'You are a greater reader than I, of course,' resumed his employer presently; 'still, I have come across one or two stories which deal with this kind of thing. Only, in the books, the people always remember what they've done at night, out of the body, in the spirit, or whatever you like to call it. Now, I remember nothing whatever. How d'you account for that, pray?'
Minks smiled a little sadly. 'The books,' he answered very softly, 'are wrong there—mere inventions—not written from personal experience. There can be no detailed memory unless the brain has been 'out' too—which it hasn't. That's where inaccuracy and looseness of thought come in. If only the best minds would take the matter up, you see, we might—'
Rogers interrupted him. 'We shall miss the post, Minks, if we go on dreaming and talking like this,' he exclaimed, looking at his watch and then at the pile of letters waiting to be finished. 'It is very delightful indeed, very—but we mustn't forget to be practical, too.'
And the secretary, not sorry perhaps to be rescued in time from the depths he had floundered in, switched his mind in concentration upon the work in hand again. The conversation had arisen from a chance coincidence in this very correspondence—two letters that had crossed after weeks of silence.
Work was instantly resumed. It went on as though it had never been interrupted. Pride and admiration stirred the heart of Minks as he noticed how keenly and accurately his master's brain took up the lost threads again. 'A grand fellow!' he thought to himself, 'a splendid man! He lives in both worlds at once, yet never gets confused, nor lets one usurp his powers to the detriment of the other. If only I were equally balanced and effective. Oh dear!' And he sighed.
And there were many similar conversations of this kind. London seemed different, almost transfigured sometimes. Was this the beginning of that glory which should prove it a suburb of Bourcelles?
Rogers found his thoughts were much in that cosy mountain village: the children capered by his side all day; he smelt the woods and flowers; he heard the leaves rustle on the poplar's crest; and had merely to think of a certain room in the tumble-down old Citadelle for a wave of courage and high anticipation to sweep over him like a sea. A new feeling of harmony was taking him in hand. It was very delightful; and though he felt explanation beyond his reach still, his talks with Minks provided peep-holes through which he peered at the enormous thing that brushed him day and night.
A great settling was taking place inside him. Thoughts certainly began to settle. He realised, for one thing, that he had left the theatre where the marvellous Play had been enacted. He stood outside now, able to review and form a judgment. His mind loved order. Undue introspection he disliked, as a form of undesirable familiarity; a balanced man must not be too familiar with himself; it endangered self-respect.
He had been floundering rather. After years of methodical labour the freedom of too long a holiday was disorganising. He tried to steady himself. And the Plan of Life, answering to control, grew smaller instantly, reduced to proportions he could examine reasonably. This was the beginning of success. The bewildering light of fairyland still glimmered, but no longer so diffused. It focused into little definite kernels he could hold steady while he scrutinised them.
And these kernels he examined carefully as might be: in the quiet, starry evenings usually, while walking alone in St. James's Park after his day of board meetings, practical work with Minks, and the like.
Gradually then, out of the close survey, emerged certain things that seemed linked together in an intelligible sequence of cause and effect. There was still mystery, for subconscious investigation ever involves this background of shadow. Question and Wonder watched him. But the facts emerged.
He jotted them down on paper as best he could. The result looked like a Report drawn up by Minks, only less concise and—he was bound to admit it—less intelligible. He smiled as he read them over....
'My thoughts and longings, awakened that night in the little Crayfield garden,' he summed it up to himself, having read the Report so far, 'went forth upon their journey of realisation. I projected them— according to Minks—vividly enough for that! I thought Beauty—and this glorious result materialised! More—my deepest, oldest craving of all has come to life again—the cry of loneliness that yearns to—that seeks—er—'
At this point, however, his analysis grew wumbled; the transference of thought and emotion seemed comprehensible enough; though magical, it was not more so than wireless telegraphy, or that a jet of steam should drive an express for a hundred miles. It was conceivable that Daddy had drawn thence the inspiration for his wonderful story. What baffled him was the curious feeling that another was mixed up in the whole, delightful business, and that neither he nor his cousin were the true sponsors of the fairy fabric. He never forgot the description his cousin read aloud that night in the Den—how the Pattern of his Story reached its climax and completeness when a little starry figure with twinkling feet and amber eyes had leaped into the centre and made itself at home there. From the Pleiades it came. The lost Pleiad was found. The network of thought and sympathy that contained the universe had trembled to its uttermost fastenings. The principal role was filled at last.
