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The Extra Day

by Algernon Blackwood · English · Gutenberg #5894 · 564,329 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Extra Day

Author: Algernon Blackwood


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5894]
                Most recently updated: June 4, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5894

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXTRA DAY ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










THE EXTRA DAY

BY

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE CENTAUR," "A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND," "INCREDIBLE
ADVENTURES," ETC.



New York

1915



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1915. Reprinted November,
1915.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I     THE MATERIAL

II    FANCY--SEED OF WONDER

III   DEATH OF A MERE FACT

IV    FACT--EDGED WITH FANCY

V     THE BIRTH OF WONDER

VI    THE GROWTH OF WONDER

VII   IMAGINATION WAKES

VIII  WHERE WONDER HIDES

IX    A PRIEST OF WONDER

X     FACT AND WONDER--CLASH

XI    JUDY'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE

XII   TIM'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE

XIII  TIME HESITATES

XIV   MARIA STIRS

XV    "A DAY WILL COME"

XVI   TIME HALTS

XVII  A DAY HAS COME

XVIII TIME GOES ON AGAIN--

XIX   --AS USUAL

XX    --BUT DIFFERENTLY!




CHAPTER I

THE MATERIAL


Judy, Tim, and Maria were just little children. It was impossible to
say exactly what their ages were, except that they were just the usual
age, that Judy was the eldest, Maria the youngest, and that Tim,
accordingly, came in between the two.

Their father did his best for them; so did their mother; so did Aunt
Emily, the latter's sister. It is impossible to say very much about
these three either, except that they were just Father, Mother, and Aunt
Emily. They were the Authorities-in-Chief, and they knew respectively
everything there was to be known about such remote and difficult
subjects as London and Money; Food, Health and Clothing; Conduct,
Behaviour and Regulations, both general and particular. Into these
three departments of activity the children, without realising that they
did so, classed them neatly. Aunt Emily, besides the special duties
assigned to her, was a living embodiment of No. While Father allowed
and permitted, while Mother wobbled and hesitated, Aunt Emily shook her
head with decision, and said distinctly No. She was too full of
warnings, advice, and admonitions to get about much. She wore gold
glasses, and had an elastic, pointed nose. From the children's point of
view she must be classed as invalid. Somewhere, deep down inside them,
they felt pity.

The trio loved them according to their just deserts; they grasped that
the Authorities did their best for them. This "best," moreover, was
done in different ways. Father did it with love and tenderness, that
is, he spoilt them; Mother with tenderness and love, that is, she felt
them part of herself and did not like to hurt herself; Aunt Emily with
affectionate and worthy desire to see them improve, that is, she
trained them. Therefore they adored their father, loved their mother,
and thought highly--from a distance preferably--of their aunt.

This was the outward and visible household that an ordinary person,
say, a visitor who came to lunch on Sunday after church, would have
noticed. It was the upper layer; but there was an under layer too.
There was Thompson, the old pompous family butler; they trusted him
because he was silent and rarely smiled, winked at their mischief,
pretended not to see them when he caught them in his pantry, and never
once betrayed them. There was Mrs. Horton, the fat and hot-tempered
family cook; they regarded her with excitement including dread, because
she left juicy cakes (still wet) upon the dresser, yet denied them the
entry into her kitchen. Her first name being Bridget, there was
evidently an Irish strain in her, but there was probably a dash of
French as well, for she was an excellent cook and _recipe_ was her
master-word--she pronounced it "recipee." There was Jackman, the nurse,
a mixture of Mother and Aunt Emily; and there was Weeden, the Head
Gardener, an evasive and mysterious personality, who knew so much about
flowers and vegetables and weather that he was half animal, half bird,
and scarcely a human being at all--vaguely magnificent in a sombre way.
His power in his own department was unquestioned. He said little, but
it "meant an awful lot"--most of which, perhaps, was not intended.

These four constituted the under layer of the household, concealed from
visitors, and living their own lives apart behind the scenes. They were
the Lesser Authorities.

There were others too, of course, neighbours, friends, and visitors,
who dwelt outside the big iron gates in the Open World, and who entered
their lives from various angles, some to linger, some merely to show
themselves and vanish into mist again. Occasionally they reappeared at
intervals, occasionally they didn't. Among the former were Colonel
William Stumper, C.B., a retired Indian soldier who lived in the Manor
House beyond the church and had written a book on Scouting; a nameless
Station-Master, whom they saw rarely when they accompanied Daddy to the
London train; a Policeman, who walked endlessly up and down the muddy
or dusty lanes, and came to the front door with a dirty little book in
his big hands at Christmas-time; and a Tramp, who slept in barns and
haystacks, and haunted the great London Road ever since they had once
handed him a piece of Mrs. Horton's sticky cake in paper over the old
grey fence. Him they regarded with a special awe and admiration, not
unmixed with tenderness. He had smiled so nicely when he said "Thank
you" that Judy, wondering if there was any one to mend his clothes, had
always longed to know him better. It seemed so wonderful. How could he
live without furniture, house, regular meals--without possessions, in a
word? It made him so real. It was "real life," in fact, to live that
way; and upon Judy especially the impression was a deep one.

In addition to these occasional intruders, there was another person, an
Authority, but the most wonderful Authority of all, who came into their
lives a little later with a gradual and overwhelming effect, but who
cannot be mentioned more definitely just now because he has not yet
arrived. The world, in any case, speaking generally, was enormous; it
was endless; it was always dropping things and people upon them without
warning, as from a clear and cloudless sky. But this particular
individual was still climbing the great curve below their horizon, and
had not yet poked his amazing head above the edge.

Yet, strange to say, they had always believed that some such person
would arrive. A wonderful stranger was already on the way. They rarely
spoke of it--it was just a great, passionate expectancy tucked away in
the deepest corner of their hearts. Children possess this sense of
anticipation all the world over; grown-ups have it too in the form of
an unquenchable, though fading hope: the feeling that some day or other
a Wonderful Stranger will come up the pathway, knock at the door, and
enter their lives, making life worth living, full of wonder, beauty,
and delight, because he will make all things new.

This wonderful stranger, Judy had a vague idea, would be--be like at
least--the Tramp; Tim, following another instinct, was of the opinion
he would be a "soldier-explorer-hunter kind of man"; Maria, if she
thought anything at all about him, kept her decision securely hidden in
her tight, round body. But Judy qualified her choice by the hopeful
assertion that he would "come from the air"; and Tim had a secret
notion that he would emerge from a big, deep hole--pop out like a
badger or a rabbit, as it were--and suddenly declare himself; while
Maria, by her non-committal, universal attitude, perhaps believed that,
if he came at all, he would "just come from everywhere at once." She
believed everything, always, everywhere. But to assert that belief was
to betray the existence of a doubt concerning it. She just lived it.

For the three children belonged to three distinct classes, without
knowing that they did so. Tim loved anything to do with the ground,
with earth and soil, that is, things that made holes and lived in them,
or that did not actually make holes but just grubbed about; mysterious,
secret things, such as rabbits, badgers, hedgehogs, mice, rats, hares,
and weasels. In all his games the "earth" was home.

Judy, on the other hand, was indubitably an air person--birds amazed
her, filling her hungry heart with high aspirations, longings, and
desires. She looked, with her bright, eager face and spidery legs,
distinctly bird-like. She flitted, darted, perched. She had what Tim
called a "tweaky" nose, though whether he meant that it was beak-like
or merely twitched, he never stated; it was just "tweaky," and Judy
took it as a compliment. One could easily imagine her shining little
face peeping over the edge of a nest, the rest of her sitting warmly
upon half a dozen smooth, pink eggs. Her legs certainly seemed stuck
into her like pencils, as with a robin or a seagull. She adored
everything that had wings and flew; she was of the air; it was her
element.

Maria's passions were unknown. Though suspected of being universal,
since she manifested no deliberate likes or dislikes, approving all
things with a kind of majestic and indifferent omnipotence, they
remained quiescent and undeclared. She probably just loved the
universe. She felt at home in it. To Maria the entire universe
belonged, because she sat still and with absolute conviction--claimed
it.




CHAPTER II

FANCY--SEED OF WONDER


The country house, so ancient that it seemed part of the landscape,
settled down secretively into the wintry darkness and watched the night
with eyes of yellow flame. The thick December gloom hid it securely
from attack. Nothing could find it out. Though crumbling in places, the
mass of it was solid as a fortress, for the old oak beams had resisted
Time so long that the tired years had resigned themselves to siege
instead of assault, and the protective hills and woods rendered it
impregnable against the centuries. The beleaguered inhabitants felt
safe. It was a delightful, cosy feeling, yet excitement and surprise
were in it too. Anything _might_ happen, and at any moment.

This, at any rate, was how Judy and Tim felt the personality of the old
Mill House, calling it Daddy's Castle. Maria expressed no opinion. She
felt and knew too much to say a word. She was habitually non-committal.
She shared the being of the ancient building, as the building shared
the landscape out of which it grew so naturally. Having been born last,
her inheritance of coming Time exceeded that of Tim and Judy, and she
lived as though thoroughly aware of her prerogative. In quiet silence
she claimed everything as her very own.

The Mill House, like Maria, never moved; it existed comfortably; it
seemed independent of busy, hurrying Time. So thickly covered was it
with ivy and various creepers that the trees on the lawn wondered why
it did not grow bigger like themselves. They remembered the time when
they looked up to it, whereas now they looked over it easily, and even
their lower branches stroked the stone tiles on the roof, patched with
moss and lichen like their own great trunks. They had come to regard it
as an elderly animal asleep, for its chimneys looked like horns, it
possessed a capacious mouth that both swallowed and disgorged, and its
eyes were as numerous as those of the forest to which they themselves
properly belonged. And so they accepted the old Mill House as a thing
of drowsy but persistent life; they protected and caressed it; they
liked it exactly where it was; and if it moved they would have known an
undeniable shock.

They watched it now, this dark December evening, as one by one its
gleaming eyes shone bright and yellow through the mist, then one by one
let down their dark green lids. "It's going to sleep," they thought.
"It's going to dream. Its life, like ours, is all inside. It sleeps the
winter through as we do. All is well. Good-night, old house of grey!
We'll also go to sleep."

Unable to see into the brain of the sleepy monster, the trees resigned
themselves to dream again, tucking the earth closely against their
roots and withdrawing into the cloak of misty darkness. Like most other
things in winter they also stayed indoors, leading an interior life of
dim magnificence behind their warm, thick bark. Presently, when they
were ready, something would happen, something they were preparing at
their leisure, something so exquisite that all who saw it would dance
and sing for gladness. They also believed in a Wonderful Stranger who
was coming into their slow, steady lives. They fell to dreaming of the
surprising pageant they would blazon forth upon the world a little
later. And while they dreamed, the wind of night passed moaning through
their leafless branches, and Time flew noiselessly above the turning
Earth.

Meanwhile, inside the old Mill House, the servants lit the lamps and
drew the blinds and curtains. Behind the closing eyelids, however, like
dream-chambers within a busy skull, there were rooms of various shapes
and kinds, and in one of these on the ground-floor, called Daddy's
Study, the three children stood, expectant and a little shy, waiting
for something desirable to happen. In common with all other living
things, they shared this enticing feeling--that Something Wonderful was
going to happen. To be without this feeling, of course, is to be not
alive; but, once alive, it cannot be escaped. At death it asserts
itself most strongly of all--Something Too Wonderful is going to
happen. For to die is quite different from being not alive. This
feeling is the proof of eternal life--once alive, alive for ever. To
live is to feel this yearning, huge expectancy.

Daddy had taught them this, though, of course, they knew it
instinctively already. And any moment now the door would open and his
figure, familiar, yet each time more wonderful, would cross the
threshold, close the door behind him, and ... something desirable would
happen.

"I wish he'd hurry," said Tim impatiently. "There won't be any time
left." And he glanced at the cruel clock that stopped all their
pleasure but never stopped itself. "The motor got here hours ago. He
can't STILL be having tea." Judy, her brown hair in disorder, her belt
sagging where it was of little actual use, sighed deeply. But there was
patience and understanding in her big, dark eyes. "He's in with Mother
doing finances," she said with resignation. "It's Saturday. Let's sit
down and wait." Then, seeing that Maria already occupied the big
armchair, and sat staring comfortably into the fire, she did not move.
Maria was making a purring, grunting sound of great contentment; she
felt no anxiety of any kind apparently.

But Tim was less particular.

"Alright," he said, squashing himself down beside Maria, whose podgy
form accommodated itself to the intrusion like a cat, "as long as Aunt
Emily doesn't catch him on the way and begin explaining."

"She's in bed with a headache," mentioned Judy. "She's safe enough."
For it was an established grievance against their mother's sister that
she was always explaining things. She was a terrible explainer. She
couldn't move without explaining. She explained everything in the
world. She was a good soul, they knew, but she had to explain that she
was a good soul. They rather dreaded her. Explanations took time for
one thing, and for another they took away all wonder. In bed with a
headache, she was safely accounted for, explained.

"She thinks we miss her," reflected Tim. He did not say it; it just
flashed through his mind, with a satisfaction that added vaguely to his
pleasurable anticipation of what was coming. And this satisfaction
increased his energy. "Shove over a bit," he added aloud to Maria, and
though Maria did not move of her own volition, she was nevertheless
shoved over. The pair of them settled down into the depths of the
chair, but while Maria remained quite satisfied with her new position,
her brother fussed and fidgeted with impatience born of repressed
excitement. "Run out and knock at the door," he proposed to Judy.
"He'll never get away from Mother unless we let him KNOW we're waiting."

Judy, kneeling on a chair and trying to make it sea-saw, pulled up her
belt, sprang down, then hesitated. "They'll only think it's Thompson
and say come in," she decided. "That's no good."

Tim jumped up, using Maria as a support to raise himself. "I know
what!" he cried. "Go and bang the gong. He'll think it's
dressing-time." The idea was magnificent. "I'll go if you funk it," he
added, and had already slithered half way over the back of the chair
when Judy forestalled him and had her hand upon the door-knob. He
encouraged her with various instructions about the proper way to beat
the gong, and was just beginning a scuffle with the inanimate Maria,
who now managed to occupy the entire chair, when he was aware of a new
phenomenon that made him stop abruptly. He saw Judy's face hanging in
mid-air, six feet above the level of the floor. Her face was flushed
and smiling; her hair hung over her eyes; and from somewhere behind or
underneath her a gruff voice said sternly:

"What are you doing in my Study at this time of night? Who asked you
in?"

The expected figure had entered, catching Judy in the act of opening
the door. He was carrying her in his arms. She landed with a flop upon
the carpet. The desired and desirable thing was about to happen. "Get
out, you lump, it's Daddy." But Maria, accustomed to her brother's
exaggerated language, and knowing it was only right and manly, merely
raised her eyes and waited for him to help her out. Tim did help her
out; half dragging and half lifting, he deposited her in a solid heap
upon the floor, then ran to the figure that now dominated the dim,
fire-lit room, and hugged it with all his force, making sounds in his
throat like an excited animal: "Ugh! ugh! ugh!...!"

The hug was returned with equal vigour, but without the curious sounds;
Maria was hugged as well and set upon her feet; while Judy, having
already been sufficiently hugged, pushed the arm-chair closer up to the
fire and waited patiently for the proper business of the evening to
begin.

The figure, meanwhile, disentangled itself. It was tall and thin, with
a mild, resigned expression upon a kindly face that years and care had
lined before its time: old-fashioned rather, with soft, grey whiskers
belonging to an earlier day. A black tail-coat adorned it, and the
neck-tie was crooked in the turned-down collar. The watch-chain went
from the waist-coat button to one pocket only, instead of right across,
and one finger wore a heavy signet-ring that bore the family crest. It
was obviously the figure of an overworked official in the Civil Service
who had returned from its daily routine in London to the evening
routine of its family in the country, the atmosphere of Government and
the Underground still hanging round it. For sundry whiffs of the
mysterious city reached the children's nostrils, bringing thrills of
some strange, remote reality they had never known at first-hand. They
busied themselves at once. While Tim unbuttoned the severe black coat
and pulled it off, Judy brought a jacket of dingy tweed from behind a
curtain in the corner, and stood on a chair to help the figure put it
on. All knew their duties; the performance went like clockwork. And
Maria sat and watched in helpful silence. There was a certain air about
her as though she did it all.

"How they do spoil me, to be sure," the figure murmured to itself; "yet
Mother's always saying that _I_ spoil them. I wonder...!"

"Now you look decent at last," said Judy. "You smell like a nice
rabbit."

"It's my shooting-coat." The figure cleared its throat, apparently on
the defensive a little.

Tim and Judy sniffed it. "Rabbits and squirrels and earth and things,"
thought Tim.

"And flowers and burning leaves," said Judy. "It's his old garden-coat
as well." She sniffed very audibly. "Oh, I love that smoky smell."

"It's the good old English smell," said the figure contentedly, while
they put his neck-tie straight and arranged the pocket flaps for him.
"It's English country--England."

"Don't other countries smell, then?" inquired Tim. "I mean, could any
one tell you were English by your smell?" He sniffed again, with
satisfaction. "Weeden's the same," he went on, without waiting for an
answer, "only much stronger, and so's the potting shed."

"But yours is sweeter _much_," said Judy quickly. To share odours with
an Authority like the Head Gardener was distinctly a compliment, but
Daddy must come first, whatever happened. "How funny," she added, half
to herself, "that England should have such a jolly smell. I wonder what
it comes from?"

"Where _does_ England come from?" asked Tim, pausing a moment to stare
into the figure's face. "It's an island, of course--England--but--"

"A piece of land surrounded by water," began the figure, but was not
allowed to finish. A chorus of voices interrupted:

"Make a story of it, please. There's just time. There's half an hour.
It's nice and dark. Ugh! Something very awful or very silly, please...."

There followed a general scuffle for seats, with bitter complaints that
he only had two pointed knees. Maria was treated with scant respect.
There was also criticism of life--that he had no lap, "no proper lap,"
that it was too dark to see his face, that everybody in turn had got
"the best place," but, chiefly, that there was "very little time." Time
was a nuisance always: it either was time to go, or time to stop, or
else there was not time enough. But at length quiet was established;
the big arm-chair resembled a clot of bees upon a honeycomb; the fire
burned dully, and the ceiling was thick with monstrous fluttering
shadows, vaguely shaped.

"Now, please. We've been ready for ages."

A deep hush fell upon the room, and only a sound of confused breathing
was audible. The figure heaved a long, deep sigh as though it suffered
pain, paused, cleared its throat, then sighed again more heavily than
before. For the moment of creation was at hand, and creation is not
accomplished without much travail.

But the children loved the pause, the sigh, the effort. Not realising
with what difficulty the stories were ground out, nor that it was an
effort against time--to make a story last till help came from
outside--they believed that something immense and wonderful was on the
way, and held their breath with beating hearts. Daddy's stories were
always marvellous; this one would be no exception.

Marvellous up to a point, that is: something in them failed. "He's
trying," was their opinion of them; and it was the trying that they
watched and listened to so eagerly. The results were unsatisfying, the
effect incomplete; the climax of sensation they expected never came.
Daddy, though they could not put this into words, possessed fancy only;
imagination was not his. Fancy, however, is the seed of imagination, as
imagination is the blossom of wonder. His stories prepared the soil in
them at any rate. They felt him digging all round them.

He began forthwith:

"Once, very long ago--"

"How long?"

"So long ago that the chalk cliffs of England still lay beneath the
sea--"

"Was Aunt Emily alive then?"

"Or Weeden?"

"Oh, much longer ago than that," he comforted them; "so long, in fact,
that neither your Aunt Emily nor Weeden were even thought of--there
lived a man who--"

"Where? What country, please?"

"There lived a man in England--"

"But you said England was beneath the sea with the chalk cliffs."

"There lived a man in a very small, queer little island called Ingland,
spelt 'Ing,' not 'Eng,' who--"

"It wasn't _our_ England, then?"

"On a tiny little island called Ingland, who was very lonely because he
was the only human being on it--"

"Weren't there animals and things too?"

"And the only animals who lived on it with him were a squirrel who
lived in the only tree, a rabbit who lived in the only hole, and a
small grey mouse who made its nest in the pocket of his other coat."

"Were they friendly? Did he love them awfully?"

"At first he was very polite to them only, because he was a civil
servant of his Government; but after a bit they became so friendly that
he loved them even better than himself, and went to tea with the rabbit
in its hole, and climbed the tree to share a nut-breakfast with the
squirrel, and--and--"

"He doesn't know what to do with the mouse," a loud whisper, meant to
be inaudible, broke in upon the fatal hesitation.

"And went out for walks with the mouse when the ground was damp and the
mouse complained of chilly feet. In the pocket of his coat, all snug
and warm, it stood on its hind legs and peered out upon the world with
its pointed nose just above the pocket flap--"

"Then he liked the mouse best?"

"What sort of coat was it? An overcoat or just an ordinary one that
smelt? Was that the only pocket in it?"

