The carrying-away sentence stuck in Wimble's mind as he journeyed back to
the flat on the top of a motor omnibus with Joan, for it expressed a
concrete fact, a fact that he could understand. 'The heart of a bird lies
in the centre of its body,' he murmured to himself happily. It gave him a
secret thrill of joy and wonder. His own heart, thrust to the left though
it was, felt ageless. The happy, invincible optimism of the bird was in
him. To live from the centre was a neat way of expressing what he had
been trying to do for so long, and he had not been far wrong in taking the
life and attitude of a bird for his symbol. It meant neglecting the
strained, laborious effort of the calculating mind, and leaning for help
and guidance upon something bigger, deeper, less fallible than the
strutting conscious self. The railway guard labelled it the subconscious,
that mysterious region in which every soul is linked to every other soul,
involving thus that comprehensive sympathy which is the beginning possibly
of brotherhood. He phrased it wildly, but that was what he meant.
The bigger self that lay like an ocean behind his separate, personal
_thought_ shared everything with every one. The joy, the wisdom of the
birds! The elasticity and brilliance of the universal air! The divine
carelessness that flows from living at the centre!
'Flow, fly, flow!
Wherever I am, I _go_;
I live in the air
Without thought or care . . . !'
'Daddy, you mustn't hum in public. It sounds so unusual, and people are
staring,' Joan reminded him. 'And you'll forget your hat and leave it
behind, if you don't put it on.'
He smoothed his ruffled hair and placed his black billycock upon it.
'So you've woken up at last, have you?' he replied, laughing at her.
'You slept through most of the lecture. What did you make of it,--eh?'
She looked at him with a puzzled expression in her soft, bright eyes.
'D'you think it was all nonsense? Was it true, I mean?' he repeated.
'He didn't lie, but he didn't tell the truth,' she said at once.
'Besides, I wasn't asleep. I heard it all.'
'You mean he didn't explain it properly?' he asked.
'It was the wrong way,' she said.
'Ah! words----'
'He ought to have danced it,' she said suddenly with decision. 'It's too
quick, too flashing for words. _I_ could have shown it to them easily, by
dancing it.'
He remembered the amazing ideas her dancing gestures on the roof had once
put into him. Then, thinking of the teachers of the world conveying their
meaning by dancing and gestures from the pulpits, he chuckled.
'Shall we join the Aquarians?' he asked slyly. 'What do you say to
becoming members of their Society?'
She took her answer out of his own mind, it seemed.
'If you belong, you belong. You needn't join. Societies are only cages,
Daddy. You're caught and you can't fly on.'
'We could spend the money better, yes,' he mumbled. 'Garden-gloves for
mother, a lawn-mower, a hurricane lantern for stormy nights or
something----'
'Much, much better,' she agreed.
'When once we've found the cottage,' he went on vaguely.
'It's there,' she interrupted instantly. 'Let's get the hurricane
lantern. I'd love to choose it with you. May I?'
Wimble looked about him as the heavy vehicle lumbered clumsily along its
swaying journey. The soft autumn sunshine of hazy gold lay on the
streets, but there was a nip, a sharpness in the air that put an electric
sparkle into everything. The solid world was really lighter than it
looked. There was a covert brilliance ready to dart forth into
swift-rushing flame. He felt the throbbing sheen and rustle in the golden
light, and his heart sang with joy above the heavy streets and pavements.
He was aware of a point of view that almost denied weight to inert matter,
making the dead mass of the universe alive and dancing. This nip and
sparkle in the air interpenetrated all these fixed and heavy things, these
laborious structures, these rigid forms, dissolving them into flowing,
ever-changing patterns of fluid loveliness. He saw them again as powder,
the parks and road blown everywhere, the pavements lifted, the walls wide
open to the sky. The solid earth became transparent, flooded with light
and air. It seemed etherealised. It spread great golden wings towards
the blazing sun and limitless sky. Air knew no fixed and rigid forms.
Societies, of course, were only cages. He saw the huge cage of the earth
blow open. Humanity flew out at last. . . .
'We'll get three, and at once,' he remarked, referring to the lanterns.
'And a pair of hedge-clippers as well, a ladder for the fruit trees, two
pair of best garden-gloves for mother, and a revolving summer-house where
she can follow the sun--and sit in peace.'
That ridiculous lecture acted like some mental cuckoo that had chucked
him finally out of the nest into the air. If he did not actually fly,
he certainly walked on air, with the same faith that had once been claimed
for walking on the sea. He became a daring and a happy soul.
Air represented a confident and free imagination in which everything was
possible. Earth he still loved, but only as a place to land on and take
off from. Imagination and intuition must still, at his present stage, be
backed and checked by reason; earth was still there to sleep on. But that
spontaneous way of living which is air, using the ground merely as the
swallow does--a swallow that exists in space and almost entirely neglects
its legs--this careless and new attitude leaped forward in him towards
realisation. A bird, he remembered, though apparently so free and
careless, works actually with an ordered precision towards great purposes.
