bereavement having thus been faced courageously, Paul threw himself into his work with energy. Every Friday night he came down to the house under the hill, and every Monday morning he returned to London. But the details of the work, beyond the fact that their fulfilment blessed both himself and those for whom he laboured, are not essential to the story of what followed. For the history of Paul's education is more than anything else a history of Aventures of the inner life. Outwardly, his existence was quiet and uneventful.
Almost immediately with the disappearance of his little friend, for instance, he discovered that the region through the Crack—the land betweenyesser-dayandtomorrow—became more real, more extraordinarily real, than ever before. The entrances now seemed everywhere and always close; it was the ways of exit that were difficult to find. He lived in it. Even in London he moved among those fields of flowers, and the winter gloom that depressed the majority only enhanced the bright sunshine that lay about his path. His thoughts were continually following the windings of the river to the far horizon; and the horizon, too, was wider, more enticing and mysterious, more suggestive than ever of that blue sea beyond where he had sailed with that other Companion.
The land became mapped out and known with an intimacy that must seem little short of marvellous to those who have never even dreamed of the existence of so fair a country. For, the truth was, his Companion, who was now his guide and leader, had suddenly revealed herself.
It came about a few days after the funeral—when the emptiness and hush of sorrow that lay over the house found its exact spiritual correspondence in the silence and sense of desolation that filled his own heart. He was in his bedroom, battling with that loneliness in loneliness which at the first had threatened to overwhelm him. He had just left his sister's side, having soothed her with what comfort he could into the sleep of weariness and exhaustion. By the open window, as so often before, he stood, staring into the damp winter night. Smoke moved restlessly to and fro behind him, sometimes sitting down to wash, sometimes jumping on the bed and sofa as though to search for something it could never find. Mrs. Tompkyns, who had scratched at the door a few minutes before, for the first time in her life, and for reasons known to none but herself and her black companion, lay at last curled up before the fire.
The room was filled with a soft presence, once silvery and fragrant, but now draped with the newly woven shadows that rendered it invisible. The invasion was irresistible. His heart ached. He knew quite well that his own soul, too, was being measured for its garment of shadow—garment that, unlike ordinary clothes, fits better and closer with every year. He was in that dangerous mood when such measurements are made only too easily, and the lassitude of grief accepts the trying-on with a kind of soft, almost pleasurable, acquiescence—when, sharply and suddenly, a sound was audible outside the window that instantly galvanised him into a state of resistance. The night, hitherto still as the grave, sighed in response to a rising wind. And through his being at the same moment ran the answering little Wind of Inspiration some one had taught him to find always when he sought it.
And the sound brought comfort. It was as though an invisible hand had reached down inside him and touched the source of joy!
Paul turned quickly. Mrs. Tompkyns was awake on the mat. Smoke rubbed against his legs. On the table, where he had spread them a few minutes before, were the black tie, the mended socks, the unused bottle for nettle stings and scratches, and beside them the faded spray of birch leaves, now withered and shrivelled. And, as he looked, the wind entered the room behind him, and he saw that the brown branch turned half over towards him. It rattled faintly as it moved. He was just in time to rescue it from Smoke, who saw in the sound and movement an invitation to play. He pinned it out of reach upon the wall over the mantelpiece.
And it was just as he finished, that this sound of wind sighing through the dripping and leafless trees outside was followed by another sound—one that he recognised. . . . There was a rush and a leap, a swift, whistling roar—and the next second he found himself among the sunny fields of flowers that he knew, and heard the water lapping at his feet . . . through the Crack!
'Everybody's thin somewhere, was what he almost expected to hear; but what he did hear was another sentence, followed by merry and delicious laughter: 'Everybody can be happy somewhere!'
And close in front of him, rising, it seemed, out of the reeds and waves and yellow sands, stood—that veiled Companion whom he knew to be a part of himself.
She was turned away from him so that he could not see her face, yet he instantly divined a movement of her whole body towards him. Something within himself rushed out to meet her halfway. His life stirred mightily. The thrill of discovery came close. The next second his arms were about her and she was looking straight into his eyes.
But her own eyes were no longer veiled; her laughing face was clear as the day; the figure that he held so close was Nixie, child and woman. If ever it can be possible for two beings to melt into one, it was possible then. Each possessed the other; each slipped into the other.
'Face to face at last!' he heard himself cry. 'Bless your little fairy heart! Why in the world didn't I guess you sooner?'
A flame of happiness sped through him, and grief ran away utterly. The sense of loss that had numbed his soul vanished. And when she only answered him by the old mischievous laughter, he asked again: 'But how did you disguise yourself so well—your voice, and everything?
Even if your face was veiled I ought to have recognised you! It's too wonderful! '
'It was you who disguised me!' she replied, standing up close in front of him, and playing with his waistcoat buttons as of old. 'Your thoughts about me got twisted—sometimes. You thought too much. You should have felt only.'
'They never shall again,' he exclaimed.
'They never can. We are face to face now.' Paul turned to look again more closely. He saw her with extraordinary detail and vividness. It was indeed Nixie, but Nixie exactly as he had always wanted her, without quite knowing it himself; at least, without acknowledging it. No gulf of age was there to separate them now. She was the perfect Companion, for he had made her so. He smoothed her hair as they turned to walk by the river, and he caught the old childish perfume of it as it spread untidily over his shoulder, her eyes like dropped stars shining through it.
'Isn't it awfully jolly?' she whispered: 'we can have twice as many aventures now, and you can go on writing them for Jonah and Toby just the same as before, only faster.'
He felt her hand steal into his; his heart became most strangely merged with hers. He had known a similar experience in Canadian forests, when the beauty of Nature had sometimes caught him up till he scarcely felt himself distinct enough from it to realise that he was separate. He now knew himself as close to her as that. It was exquisite and yet so simple that a little child might have felt it—without perplexity. Perhaps it was precisely what children always did feel towards what they loved, animate or inanimate.
'But how is it you can come so close?' he asked though he fancied that he thought, rather than spoke, the question.
'Because, in the important sense, you are still a child,' he caught the answer, 'and always have been, and always will be.'
The whole world belonged to him. In the midst of the sea of sorrow he had discovered the little island of happiness.
'We never can lose each other—now!' he said.
'As long as you think about me,' she answered. 'Please always think hard, very hard indeed thoughts. Through the Crack you can find everything that's lost.'
"And we're through the Crack now.'
'Rather!'
CHAPTER XXVII
.... Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,