"It was made of the best leaves from the squirrel's tree, and from the
rabbit's last year's fur, and the mouse had fastened the edges together
neatly with the sharpest of its own discarded whiskers. And so they
walked about the tiny island and enjoyed the view together--"

"The mouse couldn't have seen much!"

"Until, one day, the mouse declared the ground was ALWAYS wet and was
getting wetter and wetter. And the man got frightened."

"Ugh! It's going to get awful in a minute!" And the children nestled
closer. The voice sank lower. It became mysterious.

"And the wetter it got the more the man got frightened; for the island
was dreadfully tiny and--"

"Why, please, did it get wetter and wetter?"

"THAT," continued the man who earned his living in His Majesty's
Stationery Office by day, and by night justified his existence offering
the raw material of epics unto little children, "that was the
extraordinary part of it. For no one could discover. The man stroked
his beard and looked about him, the squirrel shook its bushy tail, the
rabbit lifted its upper lip and thrust its teeth out, and the mouse
jerked its head from side to side until its whiskers grew longer and
sharper than ever--but none of them could discover why the island got
wetter and wetter and wetter--"

"Perhaps it just rained like here."

"For the sky was always blue, it never rained, and there was so little
dew at night that no one even mentioned it. Yet the tiny island got
wetter every day, till it finally got so wet that the very floor of the
man's hut turned spongy and splashed every time the man went to look
out of the window at the view. And at last he got so frightened that he
stayed indoors altogether, put on both his coats at once, and told
stories to the mouse and squirrel about a country that was always dry--"

"Didn't the rabbit know anything?"

"For all this time the rabbit was too terrified to come out of its hole
at all. The increasing size of its front teeth added to its uneasiness,
for they thrust out so far that they hid the view and made the island
seem even smaller than it was--"

"I like rabbits, though."

"Till one fine day--"

"They were all fine, you said."

"One finer day than usual the rabbit made a horrible discovery. The way
it made the discovery was curious--may seem curious to us, at
least--but the fact is, it suddenly noticed that the size of its front
teeth had grown out of all proportion to the size of the island.
Looking over its shoulder this fine day, it realised how absurdly small
the island was in comparison with its teeth--and grasped the horrid
truth. In a flash it understood what was happening. The island was
getting wetter because it was also getting--_smaller_!"

"Ugh! How beastly!"

"Did it tell the others?"

"It retired half-way down its hole and shouted out the news to the
others in the hut."

"Did they hear it?"

"It warned them solemnly. But its teeth obstructed the sound, and the
windings of its hole made it difficult to hear. The man, besides, was
busy telling a story to the mouse, and the mouse, anyhow, was sound
asleep at the bottom of his pocket, with the result that the only one
who caught the words of warning was--the squirrel. For a squirrel's
ears are so sharp that it can even hear the grub whistling to itself
inside a rotten nut; and it instantly took action."

"Ah! IT saved them, then?"

"The squirrel flew from the man's shoulder where it was perched,
balanced for a second on the top of his head, then clung to the ceiling
and darted out of the window without a moment's delay. It crossed the
island in a single leap, scuttled to the top of the tree, peered about
over the diminishing landscape, and--"

"Didn't it see the rabbit?"

"And returned as quickly as it went. It bustled back into the hut,
hopping nervously, and jerking its head with excitement. In a moment it
was perched again on the man's shoulder. It carefully kept its bushy
tail out of the way of his nose and eyes. And then it whispered what it
had seen into his left ear."

"Why into his left ear?"

"Because it was the right one, and the other had cotton wool in it."

"Like Aunt Emily!"

"What did it whisper?"

"The squirrel had made a discovery, too," continued the teller,
solemnly.

"Goodness! That's two discoveries!"

"But what _did_ it whisper?"

In the hush that followed, a coal was heard falling softly into the
grate; the night-wind moaned against the outside walls; Judy scraped
her stockinged foot slowly along the iron fender, making a faint
twanging sound. Breathing was distinctly audible. For several moments
the room was still as death. The figure, smothered beneath the clotted
mass of children, heaved a sigh. But no one broke the pause. It was too
precious and wonderful to break at once. All waited breathlessly, like
birds poised in mid-air before they strike ... until a new sound stole
faintly upon the listening silence, a faint and very distant sound,
barely audible as yet, but of unmistakable character. It was far away
in the upper reaches of the building, overhead, remote, a little
stealthy. Like the ominous murmur of a muffled drum, it had approach in
it. It was coming nearer and nearer. It was significant and threatening.

For the first time that evening the ticking of the clock was also
audible. But the new sound, though somewhat in league with the ticking,
and equally remorseless, did not come from the clock. It was a human
sound, the most awful known to childhood. It was footsteps on the
stairs!

Both the children and the story-teller heard it, but with different
results. The latter stirred and looked about him, as though new hope
and strength had come to him. The former, led by Tim and Judy, broke
simultaneously into anxious speech. Maria, having slept profoundly
since the first mention of the mouse in its cosy pocket, gave no sign
at all.

"Oh, quick! quick! What did the squirrel whisper in his good right ear?
What was it? DO hurry, please!"

"It whispered two simple words, each of one syllable," continued the
reanimated figure, his voice lowered and impressive. "It said--_the
sea_!"

The announcement made by the squirrel was so entirely unexpected that
the surprise of it buried all memory of the disagreeable sound. The
children sat up and stared into the figure's face questioningly. Surely
he had made a slight mistake. How could the sea have anything to do
with it? But no word was spoken, no actual question asked. This
overwhelming introduction of the sea left him poised far beyond their
reach. His stories were invariably marvellous. He would somehow justify
himself.

"The Sea!" whispered Tim to Judy, and there was intense admiration in
his voice and eyes.

"From the top of its tree," resumed the figure triumphantly, "the
squirrel had seen what was happening, and made its great discovery. It
realised why the ground was wetter and wetter every day, and also why
the island was small and growing smaller. For it understood the awful
fact that--the sea was rising! A little longer and the entire island
would be under water, and everybody on it would be drowned!" "Couldn't
none of them swim or anything?" asked Judy with keen anxiety.

"Hush!" put in Tim. "It's what did they _do?_ And who thought of it
first?"

The question last but one was chosen for solution.

"The rabbit," announced the figure recklessly. "The rabbit saved them;
and in saving them it saved the Island too. It founded Ingland, this
very Ingland on which we live to-day. In fact, it started the British
Empire by its action. The rabbit did it."

"How? How?"

"It heard the squirrel's whisper half-way down its hole. It forgot
about its front teeth, and the moment it forgot them they, of course,
stopped growing. It recovered all its courage. A grand idea had come to
it. It came bustling out of its hiding-place, stood on its hind legs,
poked its bright eyes over the window-ledge, and told them how to
escape. It said, 'I'll dig my hole deeper and we'll empty the sea into
it as it rises. We'll pour the water down my hole!'"

The figure paused and fixed his eyes upon each listener in turn,
challenging disapproval, yet eager for sympathy at the same time. In
place of criticism, however, he met only silence and breathless
admiration. Also--he heard that distant sound _they_ had forgotten, and
realised it had come much nearer. It had reached the second floor. He
made swift and desperate calculations. He decided that it was _just_
possible ... with ordinary good luck ...

"So they all went out and began to deepen the rabbit's hole. They dug
and dug and dug. The man took off both his coats; the rabbit scraped
with its four paws, using its tail as well--it had a nice long tail in
those days; the mouse crept out of his pocket and made channels with
its little pointed toes; and the squirrel brushed and swept the water
in with its bushy, mop-like tail. The rising sea poured down the
ever-deepening hole. They worked with a will together; there was no
complaining, though the rabbit wore its tail down till it was nothing
but a stump, and the mouse stood ankle-deep in water, and the
squirrel's fluffy tail looked like a stable broom. They worked like
heroes without stopping even to talk, and as the water went pouring
down the hole, the level of the sea, of course, sank lower and lower
and lower, the shores of the tiny island stretched farther and farther
and farther, till there were reaches of golden sand like Margate at low
tide, and as the level sank still lower there rose into view great
white cliffs of chalk where before there had been only water--until, at
last, the squirrel, scampering down from the tree where it had gone to
see what had been accomplished, reported in a voice that chattered with
stammering delight, 'We're saved! The sea's gone down! The land's come
up!'"

The steps were audible in the passage. A gentle knock was heard. But no
one answered, for it seemed that no one was aware of it. The figure
paused a moment to recover breath.

"And then, and then? What happened next? Did they thank the rabbit?"

"They all thanked each other then. The man thanked the rabbit, and the
rabbit thanked the squirrel, and the mouse woke up, and--"

No one noticed the slip, which proved that their attention was already
painfully divided. For another knock, much louder than before, had
interrupted the continuation of the story. The figure turned its head
to listen. "It's nothing," said Tim quickly. "It's only a sound," said
Judy. "What did the mouse do? Please tell us quickly."

"I thought I heard a knock," the figure murmured. "Perhaps I was
mistaken. The mouse--er--the mouse woke up--"

"You told us that."

The figure continued, speaking with greater rapidity even than before:

"And looked about it, and found the view so lovely that it said it
would never live in a pocket again, but would divide its time in future
between the fields and houses. So it pricked its whiskers up, and the
squirrel curled its tail over its back to avoid any places that still
were damp, and the rabbit polished its big front teeth on the grass and
said it was quite pleased to have a stump instead of a tail as a
memento of a memorable occasion when they had all been nearly drowned
together, and--they all skipped up to the top of the high chalk cliffs
as dry as a bone and as happy as--"

He broke off in the middle of the enormous sentence to say a most
ridiculous and unnecessary thing. "Come in," he said, just as though
there was some one knocking at the door. But no single head was turned.
If there was an entry it was utterly ignored.

"Happy as what?"

"As you," the figure went on faster than ever. "And that's why England
to-day is an island of quite a respectable size, and why everybody
pretends it's dry and comfortable and cosy, and why people never leave
it except to go away for holidays that cannot possibly be avoided."

"I beg your pardon, sir," began an awful voice behind the chair.

"And why to this day," he continued as though he had not heard, "a
squirrel always curls its tail above its back, why a rabbit wears a
stump like a pen wiper, and why a mouse lives sometimes in a house and
sometimes in a field, and--"

_"I beg your pardon, sir,"_ clanged the slow, awful voice in a tone
that was meant to be heard distinctly, "but it's long gone 'arf-past
six, and--"

"Time for bed," added the figure with a sound that was like the falling
of an executioner's axe. And, as if to emphasise the arrival of the
remorseless moment, the clock just then struck loudly on the
mantelpiece--seven times.

But for several minutes no one stirred. Hope, even at such moments, was
stronger than machinery of clocks and nurses. There was a general
belief that somehow or other the moment that they dreaded, the moment
that was always coming to block their happiness, could be evaded and
shoved aside. Nothing mechanical like that was wholly true. Daddy had
often used queer phrases that hinted at it: "Some day--A day is
coming--A day will come"; and so forth. Their belief in a special Day
when no one would say "Time" haunted them already. Yet, evidently this
evening was not the momentous occasion; for when Tim mentioned that the
clock was fast, the figure behind the chair replied that she was half
an hour overdue already, and her tone was like Thompson's when he said,
"Dinner's served." There was no escape this time.

Accordingly the children slowly disentangled themselves; they rose and
stretched like animals; though all still ignored the figure behind the
chair. A ball of stuff unrolled and became Maria. "Thank you, Daddy,"
she said. "It was just lovely," said Judy. "But it's only the
beginning, isn't it?" Tim asked. "It'll go on to-morrow night?" And the
figure, having escaped failure by the skin of its teeth, kissed each in
turn and said, "Another time--yes, I'll go on with it." Whereupon the
children deigned to notice the person behind the chair. "We're coming
up to bed now, Jackman," they mentioned casually, and disappeared
slowly from the room in a disappointed body, robbed, unsatisfied, but
very sleepy. The clock had cheated them of something that properly was
endless. Maria alone made no remark, for she was already asleep in
Jackman's comfortable arms. Maria was always carried.

"Time's up," Tim reflected when he lay in bed; "time's always up. I do
wish we could stop it somehow," and fell asleep somewhat gratified
because he had deliberately not wound up his alarum-clock. He had the
delicious feeling--a touch of spite in it--that this would bother Time
and muddle it.

Yet Time, as a monster, chased him through a hundred dreams and thus
revenged itself. It pursued him to the very edge of the daylight, then
mocked him with a cold bath, lessons, and a windy sleet against the
windows. It was "time to get up" again.

Yet, meanwhile, Time helped and pleased the children by showing them
its pleasanter side as well. It pushed them, gently but swiftly, up the
long hill of months and landed them with growing excitement into the
open country of another year. Since the rabbit, mouse, and squirrel
first woke in their hearts the wonder of common things, they had all
grown slightly bigger. Time tucked away another twelve months behind
their backs: each of them was a year older; and that in itself was full
of a curious and growing wonder.

For the birth of wonder is a marvellous, sweet thing, but the
recognition of it is sweeter and more marvellous still. Its growth,
perhaps, shall measure the growth and increase of the soul to whom it
is as eyes and hands and feet, searching the world for signs of hiding
Reality. But its persistence--through the heavier years that would
obliterate it--this persistence shall offer hints of something coming
that is more than marvellous. The beginning of wisdom is surely--Wonder.




CHAPTER III

DEATH OF A MERE FACT


There was a man named Jinks. In him was neither fancy, imagination, nor
a sign of wonder, and so he--died.

But, though he appears in this chapter, he disappears again so quickly
that his being mentioned in a sentence all by himself should not lead
any one astray. Jinks made a false entry, as it were. The children
crossed him out at once. He became illegible. For the trio had their
likes and dislikes; they resented liberties being taken with them.
Also, when there was no one to tell them stories, they were quite able
to amuse themselves. It was the inactive yet omnipotent Maria who
brought about indirectly the obliteration of Mr. Jinks.

And it came about as follows:

Maria was a podgy child of marked individuality. It was said that she
was seven years old, but _she_ declared that eight was the figure,
because some uncle or other had explained, "you're in your eighth
year." Wandering uncles are troublesome in this kind of way. Every time
her age was mentioned she corrected the informant. She had a trick of
moving her eyes without moving her head, as though the round face was
difficult to turn; but her big blue eyes slipped round without the
least trouble, as though oiled. The performance gave her the sly and
knowing aspect of a goblin, but she had no objection to that, for it
saved her trouble, and to save herself trouble--according to nurses,
Authorities, and the like--was her sole object in existence.

Yet this seemed a mistaken view of the child. It was not so much that
she did not move unnecessarily as that it was not necessary for her to
move at all, since she invariably found herself in the middle of
whatever was going on. While life bustled anxiously about her, hurrying
to accomplish various ends, she remained calm and contented at the
centre, completely satisfied, mistress of it all. And her face was
symbolic of her entire being; whereas so many faces seem unfinished,
hers was complete--globular like the heavenly bodies, circular like the
sun, arms and legs unnecessary. The best of everything came to her
_because_ she did not run after it. There was no hurry. Time did not
worry her. Circular and self-sustaining, she already seemed to dwell in
Eternity.

"And this little person," one of these inquisitive, interfering
visitors would ask, smiling fatuously; "how old is she, I wonder?"

"Seven," was the answer of the Authority in charge.

Maria's eyes rolled sideways, and a little upwards. She looked at the
foolish questioner; the Authority who had answered was not worth a
glance.

"No," she said flatly, with sublime defiance, "I'm more. I'm in my
eighth year, you see."

And the visitor, smiling that pleasant smile that makes children
distrust, even dislike them, and probably venturing to pinch her cheek
or pat her on the shoulder into the bargain, accepted the situation
with another type of smile--the Smile-that-children-expect. As a matter
of fact, children hate it. They see through its artificial humbug
easily. They prefer a solemn and unsmiling face invariably. It's the
latter that produces chocolates and sudden presents; it's the
stern-faced sort that play hide-and-seek or stand on their heads. The
Smilers are bored at heart. They mean to escape at the first
opportunity. And the children never catch their sleeves or coattails to
prevent them going.

"So you're in your eighth year, are you?" this Smiler chuckled with a
foolish grin. He patted her cheek kindly. "Why, you're almost a
grown-up person. You'll be going to dinner-parties soon." And he smiled
again. Maria stood motionless and patient. Her eyes gazed straight
before her. Her podgy face remained expressionless as dough.

"Answer the kind gentleman," said the Authority reprovingly.

Maria did not budge. A finger and thumb, both dirty, rolled a portion
of her pinafore into a pointed thing like a string, distinctly black.
She waited for the visitor to withdraw. But this particular visitor did
not withdraw.

"_I_ knew a little girl--" he began, with a condescending grin that
meant that her rejection of his advances had offended him, "a little
girl of about your age, who--"

But the remainder of the rebuke-concealed-in-a-story was heard only by
the Authority. For Maria, relentless and unhumbugged, merely walked
away. In the hall she discovered Tim, discreetly hiding. "What's _he_
come for?" the brother inquired promptly, jerking his thumb towards the
hall.

Maria's eyes just looked at him.

"To see Mother, I suppose," he answered himself, accustomed to his
sister's goblin manners, "and talk about missions and subshkiptions,
and all that. Did he give you anything?"

"No, nothing."

"Did he call us bonny little ones?" His face mentioned that he could
kill if necessary, or if his sister's honour required it.

"He didn't _say_ it."

"Lucky for him," exclaimed Tim gallantly, rubbing his nose with the
palm of his hand and snorting loudly. "What _did_ he say, then--the old
Smiler?"

"He said," replied Maria, moving her head as well as her eyes, "that I
wasn't really old, and that he knew another little girl who was nicer
than me, and always told the truth, and--"

"Oh, come on," cried Tim, impatiently interrupting. "My trains are
going in the schoolroom, and I want a driver for an accident. We'll put
the Smiler in the luggage van, and he'll get smashed in the collision,
and _all_ the wheels will go over his head. Then he'll find out how old
you really are. We'll fairly smash him."

They disappeared. Judy, who was reading a book on the Apocalypse, in a
corner of the room, looked up a moment as they entered.

"What's up?" she asked, her mind a little dazed by the change of focus
from stars, scarlet women, white horses, and mysterious "Voices," to
dull practical details of everyday existence. "What's on?" she repeated.

"Trains," replied Tim. "We're going to have an accident and kill a man
dead."

"What's he done?" she inquired.

"Humbugged Maria with a lot of stuff--and gave her nothing--and didn't
believe a single word she told him."

Judy glanced without much interest at the railway laid out upon the
floor, murmured "Oh, I see," and resumed her reading of the wonderful
book she had purloined from the top shelf of a neglected bookcase
outside the gun-room. It absorbed her. She loved the tremendous words,
the atmosphere of marvel and disaster, and especially the constant
suggestion that the end of the world was near. Antichrist she simply
adored. No other hero in any book she knew came near him.

"Come and help," urged Tim, picking up an engine that lay upon its
side. "Come on."

"No, thanks. I've got an Apocalypse. It's simply frightfully exciting."

"Shall we break _both_ legs?" asked Maria blandly, "or just his neck?"

"Neck," said Tim briefly. "Only they must find the heart beneath the
rubbish of the luggage van."

Judy looked up in spite of herself. "Who is it?" she inquired, with an
air of weighing conflicting interests.

"Mr. Jinks." It was Maria who supplied the information.

"But he's Daddy's offiss-partner man," Judy objected, though without
much vim or heat.

Maria did not answer. Her eyes were glued upon the other engine.

"All black and burnt and--full of the very horridest diseases," put in
Tim, referring to the heart of the destroyed Mr. Jinks beneath the
engine.

He glanced up enticingly at his elder sister, whom he longed to draw
into the vindictive holocaust.

"He said things to Maria," he explained persuasively, "and it's not the
first time either. Last Sunday he called me 'his little man,' and he's
never given me a single thing since ever I can remember, years and
years ago."

Then Judy remembered that he invariably kissed her on both cheeks as
though she was a silly little child.

"Oh, _that_ man!" she exclaimed, realising fully now the enormities he
had committed. She appeared to hesitate a moment. Then she flung down
her Apocalypse suddenly. "Put him on a scarlet horse," she cried,
"pretend he's the Beast, and I'll come."

Maria's blue eyes wheeled half a circle towards Tim. She did not move
her head. It signified agreement. Tim knew. Only her consent, as the
insulted party, was necessary before he could approve.

"All right," he cried to Judy. "We'll put him in a special carriage
with his horse, and I'll make out a label for the window, so that every
one will know." He went over to the table and wrote "BEAST" in capital
letters on a half-sheet of paper. The cumbersome quill pen made two
spongy blots.

"It's the end of the world _really_ at the same time," decided Judy, to
a chorus of general approval, "not only the end of Mr. Jinks." She
liked her horrors on a proper scale.

