ajatttcU Hmoeraitg ffixbrarg 
 
 atljara. Keni fork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 PR6003.L15P96 
 
 The promise of air, 
 
 3 1924 013 589 340 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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THE NOVELS OF 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 Cr. 8vo. 6s. net each. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL. 
 
 THE HUMAN CHORD. 
 
 THE CENTAUR. 
 
 PAN'S GARDEN : A VOLUME OF Nature 
 
 Stories. Illustrated. 
 A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND. (The 
 
 Book that " Uncle Paul" wrote.) 
 INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES. 
 THE EXTRA DAY. 
 
 THE WAVE : An Egyptian Aftermath. 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR. 
 
 JIMBO. A Fantasy. Cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. 
 THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL. Cr. 8vo. 
 
 KARMA : A Re-incarnation Play. By 
 Algernon Blackwood and Violet 
 Peaen. Cr. 8vo. 
 
 LONDON ; MACMILLAN & CO. , Ltd. 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
^m^ 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON . BOMBAY CALCUTTA ■ MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YOni>: BOSTON . CHICAGO 
 DALLAS ■■ SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 
 PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 author of 
 
 *the education of uncle paul,' 'a prisoner in fairyland,* 
 
 'the centaur/ etc. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1918 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
TO 
 
 (I9I3) 
 
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 destruction of these 
 ambitions, accordingly, was so bitter a disappoint- 
 ment that he felt j ustified 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 
 
2 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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. ' I'd 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, big- 
 hearted 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. 
 So ordinary was he in fact, so little distinguished 
 
I THE PROMISE OF AIR 3 
 
 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 kaleido- 
 scope of life conveyed a single vast impression ; 
 there was no reason to get excited over particular 
 details ; in the end it was literally ail 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 indifference to things was not so colour- 
 less 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 
 something 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. 
 
4 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 He refused to work, to ' grind ' he knew not how ; 
 yet he absorbed a good deal of knowledge ; in- 
 formation 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 could 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 appear- 
 ances. Logic, too, the backbone of philosophy, 
 affected him with weariness, just as his respect for 
 reason was shockingly undeveloped. And argument 
 could prove anything, hence argument for him was 
 
I THE PROMISE OF AIR 5 
 
 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 
 
6 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 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 Charter- 
 house 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 ! 
 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 
 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 track- 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 7 
 
 less space, travelling for the most part in the dark- 
 ness, 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 loneli- 
 ness 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 tele- 
 pathy 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 anything on the earth ; air 
 stood for a condition that at present was beyond the 
 reach of humanity, but that humanity one day would 
 
8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 imagina- 
 tive 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 some- 
 thing wrong,' he realised. ' Why should I need 
 such a mass of stuff 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 r61e he 
 played on earth. The smaller forms of life were 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 always inarticulate. Dumbly he yearned for air ; 
 
I THE PROMISE OF AIR 9 
 
 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 limita- 
 tions of the human intellect afflicted him. He 
 thought of the barren sterility of learned minds, 
 packed tight with this objective information about 
 the clothes of the universe, yet uninformed con- 
 cerning 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 
 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 experi- 
 enced a completeness and a buoyancy that denied 
 
lo THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 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 synthetical 
 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 like every one else to the ground, 
 his inmost being lived in the air already, 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 
 
I THE PROMISE OF AIR ii 
 
 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 care- 
 lessly into the world of buttercups, following the 
 stream where the feathered willows bent in a wave 
 of falling 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. 
 
CHAP. II THE PROMISE OF AIR 13 
 
 The stream was blue, the grass an emerald green, 
 the willows laughed, showing their under leaves, the 
 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 thaf 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 tree- 
 tops, shrill with joy ; a whitethroat tossed itself 
 exultantly into the air beside him ; he heard the 
 warblers trilling, the little calling cry of the chiff- 
 chaff, 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 
 
14 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 suggested only — eternal 
 promise, ethereal glamour : prophecy, hope, expect- 
 ancy — 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 rhythmical. 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 
 touch of the luxuriant herbage brought a slight 
 
II THE PROMISE OF AIR 15 
 
 relief, as did the itemising of the songs he heard 
 and imitated, the colours he gazed upon and named: 
 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 com- 
 bined to put the true bird-ecstasy upon him as he 
 lay and watched and listened. The amazing out- 
 burst of spring music lifted him almost into the air 
 to join the ropes of starlings 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 bird- 
 mood 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 
 
1 6 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 ! ' 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 corner 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, with 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. 
 
II THE PROMISE OF AIR 17 
 
 The passion of Spring and the mystery of birds 
 focussed together in the tiny symbol. Imagination 
 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 in- 
 numerable, 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 hand- 
 ling, 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 
 
1 8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 head- 
 long, 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 dis- 
 covered 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 sun- 
 bonnet and a book lying on the other side by a pond 
 below some willows. And the being was a blue- 
 eyed 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 it 
 
II THE PROMISE OF AIR 19 
 
 was a surprised, reproachful eye. He looked down 
 at her, and she looked up at him. His heart came 
 up into hi^ 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." 
 
 ' Yes,' 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 out- 
 stretched 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 every- 
 thing. I believe it flew back — flew into you ! ' 
 
20 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 deliciously ; and when she 
 lost the cross expression and smiled at him the next 
 moment he blurted out a confused, impetuous some- 
 thing 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 enthusiasm. 
 It was the onlj' word that he could think of ; and 
 he added, ' presently.' 
 
n THE PROMISE OF AIR 21 
 
 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 bird- 
 terms. 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. 
 
 And so it began and ended in the brief ten 
 
22 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 minutes of this intoxicating May morning beside the 
 willow pond where the birds of the countryside came 
 down to bathe at dawn and drink at sunset. It was 
 an ideal opening. She put her stockings on, but 
 not before he had complained that she was slow 
 about it because a thorn had run into her toe, 
 blaming him so that he had to extract it with 
 trembling fingers and a penknife. They were laugh- 
 ing together like two children by the time he 
 finished ; and by the time they reached the house 
 he had dipped into her being and found, as in a 
 book of poetry, that all his favourite passages were 
 marked. Moreover, she had led him by so round 
 a way that they had been obliged to rest under the 
 hedges more than once, and had discovered also that 
 they were very hungry. The sudden intimacy was 
 the sudden falling in love of two young persons who 
 were obviously made for one another. It was the 
 mating of two birds. They had met by the pond, 
 exchanged glances, and then flown off together across 
 the lawn. For it was spring and nesting time. . . . 
 The dust of blue and bronze was on the dragon- 
 flies, the bloom and promise of deep-bosomed summer 
 in the air. . . . 
 
 'Father, this is my friend, Mr. Wimble,' she 
 introduced him. ' You remember, I told you. He's 
 at Trinity.' 
 
 ' You'll stay and have a bite with us, won't you 
 then.? It's just time,' was the genial invitation. 
 
II THE PROMISE OF AIR 23 
 
 given to hide his excusable lack of recognition. 
 There was no mention of the damaged fields nor of 
 the trespassing. ' Come, Joan, let's get at it, for 
 I'm starving.' 
 
 The name sounded wonderful, but Joseph knew 
 it already and had already used it, his face close 
 against her red lips and shining eyes. He also knew 
 his fate was sealed, and he wished to heaven his own 
 father was as nice as hers. 
 
