A Prisoner in Fairyland Part 18

'Of course I know a Star Cave,' he said at length, when Jimbo had finished his recitation, and Monkey had added the details their father had told them. 'I know the very one your Daddy spoke about. It's not far from where we're sitting. It's over there.' He pointed up to the mountain heights behind them, but Jimbo guided his hand in the right direction--towards the Boudry slopes where the forests dip upon the precipices of the Areuse.

'Yes, that's it--exactly,' he said, accepting the correction instantly; 'only _I_ go to the top of the mountains first so as to slide down with the river of starlight.'

'We go straight,' they told him in one breath.

'Because you've got more star-stuff in your eyes than I have, and find the way better,' he explained.

That touched their sense of pity. 'But you can have ours,' they cried, 'we'll share it.'

'No,' he answered softly, 'better keep your own. I can get plenty now.

Indeed, to tell the truth--though it's a secret between ourselves, remember--that's the real reason I've come out here. I want to get a fresh supply to take back to London with me. One needs a fearful lot in London----'

'But there's no sun in London to melt it,' objected Monkey instantly.

'There's fog though, and it gets lost in fog like ink in blotting- paper. There's never enough to go round. I've got to collect an awful lot before I go back.'

'That'll take more than a week,' she said triumphantly.

They fastened themselves closer against him, like limpets on a rock.

'I told you there was lots to do here,' whispered Monkey again.

'You'll never get it done in a week.'

'And how will you take it back?' asked Jimbo in the same breath. The answer went straight to the boy's heart.

'In a train, of course. I've got an express train here on purpose----'

'The "Rapide"?' he interrupted, his blue eyes starting like flowers from the earth.

'Quicker far than that. I've got----'

They stared so hard and so expectantly, it was almost like an interruption. The bird paused in its rus.h.i.+ng song to listen too.

'----a Starlight Express,' he finished, caught now in the full tide of fairyland. 'It came here several nights ago. It's being loaded up as full as ever it can carry. I'm to drive it back again when once it's ready.'

'Where is it now?'

'Who's loading it?'

'How fast does it go? Are there accidents and collisions?'

'How do you find the way?'

'May I drive it with you?'

'Tell us exactly everything in the world about it--at once!'

Questions poured in a flood about him, and his imagination leaped to their answering. Above them the curtain of the Night shook out her million stars while they lay there talking with bated breath together.

On every single point he satisfied them, and himself as well. He told them all--his visit to the Manor House, the sprites he found there still alive and waiting as he had made them in his boyhood, their songs and characters, the Dustman, Sweep, and Lamplighter, the Laugher, and the Woman of the Haystack, the blue-eyed Guard----

'But now her eyes are brown, aren't they?' Monkey asked, peering very close into his face. At the same moment she took his heart and hid it deep away among her tumbling hair.

'I was coming to that. They're brown now, of course, because in this different atmosphere brown eyes see better than blue in the dark. The colours of signals vary in different countries.

'And I'm the _mecanicien_,' cried Jimbo. 'I drive the engine.'

'And I'm your stoker,' he agreed, 'because here we burn wood instead of coal, and I'm director in a wood-paving company and so know all about it.'

They did not pause to dissect his logic--but just tore about full speed with busy plans and questionings. He began to wonder how in the world he would satisfy them--and satisfy himself as well!--when the time should come to introduce them to Express and Cave and Pa.s.sengers.

For if he failed in that, the reality of the entire business must fall to the ground. Yet the direct question did not come. He wondered more and more. Neither child luckily insisted on immediate tangible acquaintance. They did not even hint about it. So far the whole thing had gone splendidly and easily, like floating a new company with the rosiest prospectus in the world; but the moment must arrive when profits and dividends would have to justify mere talk. Concrete results would be demanded. If not forthcoming, where would his position be?

Yet, still the flood of questions, answers, explanations flowed on without the critical sentence making its appearance. He had led them well--so far. How in the world, though, was he to keep it up, and provide definite result at the end?

Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was not he who led after all; it was they. He was being led. They knew. They understood. The reins of management lay in their small capable hands, and he had never really held them at all. Most cleverly, with utmost delicacy, they had concealed from him his real position. They were Directors, he the merest shareholder, useful only for 'calls.' The awkward question that he feared would never come, but instead he would receive instructions.

'Keep close to the children; they will guide you.' The words flashed back. He was a helpless prisoner; but had only just discovered the fact. He supplied the funds; they did the construction. Their plans and schemes netted his feet in fairyland just as surely as the weight of their little warm, soft bodies fastened him to the boulder where he sat. He could not move. He could not go further without their will and leaders.h.i.+p.

But his captivity was utterly delightful to him....

The sound of a deep bell from the Colombier towers floated in to them between the trees. The children sprang from his knees. He rose slowly, a little cramped and stiff.

'Half-past six,' said Jimbo. 'We must go back for supper.'

He stood there a moment, stretching, while the others waited, staring up at him as though he were a tree. And he felt like a big tree; they were two wild-flowers his great roots sheltered down below.

And at that moment, in the little pause before they linked up arms and started home again, the Question of Importance came, though not in the way he had expected it would come.

'Cousinenry, do you sleep very tightly at night, please?' Monkey asked it, but Jimbo stepped up nearer to watch the reply.

'Like a top,' he said, wondering.

Signals he tried vainly to intercept flashed between the pair of them.

'Why do you ask?' as nothing further seemed forthcoming.

'Oh, just to know,' she explained. 'It's all right.'

'Yes, it's quite all right like that,' added Jimbo. And without more ado they took his arms and pulled him out of the forest.

And Henry Rogers heard something deep, deep down within himself echo the verdict.

'I think it is all right.'

On the way home there were no puddles, but there were three pairs of eyes--and the stars were uncommonly thick overhead. The children asked him almost as many questions as there were cl.u.s.ters of them between the summits of Boudry and La Tourne. All three went floundering in that giant Net. It was so different, too, from anything they had been accustomed to. Their father's stories, answers, explanations, and the like, were ineffective because they always felt he did not quite believe them himself even while he gave them. He did not think he believed them, that is. But Cousin Henry talked of stars and star- stuff as though he had some in his pocket at the moment. And, of course, he had. For otherwise they would not have listened. He could not have held their attention.

They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to be fed with a string of one-syllable words!

Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.

'There's a point beyond which--' her cousin would say gravely, when she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of impertinence at once.