_ Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Doctor Famtus, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.
The plop of a water-rat in the pond that occupied the rock-garden in
the middle of the lawn brought him back to earth, and the Vicar's
invitation to tea flashed across his mind.
'Stock Exchange and typewriters!' he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think
me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long,
yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted
zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of
star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard used to call them.
'And I shall miss my supper and bed into the bargain!'
He turned reluctantly from his place beside the lime trees, and
crossed the lawn now wet with dew. The whole house seemed to turn its
hooded head and watch him go, staring with amusement in its many
lidless eyes. On the front lawn there was more light, for it faced the
dying sunset. The Big and Little Cedar rose from their pools of
shadow, beautifully poised. Like stately dowagers in voluminous skirts
of velvet they seemed to curtsey to him as he passed. Stars like
clusters of sprinkled blossoms hung upon their dignified old heads.
The whole place seemed aware of him. Glancing a moment at the upper
nursery windows, he could just distinguish the bars through which his
little hands once netted stars, and as he did so a meteor shot across
the sky its flashing light of wonder. Behind the Little Cedar it dived
into the sunset afterglow. And, hardly had it dipped away, when
another, coming crosswise from the south, drove its length of molten,
shining wire straight against the shoulder of the Big Cedar.
The whole performance seemed arranged expressly for his benefit. The
Net was loosed--this Net of Stars and Thoughts--perhaps to go
elsewhere. For this was taking out the golden nails, surely. It would
hardly have surprised him next to see the Starlight Express he had
been dreaming about dart across the heavens overhead. That cool air
stealing towards him from the kitchen-garden might well have been the
wind of its going. He could almost hear the distant rush and murmur of
its flying mass.
'How extraordinarily vivid it all was!' he thought to himself, as he
hurried down the drive. 'What detail! What a sense of reality! How
carefully I must have _thought_ these creatures as a boy! How
thoroughly! And what a good idea to go out and see Jack's children at
Bourcelles. They've never known these English sprites. I'll introduce
'em!'
He thought it out in detail, very vividly indeed. His imagination
lingered over it and gave it singular reality.
Up the road he fairly ran. For Henry Rogers was a punctual man; these
last twenty years he had never once been late for anything. It had
been part of the exact training he had schooled himself with, and the
Vicar's invitation was not one he desired to trifle with. He made his
peace, indeed, easily enough, although the excuses sounded a little
thin. It was something of a shock, too, to find that the married
daughter after all was not the blue-eyed girl of his boyhood's
passion. For it was Joan, not May, who came down the gravel path
between the roses to greet him.
On the way up he had felt puzzled. Yet 'bemused,' perhaps, is the word
that Herbert Minks would have chosen for one of his poems, to describe
a state of mind he, however, had never experienced himself. And he
would have chosen it instinctively--for onomatopoeic reasons--because
it hums and drones and murmurs dreamily. 'Puzzled' was too sharp a
word.
Yet Henry Rogers, who felt it, said 'puzzled' without more ado,
although mind, imagination, memory all hummed and buzzed pleasantly
about his ears even while he did so.
'A dream is a dream,' he reflected as he raced along the familiar
dusty road in the twilight, 'and a reverie is a reverie; but that, I'd
swear, went a bit further than either one or t'other. It puzzles me.
Does vivid thinking, I wonder, make pictures everywhere?... And--can
they last?'
For the detailed reality of the experience had been remarkable, and
the actuality of those childhood's creations scarcely belonged to
dream or reverie. They were certainly quite as real as the sleek
Directors who sat round the long Board Room table, fidgeting with fat
quill pens and pewter ink-pots; more alive even than the Leading
Shareholder who rose so pompously at Annual Meetings to second the
resolution that the 'Report and Balance Sheet be adopted without
criticism.'
And he was conscious that in himself rose, too, a deep, passionate
willingness to accept the whole experience, also 'without criticism.'
Those picturesque passengers in the Starlight Express he knew so
intimately, so affectionately, that he actually missed them. He felt
that he had said good-bye to genuine people. He regretted their
departure, and was keenly sorry he had not gone off with them--such a
merry, wild, adventurous crew! He must find them again, whatever
happened. There was a yearning in him to travel with that blue-eyed
guard among the star-fields. He would go out to Bourcelles and tell
the story to the children. He thought very hard indeed about it all.