And the railway line was quickly laid across the room from the window
to the wall. The lamps of oil on both engines were lit. The trains
faced one another. Mr. Jinks and his scarlet horse thought themselves
quite safe in their special carriage, unaware that it was labelled
"Beast" with a label that overlapped the roof and hid all view of the
landscape through the windows on one side. Apparently they slept in
opposite corners, with full consciousness of complete security. Mr.
Jinks was tucked up with woolly rugs, and a newspaper lay across his
knee. The scarlet horse had its head in a bag of oats, and its bridle
was fastened to the luggage rack above. Both were supplied with iron
foot-warmers. There was a _fearful_ fog; and the train was going at a
_TREMENDOUS_ pace.

So was the other train. They approached, they banged, they smashed to
atoms. It was the most appalling collision that had ever been heard of,
and the Guard and Engine-Driver, as well as the Ticket-Collectors and
Directors of the Company, were all executed by the Government the very
next day from gallows that an angry London built in half an hour on the
top of St. Paul's Cathedral dome.

It took place between the footstool and the fireplace in the thickest
fog that England had ever known. And the horrid black heart of Mr.
Jinks was discovered beneath the wreckage of a special carriage next to
the luggage van. It was simply black as coal and very nasty indeed. The
little boy who found it was a porter's son, whose mother was so poor
that she took in washing for members of Parliament, who paid their
bills irregularly because they were very busy governing Ireland. He
knew it was a cinder, but did not discover it was a heart until he
showed it to his mother, and his mother said it was far too black to
wash.

The accident to Mr. Jinks, therefore, was a complete success. The
butler helped with the mending of the engine, and Maria informed at
least one Authority, "We do not know Mr. Jinks. We have other friends."

"But, remember," said Judy, "we mustn't mention it to Daddy, because
Mr. Jinks is his partner-in-the-offiss."

"_Was_," said Tim. The remains they decided to send to what they called
the "Hospital for Parilysed Ineebrits with Incurable Afflictions of the
Heart."




CHAPTER IV

FACT--EDGED WITH FANCY


But the children were not always so vindictive and blood-thirsty. All
three could be very tender sometimes. Even Maria was not wholly
implacable and merciless, she had a pretty side as well. Their
neighbour at the Manor House, Colonel William Stumper, C.B.,
experienced this gentler quality in the trio. He was Mother's cousin,
too.

They were inclined to like this Colonel Stumper, C.B. For one thing he
limped, and that meant, they decided, that he had a wooden leg. They
never called it such, of course, but indicated obliquely that the
injured limb was made of oak or walnut, by referring to the other as
"his living leg," "his good leg," and so forth. For another thing, he
did not smile at them; and for a third, he did not ask foolish
questions in an up-and-down voice (assumed for the moment), as though
they were invalids, idiots, or tailless puppies who could not answer.
He frowned at them. He said furiously, "How are you, creatures?"
And--he gave usually at least a shilling to each.

"That makes three shillings altogether," as Tim cleverly explained.

"But not three shillings for each of us," Maria qualified the praise.
"_I_ only got one." She took it out of her mouth and showed it by way
of proof.

"You'll swallow it," warned Judy, "and then you won't have none at all."

If received early in the week, they reported their good fortune to the
Authorities; but if Sunday was too near, they waited. Daddy had a queer
idea of teasing sometimes. "Just in time for to-morrow's collection,"
he would be apt to say; and though he did not really mean it perhaps,
there was a hint of threat in the suggestion that quenched high spirits
at the moment.

"You see, he takes the plate round," Judy told them, "and so feels
ashamed." She did not explain the feeling ashamed. It was just that her
father, who always did things thoroughly, had to say something, and so
picked on that. "Monday or Tuesday's safest," was her judgment.

Maria rolled her eyes round like a gigantic German doll.

"Never's best," she gave as her opinion.

But that was sly. The others reproved her quickly.

"Daddy likes to know," they told her. "Monday or Tuesday's all right."
They agreed just to mention the matter only. There was no need to "say
a lot."

So they liked this Colonel Stumper, C.B. They liked his "title,"
declaring that the letters stood for "Come Back," and referring to
their owner as "Come Back Stumper." Some day, when he was gone for
good, he was to be promoted to K.C.B., meaning "Kan't-Come-Back." But
they preferred him as he was, plain C.B., because they did not want to
lose him. They declared that "Companion to the Bath" was just nonsense
invented by a Radical Government. For in politics, of course, they
followed their father's lead, and their father had _distinctly_ stated
more than once that "the policy of a Radical Government was
some-funny-word-or-other nonsense," which statement helped them
enormously in forming their own opinions on several other topics as
well. In personal disagreements, for instance--they never
"squabbled"--the final insult was to say, "My dear, you're as silly as
a something-or-other Radical Govunment," for there was no answer to
this anywhere in the world.

Come-Back Stumper, therefore, though casual outsiders might never have
guessed it, was a valuable ally. He was what Mother called "a
character" as well, and if the children used this statement in praise
of him, while adopting in their carelessness a revised version, "he has
no character," this was not Come-Back Stumper's fault. He was also an
"extinguished soldger," and had seen much service in foreign parts.
India with its tigers, elephants, and jungles, was in his heated
atmosphere deliciously, and his yellow tint, as of an unripe orange,
was due to something they had learned from hearsay to describe as
"curried liver trouble." All this, and especially his dead or wooden
leg, was distinctly in his favour. Come-Back Stumper was real. Also, he
was hard and angular in appearance, short, brisk in manner,
square-shouldered, and talked like a General who was bothered about
something in a battle. His opinions were most decided. His conversation
consisted of negatives, refusals and blank denials. If Come-Back
Stumper agreed with what was said, it meant that he was feeling unwell
with an attack of curried-liver-trouble. The children understood him.
He understood the children, too.

"It's a jolly morning, William," from Daddy would be met with "Might be
worse" and a snort like the sneeze of the nursery cat, but a direct
invitation of any sort was simply declined point blank. "Care to see
The Times, William?" ensured the answer, "Oh, _no_, thanks; there's
never anything worth reading in it." This was as regular as breakfast
when Cousin William was staying in the house. It was, in fact, Daddy's
formula when he settled into his armchair for a quiet half-hour's read.
Daddy's question was the mere politeness of a host. It was sham, but
Cousin William's answer was as real as breakfast. The formula was a
mechanical certainty, as certain as that pressing a button in the wall
produced Thompson in the room.

Accordingly, when Mother said, "Now, don't bother your Cousin William,
children; he doesn't want you," this individual would instantly
shoulder arms and state the exact contrary with fiery emphasis.

"If you've no objection," came the testy answer, "and if it's all the
same to you, Cecilia"--a shade sarcastically, this--"it's precisely
what I _do_ want."

And he would look at the children in a way that suggested the most
intimate of secret understanding between himself and them. More, he
would rise and leave the room with the impetus of a soldier going out
to fight, and would play with Judy, Tim, and Maria in a fashion that
upset the household routine and made the trio unmanageable for the
Authorities for hours afterwards.

"He's an honourable gentleman like the gentlemen in Parliament,"
declared Judy, "and that's my opinion of why I think him nice."

"And when I'm grown-up," was Tim's verdict, "I'll be a soldger just
exactly the same, only not yellow, and taller, and not so thick in the
middle, and much, much richer, and with C.B. in front of my name as
well as at the end."

Maria, not being present at the time, said nothing audible. But she
liked him, too, unquestionably. Otherwise she would have announced the
fact without delay. "He _is_ a lump rather," she had been heard to
remark, referring to his actual bulk and slowness of movement when in
play. But it was nicely, very nicely meant.

"I am sure your Cousin William would rather be left alone to read
quietly," said Mother, seeing the trio approach that individual
stealthily after tea in the library one evening. He was deep in a big
armchair, and deep in a book as well. The children were allowed
downstairs after their schoolroom tea for an hour when nothing
particular was on. "Wouldn't you, William?" she added. She went on
knitting a sort of muffler thing she held up close to the lamp. She
expected no reply, apparently.

Cousin William made none. But he raised the level of his book so that
it hid his face. A moment before, the eyes had been looking over the
top at the advancing trio, watching their movements narrowly.

The children did not answer either. They separated. They scouted. They
executed a flank attack in open order. Three minutes later Colonel
Stumper was surrounded. And no word was spoken; the scouts just perched
and watched him. He was not actually reading, for he had not turned a
page for about ten minutes, and it was _not_ a picture book. The
difficulty was, however, to get him started. If only Mother would help
them! Then Mother, unwittingly, did so. For she dropped her ball of
wool, and finding no one at hand to recover it, she looked vaguely
round the room--and saw them. And she shook her head at them.

"Don't bother him just now," she whispered again, "he's got a cold.
Here, Maria, pick up my wool, darling, will you?" But while Tim (for
Maria only moved her eyes) picked up the wool obediently, Cousin
William picked up himself with difficulty, tossed his book into the
deep arm-chair, and stalked without a single word towards the door.
Mother watched him with one eye, but the children did not stir a muscle.

"William, you're not going to bed, are you?" she asked kindly, "or
would you like to, perhaps? And have your dinner in your room, and a
warm drink just before going to sleep? That's the best thing for a
cold, I always think."

He turned at the door and faced her. "Thank you very much," he said
with savage emphasis, "but I am _not_ ill, and I am _not_ going to
bed." The negatives sounded like pistol shots. "My cold is nothing to
speak of." And he was gone, leaving a trail of fire in the air.

The children, cunning in their generation, did not move. There were
moments in life, and this was one of them, when "stir a finger and
you're a dead man" was really true. No finger stirred, no muscle
twitched; one pair of eyelids fluttered, nothing more. And Mother,
happy with her recovered ball of wool, was presently lost in the
muffler thing she knitted, forgetful of their presence, if not of their
very existence. Signals meanwhile were made and answered by means of
some secret code that birds and animals understand. The plan was
matured in silence.

"Good-night, Mother," said Judy innocently, a few moments later,
stepping up and kissing her.

"Good-night," said Tim gravely, doing likewise.

Maria kissed, but said no word at all. They did not linger, as their
custom was, to cuddle in or hear a fairy story. To-night they were good
and businesslike.

"Good-night, duckies," said Mother, glancing at the clock on the
mantelpiece. "It's not _quite_ bed-time yet, but it's been a long day,
and you're tired out. I shall be up presently to hear your prayers and
tuck you up. And, Judy, you might tell Jackman--"

But the room was empty, the children vanished. The door banged softly,
cutting off the sentence in its middle, and Mother resumed her
knitting, smiling quietly to herself. And in the hall outside Come-Back
Stumper was discovered, warming his Army back before the open fire of
blazing logs. He looked like a cart-horse, the shadows made him spread
so. Maria pushed him to one side. She pushed, at least, but he did not
move exactly. Yet somehow, by a kind of sidling process, he took up a
new position in regard to the fire and themselves, the result of which
was that they occupied the best places, while he stood at one corner in
an attitude which resisted attack and yet invited it.

"Good-evening," remarked Maria; "are you warm?"

"Oh, no," exclaimed Tim, "that's not it at all. The thing is, shall we
play hide-and-seek, or would you really rather go to bed, as Mother
said, and have dinner and hot drinks?"

"Nonsense," cried Judy with authority. "He's got an awful cold, and
he's got to go to bed at once. He's shivering all over. It's Nindian
fever."

"No, really, really--" began Stumper, but was not allowed to finish.

"Thin captain biscuits soaked in hot milk with ginger, nutmeg, lemon,
and whisky," announced Judy, "would be best." And she shot towards the
door, her hair untied and flying.

"But, my dear, I assure you--"

"Or Bath Olivers," she interrupted, "because they soak better. _You_
know nothing," she added motheringly; "no man ever does." There was
contempt in her voice as well as pity.

"_Why_ do you know nothing?" inquired Maria, with a blaze of staring
eyes, as the door slammed upon her vanishing sister.

"_I_ think you know everything," said Tim with pride, decidedly, "only
you've forgotten it in India. I think it's silly."

"The milk and stuff?" agreed the soldier. "Yes, so do I. And I hate
biscuits, and ginger makes me hot and ill--"

"Iller than you are already?" asked Maria, "because that means bed."

"Maria," he snapped angrily, "I'm not ill at all. If you go on saying
I'm ill, of course I shall get ill. I never felt better in my life."

Tim turned round like a top. "Then let's play hide-and-seek," he cried.
"Let's hide before Judy gets back, and she can come and never find us!"

Cousin William suggested they were not enough to play that game, and
was of opinion that Aunt Emily might be invited too.

"Oh, no," Tim gave his decided verdict, "not women. They can't hide
properly. They bulge."

And at that moment Judy appeared in the doorway across the hall.

"It's coming," she cried. "I've ordered everything--hot milk and Bath
Olivers and preserved ginger and--"

Cousin William took the matter into his own hands then, for the
situation was growing desperate. "Look here," he suggested gravely, yet
without enthusiasm, "I'll take the milk and stuff upstairs when I've
got into bed, and meanwhile we'll do something else. I'm--that is, my
cold is too bad to play a game, but I'll tell you a story
about--er--about a tiger--if you like?" The last three words were added
as a question. An answer, however, was not immediately forthcoming. For
the moment was a grave one. It was admitted that Come-Back Stumper
could play a game with credit and success, even an active game like
hide-and-seek; but it was not known yet that he could tell a story. The
fate of the evening, therefore, hung upon the decision.

"A tiger!" said Tim, doubtfully, weighing probabilities. "A tiger you
shot, was it, or just--a tiger?" A sign, half shadow and half pout, was
in his face. Maria and Judy waited upon their brother's decision with
absolute confidence, meanwhile.

Colonel Stumper moved artfully backwards towards a big horsehair sofa,
beneath the deer heads and assegais from Zululand. He did it on tiptoe,
aware that this mysterious and suggestive way of walking has a marked
effect on children in the dark. "I did not shoot it," he said, "because
I lived with it. It was the most extraordinary tiger that was ever
known--"

"In India?"

"In the world. And I ought to know, because, as I say, I lived with it
for days--"

"Inside it?"

"Nearly, but not quite. I lived in its cave with the cubs and other
things, half-eaten deer and cows and the bones of Hindus--"

"Were the bones black? However did you escape? Why didn't the tiger eat
you?"

He drew the children closely round him on the sofa. "I'll tell you," he
said, "for this is an inaugural occasion, and I've never told the story
before to any one in the world. The experience was incredible, and no
one would believe it. But the proof that it really happened is that the
tiger has left its mark upon me till I die--"

"But you haven't died--yet, I mean," Maria observed.

"He means teeth, silly," Tim squelched her.

"Died in another sense than the one you mean," the great soldier and
former administrator of a province continued, "dyed yellow--"

"Oh-h-h! Is that why--?"

"That is why," he replied pathetically. "For living with that tiger
family so long, I almost turned into one myself. The tiger nature got
into me. I snarl and growl, I use my teeth ferociously when hungry, I
walk stealthily on tiptoe, I let my whiskers grow, and my colour has
the tint of Indian tigers' skins."

"Have you got a tail, too?"

He glared into the blue eyes of Maria, sternly. "It's growing," he
whispered horribly, "it's growing."

There was a pause in which credulity shook hands with faith. Belief was
in the air. If doubt did whisper, "Let me see, please," it was too low
to be quite audible. Come-Back Stumper was surrounded by an atmosphere
of black-edged glory suddenly; he wore a halo; his feet were dipped in
mystery.

"Then what's an orgully occasion?" somebody asked.

"This!" replied Stumper. But he uttered it so savagely that no one
cared to press for further details. Clearly it was a secret and
confidential moment, and "inaugural occasion" had something to do with
the glory of wearing an incipient tail. Glory and mystery clothed
Stumper from that moment with Indian splendour. At least, _he_ thought
so....

"And the tiger?" came the whispering question.

"Ugh-h-h-h!" he shuddered; "I'll tell you. But I must think a moment
quietly first."

"His tail hurts," Maria told Tim beneath her breath, while they waited
for the story to begin.

"So would yours," was the answer, "if you had a cold at the same time,
too. A girl would simply cry." And he looked contempt at her, but
unutterable respect at his soldier friend.

"This tiger," began the traveller, in a heavy voice, "was a--a very
unusual tiger. I met it, that is to say, most unexpectedly. It was in a
tropical jungle, where the foliage was so thick that the sunlight
hardly penetrated at all. It was dark as night even in the daytime.
There were monkeys overhead and snakes beneath, and bananas were so
plentiful that every time my elephant knocked against a tree a shower
of fruit fell down like hail and tickled its skin."

"You were on an elephant, then?"

"We were all on elephants. On my particular elephant there was a man to
load for me and a man to guide the beast. We moved slowly and
cautiously. It was dark, as I said, but the showers of falling bananas
made yellow streaks against the black that the elephant constantly
mistook for tigers flying through the air as they leaped in silent fury
against the howdah in which we crouched upon his back. The howdah, you
know, is the saddle."

"Was the elephant friendly?"

"_Very_ friendly indeed; but he found it difficult to see, and all of a
sudden he would give a hop and a jump that nearly flung me off his
shoulders. For a long time--"

"That was the bananas tickling him, I suppose?"

"This continued without anything dangerous happening, but all at once
he gave a tremendous leap into the air, lifted his trunk, trumpeted
like an Army bugle, and then set off at full speed through the tangled
jungle. He had stupidly stepped upon a cobra! And the cobra, before it
was squashed to pulp, had stung him between the big and little toe."

"On purpose?" Judy asked.

"In an Indian jungle everything's done on purpose. My elephant raced
away, trumpeting in agony, at twenty miles an hour. The driver lost his
balance and fell off; the other man, scrambling along to take his place
and steer the monster, fell off after him, taking both my guns with him
as he went; and I myself, crouching in the swaying howdah, and holding
on for grim death, continued to tear through the jungle on top of my
terrified and angry elephant. Then, suddenly, the branch of a tree
caught the howdah in the middle and swept it clear. The elephant rushed
on. The howdah, with myself inside it, swung in mid-air like a caught
balloon. But I saw it could not hold on long. There was just time to
scramble out of it into safety upon the branch when there came a sound
of ripping, and the thing fell smash upon the ground some twenty feet
below, leaving me alone in an Indian jungle--up a tree."

And he paused a moment to produce the right effect and reap the
inevitable glory of applause.

Out of the breathless silence sprang a voice at once: "Was the elephant
badly hurt?" And then another: "I thought elephants were too big to
feel a bite like that." Followed by a third--Maria's: "It wasn't fair
to step on it and expect it to do nothing."

But no single word about his own predicament--its horror, danger,
loneliness, and risk. No single syllable. Even the Hindus, the driver,
and the man who carried the guns, were left unmentioned. Bananas were
equally ignored. The tiger itself had passed into oblivion.

"Thanks most awfully," said Tim, politely, after an interval. "It must
have been awful for you." It was said as spokesman for the other
listeners. All were kind and grateful, but actual interest there was
none. They took the pause to mean that the story was at an end; but
they had not cared about it because they--did not believe it.

"Simply awful," the boy added, as though, perhaps, he had not made it
quite clear that he wished to thank yet could not honestly praise.
"Wasn't it, Judy?" And he jerked his head round towards his elder
sister.

"Oh, _awful_--yes," agreed that lady.

But neither of them risked inviting the opinion of Maria. Her
uncompromising nature was too well known for that. Nevertheless,
unasked, she offered her criticism too: "Awful," she said, her podgy
face unmoved, her blue eyes fixed upon the ceiling. And the whole room
seemed to give a long, deep sigh.

Now, for the hero, this was decidedly an awkward moment; he had done
his best and miserably failed. He was no story-teller, and they had
found him out. None the less, however, he was a real hero. He faced the
situation as a brave man should:

      For his tale was mediocre,
      And his face of yellow ochre
      Took a tinge of saffron sorrow in his fright;
      Yet he rose to the occasion,
      Without anger or evasion,
      And did his best to put the matter right.

"Tell me how you knew," he asked at length, facing the situation. "What
made you guess?"

"Because, in the first place, you're not an atom _like_ a tiger,
anyhow," explained Judy.

"And you made the jungle so very dark," said Tim, "that you simply
couldn't have seen the bananas falling."

"And we _know_ you haven't got a tail at all," Maria added, clinchingly.

"Of course," he agreed; "your discernment does you credit, very great
credit indeed. Few of the officials under me in India had as much."

Judy looked soothingly at him and stroked his sleeve. Somehow or other
she divined, it seemed, he felt mortified and ashamed. He was a dear
old thing, whatever happened.

"Never mind," she whispered, "it really doesn't matter. It was very
nice to hear about your tiger. Besides--it must hurt awfully, having a
cold like this."

"I knew," put in Tim sympathetically, "the moment you began about the
bananas falling. But I didn't say anything, because I knew it couldn't
last--anything that began like that."

"But it got wonderful towards the end," insisted Judy.

"Till he was in the tree," objected her brother. "He never could really
have got along a branch like that."

"No," agreed Judy, thoughtfully, "that _was_ rather silly."

They continued discussing the story for some time as though its creator
was elsewhere. He kept very still. Maria already slept in a soft and
podgy ball on his lap....

