“Your body and mind,” the boy resumed, ignoring the pretence that laziness offered in place of information, “and all that kind of thing; trees and mountains, and birds and caterpillars and people like Aunt Emily, and clergymen and volcanoes and elephants—oh, everything in the world everywhere?”
There was another sigh. And another pause dropped down upon creation, while they watched a looper caterpillar that clung to the edge of the illustrated paper and made futile circles in the air with the knob it called its head. Some one had forgotten to let down the ladder it expected, or perhaps it, too, was asking unanswerable questions of the sun.
“I believe,” announced Judy, still smarting under a sense of recent neglect, “it just came from nowhere. It’s all in a great huge circle. And we go round and round and rounder,” she went on, as no one met her challenge, “till we’re finished!”
She avoided her brother’s eye, but glanced winningly at Uncle Felix, remembering that she had gained support from him before by a similar device. At Maria she looked down. “You know nothing anyhow,” her expression said, “so you must agree.”
“I don’t finish,” said Maria quietly, whereupon Tim, feeling that the original question was being shelved, made preparation to obliterate her—when Uncle Felix intervened with a longer observation of his own.
“It’s not such a bad idea,” he said, glancing sideways at Maria with approval, “that circle business. Everything certainly goes round. The earth is round, and the sun is round, and, as Maria says, a circle never finishes.” He paused, reflecting deeply.
“But who made the circle,” demanded Tim.
“That is the point,” agreed Uncle Felix, nodding his head. “Some one must have made it—some day—mustn’t they?”
They stared at him, as probably the animals stared at Adam, wondering what their splendid names were going to be. The yearning in their eyes was enough to make a rock produce sweet-scented thyme. Even the looper steadied its pin-point head to listen. But nothing happened. Uncle Felix looked dumber than the clock. He looked hot, confused, and muddled too. He kept his eyes upon the grass. He fumbled in his pockets for a match. He spoke no word.
“What?” asked Tim abruptly, by way of a hint that something further was expected of him.
Uncle Felix looked up with a start. Like Proteus who changed his shape to save himself the trouble of prophesying, he swiftly changed the key to save himself providing accurate information that he didn’t possess.
“It wasn’t a circle, exactly,” he said slowly; “it was a thought, a great, white, wonderful, shining thought. That’s what started the whole business first,” and he looked round hopefully at the eager faces. “Somebody thought it all,” he went on, recklessly, “and it all came true that way. See?”
They waited in silence for particulars.
“Somebody thought it all out first,” he elaborated, “and so it simply had to happen.”
There was an interval of some thirty seconds, and then Tim asked:
“But who thought him?” He said it with much emphasis.
Uncle Felix sat up with energy and lit his pipe. His listeners drew closer, with the exception of Maria, whose life seemed concentrated in her fixed and steady eyes.
“It’s like this, you see,” the man explained between the puffs; “if you go into the schoolroom, you find a lot of things lying about everywhere—blocks, toys, engines, and all sorts of things—don’t you?”
“Yes,” they agreed, without enthusiasm.
“Well,” he continued, “what’s the good of them until you think something about them—think them into something—some game or meaning or other? They’re nothing but a lot of useless stuff just lying untidily upon the floor. See what I mean?”
They nodded, but again without enthusiasm.
“With our End of the World place,” he went on, seeing that they listened attentively, “it’s the same again. It was nothing but a rubbish-heap until we thought it into something wonderful—which, of course, it is,” he hastened to add. “But by thinking about it, we discovered—we created it!”
They nodded again. Somebody grunted. Maria watched the caterpillar crawling up his sleeve.
“The things—the place and the toys,” he resumed hopefully, “were there all the time, but they meant nothing—they weren’t alive—until we thought about them.” He blew a cloud of smoke. “So, you see,” he continued with an effort, “if we could only think out what everything meant, we could—er—find out what—what everything meant—and where it came from. Everything would be all right, don’t you see?”
