"But there _is_ no such word, really," she urged, determined to clear up all she could. "It rhymes--that"s all."
"And there _is_ no verse or story," he replied with a sigh. "There _was_--that"s all."
There was another pause. Jimbo and Monkey looked round suspiciously.
They ceased their mysterious whispering. They clearly did not wish the others to know what their confabulation was about.
"That"s why your books are wumbled, is it?" she inquired, proud of an explanation that excused him, yet left his glory somehow unimpaired.
Her face was a map of puzzled wrinkles.
"Precisely, Jinny. You see, the starlight never gets through properly into my mind. It lies there in a knot. My plot is wumbled. I can"t disentangle it quite, though the beauty lies there right enough---"
"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "the beauty lies there still." She got up suddenly and gave him a kiss.
"Never mind, Daddy," she whispered. "I"ll get it straight for you one day. I"ll unwumble it. I"ll do it like a company promoter, I will."
She used words culled from newspapers.
"Thank you, child," he smiled, returning her kiss; "I"m sure you will.
Only, you"d better let me know when you"re coming. It might be dangerous to my health otherwise."
She took it with perfect seriousness. "Oh, but, excuse me, I"ll come when you"re asleep," she told him, so low that the others could not hear. "I"ll come to you when I"m dreaming. I dream all night like a busy Highlander."
"That"s right," he whispered, giving her a hug. "Come when I"m asleep and all the stars are out; and bring a comb and a pair of scissors---"
"And a hay-rake," added Monkey, overhearing.
Everybody laughed. The children cuddled up closer to him. They pitied him. He had failed again, though his failure was as much a pleasure as his complete success. They sat on his knees and played with him to make up for it, repeating bits of the rhyme they could remember. Then Mother and Riquette woke up together, and the spell was broken. The party scattered. Only Jimbo and his younger sister, retiring into a corner by themselves, continued their mysterious confabulation. Their faces were flushed with excitement. There was a curious animation in their eyes--though this may have been borrowed from the embers of the peat. Or, it may have been the stars, for they were close to the open window. Both seemed soft-shiny somehow. _They_, certainly, were not wumbled.
And several hours later, when they had returned from supper at the Pension and lay in bed, exchanging their last mysterious whispers across the darkness, Monkey said in French--
"Jimbo, I"m going to find that Cavern where the star stuff lies," and Jimbo answered audaciously, "I"ve already been there."
"Will you show me the way, then?" she asked eagerly, and rather humbly.
"Perhaps," he answered from beneath the bedclothes, then added, "Of course I will." He merely wished to emphasise the fact that he was leader.
"Sleep quickly, then, and join me--over there." It was their game to believe they joined in one another"s dreams.
They slept. And the last thing that reached them from the outer world was their mother"s voice calling to them her customary warning: that the _ramoneur_ was already in the chimney and that unless they were asleep in five minutes he would come and catch them by the tail. For the Sweep they looked upon with genuine awe. His visits to the village--once in the autumn and once in the spring--were times of shivery excitement.
Presently Mother rose and sailed on tiptoe round the door to peep. And a smile spread softly over her face as she noted the characteristic evidences of the children beside each bed. Monkey"s clothes lay in a scattered heap of confusion, half upon the floor, but Jimbo"s garments were folded in a precise, neat pile upon the chair. They looked ready to be packed into a parcel. His habits were so orderly. His school blouse hung on the back, the knickerbockers were carefully folded, and the black belt lay coiled in a circle on his coat and what he termed his "westkit." Beneath the chair the little pair of very dirty boots stood side by side. Mother stooped and kissed the round plush-covered head that just emerged from below the mountainous _duvet_. He looked like a tiny radish lying in a big ploughed field.
Then, hunting for a full five minutes before she discovered the shoes of Monkey, one beneath the bed and the other inside her petticoat, she pa.s.sed on into the little kitchen where she cleaned and polished both pairs, and then replaced them by their respective owners. This done, she laid the table in the outer room for their breakfast at half-past six, saw that their school-books and satchels were in order, gave them each a little more unnecessary tucking-up and a kiss so soft it could not have waked a b.u.t.terfly, and then returned to her chair before the fire where she resumed the mending of a pile of socks and shirts, blouses and stockings, to say nothing of other indescribable garments, that lay in a formidable heap upon the big round table.
