_ _Asia_. ... I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
Prometheus Unbound, SHELLEY.
It was only ten o'clock, really, and the curfew was ringing from every
village on the mountain-side. The sound of the bells, half musical,
half ominous, was borne by the bise across the vineyards, for the
easterly wind that brings fine weather was blowing over lake and
forest, and seemed to drive before it thin sheets of moonlight that
turned the whole world soft. The village lay cosily dreaming beneath
the sky. Once the curfew died away there was only the rustling of the
plane trees in the old courtyard. The great Citadelle loomed above the
smaller houses, half in shadow half in silver, nodding heavily to the
spire of the Church, and well within sight of the sentinelle poplar
that guarded the village from the forest and the mountains. Far away,
these mountains now lowered their enormous shoulders to let night flow
down upon the sleeping world. The Scaffolding that brought it had long
since sailed over France towards the sea....
Mother, still panting from the ritual of fastening the younger
children into bed, had gone a moment down the passage to say good-
night to Mlle. Lemaire, and when she returned, the three of them--
herself, her husband, and Cousin Henry--dropped into chairs beside the
window and watched the silvery world in silence for a time. None felt
inclined to speak. There was drama somehow in that interval of
silence--that drama which lurks everywhere and always behind life's
commonest, most ordinary moments. Actions reveal it--sometimes--but it
mostly lies concealed, and especially in deep silences like this, when
the ticking of a cuckoo clock upon the wall may be the sole hint of
its presence.
It was not the good-byes that made all three realise it so near,
though good-byes are always solemn and momentous things; it was
something that stirred and rose upon them from a far deeper strata of
emotion than that caused by apparent separation. For no pain lay in
it, but a power much more difficult to express in the sounds and
syllables of speech--Joy. A great joy, creative and of big
significance, had known accomplishment. Each felt it, knew it,
realised it. The moonlit night was aware of it. The entire universe
knew it, too. The drama lay in that. There had been creation--of more
light.... The world was richer than it had been. Some one had caught
Beauty in a net, and to catch Beauty is to transform and recreate all
common things. It is revelation.
Through the mind of each of these three flowed the stream of casual
thinking--images, reflections, and the shadowy scaffoldings of many
new emotions--sweeping along between the banks of speech and silence.
And this stream, though in flood, did not overflow into words for a
long time. With eyes turned inwards, each watched the current pass.
Clear and deep, it quietly reflected--stars. Each watched the same
stream, the same calm depths, the same delicate reflections. They were
in harmony with themselves, and therefore with the universe....
Then, suddenly, one of the reflections--it was the Pleiades--rose to
the surface to clasp its lovely original. It was the woman who netted
the golden thought and drew it forth for all to see.
'Couldn't you read it to us, Daddy?' she whispered softly across the
silence.
'If it's not too long for you.' He was so eager, so willing to comply.
'We will listen till the Morning Spiders take us home,' his cousin
said.
'It's only the shorter version,' Daddy agreed shiningly, 'a sketch for
the book which, of course, will take a year to write. I might read
_that_, perhaps.'
'Do,' urged Mother. 'We are all in it, aren't we? It's our story as
well as yours.'
He rose to get the portfolio from the shelf where he had laid it, and
while Rogers lit the lamp, Riquette stole in at the window, picking
her way daintily across the wet tiles. She stood a moment, silhouetted
against the sky; then shaking her feet rapidly each in turn like bits
of quivering wire, she stepped precisely into the room. 'I am in it
too,' she plainly said, curling herself up on the chair Daddy had just
vacated, but resigning herself placidly enough to his scanty lap when
he came back again and began to read. Her deep purring, while he
stroked her absent-mindedly, became an undercurrent in the sound of
his voice, then presently ceased altogether....
On and on he read, while the moon sailed over La Citadelle, bidding
the stars hush to listen too. She put her silvery soft hands across
their eyes that they might hear the better. The blue wind of night
gathered up the meaning and spread it everywhere. The forest caught
the tale from the low laughter in the crest of the poplar, and passed
it on to the leagues of forest that bore it in turn across the
frontiers into France. Thence snowy Altels and the giant Blumlisalp
flashed it south along the crowding peaks and down among the Italian
chestnut woods, who next sent it coursing over the rustling waves of
the Adriatic and mixed it everywhere with the Mediterranean foam. In
the morning the shadows upon bare Grecian hills would whisper it among
the ancient islands, and the East catch echoes of it in the winds of
dawn. The forests of the North would open their great gloomy eyes with
wonder, as though strange new wild-flowers had come among them in the
night. All across the world, indeed, wherever there were gardened
minds tender enough to grow fairy seed, these flakes of thought would
settle down in sleep, and blossom in due season into a crop of magic
beauty.
