CHAPTER XVI
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.
YEATS.
Thus, led delicately by the animals and the children, and guided to a certain extent, too, by the curious poesy of his own soul, Paul Rivers came gradually into his own. Once made free of their world, he would learn next that the process automatically lade him free of his own. This simple expedient of having found an audience did wonders for him, for it not only loosened his tongue and his pen, but it all the deeper parts of him running into speech, id the natural love and poetry of the man began to produce a delightful, if somewhat extraordinary, harvest.
He understood—none better—that fantasy, unless rooted in reality, leads away from action and tends to weakness and insipidity; but that, grounded in the common facts of life, and content with idealising the actual, it might become an important factor for good, lending wings to the feet and lifting the soul over difficult places. His education advanced by leaps and bounds. And in some respects he showed himself possessed of a wisdom that could only have belonged to him because at heart he was still a child, and the ordinary 'knowledge of the world' had not come to spoil him in his life of solitude among the trees.
For instance, that 'Between Yesterday and Tomorrow' bore some curious relation to reverie and dreams, he dimly discerned, yet, with this simple and profound wisdom of his, he refused to pry too closely into the nature of such relationship. He did not seek to reduce the delightful experience to the little hard pellet of an exact fact. For that, he felt, would be to lose it. Exact knowledge, he knew, was often merely a great treachery, and 'fact' a dangerous weapon that deceived, and might even destroy, its owner. If he analysed too carefully, he might analyse the whole thing out of existence altogether, and such a contingency was not to be thought of for a single moment.
Moreover, the attitude of the children confirmed his own. They never referred to their adventures until he had given them form and substance in his reports as recording secretary of the society. No word passed their lips until they had heard them read out, and then they talked of nothing else. During the day they maintained a sublime ignorance of his 'aventures of the night,' as though nothing of the kind had ever happened; and this tended still further to relegate it all to a region untouched by time, beyond the reach of chance, beyond the destruction of mere talk, eternal and real in the great sense.
Meanwhile, as this hidden country he had discovered yielded to exploration, becoming more and more mapped out, and its springs of water tapped, Paul was conscious that the power from these vital sources began to modify his character, and to enlarge his outlook upon life. Imagination, released and singing, provides the greatest of all magics—belief in one's self. The rivers of feeling carve their own channels, which are ever the shortest way to the ocean of fulfilment. The effects spread gradually to the remotest corner of his being.
One rainy day he found himself alone in the schoolroom with Nixie, for it was Saturday afternoon, and Mile. Fleury had carried off Jonah and Toby in their best clothes, and to their acute dismay, to have tea with the children—they were dull children—at the vicarage.
Dressed in blue serge, with a broad white collar over her shoulders and a band of gold about her waist that matched the colour of her hair, she darted about the room with her usual effect of brightness, so that he found himself continually thinking the sun had burst through the clouds. She was busily arranging cats and kittens in various positions in which they showed no inclination to remain, till the performance had somewhat the air of the old-fashioned game of 'general post.' Paul sat lazily at the ink-stained table, dividing his attentions between watching the child's fascinating movements and pecking idly into the soft wood with his little gold penknife.
'Aren't you very glad we found you out so soon, Uncle Paul?' she asked suddenly, looking up at him over a back of glossy and wriggling yellow fur. 'Aren't you very glad indeed, I mean?'
He went on picking at the soft ditches between the ridges of dirty brown without answering for a moment.
'Yes,' he said presently, in the slow manner of a man who weighs his words; 'very glad indeed. It's increased my interest in life. It's made me happier, and healthier, and wealthier, and all the rest of it—and wiser too.' He bent, frowning, over the ditches.
'It was all your own fault, you know, that we didn't get you sooner. Oh, years ago—ever so many.'
'But I was in the backwoods, Nixie.'
'That made no difference,' she answered promptly. 'If you had written to us, as mother often asked, we should have noticed at once what you were.'
'How could that possibly be?' he objected, still without looking up.
'Of course!' was the overwhelming reply.
'Oh, come now,' he said, staring at her solemnly over the table; 'I admit your penetration is pretty keen, but I doubt that'
She returned his gaze with an expression of grave, almost contemptuous surprise, tossing her hair back impatiently with a jerk from her face. She had finally established the kittens, Zezette and Sambo, in a sleepy heap just where she wanted them on the top of the squirrel's cage.
'But, Uncle,' she exclaimed, 'between yesser-dayantomorrow you can meet people even after they've gone altogether. So America wouldn't have been difficult. How can you think such things?'
Not knowing exactly how it was he could think such things, Paul made no immediate reply.
'Anyhow,' she resumed, 'it didn't take long once you were here. We saw in a second in the drawing-room what you were—the day you arrived.'
'But I acted so well! I'm sure now I behaved—'
'You behaved just like Jonah,' she interrupted him with swift decision, '—only bigger!'
Paul laughed to himself. His inquisitor shot across the room to establish Pouf, another kitten, on the piano top. She moved lightly, with a dancing motion that flung her hair behind her through the air, again producing the effect of a sunlight gleam. Paul continued to destroy the table with his blunt penknife, chuckling inwardly at the figure he must have cut that summer afternoon in the 'drawinroom' before these mercilessly observant eyes.
'You stood about shyly just like him and Toby—in lumps,' she went on presently, 'saying things in a sudden, jerky way—'
'In lumps! 'cried Paul. 'That's a nice way to talk to your Uncle!'
Nixie burst out laughing. 'Oh, I don't mean that quite,' she explained; 'but you stood about as i you found it hard to balance, and were afraid to move off the mat. Just as Jonah does at a party when he's shy. I copied you exactly when I got upstairs.'
'Did I indeed? Did you indeed, I mean? 'said he, wondering whether he ought to feel offended or pleased at the picture.
'Yes, rather,' declared the child emphatically, darting up with Pouf who had definitely rejected the top of the piano, and planting it on the table under his nose, where it immediately sat down, purring loudly and staring into his face. 'I should think you did! You see, Pouf says so too; he's purring his agreement. Listen to him! That's fur language.'
He listened as he was bid, gazing first into the green eyes of the kitten that opened so wide the} seemed to have no lids at all, and then into the mischievous blue eyes of his other tormentor, decided that on the whole he felt pleased. Then I wasted a lot of time,' he observed presently, 'about joining, I mean—coming into your world.'
'H'mmmm, you did.'
'Only, remember, you were all very young when I was in America' weren't you?' he added by way of excuse.
Nixie nodded her head approvingly.
'And