And now, in the Vicarage drawing-room after dinner, his bemusement
increased rather than grew less. His mind had already confused a face
and name. The blue-eyed May was not, after all, the girl of his
boyhood's dream. His memory had been accurate enough with the
passengers in the train. There was no confusion there. But this gentle
married woman, who sang to her own accompaniment at her father's
request, was not the mischievous, wilful creature who had teased and
tortured his heart in years gone by, and had helped him construct the
sprites and train and star-trips. It was, surely, the other daughter
who had played that delicious role. Yet, either his memory was at
fault, or the Vicar had mixed the names up. The years had played this
little unimportant trick upon him anyhow. And that was clear.
But if with so-called real people such an error was possible, how
could he be sure of anything? Which after all, he asked himself, was
real? It was the Vicar's mistake, he learned later, for May was now a
teacher in London; but the trivial incident served to point this
confusion in his mind between an outer and an inner world--to the
disadvantage, if anything, of the former.
And over the glass of port together, while they talked pleasantly of
vanished days, Rogers was conscious that a queer, secret amusement
sheltered in his heart, due to some faint, superior knowledge that
this Past they spoke of had not moved away at all, but listened with
fun and laughter just behind his shoulder, watching them. The old
gentleman seemed never tired of remembering his escapades. He told
them one after another, like some affectionate nurse or mother, Rogers
thought, whose children were--to her--unique and wonderful. For he had
really loved this good-for-nothing pupil, loved him the more, as
mothers and nurses do, because of the trouble he had given, and
because of his busy and fertile imagination. It made Rogers feel
ridiculously young again as he listened. He could almost have played a
trick upon him then and there, merely to justify the tales. And once
or twice he actually called him 'Sir.' So that even the conversation
helped to deepen this bemusement that gathered somewhat tenderly about
his mind. He cracked his walnuts and watched the genial, peace-lit
eyes across the table. He chuckled. Both chuckled. They spoke of his
worldly success too--it seemed unimportant somehow now, although he
was conscious that something in him expected, nay demanded tribute--
but the former tutor kept reverting to the earlier days before
achievement.
'You were indeed a boy of mischief, wonder, and mystery,' he said, his
eyes twinkling and his tone almost affectionate; 'you made the whole
place alive with those creatures of your imagination. How Joan helped
you too--or was it May? I used to wonder sometimes--' he glanced up
rather searchingly at his companion a moment--' whether the people who
took the Manor House after your family left did not encounter them
sometimes upon the lawn or among the shrubberies in the dusk--those
sprites of yours. Eh?' He passed a neatly pared walnut across the
table to his guest. 'These ghosts that people nowadays explain
scientifically--what are they but thoughts visualised by vivid
thinking such as yours was--creative thinking? They may be just
pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist
for centuries and reach other minds direct They're not seen with the
outer eye; that's certain, for no two people ever see them together.
But I'm sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just
as clearly as some folk see Grey Ladies and the rest flit down the
stairs at midnight.'
They munched their walnuts a moment in silence. Rogers listened very
keenly. How curious, he reflected, that the talk should lie this way.
But he said nothing, hoping that the other would go on.
'And if you really believed in your things,' the older man continued
presently, 'as I am sure you did believe, then your old Dustman and
Sweep and Lamplighter, your Woman of the Haystack and your Net of
Stars and Star Train--all these, for instance, must still be living,
where you left them, waiting perhaps for your return to lead their
fresh adventures.'
Rogers stared at him, choking a little over a nut he had swallowed too
hurriedly.
'Yet,' mused on the other, 'it's hardly likely the family that
succeeded you met them. There were no children!'
'Ah,' exclaimed the pupil impulsively, 'that's significant, yes--no
children.' He looked up quickly, questioningly.
'Very, I admit.'
'Besides, the chief Magician had gone away into the City. They
wouldn't answer to anybody's call, you know.'
'True again. But the Magician never forgot them quite, I'll be bound,'
he added. 'They're only in hiding till his return, perhaps!' And his
bright eyes twinkled knowingly.
'But, Vicar, really, you know, that is an extraordinary idea you have
there-a wonderful idea. Do you really think--?'
'I only mean,' the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man
thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It's in the heart
that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it--
grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action
is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys,
I always say to children, or you'll surely see them.'
