The promise of air

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Chapter I

JOSEPH WIMBLE was the only son of an analytical chemist, who, having made considerable profits out of an Invisible Sticking Plaster, sent the boy to Charterhouse and Cambridge in the hope that he would turn out a gentleman. When Joseph left Cambridge his father left business, referred to himself as Expert, used a couple of letters after his name, and suggested making the Grand Tour of Europe together as a finishing touch. "To talk familiarly of Rome and Vienna and Constantinople as though you knew them," he explained, "is a useful thing. It helps one with the women, and to be helped by women in life is half the battle." His ambitions for his son were considerable, including above all a suitable marriage. The abrupt destructipn of these ambitions, accordingly, was so bitter a disappointment that he felt justified in giving the lad a nominal sum and mentioning that he had better shift for himself. For Joseph married secretly the daughter of a Norfolk .corn-chandler.

announcing the news to his father upon the very eve of starting for the Grand Tour. Joseph found himself with £500 and a wife.

Joseph himself was of that placid temperament to which things in life just came and went apparently without making very deep impressions. He was a careless, indifferent sort of fellow even as a boy, careless of consequences, indifferent to results : not irresponsible, yet very easy-going. There was no intensity in him; he did not realise things. "Oh, it's much the same to me," would be his reply to most proposals. "Fd as soon as not." There was something fluid in his nature that accepted life nonchalantly, as if all things were one to him; yet, again, not that he was devoid of feeling or desires., but that he did not realise life in the solid way of the majority. At school he did not realise that he was what the world calls "not quite a gentleman," although the boys made a point of proving it to him. At Cambridge he did not realise that to pass his Little-go, or acquire the letters B.Sc, was of any importance, although various learned and older men received good pay in order to convince him of the fact. He just went along in a loose, careless, bighearted way of living, and took whatever came — exactly as it came. He had a delightful smile and put on fat; shared his money with one and all; existed in a methodical way as most other fellows of his age existed, and grew older much as they did.

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So ordinary was he in fact, so little distinguished from the rest of his kind, that men who knew him well would stop and think when questioned if they numbered Joseph Wimble among their acquaintances. "Wimble, lemme see— oh yes, of course! Why, I've known him for a couple of years !" That was Joseph Wimble. Only it made no difference to him whether they remembered him or not He behaved rather as if everything was one to him in a very literal sense; as if the whole bewildering kaleidoscope of life conveyed a single va§t impression; there was no reason to get excited over particular details; in the end it was literally all one. His smattering of physics taught him that all things could be expressed, more or less, in terms of one another. That was his attitude, at any rate. "Take it as a whole," he would say vaguely, "and it's all right It's all the same."

Yet his indiflference to things was not so colourless as it appeared; but was due, perhaps, to the transference of his interests elsewhere. His centre of gravity hardly seemed on earth is one way of expressing it Behind the apparent stolidity hid somethii^ that danced and sang; something almost flighty. It was laborious explanation that he dreaded and despised, as though things capable of being "explained" were of small importance to him. He was eager to know things he wanted to know, yet in a way he was too intensely curious, too impatient certainly, to put himself to much trouble to find out. He refused to work, to "grind" he knew not how; yet he absorbed a good deal of knowledge; information came to him, as it were. He figured to himself vaguely that there was another surer way of learning than by memorising detail, — a flashing, darting, sudden way, like the way of a bird. To follow a line of information to its bitter end was a wearisome, stultifying business, the reality he sought was lost sight of in the process. The main idea had interest for him, but not the details, for the details blurred and obscured it Proof was a stupid word that blocked his faculties. He did not despise or reject it exactly, but he refused to recognise it. In a sense he overlooked it. Of answers to the important questions millions have been asking for thousands of years there was no proof obtainable. Of survival, for instance, or the existence of the soul, there was no "proof," yet for that very reason he believed in both. He could "prove" a stone, a tree, a dog. He cotdd name and weigh and describe it. The senses of hearing, sight, and touch reported upon it, yet these reports he knew to be but vibrations of the respective nerves that brought them to his brain. They were at best indirect reports, and at worst referred to a mere collection of unverified appearances. Logic, too, the backbone of philosophy, affected him with weariness, just as his respect for i THE PROMISE OF AIR 5

reason was shockingly undeveloped. And argument could prove anything, hence argument for him was also futile. He jumped to the conclusion always. Thus at school, and even more at Cambridge, he liked to know what other fellows thought and believed, but as a whole and in outline only. A general idea of "what and why" was enough for him — ^just to catch the drift

This faculty of catching the drift of any knowledge that he cared about came to him naturally, as it seemed. They called him talented but lazy; for he took the cream off; he swooped like a bird, caught it flying, and was off upon another quest Since there was no real proof of any of the important things, why toil to master the tedious arguments and facts of either side? There was somewhere a swifter, lighter way of knowing things, a direct and instantaneous way. He was sure of it Thus the ordinary things of life he did not realise — quite as other people realised them. They passed him by.

