Half-way across the lawn, however, it paused and stretched itself; it rubbed its eyes; it yawned; and, as it shook the sleep from face and body, the outline grew distinctly clearer. The thing that had looked like a bundle of hay or branches resolved itself into a human being; the loose untidiness gave place to definite shape, as leaves, gra.s.s, twigs, and wisps of straw fell fluttering from it to the ground. It was a pathetic and yet wonderful sight, beauty, happiness, and peace about it somewhere, together with a soft and tender sweetness that tempered the wildness of its aspect. Indescribably these qualities proclaimed themselves. It was a man.

"They've seen me twice," he mentioned to the dipping swallows. "This is my third appearance. They'll recognise me without a word. The Day has come."

He stood a moment, shaking the extras of the night from hair and clothing, then laughed with a sound like running water as the birds swooped down and carried the straws and twigs away with a great business of wings. Next, glancing up at the open windows of the house, he started forward with a light but steady step. "They will not be surprised," he said, "for they have always believed in me. They knew that some day I should come, and in the twinkling of an eye!" He paused and chuckled in his beard. "I'm not _the_ one thing they're expecting, but I'm next door to it, and I can show them how to look at any rate."

And he began softly humming the words of a little song he had evidently made up himself, and therefore liked immensely. He neared the walls; the sunrise tipped a happy, glorious face; he disappeared from view as though he had melted through the old grey stone. And a flight of swallows, driven by the fresh dawn wind, pa.s.sed high overhead across the heavens, leading the night away. They swung to the rhythm of his little song:

My secret's in the wind and open sky, There is no longer any Time--to lose; The world is young with laughter; we can fly Among the imprisoned hours as we choose.

The rushing minutes pause; an unused day Breaks into dawn and cheats the tired sun; The birds are singing. Hark! Come out and play!

There is no hurry! Life has just begun!

THE EXTRA DAY

BEHIND _TIME_

I

The day broke. It broke literally. The sky gave way and burst asunder, scattering floods of radiant sunshine. This was the feeling in Uncle Felix's heart as he came downstairs to breakfast in the schoolroom. A sensation of feathery lightness was in him, of speed as well: he could rise above every obstacle in the world, only--there were no obstacles in the world to rise above. Boredom, despair, and pessimism, he suddenly realised, meant deficiency of energy merely. "Birds can rise above everything--and so can I!"--as though he possessed a robin's normal temperature of 110 degrees!

Although it was Sunday morning, and a dark suit was his usual custom, he had slipped into flannels and a comfortable low collar, without thinking about it one way or the other. "It's a jolly day," he hummed to himself, "and I'm alive. We must do all kinds of things--everything!

It's all one thing really!" It seemed there was a new, uplifting sense of joy in merely being alive. He repeated the word again and again--"alive, alive, alive!" Of course a robin sang: it was the natural thing to do.

He looked out of the window while dressing, and caught the startling impression that this life emanated from the world of familiar trees and gra.s.s and flowers spread out before his eyes. Everything was singing.

Beauty had dropped down upon the earth; the earth, moreover, knew that she was beautiful--she was obviously enjoying herself, both as a whole and in every tiniest nook and corner of her gigantic being. Yet without undue surprise he noted this; the marvel was there as always, but he did not pause to say, "How marvellous!" It was as natural as breathing, and as easily accepted. He was always breathing, but he never stopped and thought, "Good Lord, I'm breathing! How dreadful if it stopped!" He simply went on breathing. And so, with the beauty of this radiant morning, it never occurred to him "This will not last, the sun will set, the shadows fall, the marvel pa.s.s and die." That this particular day could end did not even suggest itself.

On his way down the pa.s.sage, Judy and Tim came dancing from their rooms to meet him. They, too, were dressed in their everyday-adventure things, no special sign of Sunday anywhere about them--slipped into their summery clothing as naturally as birds and flowers grow into the bright and feathery stuff that covers them. This notion struck him, but faintly; it was not a definite thought. He might as well have noticed, "Ah, the sky is dressed in light, or mist! The wind blows it into folds and creases!" Yet the notion did strike him with its little dream-like hammer, because with it came a second tiny blow, producing, it seemed, a soft blaze of light behind his eyes somewhere: "I've recovered the childhood sense of reality, the vivid certainty, the knowledge!...

Somebody's coming.... Somebody's here--hiding still, perhaps, yet nearer..." It flashed like a gold-fish in some crystal summer fountain... and was gone again.

In the pa.s.sage Judy touched his hand, and said confidingly, "You will take me to the end of the world to-day, Uncle."

It was true and possible. No special preparation was required for any journey whatsoever. They were already prepared for anything--like birds. And some one, it seemed, had taken his name away!

"We'll do everything at once," said Tim, with the utmost a.s.surance in tone and manner.

"Of course," was his obvious and natural reply to each, no explanations or conditions necessary. Things would happen of themselves, spontaneously. There was only one thing to do! "We're alive," he added.

