'Let's go and see them then,' he cried, delights with this idea of a heaven of broken animals.
In a moment they were on their feet and away over the springy turf, singing and laughing in the sunshine, picking flowers, jumping the little brooks that ran like crystal ribbons among the grass, Nixie and Jonah dancing by his side as though they springs in their feet and wings on their shoulder More and more the country spread before them like a great garden run wild, and Paul thought he never seen such fields of flowers or smelt such perfumes in the wind.
'What's the matter now?' he exclaimed, Jonah stopped and began to stare hard at an acre of lilies of the valley by the way.
'He's calling some things of his own,' Nixie answered. 'Stare and think—and they'll all come. But we needn't bother about him. Come along!' And he only had time to see the lilies open in an avenue to make way for a variety of furry, four-legged creatures, when the child pulled him by the hand and they were off again at full speed across the fields.
A sound of neighing made him turn round, and before he could move aside, a large grey horse with a flowing tail and a face full of gentle beneficence came trotting over the turf and stopped just behind him, nuzzling softly into his shoulder.
'Nice, silly-faced old thing,' said Nixie, running up to speak to it, while a brown collie trotted quietly at her heels. A little further off, peeping up through a tangled growth of pinks and meadow-sweet, he saw the faces of innumerable kittens, watching him with large and inquisitive eyes, their ears just topping the flowers like leaves of fur. Such a family of animals Paul thought he had never even dreamed of.
'This is the heaven of the lost animals,' Nixie cried from her seat on the back of the grey horse, having climbed up by means of a big stone. On her shoulder perched a small brown owl, blinking in the light like the instantaneous shutter of a photographic camera. It had fluffy feathers down to its ankles like trousers, and was very tame. 'And they are always happy here and have plenty to eat and drink. They play with us far better here than outside, and are never frightened. Of course, too, they get no older.'
Paul climbed up behind her on the horse's back.
'Now we're off! 'he cried; and with Jonah and a dozen animals at their heels, they raced off across the open country, holding on as best they could to mane and tail, laughing, shouting, singing, while the wind whistled in their ears and the hot sun poured down upon their bare heads.
Then, suddenly, the horse stopped with a jerk that sent them sprawling forward upon his neck. He turned his head round to look at them with a comical expression in his big, brown eyes. Paul slid off behind, and Nixie saved herself by springing sideways into a bed of forget-me-nots. The owl fluttered away, blinking its eyes more rapidly than ever in a kind of surprised fury, shaking out its fluffy trousers, and Jonah arrived panting with his dogs and rabbits and puppies.
'Come,' exclaimed Nixie breathlessly, 'he's had enough by now. No animal wants people too long. Let's get something to eat.'
'And I'll cook it,' cried the boy, busying himself with sticks and twigs upon the ground. 'We'll have stodgy-pudding and cake and jam and oyster-patties, and then more stodgy-pudding again to finish up with.'
Paul glanced round him and saw that all the animals had disappeared—gone like thoughts forgotten. In their place he soon saw a column of blue smoke rising up among the fir trees close behind him, and the children flitting to and fro through it looking like miniature gypsies. The odour of the burning wood was incense in his nostrils.
'But can't I see something too—something of my own?' he asked in an aggrieved tone.
Nixie and Jonah looked up at him with surprise. 'Of course you can,' they exclaimed together. 'Just stare into space as the cats do, and think, and wish, and wait. Anything you want will come—with practice. People you've lost, or people you've wanted to find, or anything that's never come true anywhere else.'
They went on busily with their cooking again, and Paul, lying on his back in the grass some distance away, sent his thoughts roaming, searching, deeply calling, far into the region of unsatisfied dreams and desires within his heart. . . .
For what seemed hours and hours they wandered together through the byways of this vast, enchanted garden, finding everything they wished to find, forgetting everything they wished to forget, amusing themselves to their heart's content; till, at last, they stood together on a big boulder in the river where the spray rose about them in a cloud and painted a rainbow above their heads.
'Get ready! Quick,' cried Jonah. 'The Crack's coming!'
'It's coming!' repeated Nixie, seizing Paul's hand and urging him to hold very tight.
He had no time to reply. There was a rushing sound of air tearing through a narrow opening. The sky grew dark, with a roaring in his ears and a sense of great things flying past him. Again came the sensation of dropping giddily through space, and the next minute he found himself standing with the two children upon the lawn, darkness about them, and the storm howling and crashing over their heads through the branches of the twin cedars.
'There's the clock still striking,' Nixie cried. 'It's only been a few seconds altogether.'
He heard the church clock strike the last six strokes of midnight.
For some minutes he realised little more than that he felt rather stiff and uncomfortable in his bedroom chair, and that he was chilly about the legs. Outside the wind still roared and whistled, making the windows rattle, while gusts of rain fell volleying against the panes as though trying to get in. A roll of distant thunder came faintly to his ear. He stretched himself and began to undress by the light of a single candle. On the table lay a sheet of paper headed 'How I climbed the Scaffolding of the Night,' and he read down the page and then took his pen and wrote the heading of something else on another sheet: 'Adventure in the Land between Yesterday and To-morrow.' With a mighty yawn he then blew out his candle and tumbled into bed.
And with him, for all the howling of the elements, came a strange sense of peace and happiness. Out of the depths rose gradually before his inner eye in a series of delightful pictures the scenes he had just left, and he understood that the pathway to that country of dreams fulfilled and emotions that never die, lay buried far within his own being.
'Between Yesterday and To-morrow' was to be the children's counterpart of that timeless, deathless region where the spirit may always go when hunted by the world, fretted by the passion of unsatisfied yearnings, plagued by the remorseless tribes of sorrow and disaster. There none could follow him, just as none—none but himself—could bring about its destruction. For he had found the mystical haven where all lost or broken things eternally reconstruct themselves.
The 'Crack,' of course, may be found by all who have the genuine yearning to recreate their world more sweetly, provided they possess at the start enough imagination to repay the trouble of training—also that Wanderlust of the spirit which seeks ever for a resting-place in the great beyond that reaches up to God.
Paul as yet had but discovered the entrance, led by little children who dreamed not how wondrous was the journey; but the rest would follow. For it is a region mapped gradually out of a thousand impulses, out of ten thousand dreams, out of the eternal desires of the soul. It is not discovered in a day, nor do the ways of entrance always remain the same. A thousand joys contribute to its fashioning, a thousand frustrated hopes describe its boundaries, and ten thousand griefs bring slowly, piece by piece, the material for its construction, while every new experience of the soul, successful or disastrous, adds something to its uncharted geography. Slowly it gathers into existence, becoming with every sojourn more real and more satisfying, till at length from the pain of all possible disillusionment the way opens to the heart of relief, to the peaceful place of hopes renewed, of purposes made fruitful and complete.
And from this deathless region, too, flow all the forces of the soul that make for hope, enthusiasm, courage, and delight.