--AS USUAL
Consciousness was first--unconsciousness; the biggest changes are
unconscious before they are conscious. They have been long preparing.
They fall with a clap; and people call them sudden and exclaim, "How
strange!" But it is only the discovery and recognition that are sudden.
It all has happened already long ago--happened before. The faint sense
of familiarity betrays it. It is there the strangeness lies.
And it was this delicate fragrance of an uncommunicable strangeness
that floated in the air when Uncle Felix and the children came down to
breakfast that Sunday morning and heard the sound of bells in the wind
across the fields. They came down punctually for a wonder, too; Maria,
last but not actually late, brought the alarum clock with her. "It's
going," she stated quietly, and handed it to her brother.
Tim took it without a word, looked at it, shook it, listened to its
ticking against his ear, then set it on the mantelpiece where it
belonged. He seemed pleased to have it in his possession again, yet
something puzzled him. An expression of wonder flitted across his face;
the eyes turned upwards; he frowned; there was an effort in him--to
remember something. He turned to Maria who was already deep in porridge.
"Did _you_ wind it up?" he asked. "I thought it'd stopped--last night."
"It's going," she said, thinking of her porridge chiefly.
"It wasn't, though," insisted Tim. He reflected a moment, evidently
perplexed. "I wound it and forgot," he added to himself, "or else it
wound itself." He went to his place and began his breakfast.
"Wound itself," mentioned Maria, and then the subject dropped.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was dressed in Sunday things. The
excitement of the evening before, the promise of an Extra Day, the
detailed preparation--all this had disappeared. Being of yesterday, it
was no longer vital: certainly there was no necessity to consult it.
They looked forward rather than backward; the mystery of life lay ever
just in front of them, what lay behind was already done with. They had
lived it, lived it out. It was in their possession therefore, part of
themselves.
No one of the four devouring porridge round that breakfast table had
forgotten about the promise, any more than they had forgotten giving up
their time-pieces, the conversation, and all the rest of it. It was not
forgetfulness. It was not loss of interest either that led no one to
refer to it, least of all, to clamour for fulfilment. It was quite
another motive that kept them silent, and that, even when Uncle Felix
handed back the watches, prevented them saying anything more than
"Thank you, Uncle," then hanging them on to belt and waistcoat.
Expectation--an eternal Expectation--was established in them.
But there was also this sense of elusive strangeness in their hearts,
the certainty that an enormous interval had passed, almost the
conviction that an Extra Day--had been. Somewhere, somehow, they had
experienced its fulfilment: It was now inside them. A strange
familiarity hung about this Sunday morning.
Yet there were still a million things to do and endless time in which
to do them. Expectation was stronger than ever before, but the sense of
Interval brought a happy feeling of completion too. There was no hurry.
They felt something of what Maria felt, living at the centre of a
circle that turned unceasingly but never finished. It was Maria's
particular adventure, and Maria had shared it with them. Wonder and
expectation made them feel more than usually--alive.
They talked normally while eating and drinking. If things were said
that skirted a mystery, no one tried to find its name or label it. It
was just hiding. Let it hide! To find it was to lose the mystery, and
life without mystery was unthinkable.
"That's bells," said Tim, "it's church this morning"; but he did not
sigh, there was no sinking of the heart, it seemed. He spoke as if it
was an adventure he looked forward to. "I've decided what I'm going to
be," he went on--"an engineer, but a mining engineer. Finding things in
the earth, valuable things like coal and gold." Why he said it was not
clear exactly; it had no apparent connection with church bells. He just
thought of life as a whole, perhaps, and what he meant to do with it.
He looked forward across the years to come. He distinctly knew himself
alive.
"I shall put sixpence in, I think," observed Judy presently. "It's a
lot. And I shall wear my blue hat with the pheasant's feather--"
"Pheasants feather," repeated Tim in a single word, amused as usual by
a curious sound.
"And a wild rose _here_," she added, pointing to the place on her
dress, though nobody felt interested enough to look. Her remark about
the Collection was more vital than the other. Collections in church
were made, they believed, to "feed the clergyman." And Sunday was the
clergyman's day.
"I've got sixpence," Tim hastened to remind everybody. "I've got a
threepenny bit as well."
"It's sixpence to-day, I think," Judy decided almost tenderly. Behind
her thought was a caring, generous impulse; the motherly instinct sent
her mind to the collection for the clergyman's comfort. But romance
stirred too; she wanted to look her best. Her two main tendencies
seemed very much alive this Sunday morning. The hat and the
sixpence--both were real.
Maria, as usual, had little or nothing to say. She spoke once, however.
"I dreamed," she informed the company. She did not look up, keeping her
head bent over the bread and marmalade upon her plate; her blue eyes
rolled round the table once, then dropped again. No one asked for
details of her dream, she had no desire to supply them. She announced
her position comfortably, as it were, set herself right with life, and
quietly went on with the business of the moment, which was bread and
marmalade.
Uncle Felix looked up, however, as she said it.
"That reminds me," he observed, "I dreamed too. I dreamed that you
dreamed."
