"That reminds me," he observed, "I dreamed too. I dreamed that you dreamed."
"Yes," Maria replied briefly, moving her eyes in his direction, but not her head. No other remarks were made; the statement was too muddled to stimulate interest particularly.
When breakfast was over they went to the open window and threw crumbs to a robin that was obviously expecting to be fed. They all leaned out with their heads in the sunlight, watching it. It hopped from a twig on to the ground, its body already tight to bursting. It looked like a toy balloon--as though it wore a dress of red elastic stretched to such a point that the merest pinp.r.i.c.k must explode it with a sharp report; and it hopped as though springs were in its feet. The earth, like a taut sheet, made it bounce. Tim aimed missiles of bread rolled into pellets at its head, but never hit it.
"It"s a lovely morning," remarked Uncle Felix, looking across the garden to the yellow fields beyond. "A perfect day. We"ll walk to church." He brushed the breakfast crumbs from the waistcoat of his neat blue suit, lit his pipe, sniffed the air contentedly, and had an air generally of a sailor on sh.o.r.e-leave.
Judy sprang up. "There"s b.u.t.ton-holes to get," she mentioned, and flew out of the room like a flash of sunlight or a bird.
Tim raced after her. "Wallflower for me!" he cried, while Judy"s answer floated back from halfway down the pa.s.sage: "I"ll have a wild rosebud--it"ll match my hat!"
Uncle Felix and Maria were left alone, gazing out of the window side by side upon the "lovely morning." She was just high enough to see above the edge, and her two hands lay sprawled, fingers extended, upon the shining sill.
"Yes," she mentioned quietly, as to herself, "and I"ll have a forget-me-not." Her eyes rolled up sideways, meeting those of her uncle as 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 its own accord somehow."
She nodded.
"And there"s another thing. You"ve got a secret--haven"t you?" It occurred to him that Maria was rather wonderful.
"I expect so," she answered, after a moment"s pause. She looked wiser than 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 really more truly alive than both the other children put together. Their tireless, incessant energy was nothing compared to some deep well of life Maria"s outer calm concealed.
He continued to stare at her, reflecting while he did so. Through her globular exterior, standing here beside him, rose this quiet tide whose profound and inexhaustible source was nothing less than the entire universe. Finding himself thus alone with her, he knew his imagination singularly stirred. The full stream of this imagination--usually turned into sea--and history-stories--poured now into Maria. It was the way she had delivered herself of the monosyllable, "Yes," that first enflamed him.
The child, obviously, was quite innocent that her uncle"s imagination clothed her in such wonder; she was entirely unselfconscious, and remained so; but, as she kept silent as well, there was nothing to interrupt the natural process of his thought. "You"re a circle, a mystery, a globe of wonder," his mind addressed her, gazing downwards half in play and half in earnest. "You"re always going it. Though you seem so still--you"re turning furiously like a little planet!"
For this abruptly struck him, flashing the symbol into his imagination--that Maria lived so close to the universe that her life and movements were akin to those of the heavenly bodies. He saw her as an epitome of the earth. Fat, peaceful, little, calm, rotund Maria--a miniature earth! She had no call to hurry nor rush after things. Like the 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 her blue eyes upwards into his.
Yet her calm was not the calm of sloth. In that mysterious centre where she lived he felt her as tremendously alive.
For the earth, apparently so calm and steady, knows no pause. She moves round her axis without stopping. She rushes with immense rapidity round the sun. Simultaneously with these two movements she combines a third; the sun, carrying her and all his other planets with him, hurries at a prodigious rate through interstellar s.p.a.ce, adventuring new regions never seen before. Calm outwardly, and without apparent motion, the earth--at this very moment, as he leaned across the window-sill--was making these three gigantic, endless movements. This peaceful summer morning, like any other peaceful summer morning, she was actually spinning, rushing, rising. And in Maria--it came to him--in Maria, outwardly so calm, something also--spun--rushed--rose! This amazing life that brimmed her full to bursting, even as it brimmed the robin and the earth, overflowed and dripped out of her very eyes in shining blue. 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 second merely, for imagination telescopes time, of course, and knows things all at once.