They just looked at him as he said it, then pulled him down the pa.s.sage a little faster than before. Yet the way they ran dancing along that oil-cloth pa.s.sage held something of the joy and confidence with which birds launch themselves into flight across the earth. There was this sense of spontaneous excitement and delight about.

"He's here already," Judy whispered, as they neared the breakfast room.

"I can feel it."

"Came in while we were asleep," her brother added. "I know it," and he clapped his hands.

"At dawn, yes," agreed Uncle Felix, saying it on the spur of the moment. He was perplexed a little, perhaps, but did not hesitate. He had not _quite_ the a.s.surance of the others. He meant to let himself go, however.

There was not the slightest doubt or question anywhere; _they_ believed because they knew; what they had expected for so long had happened. The Stranger in the Tea-cup had arrived at last. They went down the long corridor of the Old Mill House, every window open to the sunshine that came pouring in. The very walls seemed made of transparent, shining paper. The world came flowing in. A happiness of the glowing earth sang in their veins. At the door they paused a second.

"I know exactly who he is," breathed Judy softly.

"I know what he looks like," whispered Tim.

"There was never time to see him properly before," said Uncle Felix.

"Things went by so fast. He whizzed and vanished. But now--of course-"

They pushed the door open and went in.

Breakfast was already laid upon the shining cloth; hot dishes steamed; there were flowers upon the table, and climbing roses peeped in round the grey walls of sun-baked stone. A bird or two hopped carelessly upon the window-sill, and a smell of earth and leaves was in the air.

Sunshine, colour, and perfume filled the room to overflowing, yet not so full that there was not ample s.p.a.ce for the "somebody" who had brought them. For somebody certainly was there--some one whom the children, moreover, took absolutely for granted.

There had been surprise outside the door, but there was none when they were in. Something like a dream, it seemed, this absence of astonishment, though, of course, no one took it in that way. For, at first, no one spoke at all. The children went to their places, lifting the covers to see what there was to eat. They did the normal, natural thing; eyed and sniffed the porridge, cream, brown sugar, and especially approved the dish of comfortable, fat poached eggs on toast.

They were satisfied with what they saw; everything was as it ought to be--plentiful, available, on hand. There was enough for everybody.

But Uncle Felix paused a moment just inside the open door, and stared; he looked about him as though the incredible thing had really happened at last. A rapt expression pa.s.sed over his face, and his eyes seemed fixed upon something radiant that hung upon the air. He sighed, and caught his breath. His heart grew amazingly light within him. Every thought and feeling that made up his personality--so it felt, at least--had wings of silver tipped with golden fire.

"At last!" he murmured softly to himself, "at last!"

He moved forward slowly into the room, his eyes still fixed on vacancy.

The face showed exquisite delight, but the lips were otherwise dumb. He looked as if he had caught a glimpse of something he could not utter.

"Porridge, please, Uncle," he heard a voice saying, as some one put a large silver spoon into his hand. "I like the hard lumps." And another voice added, "I like the soupy, slippery stuff, please." He pulled himself together with an effort.

"Ah," he mumbled, peeping from the dishes at the children's faces, "the tea has stopped turning in the cup at last. He's come up to the surface."

And they turned and looked at him, but without the least surprise again; it was perfectly natural, it seemed, that there should be this Presence in the room; their Uncle's remark was neither here nor there.

He had a right to express his own ideas in his own way if he wanted to.

Their own remarks outside the door they had apparently forgotten. That, indeed, was already a very long time ago now. In the full bliss of realisation, antic.i.p.ation was naturally not remembered. The excitement in the pa.s.sage belonged to some dim Yesterday--almost when they were little.

They began immediately to talk _at_ the Stranger in the room.

"I didn't _hear_ anybody come," remarked Tim, as he mixed cream and demerara sugar inside an artificial pool of porridge, "but it's all the same--now. Our Somebody's here all right." And then, between gulps, he added, "The swallows laid an awful lot of eggs in the night, I think."

"On tiptoe just at dawn," remarked Judy casually, following her own train of thought, and intent upon chasing a slippery poached egg round and round her plate at the same time. "The birds were awake, of course."

The birds! As she said it, a memory of some faint, exquisite dream, of years and years ago it seemed, fled also on tiptoe through the bright, still air, and through three listening hearts as well. The robin, the swallows, and the up-and-under bird made secret signs and vanished.

"They know everything first, of course," said Uncle Felix aloud; "they're up so early, aren't they?" To himself he said, "I'm dreaming!

This is a dream!" his reason still fluttering a little before it died.

But he kept his secret about the robin tightly in its hiding-place.

"Before they've happened--_really_," Tim mentioned. "They do a thing to-morrow long before to-morrow's come." He knew something the others could not possibly know.

"Everything comes from the air, you see," advanced Judy, secure in the memory of her private morning interview. "But it can disappear under--underneath when it wants to."

"Or into a hole," agreed Tim.