comfortable so that the parasol should shade her, the hat not tickle her, and the novel open easily for reading; 'you are happy here, aren't you? You're not too dull with us, I mean?'
'It's quite delightful, Margaret,' he answered at once. 'In one sense I have never been so happy in my life.' He looked straight at her, the sun catching his brown beard and face. 'And I love the children; they're just the kind of companions I need.'
'I'm so glad, so glad,' she said genuinely. 'And it's very kind and good-natured of you to be with them such a lot. You really almost fill Dick's place for them.' She sighed and half closed her eyes. 'Some day you may have children of your own; only you would spoil them quite atrociously, I'm sure.'
'Am I spoiling yours?' he asked solemnly.
'Dreadfully,' she laughed; 'and turning little Mademoiselle's head into the bargain.'
It was his turn to burst out laughing. 'I think that young lady can take care of herself without difficulty,' he exclaimed; 'and as for my spoiling the children, I think it's they who are spoiling me!'
And, presently, with some easy excuse, he left her side and went off into the woods. Margaret watched him charge across the lawn. A perplexed expression came into her face as she picked up her novel and settled down into the cushions, balancing the red parasol over her head at a very careful angle. Admiration was in her glance, too, as she saw him go. Evidently she was proud of her brother—proud that he was so different from other people, yet puzzled to the verge of annoyance that he should be so.
'What a strange creature he is,' was her some-, what indefinite reflection; 'I thought but one Dick could exist in the world! He's still a boy—not a day over twenty-five. I wonder if he's ever been in love, or ever will be? I think—I hope he won't; he's rather nice as he is after all.'
She sighed faintly. Then she dipped again into her novel, wherein the emotions, from love down-; wards, were turned on thick and violent as from] so many taps in a factory; got bored with it looked on to the last chapter to see what happened; to everybody; and, finally—fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIII
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay. . . .
Ode, W. W.
For the rest of the day Paul was in peculiarly good spirits; he went about the place full of bedevilment of all kinds, to the astonishment of the household in general and of his sister in particular. The oppressive heat seemed to have no effect upon him. There was something in the air that excited him, and he was very busy getting rid of the excitement.
With bedtime came no desire to sleep. 'I feel all worked-up, Margaret,' he said as he lit her candle in the hall. 'I think it must be an "aventure" coming,'—though, of course, she had no idea what he meant.
'There's thunder about,' she replied. 'It's been so very close all day.'
'Sleep well,' Paul said when he left her at the top of the stairs; and the last thing he heard as he went down the long winding passage to his bedroom in the west wing was her voice faintly assuring him 'One always does here, I'm glad to say.'
Once inside, and the door shut, he gave himself up to his mood. It was a mood apparently that came from nowhere. A soft and mysterious excitement, all delicious, stirred in the depths of his being, rising slowly to the surface. Perhaps it was growing-pains somewhere in the structure of his personality, engineered subconsciously by his imagination; perhaps only 'weather.' He always followed the barometer like a strip of dried seaweed.
But on this particular night something more than mere 'weather' was abroad; his nerves sent a succession of swift faint warnings to his brain. To begin with, the night herself claimed definite attention. Some nights are just ordinary nights; others touch the soul and whisper 'I am the night. Look at me. Listen!'
He obeyed the summons and went to the window, leaning out as his habit was. The darkness pressed up in a solid wall, charged to the brim with mysteries waiting to reveal themselves. No trees were visible, no outline of moor or hill or garden. The sky was pinned down to the horizon more tightly than usual—keeping back all manner of things. Very little air crept beneath the edges, so that the atmosphere was oppressive. The day had been cloudless, but with the sunset whole continents of vapour had climbed upon the hills of the evening wind, driven slowly by high currents that had not yet come near enough the earth to be heard and felt.
He coughed—gently. The least noise, he felt, would shatter some soft and delicate structure that rose everywhere through the darkness—some web-like shadow-scaffolding that reared upwards, supporting the night.
'Something's going to happen,' he said low to himself. 'I can feel it coming.'
He became very imaginative, enjoying his mood enormously, letting it act as a mental purge. Aventures that he would discover for the next Meeting swept through him. The stress and fever of creative fancy, stirred by the deep travailing of the elements behind that curtain of night, was upon him. Then, sleep being far away, he went to the writing-table, where Nixie's deft hands had everything prepared, lit a second candle, and began to write.
'I'll write "How I climbed the Scaffolding of the Night," 'he murmured; 'for I feel it true within me. I feel as if I were part of the night—part of all this beautiful soft darkness.'
But, before he had written a dozen lines, he stopped and fell to listening again, staring past the steady candle-flames out into the open. The stillness was profound. A single ivy-leaf rattled sharply all by itself on the wall outside his window. He felt as if that leaf tapped faintly upon his own brain. By a curious process known only to the poetic temperament, he passed on to feel with everything about him—as though some portion of himself actually merged in with the silence, with the perfumes of trees and garden, with the voice of that little tapping leaf. And, in proportion as he realised this, he transferred the magic of it to his tale. He found the words that fitted his conception like a natural skin. He knew in some measure the satisfaction and relief of expression.
'A year ago—a month ago,' he thought with delight, 'this would have been impossible to me. Nixie has taught me so much already!'
What he really wanted, of course, were the living, flaming words of poetry. But this he knew was denied him; perhaps the fire of inspiration did not burn steadily enough; perhaps the intellectual foundation was not there. At any rate, he could only do his best and struggle with the prose, and this he did with intense pleasure.
After a time he laid his pen down and fell to thinking again—the kind of reverie that dramatises a mood before the inner vision. And another inspiration came upon him with its sudden little glory; he realised vividly that within himself a region existed where all that he desired might find fulfilment; where yearnings, dreams, desires might come true. There existed this inner place within where he might visualise all he most wished for into a state of reality. The workshop of the creative imagination was its vestibule. . . .
Whether or not he could put it into words for others to realise was merely a question of craft. . . .
He must have sat thinking in this way much longer than he knew, for the candles had burnt down quite low when at length he bestirred himself with a mighty yawn and rose to go to bed. But hardly had he begun to unfasten his crumpled black tie when something made him pause.
Far away, through the hush that covered the world, that 'something' was astir—coming swiftly nearer. He stepped back into the middle of the room and waited. Smoke, the sleeping black cat on the sofa, sat up and waited too. Looking about it with brilliant green eyes, wide open, and whiskers twitching backwards and forwards, it understood even better