One thing and one only, it seemed, he desired to realise, and that was birds. It was a passion in him, a mania. He had a yearning desire to understand the mystery of bird-life — not ornithology but birds. Anything to do with birds changed the expression of his face at once; the fat and placid indifference gave way to an emotion that, judging by his expression, caused him a degree of wonder that was almost worship, of happiness nearly painful. Their intense vitality inspired him, their equality stirred respect Anything to do with their flight, their songs, their eggs, their habits fascinated him. And this fascination he realised. He indulged it furiously, if of necessity secretly, since to study bird-life fields and hedges must be visited without company. But here again he took no particular pains, it seemed. As is usual with an overmastering tendency, his knowledge of his subject was instinctive. Before he went to Charterhouse he knew the size and colouring of every egg that ever lay in a British nest, and by the time he left that school he could imitate with marvellous accuracy the singing notes and whistles of any bird he had heard once. He devoured books about them, studied their differing ways of flight, knew every nest within a radius of miles about his house in a given neighbourhood, and above all was moved to a kind of ecstasy of wonder over the magic of their annual migration. That in particular touched him into poetry. He thought dumbly about it, but his imagination stirred. Inarticulateness increased his accumulating store of wonder. The Grand Tour I Rome, Vienna, Constantinople, indeed ! What were the capitals of Europe compared to the Southern Tour they made ! That deep instinct to hurry after the fading sun, to keep in touch with their source of life, to follow colour, heat, light, and beauty. That

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vast autumnal flight! The marvel of the great return, entranced by the southern sun, intoxicated with the music of the southern winds! That such tiny bodies could dare four thousand miles of trackless space, travelling for the most part in the darkness, carelessly carrying nothing with them, and rush back in the spring to the very copse or hedgerow left six months before — that was a source of endless wonder to his mind. There was pathos and loneliness in their absence. England seemed empty once the birds had flown. The sky was dead without the swallows. Of course the land was dark and silent when they left, and of course it burst into colour, rhythm, movement, and singing when they showered back upon it in the spring !

The sweet passion of woodland music caught his heart. He realised that birds had a secret and mysterious life of their very own, and that the world they lived in was a happy and desirable world. That strange knowledge at a distance men called instinct, puzzled him. A new method of communication belonged to it too. It had its laws and customs, its joys and terrors, its habits, rules, and purposes ; but these all were strangely different from anything that solid earth-life knew. Freedom, light, and swiftness were the characteristics of that existence, and joy its outstanding quality. Its universal telepathy exhilarated. No other beings in the universe expressed themselves naturally by singing.

The Kingdom of the Air became for him a symbol of an existence higher than an5rthing on the earth ; air stood for a condition that at present was beyond the reach of humanity, but that humanity one day would achieve. His imagination figured this glorious accomplishment as the next stage in evolution. A clever poet might have made Joseph Wimble the hero of an original fairy tale, in which he lived and suffered heavily on solid ground, eternal type of the exile, vainly yearning for his natural element, the air. For exile was in it; he claimed the knowledge of the air as a familiar experience. He felt that he knew and understood the air instinctively; he belonged "up there"; he had nested in the trees, perched on some topmost twig, had balanced in the breeze, and sung his heart out from sheer joy of living; he had even flown.

This was doubtless a mental exercise, an imaginative flight. It all seemed familiar to him, long, long ago, before this enormous physical frame had walled him down to the ground and weight had handicapped aspiration so distressingly. He looked at his body in the glass and sighed. "There's something wrong," he realised. "Why should I need such a mass of stuflf to function through? I'm supposed to be more intelligent than animals or things." He thought of a swift — ^and sighed. Size and weight were so out of proportion to the role he played on earth. The smaller forms of life were

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far less handicapped; a flea, a beetle were a thousand times stronger relatively than a human being, whereas a little bird It all left him inarticulate. He was alwaysi inarticulate. Dumbly he yearned for air ; desired, that is, the mental attitude of one to whom free swift movement in the air was natural ; and the intensity of the yearning — ^the one thing he fully realised — must some day produce a result. The beauty of an air-life hid in his blood. It expressed the ultimate yearning of his very soul.