'Ah, in _that_ sense--!'
'In any sense your mind and intuition can grasp. The thought that
leaves your brain, provided it be a real thought strongly fashioned,
goes all over the world, and may reach any other brain tuned to its
acceptance. _You_ should understand that!' he laughed significantly.
'I do,' said Rogers hastily, as though he felt ashamed of himself or
were acknowledging a fault in his construing of Homer. 'I understand
it perfectly. Only I put all those things--imaginative things--aside
when I went into business. I had to concentrate my energies upon
making money.'
'You did, yes. Ah!' was the rejoinder, as though he would fain have
added, 'And was that wise?'
'And I made it, Vicar; you see, I've made it.' He was not exactly
nettled, but he wanted a word of recognition for his success. 'But you
know why, don't you?' he added, ashamed the same moment. There was a
pause, during which both looked closely at their broken nuts. From one
of the men came a sigh.
'Yes,' resumed the older man presently, 'I remember your great dream
perfectly well, and a noble one it was too. Its fulfilment now, I
suppose, lies well within your reach? You have the means to carry it
out, eh? You have indeed been truly blessed.' He eyed him again with
uncommon keenness, though a smile ran from the eyes and mouth even up
to the forehead and silvery hair. 'The world, I see, has not yet
poisoned you. To carry it out as you once explained it to me would be
indeed success. If I remember rightly,' he added, 'it was a--er--a
Scheme for Disabled--'
Rogers interrupted him quickly. 'And I am full of the same big dream
still,' he repeated almost shyly. 'The money I have made I regard as
lent to me for investment. I wish to use it, to give it away as one
gives flowers. I feel sure--'
He stopped abruptly, caught by the glow of enthusiasm that had leaped
into the other's face with a strangely beautiful expression.
'You never did anything by halves, I remember,' the Vicar said,
looking at him proudly. 'You were always in earnest, even in your
play, and I don't mind telling you that I've often prayed for
something of that zeal of yours--that zeal for others. It's a
remarkable gift. You will never bury it, will you?' He spoke eagerly,
passionately, leaning forward a little across the table. 'Few have it
nowadays; it grows rarer with the luxury and self-seeking of the age.
It struck me so in you as a boy, that even your sprites worked not for
themselves but for others--your Dustman, your Sweep, your absurd
Lamplighter, all were busy doing wonderful things to help their
neighbours, all, too, without reward.'
Rogers flushed like a boy. But he felt the thrill of his dream course
through him like great fires. Wherein was any single thing in the
world worth doing, any object of life worth following, unless as means
to an end, and that end helping some one else. One's own little
personal dreams became exhausted in a few years, endeavours for self
smothered beneath the rain of disappointments; but others, and work
for others, this was endless and inexhaustible.
'I've sometimes thought,' he heard the older man going on, 'that in
the dusk I saw'--his voice lowered and he glanced towards the windows
where the rose trees stood like little figures, cloaked and bonneted
with beauty beneath the stars--'that I saw your Dustman scattering his
golden powder as he came softly up the path, and that some of it
reached my own eyes, too; or that your swift Lamplighter lent me a
moment his gold-tipped rod of office so that I might light fires of
hope in suffering hearts here in this tiny world of my own parish.
Your dreadful Head Gardener, too! And your Song of the Blue-Eyes
Fairy,' he added slyly, almost mischievously, 'you remember that, I
wonder?'
'H'm--a little, yes--something,' replied Rogers confusedly. 'It was a
dreadful doggerel. But I've got a secretary now,' he continued
hurriedly and in rather a louder voice,' a fellow named Minks, a jewel
really of a secretary he is--and he, I believe, can write real--'
'It was charming enough for us all to have remembered it, anyhow,' the
Vicar stopped him, smiling at his blushes,' and for May--or was it
Joan? dear me, how I do forget names!--to have set it to music. She
had a little gift that way, you may remember; and, before she took up
teaching she wrote one or two little things like that.'
'Ah, did she really?' murmured the other. He scarcely knew what he was
saying, for a mist of blue had risen before his eyes, and in it he was
seeing pictures. 'The Spell of Blue, wasn't it, or something like
that?' he said a moment later, 'blue, the colour of beauty in flowers,
sea, sky, distance--the childhood colour par excellence?'