"I am a lonely old thing," he said suddenly, with a long sigh, for in
reality he was deeply disappointed at his failure, and had aspired to
be their story-teller as well as playmate. Ordinary life bored him
dreadfully. He had melancholy yearnings after youth and laughter.
"Let's do something else now. What do you say to a turn of
hide-and-seek? Eh?"

The miraculous Maria woke at this, yawned like a cat, and nearly rolled
off on to the floor. "I dreamed of a real tiger," she informed every
one. But no one was listening. Judy and Tim were prancing wildly.

"If your cold isn't _too_ bad," cried Judy, "it would be lovely." No
grown-up could have been more thoughtful of his welfare than she was.

"I'll hide," he said, "and in five minutes you come and find me." He
went towards the door into the passage.

"Choose a warm place, and keep out of draughts," she cried after him.
And he was gone. He nearly collided with a servant carrying a tray, but
the servant, hearing his secret instructions, vanished again instantly
in the direction of the kitchen. Five minutes later--an alleged five
minutes--the children began their search. But they never found him.
They hunted high and low, from attic to cellar, in gun-room, scullery,
and pantry, even climbing up the ladder from the box-room to the roof,
but without result. Colonel Stumper had disappeared. He was K.C.B.

"D'you think he's offended?" suggested Judy, as they met at length in
the hall to consider the situation.

"Of course not," said Tim emphatically, "a man like that! He's written
a book on Scouting!"

"I've finished," Maria mentioned briefly, and sat down.

On Judy's puzzled face there appeared an anxious expression then. His
cold, she remembered, was very heavy. "I looked under every sofa and
into every cupboard," she said, as though she feared he might have
choked or suffocated. They stood in front of the fireplace and began to
talk about other things. Their interest in the game was gone, they were
tired of looking; but at the back of their minds was a secret
annoyance, though at the same time a sense of great respect for the man
who could conceal himself so utterly from sight. A touch of the
marvellous was in it somehow.

"There's no good hiding like _that_," they felt indignantly. Still it
was rather wonderful, after all. A man "like that" could do anything.
He might even be up a chimney somewhere. He might be anywhere! They
felt a little creepy....

"P'raps he _is_ a sort of tiger thing," whispered some one ... and they
were rather relieved when the drawing-room door opened and Mother
appeared, knitting her scarlet muffler as she walked. The scene of
scolding, explanation, and excuses that followed--for it was half an
hour after bed-time--was cut short by Maria informing the company that
she was "awfully tired," with a sigh that meant she would like to be
carried up to bed. She was carried. The procession moved slowly, Tim
and Judy bringing up the rear. But while Tim talked about a water-rat
he meant to kill next day with an air-gun, Judy used her eyes
assiduously, still hoping to discover Cousin William crumpled up in
some incredible hiding-place. They told their mother nothing. The
matter was private. It was between themselves and him. It would have to
be cleared up on the morrow--if they remembered. On the upper landing,
however, there was a curious sound. Maria, half asleep in the maternal
arms, did not hear it, apparently, but the other two children exchanged
sudden, recriminating glances. A door stood ajar, and light came
through it from the room within. This curious sound came with it. It
was a sneeze--a regular Nindian sneeze.

"We never thought of looking _there_," they said reproachfully.
Come-Back Stumper had simply gone to bed.




CHAPTER V

THE BIRTH OF WONDER


Meanwhile their father alone grew neither older nor larger. His
appearance did not change. They could not imagine that he would ever
change. He still went up to London in the morning, he still came down
again, he still continued to grind out stories which they thought
wonderful, and he still, on occasions, said mysteriously, "A day will
come," or its variants, "Some day," and "A day is coming." Yet, though
he had Fancy, he had not Imagination. He did not satisfy them. For
while Fancy may attend the birth of Wonder, Imagination alone
accompanies her growth. Daddy was too full of stationery and
sealing-wax in his daily work to have got very far.

Aunt Emily also still was there, explaining everything and saying No,
shaking her head at them, or holding up a warning finger. Their outward
life, indeed, showed little change, but it included one important
novelty that affected all their present and all their subsequent
existence, too. They made a new friend--their father's brother.

When first his visit was announced, they had their doubts about
him--"your Uncle Felix" had a very questionable sound indeed, but the
fact that he lived in Paris and was a writer of sea-stories and
historical novels counterbalanced the handicap of the unpleasant
"Felix." For to their ears Felix was not a proper sort of name at all;
it was all right for a horse or a dog or even for a town, but for a man
who was also a relation it was a positive disaster. It would not
shorten for one thing, and for another it reminded them of "a king, or
some one in a history book," and thus did not predispose them in his
favour. It was simply what Tim called a "beastly name." Aunt Emily,
however, was responsible for their biggest prejudice against him: "You
must remember not to bother him, children; you must never disturb him
when he's working." And as Uncle Felix was coming to stay for several
weeks in the Mill House, they regarded him in advance as some kind of
horrible excitement they must put up with.

However, as most things in life go by contraries, this Uncle Felix
person turned out just the opposite. Within an hour of his arrival he
was firmly established as friend and ally, yet so quickly and easily
was this adjustment brought about that no one could say exactly how it
happened. They themselves said nothing--just stood and stared at him;
Daddy and Mother said the expected things, and Aunt Emily, critical and
explanatory as usual, found it necessary to add: "You'll find it such a
quiet house to work in, Felix, and the children will never interfere or
get in your way." She was evidently proud of her relative and his
famous books. "They'll be as good as gold--won't you, Judy?" by which
name she referred to the trio as a whole.

Whereupon Judy smiled and nodded shyly, Tim bent down and scratched his
stocking, and Maria, her face expressionless, merely stared at her aunt
as though she--Emily, that is--were a piece of inanimate furniture.

"I see," said Uncle Felix carelessly, and glanced down at the trio.

That was all he said. But it was the way he said it that instantly
explained his position. He looked at them and said, "I see"; no more
than that--and it was done. They knew, he knew, Aunt Emily also knew.
Two little careless words--and then continued to talk of Paris, the
Channel crossing, and the weather.

"Didn't he squash her just!" remarked Tim, when they were alone
together. "She expected him to thank her awfully and give her a kiss."
And, accordingly, none of them were in the least surprised when he
suddenly poked his head inside the door as they lay in bed and
explained that he had just looked in to say good-night, and when he
left them a moment later added gravely from the door: "Mind, you never
disturb me, children; because, if you do--!" He shook a warning finger
and was gone. He looked enormous in the doorway.

From that moment Uncle Felix became an important factor in their lives.
The mysterious compact between them all was signed and sealed, yet none
could say who drew it up and worded it. His duties became considerable.
He almost took Daddy's place. The Study, indeed, at certain hours of
the evening, became their recognised nesting place, and Daddy was as
pleased as they themselves were. He seemed relieved. He rarely ground
out epics now when his brain was tired and full of Government
stationery and sealing-wax. Uncle Felix held the wizard's wand, and
what he did with it was this: he raised the sense of wonder in them to
a higher level. Daddy had awakened it, and fed it with specimens they
could understand. But Uncle Felix poked it into yet greater activity by
giving them something that no one could ever possibly understand! He
stimulated it so that it worked in them spontaneously and of its own
accord. He made it _grow_. And no amount of Aunt Emilies in the world
could stop him.

Their father felt no jealousy. When the story-hour came round, he
produced a set of sentences he kept slyly up his sleeve for the
occasion. "Ask your Uncle Felix; he's better at stories and things than
I am. It's his business." This was the model. A variation ran: "Oh,
don't bother me just now, children. I've got a lot of figures to
digest." But the shortest version was simply, "Run and plague your
uncle. I'm too busy."

"Try Mother" was used when Uncle Felix was in hiding. Only it had no
result. Mother's mind was too diffuse to carry conviction. It was
soaked in servants and things. In another sense it was too exact. The
ingredients of her stories were like a cooking recipe. Besides, hers
was the unpardonable fault of never forgetting the time. On the very
stroke of the clock she broke off abruptly with "Now it's bed-time; you
shall hear the rest another night." Daddy forgot, or pleaded for "ten
minutes more." Uncle Felix, however, said flatly, "They can't go till
it's finished"--and he meant it. His voice was deep and gruff--"like a
dog's," according to Maria--and his laugh was like a horse's neigh; it
made the china rattle. He was "frightfully strong," too, stronger than
Weeden, for he could take a child under each arm and another on his
back--and run! He never smiled when he told his stories, and, though
this made them seem extra real, it also alarmed deliciously--in the
terrible places. Perched on his gigantic knees, they felt "like up the
cedar," and when he stretched an arm or leg it was the great cedar
branch swaying in the wind.

His manner, too, was stern to severity, and his voice was so deep
sometimes that they could "feel it rumbling inside," as though he had
"swallowed the dinner gong." He was a very important man somewhere;
Daddy was just in the Stationery Office, but Uncle Felix was an author,
and the very title necessarily included awe. He wrote
"storical-novuls." His name was often in the newspapers. They connected
him with the "Govunment." It had to do somewhere with the Police. No
one trifled with Uncle Felix. Yet, strange to say, the children never
could be properly afraid of him, although they tried very hard. Their
audacity, their familiarity, their daring astonished everybody. The
gardeners and coachmen, to say nothing of the indoor servants, treated
him as though he was some awful emperor. But the children simply pushed
him about. He might have been a friendly Newfoundland dog that wore
tail-coats and walked on his hind legs, for all they feared reprisals.

He gave them a taste of his quality soon after his arrival.

"No, children, it's impossible now. I'm busy over a scene of my
storicalnovul. Ask your father." He growled it at them, frowning darkly.

The parental heels had just that instant vanished round the door.

"Father's got the figures and says he can't."

"Or your mother--" he said, gruffly.

"Mother's doing servants in the housekeeper's room."

"Take your foot out of my waistcoat pocket this instant," he roared.

"Why?" enquired Maria. "How else can I climb up?"

He shook and swayed like the cedar branch, but he did not shake her
off. "Because," he thundered, "there's money in it, and you've got
holes in your stockings, and toes with you are worse than fingers."

And he strode across the floor, Tim clinging to one leg with both feet
off the ground, and Judy pushing him behind as though he were a heavy
door that wouldn't open. He was very angry indeed. He told them plainly
what he thought about them. He explained the philosophy of authors to
them in brutal sentences. "Leave me alone, you little botherations!" he
cried. "I'm in the middle of a scene in a storicalnovul." It was
disgraceful that a man could lose his temper so. "Leave me alone, or
I'll ..."

In the corner of the big nursery sofa there was sudden silence. It was
a chilly evening in early spring. Between the bars across the windows
the wisteria leaves sifted the setting sunlight. The railway train lay
motionless upon the speckled carpet. A cat, so fat it couldn't unroll,
lay in a ball of mystery against the high guard of wire netting before
the fire. Outside the wind went moaning.

And Time ran backwards, or else the clock stopped dead. Dusk slipped in
between the window bars. The cedars on the lawn became gigantic. They
heard the haystacks shuffling out of their tarpaulins. The whole house
rose into the air and floated off. Mother, Daddy, Nurses, beds dropped
from the windows as it sailed away. All were left behind, forgotten
details of some stupid and uncomfortable life elsewhere.

"Quite ready," sighed the top of one cedar to the other.

"And waiting, too," an answer came from nowhere.

And then the Universe paused and settled with a little fluttering sound
of wonder. The onceuponatime Moment entered the room....

"There was a thing that nobody could understand," began the deep, gruff
voice. "And this thing that nobody could understand was something no
one understood at all."

"That's twice they couldn't understand it," observed Judy, in the
slight pause he made for effect.

"It was alive," he went on, "and very beautiful, so beautiful, in fact,
that people were astonished and felt rather ashamed because they
couldn't understand it. Some declared it wasn't worth understanding at
all; others said it might be worth understanding if they had the time
to think about it; and the rest decided that it was nothing much, and
promptly forgot that it existed. Their lives grew rather dull in
consequence. A few, however, set to work to discover what it was. For
the beauty of it set something in them strangely burning."

"It was a firework, I think," remarked Maria, then felt she had said
quite an awful thing. For Tim just looked at her. "It's alive, Uncle
Felix told you," he stated. She was obliterated--for the moment.

"Yes," resumed the story-teller, "it was alive, and its beauty set the
hearts of a few people on fire to know what it meant. It was difficult
to find, however, and difficult to see properly when found.

"These people tried to copy it, and couldn't. Though it looked so
simple it was impossible to imitate. It went about so quickly, too,
that they couldn't catch hold of it and--"

"But have _you_ seen it?" asked Judy, her head bobbing up into his face
with eager curiosity.

It was a vital question. All waited anxiously for his reply.

"I have," he answered convincingly. "I saw it first when I was about
your age, and I've never forgotten it."

"But you've seen it since, haven't you? It's still in the world, isn't
it?"

"I've seen it since, and it's still in the world. Only no one knows to
this day why it's there. No one can explain it. No one can understand
it. It's so beautiful that it makes you wonder, and it's so mysterious
that it makes you--"

"What?" asked Tim for the others, while he paused a moment and stared
into their gazing faces.

"Wonder still more," he added.

Another pause followed.

"Then is your heart still burning, Uncle Felix?" Judy enquired,
prodding him softly. "And does it matter much?"

"It matters a great deal, yes, because I want to find out, and cannot.
And the burning goes on and on whenever I see the
thing-that-nobody-can-understand, and even when I don't see it but just
think about it--which is pretty often. Because, if I found out why it's
there, I should know so much that I should give up writing
storicalnovuls and become a sort of prophet instead."

They stared in great bewilderment. Their curiosity was immense. They
were dying to know what the thing was, but it was against the Rules to
ask outright.

"Were their lives _very_ dull?"--Maria set this problem, suddenly
recalling something at the beginning of the story.

"Oh, very dull indeed. They had no sense of wonder--those who forgot."

"How awful for them!"

"Awful," he agreed, in a long-drawn whisper, shuddering.

And that shudder ran through every one. The children turned towards the
darkening room. The gloomy cupboard was a blotch of shadow. The table
frowned. The bookshelves listened. The white face of the cuckoo clock
peered down upon them dimly from the opposite wall, and the chairs, it
seemed, moved up a little closer. But through the windows the stars
were beginning to peep, and they saw the crests of the friendly cedars
waving against the fading sky.

He pointed. High above the cedars, where the first stars twinkled, the
blue was deep and exquisitely shaded from the golden streak below it
into a colour almost purple.

"The thing that nobody could understand was even more wonderful than
_that_," he whispered. "But no one could tell why it was there; no one
could guess; no one could find out. And to this day--no one _can_ find
out."

His voice grew lower and lower and lower still.

"To-morrow I'll show it to you. You shall see it for yourselves."

They hardly heard him now. The voice seemed far away. What could it
be--this very, very wonderful thing?

"We'll go out and find one...by the stream ...where the willows
bend...and shake their pointed leaves.... We'll go to-morrow...."

His voice died away inside his waistcoat. Not a sound was audible. The
children were very close against him. In his big hands he took each
face in turn and put his lips inside the rim of three small ears.

He told the secret then, while wonder filled the room and hovered
exquisitely above the crowded chair....

Awakened by the silence, presently, the ball of black unrolled itself
beside the wire fender, it stretched its four black legs. And the
children, hushed, happy, and with a mysterious burning in their hearts,
went off willingly to bed, to dream of wonder all night long, and to
ask themselves in sleep, _"Why God has put blue dust upon the body of a
dragon-fly?"_




CHAPTER VI

THE GROWTH OF WONDER


The story of the dragon-fly marked a turning-point in their lives; they
realised that life was crammed with things that nobody could
understand. Daddy's reign was over, and Uncle Felix had ascended the
throne. Wonder--but a growing wonder--ruled the world. The great
Stranger they had always been vaguely expecting had drawn nearer; it
was not Uncle Felix, yet he seemed the forerunner somehow. That "Some
Day" of Daddy's--they had almost forgotten its existence--became more
and more a possibility. Life had two divisions now: Before Uncle Felix
came--and Now. To Maria alone there seemed no interval. To her it was
always Now. She had so much wonder in her that she _knew_.

Outwardly the household ran along as usual, but inwardly this enormous
change was registered in three human hearts. The adventures they had
before Uncle Felix came were the ordinary kind all children know; they
invented them themselves. Their new adventures were of a different
order--impossible but true. Their uncle had brought a key that opened
heaven and earth.

He did not know that he had brought this key. It was just natural--he
let himself in because it was his nature so to do; the others merely
went in with him. He worked away in his room, covering reams of paper
with nonsense out of his big head; and the trio never disturbed him or
knocked at his door, or even looked for him: they knew that his real
life ran with theirs, and the moment he had covered so many dozen
sheets he would appear and join them. All people had their duties; his
duty was to fill so many sheets a day for printers; but his important
life belonged to them and they just lived it naturally together. He
would never leave the Old Mill House. The funny thing was--whatever had
he done with himself before he came there!

Everything he said and did lit up the common things of daily life with
this strange, big wonder that was his great possession. Yet his method
was simple and instinctive; he never thought things out; he just--knew.

And the effect of his presence upon the other Authorities was
significant. Not that the Authorities admitted or even were aware of
it, but that the children saw them differently. Aunt Emily, for
instance, whom they used to dread, they now felt sorry for. She was so
careful and particular that she was afraid of life, afraid of living.
Prudence was slowly killing her. Everything must be done in a certain
way that made it safe; only, by the time it was safe it was no longer
interesting. They saw clearly how she missed everything owing to the
excessive caution and preparation in her: by the time she was ready,
the thing had simply left. Instead of coming into the hayfield at once
and enjoying it, she uttered so many warnings and gave so much advice
against disaster--"better take this," and "better not take that"--that
by the time they got there the hayfield had lost all its wonder. It was
just a damp, untidy hayfield.

Daddy, however, gained in glory. He approved of his big brother. On his
return from London every evening the first thing he asked was, "What
have you all been up to to-day? Has Uncle Felix given you the moon or
rolled the sun and stars into a coloured ball?" Weeden, too, had grown
in mystery--he made the garden live, and understood the secret life of
every growing thing; while Thompson and Mrs. Horton, each in their
separate ways, led lives of strange activity in the lower regions of
the house till the kitchen seemed the palace of an ogress and the
pantry was its haunted vestibule. "Mrs. Horton's kitchen" was a phrase
as powerful as "Open Sesame"; and "the butler's pantry" edged the world
of mighty dream.

Above all, Mother occupied a new relationship towards them that made
her twice as splendid as before. Until Uncle Felix came, she was simply
"Mother," who loved them whatever they did and made allowances for
everything. That was her duty, and unless they provided her with
something to make allowances for they had failed in what was expected
of them. Her absorption in servants and ordering of meals, in choosing
their clothes and warning Jackman about their boots--all this was a
chief reason for her existence, and if they didn't eat too much
sometimes and wear their boots out and tear their clothes, Mother would
have been without her normal occupation. Whereas now they saw her in
another light, touched with the wonder of the sun and stars. It was
proper, of course, for her to have children, but they realised now that
she contrived to make the whole world work somehow for their benefit.
Mother not only managed the entire Household, from the dinner-ordering
slate at breakfast-time to the secret whisperings with Jackman behind
the screen at bedtime, or the long private interviews with Daddy in his
study after tea: she led a magnificent and stupendous life that
regulated every smallest detail of their happiness. She was for ever
thinking of them and slaving for their welfare. The wonder of her
enormous love stole into their discerning hearts. They loved her
frightfully, and told her all sorts of little things that before they
had kept concealed. There were heaps and heaps of mothers in the world,
of course; they were knocking about all over the place; but there was
only one single Mother, and that was theirs.

Yet, in his own peculiar way, it was Uncle Felix who came first. Daddy
believed in a lot of things; Mother believed in many things; Aunt Emily
believed in certain things done at certain times and in a certain way.
But Uncle Felix believed in everything, everywhere and always. To him
nothing was ever impossible. He held, that is, their own eternal creed.
He was akin to Maria, moreover, and Maria, though silent, was his
spokesman often.

"Why _does_ a butterfly fly so dodgy?" inquired Tim, having vainly
tried to catch a Painted Lady on the lawn.

Daddy made a grimace and shrugged his shoulders, yet left the insect
quite as wonderful as it was before. Mother looked up from her knitting
with a gentle smile and said, "Does it, darling? I hadn't noticed."
Aunt Emily, balancing her parasol to keep the sun away, observed in an
educational tone of voice, "My dear Tim, what foolish questions you
ask! It's because its wings are so large compared to the rest of its
body. It can't help itself, you see." She belittled the insect and took
away its wonder. She explained.

Tim, unsatisfied, moved over to the wicker chair where Uncle Felix sat
drowsily smoking his big meerschaum pipe. He pointed to the vanishing
Painted Lady and repeated his question in a lower voice, so that the
others could not hear:

"Why does it fly like that--all dodgy?" Whatever happened, the boy knew
his Uncle would leave the butterfly twice as wonderful as he found it.

