This sudden rush came over him, sea-like. His moods were ever like the sea, some strange touch of colour shifting the entire key. Something, too, made him feel lonely and oppressed. He, who was accustomed to space in bulk—the space the stars and winds live in—had come to this little, parcelled-out place. He felt clipped already. He turned to the shadowy personality beside him, the boyish impulse bursting its way out. After all, she was his own sister; he could reveal himself to no one if not to her.
'By Gosh, Margaret,' he cried, 'this is the real thing. This wood must be alive and haunted just as the James Bay forests are. It's simply full of wonder.' 'It's the Gwyle wood,' she said quietly. 'It's usually rather damp. But Dick loved it.'
Her brother hardly heard what she said. 'Listen,' he said in a hushed tone; 'do you hear the wind up there aloft? The trees are talking. The wood is full of whispers. There's no sound in the world like that murmur of a soft breeze in pine branches. It's like the old gods sighing, which only their true worshippers hear! Isn't it fine and melancholy? Margaret, d'you know, it goes through me like a fever.'
His sister stopped and stared at him. She wore a little frightened expression. His sudden enthusiasm puzzled her evidently.
'It's the Gwyle wood,' she repeated mechanically. 'It's very pretty, I think. Dick always thought so too.'
Her brother, surprised at his own rush of ready words, and already ashamed of the impulse that had prompted him to reveal himself, fell into silence.
'Nature excites me sometimesI he said presently. 'I suppose it's because I've known nothing else.'
'That's quite natural, I'm sure, Paul dear,' she rejoined, turning to lead the way back to the sunshine of the open garden; 'it's very pretty; I love it too. But it rather alarms me, I think, sometimes.' 'Perhaps the natural tendency in solitude is to personify nature, and make it take the place of men and women. It has become a profound need of my being certainly.' He spoke more quietly, chilled by her utter absence of comprehension.
'In its place I think it is ever so nice. But, Paul, you surprise me. I had no idea you were clever like that.' She was perfectly sincere in what she said.
Her brother blushed like a boy. 'It's my foolishness, I suppose, Margaret,' he said with a shy laugh. 'I am certainly not clever.'
'Anyhow, you can be foolish or clever here to your heart's content. You must use the place as though it were your own exactly.'
'Thank you, Margaret.'
'Only I don't think I quite understand all those things,' she added vaguely after a pause. 'Nixie talks rather like that. She has all poor Dick's ideas and strange fancies. I really can't keep up with her at all.'
Paul stiffened at the reference to the children; he remembered his attitude. Already he had been guilty of a serious lapse from his good intentions.
'She comes down to this wood far too much, and I'm sure it's not quite healthy for her. I always forget to speak to Mile. Fleury.' Then she turned to him and smiled. 'But they are all so excited about your coming. They will simply devour you.'
'I'm a poor hand at children, I'm afraid,' he said, falling back upon his usual formula, 'but, of course, I shall be delighted to see them.'
She gathered up her white skirts about her trim ankles and led the way out of the wood, her brother following and thinking how slim and graceful she was, and what a charming figure she made among the rose-trees. He got the impression of her as something unreal and shadowy, a creature but half alive. It would hardly have surprised him to see her suddenly flit off into mist and sunshine and disappear from view, leaving him with the certainty that he had been talking with a phantasm of a dream. Between himself and her, however, he realised now, there was a gulf fixed. They looked at one another as it were down the large end of a telescope, and talked down a long-distance telephone that changed all their words and made the sense unintelligible and meaningless. The scale of values between them had no common denominator. Yet he could love her, and he meant to.
They crossed the lawns and went through the French window into the cool of the drawing-room, and while he was sipping his first cup of afternoon English tea, struggling with a dozen complex emotions that stirred within him, there suddenly darted across the lawn a vision of flying children, with a string of animals at their heels. They swept out of some laurel shrubberies into the slanting evening sunlight, and came to a dead stop on the gravel path in front of the window.
Their eyes met. They had seen him.
There they stood, figures of suddenly arrested motion, staring at him through the glass. 'So that's Uncle Paul!' was the thought in the mind of each. He was being inspected, weighed, labelled. The meeting with his sister was nothing compared to this critical examination, conducted though it was from a distance.
But it lasted only a moment. With a sudden quietness the children passed away from the window towards another door round the corner, and so out of sight.
'They've gone up to get tidy before coming to see you,' explained his sister; and Paul used the short respite to the best possible advantage by collecting his thoughts, remembering his 'attitude and disguise,' and seeing to it that his armour was properly fastened on, leaving no loopholes for sudden attack. He retired cautiously to the only place in a room where a shy man feels really safe—the mat before the fireplace. He almost wished for his gun and hunting-knife. The idea made him laugh.
'They already love you,' he heard his sister's gentle whispering voice, 'and I know you'll love them too. You must never let them annoy you, of course.'
'They're your children—and Dick's,' he answered quietly. 'I shall get on with them famously, I'm sure.'
CHAPTER V
I kiss you and the world begins to fade.
Land of Hearts Desire.—YEATS.
A few minutes later the door opened softly, and a procession, solemn of face and silent of foot, marched slowly into the room. The moment had come at last for his introduction, and, by a single stroke of unintentional diplomacy, his sister did more to winning her brother's shy heart than by anything else she could possibly have devised. She went out.
'They will prefer to make your acquaintance by themselves,' she said in her gentle way, 'and without any assistance from me.'
The procession advanced to the middle of the room and then stopped short. Evidently, for them, the departure of their mother somewhat complicated matters. They had depended upon her to explain them to their uncle. There they stood, overcome by shyness, moving from one foot to another, with flushed and rosy faces, hair brushed, skin shining, and eyes all prepared to laugh as soon as somebody gave the signal, but not the least knowing how to begin.
And their uncle faced them in similar plight, as, for the second time that afternoon, shyness descended upon him like a cloud, and he could think of nothing to say. His size overwhelmed him; he felt like an elephant. With a sudden rush all his self-possession deserted