 ' I'm a chandler,' he was told in the course of the 
 talk across the luncheon table by the window while 
 the birds hushed their song outside, well knowing 
 it was noon, ' a corn-chandler down in Norfolk. 
 But I've got two farms up here in Cambridgeshire, 
 and I'm just up to look over 'em for a chap as wants 
 to buy 'em off me.' He was a rough-and-ready 
 type, free in his drink and language, using meaning- 
 less oaths more frequently as intimacy grew, and 
 betraying a somewhat irascible temperament as well. 
 Yet he was kindly enough. And before Joseph left 
 to go back to his forgotten lectures there had been 
 an invitation too : ' You must come down and see us 
 there some time if you don't mind a bit of roughing 
 it. We live very simple.' 
 
 From all of which it was clear that the corn- 
 chandler was favourably impressed by the visit of an 
 Undergraduate of Cambridge University, and would 
 not be at all averse to marrying his daughter to the 
 first available young man with reasonable credentials. 
 
24 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 It was all so easy, instinctive, natural. It ran so 
 smoothly. It flowed, it flew. No obstacles appeared. 
 There was flight and rapture in it from the very 
 start. The couple managed to see one another once 
 a day at least for the next three weeks, but before 
 the first week ended they were engaged. Young 
 Wimble said nothing at home because he knew his 
 father would object to the daughter of a corn- 
 chandler who lived in Norfolk. By September they 
 were married. But by the end of September Joseph 
 realised that they were married — quite another thing. 
 For his father meant what he said, and beyond a 
 modest allowance from the chandler to his daughter, 
 they started life with nothing but the small lump 
 sum by means of which Mr. Wimble senior eased 
 his conscience and set himself right with the outside 
 world. The capitals of Europe were not visited. 
 
 Joseph and Joan, however, took the situation like 
 a pair of birds, lightly and carelessly. They were 
 as thoughtless as two finches on the lawn, and as 
 faithful as red linnets. The game of the yellow 
 wagtail chase was kept up between them. He pre- 
 tended that it was her flying scarf he had seen 
 shining two miles across the buttercup fields, and 
 she declared that she had gone to the willow pond 
 on purpose, knowing in her bones — she called them 
 feathers — that one day some one would find her there 
 and capture her. The actual wagtail was a real decoy. 
 It was his yearning and her own materialised. 
 
11 THE PROMISE OF AIR 25 
 
 They laughed and played with the idea till it grew 
 very real. And the future did not frighten them a 
 bit. They took their money and spent it on their 
 honeymoon, leaving for the south in October with 
 the birds. They started on the great Southern Tour, 
 building their first nest far away in a sun-drenched 
 Algerian garden where the air, soft with the bloom of 
 an eternal summer, mastered the earth and made it seem 
 of small account. Nothing could weigh them down, 
 nor cage them in. They led a true air-life together, 
 the winds were softly scented, stars shone nightly 
 above their cosy tent, they sang in the golden sunsets 
 and washed their young bodies in the morning dew. 
 
 It was the paradise of a realised dream, a sparkling 
 ecstasy they thought could never end. Her beauty 
 seemed to him the one thing necessary. The autumn 
 migration of the birds, mysterious with grandeur, 
 had always suggested to him a passing-away from 
 earth, a procession to another life, and a returning to 
 sing of it with rapture in the spring. Their honey- 
 moon was this dream come true. They mated and 
 married as birds do, on the wing, and singing. And 
 their first-born, a girl, was the offspring of a passion 
 as intense and radiant as any passion can be in this 
 world. Their imaginative ecstasy, prolonged won- 
 drously through golden months, lifted them from 
 the earth towards the very stars. In it was singing, 
 flight, and rapture, the freedom of wild free spaces 
 and the glory of flashing, coloured wings. 
 
26 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 It was of the air. They fluted to one another 
 beneath the moon ; they soared above the noonday 
 heat, they warbled in the scented dusk. Their child, 
 conceived of sun and wind, in a transport of bliss 
 akin to that careless passionate happiness that makes 
 bird-life a ceaseless running song, was born where 
 the missel-thrush sings in the moonlight, and the 
 nightingales in February. She was a veritable child 
 of air. A bird on the wing dropped her to earth in 
 passing, and was gone. . . . 
 
 But something else was gone about that time as 
 well. There came the collapse of inevitable reaction 
 — tragedy. It was as pitiful as anything well could 
 be. Having accomplished her chief end in life, the 
 wife's strange beauty faded : her lightness, brilliance 
 waned, her rapture sank and died ; she became a 
 heavy, rather stupid mother ; she returned to type 
 whence youth and imagination had temporarily 
 rescued her. Her underlying traits of ordinary 
 texture dulled the colour of her yellow wings. She 
 bequeathed her all to this radiant, sparkling first- 
 born, and herself went out. The thing he loved in 
 her vanished or became obliterated. He had caught 
 her main drift ; he tired. She tired too. In him 
 patient affection replaced ecstatic adoration ; in her 
 there was tolerance, misunderstanding, then disap- 
 pointment. To live longer on the heights they had 
 first climbed became impossible. All that had fascin- 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 27 
 
 ated him, caught him into the air, departed from her. 
 The bird flew from her — into the little girl with 
 yellow hair and big blue eyes. 
 
 She wearied of the life in tents and spoke of 
 ' artistic furniture ' at home, of comfort, and began 
 to wonder how their ' living ' could be ' earned.' 
 The practical outlook developed, the carelessness of 
 air decreased. Tom, the second-born, was the cul- 
 minating proof of the saddening descent. He was 
 just a jolly little dirty animal. ' He's Hke a rabbit,' 
 thought his father, looking with disappointment on 
 him, thus introducing the big, bitter quarrel that 
 ended in their coming back to the heavy skies of 
 England, setthng in a flat in Maida Vale, and led 
 eventually to his taking up work in connection with 
 a modern publishing house to provide the necessary 
 food and rent and clothing. They landed with a 
 distinctly heavy thud — on earth. 
 
 It was, on the mother's part, a great tragedy of 
 sacrifice. Having given all her best qualities to the 
 first-born, she kept none over for herself — not even 
 enough to appreciate her loss. Her radiance, sparkle, 
 lightness, all her airy wonder, joy and singing, passed 
 from her into yellow-haired little Joan. She stared 
 at it with dull misunderstanding in her heart. She 
 had not retained enough even to understand herself. 
 She did not even discover that she had changed, for 
 only when a fragment remains is the loss of the rest 
 recognised, much less regretted. 
 
2 8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, h 
 
 By expressing herself in reproduction, she had 
 not grown richer, but had somehow merely emptied 
 herself. Her husband, moreover, was not heartless. 
 He was not even to blame. He remained tender, 
 kind, and true, but he did not love. For the thing 
 he loved had gone — into another form. 
 
 Like the shifting shadows of the wings upon the 
 Cambridge flats that gay spring morning, there fell 
 upon his mind a shower of vague and indescribable 
 thoughts, only one of which he pounced upon before 
 it fled away. 
 