"What _is_ your secret, Maria?" he asked again. "I believe it"s about that Extra Day we meant to steal. Is that it?"
Her eyes gazed straight before her across the lawn where Tim and Judy were now visible, searching busily for b.u.t.ton-holes.
"It was to be your particular adventure, wasn"t it?"
"Yes," she told him at length, without changing her expression of serene contentment.
His imagination warned him he was getting "at her" gradually. He possibly read into her a thousand things that were not there.
Certainly, Maria was not aware of them. But, though Uncle Felix knew this perfectly well, he persisted, hoping for a sudden disclosure that would justify his search--even expecting it, perhaps.
"And what sort of a day would it be, then, this Extra Day of yours?" he went 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 distinct encouragement. He felt obliged to help her. This was her peculiar power--that everything was done for her while she seemed to do it all herself. "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." She moved in a little closer to his side as she said it. The disclosure he expected seemed so near now that excitement grew in him. Across the lawn he saw the hurrying figures of Tim and Judy, racing back with their b.u.t.ton-holes. There was no time to lose.
He put his arm about her, tilting her face upwards with one hand to see it plainly. The blue dyes came up with it.
"Then, what kind of a day _would_ you choose, Maria? Tell me--in a whisper."
And then the disclosure came. But it was not whispered. Uncle Felix heard 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 a cataract; it seemed that a dozen children rushed upon them in a torrent. The air was full of voices and flowers suddenly. A smell of the open world came in with them. b.u.t.ton-holes were fastened into everybody, accompanied by a breathless chorus of where and how they had been found, who got the best, who got it first, and all the rest. From the End of the World they came, apparently, but while Tim had climbed the wall for his, Judy picked hers because a bird had lowered the branch into her very hand. For Uncle Felix she brought a spray of lilac; Tim brought a bit of mignonette. Eventually he had to wear them both.
"And here"s a forget-me-not, Maria," cried Judy, stooping down to poke it into her sister"s blue and white striped dress. "That suits you best, I thought."
"Thank you," said Maria, moving her eyes the smallest possible fraction of an inch.
And they scampered out of the room again, Maria ambling slowly in the rear, to prepare for church. There were prayer-books and things to find, threepenny bits and sixpences for the collection. There was simply heaps to do, as they expressed it, and not a moment to lose either. Uncle Felix listened to the sound of voices and footsteps as they flew down the pa.s.sage, dying rapidly away into the distance, and finally ceasing altogether. He puffed his pipe a little longer before going to his room upon a similar errand. He watched the smoke curl up and melt into the outer air; he felt the pleasant sunshine warm upon his face; he smelt the perfume rising from his enormous b.u.t.ton-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 were birthdays, Extra Days.
And while they walked along the lane to church he still was thinking about it.
The conversation proved that he was absent-minded rather; yet not that his mind was absent so much as intent upon other things. The children found him heavy; he seemed ponderous to them. And pondering he certainly was--pondering the meaning of existence. The children, he realised, were such brilliant comments upon existence; their unconscious way of living, all they said and thought and did, but especially all they believed, offered such bright interpretations, such simple solutions of a million things. They lived so really, were so really--alive. They never explained, they just accepted; and the explanations given they placed at their true value, still asking, "Yes, but what is the meaning of all that?" So close to Reality they lived--before reason, cloaked and confused it with a million complex explanations. That "Yes" and "Birthday" of Maria"s were illuminating examples.
Of this he was vaguely pondering as they walked along the sunny lanes to church, and his conversation proved it. For conversation with children meant answering endless questions merely, and the questions were 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 single question--an affirmation: "We"re alive, so everything else is too!"
His conversation proved that he had almost reached that state of time-less reality in which they lived. He felt it this morning very vividly. It seemed familiar somehow--like his own childhood recovered almost.
He answered them accordingly. It didn"t matter what was said, because all 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. "They do that for safety," he added; and if there was confusion in his language, there was none in his thought. "Then no one can tell which its hole is, you see. Because each rabbit--"
He broke off and glanced expectantly at his uncle. At junctures like this his uncle usually cleared things up with an easy word or two. He would not fail him now.
"Come _out_, no," was the reply; "no one ever sees a rabbit come out.