'But chiefly in the eyes of children, yes,' the Vicar helped him,
rising at the same time from the table. 'It was the spell, the
passport, the open sesame to most of your adventures. Come now, if you
won't have another glass of port, and we'll go into the drawing-room,
and Joan, May I mean--no, Joan, of course, shall sing it to you. For
this is a very special occasion for us, you know,' he added as they
passed across the threshold side by side. 'To see you is to go back
with you to Fairyland.'
The piano was being idly strummed as they went in, and the player was
easily persuaded to sing the little song. It floated through the open
windows and across the lawn as the two men in their corners listened.
She knew it by heart, as though she often played it. The candles were
not lit. Dusk caught the sound and muted it enchantingly. And somehow
the simple melody helped to conceal the meagreness of the childish
words. Everywhere, from sky and lawn and solemn trees, the Past came
softly in and listened too.
There's a Fairy that hides in the beautiful eyes
Of children who treat her well;
In the little round hole where the eyeball lies
She weaves her magical spell.
Oh, tell it to me,
Oh, how can it be,
This Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy.
Well,--the eyes must be blue,
And the heart must be true,
And the child must be _better_ than gold;
And then, if you'll let her,
The quicker the better,
She'll make you forget that you're old,
That you're heavy and stupid, and--old!
So, if such a child you should chance to see,
Or with such a child to play,
No matter how weary and dull you be,
Nor how many tons you weigh;
You will suddenly find that you're young again,
And your movements are light and airy,
And you'll try to be solemn and stiff in vain--
It's the Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy!
Now I've told it to you,
And you _know_ it is true--
It's the Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy!
'And it's the same spell,' said the old man in his corner as the last
notes died away, and they sat on some minutes longer in the fragrant
darkness, 'that you cast about us as a boy, Henry Rogers, when you
made that wonderful Net of Stars and fastened it with your comets'
nails to the big and little cedars. The one catches your heart, you
see, while the other gets your feet and head and arms till you're a
hopeless prisoner--a prisoner in Fairyland.'
'Only the world to-day no longer believes in Fairyland,' was the
reply, 'and even the children have become scientific. Perhaps it's
only buried though. The two ought to run in harness really--opposite
interpretations of the universe. One might revive it--here and there
perhaps. Without it, all the tenderness seems leaking out of life--'
Joan presently said good-night, but the other two waited on a little
longer; and before going to bed they took a turn outside among the
flower-beds and fruit-trees that formed the tangled Vicarage garden at
the back. It was uncommonly warm for a night in early spring. The
lilacs were in bud, and the air most exquisitely scented.
Rogers felt himself swept back wonderfully among his early years. It
seemed almost naughty to be out at such an hour instead of asleep in
bed. It was quite ridiculous--but he loved the feeling and let himself
go with happy willingness. The story of 'Vice Versa,' where a man
really became a boy again, passed through his mind and made him laugh.
And the old Vicar kept on feeding the semi-serious mood with what
seemed almost intentional sly digs. Yet the digs were not intentional,
really; it was merely that his listener, already prepared by his
experience with the Starlight Express, read into them these searching
meanings of his own. Something in him was deeply moved.
'You might make a great teacher, you know,' suggested his companion,
stooping to sniff a lilac branch as they paused a moment. 'I thought
so years ago; I think so still. You've kept yourself so simple.'
'How not to do most things,' laughed the other, glad of the darkness.
'How to do the big and simple things,' was the rejoinder; 'and do them
well, without applause. You have Belief.'
'Too much, perhaps. I simply can't get rid of it.'
'Don't try to. It's belief that moves the world; people want teachers
--that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in
miniature, after all--but they won't listen to a teacher who hasn't
got it. There are no great poets to-day, only great discoverers. The
poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone--starved out of life by
ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible. With
your imagination and belief you might help a world far larger than
this parish of mine at any rate. I envy you.'
Goodness! how the kind eyes searched his own in this darkness. Though
little susceptible to flattery, he was aware of something huge the
words stirred in the depths of him, something far bigger than he yet
had dreamed of even in his boyhood, something that made his cherished
Scheme seem a little pale and faded.