 ' What has been so long unconscious in me, little 
 Joan may perhaps make conscious. I wonder. . . ! ' 
 He wondered till he died. He kept his wings, that is. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The return to London was a return to the demands 
 of earth ; from the bright and fiery aether of the 
 southern climate they landed with something of a jar 
 among sooty bricks and black-edged mortar. The 
 sunshine dimmed, the very air seemed solid. Regular 
 hours of work made it difficult for him to lift his 
 wings, much less to fly ; he knew the London air 
 was good, but he never noticed that it was air at all ; 
 he almost forgot they had ever lived in the air and 
 flown at all. Grocers, butchers, and bakers taught 
 Mrs. Wimble to become very practical, and the 
 halfpenny newspapers stirred her social ambitions for 
 her children. Wimble worked hard and capably, 
 and they made both ends meet. He proved a patient 
 husband and a devoted father, if perhaps a rather 
 vague one. His moment of realisation was over. 
 He accepted the routine of the majority, living 
 methodically, almost automatically, yet always a little 
 absent-mindedly as though much of his intelligence 
 was unconsciously at work elsewhere. 
 
 Both parents altered ; but, whereas his change was 
 39 
 
30 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 on the surface only, his wife's seemed fundamental 
 and permanent. He was aware that he had altered, 
 she was not aware. They differed radically, for in- 
 stance, about the prolonged and golden honeymoon 
 in the south. 
 
 ' The money lasted uncommonly well,' said Mrs. 
 Wimble when they spoke of it ; ' it was a pity we 
 didn't keep over a little, wasn't it ? ' There was a 
 hint of asperity in the droop of her lips. 
 
 ' We should have it now if we had,' he answered 
 vaguely but with patience. ' But for me it's a 
 memory that will always live.' He spoke with 
 longing tenderness. 
 
 ' What ? ' said Mrs. Wimble, who, like all slow 
 thinkers, liked sentences repeated, thus giving time 
 to find an intelligent reply. 
 
 ' We had a lovely time out there,' she admitted 
 with a sigh, and went on to mention by way of com- 
 plaint that she feared she was getting rather stout in 
 London. There was no idea in her that she had 
 changed in any other way ; she looked back upon 
 Algeria as a kind of youthful madness, half regretting 
 it. That the bird had flown from her heart did not 
 occur to her. Not alone her body, but her mind 
 was getting stout. She had grown so artificial that 
 she was no longer real. The manners, moods, the 
 words and gestures she adopted in order to please or 
 in order to appear as others are, had ended by 
 effectually screening her own natural self, that which 
 
I.I THE PROMISE OF AIR 31 
 
 is every one's possession of unique value. It was 
 not so much that she was false as that she was not 
 herself. She was unreal. 
 
 In Wimble, however, those two' years remained 
 as something bewilderingly beautiful. Just out of 
 sight in his heart he wore still the steady glow of it. 
 He never could recall quite what he had felt in those 
 deliriously happy days, yet the knowledge that they 
 had been deliriously happy remained and warmed his 
 blood. It was a big, brave, heartening memory 
 beneath his coloured waistcoat. He dreamed his 
 dream, only he did not tell it to any one — yet. He 
 remained a kind, untidy husband and father. But 
 that was the outer portion of him. The inner portion 
 flew and soared and even sang. He no longer quite 
 understood the meaning of this inner portion, but 
 some day, he felt, it would be drawn out of him again 
 and recognised. He would be taught to realise it, 
 and what this bird-thing in him meant would be 
 made clear. Already he looked to little Joan with 
 something more than an infatuated father's adoration 
 for her yellow hair, her bright blue eyes, her light and 
 dancing ways. Tom he just loved in the way his 
 mother loved. He remained a rabbit with distinctive 
 tendencies of the animal. But with Joan it was 
 different. In Joan there was something he looked 
 forward to. Even at the age of five there was a 
 glint about her that increased the glow in him ;'at 
 ten it was still more marked. She puzzled her 
 
32 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 mother considerably, just as later she alarmed her. 
 ' I 'm nervous about the child ; she doesn't seem like 
 other girls of her age. I don't see her getting on 
 much,' was her opinion, expressed again and again in 
 the same or similar language. ' Joan seems to me 
 backward.' 
 
 ' Well,' admitted her husband, ' she's certainly 
 not in a hurry about it. She's maturing slowly. 
 Lots of them do — when there's a good deal to 
 mature.' 
 
 ' I hope you're right, Joe.' And then she added 
 with pride by way of compensation — ' Tom's coming 
 along nicely, anyhow,' — as though she spoke of a 
 growing vegetable or, as he thought, of a rabbit in 
 a cage with lettuces in front of it, and the idea of 
 mating the chief end in life. 
 
 Once past the age of sixteen, however, Joan too 
 came along nicely, and with a sudden rush that re- 
 minded her father of a young bird consciously leaving 
 the nest. She seemed to mature so abruptly. There 
 came a wondrous bloom upon her, as though the 
 South poured up and blossomed in her body, mind, 
 and soul. It took her father deliciously by surprise. 
 The glowing thing in him spread too, rose to the 
 sui-face, caught fire. He watched her with amaze- 
 ment, joy, and pride. He felt wings inside him. 
 Thought danced — flashed against a background of 
 blue and gold again. 
 
 ' She'll do something in the world before she's 
 
in THE PROMISE OF AIR 23 
 
 done,' he said confusedly to himself, feeling a 
 prophecy he had always made without realising it. 
 ' There's wings in the girl. She'll teach them how 
 to fly ! ' 
 
 He was beginning to realise himself — through her. 
 His early ideal had taken flesh again, but this time 
 with a difi^erence. He had not merely found it. He 
 had created it. 
 
 For, more and more lately, the influence of Joan 
 upon him had been growing. It was not merely 
 that she made him feel young again, nor that her 
 queer ways made him aware that he wanted to sing 
 and dance. It was, in a word, that he recognised in 
 her the remarkable thing he had known first in her 
 mother years ago — but released in all its golden full- 
 ness. He recovered in her sparkling presence the 
 imaginative dream that had caught him up into the 
 air in youth, and it was both in her general attitude 
 to life as well as in the odd things she now began to 
 say and do. Her general attitude expressed it better 
 than her words and acts. She was it — lived it 
 naturally. She had the Air in her. In her presence 
 the old magic rose over him again. He remembered 
 the strange boyhood's point of view about it — that a 
 new thing was stealing down into the world of men, 
 a new point of view, a new way of looking at old, 
 dull, heavy things, that Air was catching at the heart 
 of humanity here and there, trying to lift it somehow 
 into freedom. He thought of the collective wisdom 
 
34 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 and brotherhood of birds. He forgot that he was 
 growing old. 
 
 The old longing for carelessness, lightness, speed 
 in life — these snatched at him with passionate yearning 
 once again. Joan was the air-idea personified. And 
 she had begun to find herself. 
 
 But so long now had he lived the mole-existence 
 in London that at first this delicious revival baffled 
 and bewildered him. He could not suddenly acquire 
 speed without the risk of losing balance. 
 
 He became aware of a maddening desire to escape. 
 He wanted air. Joan, he felt positive, knew the 
 way. But the majority of people about him — his 
 wife, Tom, their visitors, their neighbours — had not 
 the least idea what it was he meant. And this lack 
 of comprehension gave him a feeling of insecurity. 
 He was out of touch with his environment. He 
 was above, beyond, in advance of it. He was in 
 the air a little. 
 
 He looked down on them — in one sense. 
 
