_ We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
The good we love, and sleep-our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,
Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.
Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,
My angel falls not short. They greet each other.
Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.
ALICE MCYNELL.
The arrival at the station interrupted the reverie in which the
secretary and his chief both were plunged.
'How odd,' exclaimed Minks, ever observant, as he leaped from the
carriage, 'there are no platforms. Everything in Switzerland seems on
one level, even the people--everything, that is, except the
mountains.'
'Switzerland _is_ the mountains,' laughed his chief.
Minks laughed too. 'What delicious air!' he added, filling his lungs
audibly. He felt half intoxicated with it.
After some delay they discovered a taxi-cab, piled the luggage on to
it, and were whirled away towards a little cluster of lights that
twinkled beneath the shadows of La Tourne and Boudry. Bourcelles lay
five miles out.
'Remember, you're not my secretary here,' said Rogers presently, as
the forests sped by them. 'You're just a travelling companion.'
'I understand,' he replied after a moment's perplexity. 'You have a
secretary here already.'
'His name is Jimbo.'
The motor grunted its way up the steep hill above Colombier. Below
them spread the vines towards the lake, sprinkled with lights of farms
and villages. As the keen evening air stole down from forest and
mountain to greet them, the vehicle turned into the quiet village
street. Minks saw the big humped shoulders of La Citadelle, the
tapering church spire, the trees in the orchard of the Pension.
Cudrefin, smoking a cigar at the door of his grocery shop, recognised
them and waved his hand. A moment later Gygi lifted his peaked hat and
called 'bon soir, bonne nuit,' just as though Rogers had never gone
away at all. Michaud, the carpenter, shouted his welcome as he
strolled towards the Post Office farther down to post a letter, and
then the motor stopped with a jerk outside the courtyard where the
fountain sang and gurgled in its big stone basin. Minks saw the plane
tree. He glanced up at the ridged backbone of the building. What a
portentous looking erection it was. It seemed to have no windows. He
wondered where the famous Den was. The roof overlapped like a giant
hood, casting a deep shadow upon the cobbled yard. Overhead the stars
shone faintly.
Instantly a troop of figures shot from the shadow and surrounded them.
There was a babel of laughter, exclamations, questions. Minks thought
the stars had fallen. Children and constellations were mingled all
together, it seemed. Both were too numerous to count. All were rushing
with the sun towards Hercules at a dizzy speed.
'And this is my friend, Mr. Minks,' he heard repeated from time to
time, feeling his hand seized and shaken before he knew what he was
about. Mother loomed up and gave him a stately welcome too.
'He wears gloves in Bourcelles!' some one observed audibly to some one
else.
'Excuse me! This is Riquette!' announced a big girl, hatless like the
rest, with shining eyes. 'It's a she.'
'And this is my secretary, Mr. Jimbo,' said Rogers, breathlessly,
emerging from a struggling mass. Minks and Jimbo shook hands with
dignity.
'Your room is over at the Michauds, as before.'
'And Mr. Mix is at the Pension--there was no other room to be had---'
'Supper's at seven---'
'Tante Jeanne's been _grand-cieling_ all day with excitement. She'll
burst when she sees you!'
'She's read the story, too. Elle dit que c'est le bouquet!'
'There's new furniture in the salon, and they've cleaned the sink
while you've been away!...'
The author moved forward out of the crowd. At the same moment another
figure, slight and shadowy, revealed itself, outlined against the
white of the gleaming street. It had been hidden in the tangle of the
stars. It kept so quiet.
'Countess, may I introduce him to you,' he said, seizing the momentary
pause. There was little ceremony in Bourcelles. 'This is my cousin I
told you about--Mr. Henry Rogers. You must know one another at once.
He's Orion in the story.'
He dragged up his big friend, who seemed suddenly awkward, difficult
to move. The children ran in and out between them like playing
puppies, tumbling against each in turn.