Judy’s expression was distraught and puzzled. Maria’s eyes were closed so tightly that her entire face seemed closed. The pause drew out.
“Yes, but where does everything come from?” inquired Tim calmly.
He valued the lengthy explanation at just exactly—nothing!
“Because there simply must be a beginning somewhere,” added Judy.
They were at the starting-point again. They had merely made a circle.
And Uncle Felix found himself in difficulties of his own creating. Where everything came from puzzled him as much as it puzzled the children, or the looper caterpillar that was now crawling from his flannel collar to his neck and contemplating the thicket of his dense back hair. Why ask these terrible questions? he thought, as he looked around at the sunshine and the trees. Life would be no happier if he knew. Since everything was already here, going along quite pleasantly and usefully, it really couldn’t help matters much to know precisely where it all came from. Possibly not. But it would have helped him enormously in his relations with the children—his particular world at the moment—if he could have provided them with a satisfactory explanation. And he knew quite well what they expected from him. That dreadful “Some Day” hung in the balance between success and failure.
And it was then that assistance came from a most unlikely quarter—from Maria. There was no movement in the stolid head. The eyes merely rolled round like small blue moons upon the expanse of the expressionless face. But the lips parted and she spoke. She asked a question. And her question shifted the universe back upon its ultimate foundations. It set a problem deeper far than the mere origin of everything. It touched the cause.
“Why?” she inquired blandly.
It seemed a bomb-shell had fallen among them. Maria had closed her eyes again. Her face was calm as a cabbage, still as a mushroom in a storm. She claimed the entire discussion somehow as her own. Yet she had merely exercised her prerogative of being herself. Having gone into the root of the matter with a monosyllable, she retired again into her eternal centre. She had nothing more to offer—at the moment.
Why?
They had never thought of Why there should be anything. It was far more interesting than Where. Why was a deeper question than whence. It made them feel more important, for one thing. Somebody—but Somebody who was not there—owed them a proper explanation about it. The burden of apology or excuse was lifted instantly from Uncle Felix’s shoulders, for, obviously, he had nothing to do with the reason for their being in the world.
Without a moment’s hesitation he flung his arms out, let the pipe fall from his lips, and—burst into song:
Why should there be anything?
Why should we be here?
It isn’t where we come from,
But why should we appear?
It’s really inexplicable,
Extr’ordinary, queer:
Why should we come and talk a bit,
And then—just disappear?
“Why, why, why?” shouted the two elder children. The air was filled with flying “whys.” They tried to sing the verse.
“Let’s dance it,” cried Judy, leaping to her feet. “Give us the words
again, please.” She picked up the clock and plumped it down into
Maria’s uncertain lap. “You beat time,” she ordered. “It’s the tune of
‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’”
&nb
sp; Maria, disinclined to budge unless obliged to, did nothing.
“It’s a beastly tune,” Tim supported her. “I hate those Sunday hymn tunes. They’re not real a bit.”
He watched Judy and his Uncle capering hand in hand among the flower-beds. He didn’t feel like dancing himself. He looked at the clock that, like Maria and himself, refused to go. He looked at Maria, fastened immovably upon the lawn. The clock lay glittering in the sunshine. Maria sat like a shining ball beside it. He felt the afternoon was a failure somewhere. Things weren’t going quite as he wanted, the clock wasn’t going either. And when they did go they went of their own accord, independent of himself, of his direction, guidance, wishes. He was out of it. This was not the time to dance. What was the meaning of it all? It had to do somehow with the clock that wouldn’t go. It had to do with Maria, who wouldn’t budge. The clock had stopped of its own accord. That lay at the bottom of it all, he felt. Some day things would be different, more satisfactory—more real…. Some day!
And strange, new ideas, very vague and dim, very far away, very queer, and very wonderful, poured through his searching, questioning little mind.
“Beat time!” shouted Judy to her motionless sister. “I told you to beat time. You’re doing nothing. You never do!”