 There were times when he did not know whether 
 he was standing on his head or his feet. ' Every- 
 thing looks different suddenly,' as he expressed it. 
 He saw things upside down, or inside out, or back- 
 wards forwards. And the condition first betrayed 
 itself one afternoon when he returned unexpectedly 
 from work — he was still traveller to a publishing 
 house — and found his wife talking over the tea-cups 
 with a caller. He burst into the room before he 
 
Ill THE PROMISE OF AIR 35 
 
 knew that any one was there, and did not know how 
 to escape without appearing rude. He sat down 
 and fingered a cup of tea. They were talking of 
 many things, the sins of their neighbours in IVIaida 
 Vale, chiefly, and after the pause and interruption 
 caused by his unwelcome entrance, the caller, search- 
 ing for a suitable subject, asked : 
 
 ' You've heard about Captain Fox, I suppose ? ' 
 ' What ? ' asked Mrs. Wimble, opening her eyes 
 as though anxious to read the other's thoughts. 
 Evidently she had not heard about Captain Fox. 
 
 ' I don't think I have,' she said cautiously. 
 ' What — in particular .? ' 
 
 ' He's going to marry her,' was the reply. 
 ' I know it for a fact. But don't say anything 
 about it yet, because I heard it from Lady Spears, 
 who . . .' 
 
 She dragged a good deal of Burke into the com- 
 plicated explanation, making it as impressive as she 
 could. Captain Fox, who was no better than he 
 should be, according to the speakers, paid rather 
 frequent visits upon the young widow of the ground- 
 floor flat, who should have been better than she was. 
 To find that honest courtship explained the friendship 
 was something of a disappointment. Mrs. Marks 
 wished to be the first to announce the innocent 
 interpretation, to claim authorship, indeed — having 
 persistently advocated the darker view. 
 
 ' Who'd ever have guessed that ? ' exclaimed Mrs. 
 
36 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 Wimble, off her guard a moment.' ' You always 
 told me ' 
 
 The face of her caller betrayed a passing flush. 
 
 ' Oh, one always hoped,' she began primly, when 
 Mrs. Wimble interrupted her with a firm, clear 
 question : 
 
 ' By the bye, who was she .'' ' she asked. 
 
 And hearing it. Wimble felt his world turn upside 
 down a moment. He realised, that is, that his wife 
 saw it upside down. For his wife to ask such a 
 question was as if he had asked it himself. He felt 
 ashamed. His world turned inside out. He looked 
 down on them. He rose abruptly, finding the 
 energy to invent a true-escaping sentence : 
 
 ' You ask who she was,' he said, not with 
 intentional rudeness, yet firmly, ' when you ought 
 to ask ' 
 
 Both ladies stared at him with surprise, waiting 
 for him to finish. He was picking up the cup his 
 sudden gesture had overturned. 
 
 ' Who she «,' concluded Wimble, with the aston- 
 ishment of positive rebuke in his tone. ' What can 
 it matter who she was ? It's what she is that's of 
 importance. The Captain's got to live with thai.' 
 And then the escaping-sentence : ' If you'll excuse 
 me, Mrs. Marks, I have to go upstairs to see a 
 book ' — he hesitated, stammered, and ended in con- 
 fusion — ' about a book.' And off he went, making 
 a formal little bow at the door. He went into the 
 
in THE PROMISE OF AIR 37 
 
 dining-room down the passage, vaguely aware that 
 he had not behaved very nicely. ' But, of course, 
 I'm not a gentleman exactly,' he said to himself; 
 ' what's called a gentleman, that is. Father was only 
 an analytical chemist.' 
 
 He stood still a moment, then dropped into a 
 chair beside the table with the red and black check 
 cloth. His mind worked on by itself, as it were. 
 
 ' What I said was true, anyhow. People always 
 ask, " Who WAS she ? " about everything. What 
 the devil does that matter .'' It's what you are that 
 counts. Father was a chemist, but I — I ' 
 
 He got up and walked over to the clock, because 
 the clock stood on the mantelpiece, and there was a 
 mirror behind it. He wanted to see his own face. 
 He stared at himself a moment without speaking, 
 thinking, or feeling anything. He put his tie straight 
 and picked a bit of cotton from his shoulder. 
 
 ' I am Joseph Wimble, not a gentleman quite, not 
 of much account anywhere perhaps, but a true 
 workman, earning £2(,o a year, knowing all about 
 the outside, and something about the inside of books ; 
 thirty-seven years old, with a boy at the Grammar 
 School, a girl of sixteen in the house, and married 
 
 to — to ' He paused, turned from the mirror, 
 
 and sat down. It cost him an effort to remember — 
 ' to Joan Lumley, daughter of a corn-chandler in 
 Norfolk, who might die any moment and leave us 
 enough to live on,' he went on, ' in a more comfort- 
 
38 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 able position,' passing his hand over his forehead ; 
 ' and my life is insured, and I've put a bit by, and 
 Tom's to be a solicitor's clerk, and everything's 
 going smoothly except that taxes ' 
 
 The sound of an opening door disturbed him. 
 He felt confused in his mind. He heard Mrs. 
 Marks saying loudly, ' And please say good-bye for 
 me to your /husband,' the aspirate so emphasised that 
 it was obviously an insecurity. She intended he 
 should hear and understand she bore him no ill- 
 will for his bad manners, yet despised him. The 
 steps went downstairs, and the two questions came 
 back upon him like pistol-shots : 
 
 ' Who was she .'' Who am I ? 
 
 He realised he had been wandering from the point. 
 
 ' I'm a centre of life, independent and unafraid,' 
 thought flashed an answer. ' I'm what I make 
 myself, what I think myself. I'm not seeing things 
 upside down ; I'm beginning to think for myself, 
 and that's what it is. No one, nor nothing, nor 
 anything anywhere in the world,' he went on, mixed 
 in speech, but clear in mind, ' can prevent me from 
 being anything I feel myself, will myself, say I am. 
 I've never read nor thought nor bothered my head 
 about things before. By heavens ! I'll begin ! I 
 have begun ' 
 
 ' What's the matter, Joe .-' Have you got a 
 headache, or is it the books bothering you, dear ? ' 
 His wife had come in upon him. 
 
Ill THE PROMISE OF AIR 39 
 
 She put her hand upon his forehead, and he got 
 up from his chair and faced her. 
 
 ' I've made a discovery,' he said, with exhilaration 
 in his manner, ' a great discovery.' He looked 
 triumphantly at her. ' I am.' 
 
 ' What are you ? ' she asked, thinking he was 
 joking, and his sentence left unfinished on purpose. 
 
 ' I am,' he repeated with emphasis. ' I have 
 discovered that I am, that I exist. Your question 
 to that woman made me suddenly see it.' 
 
 His wife looked flustered, and said vaguely, 
 ' What ? ' Wimble continued : 
 
 ' As yet, I don't know exactly what I am, but 
 I mean to find out. Up till now I've been auto- 
 matic, just doing things because other people do 'em. 
 But I've discovered that's not necessary. I'm going 
 to do things in future because I want to. But first 
 I must find out why I am what I am. Then the 
 explanation'U come — of everything. Do you see 
 what I mean ? It's a case of " Enquire within upon 
 everything." ' And he smiled. His heart fluttered. 
 He felt wings in it — again. 
 
 ' Do you mean you're going to start in the writing 
 or publishing line, Joe ? ' It had always been her 
 secret ambition. 
 
