Meanwhile, however, he took rapid and careful note of them as they stood in that silent, fidgety group before him, with solemn, wide-open eyes fixed upon his face.
The youngest, being in his view little more than a baby, needs no description beyond the fact that it stared quite unintelligently without winking an eye. Its eyes, in fact, looked as though they were not made to close at all. And this is its one and only appearance.
Standing next to the baby, holding its hand, was a boy in a striped suit of knickerbockers, with a big brown curl like a breaking wave on the top of his forehead; he was between eight and nine years old, and his names—for, of course, he had two—were Richard Jonathan, shortened, as Paul learned later, into Jonah. He balanced himself with the utmost care in the centre of a particular square of carpet as though half an inch to either side would send him tumbling into a bottomless abyss. The fingers not claimed by the baby travelled slowly to and fro along the sticky line of his lower lip.
Close behind him, treating similarly another square of carpet, stood a rotund little girl, slightly younger than himself, named Arabella Lucy. There was a touch of audacity in her eyes, and an expression about the mouth that indicated the imminent approach of laughter. She had been distinctly washed and brushed-up for the occasion. Her face shone like a polished onion skin. She had the same sort of brown hair that Jonah considered fashionable, and her name for all common daily purposes was Toby.
The eldest and most formidable of his tormentors, standing a little in advance of the rest, was Margaret Christina, shortened by her father (who, indeed, had been responsible for all the nicknames) into Nixie. And the name fitted her like a skin, for she was the true figure of a sprite, and looked as if she had just stepped out of the water and her hair had stolen the yellow of the sand. Her eyes ran about the room like sunshine from the surface of a stream, and her movements instantly made Paul think of water gliding over pebbles or ribbed sand with easy and gentle undulations. Flashlike he saw her in a clearing of his lonely woods, a creature of the elements. Her big blue eyes, too, were full of wonder and pensive intelligence, and she stood there in a motherly and protective manner as though she were quite equal to the occasion and would presently know how to act with both courage and wisdom.
And Nixie, indeed, it was, after this prolonged and critical pause, who commenced operations. There was a sudden movement in the group, and the next minute Paul was aware that she had left it and was walking slowly towards him. He noticed her graceful, flowing way of moving, and saw a sunburnt arm and hand extended in his direction. The next second she kissed him. And that kiss acted like an electric shock. Something in her that was magical met its kind in his own soul and, flamelike, leaped towards it. A little tide of hot life poured into him, troubling the deeps with a momentary sense of delicious bewilderment.
'How do you do, Uncle Paul,' she said; 'we are very glad you have come—at last.'
The blood ran ridiculously to his head. He found his tongue, and pulled himself sharply together.
'So am I, dear. Of course, it's a long way to come—America.' He stooped and bestowed the necessary kisses upon the others, who had followed their leader and now stood close beside him, staring like little owls in a row.
'I know,' she replied gravely. 'It takes weeks, doesn't it? And mother has told us such a lot about you. We've been waiting a very long time, I think,' she added as though stating a grievance.
'I suppose it is rather a long time to wait,' he said sheepishly. He stroked his beard and waited.
'All of us,' she went on. She included the others in this last observation by bending her head at them, and into her uncle's memory leaped the vision of a slender silver birch-tree that grew on the edge of the Big Beaver Pond near the Canadian border. She moved just as that silver birch moved when the breeze caught it.
Her manner was very demure, but she looked so piercingly into the very middle of his eyes that Paul felt as though she had already discovered everything about him. They all stood quite close to him now, touching his knees; ready, there and then, to take him wholly into their confidence.
An impulse that he only just managed to control stirred in him and a curious pang accompanied it. He remembered his 'attitude,' however, and stiffened slightly.
'No, it only takes ten days roughly from where I've come,' he said, leaving the mat and dropping into a deep arm-chair a little farther off. 'The big steamers go very fast, you know, nowadays.'
Their eyes remained simply glued to his face. They switched round a. few points to follow his movement, but did not leave their squares of carpet.
'Madmerzelle said'—it was Toby, née Arabella Lucy, speaking for the first time—' you knew lots of stories about deers and wolves and things, and would look like a Polar bear for us sometimes.'
'Oh yes, and beavers and Indians in snowstorms, and the roarer boryalis,' chimed in Jonah, giving a little hop of excitement that brought him still closer. 'And the songs they sing in canoes when there are rapids,' he added with intense excitement. 'Madmizelle sings them sometimes, but they're not a bit the real thing, because she hasn't enough bass in her voice.'
Paul bit his lip and looked at the carpet. Something in the atmosphere of the room seemed to have changed in the last few minutes. Jolly thrills ran through him such as he knew in the woods with his animals sometimes.
'I'm afraid I can't sing much,' he said, 'but I can tell you a bear story sometimes—if you're good.' He added the condition as an afterthought.
'We are good,' Jonah said disappointedly,' almost always.'
Again that curious pang shot through him. He did not wish to be unkind to them. He pulled back his coat-sleeve suddenly and showed them a scar on his arm.
'That was made by a bear,' he said, 'years ago.'
'Oh, look at the fur!' cried Toby.
'Don't be silly! All proper men have hair on their arms,' put in Jonah. 'Does it still hurt, Uncle Paul?' he asked, examining the place with intense interest.
'Not now. We rolled down a hill together head over heels. Such a big brute, too, he was, and growled like a thunderstorm; it's a wonder he didn't squash me. I've got his claws upstairs. I think, really, he was more frightened than I was.'
They clapped their hands. 'Tell us, oh, do tell us!'
But Nixie intervened in her stately fashion, leaning over a little and stroking the scar with fingers that were like the touch of leaves.
'Uncle Paul's tired after coming such a long way,' she said gravely with sympathy. 'He hasn't even unpacked his luggage yet, have you, Uncle?'
Paul admitted that this was the case. He made the least possible motion to push them off and clear a space round his chair.
'Are you tired? Oh, I'm so sorry,' said Jonah.
'Then he ought to see the animals at once,' decided Toby, 'before they go to bed,'—she seemed to have a vague idea that the whole world must go to bed earlier than usual if Uncle Paul was tired— 'or they'll be awfully disappointed.' Her face expressed the disappointment of the animals as well as her own; her uncle's fatigue had already taken a second place. 'Oughtn't he?' she added, turning to the others.
Paul remembered his intention to remain stiffly grown up.
He made a great effort. Oh, but why did they tug and tear at his heart so, these little fatherless children? And why did he feel at once that he was in their own world, comfortably 'at home' in it? Did this world of children, then, link on so easily and naturally with the poet's region of imagination and wonder in which he himself still dwelt for all his many years, bringing him close to his main passion—to