'They don't know which is which,' observed Jinny, watching the
introduction. Her voice ran past him like the whir of a shooting star
through space--far, far away. 'Excuse me!' she cried, as she cannoned
off Monkey against Cousinenry. 'I'm not a terminus! This is a regular
shipwreck!'
The three elder ones drew aside a little from the confusion.
'The Countess,' resumed Daddy, as soon as they were safe from
immediate destruction, 'has come all the way from Austria to see us.
She is staying with us for a few days. Isn't it delightful? We call
her the little Grafin.' His voice wumbled a trifle thickly in his
beard. 'She was good enough to like the story--our story, you know--
and wrote to me---'
'My story,' said a silvery, laughing voice.
And Rogers bowed politely, and with a moment's dizziness, at two
bright smiling eyes that watched him out of the little shadow standing
between him and the children. He was aware of grandeur.
He stood there, first startled, then dazed. She was so small. But
something about her was so enormous. His inner universe turned over
and showed its under side. The hidden thing that so long had brushed
his daily life came up utterly close and took him in its gigantic
arms. He stared like an unmannered child.
_Something had lit the world_....
'This _is_ delicious air,' he heard Minks saying to his cousin in the
distance--to his deaf side judging by the answer:
'Delicious here--yes, isn't it?'
_Something had lit the stars._...
Minks and his cousin continued idly talking. Their voices twittered
like birds in empty space. The children had scattered like marbles
from a spinning-top. Their voices and footsteps sounded in the cobbled
yard of La Citadelle, as they scampered up to prepare for supper.
Mother sailed solemnly after them, more like a frigate than ever. The
world, on fire, turned like a monstrous Catherine wheel within his
brain.
_Something had lit the universe._...
He stood there in the dusk beneath the peeping stars, facing the
slender little shadow. It was all he saw at first--this tiny figure.
Demure and soft, it remained motionless before him, a hint of
childhood's wonder in its graceful attitude. He was aware of something
mischievous as well--that laughed at him.... He realised then that she
waited for him to speak. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no
words, because the eyes, beneath the big-brimmed hat with its
fluttering veil, looked out at him as though some formidable wild
creature watched him from the opening of its cave. There was a glint
of amber in them. The heart in him went thumping. He caught his
breath. Out, jerked, then, certain words that he tried hard to make
ordinary---
'But surely--we have met before--I think I know you---'
He just said it, swallowing his breath with a gulp upon the unfinished
sentence. But he said it--somewhere else, and not here in the twilight
street of little Bourcelles. For his sight swam somehow far away, and
he was giddy with the height. The roofs of the houses lay in a sea of
shadow below him, and the street wound through them like a ribbon of
thin lace. The tree-tops waved very softly in a wind that purred and
sighed beneath his feet, and this wind was a violet little wind, that
bent them all one way and set the lines and threads of gold a-quiver
to their fastenings. For the fastenings were not secure; any minute he
might fall. And the threads, he saw, all issued like rays from two
central shining points of delicate, transparent amber, radiating forth
into an exquisite design that caught the stars. Yet the stars were not
reflected in them. It was they who lit the stars....
He _was_ dizzy. He tried speech again.
'I told you I _should_--' But it was not said aloud apparently.
Two little twinkling feet were folded. Two hands, he saw, stretched
down to draw him close. These very stars ran loose about him in a
cloud of fiery sand. Their pattern danced in flame. He picked out
Sirius, Aldebaran--the Pleiades! There was tumult in his blood, a wild
and exquisite confusion. What in the world had happened to him that he
should behave in this ridiculous fashion? Yet he was doing nothing. It
was only that, for a passing instant, the enormous thing his life had
been dimly conscious of so long, rose at last from its subterranean
hiding-place and overwhelmed him. This picture that came with it was
like some far-off dream he suddenly recovered. A glorious excitement
caught him. He felt utterly bewildered.
'Have we?' he heard close in front of him. 'I do not think I have had
the pleasure'--it was with a slightly foreign accent--'but it is so
dim here, and one cannot see very well, perhaps.'