But no immediate answer came. They watched it for a moment together in
silence. It behaved in the amazing way peculiar to its kind. Nothing in
the world flies like a butterfly. Birds and other things fly straight,
or sweep in curves, or rise and drop in understandable straight lines.
But the Painted Lady obeyed no such rules. It dodged and darted, it
jerked and shot, it was everywhere and anywhere, least of all where it
ought to have been. The swallows always missed it. It simply
doubled--and disappeared round the corner of the building.

Then, puffing at his pipe, Uncle Felix looked at Tim and said, "I
couldn't tell you. It's one of the things nobody can understand, I
think."

"Yes," agreed Tim, "it must be."

There was a considerable pause.

"But there must be some way of finding out," the boy said presently. He
had been thinking over it.

"There is." The man rose slowly from his chair.

"What is it?" came the eager question.

"Try it ourselves, and see if we can do the same!"

And they went off instantly, hand in hand, and vanished round the
corner of the building.

The adventures they had since Uncle Felix came were of this impossible
and marvellous order. That strange and lovely cry, "There's some one
coming," ran through the listening world. "I believe there is," said
Uncle Felix. "Some day he'll come and a tremendous thing will happen,"
was another form of it, to which the answer was, "I know it will."

It was much nearer to them than before. It was just below the edge of
the world, the edge of life. It was in the air. Any morning they might
wake and find the great thing was there--arrived in the night while
they were sound asleep. So many things gave hints. A book _might_ tell
of it between the lines; each time a new book was opened a thrill
slipped out from the pages in advance. Yet no book they knew had ever
told it really. Out of doors, indeed, was the more likely place to
expect it. The tinkling stream either ran towards it, or else came from
it; that was its secret, the secret it was always singing about day and
night. But it was impossible to find the end or beginning of any
stream. Wind, moreover, announced it too, for wind didn't tear about
and roar like that for nothing. Spring, however, with its immense hope
and expectation, gave the clearest promise of all. In winter it hid
inside something, or at least went further away; yet even in winter the
marvellous something or some one lay waiting underneath the snow,
behind the fog, above the clouds. One day, some day, next day, or the
day after to-morrow--and it would suddenly be there beside them.

Whence came this great Expectancy they never questioned, nor what it
was exactly, nor who had planted it. This was a mystery, one of the
things that no one can understand. They felt it: that was all they
knew. It was more than Wonder, for Wonder was merely the sign and proof
that they were seeking. It was faint and exquisite in them, like some
far, sweet memory they could never quite account for, nor wholly, even
once, recapture. They remembered almost--almost before they were born.

"We'll have a look now," Uncle Felix would say every walk they took;
but before they got very far it was always time to come in again.
"That's the bother of everything," he agreed with them. "Time always
prevents, doesn't it? If only we could make it stop--get behind time,
as it were--we might have a chance. Some day, perhaps, we shall."

He left the matter there, but they never forgot that pregnant remark
about stopping time and getting in behind it. No, they never forgot
about it. At Christmas, Easter, and the like, it came so near that they
could almost smell it, but when these wonderful times were past they
looked back and knew it had not really come. The holidays cheated them
in a similar way. Yet, when it came, they knew it would be as natural
and simple as eating honey, though at the same time with immense
surprise in it. And all agreed that it was somehow connected with the
Dawn, for the Dawn, the opening of a new day, was something they had
heard about but never witnessed. Dawn must be exceedingly wonderful,
because, while it happened daily, none of them had ever seen it happen.
A hundred times they had agreed to wake and have a look, but the Dawn
had always been too quick and quiet. It slipped in ahead of them each
time. They had never seen the sun come up.

In some such sudden, yet quite natural way, this stupendous thing they
expected would come up. It would suddenly be there. Everybody,
moreover, expected it. Grown-ups pretended they didn't, but they did.
Catch a grown-up when he wasn't looking, and he _was_ looking. He
didn't like to be caught, that's all, for as often as not he was
smiling to himself, or just going to--cry.

They shared, in other words, the great, common yearning of the world;
only they knew they yearned, whereas the rest of the world forgets.

"I think," announced Judy one day--then stopped, as though unsure of
herself.

"Yes?" said her Uncle encouragingly.

"I think," she went on, "that the Night-Wind knows an awful lot, if
only--" she stopped again.

"If only," he helped her.

"We," she continued.

"Could," he added.

"Catch it!" she finished with a gasp, then stared at him expectantly.

And his answer formed the subject of conversation for fully half an
hour in the bedroom later, and for a considerable time after Jackman
had tucked them up and taken the candle away. They watched the shadows
run across the ceiling as she went along the passage outside; they
heard her steps go carefully downstairs; they waited till she had
safely disappeared, for the door was ajar, and they could hear her
rumbling down into the lower regions of Mrs. Horton's kitchen--and then
they sat up in bed, hugged their knees, shuddered with excitement, and
resumed the conversation exactly where it had been stopped.

For Uncle Felix had given a marvellous double-barrelled answer. He had
said, "We can." And then he had distinctly added, "We will!"




CHAPTER VII

IMAGINATION WAKES


For the Night-Wind already had a definite position in the mythology of
the Old Mill House, and since Uncle Felix had taken to reading aloud
certain fancy bits from the storicalnovul he was writing at the moment,
it had acquired a new importance in their minds.

These fancy bits were generally scenes of action in which the
Night-Wind either dropped or rose unexpectedly. He used the children as
a standard. "Thank you very much, Uncle," meant failure, the
imagination was not touched; but questions were an indication of
success, the audience wanted further details. For he knew it was the
child in his audience that enjoyed such scenes, and if Tim and Judy
felt no interest, neither would Mr. and Mrs. William Smith of Peckham.
To squeeze a question out of Maria raised hopes of a second edition!

A Duke, disguised as a woman or priest, landing at night; a dark man
stealing documents from a tapestried chamber of some castle, where bats
and cobwebs shared the draughty corridors--such scenes were incomplete
unless a Night-Wind came in audibly at critical moments. It wailed,
moaned, whistled, cried, sang, sighed, soughed or--sobbed. Keyholes and
chimneys were its favourite places, but trees and rafters knew it too.
The sea, of course, also played a large part in these adventures, for
water above all was the element Uncle Felix loved and understood, but
this Night-Wind, being born at sea, was also of distinct importance.
The sea was terrible, the wind was sad.

To the children it grew more and more distinct with each appearance. It
had a personality, and led a curious and wild existence. It had
privileges and prerogatives. Owing to its various means of vocal
expression--singing, moaning, and the rest--a face belonged to it with
lips and mouth; teeth too, since it whistled. It ran about the world,
and so had feet; it flew, so wings pertained to it; it blew, and that
meant cheeks of sorts. It was a large, swift, shadowy being whose ways
were not the ordinary ways of daylight. It struck blows. It had
gigantic hands. Moreover, it came out only after dark--an ominous and
suspicious characteristic rather.

"Why isn't there a day-wind too?" inquired Judy thoughtfully.

"There is, but it's _quite_ a different thing," Uncle Felix answered.
"You might as well ask why midday and midnight aren't the same because
they both come at twelve o'clock. They're simply different things."

"Of course," Tim helped him unexpectedly; "and a man can't be a woman,
can it?"

The Night-Wind's nature, accordingly, remained a mystery rather, and
its sex was also undetermined. Whether it saw with eyes, or just felt
its way about like a blind thing, wandering, was another secret matter
undetermined. Each child visualised it differently. Its hiding-place in
the daytime was equally unknown. Owls, bats, and burglars guessed its
habits best, and that it came out of a hole in the sky was, perhaps,
the only detail all unanimously agreed upon. It was a pathetic being
rather.

This Night-Wind used to come crying round the bedroom windows
sometimes, and the children liked it, although they did not understand
all its melancholy beauty. They heard the different voices in it,
although they did not catch the meaning of the words it sang. They
heard its footsteps too. Its way of moving awed them. Moreover, it was
for ever trying to get in.

"It's wings," said Judy, "big, dark wings, very soft and feathery."

"It's a woman with sad, black eyes," thought Tim, "that's how I like
it."

"It's some one," declared Maria, who was asleep before it came, so
rarely heard it at all. And they turned to Uncle Felix who knew all
that sort of thing, or at any rate could describe it. He found the
words. They lay hidden in his thick back hair apparently--there was
little on the top!--for he always scratched his head a good deal when
they asked him questions about such difficult matters. "What is it
_really_--the Night-Wind?" they asked gravely; "and why does it sound
so _very_ different from the wind in the morning or the afternoon?"

"There _is_ a difference," he replied carefully. "It's a quick, dark,
rushing thing, and it moves like--like anything."

"We know _that_," they told him.

"And it has long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring
eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound
it makes--that's its hair against the walls and tiles, you see."

"It _is_ a woman, then?" said Tim proudly. All looked up, wondering. An
extraordinary thing was in the air. A mystery that had puzzled them for
ages was about to be explained. They drew closer round the sofa, and
Maria blundered against the table, knocking some books off with a
resounding noise. It was their way of reminding him that he had
promised. "Hush, hush!" said Uncle Felix, holding up a finger and
glancing over his shoulder into the darkened room. "It may be coming
now... Listen!"

"Yes, but it is a woman, isn't it?" insisted Tim, in a hurried whisper.
He had to justify himself before his sisters. Uncle Felix must see to
that first.

The big man opened his eyes very wide. He shuddered. "It's a--Thing,"
was the answer, given in a whisper that increased the excitement of
anticipation. "It certainly is a--Thing! Now hush! It's coming!"

They listened then intently. And a sound _was_ heard. Out of the starry
summer night it came, quite softly, and from very far away--upon
discovery bent, upon adventure. Reconnoitering, as from some deep
ambush in the shrubberies where the blackbirds hid and whistled, it
flew down against the house, stared in at the nursery windows,
fluttered up and down the glass with a marvellous, sweet humming--and
was gone again.

"Listen!" the man's voice whispered; "it will come back presently. It
saw us. It's awfully shy--"

"Why is it awfully shy?" asked Judy in an undertone.

"Because people make it mean so much more than it means to mean," he
replied darkly. "It never gets a chance to be just itself and play its
own lonely game--"

"We've called it things," she stated.

"But we haven't written books about it and put it into poetry," Uncle
Felix corrected her with an audacity that silenced them. "We play our
game; it plays its."

"It plays its," repeated Tim, amused by the sound of the words.

"And that's why it's shy," the man held them to the main point, "and
dislikes showing itself--"

"But why is its game lonely?" some one asked, and there was a general
feeling that Uncle Felix had been caught this time without an answer.
For what explanation could there possibly be of that? Their faces were
half triumphant, half disappointed already.

He smiled quietly. He knew everything--everything in the world. "It's
unhappy as well as shy," he sighed, "because nothing will play with it.
Everything is asleep at night. It comes out just when other things are
going in. Trees answer it, but they answer in their sleep. Birds,
tucked away in nests and hiding-places, don't even answer at all. The
butterflies are gone, the insects lost. Leaves and twigs don't care
about being blown when there's no one there to see them. They hide too.
If there are clouds, they're dark and sulky, keeping their jolly sides
towards the stars and moon. Nothing will play with the Night-Wind. So
it either plays with the tiles on the roof and the telegraph
wires--dead things that make a lot of noise, but never leave their
places for a proper game--or else just--plays with itself. Since the
beginning of the world the Night-Wind has been shy and lonely and
unhappy."

It was unanswerable. They understood. Their sense of pity was greatly
touched, their love as well.

"Do pigs really see the wind, as Daddy says?" inquired Maria abruptly,
feeling the conversation beyond her. She merely obeyed the laws of her
nature. But no one answered her; no one even heard the question.
Another sound absorbed their interest and attention. There was a low,
faint tapping on the window-pane. A hush, like church, fell upon
everybody.

And Uncle Felix stood up to his full height suddenly, and opened his
arms wide. He drew a long, deep breath.

"Come in," he said splendidly.

The tapping, however, grew fainter and fainter, till it finally ceased.
Everybody waited expectantly, but it was not repeated. Nothing
happened. Nobody came in. The tapper had retreated.

"It was a twig," whispered Judy, after a pause. "The Virgin Creeper--"

"But it was the wind that shook it," exclaimed Uncle Felix, still
standing and waiting as though he expected something. "The
Night-Wind--Look out!"

A roaring sound over the roof drowned his words; it rose and fell like
laughter, then like crying. It dropped closer, rushed headlong past the
window, rattled and shook the sash, then dived away into the darkness.
Its violence startled them. A deep lull followed instantly, and the
little tapping of the twig was heard again. Odd! Just when the
Night-Wind seemed furthest off it was all the time quite near. It had
not really gone at all; it was hiding against the outside walls. It was
watching them, trying to get in. The tapping continued for half a
minute or more--a series of hurried, gentle little knocks as from a
child's smallest finger-tip.

"It wants to come in. It's trying," whispered some one.

"It's awfully shy."

"It's lonely and frightfully unhappy."

"It likes us and wants to play."

There was another pause and silence. No one knew quite what to do.
"There's too much light. Let's put the lamp out," said a genius, using
the voice of Judy.

As though by way of answer there followed instantly a sudden burst of
wind. The torrent of it drove against the house; it boomed down the
chimney, puffing an odour of soot into the room; it shook the door into
the passage; it lifted an edge of carpet, flapping it. It shouted,
whistled, sang, using a dozen different voices all at once. The roar
fell into syllables. It was amazing. A great throat uttered words. They
could scarcely believe their ears.

The wind was shouting with a joyful, boisterous shout: "Open the
window! _I'll_ put out the light!"

All heard the wonderful thing. Yet it seemed quite natural in a way.
Uncle Felix, still standing and waiting as though he knew not exactly
what was going to happen, moved forward at once and boldly opened the
window's lower sash. In swept the mighty visitor, the stranger from the
air. The lamp gave one quick flicker and went out. Deep stillness
followed. There was a silence like the moon.

The shy Night-Wind had come into the room.

Ah, there was awe and wonder then! The silence was so unexpected. The
whole wind, not merely part of it, was in. It had come so gently,
softly, delicately too! In the darkness the outline of the window-frame
was visible; Uncle Felix's big figure blocked against the stars. Judy's
head could be seen in silhouette against the other window, but Tim and
Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level
of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the
room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once.
A rustle was audible as of trailing, floating hair.

"It's hiding in the corners and behind the furniture," whispered Uncle
Felix; "keep quiet. If you frighten it--whew!"--he whistled
softly--"it'll be off above the tree-tops in a second!"

A low soft whistle answered to his own; somewhere in the room it
sounded; there was no mistaking it, though the exact direction was
difficult to tell, for while Tim said it was through the keyhole, Judy
declared positively that it came from the door of the big, broken
cupboard opposite. Maria stated flatly, "Chimney."

"Hush! It's talking." It was Uncle Felix's voice breathing very low.
"It likes us. It feels we're friendly."

A murmur as of leaves was audible, or as of a pine bough sighing in a
breeze. Yet there were words as well--actual spoken words:

"Don't look for me, please," they heard. "I do not want to be seen. But
you may touch me. I like that."

The children spread their hands out in the darkness, groping,
searching, feeling.

"Ah, your touch!" the sighing voice continued.

"It's like my softest lawn. Your hair feels as my grass feels on the
hill-tops, and the skin of your cheeks is smooth and cool as the
water-surface of my lily ponds at midnight. I know you"--it raised its
tones to singing. "You are children. I kiss you all!"

"I feel you," Judy said in her clear, quiet voice. "But you're cold."

"Not really," was the answer that seemed all over the room at once.
"That's only the touch of space. I've come from very high up to-night.
There's been a change. The lower wind was called away suddenly to the
sea, and I dropped down with hardly a moment's warning to take its
place. The sun has been very tiresome all day--overheating the
currents."

"Uncle, _you_ ask it everything," whispered Tim, "simply everything!"

"Say how we love it, please," sighed Judy. "I feel it closing both my
eyes."

"It's over all my face," put in Maria, drawing her breath in loudly.

"But my hair's lifting!" Judy exclaimed. "Oh, it's lovely, lovely!"

Uncle Felix straightened himself up in the darkness. They could hear
him breathing with the effort. "Please tell us what you do," he said.
"We all can feel you touching us. Play with us as you play with trees
and clouds and sleeping flowers along the hedgerows."

A singing, whistling sound passed softly round the room; there was a
whirr and a flutter as when a flight of bees or birds goes down the
sky, and a voice, a plaintive yet happy voice, like the plover who cry
to each other on the moors, was audible:

  "I run about the world at night,
     Yet cannot see;
   My hair has grown so thick these millions years,
     It covers me.
   So, like a big, blind thing
     I run about,
   And know all things by touching them.
     I touch them with my wings;
       I know each one of you
         By touching you;
           I touch your _hearts_!"

"I feel you!" cried Judy. "I feel you touching me!"

"And I, and I!" the others cried. "It's simply wonderful!"

An enormous sigh of happiness went through that darkened room.

"Then play with me!" they heard. "Oh, children, play with me!"

The wild, high sweetness in the windy voice was irresistible. The
children rose with one accord. It was too dark to see, but they flew
about the room without a fault or slip. There was no stumbling; they
seemed guided, lifted, swept. The sound of happy, laughing voices
filled the air. They caught the Wind, and let it go again; they chased
it round the table and the sofa; they held it in their arms until it
panted with delight, half smothered into silence, then marvellously
escaping from them on the elastic, flying feet that tread on forests,
clouds, and mountain tops. It rushed and darted, drove them, struck
them lightly, pushed them suddenly from behind, then met their faces
with a puff and shout of glee. It caught their feet; it blew their
eyelids down. Just when they cried, "It's caught! I've got it in my
hands!" it shot laughing up against the ceiling, boomed down the
chimney, or whistled shrilly as it escaped beneath the crack of the
door into the passage. The keyhole was its easiest escape. It grew
boisterous, singing with delight, yet was never for a moment rough. It
cushioned all its blows with feathers.

"Where are you now? I felt your hair all over me. You've gone again!"
It was Judy's voice as she tore across the floor.

"You're whacking me on the head!" cried Tim. "Quick, quick! I've got
you in my hands!" He flew headlong over the sofa where Maria sat
clutching the bolster to prevent being blown on to the carpet.

They felt its soft, gigantic hands all over them; its silky coils of
hair entangled every movement; they heard its wings, its rushing,
sighing voice, its velvet feet. The room was in a whirr and uproar.

"Uncle! Can't _you_ help? You're the biggest!"

"But it's blown me inside out," he answered, in a curiously muffled
voice. "My fingers are blown off. It's taken all my breath away."

The pictures rattled on the wall; loose bits of paper fluttered
everywhere; the curtains flapped out horizontally into the air.

"Catch it! Hold it! Stop it!" cried the breathless voices.

"Join hands," he gasped. "We'll try." And, holding hands, they raced
across the floor. They managed to encircle something with their spread
arms and legs. Into the corner by the door they forced a great, loose,
flowing thing against the wall. Wedged tight together like a fence,
they stooped. They pounced upon it.

"Caught!" shouted Tim. "We've got you!"

There was a laughing whistle in the keyhole just behind them. It was
gone.

The window shook. They heard the wild, high laughter. It was out of the
room. The next minute it passed shouting above the cedar tops and up
into the open sky. And their own laughter went out to follow it across
the night.

The room became suddenly very still again. Some one had closed the
window. The twig no longer tapped. The game was over. Uncle Felix
collected them, an exhausted crew, upon the sofa by his side.

"It was very wonderful," he whispered. "We've done what no one has ever
done before. We've played with the Night-Wind, and the Night-Wind's
played with us. It feels happier now. It will always be our friend."

"It was awfully strong," said Tim in a tone of awe. "It fairly banged
me."

"But awfully gentle," Judy sighed. "It kissed me hundreds of times."

"I felt it," announced Maria.

"It's only a child, really," Uncle Felix added, half to himself, "a
great wild child that plays with itself in space--"

He went on murmuring for several minutes, but the children hardly heard
the words he used. They had their own sensations. For the wind had
touched their hearts and made them think. They heard it singing now
above the cedars as they had never heard it sing before. It was alive
and lovely, it meant a new thing to them. For they had their little
aching sorrows too; it had taken them all away: they had their little
passionate yearnings and desires; it had prophesied fulfilment. The
dreamy melancholy of childhood, the long, long days, the haunted
nights, the everlasting afternoons--all these were in its wild, great,
windy voice, the sighing, the mystery, the laughter too. The joy of
strange fulfilment woke in their wind-kissed hearts. The Night-Wind was
their friend; they had played with it. Now everything could come true.

And next day Maria, lost to the Authorities for over an hour, was at
length discovered by the forbidden pigsties in a fearful state of mess,
but very pleased and happy about something. She was watching the pigs
with eyes brimful of questioning wonder and excitement. She was
listening intently too. She wanted to find out for certain whether pigs
really--really and truly--saw--anything unusual!




