A Prisoner in Fairyland Part 42

'It's only like going to sleep,' explained her brother. You'll come back every night in a Starlight Express---'

'Because a Starlight Express takes pa.s.sengers--whether they like it or not. You take an ordinary train, but a starlight train takes you!'

added Monkey.

Mother heard the words and looked up sharply from her knitting.

Something, it seemed, had caught her attention vividly, though until now her thoughts had been busy with practical things of quite another order. She glanced keenly round at the faces, where all sat grouped upon the stone steps of La Citadelle. Then she smiled curiously, half to herself. What she said was clearly not what she had first meant to say.

'Children, you're not sitting on the cold stone, are you?' she inquired, but a little absent-mindedly.

'We're quite warm; we've got our thick under-neathies on,' was the reply. They realised that only part of her mind was in the, question, and that any ordinary answer would satisfy her.

Mother resumed her knitting, apparently satisfied.

But Jinny, meanwhile, had been following her own train of thought, started by her cousin's description of her as 'grown-up.' The picture grew big and gracious in her mind.

'I wonder what I shall do when my hair goes up?' she observed, apparently _a propos de bottes_. It was the day, of course, eagerly, almost feverishly, looked forward to.

'Hide your head in a bag probably,' laughed her sister. Jinny flushed; her hair was not abundant. Yet she seemed puzzled rather than offended.

'Never mind,' Rogers soothed her. 'The day a girl puts up her hair, a thousand young men are aware of it,--and one among them trembles.' The idea of romance seemed somehow in the air.

'Oh, Cousinenry!' She was delighted, comforted, impressed; but perplexity was uppermost. Something in his tone of voice prevented impudent comment from the others.

'And all the stars grow a little brighter,' he added. 'The entire universe is glad.'

'I shall be a regular company promoter!' she exclaimed, nearer to wit than she knew, yet with only the vaguest inkling of what he really meant.

'And draw up a Memorandum of Agreement with the Milky Way,' he added, gravely smiling.

He had just been going to say 'with the Pleiades,' when something checked him. A wave of strange emotion swept him. It rose from the depths within, then died away as mysteriously as it came. Like exquisite music heard from very far away, it left its thrill of beauty and of wonder, then hid behind the breath of wind that brought it.

'The whole world, you see, will know,' he added under his breath to the delighted child. He looked into her queer, flushed face. The blue eyes for a moment had, he thought, an amber tinge. It was a mere effect of light, of course; the sun had pa.s.sed behind a cloud.

Something that he ought to have known, ought to have remembered, flashed mockingly before him and was gone. 'One among them trembles,'

he repeated in his mind. He himself was trembling.

'The Morning Spiders,' said some one quietly and softly, 'are standing at their stable doors, making faces at the hidden sun.'

But he never knew who said it, or if it was not his own voice speaking below his breath. He glanced at Jimbo. The small grave face wore an air of man-like preoccupation, as was always the case when he felt a little out of his depth in general conversation. He a.s.sumed it in self-protection. He never exposed himself by asking questions. The music of that under-voice ran on:--

'Sweet thoughts, like fine weather, Bind closely together G.o.d's stars with the heart of a boy.'

But he said it aloud apparently this time, for the others looked up with surprise. Monkey inquired what in the world he was talking about, only, not quite knowing himself, he could not answer her. Jimbo then, silent and preoccupied, found his thoughts still running on marriage.

The talk about his sister's hair going up no doubt had caused it.

He remembered the young schoolmistress who had her meals at the Pension, and the Armenian student who had fallen in love with, and eventually married, her. It was the only courtship he had ever witnessed. Marriage and courtship seemed everywhere this morning.

'I saw it all with Mlle. Perette,' he informed the party. 'It began already by his pouring out water for her and pa.s.sing the salt and things. It _always_ begins like that. He got shawls even when she was hot.'

He looked so wise and grave that n.o.body laughed, and his sisters even seemed impressed rather. Jinny waited anxiously for more. If Mother did make an odd grimace, it was not noticed, and anyhow was cleverly converted into the swallowing of a yawn. There was a moment's silence.

Jimbo, proudly conscious that more was expected of him, provided it in his solemn little voice.

'But it must be horrid,' he announced, 'to be married--always sticked to the same woman, like that.' No sentence was complete without the inevitable 'already' or 'like that,' translated from the language he was more at home in. He thought in French. 'I shall never marry myself (_me marier_) he decided, seeing his older sister's eyes upon him wonderingly. Then, uncertain whether he had said an awfully wise or an awfully foolish thing, he added no more. Anyhow, it was the way a man should talk--with decision.

'It's bad enough to be a wife,' put in Monkey, 'but it must be worse still to have one!'

But Jane Anne seemed shocked. A man, Jimbo reflected, can never be sure how his wisdom may affect the other s.e.x; women are not meant to know everything. She rose with dignity and went upstairs towards the door, and Monkey, rippling with laughter, smacked her as she went.

