Yet, curiously enough, when Reason had set down the figures accurately, as he fancied, and totted up the trifling totals, there flitted before him something more that refused to be set down upon the paper. The Ledger had no lines for it. What was it? Why was it pleasant, even flattering? Why did it mitigate his discontent and lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but, though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something had been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire, yearning, hope—that, after all, a result had perhaps been achieved, a result he himself was not properly aware of—a result of that incalculable spiritual kind that escapes the chains of definite description. For he recalled—yet mortified a little the memory should flatter—that his cousin had netted Beauty in his story, and that Mother had spoken of living with greater carelessness and peace, and that each had thanked him as though he were the cause.
And these memories, half thought, half feeling, were comforting and delicious, so that he revelled in them lingeringly, and wished that they were really true. For, if true, they were immensely significant. Any one with a purse could build a hospital or pay an education fee, but to be helpful because of being oneself was a vast, incalculable power, something direct from God… and his thoughts, wandering on thus between fact and fantasy, led him back with a deep inexplicable thrill again to—the Pleiades, whose beauty, without their being aware of it, shines nightly for all who can accept it. Here was the old, old truth once more-that the left hand must not know what the right is doing, and that to be is of greater importance than to do. Here was Fairyland once more, the Fairyland he had just left. To think beauty and love is to become them, to shed them forth without realising it. A Fairy blesses because she is a Fairy, not because she turns a pumpkin into a coach and four…. The Pleiades do not realise how their loveliness may….
Rogers started. For the thought had borrowed a tune from the rhythm of the wheels and sleepers, and he had uttered the words aloud in his corner. Luckily he had the carriage to himself. He flushed. Again a tender and very exquisite thing had touched him somewhere…. It was in that involuntary connection his dreaming had found between a Fairy and the Pleiades. Wings of gauzy gold shone fluttering a moment before his inner sight, then vanished. He was aware of some one very dear and wild and tender, with amber eyes and little twinkling feet—some one whom the Great Tale brought almost within his reach…. He literally had seen stars for an instant—a star! Its beauty brimmed him up. He laughed in his corner. This thing, whatever it was, had been coming nearer for some time. These hints of sudden joy that breathe upon a sensitive nature, how mysterious, how wildly beautiful, how stimulating they are! But whence, in the name of all the stars, do they come? A great happiness passed flaming through his heart, an extraordinary sense of anticipation in it—as though he were going to meet some one who—who—well, what?—who was a necessity and a delight to him, the complement needed to make his life effective—some one he loved abundantly—who would love him abundantly in return. He recalled those foolish lines he had written on sudden impulse once, then thrown away….
Thought fluttered and went out. He could not seize the elusive cause of this delicious joy. It was connected with the Pleiades, but how, where, why? Above the horizon of his life a new star was swimming into glory. It was rising. The inexplicable emotion thrilled tumultuously, then dived back again whence it came… It had to do with children and with a woman, it seemed, for the next thing he knew was that he was thinking of children, children of his own, and of the deep yearning Bourcelles had stirred again in him to find their Mother… and, next, of his cousin’s story and that wonderful detail in it that the principal role was filled at last, the role in the great Children’s Play he himself had felt was vacant. It was to be filled by that childless Mother the writer’s imagination had discovered or created. And again the Pleiades lit up his inner world and beckoned to him with their little fingers of spun gold; their eyes of clouded amber smiled into his own. It was most extraordinary and delightful. There was something—come much closer this time, almost within reach of discovery—something he ought to remember about them, something he had promised to remember, then stupidly forgotten. The lost, hidden joy was a torture. Yet, try as he would, no revelation came to clear the matter up. Had he read it somewhere perhaps? Or was it part of the Story his cousin had wumbled into his ear when he only partly listened?
‘I believe I dreamed it,’ he smiled to himself at last in despair. ‘I do believe it was a dream—a fragment of some jolly dream I had in my Fairyland of little Bourcelles!’
Children, stars, Fairyland, dreams—these brought it somehow. His cousin’s story also had to do with it, chiefly perhaps after all—this great story.
‘I shall have to go back there to get hold of it completely,’ he added with conviction. He almost felt as if some one were thinking hard about him—one of the characters in the story, it seemed. The mind of some one far away, as yet unknown, was searching for him in thought, sending forth strong definite yearnings which came to rest of their own accord in his own being, a garden naturally suited to their growth. The creations of his boyhood’s imagination had survived, the Sweep, the Dustman, and the Lamplighter, then why not the far more powerful creations in the story…? Thought was never lost!
‘But no man in his senses can believe such a thing!’ he exclaimed, as the train ran booming through the tunnel.
‘That’s the point,’ whispered a voice beside him. ‘You are out of your senses. Otherwise you could not feel it!’
He turned sharply. The carriage was empty; there was no one there. It was, of course, another part of himself that supplied the answer; yet it startled him. The blurred reflection of the lamp, he noticed, cast a picture against the black tunnel wall that was like a constellation. The Pleiades again! It almost seemed as if the voice had issued from that false reflection in the shaking window-pane….