Tim stood watching them, while the words rang on in his head: “You are doing nothing! You never do!” How wonderful it was! Maria never did anything, yet was always there in everything. And the others—how funny they were, too! They looked like an elephant and a bird, he thought, for Judy hopped and fluttered, while his Uncle moved heavily, making holes in the soft lawn with his great feet. “Beat time, beat time!” cried Judy at intervals.
What a queer phrase it was—to beat time. Why beat it? It wasn’t there unless it was beaten. Poor Time; and Maria refused to beat it. His eye wandered from Maria to the dancers, and a kind of reverie stole over him. What was the use of dancing unless there was something to dance round? Maria was round; why didn’t they dance round her? His thoughts returned to Maria. How funny Maria was! She just sat there doing nothing at all. Maria was dull and unenterprising, yet somehow everything came round to her in the end. It was just because she waited, she never hurried. She was a sort of centre. Only it must be rather stupid just to be a centre. Then, suddenly, two ideas struck him at the same instant, scattering his dreamy state of reverie. The first was—Everything comes from a centre like Maria; that’s where everything comes from! The second, bearing no apparent relation to it, found expression in words:
He cried out: “I know what! Let’s go to the End of the World and make a fire and burn things!”
And he looked at Maria as though he had discovered America.
“Beat time, oh, do beat time,” cried Judy breathlessly.
“We’re going to make a fire,” he shouted; “there’s lots of things to burn.” He looked about him as though to choose a place. But he couldn’t find one. He pointed vaguely, first at Maria, as though she was the thing to burn, and then at the landscape generally. “Then you can dance round it,” he added convincingly to clinch the matter.
But the bird and the elephant continued their gymnastic exercises on the lawn, while Maria turned her eyes without moving her head and watched them too.
Then, while the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” filled the air, Tim and Maria began an irrelevant argument about things in general. Tim, at least, told her things, while she laid the clock down upon the grass and listened. But the flood of language rolled off her as minutes roll from the face of the sun, producing no effect. There was wonder in her big blue eyes, wonder that never seemed to end. But minutes don’t decrease merely because the rising and setting of the sun sends them flying, and there are not fewer words in a boy’s vocabulary merely because he uses up a lot in saying things. Both words and minutes seemed a circle without beginning or end. It was most odd and strange—this feeling of endlessness that was everywhere in the air. And, long before Tim had got even to the middle of his enormous speech, he had forgotten all about the fire, forgotten about dancing, about burning things, forgotten about everything everywhere, because his roving eye had fallen again upon the—clock. The clock absorbed his interest. It lay there glittering in the sunshine beside Maria. It wasn’t going; Maria wasn’t going either. It had stopped. He realised abruptly, realised it without rhyme or reason, that a stopped clock, a clock that isn’t going, was a—mystery.
And the tide of words dried up in him; he choked; something was wrong with the universe; for if the clock stopped—his clock—time—time must—he was unable to think it out—but time must surely get muddled and go wrong too.
And he moved over to Maria just as she was about to burst into tears. He sat down beside her. At the same moment Judy and Uncle Felix, thinking a quarrel was threatening, stopped their dancing, and joined the circle too. They stood with arms akimbo, panting, silent, waiting for something to happen so that they could interfere and set it right again.
But nothing did happen. There was deep silence only. The slanting sunshine lay across the lawn, the wind passed sighing through the lime trees, and the clock stared up into their faces, motionless, a blank expression on it—stopped. They formed a circle round it. No one moved or spoke. There was a queer, deep pause. The sun watched them; the sky was listening; the entire afternoon stood still. Something else beside the clock, it seemed, was slowing up.
“To-morrow’s Sunday. Time’s getting awfully short,” was in the air inaudibly.
“Let’s sit down,” whispered Tim, already seated himself, but anxious to feel the others close. Judy and Uncle Felix obeyed. They all sat round in a circle, staring at the shining disc of the motionless, stopped clock. It might have been a Lucky Bag by the way they watched it with expectant faces.