This only shocked her more.

'That was a slight mistake behind,' she said reprovingly, looking back; 'you should have more reserve, I think,' then firmly shut the door.

All of which meant--so far as Jane Anne was concerned--that an important standard of conduct--grown-up, dignified, stately in a spiritual sense--was being transferred to her present behaviour, but transferred ineffectively. Elsewhere Jane Anne lived it, _was_ it. She knew it, but could not get at the part of her that knew it. The transmitting machinery was imperfect. Connecting links and switches were somehow missing. Yearning was strong in her, that yearning which is common to all the world, though so variously translated. Once out of the others' sight, she made a curious face. She went into her room between the kitchen and the Den, flung herself on the bed, and burst into tears. And the fears brought relief. They oiled the machinery perhaps. At any rate, she soon felt better.

'I felt so enormous and unsettled,' she informed Mother later, when the redness of her eyes was noticed and she received breathlessly a great comforting hug. I never get anything right.'

'But you _are_ right, darling,' Mother soothed her, little guessing that she told the perfect truth. 'You are all right, only you don't know it. Everybody's wumbled somewhere.' And she advised her--ah, Mother was profoundly wise instinctively--not to think so much, but just go ahead as usual and do her work.

For Mother herself felt a little queer that day, as though something very big and splendid lay hiding just beyond her reach. It surged up, vanished, then surged up again, and it came closest when she was not thinking of it. The least effort of the mind to capture it merely plunged her into an empty gulf where she could not touch bottom. The glorious thing ran instantly underground. She never ceased to be aware of it, but any attempt to focus resulted in confusion. a.n.a.lysis was beyond her powers, yet the matter was very simple really, for only when thought is blank, and when the mind has forgotten to think, can inspiration come through into the heart. The intellect interprets afterwards, sets in order, regulates, examines the wonder and beauty the heart distils alchemically out of the eternal stream in which life everywhere dips its feet. If Reason interferes too soon, or during transmission, it only muddles and destroys. And Mother, hitherto, had always been so proud of being practical, prosaic, reasonable. She had deliberately suppressed the other. She could not change in a single day just because she had been 'out' and made discoveries last night.

Oh, how simple it all was really, and yet how utterly most folk convert the wonder of it into wumbling!

Like Jane Anne, her miniature, she felt splendid all day long, but puzzled too. It was almost like those religious attacks she had experienced in early youth. She had no definite creed by which she could explain it. Though nominally Christian, like her husband, she could not ascribe her joy to a 'Holy Spirit,' or to a 'G.o.d' working in her. But she was reminded of her early 'religious attacks' because she now experienced that large sensation of glorious peace and certainty which usually accompanies the phenomenon in the heart called 'conversion.' She saw life whole. She rested upon some unfailing central Joy. Come what might, she felt secure and 'saved.' Something everlasting lay within call, an ever-ready help in trouble; and all day she was vaguely conscious that her life lay hid with--with what?

She never found the word exactly, for 'Joy' was but one aspect of it.

She fell back upon the teachings of the big religions which are the police regulations of the world. Yet all creeds shared these, and her feeling was far deeper than mere moral teachings. And then she gave up thinking about it. Besides, she had much knitting to do.

'It's come to stay anyhow; I feel in sympathy with everybody,' she said, and so dismissed vain introspection, keeping the simple happiness and peace. That was her strength, as it was also Jinny's. A re-formation had begun.

Jimbo, too, felt something in his microcosmic way, only he said little and asked no single question. It betrayed itself, however, to his Mother's widened vision. He was all stirred up. He came back again from school at three o'clock--for it was Thursday and he did not take the singing lesson from three to four--put down his books with a very business-like air, forgot to kiss his Mother--and went out.

'Where are you off to, Jimbo?' She scented mischief. He was so _affaire_.

He turned obediently at once, the face grave and puckered.

'Going over to the carpenter's house, Mummy.'

'What for, dear? Why don't you stay and play here?' She had the feeling that her husband was absorbed in his work and would not like to be disturbed.

The boy's reply was evasive too. 'I want to have a long discuss with Daddy,' he said.

'Can't you have your long discuss with me instead?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'You see,' he answered solemnly, 'it's about things.'

'But Daddy's working just now; he'll be over to tea at four. Can't it wait till then?'

She understood too well to inquire what 'things' might be. The boy wished to speak with one of his own s.e.x--as one man to another man.

'When a man's at work,' she added, 'he doesn't like to be disturbed.'

'All right,' was the reply. 'We can wait a little,' and he settled down to other things in a corner by himself. His mind, clearly, was occupied with grave considerations he could not discuss with anybody, least of all with women and children. But, of course, busy men must not be interrupted. For a whole hour in his corner he made no sound, and hardly any movement.

But Daddy did not come at four o'clock. He was evidently deep in work.

And Mother did not send for him. The carpenter's wife, she knew, would provide a cup of tea.