Her father stood upside-down--mentally, of course, not physically.
Certain of the Primer 'Epitomes' came in helter-skelter to support his
daughter's nonsense. At the same time he was aware that he ought to chide
her. And probably he would have done so but for the fact that before he
knew it, the girl was asking to be forgiven. He had not seen her move;
his mental sight was still following Mother. There was a flutter of
something white across the air--and there Joan was--upon his knee.
And so he did not chide her. Nor did he rebuke her for singing under her
breath what she called 'Mother's Song,' beginning:
O Disaster!
You're my Master!
'Your mother's tired to-night,' he observed. 'But all the same, you are a
nasty little tease, you know.' Her arms felt like warm, smooth feathers as
he stroked them. He seemed floating lightly in mid-air above the roof.
And he remembered vaguely the fairy tales of his youth when Princesses
turned suddenly into swans. Oh, how beautiful it was, this bird idea,
this seeing and feeling things in the terms of birds. Those girls in
Greece the gods changed into a nightingale and a swallow--what a
delightful, exhilarating experience! Easy--and how true! 'The feathery
change came o'er you,' he murmured from the Treasury of Song, then,
interrupting his own mood of curious enjoyment, turned to Joan abruptly.
'Why did you talk like that?' he inquired.
'To make Mother move----'
'To bed, you mean?' he asked, almost severely.
'Yes, no,' said Joan.
'Answer me properly, girl,' he observed.
'Of course not. Move nearer to you--and me--even to grandpa. We ought to
be a flock somehow, I felt. But we looked so separate and apart, you two
on chairs, reading, him out of sight, and me on the window-sill.'
'Eh?'
'We ought to be one thing more. The whole world ought to be.
Not crowded--oh, there'd be heaps of room to move in--but all together
somehow like birds. It's only bad birds that are apart--ravens, hawks,
and birds of prey. All the others flock.' She darted from his knee and
stood upon her toes a second before him, staring down into his eyes.
'It's coming, you know, Daddy. It's coming, anyhow!' She said it
brightly, eagerly, yet with a singular conviction in her tone.
'The whole world's flocking somehow--somewhere--for I feel it. We shall
all be happy together once we get into the country.'
A shiver of beauty passed through him as he heard her. He remembered his
walk up Maida Vale, and the rushing, shadowy presentiment in his mind that
something new was on the way.
'Like a single big family, you mean? All after one high big thing
together?' He asked it, greatly wondering at her. But her reply made him
gasp. Where had she learned such things, unless from the air?
'Your language is so draughty, Daddy. _I_ mean a bird-world.
Birds aren't unselfish, they're just--together.'
He rubbed his forehead, saying nothing, while she fluttered down upon his
knees again.
'Like my body,' she said. 'Don't you see?'
'Yes, no,' he laughed, using her method unconsciously.
'I can't lace my boot with one hand, but the other isn't unselfish when it
comes to help. My head is no farther from _me_ than my boot, is it?'
And she sang softly her bird-song of movement and delight, until he felt
the quality of her volatile, aerial mind flash down into his own and
lighten it amazingly.
'My precious little daughter,' he cried, 'you are a bird, and you shall
teach me all your flying secrets. But, tell me,' he whispered, 'how in
the world did you find out all this?'
'Oh, I can't tell _that_,' she replied almost impatiently, 'for once I
begin to think it all goes, and I feel like an animal in a hole. But I'll
tell you soon--when the right moment comes--in the fields. I just go
about and it all shoots into me.'
It was the true bird-quality, always singing, always on the alert, swift
to notice and be glad.
'Yet I said it without thinking,' she went on, 'and the meaning came in
afterwards at the end--all of its own accord. And that's really the way
to live together. At least, it's coming----'
'The next stage, the next move!'
'Flight!' she cried, half singing it.
'You live and talk,' he laughed, 'like a German sentence that carries all
in the head and suddenly puts the verb down at the end.'
'Yes, yes,' he realised after she had gone to bed, while he sat there,
pondering her fluid statements, 'there is this new thing coming into life,
and it is in some sense indeed a bird-thing. It's a new outlook!'
He caught at her feathery meanings none the less. A great aerial movement
had begun, an etherialisation, a spiritualisation of life. And in true
spirituality there was nothing vague; its expression was terrifically
definite, stupendously alive, swift, sure, and steady as a mighty bird.
Spirit was a bird of fire. Joan left him in that dreary sitting-room with
a feeling that life was glorious and that the entire population of the
globe must presently take flight and wing its way to some less ponderous
star--migration. Joan's language was absurd, yet she left winged ideas
rushing like imperial eagles through his mind. Humanity was really one,
but on earth alone it would never, never find it out. In the air it
would. Its upward struggles were not mere figures of speech.
Routine oppressed and deadened life, prisoning it within a network of
rigid, fixed ideas, and behind barriers of concentrated effort which
turned the fluid stagnant--hard. Routine was dulling, anti-spiritual.
To live like a quicksand before you get fixed and sank, this was the way.
To be ready for a fire that should burn up all you had. Life flows,
flies, flows; it has rhythm and abandon; self, by means of boundaries and
casting limits, resists this universal flow towards expansion
characteristic of all Nature. A bird was poised. True! But it was ready
to go in any direction instantly, for it was more various and less
intense, by no means purposeless, and never bound. It was spontaneous,
instantaneous, for ever on the run. That was living, that was 'fun.'
People, like animals, were congested. But life was growing quicker,
lighter, with rhythm, movement everywhere.
The shadow dance began again deliciously.
Yet to act intuitively seemed a dangerous plan for the majority at
present, to live on impulse seemed mere recklessness. But it would come.
Already people were tired of knowing exact and detailed reasons for all
they did. Confusion would come first, of course, but out of that
confusion, as out of the apparent trouble of a rising flock of birds, or
the scattered muddle of leaves and branches in a wind-tossed tree, would
follow magnificent concerted life. Democracy was growing wings. Soon it
would sing for joy.
Yes, there was truth in it. Majestic powers were moving already past the
visible curtain of fixed and rigid formulae. To obey an intuition the
instant it came, was to find the opportunity at hand for carrying it out
effectively. To wait and hesitate, consider, reflect and reason out, was
to lose the chance. It was disobedience, and disobedience detached from
power. Fate was controlled by an obedient and instantaneous mind, for it
meant acting in harmony with these majestic powers. Understanding
followed later, as with Joan's outlook; the verb came down at the end,
explaining, justifying all that had preceded it. Good and evil were,
after all, misnomers of the nursery. In rhythm or out of rhythm was
common, aye, the commonest sense. Rhythm was simply ease, as
separateness, due to want of rhythm, was dis-ease.
'Oh dear!' sighed Joseph Wimble, as he turned the light out and pattered
down the corridor to bed. 'I feel carried off my feet. What a buoyant
thing life is, to be sure! It gets big and light and happy when you least
expect it! Evidently, there's a big universal thing underlying it all--
that's what she means by air--and to lean upon _that_--subconsciously,
I suppose--to act in rhythm with it----' He broke off, colliding with a
chest of drawers Mother _would_ keep in the narrow passage.
Then, suddenly, as he switched the light on in his bedroom, he realised
something very big and striking:
'_Of course_, I'm a cosmic, not merely a planetary, being . . .!'