It was here came in the perplexing thing that baffled him. His mind sat down and stared at an enormous, shadowy possibility that he was unable to grasp. It brushed past him overhead, beneath, on all sides. He peered up at it and marvelled, unconvinced, yet knowing himself a prisoner. Something he could not understand was coming, was already close, was watching him, waiting the moment to pounce out, like an invisible cat upon a bewildered mouse. The question he flung out brought no response, and he recalled with a smile the verse that described his absurd position:—
Like a mouse who, lost in wonder,
Flicks its whiskers at the thunder!
For, while sprites and yearning were decidedly his own, the interpretation of them, if not their actual origin, seemed another's. This other, like some dear ideal on the way to realisation, had taken him prisoner. The queer sense of anticipation Bourcelles had fostered was now actual expectation, as though some Morning Spider had borne his master-longing, exquisitely fashioned by the Story, across the Universe, and the summons had been answered-from the Pleiades. The indestructible threads of thought and feeling tightened. The more he thought about his cousin's interpretation the more he found in it a loveliness and purity, a crystal spiritual quality, that he could credit neither to the author's mind nor to his own. This soft and starry brilliance was another's. Up to a point the interpretation came through Daddy's brain, just as the raw material came through his own; but there-after this other had appropriated both, as their original creator and proprietor. Some shining, delicate hand reached down from its starry home and gathered in this exquisite form built up from the medley of fairy thought and beauty that were first its own. The owner of that little hand would presently appear to claim it.
'We were but channels after all then—both of us,' was the idea that lay so insistently in him. 'The sea of thought sends waves in all directions. They roll into different harbours. I caught the feeling, he supplied the form, but this other lit the original fire!'
And further than this wumbled conclusion he could not get. He went about his daily work. however, with a secret happiness tugging at his mind all day, and a sense of expectant wonder glancing brightly over everything he thought or did. He was a prisoner in fairyland, and what he called his outer and his inner world were, after all, but different ways of looking at one and the same thing. Life everywhere was one.
Chapter XXXI
*
Es stehen unbeweglich
Die Sterne in der Hoh'
Viel tausend Jahr', und schauen
Sich an mit Liebesweh.
Sie sprechen eine Sprache,
Die ist so reich, so schon;
Doch keiner der Philologen
Kann diese Sprache verstehen.
Ich aber hab' sie gelernet,
Und ich vergesse sie nicht;
Mir diente als Grammatik
Der Herzallerliebsten Gesicht.
Heine.
One evening in particular the sense of expectation in him felt very close upon delivery. All day he had been aware of it, and a letter received that morning from his cousin seemed the cause. The story, in its shorter version, had been accepted. Its reality, therefore, had already spread; one other mind, at least, had judged it with understanding. Two months from now, when it appeared in print, hundreds more would read it. Its beauty would run loose in many hearts. And Rogers went about his work that day as though the pleasure was his own. The world felt very sweet. He saw the good in every one with whom he came in contact. And the inner excitement due to something going to happen was continuous and cumulative.
Yet London just then—it was August—was dull and empty, dusty, and badly frayed at the edges. It needed a great cleaning; he would have liked to pour sea water over all its streets and houses, bathed its panting parks in the crystal fountains of Bourcelles. All day long his thoughts, indeed, left London for holidays in little Bourcelles. He was profoundly conscious that the Anticipation he first recognised in that forest village was close upon accomplishment now. On the journey back to England he recalled how urgent it had been. In London, ever since, it had never really left him. But to-day it now suddenly became more than expectation—he felt it in him as a certainty that approached fulfilment. It was strange, it was bewildering; it seemed to him as though something from that under-self he could never properly reach within him, pushed upwards with a kind of aggressive violence towards the surface. It was both sweet and vital. Behind the 'something' was the 'some one' who led it into action.
