A Prisoner in Fairyland Part 11

'There's too much sadness. Come on! Let's go somewhere else.'

But Jimbo held her tight. 'Let's have a try. Listen, you silly, can't you!'

They stood for several minutes, listening together, while the brightness of their near approach seemed to change the woman's face a little. She looked up and listened as though aware of something near her.

'She's praying for others as well as herself,' explained Jimbo.

'Ca vaut la peine alors,' said Monkey. And they drew cautiously nearer.... But, soon desisting, the children were far away, hovering about the mountains. They had no steadiness as yet.

'Starlight,' Jimbo was singing to himself, 'runs along my mind.'

'You're all up-jumbled,' Monkey interrupted him with a laugh, turning repeated somersaults till she looked like a catherine wheel of brightness.

'... the pattern of my verse or story...' continued Jimbo half aloud, '... a little ball of tangled glory....'

'You must unwind!' cried Monkey. 'Look out, it's the sun! It'll melt us into dew!'

But it was not the sun. Out there beyond them, towards the purple woods still sleeping, appeared a draught of starbeams like a broad, deep river of gold. The rays, coming from all corners of the sky, wove a pattern like a network.

'Jimbo!' gasped the girl, 'it's like a fis.h.i.+ng-net. We've never noticed it before.'

'It _is_ a net,' he answered, standing still as a stone, though he had not thought of it himself until she said so. He instantly dressed himself, as he always translated _il se dressait_ in his funny Franco- English. _Deja_ and _comme ca_, too, appeared everywhere. 'It is a net like that. I saw it already before, once.'

'Monkey,' he added, 'do you know what it really is? Oh, I say!'

'Of course I do.' She waited nevertheless for him to tell her, and he was too gallant just then in his proud excitement for personal exultation.

'It's the Star Cave--it's Daddy's Star Cave. He said it was up here "where the Boudry forests dip below the cliffs towards the Areuse."

...' He remembered the very words.

His sister forgot to turn her usual somersaults. Wonder caught them both. 'A pair of eyes, then, or a puddle! Quick!' she cried in a delighted whisper. She looked about her everywhere at once, making confused and rus.h.i.+ng little movements of helplessness. 'Quick, quick!'

'No,' said Jimbo, with a man's calm decision, 'it's when they _can't_ find eyes or puddles that they go in there. Don't interfere.'

She admitted her mistake. This was no time to press a petty advantage.

'I'll shut my eyes while you sponge up the puddles with a wedge of moss,' she began. But her brother cut her short. He was very sure of himself. He was leader beyond all question.

'You follow me,' he commanded firmly, 'and you'll get in somehow.

We'll get all sticky with it. Then we'll come out again and help those crying people like Tante Jeanne and....' A list of names poured out.

'They'll think us wonderful---'

'We shall be wonderful,' whispered Monkey, obeying, yet peeping with one big brown eye.

The cataract of starbeams rushed past them in a flood of gold.

They moved towards an opening in the trees where the limestone cliffs ran into rugged shapes with pinnacles and towers. They found the entrance in the rocks. Water dripped over it, making little splashes.

The lime had run into hanging pillars and a fringe of pointed fingers.

Past this the river of starlight poured its brilliant golden stream.

Its soft brightness shone yellow as a shower of primrose dust.

'Look out! The Interfering Sun!' gasped Monkey again, awed and confused with wonder. 'We shall melt in dew or fairy cotton. Don't you? ... I call it rotten ...!'

'You'll unwind all right,' he told her, trying hard to keep his head and justify his leaders.h.i.+p. He, too, remembered phrases here and there. 'I'm a bit knotted, looped, and all up-jumbled too, inside. But the sun is miles away still. We're both soft-s.h.i.+ny still.'

They stooped to enter, plunging their bodies to the neck in the silent flood of sparkling amber.

Then happened a strange thing. For how could they know, these two adventurous, dreaming children, that Thought makes images which, regardless of s.p.a.ce, may flash about the world, and reach minds anywhere that are sweetly tuned to their acceptance?

'What's that? Look out! _Gare!_ Hold tight!' In his sudden excitement Jimbo mixed questions with commands. He had caught her by the hand.

There was a new sound in the heavens above them--a roaring, rus.h.i.+ng sound. Like the thunder of a train, it swept headlong through the sky.