He read on and on.... The village listened too, the little shadowy
street, the familiar pine woods, the troubled Pension, each, as its
image was evoked in the story, knew its soul discovered, and stirred
in its sleep towards the little room to hear. And the desolate ridges
of La Tourne and Boudry, the clefts where the wild lily of the valley
grew unknown, high nooks and corners where the buzzards nested, these
also knew and answered to the trumpet summons of the Thought that made
them live. A fire of creation ran pulsing from this centre. All were
in the Pattern of the Story.
To the two human listeners it seemed as familiar as a tale read, in
childhood long ago, and only half forgotten. They always knew a little
of what was coming next. Yet it spread so much further than mere
childhood memories, for its golden atmosphere included all countries
and all times. It rose and sang and sparkled, lighting up strange deep
recesses of their unconscious and half-realised life, and almost
revealing the tiny silver links that joined them on to the universe at
large. The golden ladders from the Milky Way were all let down. They
climbed up silvery ropes into the Moon....
'It's not my own idea,' he said; 'I'm convinced of that. It's all
flocked into me from some other mind that thought it long ago, but
could not write it, perhaps. No thought is lost, you see--never can be
lost. Like this, somehow, I feel it:--
Now sinks to sleep the clamour of the day,
And, million-footed, from the Milky Way,
Falls shyly on my heart the world's lost Thought--
Shower of primrose dust the stars have taught
To haunt each sleeping mind,
Till it may find
A garden in some eager, passionate brain
That, rich in loving-kindness as in pain,
Shall harvest it, then scatter forth again
It's garnered loveliness from heaven caught.
Oh, every yearning thought that holds a tear,
Yet finds no mission,
And lies untold,
Waits, guarded in that labyrinth of gold,--
To reappear
Upon some perfect night,
Deathless--not old--
But sweet with time and distance,
And clothed as in a vision
Of starry brilliance
For the world's delight.'
In the pauses, from time to time, they heard the distant thunder of
the Areuse as it churned and tumbled over the Val de Travers boulders.
The Colombier bells, as the hours passed, strung the sentences
together; moonlight wove in and out of every adventure as they
listened; stars threaded little chapters each to each with their
eternal golden fastenings. The words seemed written down in dew, but
the dew crystallised into fairy patterns that instantly flew about the
world upon their mission of deliverance. In this ancient Network of
the Stars the universe lay fluttering; and they lay with it, all
prisoners in Fairyland.
For the key of it all was sympathy, and the' delicate soul of it was
tender human love. Bourcelles, in this magic tale, was the starting-
point whence the Starlight Expresses flashed into all the world, even
unto unvisited, forgotten corners that had known no service hitherto.
It was so adaptable and searching, and knew such tiny, secret ways of
entrance. The thought was so penetrating, true, and simple. Even old
Mother Plume would wake to the recovery of some hitherto forgotten
fragrance in her daily life... just as those Northern forests would
wake to find new wild-flowers. For all fairytales issue first from the
primeval forest, thence undergoing their protean transformation; and
in similar fashion this story, so slight but so tremendous, issued
from the forest of one man's underthinking--one deep, pure mind,
wumbled badly as far as external things were concerned, yet realising
that Bourcelles contained the Universe, and that he, in turn contained
Bourcelles. Another, it is true, had shown it to him, though all
unwittingly, and had cleaned in his atmosphere the channels for the
entrance of the glorious pattern. But the result was the same. In his
brain--perhaps by Chance, perhaps by God--lay the machinery which
enabled him to give it out to others--the power and ability to
transmit. It was a fairy-tale of the world, only the world had
forgotten it. He brought back its fairyland again.
And this fairyland, what and where was it? And how could this tale of
its recovery bring into his listeners' hearts such a sense of peace
and joy that they felt suddenly secure in the world and safe mid all
the confusion of their muddled lives? That there were tears in
Mother's eyes seems beyond question, because the moonlight, reflected
faintly from a wet cobble in the yard below, glistened like a tiny
silver lantern there. They betrayed the fact that something in her had
melted and flowed free. Yet there was no sadness in the fairy-tale to
cause it; they were tears of joy.