"The next stage of the world is air," he imagined with some part of his intelligence that never could articulately clothe the dream in language. "We shall never be happy and right until we know the air as birds do. We've learned all the earth has got to teach us. There's a new age coming — ^a new element its key : Air !"

Earth, ever sweet and beautiful, was in the main, however, chiefly useful only. Somehow he no longer felt the need of it

The unreality of objective knowledge, the limitations of the human intellect afilictedj him. He thought of the barren sterility of learned minds, packed tight with this objective information about the clothes of the universe, yet uninformed concerning the living personality that wears them. The scholars and collectors had no joy; they never sang.

He thought hard about it. He tried to state to lo THE PROMISE OF AIR chap.

himself what he meant in clear words. It was difficult. Already he thought in terms of air — ^transparent, everywhere at once, radiant and flashing. He experienced a completeness and a buoyancy that denied the accepted rule that two and two make four. Two and two, of course, did make four on earth and in the nursery or the nest. But somehow in the air — ^they just didn't. There was no two and two at all. They didn't exist. It was some kind of s)mthetical air-knowledge that he sought.

"Earth is divisible— divided," he said to himself. "It has details, separate objects, definite divisions into stones and things. But in the air there is no division. Air is homogeneous — ^not as the physicist's gas, but as an expression of space." In the air, or rather of the air, two and two make four became not false exactly, but impossible. It could not be said. Earth is not continuous, but broken up; it belongs to time and time's divisions of the nursery. Earth is an expression of separateness. Even water has drops, fluid and cohering though it is. Air has no drops. There are no drops of air. There are currents, streams and surfaces, all undetailed. Earth, he felt, belonged to time and time's divisions where two and two made four. But air was of another category altogether, and not of time at all. Air was one.

It explained his indifference to earth. Though fastened physically Uke every one else to the ground.

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his inmost being lived in the air ak-eady, and some day he would meet a person who would explain and justify this extraordinary yearning. He was aware of this expectancy in him, for the craving to become articulate produced it. He needed a mate, of course. Together, somehow, their deep desire would find expression. He would become articulate through her. And suddenly, with a kind of abrupt surprise that belongs to birds, he found her.

The surprising way he found her, too, was characteristic They floated, if not flew, into each other's arms.

Chapter II

IT was a glad May morning, the air soft-flowing and cool, the sunshine warm and brilliant, when the youth cut his lectures and went out into the fields, drawn irresistibly by the electric rush and sparkle of the spring. The swallows were home from the Southern Tour, and the sky was singing. He could not sit and listen to chemical formulae in a lecture-room; it was not possible. He wandered out carelessly into the world of buttercups, following the stream where the feathered willows bent in a wave of falhng green. It was a true bird-day, and his heart, uprising like the larks, was shrilling. He felt exactly like a bird himself, and it made him laugh as naturally as a bird might sing. He fell to copying their various cries. They came up close and saw him. They were aware of him. "Birds of the sweet spring skies !" he thought, and yearned to share their strange collective life, individual still, yet part of their magical community.

He soon found himself out of the scholastic town and among the flat expanse of yellow fields beyond. The stream was blue, the grass an emerald green, the willows laughed, showing their under leaves, the

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dew still sparkled. Buttercups by the million nodded in the breeze; wings were everywhere, the surface of the earth was dancing, and the whole air fluttered. The earth was dressed in blue and gold.

The singing was so general that he had to pause in order to pick out the separate melodies ; the song of the birds was, indeed, so much a part of their surroundings that an act of definite listening was necessary to hear it. It linked him on to Nature; it made Nature articulate. He heard the hearty whistle of the blackcap among the swaying treetops, shrill with joy; a whitethroat tossed itself exultantly into the air beside him; he heard the warblers trilling, the little calling cry of the chiflfchaflf, the tiny poem of the willow-warbler, the merry laughter of the dainty wren. The tits shot everywhere, pecking in seed, pricking the sunshine with their tiny beaks, darting, flashing. He passed a farm and saw the vigorous outline of a blackbird, perched upon an oak bough still bare, fluting as Pan fluted upon many-fountained Ida long ago; a chaffinch dipped at him over the wall from wet shrubberies beyond, hopped to a twig in the sunlight above the blackbird, and let loose a shower of notes like silvery drops of water. Singing shook itself out of the atmosphere everywhere, as though the whole of Nature moved and trembled into her strange scale-less music. There was the joy of air upon the stirring world.

