_ Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
_Book of Job_.
The feeling that something was going to happen--that odd sense of
anticipation--which all had experienced the evening before at tea-time
had entirely vanished, of course, next morning. It was a mood, and it
had passed away. Every one had slept it off. They little realised how
it had justified itself. Jane Anne, tidying the Den soon after seven
o'clock, noticed the slip of paper above the mantelpiece, read it
over--'The Starlight Express will start to-night. Be reddy!'--and tore
it down. 'How could that. have amused us!' she said aloud, as she
tossed it into the waste-paper basket. Yet, even while she did so,
some stray sensation of delight clutched at her funny little heart, a
touch of emotion she could not understand that was wild and very
sweet. She went singing about her work. She felt important and grown-
up, extraordinarily light-hearted too. The things she sang made up
their own words--such odd snatches that came she knew not whence. An
insect clung to her duster, and she shook it out of the window with
the crumbs and bits of cotton gathered from the table-cloth.
'Get out, you Morning Spider,
You fairy-cotton rider!'
she sang, and at the same minute Mother opened the bedroom door and
peeped in, astonished at the unaccustomed music. In her voluminous
dressing-gown, her hair caught untidily in a loose net, her face
flushed from stooping over the porridge saucepan, she looked, thought
Jinny, 'like a haystack somehow.' Of course she did not say it. The
draught, flapping at her ample skirts, added the idea of a covering
tarpaulin to the child's mental picture. She went on dusting with a
half-offended air, as though Mother had no right to interrupt her with
a superintending glance like this.
'You won't forget the sweeping too, Jinny?' said Mother, retiring
again majestically with that gliding motion her abundant proportions
achieved so gracefully.
'Of course I won't, Mother,' and the instant the door was closed she
fell into another snatch of song, the words of which flowed
unconsciously into her mind, it seemed--
'For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
Dusting the room while you're all asleep,
And shoving you all in the rubbish heap,
Over the edge of the tiles'
--a little wumbled, it is true, but its source unmistakable.
And all day long, with every one, it was similar, this curious
intrusion of the night into the day, the sub-conscious into the
conscious--a kind of subtle trespassing. The flower of forgotten
dreams rose so softly to the surface of consciousness that they had an
air of sneaking in, anxious to be regarded as an integral part of
normal waking life. Like bubbles in water they rose, discharged their
puff of fragrant air, and disappeared again. Jane Anne, in particular,
was simply radiant all day long, and more than usually clear-headed.
Once or twice she wumbled, but there was big sense in her even then.
It was only the expression that evaded her. Her little brain was a
poor transmitter somehow.
'I feel all endowed to-day,' she informed Rogers, when he
congratulated her later in the day on some cunning act of attention
she bestowed upon him. It was in the courtyard where they all sat
sunning themselves after _dejeuner_, and before the younger children
returned to afternoon school.
'I feel emaciated, you know,' she added, uncertain whether emancipated
was the word she really sought.
'You'll be quite grown-up,' he told her, 'by the time I come back to
little Bourcelles in the autumn.' Little Bourcelles! It sounded, the
caressing way he said it, as if it lay in the palm of his big brown
hand.
'But you'll never come back, because you'll never go,' Monkey chimed
in. 'My hair, remember---'
'_My_ trains won't take you,' said Jimbo gravely.
'Oh, a train may _take_ you,' continued Monkey, 'but you can't leave.
Going away by train isn't leaving.'
'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 passengers--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 passed 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 assumed 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
God'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 passing the salt and
things. It _always_ begins like that. He got shawls even when she was
hot.'
He looked so wise and grave that nobody 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 sex; 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. Analysis 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 'God' 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 sex--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.
He came late to supper, too, at the Pension, nodded to Mother with an
expression which plainly said, 'I've finished the story at last';
winked to his cousin, meaning, 'It came out all right, I'm satisfied,'
and took his seat between Jinny and Mlle. Vuillemot, the governess who
had earned her meal by giving a music lesson that afternoon to a
_pensionnaire_. Jinny looked sideways at him in a spirit of
examination, and picked the inevitable crumb deftly from his beard.
'Reminiscences!' she observed slyly. 'You did have some tea, then.'
Her long word was well chosen for once; her mind unusually logical,
too.
