Part 17 (2/2)

'Then how long are you going to stay--_really_?' inquired Monkey once again, as though the polite interlude were over. It was a delicate way of suggesting that he had told an untruth. She looked up straight into his face. And, meeting her big brown eyes, he wondered a little--for the first time--how he should reply.

'Daddy came here meaning to stay only six months--first.'

'When I was littler,' Jimbo put in.

'----and stayed here all this time--four years.'

'I hope to stay a week or so--just a little holiday, you know,' he said at length, giving the answer purposely. But he said it without conviction, haltingly. He felt that they divined the doubt in him.

They guessed his thought along the hands upon his arm, as a horse finds out its rider from the touch upon the reins. On either side big eyes watched and judged him; but the brown ones put a positive enchantment in his blood. They shone so wonderfully in the dusk.

'Longer than that, I think,' she told him, her own mind quite made up.

'It's not so easy to get away from.'

'You mean it?' he asked seriously. 'It makes one quite nervous.'

'There's such a lot to do here,' she said, still keeping her eyes fixed upon his face till he felt the wonder in him become a little unmanageable. 'You'll never get finished in a week.'

'My secretary,' he stammered, 'will help me,' and Jimbo nodded, fastening both hands upon his arm, while Monkey indulged in a little gust of curious laughter, as who should say 'He who laughs last, laughs best.'

They entered the edge of the forest. Hepaticas watched them with their eyes of blue. Violets marked their tread. The frontiers of the daylight softly closed behind them. A thousand trees opened a way to let them pa.s.s, and moss twelve inches thick took their footsteps silently as birds. They came presently to a little clearing where the pines stood in a circle and let in a s.p.a.ce of sky. Looking up, all three saw the first small stars in it. A wild faint scent of coming rain was in the air--those warm spring rains that wash the way for summer. And a signal flashed unseen from the blue eyes to the brown.

'This way,' said Jimbo firmly. 'There's an armchair rock where you can rest and get your wind a bit,' and, though Rogers had not lost his wind, he let himself be led, and took the great grey boulder for his chair. Instantly, before he had arranged his weight among the points and angles, both his knees were occupied.

'By Jove,' flashed through his mind. 'They've brought me here on purpose. I'm caught!'

A tiny pause followed.

'Now, look here, you little Schemers, I want to know what----'

But the sentence was never finished. The hand of Monkey was already pointing upwards to the s.p.a.ce of sky. He saw the fringe of pine tops fencing it about with their feathery, crested ring, and in the centre shone faint, scattered stars. Over the fence of mystery that surrounds common objects wonder peeped with one eye like a star.

'Cousinenry,' he heard close to his ear, so soft it almost might have been those tree-tops whispering to the night, 'do you know anything about a Star Cave--a place where the starlight goes when there are no eyes or puddles about to catch it?'

A Star Cave! How odd! His own boyhood's idea. He must have mentioned it to his cousin perhaps, and _he_ had told the children. And all that was in him of nonsense, poetry, love rose at a bound as he heard it.

He felt them settle themselves more comfortably upon his knees. He forgot to think about the points and angles. Here surely a gateway was opening before his very feet, a gateway into that world of fairyland the old clergyman had spoken about. A great wave of tenderness swept him--a flood strong and deep, as he had felt it long ago upon the hill of that Kentish village. The golden boyhood's mood rushed over him once more with all its original splendour. It took a slightly different form, however. He knew better how to direct it for one thing. He pressed the children closer to his side.

'A what?' he asked, speaking low as they did. 'Do I know a what?'

'A cave where lost starlight collects,' Monkey repeated, 'a Star Cave.'

And Jimbo said aloud the verses he had already learned by heart. While his small voice gave the words, more than a little mixed, a bird high up among the boughs woke from its beauty sleep and sang. The two sounds mingled. But the singing of the bird brought back the scenery of the Vicarage garden, and with it the strange, pa.s.sionate things the old clergyman had said. The two scenes met in his mind, pa.s.sed in and out of one another like rings of smoke, interchanged, and finally formed a new picture all their own, where flowers danced upon a carpet of star-dust that glittered in mid-air.

He knew some sudden, deep enchantment of the spirit. The Fairyland the world had lost spread all about him, and--he had the children close.

The imaginative faculty that for years had invented ingenious patents, woke in force, and ran headlong down far sweeter channels--channels that fastened mind, heart, and soul together in a single intricate network of soft belief. He remembered the dusk upon the Crayfield lawns.

<script>