 ' That may come later,' he told her, ' when I've 
 something to say. For it's really big, this discovery 
 of mine. Most people never find it out at all. 
 She ' — indicating with his thumb the direction Mrs. 
 
40 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 Marks had taken — ' hasn't, for instance. She simply 
 isn't aware that she exists. She isn't.' 
 
 ' Isn't what, dear ? ' 
 
 ' She is not, I mean, because she doesn't know she 
 is,' he said loudly. 
 
 ' Oh, that way. I see.' Mrs. Wimble looked 
 a wee bit frightened. He had seen an animal, a 
 rabbit for instance, look like that before it decided 
 to plunge back into its hole for safety. 
 
 ' There are strange, big things about these days, 
 I know,' she said after a pause, thinking of the books 
 with queer titles his employers published. ' You 
 have been reading too much, dear, thinking and ' 
 
 ' Mother,' he interrupted, instinctively omitting 
 her name, and in a tone that convinced her his head 
 was momentarily turned, ' that's the whole trouble. 
 I've never thought in my life.' 
 
 ' But why should you, dear .? ' she soothed him, 
 wondering if people who lost their memory and 
 wandered off exhibited such symptoms first. ' You 
 always do your work splendidly. Don't think too 
 much, is what I say. It always leads to worrying — ■ — ' 
 
 ' Hardly ever — till this moment,' he was saying 
 in the grave, emphatic way that so alarmed her. 
 ' Not even when I asked you to marry me, when 
 Tom was born, or Joan, or when we took this flat, 
 or anything.' 
 
 ' You've made quite a success of your life without 
 it anyhow, Joe dear. And no woman could ask 
 
in THE PROMISE OF AIR 41 
 
 more than that. D'you feel poorly ? Joan can 
 fetch Dr. Monson in a moment.' It was a variant 
 of ' What ? ' 
 
 ' I feel better and bigger and stronger,' he replied, 
 ' more real than ever in my life before. I have 
 never been really alive till this moment. I am — 
 and for the first time I know it. I'm experiencing.' 
 He stopped short, as Joan went down the passage 
 singing, pausing a moment to look in, then tact- 
 fully going on her way again. The fluttering in his 
 heart became more marked. Something was trying 
 to escape. There was a whirr of wings again. 
 ' Mother,' he said to his wife, as their heads turned 
 back from the door together, ' do you know what 
 " experiencing " is ^ D'you realise what the word 
 means ? ' 
 
 She sat down, resting her arms upon the table. 
 She looked quietly into his eyes, as at one who is 
 about to speak out of greater knowledge. 
 
 ' Joe dear, I have had experiences — experiences 
 of my very own, you know.' 
 
 'Yes, yes, I know, I know. But what I mean 
 is — do you get the meaning, the real meaning of the 
 word ? ' 
 
 She sighed audibly. ' Not your meaning, perhaps,' 
 she meant. But she did not say it. 
 
 ' It means,' he said, delighted with her exquisite 
 
 silence, ' it means — er ' He thought hard a 
 
 moment. ' Experience,' he went on, ' is that " some- 
 
42 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 thing " which changes potatoes into nourishment, 
 and so into emotion. That's it. Until you eat 
 potatoes, you don't exist. Until you have experi- 
 ences, you don't exist. When you have experiences 
 and know that you have them, you — persist.' 
 
 She gasped aloud. She took his hand — very 
 quietly. 
 
 'Joe dear,' she said, softly as in their courtship 
 days, ' such ideas don't come into your head from 
 nowhere. Has some one been talking to you ? Have 
 you been reading these books ? ' 
 
 His pulse was very quiet. 
 
 ' Have you been reading the firm's books, dear ? ' 
 she repeated. 
 
 She asked it gently, forgivingly, as a mother 
 might ask her boy, ' Have you been tasting father's 
 whisky ? ' The books were meant to sell to book- 
 sellers, to the public, to people who needed that 
 particular kind of excitement. Her husband was to 
 be trusted. He was not supposed to know what 
 they contained. His ' line ' of trade was chiefly 
 medical, psychological, religious, philosophical. 
 Fiction was another ' line ' — for the apprentice. Joe 
 was an ' expert ' traveller. He was expected to talk 
 about his wares, but not as one who read them. 
 Merely their selling value was his strong point. 
 
 By the expression of his face she knew the 
 answer. 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, just as he did 
 
Ill THE PROMISE OF AIR 43 
 
 sometimes when he asked what there was for dinner 
 — the same real interest in his eyes — and he answered 
 very calmly : 
 
 ' My dear, I have — a bit. Cogito ergo sum. For 
 the first time I understood, in theory, that I existed. 
 My reading taught me that. But I never knew it in 
 practice until just now, when I heard you ask that 
 question about the future Mrs. Fox : " Who was 
 she .'' " And then I knew also that you ' 
 
 ' You what ? ' enquired Mrs. Wimble, bridling. 
 
 ' Were unaware that you existed,' he replied point 
 blank. 
 
 ' Aren't you a little beside yourself, Joe — sort of 
 excited, or something ? ' she gasped, proud of her 
 tact and self-control. ' What else could I have said ? 
 How could I have put it different .'' ' 
 
 ' Joan,' he answered gently, ' you should have 
 said, " What is she ? " For that would have meant 
 you thought for yourself It would have meant that 
 you knew you were, and that you knew she was.^ 
 
 ' Original ? ' said Mrs. Wimble slowly, catching 
 her husband's meaning vaguely, but more than a 
 little disturbed in her mind. 
 
 ' No,' he answered, ' true. Just as when, years 
 ago — the sunshine lovely and the fields full of 
 buttercups — you wore a yellow scarf, and a wagtail 
 beside a willow pond came so near that ' 
 
 ' Joe,' she said with a slight flush that was half 
 displeasure yet half flattered vanity, ' you needn't 
 
44 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 bring up that again. We were a bit above our- 
 selves, dear, when that happened. We lost our 
 heads ' 
 
 ' Above ourselves ! Free and real and happy,' 
 he interrupted her, ' that's what we were then. We 
 had wings. We've lost 'em. We were in the air, 
 I tell you.' His voice grew louder. ' And what's 
 more, we knew it.' 
 
 He heard his daughter pass down the narrow 
 passage again, singing. He got up and seemed to 
 shake himself. There was again a fluttering in him. 
 
 ' We certainly were in the air,' murmured his 
 astonished wife. 
 
 ' You were a glorious yellow wagtail,' he went on, 
 so that she didn't know whether his laughter was 
 in earnest or in play, ' and we were rising— into 
 flight. We've come down to earth since. We live 
 in a hole, as it were. I'm going to get out ! ' 
 
 Joan's little song went past the door and died 
 away towards the kitchen : 
 
 Flow, fly, flow. 
 Wherever I am, I go. 
 
 ' We've lost our wings. We crawl about. We 
 
 never dance now, or sing, or ' He broke ofF 
 
 abruptly. He felt the other portion of himself, so 
 long hidden, coming to the surface ; and he was 
 aware that it went after his daughter. He v/as a 
 little afraid of it — felt giddy. Her voice in the 
 distance sounded like a lark's, the lilt of her curious 
 
ni THE PROMISE OF AIR 45 
 
 little song had an echo of the open air in it, her 
 tread brought back the tripping of the wagtail along 
 the river's bank. ' We never get out now,' he 
 finished the sentence, ' we never get out. Earth 
 smothers us. We want air ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Wimble watched him a moment with 
 frightened eyes. . He was standing on tiptoe, holding 
 the tails of his coat in his hands as though he was 
 about to do something very unusual — something 
 foolish and ridiculous, she thought. He seemed 
 about to dance, to rise, almost to fly up to the 
 ceiling. She felt uneasy, hot — a little ashamed. 
 
