"The Dustman!" they cried with excitement, easily recognising his energetic yet stooping figure; and Jimbo added, "the dear old Dustman!" while Monkey somersaulted after him, returning breathless a minute later with, "He"s gone; I couldn"t get near him. He went straight to La Citadelle----"
And then collided violently with the Lamplighter, whose pole of office caught her fairly in the middle and sent her spinning like a conjurer"s plate till they feared she would never stop. She kept on laughing the whole time she spun--like a catherine wheel that laughs instead of splutters. The place where the pole caught her, however--it was its lighted end--shines and glows to this day: the centre of her little heart.
"Do let"s be careful," pleaded Jimbo, hardly approving of these wild gyrations. He really did prefer his world a trifle more dignified. He was ever the grave little gentleman.
They stooped to enter by the narrow opening, but were stopped again-- this time by some one pushing rudely past them to get in. From the three points of the compa.s.s to which the impact scattered them, they saw a shape of darkness squeeze itself, sack and all, to enter. An ordinary man would have broken every bone in his body, judging by the portion that projected into the air behind. But he managed it somehow, though the discomfort must have been intolerable, they all thought.
The darkness dropped off behind him in flakes like discarded clothing; he turned to gold as he went in; and the contents of his sack--he poured it out like water--shone as though he squeezed a sponge just dipped in the Milky Way.
"What a lot he"s collected," cried Rogers from his point of vantage where he could see inside. "It all gets purified and clean in there.
Wait a moment. He"s coming out again--off to make another collection."
And then they knew the man for what he was. He shot past them into the night, carrying this time a flat and emptied sack, and singing like a blackbird as he went:--
Sweeping chimneys and cleaning flues, That is the work I love; Brushing away the blacks and the blues, And letting in light from above!
I twirl my broom in your tired brain When you"re tight in sleep up-curled, Then scatter the stuff in a soot-like rain Over the edge of the world.
The voice grew fainter and fainter in the distance--
For I"m a tremendously busy Sweep, Catching the folk when they"re all asleep, And tossing the blacks on the Rubbish Heap Over the edge of the world...!
The voice died away into the wind among the high branches, and they heard it no more.
"There"s a Sweep worth knowing," murmured Rogers, strong yearning in him.
"There are no blacks or blues in _my_ brain," exclaimed Monkey, "but Jimbo"s always got some on his face."
The impudence pa.s.sed ignored. Jimbo took his cousin"s hand and led him to the opening. The "men" went in first together; the other s.e.x might follow as best it could. Yet somehow or other Monkey slipped between their legs and got in before them. They stood up side by side in the most wonderful place they had ever dreamed of.
And the first thing they saw was--Jane Anne.
"I"m collecting for Mother. Her needles want such a chronic lot, you see." Her face seemed full of stars; there was no puzzled expression in the eyes now. She looked beautiful. And the younger children stared in sheer amazement and admiration.
"I have no time to waste," she said, moving past them with a load in her spread ap.r.o.n that was like molten gold; "I have to be up and awake at six to make your porridge before you go to school. I"m a busy monster, I can tell you!" She went by them like a flash, and out into the night.
Monkey felt tears in her somewhere, but they did not fall. Something in her turned ashamed--for a moment. Jimbo stared in silence. "What a girl!" he thought. "I"d like to be like that!" Already the light was sticking to him.
"So this is where she always comes," said Monkey, soon recovering from the temporary attack of emotion. "She"s better out than in; she"s safest when asleep! No wonder she"s so funny in the daytime."
Then they turned to look about them, breathing low as wild-flowers that watch a rising moon.
The place was so big for one thing--far bigger than they had expected.
The storage of lost starlight must be a serious affair indeed if it required all this s.p.a.ce to hold it. The entire mountain range was surely hollow. Another thing that struck them was the comparative dimness of this huge interior compared with the brilliance of the river outside. But, of course, lost things are ever dim, and those worth looking for dare not be too easily found.
A million tiny lines of light, they saw, wove living, moving patterns, very intricate and very exquisite. These lines and patterns the three drew in with their very breath. They swallowed light--the tenderest light the world can know. A scent of flowers--something between a violet and a wild rose--floated over all. And they understood these patterns while they breathed them in. They read them. Patterns in Nature, of course, are fairy script. Here lay all their secrets sweetly explained in golden writing, all mysteries made clear. The three understood beyond their years; and inside-sight, instead of glimmering, shone. For, somehow or other, the needs of other people blazed everywhere, obliterating their own. It was most singular.
Monkey ceased from somersaulting and stared at Jimbo.
"You"ve got two stars in your face instead of eyes. They"ll never set!" she whispered. "I love you because I understand every bit of you."
"And you," he replied, as though he were a grande personne, "have got hair like a mist of fire. It will never go out!"
"Every one will love me now," she cried, "my underneath is gold."
But her brother reproved her neatly:--
"Let"s get a lot--simply an awful lot"--he made a grimace to signify quant.i.ty--"and pour it over Daddy"s head till it runs from his eyes and beard. He"ll write real fairy stories then and make a fortune."
And Cousin Henry moved past them like a burning torch. They held their breath to see him. Jane Anne, their busy sister, alone excelled him in brightness. Her perfume, too, was sweeter.