CHAPTER VIII

WHERE WONDER HIDES


The children had never been to London, but they knew the direction in
which it lay--beyond the crumbling kitchen-garden wall, where the
wall-flowers grew in a proud colony. The sky looked different there, a
threatening quality in it. Both snow and thunderstorm came that way,
and the dirty sign-post "London Road" outside the lodge-gates was
tilted into the air significantly.

They regarded London as a terrible place, though a necessity: Daddy's
office was there; Christmas and Birthday presents came from London, but
also it was where the Radical govunment lived--an enormous, evil,
octopus kind of thing that made Daddy poor. Weeden, too, had been known
to say dark things with regard to selling vegetables, hay, and stuff.
"What can yer igspect when a Radical govunment's in?" And the fact that
neither he nor Daddy did anything to move it away proved what a
powerful thing it was, and made them feel something hostile to their
happiness dwelt London-way beyond that crumbling wall.

The composite picture grew steadily in their little minds. When ominous
clouds piled up on that northern horizon, floating imperceptibly
towards them, it was a fragment of London that had broken off and come
rolling along to hover above the old Mill House. A very black cloud was
the Seat of Govunment.

London itself, however, remained as obstinately remote as Heaven, yet
the two visibly connected; for while the massed vapours were part of
London, the lanes and holes of blue were certainly the vestibule of
Heaven. "His seat is in the Heavens" must mean something, they argued.
They were quite sweetly reverent about it. They merely obeyed the
symbolism of primitive age.

"I shall go to Heaven," Tim said once, when they discussed dying as if
it were a game. He wished to define his position, as it were.

"But you haven't been to London yet," came the higher criticism from
Judy. "London's a metropolis."

Metropolis! It was an awful thing to say, though no one quite knew why.
Part of their dread was traceable to this word. Ever since some one had
called it "the metropolis" in their hearing, they had associated vague
awe with the place. The ending "opolis" sounded to them like something
that might come "ontopofus"--and that, again, brought "octopus" into
the mind. It seemed reckless to mention London and Heaven together--yet
was right and proper at the same time. Both must one day be seen and
known, one inevitably as the other. Thus heavenly rights were included
in their minds with a ticket to London, far, far away, when they were
much, much older. And both trips were dreaded yet looked forward to.

Maria, however, held no great opinion of either locality. She disliked
the idea of long journeys to begin with. Having no objection to moving
her eyes, she was opposed to moving her body--unless towards an
approved certainty. Puddings, bonfires, and laps at story-time were
approved certainties; Heaven and London apparently were not. She was
contented where she was. "London's a bother," was her opinion: it meant
a rush in the hall when the dog-cart was waiting for the train and
Daddy was too late to hear about bringing back a new blue eye for a
broken doll. And as for the other place--her ultimatum was hardly
couched in diplomatic language, to say the least. An eternal Sunday was
not her ideal of happiness. Aunt Emily, it was stated, would live in
Heaven when she died, and the place had lost its attractiveness in
consequence. For Aunt Emily used long words and heard their "Sunday
Colics," and the clothes she wore on that seventh workless day reminded
them of village funerals or unhappy women who came to see over the
house when it was to be let, and asked mysterious questions about
something called "the drains." Daddy's top-hat with a black band was
another item in the Sunday and Metropolis picture. London and Heaven,
as stated, were not looked forward to unreservedly.

There were compensations, though. They knew the joy of deciding who
would go there. Stumper, of course, for one: it was the only place he
would not come back from: he would be K.C.B. Uncle Felix, too, because
it was his original source of origin. Mother repeatedly called him
"angel," and even if she hadn't, it was clear he knew all about both
places by the way he talked. Stumper's India was not quite believed in
owing to the way he described it, but Uncle Felix's London was real and
living, while the other marvellous things he told them could only have
happened in some kind of heavenly place. His position, therefore, was
unshakable, and Mother and Daddy also had immemorial rights. Others of
their circle, however, found themselves somewhat equivocally situated.
Thompson and Mrs. Horton were uncertain, for since there was "no
marriage" there, there could be no families to wait upon and cook for.
Weeden, also, was doubtful. Having never been to London, the
alternative happiness was not properly within his grasp, whereas the
Postman might be transferred from the metropolis to the stars at any
minute of the day or night. Those London letters he brought settled his
case beyond all argument whatever.

All of which needs mention because there was a place called the End of
the World, and the title has of course to do with it. For the End of
the World is the hiding-place of Wonder.

Beyond that crumbling kitchen-garden wall was a very delightful bit of
the universe. A battered grey fence kept out the road, but there were
slits between the boards through which the Passers-by could be secretly
observed. All Passers-by were criminals or heroes on their way to
mysterious engagements; the majority were disguised; many of them could
be heard talking darkly to themselves. They were a queer lot, those
Passers-by. Those who came _from_ London were escaping, but those going
north were intent upon awful business in the sinister
metropolis--explosions, murders, enormous jewel robberies, and
conspiracies against the Radicalgovunment. The solitary policeman who
passed occasionally was in constant terror of his life. They longed to
warn him. Yet he had his other side as well--his questionable side.

This neglected patch of kitchen-garden, however, possessed other claims
to charm as well as the tattered fence. It was uncultivated. Some rows
of tangled currant bushes offered excellent cover; there was a fallen
elm tree whose trunk was "home"; a pile of rubbish that included
scrap-iron, old wheel-barrows, broken ladders, spades, and
wire-netting, and, chief of all, there was the spot behind the currant
bushes where Weeden, the Gardener, burnt dead leaves. It was sad, but
mysterious and beautiful too, this burning of the leaves; though,
according to Uncle Felix, who gave the Gardener's explanation, it was
right and necessary. They loved the smoke, too, hanging in the air
above the lawn, with its fragrant smell and shadowy distances:

"Oh, Gardener! How can you let them burn?"

"Because," he explained, "they've 'ad their turn, And nobody wants
their shade.

 These withered-up messes
 Is worn-out old dresses
 I tuck round the boots
 Of the shiverin' roots
 Till the Spring makes 'em over
 Like roses and clover--
 But nobody wants dead leaves, dead leaves,
 Nor nobody wants their shade!"

A deserted corner, yet crowded gloriously with life. Adventure lurked
in every inch. There was danger, too, terror, wonder, and excitement.
And since for them it was the beginning of all things, they called it,
naturally, The End of the World. To escape to the End of the World,
unaccompanied by grown-ups, and, if possible, their whereabouts unknown
to anybody, was a daily duty second to no other. It was a duty, wet or
fine, they seldom left, neglected.

Besides themselves, two others alone held passes to this sanctuary:
Uncle Felix, because he loved to go there (he wrote his adventure
stories there, saying anything might happen in such a lonely place),
and the Gardener, because he was obliged to. Come-Back Stumper was
excluded. They had taken him once, and he had said such an abominable
thing that he was never allowed to visit it again. "A messy hole," he
called it. Mr. Jinks had never even seen it, but, after his death in
the railway accident, his remains, recovered without charge from the
Hospital, had been buried somewhere in the scrap-heap. From this point
of view alone he knew the End of the World; he was worthy of no other.
His epitaph was appalling--too horrible to mention really. Tim composed
it, but Uncle Felix distinctly said that it never, _never_ must be
referred to audibly again:

               Here Matthew Jinks
               Just lies and st--

"It's _not_ nice," he said emphatically, "and you mustn't say it.
Always speak well of the dead." And, as they couldn't honestly do that,
they obeyed him and left Mr. Jinks in his unhonoured grave, with a
broken wheel-barrow for a headstone and a mass of wire-netting to make
resurrection difficult. In order to get the disagreeable epitaph out of
their minds Uncle Felix substituted a kinder and gentler one, and made
them learn it by heart:

          Old Jinks lies here
          Without a tear;
          He meant no wrong,
          But we didn't get along;
          So Jinks lies here,
          And we've nothing more to fear.
          He's all right:
               Jinks
               Sinks
          Out of sight!

It was the proud colony of wallflowers that first made Uncle Felix like
the place. Their loveliness fluttered in the winds, and their perfume
stole down deliciously above the rubbish and neglect. They seemed to
him the soul of ruins triumphing over outward destruction. Hence the
delicate melancholy in their scent and hence their lofty chosen perch.
Out of decay they grew, yet invariably above it. Both sun and stars
were in their flaming colouring, and their boldness was true courage.
They caught the wind, they held the sunset and the dawn; they turned
the air into a shining garden. They stood somehow for a yearning beauty
in his own heart that expressed itself in his stories.

"If you pick them," he warned Tim, who climbed like a monkey, and was
as destructive as his age, "the place will lose its charm. They grow
for the End of the World, and the End of the World belongs to them.
This wonderful spot will have no beauty when they're gone." To wear a
blossom in the hair or buttonhole was to be protected against decay and
ugliness.

Most wonderful of all, however, was the door in the old grey fence; for
it was a Gateway, and a Gateway, according to Uncle Felix, was a solemn
thing. None knew where it led to, it was a threshold into an unknown
world. Ordinary doors, doors in a house, for instance, were not
Gateways; they merely opened into rooms and other familiar places.
Dentists, governesses, and bedrooms existed behind ordinary, indoor
doors; but out-of-doors opened straight into the sky, and in virtue of
it were extraordinary. They were Gateways. At the End of the World
stood a stupendous, towering door that was a Gateway. Another, even
more majestic, rose at the end of life. This door in the grey fence was
a solemn, mysterious, and enticing Gateway--into everything worth
seeing.

It was invariably kept locked; it led into the high-road that slithered
along secretly and sedulously--to London. For the children it was out
of bounds. Here the Policeman lived in constant terror of his life, and
here went to and fro the strange world of Passers-by. The white road
flowed past like a river. It moved. From the lower branches of the
horse-chestnut tree they could just see it slide; also when the swing
went extra high, and from the end of the prostrate elm. It went in both
directions at once. It encircled the globe, going under the sea too.
The door leading into it was a quay or port. But the brass knob never
turned; the Gardener said there was no key; and from the outer side the
handle had long since been removed, lest Passers-by might see it and
come in. Even the keyhole had been carefully stuffed up with that
stringy stuff the Gardener carried in his pockets.

Till, finally, something happened that made the End of the World seem
suddenly a new place. Tim noticed that the stringy stuff had been
removed.

The day had been oppressively hot, and tempers had been sorely tried.
Mother had gone to lie down with a headache; Aunt Emily was visiting
the poor with a basket; Daddy was inaccessible in his study; all
Authorities were doing the dull things Authorities have to do. It was
September, and the world stood lost in this golden haze of unexpected
heat. Very still it stood, the yellow leaves quite motionless and the
smoke from the kitchen chimney hanging stiff and upright in the air.
There was no breath of wind.

"There's simply _nothing_ to do," the children said--when suddenly
Uncle Felix arrived, and their listlessness was turned to life and
interest. He had gone up in the morning to London, and the suddenness
of his return was part of his prerogative. Stumper, Jinks, and other
folk were announced days and days beforehand, but Uncle Felix
just--came.

"We'll go to the End of the World," he decided gravely, the moment he
had changed. "There's something going on there. Quick!" This meant, as
all knew, that he had an idea. They stole out, and no one saw them go.
Across the lawn and past the lime trees humming busily with tired bees,
they crept beneath the shadow of the big horse-chestnut, where the
staring windows of the house could no longer see them. They
disappeared. The Authorities might look and call for ever without
finding them.

"Slower, please, a little," said Maria breathlessly, and was at once
picked up and carried. Moving cautiously through the laurel shrubbery,
they left the garden proper with its lawns and flower-beds, and entered
the forbidden region at the End of the World. They stood upright. Uncle
Felix dropped Maria like a bundle.

"Look!" he said below his breath. "I told you so!"

He pointed. The colony of wallflowers were fluttering in the windless
air. Nothing stirred but these. The stillness was unbroken. Sunshine
blazed on the rubbish-heap. The currant bushes watched. Deep silence
reigned everywhere. But the flowers on the crumbling wall waved
mysteriously their coloured banners of alarm.

"It looks different," said Judy in a hushed aside.

"Something's happened," whispered Tim, staring round him.

Maria watched them from the ground, prepared to follow in any
direction, but in no hurry until a plan was decided.

"The keyhole!" cried Tim loudly, and at the same moment a huge
blackbird flew out of the shrubberies behind them, and flashed across
the open space toward the orchard on the other side. It whistled a
long, shrill scream of warning. It was bigger by far than any ordinary
blackbird.

"Home! Quick! Run for your lives!" cried some one, as they dashed for
the safety of the elm tree. Even Maria ran. They scrambled on to the
slippery, fallen trunk and gasped for breath as they stood balancing in
an uneasy row, all holding hands.

"It was bigger than a hen," exclaimed Judy inconsequently. "It couldn't
have come through any keyhole." She stared with inquiring, startled
eyes at her brother. The bird and the keyhole were somehow lumped
together in her mind.

"They've stopped," observed Maria, and sat down in the comfortable
niche between the lopped branch and the trunk. It was true. The
wallflowers were as motionless now as painted outlines on a nursery
saucer.

"Because we're safe," said Uncle Felix. "It was a warning."

And then all turned their attention to Tim's discovery of the keyhole.
For the stuffing had been removed. The white, dusty road gleamed
through the hole in a spot of shining white.

"Hush!" whispered their guide. "There's something moving."

"Perhaps it's Jinks in his cemetery," thought Judy after a pause to
listen.

"No," said Uncle Felix with decision. "It's outside. It's on the--road!"

His earnestness on these occasions always thrilled them; his gravity
and the calm way he kept his head invariably won their confidence.

"The London Road!" they repeated. That meant the world.

"Something going past," he added, listening intently. They listened
intently with him. All four were still holding hands.

"The great High Road outside," he repeated softly, while they moved
instinctively to the highest part of the tree whence they could see
over the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing
very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been
so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon
the opposite bank, the grassy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery
quantities. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual
road was higher than before. It certainly was rising.

"Metropolis!" cried Tim. "I see an eye!"

Some one was looking through the keyhole at them.

"An eye!" exclaimed several voices in a hushed, expectant tone.

There was a pause, during which every one looked at every one else.

"It's probably a tramp," said Uncle Felix gravely. "We'll let him in."

The proposal, however, alarmed them, for they had expected something
very different. To stuff the keyhole, run away and hide, or at least to
barricade the fence was what he ought to have advised. Instead of this
they heard the very opposite. The excitement became intense. For them a
tramp meant danger, robbery with violence, intoxication, awful dirt,
and an under-the-bed-at-midnight kind of terror. It was so long since
they had seen the tramp--their own tramp--that they had forgotten his
existence.

"They'll kill us at once," said Maria, using the plural with the
comprehensive and anticipatory vision of the child.

"They're harmless as white mice," said her Uncle quickly, "once you
know how to treat them, and full of adventures too. I do," he added
with decision, referring to the treatment. And he stepped down to unbar
the gate.

The children, breathless with interest, watched him go. On the trunk,
of course, they felt comparatively safe, for it was "home"; but none
the less the "girls" drew up their skirts a little, and Tim felt
premonitory thrills run up his spidery legs into his spine. The
wallflowers shook their tawny heads as a sudden breath of wind swept
past them across the End of the World. It seemed an age before the
audacious thing was accomplished and the door swung wide into the road
outside. Uncle Felix might so easily have been stabbed or poisoned or
suffocated--but instead they saw a shabby, tangled figure come
shuffling through that open gate upon a cloud of dust.

"Quick! he's a perjured man!" cried Judy, remembering a newspaper
article. "Shut the gate!" She sprang down to help. "He'll be arrested
for a highway violence and be incarc-"

There was confusion in her mind. She felt pity for this woebegone
shadow of a human being, and terror lest the Policeman, who lived on
the white, summery high road, would catch him and send him to the
gallows before he was safe inside. Her love was ever with the under dog.

There was a rush and a scramble, the gate was shut, and the Tramp stood
gasping before them in the enchanted sanctuary of the End of the World.

"He's ours!" exclaimed Judy. "It's our old tramp!"

"Be very polite to him," Uncle Felix had time to whisper hurriedly,
seeing that all three stood behind him. "He's a great Adventurer and a
Wanderer too."




CHAPTER IX

A PRIEST OF WONDER


He was a grey and nameless creature of shadowy outline and vague
appearance. The eye focused him with difficulty. He had an air of a
broken tombstone about him, with moss and lichen in wayward patches,
for his face was split and cracked, and his beard seemed a continuation
of his hair; but he had soft blue eyes that had got lost in the general
tangle and seemed to stray about the place and peep out unexpectedly
like flowers hiding in a thick-set hedge. The face might be anywhere;
he might move suddenly in any direction; he was prepared, as it were,
to move forward, sideways, or backwards according as the wind decided
or the road appeared--a sort of universal scarecrow of a being
altogether.

Yet, for all his forlorn and scattered attitude, there hung about his
rags an air of something noble and protective, something strangely
inviting that welcomed without criticism all the day might bring.
Homeless himself, and with no place to lay his extraordinary body, the
birds might have built their nests in him without alarm, or the furry
creatures of fields and woods have burrowed among his voluminous
misfit-clothing to shelter themselves from rain and cold. He would
gladly have carried them all with him, safely hidden from guns or traps
or policemen, glad to be useful, and careless of himself. That, at any
rate, was the mixed impression that he gave.

"Thank you," he said in a comfortable sort of voice that sounded like
wind among telegraph wires on a high road: then added "kindly all."

And instantly the children felt delighted with him; their sympathy was
gained; fear vanished; the Policeman, like a scape-goat, took all their
sins away. They did not actually move closer to the Tramp but their
eyes went nestling in and out among his tattered figure. Judy, however,
it was noticeable, looked at him as though spell-bound. To her he was,
perhaps, as her Uncle said, the Great Adventurer, the type of romantic
Wanderer for ever on the quest of perilous things--a Knight.

It was Uncle Felix who first broke the pause.

"You've come a long way," he suggested.

"Oh, about the same as usual," replied the Tramp, as though all
distances and localities were one to him.

"Which means--?"

"From nowhere, and from everywhere."

"And you are going on to--?"

"Always the same place."

"Which is--?"

"The end." He said it in a rumbling voice that seemed to issue from a
pocket of the torn old coat rather than from his bearded mouth.

"Oh, dear," sighed Judy, "that is a _very_ long way indeed. But, of
course, you never get tired out?" Her eyes were brimmed with admiration.

He shrugged his great loose shoulders. It was odd how there seemed to
be another thing within all that baggy clothing and behind the hair.
The shaggy exterior covered a slimmer thing that was happy, laughing,
dancing to break out. "Not tired out," he said, "a bit sleepy
sometimes, p'r'aps." He glanced round him carelessly, his strange eyes
resting finally on Judy's face. "But there's lots of beds about," he
explained to her, "once you know how to make 'em."

"Yes," the child murmured, with a kind of soft applause, "of course
there must be."

"And those wot sleeps in ditches dreams the sweetest--that _I_ know."

"They must," agreed Judy, as though grass and dock leaves were familiar
to her. "And you get up when you're ready, don't you?"

"That's it," replied the wanderer. "Only you always _are_ ready."

"But how do you know the time?" asked Tim.

The Tramp turned round slowly and looked at his questioner.

"Time!" he snorted. And he exchanged a mysterious glance of sympathy
with Maria, who lifted her eyes in return, but otherwise made no sign
whatever. "Sit quiet like," he added, "and everything worth 'aving
comes of itself. That's living that is. The 'ole world belongs to you."

"I've got a watch," said Tim, as though challenged. "I've got an alarum
clock too. Only you have to wind them up, of course."

"There you are!" the Tramp exclaimed, "you've got to wind 'em up. They
don't go of theirselves, do they?"

"Oh, no."

"I never knew 'appiness until I chucked my watch away," continued the
other.

"_Your_ watch!" exclaimed Tim.

"Well, not igsackly," laughed the Tramp.

"Oh, he didn't mean _that_," Judy put in quickly.

"I was usin' it at the time, any'ow," chuckled their guest, "and wot
you're usin' at the time belongs to you. I never knew 'appiness while I
kep' it. Watches and clocks only mean 'urry. It's an endless job,
tryin' to keep up with 'em. You've got to go so fast for one thing--I
never was a sprinter--bah!" he snorted--"there's nothing in it. Life
isn't a 'undred yards race. You miss all the flowers on the way at that
pace. And what's the prize?" He glanced down contemptuously at his
feet. "Worn-out boots. Yer boots wear out--that's all."

He looked round at the children, smiling wonderfully. Maria seemed to
understand him best, perhaps. She looked up innocently into his tangled
face. "That's it," he said, with another chuckle. "YOU know wot I mean,
don't yer, missie?" But Maria made no reply. She merely beamed back at
him till her face seemed nothing but a pair of wide blue eyes.

"Stop yer clocks, go slow," the man murmured, half to himself, "and
you'll see what I mean. There's twice as much time as before. You can
do anything, everything,"--he spread his arms out--"because there's
never any 'urry. You'd be surprised."

"You're very hungry, aren't you?" inquired Tim, resenting the man's
undue notice of Maria.

