Part 26 (2/2)

'By Jove! I am delighted!' Rogers had seen him excited before over a 'brilliant idea,' but the telling of it always left him cold. It touched the intellect, yet not the heart. It was merely clever. This time, however, there was a new thing in his manner. 'How did you get it?' he repeated. Methods of literary production beyond his own doggerels were a mystery to him. 'Sort of inspiration, eh?'

'Woke with it, I tell you,' continued his cousin, twisting the m.u.f.fler so that it tickled his ear now instead of his chin. 'It must have come to me in sleep----' 'In sleep,' exclaimed the other; 'you dreamt it, then?'

'Kind of inspiration business. I've heard of that sort of thing, but never experienced it----' The author paused for breath.

'What is it? Tell me.' He remembered how ingenious details of his patents had sometimes found themselves cleared up in the morning after refres.h.i.+ng slumber. This might be something similar. 'Let's hear it,'

he added; 'I'm interested.'

His cousin's recitals usually ended in sad confusion, so that all he could answer by way of praise was--' You ought to make something good out of that. I shall like to read it when you've finished it.' But this time, he felt, there was distinctly a difference. There were new conditions.

The older man leaned closer, his face alight, his manner shyly, eagerly confidential. The morning suns.h.i.+ne blazed upon his untidy hair. A bread crumb from breakfast still balanced in his beard.

'It's difficult to tell in a few words, you see,' he began, the enthusiasm of a boy in his manner, 'but--I woke with the odd idea that this little village might be an epitome of the world. All the emotions of London, you see, are here in essence--the courage and cowardice, the fear and hope, the greed and sacrifice, the love and hate and pa.s.sion--everything. It's the big world in miniature. Only--with one difference.'

'That's good,' said Rogers, trying to remember when it was he had told his cousin this very thing. Or had he only _thought_ it? 'And what _is_ the difference?'

'The difference,' continued the other, eyes sparkling, face alight, 'that here the woods, the mountains and the stars are close. They pour themselves in upon the village life from every side--above, below, all round. Flowers surround it; it dances to the mountain winds; at night it lies entangled in the starlight. Along a thousand imperceptible channels an ideal simplicity from Nature pours down into it, modifying the human pa.s.sions, chastening, purifying, uplifting. Don't you see?

And these sweet, viewless channels--who keeps them clean and open?

Why, G.o.d bless you----. The children! _My_ children!'

'By Jingo, yes; _your_ children.'

Rogers said it with emphasis. But there was a sudden catch at his heart; he was conscious of a queer sensation he could not name. This was exactly what he had felt himself--with the difference that his own thought had been, perhaps, emotion rather than a reasoned-out idea.

His cousin put it into words and gave it form. A picture--had he seen it in a book perhaps?--flashed across his mind. A child, suspiciously like Monkey, held a pen and dipped it into something bright and flowing. A little boy with big blue eyes gathered this s.h.i.+ning stuff in both hands and poured it in a golden cataract upon the eyelids of a sleeping figure. And the figure had a beard. It was a man ...

familiar. ... A touch of odd excitement trembled through his undermind ... thrilled ... vanished. ...

All dived out of sight again with the swiftness of a darting swallow.

His cousin was talking at high speed. Rogers had lost a great deal of what he had been saying.

'... it may, of course, have come from something you said the other night as we walked up the hill to supper--you remember?--something about the brilliance of our stars here and how they formed a s.h.i.+ning network that hung from Boudry and La Tourne. It's impossible to say.

The germ of a true inspiration is never discoverable. Only, I remember, it struck me as an odd thing for _you_ to say. I was telling you about my idea of the scientist who married--no, no, it wasn't that, it was my story of the materialist doctor whom circ.u.mstances compelled to accept a position in the Community of Shakers, and how the contrast produced an effect upon his mind of--of--you remember, perhaps? It was one or the other; I forget exactly,'--then suddenly-- 'No, no, I've got it--it was the a.n.a.lysis of the father's mind when he found----'

'Yes, yes,' interrupted Rogers. 'We were just pa.s.sing the Citadelle fountain. I saw the big star upon the top of Boudry, and made a remark about it.' His cousin was getting sadly wumbled. He tried to put severity and concentration into his voice.

'That's it,' the other cried, head on one side and holding up a finger, 'because I remember that my own thought wandered for a moment --thought will, you know, in spite of one's best effort sometimes--and you said a thing that sent a little s.h.i.+ver of pleasure through me for an instant--something about a Starlight Train--and made me wonder where you got the idea. That's it. I do believe you've hit the nail on the head. Isn't it curious sometimes how a practical mind may suggest valuable material to the artist? I remember, several years ago----'

'Starlight Express, wasn't it?' said his friend with decision in his voice. He thumped the table vigorously with one fist. 'Keep to the point, old man. Follow it out. Your idea is splendid.'

'Yes, I do believe it is.' Something in his voice trembled.

One sentence in particular Rogers heard, for it seemed plucked out of the talk he had with the children in the forest that day two weeks ago.

'You see, all light meets somewhere. It's all one, I mean. And so with minds. They all have a common meeting-place. Sympathy is the name for that place--that state--they feel with each other, see flash-like from the same point of view for a moment. And children are the conduits.

They do not think things out. They feel them, eh?' He paused an instant.

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