The life of air was dominant, ruling the heavy earth — ^bird-life. What delicious names they had, Whitethroat, Gold-oriel, Wheat-ear, Dipper, Bunting, Redpoll, Osprey, Snowy-owl, Snow-bunting, Martin; what lyrical names with fun and laughter in them, a childlike beauty of air and sunny woodland-space. The magic of Spring captured him by its suggestion: nothing was fully out, it was sug* gested only— eternal promise, ethereal glamour: prophecy, hope, expectancy — fulfilment.

On all sides he felt the tremendous lift of the year that comes in May with song and colour and movement The world was rh5rthmical. It caught him into joy, as though it would sweep him like a harp into passionate response. Yet he remained dumb and inarticulate. He drank it in: but he could not sing, he could not soar, he could not fly. This piping, fluting, thrilling, this showering stream of sweet elemental song and dance was not of the earth, but of the air. The strange yearning in him grew and gathered into a dangerous accumulation. It must find expression somehow or he would — burst.

He threw himself down in the long grass beside the blue-throated stream, and became at once all eyes and ears. There was no other way. The cool totich of the luxuriant herbage brought a slight relief, as did the itemising of the songs he heard and imitated, the colours he gazed upon and named :

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the shimmering sheen of the rooks in the elm trees yonder; the deep, unpolished ebony of the blackbird with its beak of gleaming yellow; the bright and roving eye of the little whitethroat picking food along the bank; the shearing speed of the swifts cutting the air with tapering, scythe-like wings; the piping sweetness of a thrush, invisible in a thicket behind the farm buildings — ^all these combined to put the true bird-ecstasy upon him as he lay and watched and listened. The amazing outburst of spring music lifted him almost into the air to join the ropes of startlings twisting and untwisting as if they reproduced the wild soft tangle of his unsatisfied yearnings. And their tiny flickering shadows fell upon the ground in ever-shifting patterns that he could never catch or seize. Upon his mind fell similarly rushing thoughts he was unable to express ... the rhythm of some mighty promise that uplifted. He was aware of love and beauty. The soul in him rose and twittered like a lark. . . .

Then, presently, he raised his head above the screen of grass. There was a sound of footsteps. His hearing was abnormally acute when this birdmood took him, for the tapping tread of a wagtail on the bank had made itself distinctly heard. He saw the frisky creature, dainty as a sprite, tripping nimbly among the rushes just below him. It balanced very cleverly, neatly dressed in its tailor-made of feathers. He saw its fairy ankles. It seemed to hold its skirts up. He caught its bright eye peeping. It was gone.

"Soft, slip of a bird I" he thought to himself with a sharp sensation of regret; "why did it leave me in such a hurry?" He felt something tender and earnest in him, something true and thorough, yet careless and light with joy, a true bird-quality. He felt, too, the pathos of the sudden disappearance: a moment ago it had been there in all its gracious beauty, and now the spot was empty.

"Where, in what new haunted comer of these

fields " he began, half-singing, when a new and

startling flash of loveliness caught his eye and took his breath away. Another wagtail, but this time yellow, marvellous as a dream, came pricking into view.

Somehow, beyond all understanding, the sweet apparition focussed his tangle of inarticulate yearning into a blaze of delight that was a climax. The advent of the exquisite little creature, widi its delicate carriage, its bosom of pure yellow, seemed symbolical almost The idea of something sylph-like from the heart of the air flashed into him. The whole singing, dancing, coloured element produced this living emblem from its Central heart of the flooding Spring. There was true air-magic in it The passion of Spring and the mystery of birds focussed together in the tiny symbol. Imagination n THE PROMISE OF AIR 17

touched the pitch of ecstasy. He turned abruptly. There was a whirr, a streak of burning yellow that lost itself against the sea of buttercups, and lo! He was — ^alone again.

But this time the loneliness was more than he could bear.

He sprang to his feet, and at full speed took the direction in which it disappeared. Some wisdom of the birds was in him possibly, though alas, not their light rapidity, for while guided wisely along the windings of the willow-guarded stream, across the fields, past hedges, copses, farms, over ditches innumerable, he could not overtake his prize — ^and so at last came into a lonely spot that lay far away upon the surface of the countryside. The occasional flash of yellow had led him onwards in this way, as though the bird enticed him of set purpose ; it would land, then shoot away again just as he came up with it It left a trail of gold across the sunlit fields. It was a will-o'-the-wisp — ^in sunlight It behaved like some spiritual decoy.