"Yes," Maria replied briefly, moving her eyes in his direction, but not
her head. No other remarks were made; the statement was too muddled to
stimulate interest particularly.
When breakfast was over they went to the open window and threw crumbs
to a robin that was obviously expecting to be fed. They all leaned out
with their heads in the sunlight, watching it. It hopped from a twig on
to the ground, its body already tight to bursting. It looked like a toy
balloon--as though it wore a dress of red elastic stretched to such a
point that the merest pinprick must explode it with a sharp report; and
it hopped as though springs were in its feet. The earth, like a taut
sheet, made it bounce. Tim aimed missiles of bread rolled into pellets
at its head, but never hit it.
"It's a lovely morning," remarked Uncle Felix, looking across the
garden to the yellow fields beyond. "A perfect day. We'll walk to
church." He brushed the breakfast crumbs from the waistcoat of his neat
blue suit, lit his pipe, sniffed the air contentedly, and had an air
generally of a sailor on shore-leave.
Judy sprang up. "There's button-holes to get," she mentioned, and flew
out of the room like a flash of sunlight or a bird.
Tim raced after her. "Wallflower for me!" he cried, while Judy's answer
floated back from halfway down the passage: "I'll have a wild
rosebud--it'll match my hat!"
Uncle Felix and Maria were left alone, gazing out of the window side by
side upon the "lovely morning." She was just high enough to see above
the edge, and her two hands lay sprawled, fingers extended, upon the
shining sill.
"Yes," she mentioned quietly, as to herself, "and I'll have a
forget-me-not." Her eyes rolled up sideways, meeting those of her uncle
as he turned and noticed her.
For quite suddenly he "noticed" her, became aware that she was there,
discovered her. He stared a moment, as though reflecting. That "yes"
had a queer, familiar sound about it, surely.
"Maria," he said, "I believe you will. Everything comes to you of its
own accord somehow."
She nodded.
"And there's another thing. You've got a secret--haven't you?" It
occurred to him that Maria was rather wonderful.
"I expect so," she answered, after a moment's pause. She looked wiser
than an owl, he thought.
"What is it? What _is_ your secret? Can't you tell me?"
For it came over him that Maria, for all her inactivity, was really
more truly alive than both the other children put together. Their
tireless, incessant energy was nothing compared to some deep well of
life Maria's outer calm concealed.
He continued to stare at her, reflecting while he did so. Through her
globular exterior, standing here beside him, rose this quiet tide whose
profound and inexhaustible source was nothing less than the entire
universe. Finding himself thus alone with her, he knew his imagination
singularly stirred. The full stream of this imagination--usually turned
into sea--and history-stories--poured now into Maria. It was the way
she had delivered herself of the monosyllable, "Yes," that first
enflamed him.
The child, obviously, was quite innocent that her uncle's imagination
clothed her in such wonder; she was entirely unselfconscious, and
remained so; but, as she kept silent as well, there was nothing to
interrupt the natural process of his thought. "You're a circle, a
mystery, a globe of wonder," his mind addressed her, gazing downwards
half in play and half in earnest. "You're always going it. Though you
seem so still--you're turning furiously like a little planet!"
For this abruptly struck him, flashing the symbol into his
imagination--that Maria lived so close to the universe that her life
and movements were akin to those of the heavenly bodies. He saw her as
an epitome of the earth. Fat, peaceful, little, calm, rotund Maria--a
miniature earth! She had no call to hurry nor rush after things. Like
the earth she contained all things within herself. It made him smile;
he smiled as he looked down into her face; she smiled as she rolled her
blue eyes upwards into his.
Yet her calm was not the calm of sloth. In that mysterious centre where
she lived he felt her as tremendously alive.
For the earth, apparently so calm and steady, knows no pause. She moves
round her axis without stopping. She rushes with immense rapidity round
the sun. Simultaneously with these two movements she combines a third;
the sun, carrying her and all his other planets with him, hurries at a
prodigious rate through interstellar space, adventuring new regions
never seen before. Calm outwardly, and without apparent motion, the
earth--at this very moment, as he leaned across the window-sill--was
making these three gigantic, endless movements. This peaceful summer
morning, like any other peaceful summer morning, she was actually
spinning, rushing, rising. And in Maria--it came to him--in Maria,
outwardly so calm, something also--spun--rushed--rose! This amazing
life that brimmed her full to bursting, even as it brimmed the robin
and the earth, overflowed and dripped out of her very eyes in shining
blue. There was no need for her to dash about. She, like the earth,
was--carried.
All this flashed upon him while the alarum clock ticked off a second
merely, for imagination telescopes time, of course, and knows things
all at once.
"What _is_ your secret, Maria?" he asked again. "I believe it's about
that Extra Day we meant to steal. Is that it?"
Her eyes gazed straight before her across the lawn where Tim and Judy
were now visible, searching busily for button-holes.
"It was to be your particular adventure, wasn't it?"
"Yes," she told him at length, without changing her expression of
serene contentment.
His imagination warned him he was getting "at her" gradually. He
possibly read into her a thousand things that were not there.
Certainly, Maria was not aware of them. But, though Uncle Felix knew
this perfectly well, he persisted, hoping for a sudden disclosure that
would justify his search--even expecting it, perhaps.
