'They're just thinking,' she said softly.
'So trees think too?'
She nodded her head, leaning her chin on her hands as she gazed with him into the misty air.
'I wonder what their thoughts are like,' he said musingly, so that she could take it for a question or not as she chose.
'Like ours—in a way,' she answered, as though speaking of something she knew beyond all question, 'only not so small, not so sharp. Our thoughts prick, I think, but theirs stroke, all running quite smoothly into each other. Very big and wonderful-indeed thoughts—big as wind, I mean, and wonderful as sky or distance. And the streams—the streams have long, winding thoughts that run down their whole length under water '
'And the trees, you were saying,' he said, seeing that her thought was wandering.
'Yes, the trees,' she repeated, 'oh! yes, the trees are different a little, I think. A wood, you see, may have one big huge thought all at once
'All at once!' 'I mean all at the same time, every tree thinking the same thought for miles. Because, if you lie in a wood, and don't think yourself, but just wait and wait and wait, you gradgilly get its great thought and know what it's thinking about exactly. You feel it all over instead of—of '
'Instead of getting a single little sharp picture in your mind,' Paul helped her, grasping the wonder of her mystical idea.
'I think that's what I mean,' she went on. 'And it's exactly the same with everything else—the sea, and the fields, and the sky—oh! and everything in the whole world.' She made a sweeping gesture with her arm to indicate the universe.
'Oh, Nixie child!' he cried, with a sudden enthusiasm pouring over him from the strange region where she had unknowingly led him, 'if only I could take you out to the big woods I know across the sea, where the trees stretch for hundreds of miles, and the moss is everywhere a foot thick, and the whole forest is such a conspiracy of wonder and beauty that it catches your heart away and makes you breathless with delight! Oh, my child, if only you could hear the thoughts and stories of woods like that—woods untouched since the beginning of the world!'
'Take me! Take me! Uncle Paul, oh! take me!' she cried as though it were possible to start next day. 'These woods are such little woods, and I know all their stories.' She danced round him with a wild and eager delight.
'Such stories, yes, such stories,' Paul continued, his face shining almost as much as hers as he thought of his mighty and beloved forests.
'Please tell me, take me, tell me!' she cried. 'All, all, all! Quick!'
'I can't. I never understood them properly; only the old Indians know them now,' he said sadly, leaning out of the window again with her. 'They are tales that few people in this part of the world could understand; in a language old as the wind, too, and nearly forgotten. You see, the trees and different there. They stand in thousands—pine, hemlock, spruce, and cedar—mighty, very tall, very straight, very dark, pouring day and night their great balsam perfumes into the air so that their stories and their thoughts are sweet as incense and very mysterious.'
Nixie took the lapels of his coat in her hands and stared up into his face as though her eyes would pop out. She looked through his eyes. She saw these very woods he was speaking of standing in dim shadows behind him.
'No one ever comes to disturb their lives, and few of them have ever heard the ringing of the axe. Only giant moose and caribou steal silently beneath their shade, and Indians, dark and soft-footed as things of their own world, make camp-fires among their roots. They know nothing of men and cities and trains, and the wind that sings through their branches is a wind that has never tasted chimney-pots, and hot crowds, and pretty, fancy gardens. It is a wind that flies five hundred miles without taking breath, with nothing to stop its flight but feathery tree-tops, brushing the heavens, and clean mountain ridges thrusting great shoulders to the stars. Their thoughts and stories are difficult to understand, but you might understand them, I think, for the life of the elements is strong in your veins, you fairy daughter of wind and water. And some day, when you are stronger in body—not older though, mind, not older—I shall take you out there so that you may be able to learn their wonder and interpret it to all the world.'
The words tore through him in such curious, impersonal fashion, that he hardly realised he was giving utterance to a longing that had once been his own, and that he was now seeking to realise vicariously in the person of this little poet-girl beside him. He stroked her hair as she nestled up to him, breathing hard, her eyes glistening like stars, speechless with the torrent of wonder with which her big uncle had enveloped her.
'Some day,' she murmured presently, 'some day, remember. You promise?'
'I promise.'
'And—and will you write that all out for me, please?' 'All what?'
'About the too-big woods and the too-old language and the winds that fly without stopping, and the stories '
'Oh, oh!' he laughed; 'that's another matter! I 'Yes, oh you must, Uncle! Make a story of it—an aventure. Write it out as a very wonderful-indeed adventure, and put you and me in it! She forgot the touch of sadness and clapped her hands with delight. 'And then read it out at a Meeting, don't you see?'
And in the end Paul promised that too, making a great fuss about it, but in his heart secretly pleased and happy.
'I'll try,' he said, with portentous gravity.
The child stared up at him with the sure knowledge in her eyes that between them they held the key to all that was really worth knowing.
He stooped to kiss her hair, but before he could do so, with a laugh and a dancing step he scarcely heard, she was gone from his side and half-way down the passage, so that he kissed the empty air.
'Bless her mighty little heart!' he exclaimed straightening himself up again. 'Was there eve such a teacher in the world before?'
He became aware that the world held power gentle yet immense, that were urging him in directions hitherto undreamed of. With such a fairy guide! he might find—he was already finding—not merely safety-valves of expression, but an outlet into the bargain for his creative imagination.
'And a little child shall lead them,' he murmured in his beard, as he went slowly down the passage to his room to dress for dinner. Again he felt like singing.
CHAPTER XVIII
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing standing in the way.
—W. B.
Thus, gradually, the grey house under the hills changed into a palace; the garden stretched to I include the stars; and Paul, the retired Wood Cruiser, walked in a world all new and brilliant. For to find the means of self-expression is to build the foundations of spiritual health, and an ideal companionship, unvexed by limitations of sense, holds potentialities that can change earth into heaven. His accumulated stores of imagination found wings, and he wrote a series of Aventures that delighted his audience while they healed his own soul.
'I wish they'd go on for ever and ever,' observed Toby solemnly to her brother. 'Perhaps they do really, only.'
'Of course they do,' Jonah said decisively, 'but Uncle Paul only tells bits of them to us—bits that you can understand.'
Toby was too much in earnest to notice the masculine scorn. 'He does know a lot, doesn't he?' she said.
'Do you think he sees up into heaven? They're not a bit like made-up aventures.' She paused, deeply puzzled; very grave indeed.