To others she was doubtless an exasperating being. To her father alone--
since he saw in her something he had lost but was now recovering,
something he therefore idealised, seeing in perfected form what was
actually but a germ still--to her father she expressed a little of that
higher carelessness, or wisdom, that he had touched in boyhood and now
yearningly desired again.
'Oh, she's all in the air,' people said. And it was truer than they knew.
She had an affinity with all that flew. This bird-idea was in her heart
and blood. Whatever flew, whatever rose above the ground, whatever passed
swiftly, suddenly, from place to place, without deliberation, without
calculation, without weighing risk and profit--this appealed to her.
Yet there must be steadiness in it somewhere too, and it must get
somewhere. A swallow or a butterfly she approved, but not a bat.
The latter, for all its darting swiftness, was a sham; it was an
earth-crawler really, frightened into ridiculous movement by finding
itself aloft like a blown leaf; like a flying fish, it was wrong and out
of place. It merely flew round and round in stupid, broken circles
without rhythm. But the former were perfect. They were ideal. They were
almost spirits.
And when her father said he was glad she was half educated, he only meant
glad that she had left school and teachers before her butterfly mind had
become a rigid, accurate, mechanical thing. She might play with books as
he himself did, fluttering over the covers, smelling their perfume,
glancing at sentences and chapter headings, at indices even. But she must
not build nests in them. A book, like a photograph, was an evillish
attempt to nail a flowing idea into a fixed pattern. In the author's mind
an idea was true, but when he had put it down in black and white he had
put down only a snapshot of it: the idea was already far away.
'Not poetry-books,' Joan qualified this, 'because poetry runs clean off
the page. It's alive and wingy. It sings my bird-song--
Flow, fly, flow,
Wherever I _am_--I _go_!
She had this unerring instinct of the bird in everything, the quality that
flashes, darts, is gone before it can be killed by capture. A bird is
everywhere and nowhere. It's all over the place at once. Look at it, and
it's no longer there; listen to it, and it's gone; touch it, and you catch
a sunbeam that warms the hand but loses half its beauty; catch it--and
it's dead. But no one ever caught a swallow or a skylark naturally on the
wing. Even the eye, the mind, the following thought grows dizzy in the
effort.
For the cow in the field she had no song. 'Wherever I am, I stay,' was
without a tune of its own. A cow couldn't leave the ground. She wanted
something with incessant movement that could touch the earth, yet leave it
at will. Wings and water could. Birds and rain both flew. Half the time
a river (the only real water for her) flowed over the earth without
stopping on it, and half the time it was a cloud in the sky, yet never
lived there. 'Flow, fly, flow; wherever I _am_, I _go_,'--this was the
little song of life and change and movement that came out of her curious
heart and mind. 'Live on the run, like a bird, _that's_ fun!' And by fun
she meant life, and the soaring joy of life.
She applied her principle unconsciously to people, too. Few men had the
bird in them except her father. Mother was a badger, half the time out of
sight below the earth. She felt respect, but no genuine love, for mother.
'A whale or a badger, I really don't know which,' she said. 'That's
Mother.'
'Joan, I cannot allow you to speak in that way of your parent and my
wife.' The sentence was unreal. He chose it deliberately, as it seemed,
from some book or other. What she had said was sparklingly true, only it
could not be said. 'You were born out of mother, and so must think her
holy.'
'I only meant that she is not birdy,' was the answer, 'and that she likes
thick salt water, or sticky earth. I mean that I never see her on the
surface much, and never for an instant _above_ it. A fish is all right,
but not a half-and-half thing.'
'She built your nest for you. She taught you how to fly. Remember that.'
He lit his pipe to hide the laughter that would bubble up.
'But she never flew with me, father--as you do. Besides, you know, I
_like_ whales and badgers. I only say they're not birds.'
She paused, stared triumphantly at him a moment, and then with anxiety in
her tone, she added: 'And you said that as if some one had taught it you,
Daddy. Some one's put bird-lime near you--some book, I suspect.'
'Grammar's all right enough in its way,' he told her finally, meaning
perhaps that there were correct and incorrect ways of saying a thing, and
so the little matter was nicely settled up, and they flew on to other
things as their way invariably was. But, after that, whenever mother was
in the room, they thought of something under ground or under water that
emerged for a brief moment to stare at them and wonder, heavens!--how they
lived. _They_ wondered how, on earth, she lived. They were in different
worlds.
For a long time now Joseph Wimble, 'travelling' in tabloid knowledge, had
been absorbing what is called the Spirit of the Age. On the paper
wrappers of his books--chiefly Knowledge Primers--were printed neat and
striking epitomes of the contents. Written by expert minds, these
epitomes were admirable brief statements. There was no room for argument.