But Daddy made no reply; he went on eating whatever was set before him
with an air of complete detachment; he devoured cold ham and salad
automatically; and the children, accustomed to this absorption,
ignored his presence. He was still in the atmosphere of his work,
abstracted, lost to the outer world. They knew they would only, get
wumbled answers to their questions and remarks, and they did not dare
to tease him. From time to time he lifted his eyes--very bright they
were--and glanced round the table, dimly aware that he was in the
midst of a stream of noisy chatter, but unable to enter it
successfully at any point. Mother, watching him, thought, 'He's
sitting on air, he's wrapped in light, he's very happy'; and ate an
enormous supper, as though an insatiable hunger was in her.
The governess, Mlle. Vuillemot, who stood in awe of the 'author' in
him, seized her opportunity. She loved to exchange a _mot_ with a real
writer, reading all kinds of unintended subtlety into his brief
replies in dreadful French. To-night she asked him the meaning of a
word, title of a Tauchnitz novel she had been reading--Juggernaut;
but, being on his deaf side, he caught 'Huguenot' instead, and gave
her a laboured explanation, strangled by appalling grammar.
The historical allusions dazed her; the explanation ended on a date.
She was sorry she had ventured, for it made her feel so ignorant.
'Shuggairnort,' she repeated bravely. She had a vague idea he had not
properly heard before.
But this time he caught 'Argonaut,' and swamped her then with
classical exposition, during which she never took her eyes off him,
and decided that he was far more wonderful than she had ever dreamed.
He was; but not for the reasons she supposed.
'Thank you,' she said with meek gratitude at the end, 'I thank you.'
'Il n'y a pas de quar,' replied Daddy, bowing; and the adventure came
to an end. The others luckily had not heard it in full swing; they
only caught the final phrase with which he said adieu. But it served
its unwitting purpose admirably. It brought him back to the world
about him. The spell was broken. All turned upon him instantly.
'Snay pas un morsow de bong.' Monkey copied his accent, using a
sentence from a schoolboy's letter in _Punch_. 'It's not a bit of
good.' Mother squelched her with a look, but Daddy, even if he noticed
it, was not offended. Nothing could offend him to-night. Impertinence
turned silvery owing to the way he took it. There was a marvellous
light and sweetness about him. 'He _is_ on air,' decided Mother
finally. 'He's written his great Story--our story. It's finished!'
'I don't know,' he said casually to the others, as they stood talking
a few minutes in the salon before going over to the Den, 'if you'd
like to hear it; but I've got a new creature for the Wumble Book. It
came to me while I was thinking of something else---'
'Thinking of one thing while you were thinking of another!' cried
Monkey. It described exaccurately his state of mind sometimes.
'---and I jotted down the lines on my cuff. So it's not very perfect
yet.'
Mother had him by the arm quickly. Mlle. Vuillemot was hovering in his
neighbourhood, for one thing. It seemed to her they floated over,
almost flew.
'It's a Haystack Woman,' he explained, once they were safely in the
Den grouped about him. 'A Woman of the Haystack who is loved by the
Wind. That is to say, the big Wind loves her, but she prefers the
younger, handsomer little Winds, and---'
He was not allowed to finish. The children laid his cuff back in a
twinkling, drawing up the coat sleeve.
'But surely I know that,' Mother was saying. 'I've heard of her before
somewhere. I wonder where?' Others were saying the same thing. 'It's
not new.'
'Impossible,' said Daddy, 'for the idea only came to me this morning
while I was---'
'Thinking of something else,' Monkey again finished the sentence for
him.
Mother felt that things were rushing about her from another world. She
was vaguely conscious--deliciously, bewilderingly--of having heard
this all before. Imaginative folk have built the certainty of a
previous existence upon evidence as slight; for actual scenery came
with it, and she saw dim forest trees, and figures hovering in the
background, and bright atmosphere, and fields of brilliant stars. She
felt happy and shining, light as a feather, too. It all was just
beyond her reach, though; she could not recover it properly. 'It must
have been a dream _she_ told me,' was her conclusion, referring to
Mlle. Lemaire. Her old friend was in it somewhere or other. She felt
sure of that.
She hardly heard, indeed, the silly lines her husband read aloud to
the children. She liked the sound of his voice, though; it suggested
music she had known far away--in her childhood.