And a ripple of laughter passed round some gigantic whispering gallery
in the sky. It set the trellis-work of golden threads all trembling.
He felt himself perched dizzily in this shaking web that swung through
space. And with him was some one whom he knew.... He heard the words
of a song:
'Light desire With their fire.'
_Something had lit his heart._...
He lost himself again, disgracefully. A mist obscured his sight,
though with the eyes of his mind he still saw crystal-clear. Across
this mist fled droves and droves of stars. They carried him out of
himself--out, out, out!... His upper mind then made a vehement effort
to recover equilibrium. An idea was in him that some one would
presently turn a somersault and disappear. The effort had a result, it
seemed, for the enormous thing passed slowly away again into the
caverns of his under-self, ... and he realised that he was conducting
himself in a foolish and irresponsible manner, which Minks, in
particular, would disapprove. He was staring rudely--at a shadow, or
rather, at two eyes in a shadow. With another effort--oh, how it
hurt!--he focused sight again upon surface things. It seemed his turn
to say something.
'I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'but I thought--it seemed to me for
a moment--that I--remembered.'
The face came close as he said it. He saw it clear a moment. The
figure grew defined against the big stone fountain--the little hands
in summer cotton gloves, the eyes beneath the big brimmed hat, the
streaming veil. Then he went lost again--more gloriously than before.
Instead of the human outline in the dusky street of Bourcelles, he
stared at the host of stars, at the shimmering design of gold, at the
Pleiades, whose fingers of spun lustre swung the Net loose across the
world....
'Flung from huge Orion's hand...'
he caught in a golden whisper,
'Sweetly linking
All our thinking....'
His cousin and Minks, he was aware vaguely, had left him. He was alone
with her. A little way down the hill they turned and called to him. He
made a frantic effort--there seemed just time--to plunge away into
space and seize the cluster of lovely stars with both his hands.
Headlong, he dived off recklessly... driving at a fearful speed, ...
when--the whole thing vanished into a gulf of empty blue, and he found
himself running, not through the sky to clutch the Pleiades, but
heavily downhill towards his cousin and Minks.
It was a most abrupt departure. There was a curious choking in his
throat. His heart ran all over his body. Something white and sparkling
danced madly through his brain. What must she think of him?
'We've just time to wash ourselves and hurry over to supper,' his
cousin said, as he overtook them, flustered and very breathless. Minks
looked at him--regarded him, rather--astonishment, almost disapproval,
in one eye, and in the other, apparently observing the vineyards, a
mild rebuke.
He walked beside them in a dream. The sound of Colombier's bells
across Planeyse, men's voices singing fragments of a Dalcroze song
floated to him, and with them all the dear familiar smells:--
Le coeur de ma mie
Est petit, tout petit petit,
J'en ai l'ame ravie....
It was Minks, drawing the keen air noisily into his lungs in great
draughts, who recalled him to himself.
'I could find my way here without a guide, Mr. Campden,' he was saying
diffidently, burning to tell how the Story had moved him. 'It's all so
vivid, I can almost see the Net. I feel in it,' and he waved one hand
towards the sky.
The other thanked him modestly. 'That's your power of visualising
then,' he added. 'My idea was, of course, that every mind in the world
is related with every other mind, and that there's no escape--we are
all prisoners. The responsibility is vast.'
'Perfectly. I've always believed it. Ah! if only one could _live_ it!'
Rogers heard this clearly. But it seemed that another heard it with
him. Some one very close beside him shared the hearing. He had
recovered from his temporary shock. Only the wonder remained. Life was
sheer dazzling glory. The talk continued as they hurried along the
road together. Rogers became aware then that his cousin was giving
information--meant for himself.
