At first he felt vaguely that his sense of disappointment had to do with herself. Not that he had expected anything dazzling, or indeed had given her consciously any thought at all. The male creature, of course, hearing the name of a girl he is about to meet, instinctively conjures up a picture to suit her name. He cannot help himself. And Joan Nicholson, apart from any deliberate process of thought or desire on his part, hardly suited the picture that had thus spontaneously formed in his mind. The woman seemed too big for the picture. He had seen her, perhaps, hitherto, only through his sister's eyes. It puzzled him. About her, mysteriously as an invisible garment, was the atmosphere of things bigger, grander, finer than he had expected; nobler than he quite understood.
Ah, now, at last, he was getting at it. The vague sense of disappointment was not with her; it was with himself. Tested by some new standard her mere presence had subtly introduced into the room—into his intuitive mind—he had become suddenly dissatisfied with himself. His play with the children, he remembered feeling, had seemed all at once insignificant, unreal, almost unworthy—compared to another larger order of things her presence had suggested, if not actually revealed.
Thus, in a flash of vision, the truth came to him. It was with himself and not with her that he was disappointed. He recalled scraps of the conversation. It was, after all, nothing Joan Nicholson had said; it was something Nixie had said. Nixie, his little blue-eyed guide and teacher, had been up to her wizard tricks again, all unconsciously.
'Cousin Joan has a real Society in London, you know—a Society that picks up real lost children?
That was the sentence that had done it. He felt certain. Combined with the spiritual presentment of the woman, this apparently stray remark had dropped down into his heart with almost startling effect—like the grain of powder a chemist adds to his test tube that suddenly changes the colour and nature of its contents. As yet he could not determine quite what the change meant; he felt only that it was there—disappointment, dissatisfaction with himself.
'Cousin Joan has a real Society.' She was in earnest.
'Real lost children'—perhaps potential Nixies, Jonahs, Tobys, all waiting to be 'picked up.'
The thoughts ran to and fro in him like some one with a little torch, lighting up corners and recesses of his soul he had so far never visited. For thus it sometimes is with the chemistry of growth. The changes are prepared subconsciously for a long while, and then comes some trivial little incident—a chance remark, a casual action—and a match is set to the bonfire. It flames out with a sudden rush. The character develops with a leap; the soul has become wiser, advanced, possessed of longer, clearer sight.
Paul was certainly aware of a new standard by which he must judge himself; and, for all the' apparent slightness of its cause, a little reflection will persuade of its truth. Real, inner crises of a soul are often produced by causes even more negligible.
The desire, always latent in him, to be of some use in the world, and to find the things he sought by losing himself in some Cause bigger than personal ends, had been definitely touched. It now rose to the surface and claimed deliberate attention.
What in the world did it matter—thus he reflected while dressing for dinner—whether his own personal sense of beauty found expression or not? Of what account was it to the world at large, the world, for instance, that included those 'lost children 'who needed to be 'picked up '? To what use did I he put it, except to his own gratification, and the passing pleasure of the children he played with? Were there no bigger uses, then, for his imagination, uses nobler and less personal? . . .
The thoughts chased one another through his mind in some confusion. He felt more and more dissatisfied with himself. He must set his house in order. He really must get to work at something real!
Other thoughts, too, played with him while he struggled with his studs and tie. For he noticed suddenly with surprise that he was taking more trouble with his appearance than usual. That black tie always bothered him when he could not get the help of Nixie's fingers, and usually he appeared at the table with the results of carelessness and despair plainly visible in its outlandish shape. But to-night he tied and re-tied, determined to get it right. He meant to look his best.
Yet this process of beautifying himself was instinctive, not deliberate. It was unconscious; he did not realise what he had been about until he was half-way downstairs. And then came another of those swift, subtle flashes by which the soul reveals herself—to herself. This 'dressing-up,' what was it for? For whom? Certainly, he did not care a button what Joan Nicholson thought of his persona appearance. That was positive. Then, for whom and for what, was it? Was it for some one else Had the arrival of this 'woman' upon the scene somehow brought the truth into sudden relief?
A delightful, fairy thought sped across his mine with wings of gold, waving through the dusk of hi soul a spray of leaves from a silver birch-tree that he I knew, and disappearing into those depths of consciousness where feelings never clothe themselves in precise language. A line of poetry swam up an«j took its place mysteriously—
My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,
With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.
Could it be, then, that he had given his heart so utterly, so exquisitely, into the keeping of a little child? . . .
At any rate, before he reached the drawing-room, he understood that what he had been so busy dressing up was not anything half so trumpery as his mere external body and appearance. It was his interior person. That black tie, properly made for once, was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; only, having forgotten, or possibly never heard the phrase, he could not make use of it! 'It's that little, sandy-haired witch after all!' he thought to himself. 'Joan's coming—a woman's coming—has made me realise it. I must behave my best, and look my best. It's my soul dressing up for Nixie, I do declare!'
CHAPTER XXI
Persons with real force of purpose carry about with them something that charges unconsciously the atmosphere of others. Paul 'felt' this woman. The first impact of her presence, as has been seen, came almost as a shock. The 'shocks,' however, did not continue—as such. Her influence worked in him underground, as it were.
She slipped easily and naturally into the quiet routine of the little household in the Grey House under the hill, till it seemed as if she had been there always. Margaret had insisted at once that there could be no 'Missing' and 'Mistering'; Dick's niece must be Joan, and her brother Paul; and the more familiar terms of address were adopted without effort on both sides.
The children helped, too. They were all in the same Society, and before a week had passed she had heard all the 'aventures,' and entered into the discovery of new ones, even contributing some herself with a zest that delighted, Paul, and made him feel wholly at his ease with her. It was all real to her; she could not otherwise have shown an interest; for sham had no part in her nature, and her love for these fatherless children was as great as his own, and similar in kind.
'You have given their "Society "a new lease of life,' she told him; 'you are an enormous addition to it.'
'Enormous—yes!