The train emerged from the tunnel. He rushed out into the blaze of the Interfering Sun. The lovely cluster vanished like a dream, and with it the hint of explanation melted down in dew. Fields sped past with a group of haystacks whose tarpaulin skirts spread and lifted in the gust of wind the train made. He thought abruptly of Mother…. Perhaps, after all, he had taught her something, shown her Existence as a big, streaming, endless thing in which months and years, possibly even life itself, were merely little sections, each unintelligible unless viewed as portions of the Whole, and not as separate, difficult, puzzling items set apart. Possibly he had drawn her map to bigger scale, increased her faith, given her more sense of repose and peace, more courage therefore. She thought formerly of a day, but not of its relation to all days before and behind. She stuck her husband’s ‘reviews’ in the big book, afflicted by the poor financial results they represented, but was unable to think of his work as a stage in a long series of development and progress, no effort lost, no single hope mislaid. And that was something—if he had accomplished it. Only, he feared he had not. There was the trouble. There lay the secret of a certain ineffectiveness in his character. For he did not realise that fear is simply suppressed desire, vivid signs of life, and that desire is the ultimate causative agent everywhere and always. ‘Behind Will stands Desire,’ and Desire is Action.
And if he had accomplished this, how was it done? Not by preaching, certainly. Was it, then, simply by being, thinking, feeling it? A glorious thought, if true! For assuredly he had this faculty of seeing life whole, and even in boyhood he had looked ahead over its entire map. He had, indeed, this way of relating all its people, and all its parts together, instead of seeing them separate, unintelligible because the context was left out. He lived intensely in the present, yet looked backwards and forwards too at the same time. This large sympathy, this big comforting vision was his gift. Cons
equently he believed in Life. Had he also, then, the gift of making others feel and believe it too…?
There he was again, thinking in a circle, as Laroche flew past with its empty platforms, and warned him that Paris was getting close. He bumped out of Fairyland, yet tumbled back once more for a final reverie before the long ugly arms of the city snatched him finally out. ‘To see life whole,’ he reflected, ‘is to see it glorious. To think one’s self part of humanity at large is to bring the universe down into the heart. But to see life whole, a whole heart is necessary…. He’s done it in that splendid story, and he bagged the raw idea somehow from me. That’s something at any rate. … So few think Beaaty…. But will others see it? That’s the point!’
‘No, it isn’t,’ answered the voice beside him. ‘The point is that he has thought it, and the universe is richer. Even if others do not read or understand, what he has thought is there now, for ever and ever.’
‘True,’ he reflected, ‘for that Beauty may float down and settle in other minds when they least are looking for it, and ignoring utterly whence comes the fairy touch. Divine! Delicious! Heavenly!’
‘The Beauty he has written came through you, yet was not yours,’ the voice continued very faintly. ‘A far more beautiful mind first projected it into that network which binds all minds together. ‘Twas thence you caught it flying, and, knowing not how to give it shape, transferred it to another—who could use it—for others…. Thought is Life, and Sympathy is living….’
The voice died away; he could not hear the remainder clearly; the passing scenery caught his attention again; during his reverie it had been unnoticed utterly. ‘Thought is Life, but Sympathy is living—-’ it rolled and poured through him as he repeated it. Snatches of another sentence then came rising into him from an immense distance, falling upon him from immeasurable heights—barely audible:-
‘… from a mind that so loved the Pleiades she made their loveliness and joy her own… Alcyone, Merope, Maia…’ It dipped away into silence like a flower closing for the night, and the train, he realised, was slackening speed as it drew into the hideous Gare de Lyon.
‘I’ll talk to Minks about it, perhaps,’ he thought, as he stood telling the Customs official that he had no brandy, cigarettes, or lace. ‘He knows about things like that. At any rate, he’ll sympathise.’
He went across Paris to the Gare du Nord, and caught the afternoon boat train to London. The sunshine glared up from the baking streets, but he never forgot that overhead, though invisible, the stars were shining all the time—Starlight, the most tender and least suspected light in all the world, shining bravely even when obscured by the Interfering Sun, and the Pleiades, softest, sweetest little group among them all.
And when at eleven o’clock he entered his St. James’s flat, he took a store of it shining in his heart, and therefore in his eyes. Only that was no difficult matter, for all the lamps far up the heights were lit and gleaming, and caught old mighty London in their gorgeous net.
CHAPTER XXIX
..................
Think with passion
That shall fashion
Life’s entire design, well planned.
Woman of the Haystack.
‘You are looking so wonderfully well, Mr. Rogers,’ Minks observed at Charing Cross Station, ‘the passage across the Channel, I trust, was calm.’
‘And yourself and Mrs. Minks?’ asked Rogers, looking into the equally sunburned face of his secretary, remembering suddenly that he had been to the sea with his family; ‘Frank, too, and the other children? All well, I hope?’
‘All in excellent health, Mr. Rogers, thanks to your generous thought.
My wife—-’
‘These are the small bags,’ the other interrupted, ‘and here are the keys for my portmanteaux. There’s nothing dutiable. You might bring them on to the flat while I run over to the Club for a bit of supper, Minks.’