But Maria also was in that circle, sitting calmly in its centre.
Then Uncle Felix cautiously lifted the glittering round thing and held it in his hand. He put his ear down to listen. He shook his head.
“It hasn’t gone since this time yesterday,” said Tim in a low tone. “That’s twenty-four hours,” he added, calculating it on the fingers of both hands.
“A whole day,” murmured Judy, as if taken by surprise somehow; “a day and a night, I mean.”
She exchanged a glance of significant expectation with her brother, but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. “It’s either something,” thought Judy, “or else he’s got a pain.” But Tim’s mind was quicker. “He’s got it,” the boy decided, meaning, “We’ve got it out of him at last!” Their manoeuvres had taken so long of accomplishment that their original purpose had almost been forgotten.
“A day, a whole day,” Uncle Felix was mumbling to himself in a dazed kind of happy way, “an entire day, I do declare!” He looked round solemnly, yet with growing excitement, into the children’s faces. “Twenty-four hours! An entire day,” he went on, half beneath his breath.
“Some day; of course…” Tim said in a low voice, catching the mood of wonder, while Judy added, equally stirred up, “A day will come…” and then Uncle Felix, breaking out of his queer reverie with an effort, raised his voice and looked as if the end of the world had come.
“But do you realise what it means?” he asked them sharply. “D’you understand what’s happened?”
He drew a long, deep breath that quivered with suppressed amazement, and waited several seconds for their answers—in vain. The children gazed at him without uttering a word; they made no movement either. The arresting tone of his voice and a certain huge expression in his eyes made everything in the world seem different. It was a moment of real life; he had discovered something stupendous. But, explanation being beyond them, they attempted no immediat
e answer to his question. The pressure of interest blocked every means of ordinary expression known to them.
Then Uncle Felix spoke again; his big eyes fixed Tim piercingly like a pin. “When did it stop?” he inquired gravely. He meant to make quite sure of his discovery before revealing it. There must be no escape, no slip, no carelessness. “When did it stop, I ask you, Tim?” he repeated.
Tim was a trifle vague. “I was asleep,” he whispered. “When I woke up—it wasn’t going.”
“You wound it?”
“Oh, yes, I wound it right enough.”
“What time was it?”
“The clock—or the day, Uncle?” He was confused a little; he wished to be awfully accurate.
Uncle Felix explained that he desired to know what time the clock had stopped. The importance of the answer could be judged by the intentness of his expression while he waited.
“The finger-hands were at four,” said the boy at length.
Uncle Felix gave a jump. “Ha, ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly, “then it stopped of its own accord!” They could have screamed with excitement, though without the least idea what they were excited about. You could have heard a butterfly breathing.
“It stopped at dawn!” he continued, louder.
“Dawn!” piped Tim, unable to think of anything else, but obliged to utter something.
“Dawn, yes,” cried Uncle Felix louder still. “It stopped of its own accord at dawn! Just at the beginning of a new day it stopped! It’s marvellous! Don’t you see? It’s marvellous!”
“Goodness!” cried Judy, her mind obfuscated, yet thrilled with a transport of inexplicable delight. “It’s marvellous!”
“I say!” Tim shouted, dropping his voice suddenly because he too was at a loss for any more intelligible relief in words.
They sat and stared at their amazing uncle. There was a hush upon the entire universe; there was marvel, mystery, but at first there was also muddle. They waited, holding their breath with difficulty. Some one, it seemed, must either explode or—or something else, they knew not exactly what. It would hardly have surprised them if Judy had suddenly flown through the air, Tim vanished down a hole, or Maria gleamed at them from the inside of a quivering bubble of soap. There was this kind of intoxicating feeling, delicious and intense. Even To-morrow might not be Sunday after all: it felt strange and wonderful enough for that!
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 118