They merely gave the entire book in a few short sentences that hit the
mind--and stayed in it. They left the impression that the problem was
proved, though actually it was merely stated. Hundreds of those
statements he had now read, until they flowed like a single sentence
through his consciousness, each _resume_ a word, as it were, in the phrase
describing the knowledge--or at least the tendencies--of the day. Wimble
was thus a concise phrase-book, who taught the grammar of the twentieth
century.
For his Firm, alert and enterprising, had the gift of scenting a
given tendency before it was understood by the mass--still 'in the air,'
that is--yet while the mass still wanted to know about it;
then of choosing the writer who could crystallise it in simple language
that made the man in the street feel well informed and up to date.
The What's-in-the-Air-To-day Publishing Co. was well named; it had the
bird quality. These Picturesque Knowledge Primers sold like wildfire.
They purveyed knowledge in tabloid form and advertised the hungry public
into nourishment. The latest thing in politics, painting, flying, in
feminism or call-of-the-wild, in music, scouting, cubism, futurism,
feeding, dancing, clothing, ancient philosophy redressed, or modern pulpit
pretending to be neo--everything that thrills the public to-day, from
pageantry and Eurhythmics to higher thought and psychism, they touched
with clever condensing accuracy of aim, and grew fat upon the proceeds.
The stream of little books flowed forth, written by birds, distributed in
flocks, scattered broadcast like seed in a wind, each picked up eagerly
and discarded for the next--winged knowledge in sparrow doses.
The Managing Director, Fox Martin (_nee_ Max Levi), was a genius in his
way, sure as a hawk, clairvoyant as a raven. His _Bergson_ sold as
successfully as his _Exercises for the Bedroom_--because he chose the
writer. He hovered, swooped, struck--and the primer was caught and issued
in its thousands. His advertising was consummate, for it convinced the
ordinary man he ought to know that particular Thing-in-the-Air-To-day,
just as he ought to wear a high collar with his evening clothes or a slit
in his coat behind with flannels. He aimed at the men as the machine-made
novel aims at the women.
Wimble, _the_ traveller _facile princeps_, for this kind of goods, knew,
therefore, everything that was 'in-the-air-to-day,' without knowing in the
least why it was to be believed, or what the arguments were. And yet he
knew that he was right. He knew things as a bird does, gathering them on
every wind, and shaping his inner life swiftly, unburdened by reasoning
calculation built on facts. Thus, useless in debate, his mind was packed
with knowledge. He was a walking Index.
And the feeling in him that everything flowed and nothing was stationary
was strong. He dealt in shooting ideas, not in dead, photographic detail.
He flashed from one subject to another; flowed through all categories,
ancient and modern; skimmed the cream off current tendencies, and swept
above the knowledge of the day with a bird's-eye view, unburdened by fact
or argument.
Of late, moreover, he had enjoyed these curious upside-down and inside-out
experiences, because he had filled himself to the saturation point, and
become, as it were, stationary. He could hold no more without a change.
He stopped. He took a snapshot photograph of himself, realised that he
existed as a separate, vital entity, and thenceforward watched himself
expectantly to see what the change was going to be, for he knew he would
not stay still. Hitherto he had been mechanical, whereas now he was an
engine capable of self-direction--an engine stoked to the brim. When the
air is at the saturation point, the tiniest additional percentage of
moisture causes rain to fall. It's the final straw that makes the camel
pause. So with Joseph Wimble. He was ready to discharge.
And it was this chance remark of his under-ground wife asking who the
widow _was_ that took the photograph, and made him say, 'I am.'
All he had read was included in the affirmation. The epitomes had become
part of his consciousness. Like the weary camel, like the moisture tired
of balancing in the air, he wanted to sit down now and consider.
His daughter's longing for the country was his too. And it was she who
now brought out all this.
At dinner that night in a West End restaurant near Piccadilly Circus he
broached the subject and listened patiently to his wife's objections.
'What's the good, even if we had the means, Joe? Burying ourselves like
that.'
Joan hopped, as it were. She recognised her mother's instinctive dread
that she would go under ground or under water and never come up again.
'None of the nice people, the county families, would call. There'd only
be the vicar and the local doctor, or p'r'aps a gentleman-farmer or two.
We know much better class in town, and there's always chances of getting
to know better still. Besides, who'd there be for Joan? The girl
wouldn't have a look-in, simply. And the winters are so sloppy in a
country cottage. Think of the Sundays. And the chickens and pigs I
really couldn't abide, and howling winds at night, and owls in the eaves,
and rats in the attics. You see, we'd have no standing at all.'
'But just a week-end cottage, Mother,' Joan put in, 'just a place of
flowers and orchards and a little stream to flit down to overnight, so to
say--_that_ now you'd like, wouldn't you?'