Surely it was that this tale of Starlight, Starlight Expresses and
Star Caves, told as simply as running water, revealed the entire
Universe--as One, and that in this mighty, splendid thing each of them
nested safe and comfortable. The world was really _thinking_, and all
lay fluttering in the grand, magnificent old Net of Stars. What people
think, they are. All can think Beauty. And sympathy--to feel with
everything--was the clue; for sympathy is love, and to love a star was
to love a neighbour. To be without sympathy was to feel apart, and to
think apart was to cut oneself off from life, from the Whole, from God
and joy--it was Death. To work at commonplace duties because they were
duties to the Universe at large, this was the way to find courage,
peace, and happiness, because this was genuine and successful work, no
effort lost, and the most distant star aware of it. Thinking was
living, whether material results were visible or not; yearning was
action, even though no accomplishment was apparent; thought and
sympathy, though felt but for a passing moment, sweetened the Pleiades
and flashed along the Milky Way, and so-called tangible results that
could prove it to the senses provided no adequate test of
accomplishment or success. In the knowledge of belonging to this vast
underlying unity was the liberation that brings courage, carelessness,
and joy, and to admit failure in anything, by thinking it, was to
weaken the entire structure which binds together the planets and the
heart of a boy. Thoughts were the fairies that the world believed in
when it was younger, simpler, less involved in separation; and the
golden Fairyland recovered in this story was the Fairyland of lovely
thinking....
In this little lamp-lit room of the Citadelle, the two listeners were
conscious of this giant, delicate network that captured every flying
thought and carried it streaming through the world. God became a
simple thing: He fashioned Rogers's Scheme, even though it never
materialised in bricks and mortar. God was behind Mother, even when
she knitted or lit the fire in the Den. All were prisoners in His
eternal Fairyland....
And the symbolism of the story, the so-called fantasy, they also
easily understood, because they felt it true. To be 'out' of the body
was merely to think and feel away from self. As they listened they
realised themselves in touch with every nation and with every time,
with all possible beliefs and disbeliefs, with every conceivable kind
of thinking, that is, which ever has existed or ever shall exist....
The heat and radiance given out by the clear delivery of this
'inspirational' fairy-tale must have been very strong; far-reaching it
certainly was....
'Ah!' sighed Rogers to himself, 'if only I could be like that!' not
realising that he was so.
'Oh dear!' felt the Woman, 'that's what I've felt sometimes. I only
wish it were true of me!' unaware that it could be, and even by the
fact of her yearning, _was_ so.
'If only I could get up and help the world!' passed like a flame
across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next
door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her
through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was
already majestically effective in the world of definite action.
And even Mother Plume, pacing her airless room at the further end of
the village and tapping her ebony stick upon the floor, turned
suspiciously, as at a passing flash of light that warmed her for a
sudden instant as it went.
'Perhaps, after all, they don't mean all these unkind things they do
to me!' she thought; 'I live so much alone. Possibly I see things less
clearly than I used to do!'
The spell was certainly very potent, though Daddy himself, reading out
the little shining chapters, guessed as little as the rest of them how
strong. So small a part of what he meant to say, it seemed, had been
transferred to the paper. More than he realised, far, far more, lay
between the lines, of course. There was conviction in it, because
there was vision and belief. Not much was said when he put his roll
of paper down and leaned back in his chair. Riquette opened her eyes
and blinked narrowly, then closed them again and began to purr. The
ticking of the cuckoo clock seemed suddenly very loud and noticeable.
'Thank you,' said Mother quietly in an uncertain kind of voice. 'The
world seems very wonderful now--quite different.'
She moved in her chair--the first movement she had made for over two
hours. Daddy rubbed his eyes, stroked his beard, and lit a cigarette;
it went out almost immediately, but he puffed on at it just the same,
till his cousin struck a match and stood over him to see it properly
alight.
'You have caught Beauty naked in your net of stars,' he murmured; 'but
you have left her as you found her--shining, silvery, unclothed.
Others will see her, too. You have taken us all back into Fairyland,
and I, for one, shall never get out again.'
'Nor I,' breathed some one in the shadows by the window....
The clock struck two. 'Odd,' said Mother, softly, 'but I never heard
it strike once while you were reading!'
'We've all been out,' Rogers laughed significantly, 'just as you make
them get out in the story'; and then, while Riquette yawned and turned
a moment from the window-sill to say thank you for her long, warm
sleep, Mother lit the spirit-lamp and brewed the cups of chocolate.