‘Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Rogers,’ was the beaming reply. ‘And
Mrs. Minks begged me to tell you—-’
Only Rogers was already in his taxi-cab and out of ear-shot.
‘How well he looks!’ reflected Minks, dangling the keys, accustomed to these abrupt interruptions, and knowing that his message had been understood and therefore duly delivered. These cut-off sentences were like a secret code between them. ‘And ten years younger! Almost like a boy again. I wonder if—-’ He did not permit himself to finish the thought. He tried to remember if he himself had looked like that perhaps in the days of long ago when he courted Albinia Lucy—an air of joy and secrecy and an absent-minded manner that might any moment flame into vehement, concentrated action. For this was the impression his employer had made upon him. Only he could not quite remember those far-off, happy days. There was ecstasy in them; that he knew. And there was ecstasy in Henry Rogers now; that he divined.
‘He oughtn’t to,’ he reflected, as he hurried in another taxi with the luggage. ‘All his yearnings would be satisfied if he did, his life flow into a single channel instead of into many.’
He did not think about his own position and his salary.
‘He won’t,’ he decided as the cab stopped at the door; ‘he’s not that kind of man.’ Minks had insight; he knew men. ‘No artist ever ought to. We are so few, and the world has need of us.’ His own case was an exception that had justified itself, for he was but a man of talent, and talent did not need an exclusive asceticism; whereas his employer was a man of genius, and no one woman had the right to monopolise what was intended to sweeten the entire universe.
By the time the luggage had been taken up, he had missed the last tram home, and his sleep that night must in any case be short. Yet he took no note of that. One must live largely. A small sacrifice for such a master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat sleeve when the door opened and Henry Rogers came upon him.
‘Ah! I waited a moment, Mr. Rogers. I thought you might have something to say before I went, perhaps.’
‘I hoped you would, Minks. I have a great deal to say. It can wait till to-morrow, really—only I wanted—but, there now, I forgot; you have to get down to Sydenham, haven’t you? And it’s late already—-’
‘That’s nothing, Mr. Rogers. I can easily sleep in town. I came prepared, indeed, to do so—-’ as though he, too, had his Club and would take a bedroom in it.
‘Clever and thoughtful of you, Minks!’
‘Only you must be tired after your journey,’ suggested the secretary.
‘Tired!’ exclaimed the other vigorously, ‘not a bit! I’m as fresh as a st—a daisy, I mean. Come, draw your chair up; we’ll have a smoke and a little chat. I’m delighted to see you again. How are you? And how’s everything?’
Goodness! How bright his eyes were, how alert his manner! He looked so young, almost springy, thought Minks, as he obeyed decorously, feeling flattered and pleased, yet at the same time uneasy a little. Such spirits could only proceed, he feared, from one cause. He was a close observer, as all poets had need to be. He would discover some clue before he went to bed, something that should betray the true state of affairs. In any case sleep would be impossible unless he did.
‘You stayed away somewhat longer than you originally intended,’ he ventured at length, having briefly satisfied his employer’s question. ‘You found genuine recreation. You needed it, I’m sure.’ He glanced with one eye at the letters.
‘Re-creation, yes; the very word. It was difficult to leave. The place was so delightful,’ said Rogers simply, filling his pipe and lighting it. ‘A wonderful mountain village, Minks,’ he added, between puffs of smoke, while the secretary, who had been waiting for the sign, then lit his own Virginian and smoked it diffidently, and with just the degree of respect he felt was becoming. He never presumed upon his master’s genial
way of treating him. He made little puffs and was very careful with the ashes.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said; ‘I am sure it must have been—both delightful and —er—difficult to leave.’ He recalled the Margate sands, bathing with Albinia and digging trenches with the children. He had written many lyrics during those happy weeks of holiday.
‘Gave one, in fact, quite a new view of life—and work. There was such space and beauty everywhere. And my cousin’s children simply would not let me go.’
There was a hint of apology and excuse in the tone and words—the merest hint, but Minks noticed it and liked the enthusiasm. ‘He’s been up to some mischief; he feels a little ashamed; his work—his Scheme— has been so long neglected; conscience pricks him. Ha, ha!’ The secretary felt his first suspicion confirmed. ‘Cousin’s children,’ perhaps! But who else?
‘He made a tactful reference—oh, very slight and tentative—to the data he had collected for the Scheme, but the other either did not hear it, or did not wish to hear it. He brushed it aside, speaking through clouds of tobacco smoke. Minks enjoyed a bigger, braver puff at his own. Excitement grew in him.
‘Just the kind of place you would have loved, Minks,’ Rogers went on with zeal. ‘I think you really must go there some day; cart your family over, teach the children French, you know, and cultivate a bit of vineyard. Such fine big forests, too, full of wild flowers and things—O such lovely hand-made things—why, you could almost see the hand that made ‘em.’ The phrase had slipped suddenly into his mind.
‘Really, really, Mr. Rogers, but how very jo—delightful it sounds.’ He thought of the stubble fields and treeless sea-coast where he had been. The language, however, astonished him. Enthusiasm like this could only spring from a big emotion. His heart sank a little.
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