He seemed conscious suddenly of a complete and absolute independence,
beyond the need of any one's comprehension. Few, if any, would understand
him, but that did not matter. The need to be understood was left behind,
below. He had soared beyond the loneliness even of a god. He felt very
humble, but very happy. And the loneliness would be but temporary, for
the rest of the world would follow before long. . . .
The motor omnibus lurched and stopped with grunting noises. Wimble, led
by his more nimble daughter, climbed down the narrow spiral stair.
He glanced upwards longingly as he descended. He saw the flashing birds.
'The brotherhood of the air,' he thought. 'Oh, how the earth must yearn
for it!'
'There's an ironmonger,' cried Joan, pointing across the road. And they
went in to buy the hurricane lanterns. They assumed, that is, that the
cottage was already found.
Then, after luncheon, while Mother criticised the garden-gloves, observing
with regard to the hurricane lanterns that it was 'living backwards,
rather, to buy things before we have the place to use them in,' he took
from the book-shelf his copy of the _Queen of the Air_ and read once again
a favourite passage. It was thumb-marked, the margin scored by his pencil
long years ago.
' . . . the bird, in which the breath, or spirit, is more full than in any
other creature and the earth-power least. . . . It is little more than a
drift of the air brought into form by plumes; the air is in all its
quills, it breathes through its whole frame and flesh, and glows with air
in its flying, like a blown flame: it rests upon the air, subdues it,
surpasses it, outraces it;--_is_ the air, conscious of itself, conquering
itself, ruling itself.
'Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air.
All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit
together in its song . . . unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven in
its gladness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft spring
nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping
and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, like
little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals
of the wild rose. . . .'
His reading was interrupted by the entrance from the passage of his wife,
her face heavily veiled; she was dressed for the street, in solemn black;
she wore a mysterious yet very confident expression. 'Joe dear, I'm going
out. I have an appointment at three o'clock sharp. I mustn't be late.'
He watched her with an absent-minded air for a moment, as though he saw
her for the first time almost; all he could remember about her just then
was that during the cinema performance she had said with proud
superiority: 'I'm glad I'm English.' Then, recognising his wife, he
realised that she was going to confession, of course, for he guessed it by
the way she folded her hands, waiting patiently for a word of
commendation.
'All right, my dear,' he said, 'and good luck. You'll be back for tea, I
suppose.' He rose and kissed her on her heavy veil, and she went out with
a smile. 'I'm so glad,' he added.
'That's her stage,' he thought to himself, 'and the critic and the
Aquarian quack have their stage, and I have mine. It's all right.'
There were immense tracts of experience in everybody, unknown, unused, but
waiting to be known and used. Some people lived in one tract only, caged
and fixed, unaware of the vast freedom a little farther outside
themselves. Different people knew different tracts, each positive that
his own particular tract alone was right--as for him, assuredly, it was--
thinking also that it was the only one, the whole, which, assuredly, it
was not. There was, however, assuredly, a point of view, the bird's, that
saw all these tracts at once, the boundaries and divisions between them
mere walls erected by the mind in ignorance. The bird's-eye view looked
down and saw the landscape whole, the divisions unreal, the separation
false. This attitude was the attitude of air; air unified; the unity of
humanity was realised. Consciousness, focussed hitherto upon little
separate tracts with feeble light, blazed upon all at once with shining
splendour.
It was true. A great world-telepathy was being 'engendered,' barriers of
creed and class were crumbling, democracy was combing out its mighty
wings; the 'tracts' inhabited by Mother, Tom, the quack, the critic, by
himself and by Joan, by that narrow snob and gossip at the tea-party who
asked, 'Who _was_ she?'--all these would be seen as adjoining little
strips belonging to the universal air which knows neither strips,
divisions nor boundaries.
A great light blazed into his heart. He wondered. Apparently it was the
little, simple, insignificant people, and not the great minds of the day,
who were the first to become aware of air. The great ones were too rigid.
Air rushed first into the hearts of the uneducated, the ignorant, the
unformed and informal--the little children of the race. It has been ever
so. The learned, knowing too much, solid with facts and explanations, are
no longer fluid. They neither flow nor fly. The brotherhood of air, he
grasped, would come first through the untaught babes and little children
of earth's vast, scattered family.
And, while these vague reflections danced across his mind, dropping their
curious shadows upon his own little tract of experience, his wife was
whispering her sins to another mind who should forgive them for her, the
critic was writing a vehement pamphlet to prove that he alone was right,
Tom, in the office, was scheming new plans for making money that should
satisfy his natural desires for pleasure and self-indulgence, the quack
was elaborating Zodiacal Explanations in his studio next to his Private
Consulting Room, and Joan----
He listened. A light, tripping step went down the corridor, passed his
door and began to climb the ladder to the open skylight in the hall.
He listened closely, eagerly, a new rhythm catching at his heart.
The little song came to him faintly through the obstructing barriers of
brick and mortar. He caught the tap and tremble of her feet upon the
roof.
Joan sang and danced above the world.