How right she was, he thought, from her point of view. At the same time, how entirely that point of view lacked vision. A badger criticised a bird for flying uselessly when there were eggs to be laid and worms to be pulled up and twigs for a nest to look at instead of rushing landscapes.

'I will, dear. I'll speak to her at once, before I go to see the agents.

I'll bring back good news at dinner-time. Now good-bye, bless you.'

He kissed her. She looked so helpless and pathetic that he kissed her again, adding 'Good-bye, old thing, don't worry. Take everything lightly like a bird and remember--Wherever we are, we go!'

'Good-bye, Joe dear. Do your best. You know our limit as to rent.'

He noticed that for once she had not asked him to repeat.

He left the room and walked down the pa.s.sage to admonish Joan, yet knowing that there was nothing he could honestly chide her for. She sang at her scales for the same reason he sang in his bath. In both of them, father and daughter, was the carelessness and joy of air, the certainty that, whatever they did on earth with effort, toil, and purpose, had in it-- behind it and sustaining it--the glad sweet element of air. Air had no divisions, it was whole--a universal radiant element containing end and beginning, everything. To act with it instantaneously was to be confident that fulfilment lay already in the smallest germ of every action.

'The cottage lies there waiting for us now. Just look for it with faith and careless happiness. . . . The perfect music lies within these boring scales. Just sing to them. It brings accomplishment more swiftly near!'

But on opening the door and poking his head inside, he found that she had ceased singing and was diligently practising.

'That's right,' he said, smiling; 'it's rather dull, but stick to it.

It'll please your mother, and before long you'll be able to play all my favourite pieces.'

She stopped, swung round on the stool and looked at him. Her little face in its wreath of shining hair was very earnest, the eyes big with wonder as though she had made a great discovery. He had seen a robin thus, perched on a window-sill, its head c.o.c.ked sideways at a crumb of bread-- poise, alertness, happiness in the att.i.tude and gesture.

'Well,' he asked, 'what is it now? 'And pointing to the maze of black printed notes, she said: 'I only wanted to tell you something I've got hold of--There are only seven notes after all--only seven altogether.'

'That's all, yes.'

'All the music in the world comes out of that--just seven notes--'

'Combinations of them--with a lot of half-notes too,' he explained.

'But half-notes only suggest. The real notes are the thing--just seven of them. Isn't it jolly? They'll never frighten me again. Now, listen a moment, Daddy, I'll play you what the wings sing when they rush along.

You know--the sound in the air when birds fly past:

Flow, fly, flow, Wherever I am, I go; I live in the air Without thought or care, Flow, fly, flow. . . .

She played and sang till he felt every atom in his being moving rhythmically to the little doggerel. He took her in his arms and hugged her.

'Ah,' he cried, 'I put all this into you unconsciously, and now you're explaining it to me. That's fun indeed, isn't it?'

'And I've only used three notes for it--for the tune, I mean,' she exclaimed breathlessly as he released her. 'I've still got four more.'

He blew her a kiss from the door and went on the top of a 'bus to Dizzy & Dizzy, who gave him a list of orders to view some half-dozen desirable cottages and bungalows in Suss.e.x that seemed reasonably within the price he could afford, but none of which, it so happened, was the thing he wanted.

And during the day, odd thoughts and feelings, born of that mystic dawn he had witnessed with the birds, came flitting round him. Being wordless, he could only translate them as best occurred to him. It was impossible to keep pace with many-sided life to-day unless a new method were discovered.

To skim adequately among the numerous sources of information and instruction, wings were needed. With their speed and economy of energy the feathered mind could dive into all, absorb fresh knowledge instantly, and pa.s.s on swiftly to yet further sources. At present complete exhaustion followed the mere bodily and mental effort to keep abreast even with one line of thought and action. The bird's-eye view, involving bird's-eye action, alone could manage it. It was a case of flow, fly, flow, indeed. He was dimly aware of a new method coming softly, silently, from the air. Air meant the spiritual method. While the body, guided by surefooted, slow, laborious reason, attended to its necessary duties on the ground, the mind, the soul, the spirit would flow, fly, flow, with the new powers of the air. . . .

He played lovingly with the idea. He thought of birds as the aborigines of the air, the pioneers perhaps. They represent no climax of evolution.

On the earth men appeared last, preceded by many stages of earlier development. Birds were, possibly, but the first, the earliest inhabitants of their delicious realm, still imperfect, but alive with a promise for mankind. They were not an ideal, they merely offered their best qualities to those below.

