Algernon Blackwood (12 page)

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
passed 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 butterfly, 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.

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
, SHELLEY.

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 attitude 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 unobserved, 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, buttoned 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 passing, 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 classed 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.
'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 fishing-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 rushing 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—'