She tiptoed in next door, and as she entered the sick-room she saw
through the steam rising from the cup she carried a curious thing--an
impression of brilliance about the bed, as though shafts of light
issued from it. Rays pulsed and trembled in the air. There was a
perfume of flowers. It seemed she stepped back into the atmosphere of
the story for an instant.
'Ah, you're not asleep,' she whispered. 'We've brewed some chocolate,
and I thought you might like a cup.'
'No, I'm not asleep,' answered the other woman from the bed she never
would leave until she was carried from it, 'but I have been dreaming.
It seemed the stars came down into my room and sang to me; this bed
became a throne; and some power was in me by which I could send my
thoughts out to help the world. I sent them out as a king sends
messengers--to people everywhere--even to people I've never heard of.
Isn't it wonderful?'
'You've had no pain?' For Mother knew that these sleepless hours at
night brought usually intense suffering. She stared at her, noting how
the eyes shone and glistened with unshed moisture.
'None,' was the answer, 'but only the greatest joy and peace I've ever
known.' The little glass of _calmant_ was untouched; it was not a drug
that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the
spell was working still. 'I was carried through the air by stars, as
though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for once
was realised.'
'You can do everything from your bed,' her friend murmured, sitting
down beside her. 'You do. Your thoughts go out so strongly. I've often
felt them myself. Perhaps that's why God put you here in bed like
this,' she added, surprised at the power in herself that made her say
such things--'just to think and pray for the world.'
'I do pray sometimes for others,' the tortured woman answered
modestly, 'but this time I was not conscious of praying at all. It all
swept out of me of its own accord. The force in me seemed so free and
inexhaustible that it overflowed. It was irresistible. I felt able to
save the world.'
'You were out,' said Mother softly, 'out of yourself, I mean,' she
corrected it. 'And your lovely thoughts go everywhere. You do save the
world.'
There fell a long silence then between them.
'You've been reading aloud,' Mlle. Lemaire said presently. 'I heard
the drone of the voice through the wall---'
'Daddy was reading his new story to us,' the other said. 'It didn't
disturb you?'
'On the contrary. I think it was the voice somehow that brought the
vision. I listened vaguely at first, trying to sleep; then, opening my
eyes suddenly, the room, as I told you, was full of stars. Their rays
caught hold of me and drew these forces out of my very heart. I
yielded, giving and giving and giving ... such life flowed from me,
and they carried it away in streams.... Oh, it was really like a
divine sensation.' 'It was divine,' said Mother, but whether she meant
the story or her friend's experience, she hardly knew herself.
'And the story--was it not about our little Bourcelles?' asked the
other.
Mother held her hands up as though words failed her. She opened her
arms wide. She was not quite sure of her voice.
'It was,' she said at length, 'but Bourcelles had grown into the
universe. It's a fairy-tale, but it's like a great golden fire. It
warmed my heart till my whole body seemed all heart, and I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. It makes you see that the whole world is
_one_, and that the sun and moon and stars lie in so small and
unimportant a thing as, say, Jimbo's mischief, or Monkey's impudence,
or Jinny's backwardness and absurdity. All are in sympathy together,
as in a network, and to feel sympathy with anything, even the most
insignificant, connects you instantly with the Whole. Thought and
sympathy _are_ the Universe--they are life.'
While Mother paused for breath, her old friend smiled a curious,
meaning smile, as though she heard a thing that she had always known.
'And all of us are in the story, and all the things we _think_ are
alive and active too, because we have created them. Our thoughts
populate the world, flying everywhere to help or hinder others, you
see.'
The sound of a door opening was heard. Mother got up to go. Shafts of
light again seemed to follow her from the figure in the bed.
'Good-night,' she whispered with a full heart, while her thought ran
suddenly--'You possess the secret of life and of creation, for
suffering has taught it to you, and you have really known it always.
But Daddy has put it into words for everybody.' She felt proud as a
queen.
There were whispered good-nights then in the corridor, for Rogers and
her husband were on their way home to bed.
'Your chocolate is getting cold,' said Daddy kindly.
'We thought you would probably stay in there. We're going over now.
It's very late,' Rogers added. They said good-night again.
She closed and locked the great door of the Citadelle behind them,
hearing their steps upon the cobbles in the yard, and for some time
afterwards upon the road. But their going away seemed the same as
coming nearer. She felt so close to everything that lived. Everything
did live. Her heart included all that existed, that ever had existed,
that ever could exist. Mother was alive all over. 'I have just been
created,' she laughed, and went back into the Den to drink her cup of
tepid chocolate. _