"And what sort of a day would it be, then, this Extra Day of yours?" he
went on. "It would never end, of course, for one thing, would it?
There'd be no time?"
She nodded quietly by way of effortless agreement and consent.
"So that, in a sense, you'd have it always," he said, aware of distinct
encouragement. He felt obliged to help her. This was her peculiar
power--that everything was done for her while she seemed to do it all
herself. "You would live it over and over again, for ever and ever.
_That's_ your secret, I expect, isn't it?"
"I expect so," the child answered quietly. "I've always got it." She
moved in a little closer to his side as she said it. The disclosure he
expected seemed so near now that excitement grew in him. Across the
lawn he saw the hurrying figures of Tim and Judy, racing back with
their button-holes. There was no time to lose.
He put his arm about her, tilting her face upwards with one hand to see
it plainly. The blue dyes came up with it.
"Then, what kind of a day _would_ you choose, Maria? Tell me--in a
whisper."
And then the disclosure came. But it was not whispered. Uncle Felix
heard the secret in a very clear, decided voice and in a single word:
"Birthday."
At the same moment the others poured into the room; they came like a
cataract; it seemed that a dozen children rushed upon them in a
torrent. The air was full of voices and flowers suddenly. A smell of
the open world came in with them. Button-holes were fastened into
everybody, accompanied by a breathless chorus of where and how they had
been found, who got the best, who got it first, and all the rest. From
the End of the World they came, apparently, but while Tim had climbed
the wall for his, Judy picked hers because a bird had lowered the
branch into her very hand. For Uncle Felix she brought a spray of
lilac; Tim brought a bit of mignonette. Eventually he had to wear them
both.
"And here's a forget-me-not, Maria," cried Judy, stooping down to poke
it into her sister's blue and white striped dress. "That suits you
best, I thought."
"Thank you," said Maria, moving her eyes the smallest possible fraction
of an inch.
And they scampered out of the room again, Maria ambling slowly in the
rear, to prepare for church. There were prayer-books and things to
find, threepenny bits and sixpences for the collection. There was
simply heaps to do, as they expressed it, and not a moment to lose
either. Uncle Felix listened to the sound of voices and footsteps as
they flew down the passage, dying rapidly away into the distance, and
finally ceasing altogether. He puffed his pipe a little longer before
going to his room upon a similar errand. He watched the smoke curl up
and melt into the outer air; he felt the pleasant sunshine warm upon
his face; he smelt the perfume rising from his enormous button-hole.
But of these things he did not think. He thought of what Maria said.
The way she uttered that single word remained with him: "Birthday."
He had half divined her secret. For a birthday was the opening of life;
it was the beginning. Maria had "got it always." All days for her were
birthdays, Extra Days.
And while they walked along the lane to church he still was thinking
about it.
The conversation proved that he was absent-minded rather; yet not that
his mind was absent so much as intent upon other things. The children
found him heavy; he seemed ponderous to them. And pondering he
certainly was--pondering the meaning of existence. The children, he
realised, were such brilliant comments upon existence; their
unconscious way of living, all they said and thought and did, but
especially all they believed, offered such bright interpretations, such
simple solutions of a million things. They lived so really, were so
really--alive. They never explained, they just accepted; and the
explanations given they placed at their true value, still asking, "Yes,
but what is the meaning of all that?" So close to Reality they
lived--before reason, cloaked and confused it with a million complex
explanations. That "Yes" and "Birthday" of Maria's were illuminating
examples.
Of this he was vaguely pondering as they walked along the sunny lanes
to church, and his conversation proved it. For conversation with
children meant answering endless questions merely, and the questions
were prompted by anything and everything they saw. Reality poked them;
they gave expression to it by a question. And nothing real was trivial;
the most careless detail was important, all being but a single
question--an affirmation: "We're alive, so everything else is too!"
His conversation proved that he had almost reached that state of
time-less reality in which they lived. He felt it this morning very
vividly. It seemed familiar somehow--like his own childhood recovered
almost.
He answered them accordingly. It didn't matter what was said, because
all the words in the world said one thing only. Whether the words,
therefore, made sense or not, was of no importance.
"Have you ever seen a rabbit come _out_ of its hole?" asked Tim. "They
do that for safety," he added; and if there was confusion in his
language, there was none in his thought. "Then no one can tell which
its hole is, you see. Because each rabbit--"
He broke off and glanced expectantly at his uncle. At junctures like
this his uncle usually cleared things up with an easy word or two. He
would not fail him now.
"Come _out_, no," was the reply; "no one ever sees a rabbit come out.
But I've seen them go _in_; and that's the same thing in the end. They
go down the wrong hole on purpose. _They_ know right enough. Rabbits
are rabbits."
"Of course," exclaimed Judy, "everything's itself and knows its own
sign--er--business, I mean."
"Yes," Maria repeated.
And before anything further could be mentioned--if there _was_ anything
to mention--they arrived at the porch of the church, passed under it
without speaking, walked up the aisle and took their places in the
family pew, Maria occupying the comfortable corner against the inner
wall.