The Promise of the Air ran through him like a strain of glad spring music.

Air, he knew, as Joan used the term, meant aether, the mother of all air.

She dreamed of pa.s.sages to dim old gleaming Hercules adrift in open s.p.a.ce, to Ca.s.siopeia, happily, mightily wandering, to the golden blossoms of the Nebulae's garden of shining gold. Across his mind the great flocks of stars were flying. . . .

'I'm _not_ a "miserable sinner." It's a lie that "there is no health in me." Nor do I believe that another man can "forgive my sins," because I confess them to him, or that those who refuse to believe as I do--whatever it is I _do_ believe!--shall forfeit my special favours, least of all suffer the smallest p.r.i.c.k of a pin on that account. . . .!'

If ever he had been affected by the dogmatic teaching of any person or group of persons, alive or dead, he broke finally with them in that moment.

CHAPTER XIII

Remembering his promise, though made only to himself, he proposed going to the cinema. Tom, who was present during the discussion that followed, wanted a Revue, but was overruled.

'You can't smoke,' he objected, but what he really meant was that he wanted to have his physical sensations stimulated by suggestive reminders that he was a breeding rabbit that had never left earth--earth which a single shower could turn into mud.

'That won't hurt you for one night, Tom,' observed Mother, aware vaguely of his difficulty.

They chose the best the advertis.e.m.e.nts supplied and went off after an early dinner. In a sort of bundle they started, Mother in her finery forgetting the performance was in the dark, Joan, smiling, neat and bright, her little ankles tripping, and Mr. Wimble important, holder of the purse-strings and full of antic.i.p.atory wonder. Tom, smoking cheap gold-tipped Turkish cigarettes, was superior and sulky. Like an untidy bundle the family made the journey towards Piccadilly Circus, a bundle with loose ends, patched corners, one end hardly belonging to the other, yet obviously coherent for all that, and with a spot of brilliant colour-- Joan's bright, glancing eyes and eagerly pretty face.

Tom, having bought a halfpenny evening paper, read the sporting and financial news; his racing tips had proved false; his mood was ill-humoured; he eyed the girls on the pavement below, flicking his cigarette ash over the edge of the motor-bus from time to time.

'What's on?' enquired a chance acquaintance across the gangway, with an eye on pretty Joan. 'Music hall or high-brow legitimate?'

'Cinema,' returned Tom in a scratchy voice, 'with the family. I'm beat to the wide.'

'Who's put the wind up you this time?' enquired his friend.

'Family. They put it across me sometimes. Can't be helped.'

'Good egg!' was the reply, as the youth looked past him admiringly at Joan.

'Oh!--my sister,' mentioned Tom, proudly, and with a flash of self-satisfaction; 'Joan, a friend of mine--Mr. Spindle,' adding under his breath something about Rolls Royce and Limousines, as though Mr.

Spindle, who was actually merely an employee in some motor works, owned several expensive cars.

Joan, ignorant of the strange modern slang they used, nodded sweetly, then turned to watch the surging throng of energetic humanity on the pavement below. She was in the corner seat. Father and Mother sat below--inside.

The sea of human beings rolled past like waves of water.

'Everybody going somewhere,' she said half to herself with a thrill of wonder. It struck her that, though hardly any one looked up, some must surely want to fly, and one or two, at least, must know they could.

She wondered there were no collisions. All dodged and slid past and side-stepped so cleverly. The energy, skill, and subconscious calculation they used were considerable. In each brain was a distinct and separate purpose, a mental picture of the spot each busily made for, while yet all seemed governed by one common denial: that nothing off the earth was conceivable even. Like crowding ants, they stuck to the ground, shuffling laboriously along the world-worn routes. Their minds, she was persuaded, knew heavy ways, unaware that horizons are made to lift. She watched the herd in search for amus.e.m.e.nt after the drudgery of the day, engaged upon a common search. What they really sought, she felt, was air. Only they knew it not. In ignorance they toiled to find artificial excitement-- pleasure.

She longed to lift them up and swing them loose into undivided s.p.a.ce, let them know freedom, lightness, spontaneous carelessness. If they would only dance--it would be something.

'And all going to the same place,' she added aloud. She sighed.

'I hope to G.o.d they're not,' said Tom in his scratchy voice, thinking of the cinema.

'Eh?' remarked Mr. Spindle, with a thrust forward of his head.

The motor-bus lumbered into the Circus and drew up, leaning over to one side.