The Tramp stared hard into the boy's unwavering eyes. "Always," he said
briefly, "but, then, there's always folks to give."

"Rather," exclaimed Judy with enthusiasm, and Tim added eagerly, "I
should think so."

They seemed to know all about him, then. Something had entered with him
that made common stock of the five of them. It was wonderful of Uncle
Felix to have known all this beforehand.

"We're all alive together," murmured the Tramp below his breath, and
then Uncle Felix showed another stroke of genius. "We'll make tea out
here to-day," he said, "instead of having it indoors. Tim, you run and
fetch a tea-pot, a bottle of milk, and some cups and a kettle full of
water; put some sugar in your pockets and bring a loaf and butter and a
pot of jam. A basket will hold the lot. And while you're gone we'll get
the fire going."

"A big knife and some spoons too," Judy cried after his disappearing
figure, "and don't let Aunt Emily see you, mind."

The Tramp looked up sharply. "I had an Aunt Emily once," he said behind
his hedged-in face. Expecting more to follow, the others waited; but
nothing came. There was a little pause.

"Once?" asked Maria, wondering perhaps if there were two such beings in
the world at the same time.

The man of journeys nodded.

"Did she mend your clothes and things--and love to care for you?" Judy
wished to know.

He shook his tangled head. "She visited the poor," he told them, "and
had no time for the likes of me. And one day I fell out of a big hole
in my second suit and took to tramping." He rubbed his hands vigorously
together in the air. "And here I am."

"Yes," said Maria kindly. "I'm glad."

Meanwhile, Judy having decided to go and help her brother with the
tea-things, the others set to work and made a fire. Maria helped with
her eyes, picking up an occasional stick as well, but it was the Tramp
who really did the difficult part. Only the way he did it made it
appear quite easy somehow. He began with the tiniest fire in the world,
and the next minute it seemed ready for the kettle, with a cross-bar
arranged adroitly over it and a supply of fresh wood in a pile beside
it.

"What do _you_ think about it?" asked Tim of his sister, as they
struggled back with the laden basket. Apparently a deep question of
some kind asked for explanation in his mind.

"It's awful that he has no one to care about him," was the girl's
reply. "I think he's a very nice man. He looks magnificent and awfully
brown."

"That's dirt," said her brother.

"It's travel," she replied indignantly.

The Tramp, when they got back, looked tidier somehow, as though the
effect of refined society had already done him good. His appearance was
less uncouth, his hair and beard a shade less hay-fieldy. It was
possible to imagine what he looked like when he was young--sure sign of
being tidy; just as to be very untidy gives an odd hint of what old age
will do eventually to face and figure. The Tramp looked younger.

They all made friends in the simple, unaffected way of birds and
animals, for at the End of the World there was no such thing as empty
formality. The children, supported by the presence of their important
uncle, asked questions, this being their natural prerogative; it came
to them as instinctively as tapping the lawn for worms comes to birds,
or scratching the earth for holes is a sign of health with rabbits. At
first shyly--then in a ceaseless, yet not too inquisitive torrent.
Questions are the sincerest form of flattery, and the Tramp, accustomed
probably to severer questions from people in uniform, was quite
delighted. He smiled quietly behind the scenery of his curious great
face, but he answered all: where he lived, how he travelled, what
friends he had, where he spent Christmas, what barns and ditches and
haystacks felt like, anything and everything, even where he meant to be
buried when he died. "'ere, where I've lived so 'appily," and he made a
wide gesture with one tattered arm to include the earth and sky. He had
no secrets apparently; he was glad they should know all. The children
had never known such a delightful creature in their lives before.

"And you eat anything?" inquired Tim, "anything you can, I mean?"

"Anything you can _get_, he means," corrected Judy softly.

He gave an unexpected answer. "I swallow sunsets, and I bite the moon;
I nibble stars. I never need a spoon."

He said it as naturally as a duchess describing her latest diet at a
smart dinner-party, with an air, too, as of some great personage
disguised on purpose so that he might enjoy the simple life.

"That rhymes," stated Maria.

"So does this," he replied; "I live on open hair and bits of bread; the
sunlight clothes me, and I lay me 'ead--"

The hissing of the kettle interrupted him. "Water's boiling," cried
Uncle Felix; "hand round the cups and cut the loaf." A cup was given to
each. The tea was made.

"Do you take sugar, please?" asked Judy of the guest. The quietness of
her voice made it almost tender. Such a man, moreover, might despise
sweet things. But he said he did.

"Two lumps?" she asked, "or one?"

"Five, please," he said.

She was far too polite to show surprise at this, nor at the fact that
he stirred his tea with a little bit of stick instead of with a spoon.
She remembered his remark that he had no use for spoons. Tim, saying
nothing, imitated all he did as naturally as though he had never done
otherwise in his life before. They enjoyed their picnic tea immensely
in this way, seated in a row upon the comfortable elm tree, gobbling,
munching, drinking, chattering. The Tramp, for all his outward
roughness, had the manners of a king. He said what he thought, but
without offence; he knew what he wanted, yet without greed or
selfishness. He had that politeness which is due to alert perception of
every one near him, their rights and claims, their likes and dislikes;
for true politeness is practically an expansion of consciousness which
involves seeing the point of view of every one else--at once. A tramp,
accustomed to long journeys, big spaces, obliged ever to consider the
demands of impetuous little winds, the tastes of flowers, the habits
and natural preferences of animals, birds, and insects, develops this
bigger sense of politeness that crowds in streets and drawing-rooms
cannot learn. Unless a tramp takes note of _all_, he remains out of
touch with all, and therefore is uncomfortable.

"Is everything all right?" asked Uncle Felix presently, anxious to see
that he was well provided for.

"Everything, thank you," the wanderer replied, "and, if you don't mind,
I'll 'ave my supper here later too. I've brought it with me." And out
of one capacious pocket he produced--a bird. "It's a chickin," he
informed them, as they stared with wide-opened eyes. Maria was the
first to go on eating her slice of bread and jam. Unordinary things
seemed to disturb her less than ordinary ones. Somehow it seemed quite
natural that he should go about with a bird for supper in his pocket.

"However did you get it--in there?" asked Tim, modifying his sentence
just in time to avoid inquisitive rudeness.

"It gave itself to me," he replied. "That kind of things 'appens
sometimes when you're tramping. _They_ know," he added significantly.
"You see, it's my birthday to-day, and something like this always
'appens on my birthday. Last time it was a fish. I fell into the stream
and went right under. When I got out on to the bank again I found a
trout in my pocket. The time before I slept beside a haystack, and when
I awoke at sunrise I felt something warm and soft against my face like
feathers. It _was_ feathers. There was a 'en's nest two inches from my
nose, and six nice eggs in it all ready for my birthday breakfast. I
only ate four of them. You should never take all the heggs out of a
nest." He looked round at the group and smiled. "But I think the
chickin's best of all," he told them, "and next year I expect a turkey,
or a bit of bacon maybe."

"You never, never grow old, do you?" Judy asked. Her admiration was no
longer concealed. It seemed she saw him differently a little from the
others.

"Oh, jest a nice age," he said.

"You seem to know so much," she explained her question, "everything."

He laughed behind his tea-cup as he fingered the chicken on his lap.

"As to that," he murmured, "there's only a few things worth knowing. If
you can just forget the rest, you're all right."

"I see," she replied beneath her breath. "But--but it's got to be
plucked and cleaned and cooked first, hasn't it?"

"The chickin?" he laughed. "Oh, dear me, no! Cooked, yes, but not
plucked or cleaned in the sense you mean. That's what they do in
'ouses. Out here we have a better way. We just wrap it up in clay and
dig a 'ole and light a fire on top, and in a 'arf hour it's ready to
eat, tender, juicy, and sweet as a bit of 'oneycomb. Break open the
ball of clay, and the feathers all come away wiv it." And then he
produced from another pocket a fat, thick roll of yellow butter,
freshly made apparently, for it was wrapped in a clean white cloth.

They stared at that for a long time without a word.

"They go together," he explained, and the explanation seemed sufficient
as well as final. "And they come together too," he added with a smile.

"Did the butter give itself to you as well as the chicken?" inquired
Judy. The Tramp nodded in the affirmative as he placed it beside him on
the trunk ready for use later. And everybody felt in the middle of a
delightful mystery. All were the same age together. Bird and butter,
sun and wind, flowers and children, tramp and animals--all seemed
merged in a jolly company that shared one another's wants and could
supply them. The wallflowers wagged their orange-bonneted heads, the
wind slipped sighing with delicious perfumes from the trees, the bees
were going home in single file, and the sun was sinking level with the
paling top--when suddenly there came a disturbing element into the
scene that made their hearts beat faster with one accord. It was a
sound.

A muffled, ominous beat was audible far away, but slowly coming nearer.
As it approached it changed its character. It became sharper and more
distinct. Something about the measured intervals between its tapping
repetitions brought a threatening message of alarm. Every one felt the
little warning and looked up. There was anxiety. The sound jarred
unpleasantly upon the peace of the happy company. They listened. It was
footsteps on the road outside.



CHAPTER X

FACT AND WONDER--CLASH

Uncle Felix paused over his last bit of bread and jam, Tim and Judy
cocked their ears up. Maria's eyes stood still a moment in the heavens,
and the Tramp stopped eating. He picked up the butter and replaced it
carefully in his pocket.

"I know those steps," he murmured half to himself and half to the
others. "They're all over the world. They follow me wherever I go. I
hear 'em even in me sleep." He sighed, and the tone of his voice was
weary and ill at ease.

"How horrid for you," said Judy very softly.

"It keeps me moving," he muttered, trying to conceal all signs of face
behind hair and beard, which he pulled over him like a veil. "It's the
Perliceman."

"The Policeman!" they echoed, staring.

"But he can't find you here!"

"He'll never see you!"

"You're quite safe inside the fence with us, for this is the End of the
World, you know."

"He's not afraid--never!" exclaimed Judy proudly.

"He goes everywhere and sees everything," whispered the Tramp. "He's
been following me since time began. So far he has not caught me up, but
his boots are so much bigger than my own--the biggest, strongest boots
in the world--that in the hend he is bound to get me."

"But you've done nothing," said Judy.

The wanderer smiled. "That's why," he said, holding up a warning
finger. "It's because I do nothing. 'ush!" he whispered. The steps came
nearer, and he lowered his voice so that the end of the sentence was
not audible.

"'ide me," he said in a whisper. And he waved his arms imploringly,
like the branches of some wind-hunted tree.

There was a tarpaulin near the rubbish-heap, and some sacking used for
keeping the vegetables warm at night. "That'll do," he said, pointing.
"Quick!--Good-bye!" In a moment he was beneath the spread black
covering, the children were sitting on its edges, quietly eating more
bread and jam, and looking as innocent as stars. Uncle Felix poked the
fire busily, a grave and anxious look upon his face.

The steps came nearer, paused, came on again then finally stopped
outside the gate. The flowing road that bore them ceased running past
in its accustomed way. The evening stopped still too. The silence could
be heard. The setting sun looked on. Upon the crumbling wall the orange
flowers shook their little warning banners.

And there came a tapping on the wooden gate.

No one moved.

The tapping was repeated. There was a sound of drums about it. The
round brass handle turned. The door pushed open, and in the empty space
appeared--the Policeman.

"Good evening," he said in a heavy, uncompromising way. He looked
enormous, framed there by the open gate, the white road behind him like
a sheet. He looked very blue--a great towering shadow against the
sunlight. It was very clear that he _knew_ he was a policeman and could
think of nothing else. He was dressed up for the part, and received
many shillings a week from a radculgovunment to look like that. It
would have been a dereliction of duty to forget it. He was stuffed with
duty. His brass buttons shone.

"Good _evening_," he repeated, as no one spoke.

"_Good_ evening," replied Uncle Felix calmly. The Policeman accentuated
the word "evening," but Uncle Felix emphasised the adjective "good."
From the very beginning the two men disagreed. "This is private
property, very private indeed. We are having tea, in fact, privately,
upon our own land."

"No property is private," returned the Policeman, "and to the Law no
thing nor person either."

For a moment the children felt afraid. It seemed incredible that Uncle
Felix could be arrested, and yet things had an appearance of it.

"Kindly close the gate so that we cannot be overheard," he said firmly,
"and then be good enough to state your business here." He did not offer
him a seat; he did not suggest a cup of tea; he spoke like a brave man
who expected danger but was prepared to meet it.

The Policeman stepped back and closed the gate. He then stepped forward
again a little nearer than before. From a pocket, hitherto invisible
inside his belt, he drew forth a crumpled notebook and a stub of
pencil. He was very dignified and very grave. He took a deep breath,
held the paper and pencil ready to use, expanded his chest till it
resembled a toy balloon in the Park, and said:

"I am looking for a man." He paused, then added: "Have you seen a man
about?"

"About what?" asked Uncle Felix innocently.

"About fifty or thereabouts," replied the other. "Disguised in rags and
a wig of hair and a false beard."

"What has he done?" It was like a game of chess, both opponents well
matched. Uncle Felix was too big to be caught napping by clever
questions that hid traps. The children felt the danger in the air, and
watched their uncle with quivering admiration. Only their uncle stood
alone, whereas behind the Policeman stretched a line of other policemen
that reached to London and was in touch with the Government itself.

"What has he done?" repeated their champion.

"He's disappeared," came the deep-voiced answer.

"There's no crime in that," was the comment, given flatly.

"But he's disappeared with"--the Policeman consulted his notebook a
moment--"a chicken and a roll of butter what don't belong to him--"

"Roll _and_ butter, did you say?"

"No, sir, roll _of_ butter was what I said." He spoke respectfully, but
was grave and terrible. "He is a thief."

"A thief!"

"He lives nowhere and has no home. You see, sir, duty is duty, and
we're expected to run in people who live nowhere and have no homes."

"Which road did he take?" Uncle Felix clearly was pretending in order
to gain time.

The man of law looked puzzled. "It was a roll of butter and a bird,
sir," he said, consulting his book again, "and my duty is to run him
in--"

"The moment you run into him."

"Precisely," replied the blue giant. "And, having seen him come in here
some time ago, I now ask you formally whether you have seen him too,
and I call upon you to show me where he's hiding." He thrust one huge
foot forward and held his notebook open with the pencil ready.
"Anything you say will be used against you later, remember. You must
all be witnesses."

"_If_ you find him," put in Uncle Felix dryly.

"_When_ I find him," said the other. And his eye wandered over to the
tarpaulin that was spread out beside the rubbish-heap. For it had
suddenly moved.

Everybody had seen that movement. There was no disguising it. Feeling
uncomfortable the Tramp had shifted his position. He probably wanted
air.

"I saw it move," the Policeman growled, moving a step towards the
rubbish-heap. "He's under there all right enough, and the sooner he
comes out the better for him. That's all I've got to say."

It was a most disagreeable and awkward moment. No one knew quite what
was best to do. Maria turned her eyes as innocently upon the tarpaulin
as she could manage, but it was obvious what she was really looking at.
Her brother held his breath and stared, expecting a pistol might appear
and some one be shot dead with a marvellous aim, struck absolutely in
the mathematical centre of the heart. Uncle Felix, upon whom fell the
burden of rescue or defence, sat there with a curious look upon his
face. For a moment it seemed he knew not what to do.

The Policeman, approaching still nearer to the tarpaulin, glared at him.

"You're an accessory," he said sternly, "both before and after the
fact."

"I didn't say he _wasn't_ there."

"You didn't say he _was_," was the severe retort. It was unanswerable.

"He'll hang by the neck till he's dead," thought Tim, "and afterwards
they'll bury the body in a lime-kiln so that even his family can't
visit the grave." He looked wildly about him, thinking of possible ways
of escape he had read or heard about, and his eye fell upon his sister
Judy.

Now Judy was a queer, original maid. She believed everything in the
world. She believed not only what was told her but also what she
thought. And among other things she believed herself to be very
beautiful, though in reality she was the ugly duckling of the brood.
"All God has made is beautiful," Aunt Emily had once reproved her, and,
since God had made everything, everything must be beautiful. It was.
God had made her too, therefore she was simply lovely. She enjoyed
numerous romances; one romance after another flamed into her puzzled
life, each leaving her more lovely than it found her. She was also
invariably good. To be asked if she was good was a blundering question
to which the astonished answer was only an indignant "Of course." And,
similarly, all she loved herself was beautiful. Her romances had
included gardeners and postmen, stable-boys and curates, age of no
particular consequence provided they stimulated her creative
imagination. And the latest was--the Tramp.

Something about the woebegone figure of adventure had set on fire her
mother instinct _and_ her sense of passionate romance. She saw him
young, without the tangled beard, without the rags, without the
dilapidated boots. She saw him in her mind as a warrior hero, storming
difficulty, despising danger, wandering beneath the stars, a being
resplendent as a prince and fearless as a deity. He was a sun of the
morning, and the dawn was in his glorious blue eyes.

And Tim now saw that this sister of his, alone of all the party, was
about to do something unexpected. She had left her place upon the
fallen trunk and stepped up in front of the Policeman.

"Stand aside, missy," this individual said, and his voice was rough,
his gesture very decided. It was, in fact, his "arresting" manner. He
was about to do his duty.

"Just wait a moment," said Judy calmly; and she placed herself directly
in his path, her legs apart, her arms akimbo on her hips. "You say the
man you want to find is old and ragged and looks like a tramp?"

"That's it," replied the Policeman, greatly astonished, and pausing a
moment in spite of himself. "You'll see him in a moment. Jest help me
to lift a corner o' this 'ere tarpaulin, and I'll show him to you." He
pushed her deliberately aside.

"All right," said Judy, her eyes shining brilliantly, her gestures
touched with a confidence that surprised everybody into silence, "but
first I want to tell you that the person underneath this old sheet
thing is not a tramp at all--"

"You don't say so," interrupted the other, half impudently, half
sarcastically. "What is he then, I'd like to know?"

The girl drew herself up and looked the great blue figure straight in
the eyes.

"He's my brother," she said, in a clear strong voice, "and he's not a
thief."

"Your brother!" repeated the man, a trifle taken aback. He guffawed.

"He's young and noble," she went on, half singing the words in her
excitement and belief, "and he's dressed all in gold. He walks like
wind about the world, has curly hair, and wears a sword of silver. He's
simply beautiful, and he's _got no beard at all!_"

"And he's your brother, is he?" cried the Policeman, laughing rudely,
"and he jest wears all that get-up for fun, don't he?" And he stooped
down and pulled the tarpaulin violently to one side.

"He is my brother, and I love him, and he is beautiful," she answered,
dancing lightly round him and flinging her arms in the air to the
complete amazement of policeman, Uncle Felix, and her brother and
sister into the bargain. "There! You can see for yourself!"

The Policeman stood aghast and stared. He drew a long, deep breath; he
whistled softly; he pushed his big, spiked helmet back. He staggered.
"Seems there's a mistake," he stammered stupidly, "a kind of mistake
somewhere, as it were. I--" He stuck fast. He wiped his lips with his
thick brown hand.

"A mistake everywhere, I think," said Uncle Felix sternly. "Your
mistake."

The two men faced each other, for Uncle Felix had risen to his feet.
The children held back and stared in silence. They were not quite sure
what it was they saw. On Judy's face alone was a radiant confidence.

For, in place of the bedraggled and unkempt figure that had crawled
beneath the sheet ten minutes before, there rose before them all
apparently a tall young stripling, clean and white and shining as a
fair Greek god. His hair was curly, he was dressed in gold, a silver
sword hung down beside him, and his beardless face and beauty in it
that made it radiant as a glad spring day. The sunlight was very
dazzling just at that moment.

"You said," continued Uncle Felix, in a voice of deadly quiet, "that
the man you wanted had a wig of hair and a beard--a false beard?"

The Policeman stared as though his eyes would drop out upon the
tarpaulin. But he said no word. He consulted his note-book in a dazed,
flustered kind of way. Then he looked up nervously at the astonishing
figure of the "Tramp." Then he looked back at his book again.

"And old?" said Uncle Felix.

"And old," repeated the officer thickly, poring over the page.

"About fifty, I think, you mentioned?"

"'Bout fifty--did I?" He said it faintly, like a man not sure of a
lesson he ought to know by heart.

"Disguised into the bargain!" Uncle Felix raised his voice till it
seemed to thunder out the words.

"Them was my instructions, sir," the man was heard to mumble sulkily.

Uncle Felix, to the children's immense delight and admiration, took a
step nearer to the man of law. The latter moved slowly backwards,
glancing half fiercely, half suspiciously at the glorious figure of the
person he had expected to arrest as a dangerous thief and tramp.

"And, following what you stupidly call your instructions," cried Uncle
Felix, looking sternly at him, "you have broken in our gate, trespassed
on our private property, disturbed our guests, and removed forcibly our
tarpaulin from its rightful place."

The crestfallen and amazed Policeman gasped and raised his hands with a
gesture of despair. He looked like a ruined man. Had there been a
handkerchief in his bulging coat, he must have cried.

