'Oh dear!' felt the Woman, 'that's what I've felt sometimes. I only wish it were true of me!' unaware that it could be, and even by the fact of her yearning, _was_ so.

'If only I could get up and help the world!' pa.s.sed like a flame across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was already majestically effective in the world of definite action.

And even Mother Plume, pacing her airless room at the further end of the village and tapping her ebony stick upon the floor, turned suspiciously, as at a pa.s.sing flash of light that warmed her for a sudden instant as it went.

'Perhaps, after all, they don't mean all these unkind things they do to me!' she thought; 'I live so much alone. Possibly I see things less clearly than I used to do!'

The spell was certainly very potent, though Daddy himself, reading out the little shining chapters, guessed as little as the rest of them how strong. So small a part of what he meant to say, it seemed, had been transferred to the paper. More than he realised, far, far more, lay between the lines, of course. There was conviction in it, because there was vision and belief. Not much was said when he put his roll of paper down and leaned back in his chair. Riquette opened her eyes and blinked narrowly, then closed them again and began to purr. The ticking of the cuckoo clock seemed suddenly very loud and noticeable.

'Thank you,' said Mother quietly in an uncertain kind of voice. 'The world seems very wonderful now--quite different.'

She moved in her chair--the first movement she had made for over two hours. Daddy rubbed his eyes, stroked his beard, and lit a cigarette; it went out almost immediately, but he puffed on at it just the same, till his cousin struck a match and stood over him to see it properly alight.

'You have caught Beauty naked in your net of stars,' he murmured; 'but you have left her as you found her--shining, silvery, unclothed.

Others will see her, too. You have taken us all back into Fairyland, and I, for one, shall never get out again.'

'Nor I,' breathed some one in the shadows by the window....

The clock struck two. 'Odd,' said Mother, softly, 'but I never heard it strike once while you were reading!'

'We've all been out,' Rogers laughed significantly, 'just as you make them get out in the story'; and then, while Riquette yawned and turned a moment from the window-sill to say thank you for her long, warm sleep, Mother lit the spirit-lamp and brewed the cups of chocolate.

She tiptoed in next door, and as she entered the sick-room she saw through the steam rising from the cup she carried a curious thing--an impression of brilliance about the bed, as though shafts of light issued from it. Rays pulsed and trembled in the air. There was a perfume of flowers. It seemed she stepped back into the atmosphere of the story for an instant.

'Ah, you're not asleep,' she whispered. 'We've brewed some chocolate, and I thought you might like a cup.'

'No, I'm not asleep,' answered the other woman from the bed she never would leave until she was carried from it, 'but I have been dreaming.

It seemed the stars came down into my room and sang to me; this bed became a throne; and some power was in me by which I could send my thoughts out to help the world. I sent them out as a king sends messengers--to people everywhere--even to people I've never heard of.

Isn't it wonderful?'

'You've had no pain?' For Mother knew that these sleepless hours at night brought usually intense suffering. She stared at her, noting how the eyes shone and glistened with unshed moisture.

'None,' was the answer, 'but only the greatest joy and peace I've ever known.' The little gla.s.s of _calmant_ was untouched; it was not a drug that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the spell was working still. 'I was carried through the air by stars, as though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for once was realised.'

'You can do everything from your bed,' her friend murmured, sitting down beside her. 'You do. Your thoughts go out so strongly. I've often felt them myself. Perhaps that's why G.o.d put you here in bed like this,' she added, surprised at the power in herself that made her say such things--'just to think and pray for the world.'

'I do pray sometimes for others,' the tortured woman answered modestly, 'but this time I was not conscious of praying at all. It all swept out of me of its own accord. The force in me seemed so free and inexhaustible that it overflowed. It was irresistible. I felt able to save the world.'

'You were out,' said Mother softly, 'out of yourself, I mean,' she corrected it. 'And your lovely thoughts go everywhere. You do save the world.'

There fell a long silence then between them.

'You've been reading aloud,' Mlle. Lemaire said presently. 'I heard the drone of the voice through the wall---'

'Daddy was reading his new story to us,' the other said. 'It didn't disturb you?'

'On the contrary. I think it was the voice somehow that brought the vision. I listened vaguely at first, trying to sleep; then, opening my eyes suddenly, the room, as I told you, was full of stars. Their rays caught hold of me and drew these forces out of my very heart. I yielded, giving and giving and giving ... such life flowed from me, and they carried it away in streams.... Oh, it was really like a divine sensation.' 'It was divine,' said Mother, but whether she meant the story or her friend's experience, she hardly knew herself.

'And the story--was it not about our little Bourcelles?' asked the other.

Mother held her hands up as though words failed her. She opened her arms wide. She was not quite sure of her voice.

'It was,' she said at length, 'but Bourcelles had grown into the universe. It's a fairy-tale, but it's like a great golden fire. It warmed my heart till my whole body seemed all heart, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It makes you see that the whole world is _one_, and that the sun and moon and stars lie in so small and unimportant a thing as, say, Jimbo's mischief, or Monkey's impudence, or Jinny's backwardness and absurdity. All are in sympathy together, as in a network, and to feel sympathy with anything, even the most insignificant, connects you instantly with the Whole. Thought and sympathy _are_ the Universe--they are life.'