'It's high spirits really,' whispered Rogers, sitting beside her in
the window. 'It's a sort of overflow from his story. He can't do that
kind of rhyme a bit, but it's an indication---'
'You think he's got a fine big story this time?' she asked under her
breath; and Cousin Henry's eyes twinkled keenly as he gave a
significant nod and answered: 'Rather! Can't you feel the splendour
all about him, the strength, the harmony!'
She leaped at the word. Harmony exactly described this huge new thing
that had come into the family, into the village, into the world. The
feeling that they all were separate items, struggling for existence
one against the other, had gone for ever. Life seemed now a single
whole, an enormous pattern. Every one fitted in. There was effort--
wholesome jolly effort, but no longer the struggle or fighting that
were ugly. To 'live carelessly' was possible and right because the
pattern was seen entire. It was to live in the whole.
'Harmony,' she repeated to herself, with a great swelling happiness in
her heart, 'that's the nunculus of the matter.'
'The what?' he asked, overhearing her.
'The nunculus,' she repeated bravely, seeing the word in her mind, yet
unable to get it quite. Rogers did not correct her.
'Rather,' was all he said. 'Of course it is.' What did the
pronunciation of a word matter at such a time? Her version even
sounded better than the original. Mother saw things bigger! Already
she was becoming creative!
'And you're the one who brought it,' she continued, but this time so
low that he did not catch the words. 'It's you, your personality, your
thinking, your atmosphere somehow that have brought this gigantic
sense of peace and calm security which are _au fond_ nothing but the
consciousness of harmony and the power of seeing ugly details in their
proper place--in a single _coup d'oeil_--and understanding them as
parts of a perfect whole.'
It was her thought really running on; she never could have found the
words like that. She thought in French, too, for one thing. And, in
any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to
the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous
effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken
captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their
sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in
the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy
that they recognised.
'But, Mother, he's making it look like you!' cried Monkey--only Mother
was too far away in her magnificent reverie to reply intelligently.
I know her; she's my friend,' she answered vaguely. 'So it's all
right.'
'Majestic Haystack'--it was the voice of the wind addressing her:--
'Majestic Haystack, Empress of my life,
Your ample waist
Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife,
And suits my taste;
Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep,
An unresponsive, elephantine heap,
Coquetting with the stars while I'm asleep,
O cruel Stack!
Coy, silent Monster, Matron of the fields,
I sing to you;
And all the fondest love that summer yields
I bring to you;
Yet there you squat, immense in your disdain,
Heedless of all the tears of streaming rain
My eyes drip over you--your breathless swain;
O stony Stack!
Stupendous Maiden, sweetest when oblong,
Does inner flame
Now smoulder in thy soul to hear my song
Repeat thy name?
Or does thy huge and ponderous heart object
The advances of my passion, and reject
My love because it's airy and elect?
O wily Stack!
O crested goddess, thatched and top-knotted,
O reckless Stack!
Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted
There is no lack;
You've spurned my love as though I were a worm;
But next September when I see thy form,
I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm!
I have that knack!'
'Far less wumbled than usual,' thought Rogers, as the children danced
about the room, making up new ridiculous rhymes, of which 'I'll give
you a whack' seemed the most popular. Only Jane Anne was quiet. A
courtship even so remote and improbable as between the Wind and a
Haystack sent her thoughts inevitably in the dominant direction.
'It must be nice when one is two,' she whispered ambiguously to Mother
with a very anxious face, 'but I'm sure that if a woman can't cook,
love flies out of the window. It's a positive calamity, you know.'
But it was Cousin Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of
pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and
mere conversation in corners was out of the question. The door was
opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz,
Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a
parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne.
She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his
shoulder. 'Please don't hold me _quite_ so tight,' she ventured. 'I've
never danced with a strange man before, you see'; and he no more
laughed at her than he had laughed at Mother's 'nunculus.' Even Jane
Anne, he knew, would settle down comfortably before long into the
great big pattern where a particular nook awaited--aye, needed--her
bizarre, odd brilliance. The most angular fragments would nest softly,
neatly in. A little filing, a little polishing, and all would fit
together. To force would only be to break. Hurry was of the devil. And
later, while Daddy played an ancient tune that was written originally
as a mazurka yet did duty now for a two-step, he danced with Mother
too, and the children paused to watch out of sheer admiration.
'Fancy, Mother dancing!' they exclaimed with glee--except Jinny, who
was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was
over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of
measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully
than Mother glided over those uneven boards.
