'Nixie, you must promise never to grow up,' he would say, laughing.
'Because Aventures stop then, don't they?' she asked.
'Partly that,' he answered.
'And I should get tired, like mother; or stupid, like the head gardener,' she added. 'I know. But I don't think I ever shall, somehow. I think I am meant to be always like this.'
The serious way she said this last phrase escaped him at the time. He remembered it afterwards, however.
It was so delightful, too, to read out his stories and aventures to her; they laughed over there and her criticisms often improved them vastly. He even read her his first poem without shyness, and they discussed each verse and talked about 'stealing Heaven's fire,' and the poor 'sparks' that never grew into flames. The 'kiss of fire' she thought' must be wonderful. She also asked what a 'lyre was. They made up other verses together too. But though they laughed and she asked odd questions, on the whole she grasped the sadness of the poem perfectly.
'Let's go and cry a bit somewhere,' she remarked quietly, her eyes very wistful. 'It helps it out! awfully, you know.'
He reminded her, however, of a sage remark of Toby's, to the effect that when men grew beards they lost the power to cry. Quick as a flash, then, she turned with one of her exquisite little bits of unconscious poetry.
'Let's go to the Gwyle then, and make the stream cry for us instead,' she said gravely, with a profound sympathy, 'because everybody's tears must get into the water some time—and so to the sea, mustn't they?'
And on their way, what with jumping ditches and flower-beds, they forgot all about the crying. On the edge of the woods, however, she raced up again to his side, her blue eyes full of a new wonder. 'I know that wind of inspiration that your poetry said never blew for you,' she cried. 'I know where it blows. Quick! I'll show you!' The pace made him pant a bit; he almost regretted he had mentioned it. 'I know where it blows, we'll catch it, and you shall see. Then you can always, always get it when you want it.'
And a little farther on, after wading through deep bracken, they stopped, and Nixie took his hand. 'Come on tiptoe now,' she whispered mysteriously. 'Don't crack the twigs with your feet.' And, smiling at this counsel of perfection, he obeyed to the best of his ability, while she pretended not to notice the series of explosions that followed his tread.
It was a curve in the skirts of the wood where they found themselves; a small inlet where the tide of daylight flowed against the dark cliffs of the firs, and then fell back. The thick trees held it at bay so that only the spray of light penetrated beyond, as from advancing waves. 'Thus far and no farther,' very plainly said the pine trees, and the sunshine lay there collected in the little hollow with the delicious heat of all the summer. It was a corner hitherto undiscovered by Paul; he saw it with the pleasure of a discovery.
And there, set brightly against the sombre background, stood the slender figure of a silver birch tree, all sweet and shining, its branches sifting the sunshine and the wind; while behind it, standing forth somewhat from the main body of the wood, a pine, shaggy and formidable, grew close as though; to guard it. The picture, with its striking contrast,? needed no imagination to make it more appealing,. It was patent to any eye.
'That's my tree,' said Nixie softly, with both arms linked about his elbow and her cheek laid against the sleeve of his coat. 'My fav'rite tree. And that's where your winds of inspiration blow that: you said you couldn't catch. So now you can always! come and hear them, you see.'
Paul entered instantly into the spirit of her dream. The way her child's imagination seized upon inanimate objects and incorporated them into the substance of her own life delighted him, for it was also his own way, and he understood it.
'Then that old pine,' he answered, pointing to the other, 'is my tree. See! It's come out of the wood to protect the little birch.'
The child ran from his side and stood close to them. 'Yes, and don't you see,' she cried, her eyes popping with excitement, 'this is me, and that's you!' She patted the two trunks, first the birch and then the pine. 'It's us! I never thought of that before, never! It's you looking after me and taking care of me, and me dancing and laughing round you all the time!' She ran back to his side and hopped up to plant a kiss in his beard. He quite forgot to correct her a'venturous grammar. 'Of course,' he cried, 'so it is. Look! The branches touch too. Your little leaves run up among my old needles!'
Nixie clapped her hands and ran to and fro, laughing and talking, on errands of further discovery, while Paul sat down to watch the scene and think his own thoughts. It was just the picture to appeal strongly to him. At any time the beauty of the tree would have seized him, but with no one else could he have enjoyed it in the same way, or spoken of his enjoyment. While Nixie flitted here and there in the sunshine, the little birch behind her bent down and then released itself with a graceful rush of branches as the pressure of the wind passed. Against the blue sky she tossed her leafy hands; then, with a passing shiver, stood still.
'I wonder,' ran his thought, 'why poets need invent Dryads when such an incomparable revelation lies plain in one of the commonest of trees like this?' And, at the same moment, he saw Nixie dart past between the fir trees and the birch, as though the very Dryad he was slighting had slipped out to chide him. Her hair spread in the sunshine like leaves. In the world of trees here, surely, was the very essence of what is feminine caught and imprisoned. Whatever of grace and wonder emanate from the face and figure of a young girl to enchant and bewitch here found expression in the silver stem and branches, in the running limbs so slender, in the twigs that bent with their cataracts of flying hair. Seen against the dark pinewood, this little birch tree laughed and danced; over that silver skin ran, positively, smiles; from the facets of those dainty leaves twinkled mischief and the joys of innocence. Here, in a word, was Nixie herself in the terms of tree-dom; and, as he watched, the wind swept out the branches towards him in a cluster of rustling leaves,—and at the same instant Nixie shot laughing to his side.
For a second he hardly knew whether it was the child or the silver birch that nestled down beside him and began to murmur in his ear.
'This is it, you see,' she was saying; 'and there's your wind of inspiration blowing now.'
'We shall have to alter the first verse then,' he said gravely:
'The winds of inspiration blow,
Yet never pass me by.'
'Of course, of course,' she whispered, listening half to her uncle, half to the rustle in the branches. 'And now,' she added presently, 'you can always come and write your poetry here, and it will be very-wonderfulindeed poetry, you see. And if you leave a bit of paper on the tree you'll find it in the morning covered with all sorts of things in very fine writing—oh, but very very fine writing, so small that no one can see it except you and me. One of the Little Winds we saw, you know, will twine round it and leave marks. And the big pine is you and the birch is me, isn't it?' she ended with sudden conviction.
The game, of course, was after her own heart. Up she sprang then suddenly again, picked a spray of leaves from a hanging branch, and brought it back to him.
'And here's a bit of me for a present, so that you can't ever forget,' she said with a gravity that held no smile. And she fastened it with much tugging and arranging in his buttonhole. 'A bit of my tree, and so of me.'
'Then I might leave a bit of paper in the water too,' he remarked slyly on their way home, 'so as to get the thoughts of the stream.'
'Easily,' she said, 'only it must be wrapped up in something. I'll get Jonah's sponge-bag and lend it you. Only you must promise faithfully to return it in case we go to the seaside in the summer.'
'And perhaps some of those tears we were talking about will stick on it and leave their marks before they go on to the sea,' he suggested.
'Oh, but they'd be too sad,' she answered quickly. 'They're much better lost in the sea, aren't they?'
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus the poetry in his soul that he could not utter, he lived. Without any conscious effort