At half-past six he strolled down a deserted St. James's Street, passed the door of his club with no temptation to go in, and climbed the stairs slowly to his rooms. His body was languid though his mind alert. He sank into an arm-chair beside the open window. 'I must do something to-night,' he thought eagerly; 'mere reading at the club is out of the question. I'll go to a theatre or—or—.' He considered various alternatives, deciding finally upon Richmond Park. He loved long walks at night when his mind was restless thus; the air in Richmond Park was peculiarly fresh and scented after dark. He knew the little gate that was never closed. He would dine lightly, and go for a ten-mile stretch among the oaks, surprise the deer asleep, listen to the hum of distant London, and watch the fairy battle between the lurid reflection of its million lights and the little stars.... There were places in the bracken where....
The rumbling clatter of a railway van disturbed the picture. His mind followed the noise instead. Thought flashed along the street to a station. He saw trains...
'Come at once! You're wanted here—some one calls you!' sounded a breathless merry voice beside him. 'Come quickly; aussi schnell que moglich!'
There was a great gulp of happiness in him; his spirit plunged in joy. He turned and looked about him swiftly. That singing voice, with its impudent mingling of languages was unmistakable.
'From the Pleiades. Look sharp! You've been further off than ever lately, and further is further than farther—much! Over the forests and into the cave, that is the way we must all behave—!'
He opened an eye.
Between him and a great gold sunset ran the wind. It was a slender violet wind. The sunset, however, was in the act of disappearing for the Scaffolding of Dusk was passing through the air—he saw the slung trellis-work about him, the tracery of a million lines, the guy-ropes, uprights, and the feathery threads of ebony that trailed the Night behind them like a mighty cloth. There was a fluttering as of innumerable wings.
'You needn't tug like that,' he gasped. 'I'm coming all right. I'm out!'
'But you're so slow and sticky,' she insisted. 'You've been sticky like this for weeks now!'
He saw the bright brown eyes and felt the hair all over his face like a bath of perfume. They rushed together. His heart beat faster....
'Who wants me in such a hurry?' he cried, the moment he was disentangled. Laughter ran past him on every side from the world of trees.
'As if you didn't know! What is the good of pretending any longer! You're both together in the Network, and you know it just as well as she does!'
Pretending! Just as well as she does!
As though he had eyes all over his body he saw the Net of Stars above him. Below were forests, vineyards, meadows, and the tiny lights of houses. In the distance shimmered the waters of a familiar lake. Great purple mountains rolled against the sky line. But immediately over his head, close yet also distant, filling the entire heavens, there hung a glittering Pattern that he knew, grown now so vast that at first he scarcely recognised its dazzling loveliness. From the painted western horizon it stretched to other fastenings that dipped below the world, where the East laid its gulfs of darkness to surprise the sun. It swung proudly down, as though hung from the Pole Star towards the north, and while the Great Bear 'pointers' tossed its embroidery across Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, just rising, flung its further fringes down to Orion, waiting in wonder to receive them far below the horizon. Old Sirius wore one breadth of it across his stupendous shoulder, and Aldebaran, with fingers of bronze and fire, drew it delicately as with golden leashes over the sleeping world.
When first he saw it, there was this gentle fluttering as of wings through all its intricate parts, but the same moment four shooting stars pierced its outlying edges with flying nails of gold. It steadied and grew taut.
'There she is!' cried Monkey, flashing away like a comet towards the Cave. 'You'll catch it now—and you deserve to!' She turned a brilliant somersault and vanished.