This was her nightly routine. Sometimes her husband joined her. Then they talked the children over until midnight, discussed expenses that threatened to swamp them, yet turned out each month "just manageable somehow" and finally made a cup of cocoa before retiring, she to her self-made bed upon the sofa, and he to his room in the carpenter"s house outside the village. But sometimes he did not come. He remained in the Pension to smoke and chat with the Russian and Armenian students, who attended daily lectures in the town, or else went over to his own quarters to work at the book he was engaged on at the moment. To-night he did not come. A light in an attic window, just visible above the vineyards, showed that he was working.
The room was very still; only the click of the knitting needles or the soft noise of the collapsing peat ashes broke the stillness. Riquette snored before the fire less noisily than usual.
"He"s working very late to-night," thought Mother, noticing the lighted window. She sighed audibly; mentally she shrugged her shoulders. Daddy had long ago left that inner preserve of her heart where she completely understood him. Sympathy between them, in the true sense of the word, had worn rather thin.
"I hope he won"t overtire himself," she added, but this was the habit of perfunctory sympathy. She might equally have said, "I wish he would do something to bring in a little money instead of earning next to nothing and always complaining about the expenses."
Outside the stars shone brightly through the fresh spring night, where April turned in her sleep, dreaming that May was on the way to wake her.
CHAPTER IX
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out, Then wander o"er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand- Come, long sought!
To _Night_, Sh.e.l.lEY.
Now, cats are curious creatures, and not without reason, perhaps, are they adored by some, yet regarded with suspicious aversion by others.
They know so much they never dare to tell, while affecting that they know nothing and are innocent. For it is beyond question that several hours later, when the village and the Citadelle were lost in slumber, Mere Riquette stirred stealthily where she lay upon the hearth, opened her big green eyes, and--began to wash.
But this toilette was pretence in case any one was watching. Really, she looked about her all the time. Her sleep also had been that sham sleep of cats behind which various plots and plans mature--a questionable business altogether. The washing, as soon as she made certain no one saw her, gave place to another manoeuvre. She stretched as though her bones were of the very best elastic. Gathering herself together, she arched her round body till it resembled a toy balloon straining to rise against the pull of four thin ropes that held it tightly to the ground. Then, unable to float off through the air, as she had expected, she slowly again subsided. The balloon deflated. She licked her chops, twitched her whiskers, curled her tail neatly round her two front paws--and grinned complacently. She waited before that extinguished fire of peat as though she had never harboured a single evil purpose in all her days. "A saucer of milk," she gave the world to understand, c is the only thing _I_ care about." Her smile of innocence and her att.i.tude of meek simplicity proclaimed this to the universe at large. "That"s me," she told the darkness, "and I don"t care a bit who knows it." She looked so sleek and modest that a mouse need not have feared her. But she did not add, "That"s what I mean the world to think," for this belonged to the secret life cats never talk about. Those among humans might divine it who could, and welcome. They would be admitted. But the rest of the world were regarded with mere tolerant disdain. They bored.
Then, satisfied that she was un.o.bserved, Mere Riquette abandoned all further pretence, and stalked silently about the room. The starlight just made visible her gliding shadow, as first she visited the made-up sofa-bed where the exhausted mother snored mildly beneath the book- shelves, and then, after a moment"s keen inspection, turned back and went at a quicker pace into the bedroom where the children slept.
There the night-light made her movements easily visible. The cat was excited. Something bigger than any mouse was coming into her life just now.
Riquette then witnessed a wonderful and beautiful thing, yet witnessed it obviously not for the first time. Her manner suggested no surprise.
"It"s like a mouse, only bigger," her expression said. And by this she meant that it was natural. She accepted it as right and proper.
