CHAPTER XIX
--AS USUAL
Consciousness was first--unconsciousness; the biggest changes areunconscious before they are conscious. They have been long preparing.They fall with a clap; and people call them sudden and exclaim, "Howstrange!" But it is only the discovery and recognition that are sudden.It all has happened already long ago--happened before. The faint senseof familiarity betrays it. It is there the strangeness lies.
And it was this delicate fragrance of an uncommunicable strangenessthat floated in the air when Uncle Felix and the children came down tobreakfast that Sunday morning and heard the sound of bells in the windacross the fields. They came down punctually for a wonder, too; Maria,last but not actually late, brought the alarum clock with her. "It'sgoing," she stated quietly, and handed it to her brother.
Tim took it without a word, looked at it, shook it, listened to itsticking against his ear, then set it on the mantelpiece where itbelonged. He seemed pleased to have it in his possession again, yetsomething puzzled him. An expression of wonder flitted across his face;the eyes turned upwards; he frowned; there was an effort in him--toremember something. He turned to Maria who was already deep in porridge.
"Did _you_ wind it up?" he asked. "I thought it'd stopped--last night."
"It's going," she said, thinking of her porridge chiefly.
"It wasn't, though," insisted Tim. He reflected a moment, evidentlyperplexed. "I wound it and forgot," he added to himself, "or else itwound itself." He went to his place and began his breakfast.
"Wound itself," mentioned Maria, and then the subject dropped.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was dressed in Sunday things. Theexcitement of the evening before, the promise of an Extra Day, thedetailed preparation--all this had disappeared. Being of yesterday, itwas no longer vital: certainly there was no necessity to consult it.They looked forward rather than backward; the mystery of life lay everjust in front of them, what lay behind was already done with. They hadlived it, lived it out. It was in their possession therefore, part ofthemselves.
No one of the four devouring porridge round that breakfast table hadforgotten about the promise, any more than they had forgotten giving uptheir time-pieces, the conversation, and all the rest of it. It was notforgetfulness. It was not loss of interest either that led no one torefer to it, least of all, to clamour for fulfilment. It was quiteanother motive that kept them silent, and that, even when Uncle Felixhanded back the watches, prevented them saying anything more than"Thank you, Uncle," then hanging them on to belt and waistcoat.
Expectation--an eternal Expectation--was established in them.
But there was also this sense of elusive strangeness in their hearts,the certainty that an enormous interval had passed, almost theconviction that an Extra Day--had been. Somewhere, somehow, they hadexperienced its fulfilment: It was now inside them. A strangefamiliarity hung about this Sunday morning.
Yet there were still a million things to do and endless time in whichto do them. Expectation was stronger than ever before, but the sense ofInterval brought a happy feeling of completion too. There was no hurry.They felt something of what Maria felt, living at the centre of acircle that turned unceasingly but never finished. It was Maria'sparticular adventure, and Maria had shared it with them. Wonder andexpectation made them feel more than usually--alive.
They talked normally while eating and drinking. If things were saidthat skirted a mystery, no one tried to find its name or label it. Itwas just hiding. Let it hide! To find it was to lose the mystery, andlife without mystery was unthinkable.
"That's bells," said Tim, "it's church this morning"; but he did notsigh, there was no sinking of the heart, it seemed. He spoke as if itwas an adventure he looked forward to. "I've decided what I'm going tobe," he went on--"an engineer, but a mining engineer. Finding things inthe earth, valuable things like coal and gold." Why he said it was notclear exactly; it had no apparent connection with church bells. He justthought of life as a whole, perhaps, and what he meant to do with it.He looked forward across the years to come. He distinctly knew himselfalive.
"I shall put sixpence in, I think," observed Judy presently. "It's alot. And I shall wear my blue hat with the pheasant's feather--"
"Pheasants feather," repeated Tim in a single word, amused as usual bya curious sound.
"And a wild rose _here_," she added, pointing to the place on herdress, though nobody felt interested enough to look. Her remark aboutthe Collection was more vital than the other. Collections in churchwere made, they believed, to "feed the clergyman." And Sunday was theclergyman's day.
"I've got sixpence," Tim hastened to remind everybody. "I've got athreepenny bit as well."
"It's sixpence to-day, I think," Judy decided almost tenderly. Behindher thought was a caring, generous impulse; the motherly instinct senther mind to the collection for the clergyman's comfort. But romancestirred too; she wanted to look her best. Her two main tendenciesseemed very much alive this Sunday morning. The hat and thesixpence--both were real.
Maria, as usual, had little or nothing to say. She spoke once, however.
"I dreamed," she informed the company. She did not look up, keeping herhead bent over the bread and marmalade upon her plate; her blue eyesrolled round the table once, then dropped again. No one asked fordetails of her dream, she had no desire to supply them. She announcedher position comfortably, as it were, set herself right with life, andquietly went on with the business of the moment, which was bread andmarmalade.
Uncle Felix looked up, however, as she said it.
"That reminds me," he observed, "I dreamed too. I dreamed that youdreamed."