While Mother paused for breath, her old friend smiled a curious, meaning smile, as though she heard a thing that she had always known.

'And all of us are in the story, and all the things we _think_ are alive and active too, because we have created them. Our thoughts populate the world, flying everywhere to help or hinder others, you see.'

The sound of a door opening was heard. Mother got up to go. Shafts of light again seemed to follow her from the figure in the bed.

'Good-night,' she whispered with a full heart, while her thought ran suddenly--'You possess the secret of life and of creation, for suffering has taught it to you, and you have really known it always.

But Daddy has put it into words for everybody.' She felt proud as a queen.

There were whispered good-nights then in the corridor, for Rogers and her husband were on their way home to bed.

'Your chocolate is getting cold,' said Daddy kindly.

'We thought you would probably stay in there. We're going over now.

It's very late,' Rogers added. They said good-night again.

She closed and locked the great door of the Citadelle behind them, hearing their steps upon the cobbles in the yard, and for some time afterwards upon the road. But their going away seemed the same as coming nearer. She felt so close to everything that lived. Everything did live. Her heart included all that existed, that ever had existed, that ever could exist. Mother was alive all over. 'I have just been created,' she laughed, and went back into the Den to drink her cup of tepid chocolate.

CHAPTER XXVIII

See, the busy Pleiades, Sisters to the Hyades, Seven by seven Across the heaven, Light desire With their fire, Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band,

Sweetly linking All our thinking In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland.

_A Voice_.

The prophecy of the children that Bourcelles was a difficult place to get away from found its justification next morning, for Rogers slept so heavily that he nearly missed his train. It was six o'clock when he tumbled downstairs, too late for a real breakfast, and only just in time to get his luggage upon the little char that did duty for all transport in this unsophisticated village. The carpenter pulled it for him to the station.

'If I've forgotten anything, my cousin will send it after me,' he told Mme. Michaud, as he gulped down hot coffee on the steps.

'Or we can keep it for you,' was the answer. 'You'll be coming back soon.' She knew, like the others, that one always came back to Bourcelles. She shook hands with him as if he were going away for a night or two. 'Your room will always be ready,' she added. 'Ayez la bonte seulement de m'envoyer une pet.i.te ligne d'avance.'

'There's only fifteen minutes,' interrupted her husband, 'and it's uphill all the way.'

They trundled off along the dusty road, already hot in the early July sun. There was no breath of wind; swallows darted in the blue air; the perfume of the forests was everywhere; the mountains rose soft and clear into the cloudless sky. They pa.s.sed the Citadelle, where the awning was already being lowered over the balcony for Mlle. Lemaire's bed to be wheeled out a little later. Rogers waved his handkerchief, and saw the answering flutter inside the window. Riquette, on her way in, watched him from the tiles. The orchards then hid the lower floors; he pa.s.sed the tinkling fountain; to the left he saw the church and the old Pension, the wistaria blossoms falling down its walls in a cascade of beauty.

The Postmaster put his head out and waved his Trilby hat with a solemn smile. 'Le barometre est tres haut...' floated down the village street, instead of the sentence of good-bye. Even the Postmaster took it for granted that he was not leaving. Gygi, standing in the door of his barn, raised his peaked hat and smiled. 'Fait beau, ce matin,' he said, 'plus tard il fera rudement chaud.' He spoke as if Rogers were off for a walk or climb. It was the same everywhere. The entire village saw him go, yet behaved as if he was not really leaving. How fresh and sweet the morning air was, keen mountain fragrance in it, and all the delicious, delicate sharpness of wet moss and dewy fields.

As he pa.s.sed the courtyard near the Guillaume Tell, and glanced up at the closed windows of Mother Plume's apartment, a pattering step startled him behind, and Jimbo came scurrying up. Rogers kissed him and lifted him bodily upon the top of his portmanteau, then helped the carpenter to drag it up the hill. 'The barriers at the level crossing are down, the warning gongs are ringing. It's signalled from Auvernier.' They were only just in time. The luggage was registered and the train panting up the steep incline, when Monkey, sleep still thick in her eyes, appeared rolling along the white road. She was too breathless to speak; she stood and stared like a stuffed creature in a Museum. Jimbo was beside the engine, having a word with the _mecanicien_.

'Send a telegram, you know--like that,' he shouted, as the carriage slid past him, 'and we'll bring the _char_.' He knew his leader would come back. He took his cap off politely, as a man does to a lady--the Bourcelles custom. He did not wave his handkerchief or make undignified signs. He stood there, watching his cousin to the last, and trying to see the working of the engine at the same time. He had already told him the times and stopping places, and where he had to change; there was nothing more for a man to say.

Monkey, her breath recovered now, shouted something impudent from the road. 'The train will break down with you in it before it gets to Pontarlier, and you'll be back for tea--worse luck!' He heard it faintly, above the grinding of the wheels. She blew him a kiss; her hair flew out in a cloud of brown the sunshine turned half golden. He almost saw the shining of her eyes. And then the belt of the forest hid her from view, hid Jimbo and the village too. The last thing he saw of Bourcelles was the top of the church spire and the red roof of the towering Citadelle. The crest of the sentinel poplar topped them both for a minute longer, waved a slight and stately farewell, then lowered itself into the forest and vanished in its turn.