For Monkey got out of herself as out of a case. She slipped from her body as a sword slips from its sheath, yet the body went on breathing in the bed just as before; the turned-up nose with the little platform at its tip did not cease from snoring, and the lids remained fastened tightly over the brilliant brown eyes, b.u.t.toned down so securely for the night. Two plaits of hair lay on the pillow; another rose and fell with the regular breathing of her little bosom. But Monkey herself stood softly shining on the floor within a paw"s length.
Riquette blinked her eyes and smiled complacently. Jimbo was close behind her, even brighter than his sister, with eyes like stars.
The visions of cats are curious things, no doubt, and few may guess their furry, silent pathways as they go winding along their length of inconsequent development. For, softer than any mouse, the children glided swiftly into the next room where Mother slept beneath the book- shelves--two shining little radiant figures, hand in hand. They tried for a moment to pull out Mother too, but found her difficult to move.
Somewhere on the way she stuck. They gave it up.
Turning towards the window that stood open beyond the head of the sofa-bed, they rose up lightly and floated through it out into the starry night. Riquette leaped like a silent shadow after them, but before she reached the roof of red-brown tiles that sloped down to the yard, Jimbo and Monkey were already far away. She strained her big green eyes in vain, seeing nothing but the tops of the plane trees, thick with tiny coming leaves, the sweep of vines and sky, and the tender, mothering night beyond. She pattered softly back again, gave a contemptuous glance at Mother in pa.s.sing, and jumped up at once into the warm nest of sheets that gaped invitingly between the shoulder of Jimbo"s body and the pillow. She shaped the opening to her taste, kneading it with both front paws, turned three times round, and then lay down. Curled in a ball, her nose buried between her back feet, she was asleep in a single moment. Her whiskers ceased to quiver.
The children were tugging at Daddy now over in the carpenter"s house.
His bed was short, and his body lay in a kind of knot. On the chair beside it were books and papers, and a candle that had burnt itself out. A pencil poked its nose out among the sheets, and it was clear he had fallen asleep while working.
"Wumbled!" sighed Jimbo, pointing to the scribbled notes. But Monkey was busy pulling him out, and did not answer. Then Jimbo helped her.
And Daddy came out magnificently--as far as the head--then stuck like Mother. They pulled in vain. Something in his head prevented complete release.
"En voila un!" laughed Monkey. "Quel homme!" It was her natural speech, the way she talked at school. "It"s a pity," said Jimbo with a little sigh. They gave it up, watching him slide slowly back again.
The moment he was all in they turned towards the open window. Hand in hand they sailed out over the sleeping village. And from almost every house they heard a sound of weeping. There were sighs and prayers and pleadings. All slept and dreamed--dreamed of their difficulties and daily troubles. Released in sleep, their longings rose to heaven unconsciously, automatically as it were. Even the cheerful and the happy yearned a little, even the well-to-do whom the world judged so secure--these, too, had their burdens that found release, and so perhaps relief in sleep.
"Come, and we"ll help them," Jimbo said eagerly. "We can change all that a little. Oh, I say, what a lot we"ve got to do to-night."
"Je crois bien," laughed Monkey, turning somersaults for joy as she followed him. Her tendency to somersaults in this condition was irresistible, and a source of worry to Jimbo, who cla.s.sed it among the foolish habits of what he called "womans and things like that!"
And the sound came loudest from the huddled little building by the Church, the Pension where they had their meals, and where Jinny had her bedroom. But Jinny, they found, was already out, off upon adventures of her own. A solitary child, she always went her independent way in everything. They dived down into the first floor, and there, in a narrow bedroom whose windows stood open upon the wistaria branches, they found Madame Jequier--"Tante Jeanne," as they knew the sympathetic, generous creature best, sister-in-law of the Postmaster--not sleeping like the others, but wide awake and praying vehemently in a wicker-chair that creaked with every nervous movement that she made. All about her were bits of paper covered with figures, bills, calculations, and the rest.
"We can"t get at her," said Monkey, her laughter hushed for a moment.