"Yes," Maria replied briefly, moving her eyes in his direction, but nother head. No other remarks were made; the statement was too muddled tostimulate interest particularly.
When breakfast was over they went to the open window and threw crumbsto a robin that was obviously expecting to be fed. They all leaned outwith their heads in the sunlight, watching it. It hopped from a twig onto the ground, its body already tight to bursting. It looked like a toyballoon--as though it wore a dress of red elastic stretched to such apoint that the merest pinprick must explode it with a sharp report; andit hopped as though springs were in its feet. The earth, like a tautsheet, made it bounce. Tim aimed missiles of bread rolled into pelletsat its head, but never hit it.
"It's a lovely morning," remarked Uncle Felix, looking across thegarden to the yellow fields beyond. "A perfect day. We'll walk tochurch." He brushed the breakfast crumbs from the waistcoat of his neatblue suit, lit his pipe, sniffed the air contentedly, and had an airgenerally of a sailor on shore-leave.
Judy sprang up. "There's button-holes to get," she mentioned, and flewout of the room like a flash of sunlight or a bird.
Tim raced after her. "Wallflower for me!" he cried, while Judy's answerfloated back from halfway down the passage: "I'll have a wildrosebud--it'll match my hat!"
Uncle Felix and Maria were left alone, gazing out of the window side byside upon the "lovely morning." She was just high enough to see abovethe edge, and her two hands lay sprawled, fingers extended, upon theshining sill.
"Yes," she mentioned quietly, as to herself, "and I'll have aforget-me-not." Her eyes rolled up sideways, meeting those of her uncleas he turned and noticed her.
For quite suddenly he "noticed" her, became aware that she was there,discovered her. He stared a moment, as though reflecting. That "yes"had a queer, familiar sound about it, surely.
"Maria," he said, "I believe you will. Everything comes to you of itsown accord somehow."
She nodded.
"And there's another thing. You've got a secret--haven't you?" Itoccurred to him that Maria was rather wonderful.
"I expect so," she answered, after a moment's pause. She looked wiserthan an owl, he thought.
"What is it? What _is_ your secret? Can't you tell me?"
For it came over him that Maria, for all her inactivity, was reallymore truly alive than both the
other children put together. Theirtireless, incessant energy was nothing compared to some deep well oflife Maria's outer calm concealed.
He continued to stare at her, reflecting while he did so. Through herglobular exterior, standing here beside him, rose this quiet tide whoseprofound and inexhaustible source was nothing less than the entireuniverse. Finding himself thus alone with her, he knew his imaginationsingularly stirred. The full stream of this imagination--usually turnedinto sea--and history-stories--poured now into Maria. It was the wayshe had delivered herself of the monosyllable, "Yes," that firstenflamed him.
The child, obviously, was quite innocent that her uncle's imaginationclothed her in such wonder; she was entirely unselfconscious, andremained so; but, as she kept silent as well, there was nothing tointerrupt the natural process of his thought. "You're a circle, amystery, a globe of wonder," his mind addressed her, gazing downwardshalf in play and half in earnest. "You're always going it. Though youseem so still--you're turning furiously like a little planet!"
For this abruptly struck him, flashing the symbol into hisimagination--that Maria lived so close to the universe that her lifeand movements were akin to those of the heavenly bodies. He saw her asan epitome of the earth. Fat, peaceful, little, calm, rotund Maria--aminiature earth! She had no call to hurry nor rush after things. Likethe earth she contained all things within herself. It made him smile;he smiled as he looked down into her face; she smiled as she rolled herblue eyes upwards into his.
Yet her calm was not the calm of sloth. In that mysterious centre whereshe lived he felt her as tremendously alive.
For the earth, apparently so calm and steady, knows no pause. She movesround her axis without stopping. She rushes with immense rapidity roundthe sun. Simultaneously with these two movements she combines a third;the sun, carrying her and all his other planets with him, hurries at aprodigious rate through interstellar space, adventuring new regionsnever seen before. Calm outwardly, and without apparent motion, theearth--at this very moment, as he leaned across the window-sill--wasmaking these three gigantic, endless movements. This peaceful summermorning, like any other peaceful summer morning, she was actuallyspinning, rushing, rising. And in Maria--it came to him--in Maria,outwardly so calm, something also--spun--rushed--rose! This amazinglife that brimmed her full to bursting, even as it brimmed the robinand the earth, overflowed and dripped out of her very eyes in shiningblue. There was no need for her to dash about. She, like the earth,was--carried.
All this flashed upon him while the alarum clock ticked off a secondmerely, for imagination telescopes time, of course, and knows thingsall at once.
"What _is_ your secret, Maria?" he asked again. "I believe it's aboutthat Extra Day we meant to steal. Is that it?"
Her eyes gazed straight before her across the lawn where Tim and Judywere now visible, searching busily for button-holes.
"It was to be your particular adventure, wasn't it?"
"Yes," she told him at length, without changing her expression ofserene contentment.
His imagination warned him he was getting "at her" gradually. Hepossibly read into her a thousand things that were not there.Certainly, Maria was not aware of them. But, though Uncle Felix knewthis perfectly well, he persisted, hoping for a sudden disclosure thatwould justify his search--even expecting it, perhaps.
