"And sings and dances--"
"And is positive that if we go on looking we shall find--exactly what we"re looking for."
Aunt Emily removed the other golosh--a shade more quickly than the first one. She kicked it off. The stiffness melted out of her; she smiled again.
"Well," she began--when Judy stood on tip-toe and whispered in her ear some magic sentence.
"Dawn!" Aunt Emily whispered back. "At dawn--when the birds begin to sing!"
Something had caught her heart and squeezed it.
Tim and Judy nodded vehemently in agreement. Aunt Emily dropped her umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality, very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy lilt, as though the Earth herself were singing of the Spring.
And Aunt Emily made one last vain attempt: she struggled to put her fingers in her ears. But the children held her hands. She crackled and made various oppressive and objecting sounds, but the song poured into her in spite of all her efforts. Her feet began to move upon the gra.s.s.
It was awful, it was shocking, it was forbidden and against all rules and regulations: yet--Aunt Emily danced!
And a thin, plaintive voice, like the voice of her long-forgotten youth, slipped out between her faded lips--and positively sang:
"The world is young with laughter; we can fly Among the imprisoned hours as we choose...."
But to Tim and Judy it all seemed merely right and natural.
"Come on," cried the boy, pulling his Aunt towards the wood.
"We can look together now. You"ve got your sign," exclaimed Judy, tugging at her other hand. "Everything"s free and careless, and so are we."
"Aim for a path," Tim shouted by way of a concession. "Aunty"ll go quicker on a path."
But Aunty was nothing if not decided. "I know a short-cut," she sang.
"Paths are for people who don"t know the way. There"s no time--to lose.
Dear me! I"m warm already!" She dropped her umbrella.
And, actually dancing and singing, she led the way into the wood, holding the fern before her like a wand, and happy as a girl let out of school.
But as they went, Judy, knowing suddenly another thing she didn"t know, made a discovery of her own, an immense discovery. It was bigger than anything Tim had ever found. She felt so light and swift and winged by it that she seemed almost to melt into the air herself.
"I say, Tim," she said.
"Yes."
She took her eyes from the sky to see what her feet were doing; Tim lifted his from the earth to see what was going on above him in the air.
Judy went on: "I know what," she announced.
"What?" He was not particularly interested, it seemed.
Judy paused. She dropped a little behind her dancing Aunt. Tim joined her. It all happened as quickly as a man might snap his fingers; Aunt Emily, her heart full of growing ferns, noticed nothing.
"We"ve found her out!" whispered Judy, communicating her immense discovery. "What she really is, I mean!"
He agreed and nodded. It did not strike him as anything wonderful or special. "Oh, yes," he answered; "rather!" He did not grasp her meaning, perhaps.
But his sister was bursting with excitement, radiant, shivering almost with the wonder of it.
"But don"t you see? It"s--a sign!" she exclaimed so loud that Aunt Emily almost heard it. "She"s found herself! She was hiding--from herself. That"s part of it all--the game. It"s the biggest sign of all!"
She was so "warm" that she burned all over.
"Oh, yes," repeated Tim. "I see!" But he was not particularly impressed. He merely wanted his Aunt to find an enormous fern whose roots were growing in the sweet, sticky earth _he_ loved. Her sign was a fern; his was the ground. It made him understand Aunt Emily at last, and therefore love her; he saw no further than that.
Judy, however, _knew_. She suddenly understood what the Tramp meant by "deep." She also knew now why Stumper, WEEDEN, Uncle Felix too, looked at him so strangely, with wonder, with respect, with love. Something about the Tramp explained each one to himself. Each one found--himself.
And she--without realising it before, had acquired this power too, though only in a small degree as yet. The Tramp believed in everybody; she, without knowing it, believed in her Aunt. It was another thing she didn"t know she knew.
And the real, long-buried, deeply-hidden Aunt Emily had emerged accordingly. All her life she had been hiding--from herself. She had found herself at last. It was the biggest sign of all.
Tim caught her hand and dragged her after him. "Come on," he cried, "we"re getting frightfully warm. Look at Aunty! Listen, will you?"
Aunt Emily, a little way in front of them, was digging busily with her dirty trowel. Her bonnet was crooked, her skirts tucked up, her white worsted stockings splashed with mud, her elastic-sided boots scratched and plastered. And she was singing to herself in a thin but happy voice that was not unlike an old and throaty corncrake: "The birds are singing....Hark! Come out and play....Life is an endless search...._I"ve_ just begun...!"
They listened for a little while, and then ran headlong up to join her.