 ' We can go out more, dear, if you think it wise,' 
 she said cautiously, moving a little further away. 
 ' It's the expense — I always thought ' 
 
 Her husband stared at her a moment dumbly. 
 He seemed to be listening. In his heart a little, 
 forgotten song crept back, answering the singing of 
 the girl. Then, dropping upon his heels again, he 
 said patiently in a soothing tone : 
 
 ' There, there, Mother ! Forgive me if I 
 frightened you. I was only pretending we were 
 young again. That old bird thing — bird-magic — 
 came over me for a moment. The girl's singing 
 did it, I suppose. Something ageless in me got the 
 upper hand . . .' 
 
 He took her hand and comforted her. ' Steady, 
 Joe,' she said, horribly puzzled, ' she is a bit flighty, 
 I know.' 
 
46 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 CHAP, in 
 
 ' But we will go out more,' he went on more 
 normally again, adopting her meaning perfectly. 
 ' Bother the expense ! We'll go out this very night 
 and take the child with us. We'll dine out, my 
 dear. I'll take you to a West End restaurant ! ' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 For Joan certainly was no ordinary girl ; some 
 called her backward, some considered her deficient, 
 but all agreed that she was singular. Yet all liked 
 her. Tall, slim and fair, with plenty of golden hair 
 and eyes of merry brightness, she was out of the 
 common in an attractive sort of way. Tom, her 
 brother, with the mind of a solicitor's clerk, looked 
 down upon her ; her mother, fond, conventional, 
 socially ambitious, despaired of her ; her father alone 
 held the opinion, " There's something in that girl. 
 She's always herself. But town-life over-weights 
 and hides her ; and in the end will suffocate. It'll 
 snufF her out. She's meant for country.' He was 
 aware of something unusually real in her. They 
 were great friends. ' I want more air,' she had said 
 once. ' In a field or garden I'd grow enormous 
 like a bean plant. In these streets I'm just a stone 
 squashed down by crowds. I'm in a hole and can't 
 breathe. I prefer a fewity.' Even her words were 
 her own like this. ' I'd like room to dance in. 
 Life is a dance, I'd learn it in a field. I'd be a 
 
 47 
 
48 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 bird girl.' Space was her need, for mind as well as 
 body. 
 
 It was her father's secret ambition too : a cottage, 
 a garden with things that grew silently into beauty, 
 flowers, vegetables, plants ; sweet laughing winds ; 
 the rush of living rain at midnight ; water to drink 
 from a deep, cool spring instead of from metal pipes ; 
 a large, inviting horizon in which a man might lose 
 himself; and above all — birds. 
 
 ' After a month in real private country — loose 
 
 country, talking, dancing, running country ' 
 
 She paused. 
 
 ' Liquid, fluid, as it were,' he put in, delighted. 
 
 ' Yes, deep and clear as a river,' she went on, 
 ' in country like that, do you know what'd happen 
 to me, father, after a few months of waiting ? ' 
 
 ' I know, but I can't quite say,' he answered. 
 ' Tell me, child, for I'd love to hear your own 
 description.' 
 
 ' I'd fly,' was her answer. ' Everything in me 
 would fly about like a bird, picking up things, and 
 all over the place at once without a plan — a fixed, 
 heavy plan like a street or square in London here — 
 and yet getting on all the time — getting further.' 
 
 ' And how would you learn, dear ? ' 
 
 ' Birds,' she laughed. ' There's bird-teaching, 
 I'm sure.' She flitted across to another chair as she 
 said it. She came closer to her father, who was 
 listening with both ears, watching, drinking in some- 
 
IV THE PROMISE OF AIR 49 
 
 thing he had known long ago and then forgotten. 
 ' Tou know all about it, Daddy. You needn't 
 pretend.' 
 
 ' You're rather like one, d'you know,' he smiled. 
 ' Like a bird, I mean.' He thought of a dabchick 
 that hides so cleverly no one can put it up — then, 
 suddenly, is there, close at hand. 
 
 She was perched on his knee before he knew it. 
 Her small voice twittered on into his ear. Some- 
 thing about her sparkled, flashed and vanished, and 
 it reminded him of sunshine on swift-fluttering wings 
 through the speckled shade of an orchard. She 
 darted, whirred, and came to rest. He stroked her. 
 
 ' Father, you know everything before I say it,' 
 she went on, her face shining with happiness that 
 made her almost beautiful. ' If I could only live 
 like a bird, I could live. Here it's all a big, stuffy 
 cage.' She flitted to the window, pointing to roofs 
 and walls and chimney-pots, black with grime. 
 The same instant she was back again upon his knees. 
 ' To live like a bird is to be alive all over, I'm sure, 
 I'm sure. I know it. It's all routing here.' 
 
 Whether she meant rotten, routine, or living in 
 a rut, he did not ask. He felt her meaning. 
 
 ' There's a nest in a garden waiting for us some- 
 where,' he said, living the dream with her in his 
 heart. 'And it's got an orchard, high deep grass, 
 wild flowers, hills in the distance, with a tremendous 
 sky where the winds go tearing about like the flight 
 
50 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 of birds. And a stream that ripples and sings and 
 shines. All alive, I mean, and always moving. 
 They say the country's stagnation. It isn't. It's 
 a perfect rush ' 
 
 ' Of course,' she put in. ' Oh, father, think hard 
 about that place, and we'll attract it nearer and 
 nearer, till in the end we drop into it and grow 
 like ' 
 
 ' Beans,' he laughed. 
 
 ' Birds,' she rippled, and hopped from his knee 
 across the room, and was down the passage and out 
 of sight before he could draw another breath. 
 
 There was something alert as lightning in the 
 girl. She woke a similar thing in him, too. It had 
 nothing to do with brain as intellect, or with reason, 
 or with knowledge in the ordinary sense the world 
 gives to these words. But it had to do, he dimly 
 felt, with another bigger thing that was everywhere 
 and in everything. Joan shared it, brought it 
 nearer ; it was universal. What that bigger thing 
 might be perplexed him. He was aware that it 
 drove past, alertness in so huge a thing conveying 
 the impression of vast power. There was grandeur 
 in it somewhere, poise, dignity, beauty ; yet this 
 subtle alertness too, and this swift protean sparkle. 
 It was towering as a night of stars, alluring as a 
 peeping wildflower, but prodigious also as though 
 all the oceans flowed suddenly between narrow banks 
 in a flood of clearest water, very rapid, terrifyingly 
 
IV THE PROMISE OF AIR 51 
 
 deep. For a robe it wore the lustrous colouring of 
 untold age. His imagery, when he tried to visualise 
 it, grew mixed. He called it Experience. But 
 sometimes he told himself he knew its Christian 
 name — its familiar, little, intimate nickname — and 
 that was Wisdom. 
 
 And so he was rather glad that Joan, like himself, 
 was but half educated ; that she was backward,' and 
 that he knew, relatively, only the outsides of books. 
 For facts, he vaguely felt, might come between 
 them and this august yet precious thing they knew 
 together. Birds could teach it, but Ornithology 
 hid it. 
 