'Oh, that's different,' she said more brightly, 'only that's not what
father means. He means a place to live in altogether. The week-end idea
is right enough. That's what everybody does who can afford to--a bungalow
on the Thames. But that means more money than we shall ever see, and even
for that you want to keep a motor or a horse and dog-cart, or a little
steam launch to get about in. Then the handy places are very expensive,
and we couldn't go very far because of Tom. Tom could come down and bring
his friends if it was near enough.'
'Grandfather might give us a little nest cheap,' suggested Joan.
She didn't 'see' Tom in the cottage.
But mother turned up her nose as she sipped her glass of Asti Spumante
that accompanied the west-end dinner by way of champagne. She didn't
approve of Norfolk.
'There's no society,' she said. 'It's flat and chilly. Your grandfather
only stays there because there's the business to keep going. If we ever
did such a thing as to move to the country, it'd have to be the Surrey
pinewoods or the Thames.'
She looked across the table questioningly at her husband. The music
played ragtime. The waiters bustled. There was movement and excitement
in the air about them. Joe looked quite distinguished in his evening
dress, and she felt proud and distinguished herself. She only wished he
were a publisher. Still, no one need feel ashamed of being interested in
the book line. Literature was not a trade.
'Some place, yes, where the country's really alive,' he agreed. 'I don't
want to vegetate any more than you do, dear, I can assure you.'
'Nor I, mother,' laughed Joan. 'I simply want to fly about all the time.'
'Joan,' was the reply, half reproachfully, 'you always talk as if we kept
you in a cage at home. The more you fly the better we like it; I only say
choose places worth flying to----'
Her husband interrupted abruptly.
'It was nothing but a little dream of my own, really,' he said lightly.
'A castle in the air, a flash of country in the brain.' He laughed and
called the waiter.
'Black, white, or Turkish?' he asked his wife. 'And what liqueur, dear?'
'Turkish and Grand Marnier,' was the prompt reply, and she would have said
'_fine champagne_' only felt uncertain how _fine_ should be pronounced.
They sipped their coffee and talked of other things. It was no good, this
speculative talk, it was too much in the air.
The key of mother's mind was always: Who _was_ she? What'll _they_ say?
She lived underground, using the worn old narrow routes. Joan and her
father made their own pathways in the trackless air. During the remainder
of the evening they kept to the earth beside mother.
That night in the poky flat, after the girl had gone to bed, Mrs. Wimble
observed to her husband:
'Do you know, Joe, I think a little change _would_ do her a lot of good.
She's getting restless here, and seems to take to nobody. Why not take
her with you sometimes on your literary trips?'
This was her name for his journeys to provincial booksellers, or when sent
to interview one of the Primer writers upon some practical detail.
'If we could afford it,' he replied.
'Father might help,' she said, showing that she had considered the matter
already. 'It would be good for her--educational, I mean.'
Her husband agreed, and they fell asleep on that agreement.
A few days later a reply was received from Mrs. Wimble's father, the
corn-chandler in Norfolk, enclosing a cheque for 20 pounds 'as a starter.'
The parents were delighted. Joan preened her wings and began at once her
short flying journeys about the country with her father. He avoided the
Commercial Traveller Hotels and took her to little Inns, where they were
very cosy together. They went from Norfolk to the edge of Wales.
She acquired a bird's-eye knowledge of the map of Southern England.
These short trips gave her somehow the general 'feel' of the various
counties, each with its different 'note,' in much the same way as the
Primers gave her father his surface impression of England's mental
condition. She noticed and remembered the living arteries which are
rivers, he the streams of thought and theory which are tendencies.
The two maps were shown and explained, and each was wonderfully alert in
understanding the other's meaning. The girl drank in her father's
knowledge, while he in his turn 'felt' the country as a dancing sheet
beneath them, flowing, liquid, alive. A new language grew into existence
between them, a kind of shorthand, almost a symbol language.
They realised it first when talking of their journeys at the dinner-table,
and Mrs. Wimble looked puzzled. Her face betrayed anxiety; she asked
perplexed questions, looking up at them as a badger might look up at
wheeling pigeons from the opening of its hole. Mentally she turned tail
and dived out of sight below ground, where, with her feet on solid earth,
her back and sides touching material that did not yield, she felt more at
home, the darkness comforting and safe. Her husband and Joan flew too
near the sun. It dazzled her. They could have talked for hours without
her catching the drift, only they were far too fond of her to do so.
They resented going underground with her, but they came down and settled
on earth, folded their wings, used words instead of unintelligible
chirrupings, and chatted with her through the opening of the hole.
One afternoon, then, in Chester, they received a telegram from her that,
for a moment, stopped the flow of things, though immediately afterwards
the rush went on with greater impetus than ever.
Father passed away peacefully
return at once
funeral to-morrow Swaffham.
And the family found itself with a solid little income of its own, free to
fly and settle where it would.