"And what sort of a day would it be, then, this Extra Day of yours?" hewent on. "It would never end, of course, for one thing, would it?There'd be no time?"
She nodded quietly by way of effortless agreement and consent.
"So that, in a sense, you'd have it always," he said, aware of distinctencouragement. He felt obliged to help her. This was her peculiarpower--that everything was done for her while she seemed to do it allherself. "You would live it over and over again, for ever and ever._That's_ your secret, I expect, isn't it?"
"I expect so," the child answered quietly. "I've always got it." Shemoved in a little closer to his side as she said it. The disclosure heexpected seemed so near now that excitement grew in him. Across thelawn he saw the hurrying figures of Tim and Judy, racing back withtheir button-holes. There was no time to lose.
He put his arm about her, tilting her face upwards with one hand to seeit plainly. The blue dyes came up with it.
"Then, what kind of a day _would_ you choose, Maria? Tell me--in awhisper."
And then the disclosure came. But it was not whispered. Uncle Felixheard the secret in a very clear, decided voice and in a single word:
"Birthday."
At the same moment the others poured into the room; they came like acataract; it seemed that a dozen children rushed upon them in atorrent. The air was full of voices and flowers suddenly. A smell ofthe open world came in with them. Button-holes were fastened intoeverybody, accompanied by a breathless chorus of where and how they hadbeen found, who got the best, who got it first, and all the rest. Fromthe End of the World they came, apparently, but while Tim had climbedthe wall for his, Judy picked hers because a bird had lowered thebranch into her very hand. For Uncle Felix she brought a spray oflilac; Tim brought a bit of mignonette. Eventually he had to wear themboth.
"And here's a forget-me-not, Maria," cried Judy, stooping down to pokeit into her sister's blue and white striped dress. "That suits youbest, I thought."
"Thank you," said Maria, moving her eyes the smallest possible fractionof an inch.
And they scampered out of the room again, Maria ambling slowly in therear, to prepare for church. There were prayer-books and things tofind, threepenny bits and sixpences for the collection. There wassimply heaps to do, as they expressed it, and not a moment to loseeither. Uncle Felix listened to the sound of voices and footsteps asthey flew down the passage, dying rapidly away into the distance, andfinally ceasing altogether. He puffed his pipe a little longer beforegoing to his room upon a similar errand. He watched the smoke curl upand melt into the outer air; he felt the pleasant sunshine warm uponhis face; he smelt the perfume rising from his enormous button-hole.But of these things he did not think. He thought of what Maria said.The way she uttered that single word remained with him: "Birthday."
He had half divined her secret. For a birthday was the opening of life;it was the beginning. Maria had "got it always." All days for her werebirthdays, Extra Days.
And while they walked along the lane to church he still was thinkingabout it.
The conversation proved that he was absent-minded rather; yet not thathis mind was absent so much as intent upon other things. The childrenfound him heavy; he seemed ponderous to them. And pondering hecertainly was--pondering the meaning of existence. The children, herealised, were such brilliant comments upon existence; theirunconscious way of living, all they said and thought and did, butespecially all they believed, offered such bright interpretations, suchsimple solutions of a million things. They lived so really, were soreally--alive. They never explained, they just accepted; and theexplanations given they placed at their true value, still asking, "Yes,but what is the meaning of all that?" So close to Reality theylived--before reason, cloaked and confused it with a million complexexplanations. That "Yes" and "Birthday" of Maria's were illuminatingexamples.
Of this he was vaguely pondering as they walked along the sunny lanesto church, and his conversation proved it. For conversation withchildren meant answering endless questions merely, and the questionswere prompted by anything and everything they saw. Reality poked them;they gave expression to it by a question. And nothing real was trivial;the most careless detail was important, all being but a singlequestion--an affirmation: "We're alive, so everything else is too!"
His conversation proved that he had almost reached that state oftime-less reality in which they lived. He felt it this morning veryvividly. It seemed familiar somehow--like his own childhood recoveredalmost.
He answered them accordingly. It didn't matter what was said, becauseall the words in the world said one thing only. Whether the words,therefore, made sense or not, was of no importance.
"
Have you ever seen a rabbit come _out_ of its hole?" asked Tim. "Theydo that for safety," he added; and if there was confusion in hislanguage, there was none in his thought. "Then no one can tell whichits hole is, you see. Because each rabbit--"
He broke off and glanced expectantly at his uncle. At junctures likethis his uncle usually cleared things up with an easy word or two. Hewould not fail him now.
"Come _out_, no," was the reply; "no one ever sees a rabbit come out.But I've seen them go _in_; and that's the same thing in the end. Theygo down the wrong hole on purpose. _They_ know right enough. Rabbitsare rabbits."
"Of course," exclaimed Judy, "everything's itself and knows its ownsign--er--business, I mean."
"Yes," Maria repeated.
And before anything further could be mentioned--if there _was_ anythingto mention--they arrived at the porch of the church, passed under itwithout speaking, walked up the aisle and took their places in thefamily pew, Maria occupying the comfortable corner against the innerwall.