Then, somehow, the vast Pattern settled into a smaller scale, so that he saw it closer, clearer, and without confusion. Beauty and wonder focused for his sight. The perfected design of Daddy's fairy story floated down into his heart without a hint of wumbling. Never had he seen it so luminous and simple. For others, of course, meanwhile had known and understood it. Others believed. Its reality was more intense, thus, than before.
He rose from the maze of tree-tops where he floated, and stretched his arms out, no fear or hesitation in him anywhere. Perched in the very centre of the Pattern, seated like a new-born star upon its throne, he saw that tiny figure who had thrilled him months ago when he caught it in a passing instant, fluttering in the web of Daddy's story,—both its climax and its inspiration. The twinkling feet were folded now. He saw the soft little eyes that shone like starlight through clear amber. The hands, palms upwards, were stretched to meet his own.
'You, of course, must come up—to me,' he heard.
And climbing the lace-like tracery of the golden web, he knelt before her. But, almost before both knees were bent, her hands had caught him—the touch ran like a sheath of fire through every nerve—and he was seated beside her in that shining centre.
'But why did it suddenly grow small?' he asked at once. He felt absolutely at home. It was like speaking to a child who loved him utterly, and whom he, in his turn, knew intimately inside out.
'Because you suddenly understood,' was the silvery, tiny answer. 'When you understand, you bring everything into yourself, small as a toy. It is size that bewilders. Men make size. Fairy things, like stars and tenderness, are always small.'
'Of course,' he said; 'as if I didn't know it already!'
'Besides,' she laughed, half closing her brilliant eyes and peering at him mischievously, 'I like everything so tiny that you can find it inside a shell. That makes it possible to do big things.'
'Am I too big—?' he exclaimed, aware of clumsiness before this exquisite daintiness.
'A little confused, that's all,' her laughter rippled. 'You want smoothing down. I'll see to that.'
He had the feeling, as she said it, that his being included the entire Pattern, even to its most distant edges where it fastened on to the rim of the universe. From this huge sensation, he came back swiftly to its tiny correspondence again. His eyes turned to study her. But she seemed transpar
ent somehow, so that he saw the sky behind her, and in it, strangely enough—just behind her face—the distant Pleiades, shining faintly with their tender lustre. They reached down into her little being, it seemed, as though she emanated from them. Big Aldebaran guided strongly from behind. For an instant he lost sight of the actual figure, seeing in its place a radiant efflorescence, purified as by some spiritual fire—the Spirit of a Star.
'I'm here, quite close beside you,' whispered the tiny voice. 'Don't let your sight get troublesome like your size. Inside-sight, remember, is the thing!'
He turned, or rather he focused sight again to find her. He was startled a little. For a moment it seemed like his own voice speaking deep down within himself.
'Make yourself at home,' it continued, 'you belong here—almost as much as I do.' And at the sound of her voice all the perplexities of his life lay down. It brushed him smooth, like a wind that sets rough feathers all one way,
He remembered again where he was, and what was going on.
'I do,' he answered, happy as a boy. 'I am at home. It is perfect.'
'Do you, indeed! You speak as though this story were your own!'
And her laugh was like the tinkle of hare-bells in the wind.
'It is,' he said; 'at least I had—I have, rather, a considerable hand in the making of it.'
'Possibly,' she answered, 'but the story belongs to the person who first started it. And that person is myself. The story is mine really!'
'Yours!' he gasped.
'Because—I am the story!'
He stared hard to find the face that said this thing. Thought stopped dead a moment, blocked by a marvel that was impossible, yet true.
'You mean—?' he stammered.
'You heard perfectly what I said; you understood it, too. There's no good pretending,' impatience as well as laughter in the little voice. 'I am the story,—the story that you love.'
A sudden joy burst over him in a flood. Struggle and search folded their wings and slept. An immense happiness wrapped him into the very woof of the pattern wherein they sat. A thousand loose and ineffective moods of his life found coherence, as a thousand rambling strands were gathered home and fastened into place.