'The Wind and the Haystack' of course, was Monkey's description.
'You'll wind and haystack to bed now,' was the reply, as Mother sat
and fanned herself in the corner. The 'bed-sentence' as the children
called it, was always formed in this way. Whatever the child was
saying when the moment came, Mother adopted as her verb. 'Shall I put
some peat on, Mother?' became 'Peat yourself off to bed-it's nine
o'clock'--and the child was sorry it had spoken.
Good-byes had really been said at intervals all day long, and so to-
night were slight enough; the children, besides, were so 'excitey-
tired,' as Monkey put it, that they possessed no more emotion of any
kind. There were various disagreeable things in the immediate future
of To-morrow--getting up early, school, and so forth; and Cousin
Henry's departure they lumped in generally with the mass, accepted but
unrealised. Jimbo could hardly keep his eyes alight, and Monkey's hair
was like a baby haystack the wind had treated to an equinoctial storm.
Jinny, stiff, perplexed, and solemn with exhaustion, yet dared not
betray it because she was older, in measurable distance of her hair
going up.
'Why don't you play with the others, child?' asked Mother, finding her
upright on a sofa while the romp went on.
'Oh, to-night,' Jinny explained, 'I sit indifferent and look on. I
don't always feel like skedivvying about!'
To skedivvy was to chivvy and skedaddle--its authority not difficult
to guess.
'Good-bye, Cousinenry,' each gasped, as his big arms went round them
and squeezed out the exclamation. 'Oh, thank you most awfully,' came
next, with another kiss, produced by his pressing something hard and
round and yellow into each dirty little hand. 'It's only a bit of
crystallised starlight,' he explained, 'that escaped long ago from the
Cave. And starlight, remember, shines for everybody as well as for
yourselves. You can buy a stamp with it occasionally, too,' he added,
'and write to me.'
'We will. Of course!'
Jimbo straightened up a moment before the final collapse of sleep.
'Your train leaves at 6.23,' he said, with the authority of exclusive
information. 'You must be at the station at six to get the _bagages
enregistrees_. It's a slow train to Pontarlier, but you'll find a
_wagon direct_ for Paris in front, next to the engine. I shall be
at the station to see you off.'
'_I_ shan't,' said Monkey.
Rogers realised with delight the true meaning of these brief and
unemotional good-byes. 'They know I'm coming back; they feel that the
important part of me is not going away at all. My thinking stays here
with them.'
Jinny lingered another ten minutes for appearance's sake. It was long
past her bed-time, too, but dignity forbade her retiring with the
others. Standing by the window she made conversation a moment, feeling
it was the proper, grown-up thing to do. It was even expected of her.
'Look! It's full moon,' she observed gravely, as though suggesting
that she could, if she liked, go out and enjoy the air. 'Isn't it
lovely?'
'No, yesterday was full moon,' Rogers corrected her, joining her and
looking out. 'Two nights ago, to be exact, I think.'
'Oh,' she replied, as solemnly as though politics or finance were
under discussion, 'then it's bigger than full moon now. It goes on,
does it, getting fuller and fuller, till--'
'Now, Jinny dear, it's very late, and you'd better full-moon off to
bed,' Mother interrupted gently.
'Yes, Mother; I'm just saying good-night.' She held her hand out, as
though she was afraid he might kiss her, yet feared he would not.
'Good-bye, Mr. Cousin Henry, and I hope you'll have an exceedingly
happy time in the train and soon come back and visit us again.'
'Thank you,' he said, 'I'm sure I shall.' He gave her a bit of solid
starlight as he said it, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed her
on the cheek. Making a violent movement like an experienced boxer who
dodges an upper cut, Jinny turned and fled precipitately from the
room, forgetting her parents altogether. That kiss, she felt, consumed
her childhood in a flash of fiery flame. In bed she decided that she
must lengthen her skirts the very next day, and put her hair up too.
She must do something that should give her protection and yet freedom.
For a long time she did not sleep. She lay thinking it over. She felt
supremely happy--wild, excited, naughty. 'A man has kissed me; it was
a man; it was Mr. Rogers, Daddy's cousin.... He's not _my_ cousin
exactly, but just "a man."' And she fell asleep, wondering how she
ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing
still, how she ought to--end it! That little backward brain sought the
solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal,
a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been
flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret--the greatest and finest
secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was
a sentence of life, and not of death. _