'Take the whole world with you into fairyland,' he heard the low voice
come murmuring in his ear across the lilacs. And there was starlight
in it--that gentle, steady brilliance that steals into people while
they sleep and dream, tracing patterns of glory they may recognise
when they wake, yet marvelling whence it came. 'The world wants its
fairyland back again, and won't be happy till it gets it.'
A bird listening to them in the stillness sang a little burst of song,
then paused again to listen.
'Once give them of your magic, and each may shape his fairyland as he
chooses...' the musical voice ran on.
The flowers seemed alive and walking. This was a voice of beauty. Some
lilac bud was singing in its sleep. Sirius had dropped a ray across
its lips of blue and coaxed it out to dance. There was a murmur and a
stir among the fruit-trees too. The apple blossoms painted the
darkness with their tiny fluttering dresses, while old Aldebaran
trimmed them silently with gold, and partners from the Milky Way swept
rustling down to lead the violets out. Oh, there was revelry to-night,
and the fairy spell of the blue-eyed Spring was irresistible....
'But the world will never dance,' he whispered sadly, half to himself
perhaps; 'it's far too weary.'
'It will follow a leader,' came the soft reply, 'who dances well and
pipes the true old music so that it can hear. Belief inspires it
always. And that Belief you have.' There was a curious vibration in
his voice; he spoke from his heart, and his heart was evidently moved.
'I wonder when it came to me, then, and how?'
The Vicar turned and faced him where they stood beneath the lime
trees. Their scent was pouring out as from phials uncorked by the
stars.
'It came,' he caught the answer that thrilled with earnestness, 'when
you saw the lame boy on the village hill and cried. As long ago as
that it came.'
His mind, as he listened, became a plot of fresh-turned earth the Head
Gardener filled with flowers. A mass of covering stuff the years had
laid ever thicker and thicker was being shovelled away. The flowers he
saw being planted there were very tiny ones. But they would grow. A
leaf from some far-off rocky mount of olive trees dropped fluttering
through the air and marvellously took root and grew. He felt for a
moment the breath of night air that has been tamed by an eastern sun.
He saw a group of men, bare-headed, standing on the slopes, and in
front of them a figure of glory teaching little, simple things they
found it hard to understand....
'You have the big and simple things alive in you,' the voice carried
on his pictured thought among the flowers. 'In your heart they lie all
waiting to be used. Nothing can smother them. Only-you must give them
out.'
'If only I knew how--!'
'Keep close to the children,' sifted the strange answer through the
fruit-trees; 'the world is a big child. And catch it when it lies
asleep--not thinking of itself,' he whispered.
'The time is so short--'
'At forty you stand upon the threshold of life, with values learned
and rubbish cleared away. So many by that time are already dead--in
heart. I envy your opportunities ahead. You have learned already one
foundation truth--the grandeur of toil and the insignificance of
acquisition. The other foundation thing is even simpler--you have a
neighbour. Now, with your money to give as flowers, and your Belief to
steer you straight, you have the world before you. And--keep close to
the children.'
'Before there are none left,' added Rogers under his breath. But the
other heard the words and instantly corrected him--
'Children of any age, and wherever you may find them.'
And they turned slowly and made their way in silence across the
soaking lawn, entering the house by the drawing-room window.
'Good-night,' the old man said, as he lit his candle and led him to
his room; 'and pleasant, happy, inspiring dreams.'
He seemed to say it with some curious, heartfelt meaning in the common
words. He disappeared slowly down the passage, shading the candle with
one hand to pick his way, and Rogers watched him out of sight, then
turned and entered his own room, closing the door as softly as
possible behind him.
It had been an astonishing conversation. All his old enthusiasm was
stirred. Embers leaped to flame. No woman ever had done as much. This
old fellow, once merely respected tutor, had given him back his first
original fire and zeal, yet somehow cleansed and purified. And it
humbled him at the same time. Dead leaves, dropped year by year in his
City life, were cleared away as though a mighty wind had swept him.
The Gardener was burning up dead leaves; the Sweep was cleaning out
the flues; the Lamplighter waving his golden signal in the sky--far
ahead, it is true, but gleaming like a torch and beacon. The Starlight
Express was travelling at top speed among the constellations. He stood
at the beginning of the important part of life....
And now, as he lay in bed and heard the owls hooting in the woods, and
smelt the flowers through the open window, his thoughts followed
strongly after that old Star Train that he used to drive about the
sky. He was both engine-driver and passenger. He fell asleep to dream
of it.
