Part 43 (2/2)

'Harmony,' she repeated to herself, with a great swelling happiness in her heart, 'that's the nunculus of the matter.'

'The what?' he asked, overhearing her.

'The nunculus,' she repeated bravely, seeing the word in her mind, yet unable to get it quite. Rogers did not correct her.

'Rather,' was all he said. 'Of course it is.' What did the p.r.o.nunciation of a word matter at such a time? Her version even sounded better than the original. Mother saw things bigger! Already she was becoming creative!

'And you're the one who brought it,' she continued, but this time so low that he did not catch the words. 'It's you, your personality, your thinking, your atmosphere somehow that have brought this gigantic sense of peace and calm security which are _au fond_ nothing but the consciousness of harmony and the power of seeing ugly details in their proper place--in a single _coup d'oeil_--and understanding them as parts of a perfect whole.'

It was her thought really running on; she never could have found the words like that. She thought in French, too, for one thing. And, in any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy that they recognised.

'But, Mother, he's making it look like you!' cried Monkey--only Mother was too far away in her magnificent reverie to reply intelligently.

I know her; she's my friend,' she answered vaguely. 'So it's all right.'

'Majestic Haystack'--it was the voice of the wind addressing her:--

'Majestic Haystack, Empress of my life, Your ample waist Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife, And suits my taste; Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep, An unresponsive, elephantine heap, Coquetting with the stars while I'm asleep, O cruel Stack!

Coy, silent Monster, Matron of the fields, I sing to you; And all the fondest love that summer yields I bring to you; Yet there you squat, immense in your disdain, Heedless of all the tears of streaming rain My eyes drip over you--your breathless swain; O stony Stack!

Stupendous Maiden, sweetest when oblong, Does inner flame Now smoulder in thy soul to hear my song Repeat thy name?

Or does thy huge and ponderous heart object The advances of my pa.s.sion, and reject My love because it's airy and elect?

O wily Stack!

O crested G.o.ddess, thatched and top-knotted, O reckless Stack!

Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted There is no lack; You've spurned my love as though I were a worm; But next September when I see thy form, I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm!

I have that knack!'

'Far less wumbled than usual,' thought Rogers, as the children danced about the room, making up new ridiculous rhymes, of which 'I'll give you a whack' seemed the most popular. Only Jane Anne was quiet. A courts.h.i.+p even so remote and improbable as between the Wind and a Haystack sent her thoughts inevitably in the dominant direction.

'It must be nice when one is two,' she whispered ambiguously to Mother with a very anxious face, 'but I'm sure that if a woman can't cook, love flies out of the window. It's a positive calamity, you know.'

But it was Cousin Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and mere conversation in corners was out of the question. The door was opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz, Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne.

She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his shoulder. 'Please don't hold me _quite_ so tight,' she ventured. 'I've never danced with a strange man before, you see'; and he no more laughed at her than he had laughed at Mother's 'nunculus.' Even Jane Anne, he knew, would settle down comfortably before long into the great big pattern where a particular nook awaited--aye, needed--her bizarre, odd brilliance. The most angular fragments would nest softly, neatly in. A little filing, a little polis.h.i.+ng, and all would fit together. To force would only be to break. Hurry was of the devil. And later, while Daddy played an ancient tune that was written originally as a mazurka yet did duty now for a two-step, he danced with Mother too, and the children paused to watch out of sheer admiration.

'Fancy, Mother dancing!' they exclaimed with glee--except Jinny, who was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully than Mother glided over those uneven boards.

'The Wind and the Haystack' of course, was Monkey's description.

'You'll wind and haystack to bed now,' was the reply, as Mother sat and fanned herself in the corner. The 'bed-sentence' as the children called it, was always formed in this way. Whatever the child was saying when the moment came, Mother adopted as her verb. 'Shall I put some peat on, Mother?' became 'Peat yourself off to bed-it's nine o'clock'--and the child was sorry it had spoken.

Good-byes had really been said at intervals all day long, and so to- night were slight enough; the children, besides, were so 'excitey- tired,' as Monkey put it, that they possessed no more emotion of any kind. There were various disagreeable things in the immediate future of To-morrow--getting up early, school, and so forth; and Cousin Henry's departure they lumped in generally with the ma.s.s, accepted but unrealised. Jimbo could hardly keep his eyes alight, and Monkey's hair was like a baby haystack the wind had treated to an equinoctial storm.

Jinny, stiff, perplexed, and solemn with exhaustion, yet dared not betray it because she was older, in measurable distance of her hair going up.

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