Voices were audible too.

'There's something enormous caught in the star-net,' he whispered.

'It's Mother, then,' said Monkey.

They both looked up, trembling with antic.i.p.ation. They saw a big, dark body like a thundercloud hovering above their heads. It had a line of brilliant eyes. From one end issued a column of white smoke. It settled slowly downwards, moving softly yet with a great air of bustle and importance. Was this the arrival of a dragon, or Mother coming after them? The blood thumped in their ears, their hands felt icy. The thing dipped slowly through the trees. It settled, stopped, began to purr.

'It's a railway train,' announced Jimbo finally with authority that only just disguised amazement. 'And the pa.s.sengers are getting out.'

With a sigh of immense relief he said it. 'You're not in any danger, Monkey,' he added.

He drew his sister back quickly a dozen steps, and they hid behind a giant spruce to watch. The scene that followed was like the holiday spectacle in a London Terminus, except that the pa.s.sengers had no luggage. The other difference was that they seemed intent upon some purpose not wholly for their own advantage. It seemed, too, they had expected somebody to meet them, and were accordingly rather confused and disappointed. They looked about them anxiously.

'Last stop; all get out here!' a Guard was crying in a kind of pleasant singing voice. 'Return journey begins five minutes before the Interfering Sun has risen.'

Jimbo pinched his sister's arm till she nearly screamed. 'Hear that?'

he whispered. But Monkey was too absorbed in the doings of the busy pa.s.sengers to listen or reply. For the first pa.s.senger that hurried past her was no less a person than--Jane Anne! Her face was not puzzled now. It was like a little sun. She looked utterly happy and contented, as though she had found the place and duties that belonged to her.

'Jinny!' whispered the two in chorus. But Jane Anne did not so much as turn her head. She slipped past them like a shaft of light. Her hair fell loose to her waist. She went towards the entrance. The flood rose to her neck.

'Oh! there she is!' cried a voice. 'She travelled with us instead of coming to meet us.' Monkey smiled. She knew her sister's alien, unaccountable ways only too well.

The train had settled down comfortably enough between the trees, and lay there breathing out a peaceable column of white smoke, panting a little as it did so. The Guard went down the length of it, turning out the lamps; and from the line of open doors descended the stream of pa.s.sengers, all hurrying to the entrance of the cave. Each one stopped a moment in front of the Guard, as though to get a ticket clipped, but instead of producing a piece of pasteboard, or the Guard a punching instrument, they seemed to exchange a look together. Each one stared into his face, nodded, and pa.s.sed on.

'What blue eyes they've got,' thought Monkey to herself, as she peered into each separate face as closely as she dared. 'I wish mine were like that!' The wind, sighing through the tree-tops, sent a shower of dew about their feet. The children started. 'What a lovely row!' Jimbo whispered. It was like footsteps of a mult.i.tude on the needles. The fact that it was so clearly audible showed how softly all these pa.s.sengers moved about their business.

The Guard, they noticed then, called out the names of some of them; perhaps of all, only in the first excitement they did not catch them properly. And each one went on at once towards the entrance of the cave and disappeared in the pouring river of gold.

The light-footed way they moved, their swiftness as of shadows, the way they tossed their heads and flung their arms about--all this made the children think it was a dance. Monkey felt her own legs twitch to join them, but her little brother's will restrained her.

'If you turn a somersault here,' he said solemnly, 'we're simply lost.' He said it in French; the long word had not yet dawned upon his English consciousness. They watched with growing wonder then, and something like terror seized them as they saw a man go past them with a very familiar look about him. He went in a cloud of sparkling, black dust that turned instantly into s.h.i.+ning gold when it reached the yellow river from the stars. His face was very dirty.

'It's _not_ the _ramoneur_,' whispered Jimbo, uncertain whether the s.h.i.+ver he felt was his sister's or his own. 'He's much too springy.'

Sweeps always had a limp.

For the figure shot along with a running, dancing leap as though he moved on wires. He carried long things over his shoulders. He flashed into the stream like a shadow swallowed by a flame. And as he went, they caught such merry words, half sung, half chanted:--,

'I'll mix their smoke with hope and mystery till they see dreams and faces in their fires---' and he was gone.