And all the vital and enchanting thoughts of his boyhood flowed back
upon him with a rush, as though they had never been laid aside. He
remembered particularly one singular thing about them--that they had
never seemed quite his own, but that he had either read or heard them
somewhere else. As a child the feeling was always strong that these
'jolly thoughts,' as he called them, were put into him by some one
else--some one who whispered to him--some one who lived close behind
his ears. He had to listen very hard to catch them. It was _not_
dreams, yet all night long, especially when he slept tightly, as he
phrased it, this fairy whispering continued, and in the daytime he
remembered what he could and made up his stories accordingly. He stole
these ideas about a Star Net and a Starlight Express. One day he would
be caught and punished for it. It was trespassing upon the preserves
of some one else.
Yet he could never discover who this some one else was, except that it
was a 'she' and lived among the stars, only coming out at night. He
imagined she hid behind that little dusty constellation called the
Pleiades, and that was why the Pleiades wore a veil and were so dim--
lest he should find her out. And once, behind the blue gaze of the
guard-girl, who was out of his heart by this time, he had known a
moment of thrilling wonder that was close to awe. He saw another pair
of eyes gazing out at him They were ambery eyes, as he called them--
just what was to be expected from a star. And, so great was the shock,
that at first he stood dead still and gasped, then dashed up suddenly
close to her and stared into her face, frightening her so much that
she fell backwards, and the amber eyes vanished instantly. It was the
'some one else' who whispered fairy stories to him and lived behind
his ear. For a second she had been marvellously close. And he had lost
her!
From that moment, however, his belief in her increased enormously, and
he never saw a pair of brown-ambery eyes without feeling sure that she
was somewhere close about him. The lame boy, for instance, had the
same delicate tint in his sad, long, questioning gaze. His own collie
had it too! For years it was an obsession with him, haunting and
wonderful--the knowledge that some one who watched close beside him,
filling his mind with fairy thoughts, might any moment gaze into his
face through a pair of ordinary familiar eyes. And he was certain that
all his star-imagination about the Net, the Starlight Express, and the
Cave of Lost Starlight came first into him from this hidden 'some one
else' who brought the Milky Way down into his boy's world of fantasy.
'If ever I meet her in real life,' he used to say, 'I'm done for. She
is my Star Princess!'
And now, as he fell asleep, the old atmosphere of that Kentish garden
drew thickly over him, shaking out clusters of stars about his bed.
Dreams usually are determined by something more remote than the talk
that has just preceded going to bed, but to-night it was otherwise.
And two things the old Vicar had let fall--two things sufficiently
singular, it seemed, when he came to think about them--influenced his
night adventures. 'Catch the world when it's asleep,' and 'Keep close
to the children'--these somehow indicated the route his dream should
follow. For he headed the great engine straight for the village in the
Jura pine woods where his cousin's children lived. He did not know
these children, and had seen his cousin but rarely in recent years;
yet, it seemed, they came to meet the train up among the mountain
forests somewhere. For in this village, where he had gone to study
French, the moods of his own childhood had somehow known continuation
and development. The place had once been very dear to him, and he had
known delightful adventures there, many of them with this cousin. Now
he took all his own childhood's sprites out in this Starlight Express
and introduced them to these transplanted children who had never made
acquaintance with the English breed. They had surprising, wild
adventures all together, yet in the morning he could remember very
little of it all. The interfering sun melted them all down in dew. The
adventures had some object, however; that was clear; though what the
object was, except that it did good somewhere to. some one, was gone,
lost in the deeps of sleep behind him. They scurried about the world.
The sprites were very active indeed--quite fussily energetic. And his
Scheme for Disabled Something-or other was not anywhere discoverable
in these escapades. That seemed forgotten rather, as though they found
bigger, more important things to do, and nearer home too. Perhaps the
Vicar's hint about the 'Neighbour' was responsible for that. Anyhow,
the dream was very vivid, even though the morning sun melted it away
so quickly and completely. It seemed continuous too. It filled the
entire night.
Yet the thing that Rogers took off with him to town next morning was,
more than any other detail, the memory of what the old tutor had said
about the living reality and persistence of figures that passionate
thinking has created--that, and the value of Belief. _