"And you call yourself an Officer of the Law?" boomed the Defender of
Personal Liberty. He went still nearer to him. His voice, to the
children, sounded simply magnificent. "A uniformed and salaried
representative of the Government of England!"

"Oo calls me orl that?" asked the wretched man in a trembling tone. "I
gets twenty-five shillings a week, and that's orl I know."

There came a pause then, while the men faced each other.

"Uncle, let him go, please," said Judy. "He couldn't help it, you know.
And he's a married man with a family, I expect. Some day--"

A forgiving smile softened the features of both men at these gentle
words.

"This time, then," said Uncle Felix slowly, "I won't report you; but
don't let it occur again as long as you live. A day will come, perhaps,
when you will understand. And here," he added, holding out his hand
with something in it, "is another shilling to make it twenty-six. I
advise you--if you're still open to friendly advice--to buy a pair of
glasses with it."

The discredited official took the shilling meekly and pocketed it with
his note-book. He cast one last hurried glance of amazement and
suspicion at the man who had been beneath the tarpaulin, and began to
slink back ignominiously towards the gate. At the last minute he turned.

"Good _evenin'_," he said, as he vanished into the road.

"_Good_ evening," Uncle Felix answered him, as he closed the gate
behind him.

Then, how it happened no one knew exactly. Judy, walking up to the
shining figure, took him by the hand and led him slowly through the
gate on to the long white road. There was a blaze of sunset pouring
through the trees and the shafts of slanting light made it difficult to
see what every one was doing. In the general commotion he somehow
vanished. The gate was closed. Judy stood smiling and triumphant just
inside upon the mossy path.

"You saved his life," said some one.

"It's all right," she said--and burst into tears.

But children are not much impressed by the tears of others, knowing too
well how easily they are produced and stopped. Tim went burrowing to
find the bird, and Maria just mentioned that the Tramp had taken the
butter away in his pocket. By the time this fact was thoroughly
established the group was ready to leave, the tea-things all collected,
the fire put out, and the sun just dipping down below the top of the
old grey fence.

Then, and not till then, did the affair of the Tramp come under
discussion. What seemed most puzzling was why the Policeman had not
arrested him after all. They could not make it out at all; it seemed a
mystery. There was something quite unusual about it altogether. Uncle
Felix and Judy had been wonderful, but--

"Did you see him blink," said Tim, "when Judy went up and gave it him
hot?"

"Yes," observed Maria, who had done nothing herself but stare. "I did."

The brother, however, was not so sure. "I think he really believed
her," he declared with assurance, proud of her achievement. "He really
saw him young and with a sword and curly hair and all that."

Judy looked at him with surprise. Her tears had ceased flowing by this
time.

"Of course," she said. "Didn't _you?_" There was pain in her voice in
addition to blank astonishment.

"Of course we did," said Uncle Felix quickly with decision. "Of course
we did."

As they went into the house, however, Uncle Felix lingered behind a
moment as though he had forgotten something. His face wore a puzzled
expression. He seemed a little bewildered. He walked into the hat-rack
first, then into the umbrella-stand, then stopped abruptly and put his
hand to his head.

"Headache?" asked Tim, who had been watching him.

His uncle did not hear the question, at least he did not answer.
Instead he pulled something hurriedly out of his waistcoat pocket, held
it to his ear, listened attentively a moment, and then gave a sudden
start.

"What is it, Uncle?"

"Oh, nothing," was the reply; "my watch has stopped, that's all." He
stood still a moment or two, reflecting deeply. His eyebrows went up
and down. He pursed his lips. "Odd," he continued, half to himself;
"I'm sure I wound it up last night...!" he added, "it's going again
now. It stopped--only for a moment!"

"Aha," said Tim significantly, and looked about him. He waited
breathlessly for something more to happen. But nothing did happen--just
then.

Only, when at last Uncle Felix looked down, their eyes met and a flash
of knowledge too enormous ever to be forgotten passed noiselessly
between the two of them.

"Perhaps...!" murmured his uncle.

"I wonder...!"

That was all.




CHAPTER XI

JUDY'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE


Adventure means saying Yes, and being careless; children say Yes to
everything and are very careless indeed: even their No is usually a
Yes, inverted or deferred. "I won't play," parsed by a psychologist,
means "I'll play when I'm ready." The adventurous spirit accepts what
offers regardless of consequences; he who hesitates and thinks is but a
Policeman who prevents adventure. Now everything offers itself to
children, because they rightly think that everything belongs to them.
Life is conditionless, if only people would let them accept it as it
is. "Don't think; accept!" expresses the law of their swift and fluid
being. They act on it. They take everything they can--get. But it is
the Policeman who adds the "get," changing the whole significance of
life with one ugly syllable.

Each of the children treasured an adventure of its very own; an
adventure-in-chief, that could not possibly have happened to anybody
else in the world. These three survivals in an age when education
considers childhood a disease to be cured as hurriedly as
possible--took their adventure the instant that it came, and each with
a complete assurance that it was unique. To no one else in the world
could such a thing have happened, least of all to the other two. Each
took it characteristically, according to his or her individual
nature--Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a
taste for Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria,
with a magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for
things to happen, then claiming them as her own. Her masterly instinct
for repose ran no risk of failure from misdirected energy. And to all
three secrecy, of course, was essential: "Don't never tell the others,
Uncle! Promise faithfully!"

For to every adventure Uncle Felix acted as audience, atmosphere, and
chorus. He watched whatever happened--audience; believed in its
reality--atmosphere; and explained without explaining away--chorus. He
had the unusual faculty of being ten years young as well as forty years
old, and a real adventure was not possible without him.

The secrecy, of course, was not preserved for long; sooner or later the
glory must be shared so that "the others" knew and envied. For only
then was the joy complete, the splendour properly fulfilled. And so the
old tired world went round, and life grew more and more wonderful every
day. For children are an epitome of life--a self-creating universe.

That week was a memorable one for several reasons. Daddy, overworked
among his sealing-wax, went for a change to Switzerland, taking Mother
with him; Aunt Emily, in her black silk dress that crackled with
disapproval, went to Tunbridge Wells--an awful place in another century
somewhere; and Uncle Felix was left behind to "take charge of
''em'"--"'em" being the children and himself. It was evidence of
monumental trust and power, placing him in their imaginations even
above the recognised Authorities. His sway was never for a moment
questioned.

"No lessons, then!" he had insisted as a condition of acceptance, and
after much confabulation the point was yielded with reluctance. It was
to be a fortnight's holiday all round. They had the house and grounds
entirely to themselves, and with the departure of the elders a sheet
was pulled by some one off the world, a curtain rolled away, another
drop-scene fell, the word No disappeared. They saw invisible things.

Another reason, however, made the week memorable--the daisies. It was
extraordinary. The very day after the grown-ups left the daisies came.
Like thousands of small white birds, with bright and steady eyes, they
arrived and settled, thick and plentiful. They appeared in sheets and
crowds upon the grass, all of their own accord and unexplained. In a
night the lawns turned white. It seemed a prearranged invasion. Judy,
first awake that morning, looked out of her window to watch a squirrel
playing, and noticed them. Then she told the others, and Maria, one eye
above the blankets, ejaculated "Ah!" She claimed the daisies too.

Now, whereas a single daisy has no smell and seems a common,
unimportant thing, a bunch of several hundred holds all the perfume of
the spring. No flowers lie closer to the soil or bring the smell of
earth more sweetly to the mind; upon the lips and cheeks they are as
soft as a kitten's fur, and lie against the skin closer than tired
eyelids. They are the common people of the flower world, yet have, in
virtue of that fact, the beauty and simplicity of the common people.
They own a subdued and unostentatious strength, are humble and ignored,
are walked upon, unnoticed, rarely thought about and never praised;
they are cut off in early youth by mowing machines; yet their pain in
fading is unreported, their little sufferings unsung. They cling to
earth, and never aspire to climb, but they hold the sweetest dew and
nurse the tiniest little winds imaginable. Their patience is divine.
They are proud to be the carpet for all walking, running things, and in
their universal service is their strength. The rain stays longer with
them than with grander flowers, and the best sunlight goes to sleep
among them in great pools of fragrant and delicious heat. The daisies
are a stalwart little people altogether.

But they have another quality as well--something elfin, wayward,
mischievous. They peep and whisper. It is said they can cast spells. To
sleep upon a daisied lawn is to run a certain risk. There is this hint
of impudence in their attitude, half audacity, half knavery, that shows
itself a little in the way they stare unwinkingly all day at everything
above them--at the stately things that tower proudly in the air--then
just shut up at sunset without a word of explanation or apology. They
see everything, but keep their opinions to themselves. Because people
notice them so little, and even tread upon their tiny and inquiring
faces, they are up to things all the time--undiscovered things. They
know, it is said, the thoughts of Painted Ladies and Clouded
Brimstones, as well as the intentions of the disappearing golden flies;
why wind often runs close to the ground when the tree-tops are without
a single breath; but, also, they know what is going on _below_ the
surface. They live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their
system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying
things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect
taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their
simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of
doors is worth a hundred shelves of text-books in the house. Their
mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so--but
a natural desire to be recognised and thought and talked about a
little. Daisies, in a word, are--daisies.

And it was by way of the daisies that Judy's great adventure came to
her, the particular adventure that was her very own. For she had deep
sympathy with flowers, a sympathy lacking in her brother and sister,
and it was natural that her adventure in chief should come that way.
She could play with flowers for long periods at a time; she knew their
names and habits; she picked them gently, without cruelty, and never
merely for the "fun" of picking them; while the way she arranged them
about the house proved that she understood their silent, inner natures,
their likes and dislikes--in a word, their souls. For Judy connected
them in her mind with birds. Born in the air, they seemed to her.

As has been seen, she was the first to notice the arrival of the
daisies. From the bedroom window she waved her arm to them, and showed
plainly the pleasure that she felt. They arrived in troops and armies.
Risen to the surface of the lawn like cream, she saw them staring with
suspicious innocence at the sky. They stared at _her_.

"Just when the others have gone away!" was her instant thought, though
unexpressed in words. There was meaning somewhere in this calculated
arrival.

"They _are_ alive," she asked that afternoon, "aren't they? But why do
they all shut up at night? Who--" she changed the word--"what closes
them?"

She was alone with Uncle Felix, and they had chosen with great
difficulty a spot where they could lie down without crushing a single
flower with their enormous bodies. After considerable difficulty they
had found it. Having done a great many things since lunch--a feast
involving several second helpings--they were feeling heavy and
exhausted. So Judy chose this moment for her simple question. The world
required explanation.

"There's life in everything," he mumbled, with his face against the
grass, "everything that grows, especially." And having said it, he
settled down comfortably again to doze. His pipe was out. He felt
rather like a log.

"But stopping growing isn't dying," she informed him sharply.

"Oh, no," he agreed lazily, "you're alive for a long time after that."

"_You_ stopped growing before I was born."

"And I'm not quite dead yet."

"Exactly," she said, "so daisies _are_ alive."

It was absurd to think of dozing at such a time. He rolled round
heavily and gazed at her through half-closed eyelids. "A daisy
breathes," he murmured, "and drinks and eats; sap circulates in its
little body. Probably it feels as well. Delicate threads like nerves
run through it everywhere. It knows when it is being picked or walked
on. Oh, yes, a daisy is alive all right enough." He sighed like a big
dog that has just shaken a fly off its nose and lies waiting for the
next attack. It came at once.

"But who knows it?" she asked. "I mean--there's no good in being alive
unless some one else knows it too!"

Then he sat up and stared at her. Judy, he remembered, knew a lot of
things she could tell to no one, not even to herself--and this seemed
one of them. The question was a startling one.

"An intellectual mystic at twelve!" he gasped. "How on earth did you
manage it?"

"I may be a mystillectual insect," she replied, proud of the
compliment. "But what's the good of being alive, even like a daisy,
unless others know it--_us_, for instance?"

He still stared at her, sitting up stiffly, and propped by his hands
upon the grass behind him. After prolonged reflection, during which he
closed his eyes and opened them several times in succession, sighing
laboriously while he did so, low mumbled words became audible.

"Forgive my apparent slowness," he said, "but I feel like a
mowing-machine this afternoon. I want oiling and pushing. The answer to
your inquiry, however, is as follows: We could--_if_ we took the
trouble."

"Could know that daisies are alive?" she cried.

His great head nodded.

"If we thought about them very hard indeed," he went on, "and for a
very, very long time we could feel as they feel, and so understand
them, and know exactly _how_ they are alive."

And the way he said it, the grave, thoughtful, solemn way, convinced
her, who already was convinced beforehand.

"I do believe we could," she answered simply.

"I'm sure of it," he said.

"Let's try," she whispered breathlessly.

For a minute and a half they stared into each other's eyes, knowing
themselves balanced upon the verge of an immense discovery. She did not
doubt or question; she did not tell him he was only humbugging. Her
heart thrilled with the right conditions--expectation and delight. Her
dark-brown eyes were burning.

He murmured something that she did not properly understand:

 Expect and delight
 Is the way to invite;
 Delight and expect,
 And you'll know things direct!

"Let's try!" she repeated, and her face proved that she fulfilled his
conditions without knowing it; she was delighted, and she
expected--everything.

He scratched his head, wrinkling up his nose and pursing his lips for a
moment. "There's a dodge about it," he explained. "To know a flower
yourself you must feel exactly like it. Its life, you see, is different
to ours. It doesn't move and hurry, it just lives. It feels sun and
wind and dew; it feels the insects' tread; it lifts its skin to meet
the rain-drops and the whispering butterflies. It doesn't run away. It
has no fear of anything, because it has the whole green earth behind
it, and it feels safe because millions of other daisies feel the same"--

"And smells because it's happy," put in Judy. "Then what _is_ a daisy?
What is it really?"

She was "expecting" vividly. Her mind was hungry for essentials. This
mere description told her nothing real. She wanted to feel "direct."

What is a daisy? The little word already had a wonderful and living
sound--soft, sweet, and beautiful. But to tell the truth about this
ordinary masterpiece was no easy matter. An ostentatious lily, a
blazing rose, a wayward hyacinth, a mass of showy wisteria--advertised,
notorious flowers--presented fewer difficulties. A daisy seemed too
simple to be told, its mystery and honour too humble for proud human
minds to understand. So he answered gently, while a Marble White sailed
past between their very faces: "Let's think about it hard; perhaps
we'll get it that way."

The butterfly sailed off across the lawn; another joined it, and then a
third. They danced and flitted like winged marionettes on wires that
the swallows tweaked; and, as they vanished, a breath of scented air
stole round the trunk of the big lime tree and stirred the daisies'
heads. A thousand small white faces turned towards them; a thousand
steady eyes observed them; a thousand slender necks were bent. A wave
of movement passed across the lawn as though the flowers pressed
nearer, aware at last that they were being noticed. And both humans,
the big one and the little one, felt a sudden thrill of happiness and
beauty in their hearts. The rapture of the Spring slipped into them.
They concentrated all their thoughts on daisies....

"I'm beginning to feel it already," whispered the Little Human, turning
to gaze at him as though that breath of air impelled her too.

The wind blew her voice across his face like perfume; he looked, but
could not see her clearly; she swayed a little; her eyes melted
together into a single lovely circle, bright and steady within their
fringe of feathery lashes. He tried to speak--"Delight and expect, and
we'll know it direct"--but his voice spread across whole yards of lawn.
It became a single word that rolled and floated everywhere about him,
rising and falling like a wave upon a sea of green: "Daisy, daisy,
daisy." On all sides, beneath, above his head as well, it passed with
the music of the wandering wind, and he kept repeating it--"Daisy,
daisy!" _She_ kept repeating it, too, till the sound multiplied, yet
never grew louder than a murmur of air and grass and tiny
leaves--"Daisy, daisy, daisy." It broke like a sea upon the coast-line
of another world. It seemed to contain an entire language in itself,
nothing more to be said but those two soft syllables. It was everywhere.

But another vaster sound lay underneath. As the crest of a breaking
wave utters its separate note of foam above the general booming of the
sea that bears it, so the flying wave of daisy-tones rose out of this
deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a
surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound
that bore it--deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away.
It was prodigious; yet there was safety and delight in it that brought
no hint of fear. They swam upon the pulse of some enormous, gentle life
that rose about and through them in a swelling tide. They felt the
heave of something that was strong enough to draw the moon, yet soft
enough to close a daisy's eyes. They heard the deep, lost roar of it,
rising and coming nearer.

"The Earth!" he whispered. "And the Spring is rising through it.
Listen!"

"We're growing together," replied the Little Human. "We're rising with
the Spring!"

Ah, it was exquisite. They were in the Daisy World.... He tried to move
and reach her, but found that he could not take a step in any
direction, and that his feet were imbedded in the soft, damp soil. The
movement which he tried to make spread wide among a hundred others like
himself. They rose on every side. All shared his movements as they had
shared his voice. He heard his whole body murmuring "Daisy, daisy,
daisy...." And she leaned over, bending towards him a slim form in a
graceful line of green that formed the segment of a circle. A little
shining face came close for a moment against his own, rimmed with
delicate spears of pink and white. It sang as it shone. The Spring was
in it. There were hundreds like it everywhere, yet he recognised it as
one he knew. There were thousands, tens of thousands, yet this one he
distinguished because he loved it.

Their faces touched like the fringes of two clouds, and then withdrew.
They remained very close together, side by side among thousands like
themselves, slowly rising on the same great tide. The Earth's round
body was beneath them. They felt quite safe--but different. Already
they were otherwise than they had been. They felt the big world flying.

"We're changing," he murmured, seizing some fragments of
half-remembered speech. "We're marvellously changed!"

"Daisies," he heard her vanishing reply, "we're two daisies on the
lawn!"

And then their voices went. That was the end of speech, the end of
thinking too. They only felt....

Long periods passed above their heads and then the air about them
turned gorgeous as a sunset sky. It was a Clouded Yellow that sailed
lazily past their faces with spreading wings as large as clouds. They
shared that saffron glory. The draught of cool air fanned them. The
splendid butterfly left its beauty in them before it sailed away. But
that sunset sky had lasted for hours; that cool wind fanning them was a
breeze that blew steadily from the hills, making "weather" for half an
afternoon. Time and duration as humans measure them had passed away;
there was existence without hurry; end and beginning had not been
invented yet. They did not know things in the stupid sense of having
names for them; all that there was they shared; that was enough. They
knew by feeling.

For everything was plentiful and inexhaustible--the heavens emptied
light and warmth upon them without stint or measure; space poured about
them freely, for they had no wish to move; they felt themselves
everywhere, for all they needed came to them without the painful effort
of busy things that hunt and search outside themselves; both food and
drink slipped into them unawares from an abundant source below that
equally supplied whole forests without a trace of lessening or loss.
All life was theirs, full, free, and generous beyond conception. They
owned the world, without even the trouble of knowing that they owned
it. They lived, simply staring at the universe with eyes of exquisitely
fashioned beauty. They knew joy and peace, and were content with that.

They did communicate. Oh, yes, they shared each other's special
happiness. There was, it is true, no sound of broken syllables, no
speech which humans use to veil the very thing they would express; but
there was that simpler language which all Nature knows, which cannot
lie because it is unconscious, and by which constellations converse
with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain--there was
gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and
necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention
of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In
sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of
intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another
face to face in dumb but eloquent--gesture.

"The sun is out; I feel warm and happy; there is nothing in the world I
need!"

"You are beside me," he replied. "I love you, and we cannot go far
apart. I smell you even when no wind stirs. You are sweetest when the
dew has gone and left you moist and shiny."

A little shiver of enjoyment quivered through her curving stem. His
petals brushed her own. She answered:

"Wet or fine, we stand together, and never stop staring at each other
till we close our faces--"

"In the long darkness. But even then we whisper as we grow--"

"And open our eyes together at the same moment when the light comes
back--"

"And feel warm and soft, and smell more delicious than ever in the
dawn."

These two brave daisies, growing on the lawn, had lives of concentrated
happiness, asking no pity for their humble station in the universe. All
treated them with unadulterated respect, and everything made love to
them because they were so tender and so easily pleased. They knew, for
instance, that their splendid Earth was turning with them, for they
felt the swerve of her, sharing from their roots upwards her gigantic
curve through space; they knew the sun was part of them, because they
felt it drawing their sweet-flavoured food up all their dainty length
till it glowed in health upon their small, flushed faces; also they
knew that streams of water made a tumbling fuss and sent them messages
of laughter, because they caught the little rumble of it through miles
of trembling ground. And some among them--though these were prophets
and poets but half believed, and looked upon as partly mad and partly
wonderful--affirmed that they felt the sea itself far leagues away,
bending their heads this way and that for hours at a stretch, according
to the thundering vibrations that the tide sent through the soil from
distant shores.

But all, from the tallest spread-head to the smallest button-face--all
knew the pleasure of the uncertain winds; all knew the game of holding
flying things just a moment longer, by fascinating

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