 Lately, however, as his wife divined, he had been 
 dipping in between the covers of the goods he 
 travelled in. Caught by the bait of several drugging 
 titles, he had nibbled — in the train, in waiting-rooms, 
 in the ' parlours ' of commercial hotels where he put 
 up for the night. He had found names and descrip- 
 tions of various things, but they were the names and 
 descriptions given by others to their own sensations. 
 The ordered classification merely developed snap- 
 shots. He recognised photographs of dead things 
 that he knew must be somewhere — alive. The 
 names made stationary what ought to dance along 
 with incessant movement. Only he did not realise 
 this until he saw the photographs. The alleged 
 accuracy of a photograph was an insolent falsehood, 
 pretending that what was alive was dead, that what 
 
52 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 rushed was stationary. Dogs and savages cannot 
 recognise the photographs of their masters. The 
 resemblance has to be taught. Everything flows, 
 his shilling Heraclitus told him. He had always 
 known it. Birds taught it. Joan lived it. To 
 classify was to photograph — a prevarication. To 
 publish a snapshot of a jumping horse was to teach 
 what is not true. Definitions were trivial and absurd, 
 for what was true to-day was false to-morrow. The 
 sole value of names, of classification, of photograph- 
 ing lay in stopping life for an instant so that its flow 
 might be realised — as a momentary stage in an 
 incessant process. And he looked at a group of 
 acquaintances his wife had ' Kodaked ' ten days ago, 
 and realised with delight how they all had rushed 
 away, torn on ahead, lived, since she had told that 
 insignificant lie in black and white about them. 
 
 Joan, catching him in the act of destroying it, 
 had said, ' I know why you're doing that, father.' 
 
 ' Why .'' ' he asked, half ashamed and half surprised. 
 
 ' Because you don't want to stop them,' was her 
 answer, ' and because it wasn't fair of mother to 
 catch them in the act like that. It wasn't all.' 
 
 And as he stared at her curious peeping face, 
 she came quickly up to him, saying passionately, 
 imploringly : 
 
 ' Oh, do let's get into the country soon, and live 
 along with it, and grow and know things. I feel 
 so stuck still here, and always caught-in-the-act like 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 S3 
 
 that photo. It's so dead. It's a toad of a place ! 
 The streets arc all nailed down on to the ground. 
 In the country they run about ' 
 
 He interrupted her on purpose : 
 
 ' But in a city life is supposed to be much richer 
 than in the country,' he said. ' You know that? ' 
 
 ' It goes round and round like a circle, though ; 
 it doesn't go on. I'm living other people's lives 
 here. I want to live my own. Everybody here- 
 lives the same thing over and over again till they 
 get so hot they get ill. I want to be cool and naked 
 like a fern. Here I'm being photographed all day 
 long. Every man who looks at me takes a photo- 
 graph. Oh, father, I'm so tired of it. Do let's go 
 soon and live hoppily like the birds.' 
 
 ' You mean happily ? ' he asked, laughing with 
 her. 
 
 ' It's the same thing,' she laughed back, ' it's like 
 wngs or running water — always going wherever 
 they are 
 
 Flow, fly, flow, . . Wher - ev - er I am I go ... I 
 
 live on the run, Like a bird — that's fun ! Flow, fly, flow. . . 
 
 and was dancing to and fro over the carpet, when 
 the door opened and in came her brother Tom, 
 followed by another youth. 
 
54 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 He looked surprised, ashamed, then vexed. It 
 was Saturday afternoon. He had been six months 
 now in the office. 
 
 ' I've brought Mr. Halliday with me,' he said 
 pompously, ' to have tea. We've just been to a 
 matinee at the Coliseum. Joan, this is Mr. Halliday, 
 our junior clerk. My sister, Harold.' 
 
 Joan instantly looked gauche and ugly. She 
 shook hands with a speckled youth, whose shy want 
 of manners did not prevent his eyeing her all over. 
 He sat down beside his friend, talking of the singing, 
 dancing, juggling and so on that they had witnessed. 
 All the time he talked at something else in her. 
 But she hid it away as cleverly as a bird hides its 
 nest. The callow youth, without realising it, was 
 hunting for a nest. In the country he might have 
 found it. He would have been sunburned, for one 
 thing, instead of speckled. The wind, the rain, the 
 starlfght would have guided him. His natural 
 instinct would have flowed out in a dance of 
 spontaneous running movement, easy, graceful, clean. 
 Here, however, it seemed rigid, ugly, diseased. He 
 was living the life of others. 
 
 'You were dancing just as we came in,' observed 
 Mr. Halliday. ' Does that line of things attract 
 you ? You are going on the stage, perhaps .'' ' 
 
 Joan looked past him out of the window, and 
 saw the swallows flashing about the sky. 
 
 ' I can dance,' she replied, ' but not on a stage.' 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 55 
 
 ' But you'd be a great success, I think, from what 
 I saw,' opined the junior clerk. And somehow he 
 said it unpleasantly. His tone half undressed her. 
 
 She didn't flush, she didn't stammer, at first she 
 didn't answer even. She watched the swallows a 
 moment, as though she had not heard him. 
 
 ' You only stare, you don't watch and enjoy,' she 
 said suddenly, turning upon him. ' And an audience 
 like that. . . ! ' She stopped, got up from her 
 chair, put her head out of the open window and 
 gazed into the air above. When she turned back, 
 she saw that her mother had come in and was leading 
 the others into the dining-room for tea. Her father's 
 face wore a singular expression — it seemed, of exulta- 
 tion. Tom, black as a thunder-cloud, waited for 
 her. 
 
 ' You're nothing but a little barbarian,' he said 
 angrily under his breath. The life of others he led 
 had been sorely wounded. ' I can never bring Mr. 
 Halliday here again. You're simply not a lady.' 
 
 ' I'm a bird,' she laughed in his face. ' And you 
 men can never understand that, because no man has 
 a bird in him, but only a creepy, crawly animal. We 
 go on two legs, you on four.' 
 
 ' I'm ashamed of you, Joan. You're nothing but 
 a savage.' He snapped at her. He could have 
 smacked her. His face was flushed, but his neck 
 thin, scraggy, white. He looked starved and twisted. 
 ' In the City we ' he began with a clown's dignity. 
 
56 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, iv 
 
 ' Live like rats in a drain,' she interrupted quickly, 
 perched a moment on her toes in front of his face. 
 ' You don't breathe or dance. Tom,' she added 
 with a gesture of her arms like flapping wings, ' if 
 you were alive, you'd be — a mole. But you're not. 
 You're a lot of other people. You're a herd — always 
 enclosed and always feeding.' 
 
 She danced down the corridor and into her room, 
 locked the door, slipped out of some tight clothing, 
 and began to sing her bird-song of incessant move- 
 ment : 
 
 Flow ! Fly ! Flow ! 
 
 Wherever I am I go ; 
 
 I live on the run 
 
 Like the birds — it's fun ! 
 
 Flow, fly, flow. . . . 
 
 She sang it to a tiny, uneven, twittering melody 
 that was made up of half notes. It went on and on, 
 repeating itself without end. It seemed to have no 
 real end at all. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 To others she was doubtless an exasperating being. 
 To her father alone — since he saw in her something 
 he had lost but was now recovering, something he 
 therefore idealised, seeing in perfected form what was 
 actually but a germ still — to her father she expressed 
 a little of that higher carelessness, or wisdom, that 
 he had touched in boyhood and now yearningly 
 desired again. 
 