'... A most charming little lady, indeed. She comes from over there,'
and he pointed to where the Pleiades were climbing the sky towards the
East, 'in Austria somewhere. She owns a big estate among the
mountains. She wrote to me--I've had _such_ encouraging letters, you
know, from all sorts of folk--and when I replied, she telegraphed to
ask if she might come and see me. She seems fond of telegraphing,
rather.' And he laughed as though he were speaking of an ordinary
acquaintance.
'Charming little lady!' The phrase was like the flick of a lash.
Rogers had known it applied to such commonplace women.
'A most intelligent face,' he heard Minks saying, 'quite beautiful,
_I_ thought--the beauty of mind and soul.'
'... Mother and the children took to her at once,' his cousin's voice
went on. 'She and her maid have got rooms over at the Beguins. And, do
you know, a most singular coincidence,' he added with some excitement,
'she tells me that ever since childhood she's had an idea like this--
like the story, I mean--an idea of her own she always wanted to write
but couldn't-----'
'Of course, of course,' interrupted Rogers impatiently; and then he
added quickly, 'but how _very_ extraordinary!'
'The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in
which we all are caught, and that it's a positive duty, therefore, to
think beauty--as much a duty as washing one's face and hands, because
what you think _touches_ others all day long, and all night long too--
in sleep.'
'Only she couldn't write it?' asked Rogers. His tongue was like a
thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who
hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself
with intimate accuracy.
'She can telegraph, she says, but she can't write!'
'An expensive talent,' thought the practical Minks.
'Oh, she's very rich, apparently. But isn't it odd? You see, she
thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even
had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight
collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent
the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can't write,
she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have
thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the
feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who
_would_ write it---'
'Almost a case of transference,' put in Minks.
'A fairy tale, yes, isn't it!'
'Married?' asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But
apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply.
He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to
drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question.
'What a fairy story for her children! How _they_ must love it!' This
time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.
'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said.
They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame
Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over
him once more. He heard Minks saying:--
'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down
the stairs, ... and then found himself washing his hands in stinging
hot water in his cousin's room.
'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won
Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long
name. They just call her the Little Countess--die kleine Grafin. She's
doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children...
the Montessori method, and all that....'
'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once
then?'
'She accepted Bourcelles rather--took it bodily into herself--our
poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest;
it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept
asking who Orion was--that's you, of course--and why you weren't
here---'
'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart,
yet knowing well the answer.
'Simply appropriated it--came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo
opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star
Cave. Oh, she's a remarkable being, you know, rather,' he went on more
gravely, 'with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once
what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew.
I think she _does_ know, if you ask me---'
'Lives the story in fact,' the other interrupted, hiding his face
rather in the towel, 'lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?'
'And, fancy this!' His voice had a glow and softness in it as he said
it, coming closer, and almost whispering, 'she wants to take Jinny and
Monkey for a bit and educate them.' He stood away to watch the effect
of the announcement. 'She even talks of sending Edward to Oxford,
too!' He cut a kind of wumbled caper in his pleasure and excitement.
'She loves children then, evidently?' asked the other, with a coolness
that was calculated to hide other feelings. He rubbed his face in the
rough towel as though the skin must come off. Then, suddenly dropping
the towel, he looked into his cousin's eyes a moment to ensure a
proper answer.
'Longs for children of her own, I think,' replied the author; 'one
sees it, feels it in all she says and does. Rather sad, you know,
that! An unmarried mother---'
'In fact,' put in Rogers lightly, 'the very character you needed to
play the principal role in your story. When you write the longer
version in book form you'll have to put her in.'
'And find her a husband too--which is a bore. I never write love
stories, you see. She's finer as she is at present--mothering the
world.'
Rogers's face, as he brushed his hair carefully before the twisted
mirror, was not visible.
There came a timid knock at the door.
'I'm ready, gentlemen, when you are,' answered the voice of Minks
outside.
They went downstairs together, and walked quickly over to the Pension
for supper. Rogers moved sedately enough so far as the others saw, yet
inwardly he pranced like a fiery colt in harness. There were golden
reins about his neck. Two tiny hands directed him from the Pleiades.