SIGNS EVERYWHERE!
IX
And it was somewhere about here and now--the exact spot impossible to determine, since it was obviously a circular experience without beginning, middle or end--that the gigantic character of the Day declared itself in all its marvellous simplicity. For as they dived deeper and deeper towards its centre, they discovered that its centre, being everywhere at once, existed--nowhere. The sun was always rising--somewhere.
In other words, each seeker grasped, in his or her own separate way, that the Splendour hiding from them lay actually both too near and far away for any individual eye to see it with completeness. Someone, indeed, had come; but this Someone, as Judy told herself, was "simply all over the place." To see him "distinkly is an awful job," according to Uncle Felix; or as Come-Back Stumper realised in the middle of another clump of bramble bushes, "Perspective is necessary to proper vision." "He" lay too close before their eyes to be discovered fully.
Tim had long ago described it instinctively as "an enormous hide," but it was more than that; it was a universal hide.
Alone, perhaps, Weeden"s lost optic, wandering ubiquitously and enjoying the bird"s-eye view, possessed the coveted power. But, like the stars, though somewhat about, it was invisible. WEEDEN made no reference to it. He attended to one thing at a time, he lived in the present; one eye was gone; he just looked for truffles--with the other.
Yet this did not damp their ardour in the least; increased it rather: the gathering of the clues became more and more absorbing. Though not seen, the hider was both known and felt; his presence was a certainty.
There was no real contradiction.
For signs grew and multiplied till the entire world seemed overflowing with them, and hardly could the earth contain them. They brimmed the sunny air, flooded the ponds and streams, lay thick upon the fields, and almost choked the woods to stillness. They trickled out, leaked through, dripped over everywhere in colour, shape, and sound. The hider had pa.s.sed everywhere, and upon everything had left his exquisite and deathless traces. The inanimate, as well as the animate world had known the various touch of his great pa.s.sing. His trail had blazed the entire earth about them. For the very clouds were dipped in snow and gold, and the meanest pebble in the lane wore a self-conscious gleam of shining silver. So-called domestic creatures also seemed aware that a stupendous hiding-place was somewhere near--the browsing cow, contented and at ease, the horse that nuzzled their hands across the gate, the very pigs, grubbing eternally for food, yet eternally unsatisfied; all these, this endless morning, wore an unaccustomed look as though they knew, and so were glad to be alive. Some knew more than others, of course. The cat, for instance, defending its kittens single-pawed against the stable-dog who pretended to be ferocious; the busy father-blackbird, pa.s.sing worms to his mate for the featherless mites, all beak and clamour in the nest; the Clouded Yellow, sharing a spray of honeysuckle with a b.u.mble-bee, and the honeysuckle offering no resistance--one and all, they also were aware in their differing degrees. And the seekers, noting the signs, grew warmer and ever warmer. An ordinary day these signs, owing to their generous profusion, might have called for no remark. They would, probably, have drawn no attention to themselves, merely lying about unnoticed, undiscovered because familiar. But this was not an ordinary day. It was unused, unspoilt and unrecorded. It was the Some Day of humanity"s long dream--an Extra Day. Time could not carry it away; it could not end; all it contained was of eternity. The great hider at the heart of it was real. These signs--deep, tender, kind and beautiful--were part of him, and in knowing, recognising them, they knew and recognised him too. They drew near, that is, brushed up closer, to his hiding-place from which _he_ saw them. They approached within knowing distance of a Reality that each in his or her particular way had always yearned for.
They held--oh, distinkly held--that they were winning. They won the marvellous game as soon as it began. They never had a doubt about the end.
But their supreme, superb discovery was this: They had always secretly longed to find the elusive hider; they now realised that _he_--wanted them to find him, and that from his hiding-place he saw them easily.
That was the most wonderful thing of all....
To describe the separate adventures of each seeker would involve a series of bulky trilogies no bookshelves in the world could carry; they can, besides, be adequately told in three simple words that Tim used--shouted with intense enthusiasm when he tripped over a rabbit-hole and tumbled headlong against that everlasting Tramp: "I"m still looking!" He dived away into another hole. "I"m looking still."
"So am I," the Tramp answered, also in three words. "I"m _very_ warm,"
growled Stumper; "I"m getting on," Aunt Emily piped; and while Judy was for ever shouting out "I"ve found him!" Uncle Felix, puffing and panting, could only repeat with rapture each time he met another seeker: "A lovely day! A _lovely_ day!" They said so little--experienced and felt so much!