Afterwards, when he thought about it, his chase took on this aspect of curious allurement, for he knew he could never catch the bird for actual handling, even had he so desired. Nor did he wish to; he had no desire to "prove" this symbol that summed up his imaginative passion. He only wanted to come up with it ; to meet its peeping eye, to watch it at close quarters: its sylph-like beauty had seduced him. Twice he dashed through the water, where the stream made a tiresome bend, and his track across the fields of early hay would have warranted a farmer in putting dust-shot into him. Yet he kept just within sight of it— of the flashing yellow which made him oblivious of all else; and the brimstone butterflies, the yellow-hammers, the orange-tinted kingfishers that obviously tried to confuse the trail by shooting across his path, failed wholly to divert him from the chase. He knew which gold to follow. It was in his heart

The wagtail at last shot headlong past a clump of bramble-bushes, and Wimble, arriving also headlong, saw to his amazement that the yellow of its breast remained on the branches as though caught and fixed. To his astonishment the gold lay in a shining stream across the prickles without moving. It held fast He saw the gleaming line of it He thought he was dreaming for an instant — ^then discovered that the stream of gold was a yellow scarf that had been netted by the hedge. It belonged to a human. being. The same second he saw a sunbonnet and a book lying on the other side by a pond below some willows. And the being was a blueeyed girl. His sylph of the air had come to earth. Two black stockings hung on a branch to dry. She was bare-footed. He certainly met her eye, and jt was a surprised, reproachful eye. He looked down n THE PROMISE OF AIR 19

at her, and she looked up at him. His heart came up into his throat and then into his eyes.

"I suppose you know you're trespassing," said a voice that was both cross and sweet at once. 'These fields are father's."

'Tfes," replied young Wimble of Trinity, staring at her in amazement "I'm awfully sorry." He was lost in admiration and unable to conceal it She was more than a farmer's daughter, he was thinking, as instinctively he transferred to her all the yearning, airy passion he had put into his search for the yellow wagtail.

"Father complained last week again, and there are new boards up everywhere." He remembered vaguely there had been complaints about trespassing; he had blundered into the very spot where the offences had been committed. "So you've no excuse !" she added, watching him.

"I'm awfully sorry," he repeated, as he disentangled the yellow scarf and passed the end into her outstretched hand. The sunburned skin just matched the landscape, he noted the tiny bleached hairs upon her arm. "I saw a yellow wagtail and went after it They're rather uncommon." And then he added, "I suppose it — you — ^got caught, scrambling through the hedge. I'm frightfully sorry. Really, I'm ashamed. I saw the bird — ^and forgot ever5rthing. I believe it flew back — ^flew into youl"

They stood looking at each other. If he cut a comical figure, she certainly did not; for whereas his face was hot, his tie flown over one shoulder, his grey trousers splashed with mud; she seemed in her natural setting between the willows and the hedge, the untidy hair falling loose about the neck, her arms akimbo and her sunburned face suiting her to perfection. She looked cool and extraordinarily radiant He thought she was absurdly beautiful; his heart began to beat delidously; and when she lost the cross expression and smiled at him the next moment he blurted out a confused, impetuous something before he could possibly prevent it.

"You're awfully becoming," he stammered. "I say — ^I'm jolly glad I saw that yellow wagtail and followed it I believe it flew back into your heart"

Her smile broadened into a laugh at once. It was impossible to be angry with such a youth. "You undergraduates," she said, "are the most ridiculous people I've ever known. But I shan't let you go now I've got you. You're fairly caught"

"Rather," said Wimble with unfeigned delight

"Then you'd better come with me and see father at once," she went on. "You can explain yourself to him — ^about the wagtail."

"Rather," he repeated, though with less entfatt-

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siasm. It was the only word that he could think of; and he added, "presently."

She looked him up and down. "It's best, I think." And her laughter was now friendly.

"I will," he repeated, "I'll go anywhere with you. I admit I'm caught. Do you think he'll be very nasty to me ?"

But he scarcely knew what he was saying all the time, for his one desire was not to lose sight of her now that he had found her. Her face, her laughter, her singing voice, her attitude, everything about her made him gasp. He already thought of her in birdterms. He remembered the redwing, delicate thrush, that comes to England from the North and is off again too soon — of countless birds that haunt our fields with transient beauty, then vanish suddenly, afraid to stay and rest. An anxious pang transfixed his heart. Any moment she might spread big yellow wings and leave him fluttering on the ground. "If I've done any damage," he added, "I'll put it right. It was worth it, anyhow." But he saw that she laughed with him now, not at him, and he began to smile himself. She was adorable. "I'll swear she's a birdy girl," the thought flashed through him.

"If you'll turn your back a moment, please," he heard her saying, "I'll put my shoes and stockings on again. There's no good paddling any more with you here."

"Rather not," he said, and ran down to fetch them for her.