"He"s an old hand at this game," Monkey said in French.
"But Jinny"s never done anything else since she was born," replied her brother proudly.
And they all three fell to collecting, for it seemed the law of the place, a kind of gravity none could disobey. They stooped--three semi- circles of tender brilliance. Each lost the least desire to gather for himself; the needs of others drove them, filled them, made them eager and energetic.
"Riquette would like a bit," cried Jimbo, almost balancing on his head in his efforts to get it all at once, while Monkey"s shining fingers stuffed her blouse and skirts with sheaves of golden gossamer that later she meant to spread in a sheet upon the pillow of Mademoiselle Lemaire.
"She sleeps so little that she needs the best," she sang, realising for once that her own amus.e.m.e.nt was not the end of life. "I"ll make her nights all wonder."
Cousinenry, meanwhile, worked steadily like a man who knows his time is short. He piled the stuff in heaps and pyramids, and then compressed it into what seemed solid blocks that made his pockets bulge like small balloons. Already a load was on his back that bent him double.
"Such a tiny bit is useful," he explained, "if you know exactly how and where to put it. This compression is my own patent."
"Of course," they echoed, trying in vain to pack it up as cleverly as he did.
Nor were these three the only gatherers. The place was full of movement. Jane Anne was always coming back for more, deigning no explanations. She never told where she had spent her former loads. She gathered an ap.r.o.n full, sped off to spend and scatter it in places she knew of, and then came bustling in again for more. And they always knew her whereabouts because of the whiter glory that she radiated into the dim yellow world about them.
And other figures, hosts of them, were everywhere--stooping, picking, loading one another"s backs and shoulders. To and fro they shot and glided, like Leonids in autumn round the Earth. All were collecting, though the supply seemed never to grow less. An inexhaustible stream poured in through the narrow opening, and scattered itself at once in all directions as though driven by a wind. How could the world let so much escape it, when it was what the world most needed every day. It ran naturally into patterns, patterns that could be folded and rolled up like silken tablecloths. In silence, too. There was no sound of drops falling. Sparks fly on noiseless feet. Sympathy makes no bustle.
"Even on the thickest nights it falls," a voice issued from a robust patch of light beside them that stooped with huge brown hands all knotted into muscles; "and it"s a mistake to think different." His voice rolled on into a ridiculous bit of singing:--
It comes down with the rain drops, It comes down with the dew, There"s always "eaps for every one-- For "im and me and you.
They recognised his big face, bronzed by the sun, and his great neck where lines drove into the skin like the rivers they drew with blunt pencils on their tedious maps of Europe. It was several faces in one.
The Head Gardener was no stranger to their imaginations, for they remembered him of old somewhere, though not quite sure exactly where.
He worked incessantly for others, though these "others" were only flowers and cabbages and fruit-trees. He did his share in the world, he and his army of queer a.s.sistants, the under-gardeners.
Peals of laughter, too, sounded from time to time in a far away corner of the cavern, and the laughter sent all the stuff it reached into very delicate, embroidered patterns. For it was merry and infectious laughter, joy somewhere in it like a lamp. It bordered upon singing; another touch would send it rippling into song. And to that far corner, attracted by the sound, ran numberless rivulets of light, weaving a l.u.s.trous atmosphere about the Laugher that, even while it glowed, concealed the actual gatherer from sight. The children only saw that the patterns were even more sweet and dainty than their own.
And they understood. Inside-sight explained the funny little mystery.
Laughter is magical--brings light and help and courage. They laughed themselves then, and instantly saw their own patterns wave and tremble into tiny outlines that they could squeeze later even into the darkest, thickest head.
Cousinenry, meanwhile, they saw, stopped for nothing. He was singing all the time as he bent over his long, outstretched arms. And it was the singing after all that made the best patterns--better even than the laughing. He knew all the best tricks of this Star Cave. He remained their leader.
And the stuff no hands picked up ran on and on, seeking a way of escape for itself. Some sank into the ground to sweeten the body of the old labouring earth, colouring the roots of myriad flowers; some soaked into the rocky walls, tinting the raw materials of hills and woods and mountain tops. Some escaped into the air in tiny drops that, meeting in moonlight or in sunshine, instantly formed wings. And people saw a brimstone b.u.t.terfly--all wings and hardly any body. All went somewhere for some useful purpose. It was not in the nature of star-stuff to keep still. Like water that must go down-hill, the law of its tender being forced it to find a place where it could fasten on and shine. It never could get wholly lost; though, if the place it settled on was poor, it might lose something of its radiance. But human beings were obviously what most attracted it. Sympathy must find an outlet; thoughts are bound to settle somewhere.
And the gatherers all sang softly--"Collect for others, never mind yourself!"
Some of it, too, shot out by secret ways in the enormous roof. The children recognised the exit of the separate brilliant stream they had encountered in the sky--the one especially that went to the room of pain and sickness in La Citadelle. Again they understood. That unselfish thinker of golden thoughts knew special sources of supply.
No wonder that her atmosphere radiated sweetness and uplifting influence. Her patience, smiles, and courage were explained. Pa.s.sing through the furnace of her pain, the light was cleansed and purified.