In this leash of sidereal fire he felt as though he flew. Swift
thought, flashing like a fairy whip, cut through the air from an
immense distance, and urged him forwards. Some one expected him and he
was late--years and years late. Goodness, how his companions crawled
and dawdled!
'... she doesn't come over for her meals,' he heard, 'but she'll join
us afterwards at the Den. You'll come too, won't you, Mr. Minks?'
'Thank you, I shall be most happy--if I'm not intruding,' was the
reply as they passed the fountain near the courtyard of the Citadelle.
The musical gurgle of its splashing water sounded to Rogers like a
voice that sang over and over again, 'Come up, come up, come up! You
must come up to me!'
'How brilliant your stars are out here, Mr. Campden,' Minks was saying
when they reached the door of La Poste. He stood aside to let the
others pass before him. He held the door open politely. 'No wonder you
chose them as the symbol for thought and sympathy in your story.' And
they climbed the narrow, creaking stairs and entered the little hall
where the entire population of the Pension des Glycines awaited them
with impatience.
The meal dragged out interminably. Everybody had so much to say.
Minks, placed between Mother and Miss Waghorn, talked volubly to the
latter and listened sweetly to all her stories. The excitement of the
Big Story, however, was in the air, and when she mentioned that she
looked forward to reading it, he had no idea, of course, that she had
already done so at least three times. The Review had replaced her
customary Novel. She went about with it beneath her arm. Minks,
feeling friendly and confidential, informed her that he, too,
sometimes wrote, and when she noted the fact with a deferential phrase
about 'you men of letters,' he rose abruptly to the seventh heaven of
contentment. Mother meanwhile, on the other side, took him bodily into
her great wumbled heart. 'Poor little chap,' her attitude said
plainly, 'I don't believe his wife half looks after him.' Before the
end of supper she knew all about Frank and Ronald, the laburnum tree
in the front garden, what tea they bought, and Albinia's plan for
making coal last longer by mixing it with coke.
Tante Jeanne talked furiously and incessantly, her sister-in-law told
her latest dream, and the Postmaster occasionally cracked a solemn
joke, laughing uproariously long before the point appeared. It was a
merry, noisy meal, and Henry Rogers sat through it upon a throne that
was slung with golden ropes from the stars. He was in Fairyland again.
Outside, the Pleiades were rising in the sky, and somewhere in
Bourcelles--in the rooms above Beguin's shop, to be exact--some one
was waiting, ready to come over to the Den. His thoughts flew wildly.
Passionate longing drove behind them. 'You must come up to me,' he
heard. They all were Kings and Queens.
He played his part, however; no one seemed to notice his
preoccupation. The voices sounded now far, now near, as though some
wind made sport with them; the faces round him vanished and
reappeared; but he contrived cleverly, so that none remarked upon his
absent-mindedness. Constellations do not stare at one another much.
'Does your Mother know you're "out"?' asked Monkey once beside him--it
was the great joke now, since the Story had been read--and as soon as
she was temporarily disposed of, Jimbo had serious information to
impart from the other side. 'She's a real Countess,' he said, speaking
as man to man. 'I suppose if she went to London she'd know the King--
visit him, like that?'
Bless his little heart! Jimbo always knew the important things to talk
about.
There were bursts of laughter sometimes, due usually to statements
made abruptly by Jane Anne--as when Mother, discussing the garden with
Minks, reviled the mischievous birds:--
'They want thinning badly,' she said.
'Why don't they take more exercise, then?' inquired Jinny gravely.
And in these gusts of laughter Rogers joined heartily, as though he
knew exactly what the fun was all about. In this way he deceived
everybody and protected himself from discovery. And yet it seemed to
him that he shouted his secret aloud, not with his lips indeed, but
with his entire person. Surely everybody knew it...! He was self-
conscious as a schoolgirl.
'You must come up--to me,' rang continuously through his head like
bells. 'You must come up to me.' _