 ' Oh, she's all in the air,' people said. And it was 
 truer than they knew. She had an affinity with all 
 that flew. This bird-idea was in her heart and blood. 
 Whatever flew, whatever rose above the ground, 
 whatever passed swiftly, suddenly, from place to 
 place, without deliberation, without calculation, with- 
 out weighing risk and profit — this appealed to her. 
 Yet there must be steadiness in it somewhere too, 
 and it must get somewhere. A swallow or a butterfly 
 she approved, but not a bat. The latter, for all its 
 darting swiftness, was a sham ; it was an earth-crawler 
 really, frightened into ridiculous movement by finding 
 itself aloft like a blown leaf; like a flying fish, it 
 
 57 
 
58 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 was wrong and out of place. It merely flew round 
 and round in stupid, broken circles without rhythm. 
 But the former were perfect. They were ideal. 
 They were almost spirits. 
 
 And when her father said he was glad she was 
 half educated, he only meant glad that she had left 
 school and teachers before her butterfly mind had 
 become a rigid, accurate, mechanical thing. She 
 might play with books as he himself did, fluttering 
 over the covers, smelling their perfume, glancing at 
 sentences and chapter headings, at indices even. But 
 she must not build nests in them. A book, like a 
 photograph, was an evillish attempt to nail a flowing 
 idea into a fixed pattern. In the author's mind an 
 idea was true, but when he had put it down in black 
 and white he had put down only a snapshot of it : 
 the idea was already far away. 
 
 ' Not poetry-books,' Joan qualified this, ' because 
 •poetry runs clean ofi^ the page. It's alive and wingy. 
 It sings my bird-song — 
 
 Flow, fly, flow, 
 Wherever I am — I go ! 
 
 She had this unerring instinct of the bird in every- 
 thing, the quality that flashes, darts, is gone before 
 it can be killed by capture. A bird is everywhere 
 and nowhere. It's all over the place at once. Look 
 at it, and it's no longer there ; listen to it, and it's 
 gone ; touch it, and you catch a sunbeam that warms 
 the hand but loses half its beauty ; catch it — and 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 59 
 
 it's dead. But no one ever caught a SYrallow or a 
 skylark naturally on the wing. Even the eye, the 
 mind, the following thought grows dizzy in the 
 effort. 
 
 For the cow in the field she had no song. ' Wher- 
 ever I am, I stay,' was without a tune of its own. A 
 cow couldn't leave the ground. She wanted something 
 with incessant movement that could touch the earth, 
 yet leave it at will. Wings and water could. Birds 
 and rain both flew. Half the time a river (the only 
 real water for her) flowed over the earth without 
 stopping on it, and half the time it was a cloud in 
 the sky, yet never lived there. ' Flow, fly, flow ; 
 wherever I am, I go,^ — this was the little song of life 
 and change and movement that came out of her 
 curious heart and mind. ' Live on the run, like a 
 bird, thais fun ! ' And by fun she meant life, and 
 the soaring joy of life. 
 
 She applied her principle unconsciously to people, 
 too. Few men had the bird in them except her 
 father. Mother was a badger, half the time out of 
 sight below the earth. She felt respect, but no 
 genuine love, for mother. 
 
 ' A whale or a badger, I really don't know which,' 
 she said. ' That's Mother.' 
 
 ' Joan, I cannot allow you to speak in that way of 
 your parent and my wife.' The sentence was unreal. 
 He chose it deliberately, as it seemed, from some 
 book or other. What she had said was sparklingly 
 
6o THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 true, only it could not be said. ' You were born out 
 of mother, and so must think her holy.' 
 
 ' I only meant that she is not birdy,' was the 
 answer, ' and that she likes thick salt water, or sticky 
 earth. I mean that I never see her on the surface 
 much, and never for an instant above it. A fish is 
 all right, but not a half-and-half thing.' 
 
 'She built your nest for you. She taught you 
 how to fly. Remember that.' He lit his pipe to 
 hide the laughter that would bubble up. 
 
 ' But she never flew with me, father — as you do. 
 Besides, you know, I like whales and badgers. I only 
 say they're not birds.' 
 
 She paused, stared triumphantly at him a moment, 
 and then with anxiety in her tone, she added : ' And 
 you said that as if some one had taught it you. Daddy. 
 Some one's put bird-lime near you — some book, I 
 suspect.' 
 
 ' Grammar's all right enough in its way,' he told 
 her finally, meaning perhaps that there were correct 
 and incorrect ways of saying a thing, and so the little 
 matter was nicely settled up, and they flew on to 
 other things as their way invariably was. But, after 
 that, whenever mother was in the room, they thought 
 of something under ground or under water that 
 emerged for a brief moment to stare at them and 
 wonder, heavens ! — how they lived. They wondered 
 how, on earth, she lived. They were in different 
 worlds. 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 6i 
 
 For a long time now Joseph Wimble, ' travelling ' 
 in tabloid knowledge, had been absorbing what is 
 called the Spirit of the Age. On the paper wrappers 
 of his books — chiefly Knowledge Primers — were 
 printed neat and striking epitomes of the contents. 
 Written by expert minds, these epitomes were ad- 
 mirable brief statements. There was no room for 
 argument. They merely gave the entire book in a 
 few short sentences that hit the mind — and stayed 
 in it. They left the impression that the problem 
 was proved, though actually it was merely stated. 
 Hundreds of those statements he had now read, until 
 they flowed like a single sentence through his con- 
 sciousness, each risumi a word, as it were, in the 
 phrase describing the knowledge — or at least the 
 tendencies — of the day. Wimble was thus a concise 
 phrase - book, who taught the grammar of the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 For his Firm, alert and enterprising, had the gift 
 of scenting a given tendency before it was understood 
 by the mass — still ' in the air,' that is — yet while 
 the mass still wanted to know about it ; then of 
 choosing the writer who could crystallise it in simple 
 language that made the man in the street feel well 
 informed and up to date. The What's-in-the-Air- 
 To-day Publishing Co. was well named ; it had the 
 bird quality. These Picturesque Knowledge Primers 
 sold like wildfire. They purveyed knowledge in 
 tabloid form and advertised the hungry public into 
 
62 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 nourishment. The latest thing in politics, painting, 
 flying, in feminism or call -of- the -wild, in music, 
 scouting, cubism, futurism, feeding, dancing, clothing, 
 ancient philosophy redressed, or modern pulpit pre- 
 tending to be neo — everything that thrills the public 
 to-day, from pageantry and Eurhythmies to higher 
 thought and psychism, they touched with clever 
 condensing accuracy of aim, and grew fat upon the 
 proceeds. The stream of little books flowed forth, 
 written by birds, distributed in flocks, scattered 
 broadcast hke seed in a wind, each picked up eagerly 
 and discarded for the next — winged knowledge in 
 sparrow doses. The Managing Director, Fox Martin 
 (ne Max Levi), was a genius in his way, sure as a 
 hawk, clairvoyant as a raven. His Bergson sold as 
 successfully as his Exercises for the Bedroom — because 
 he chose the writer. He hovered, swooped, struck 
 — and the primer was caught and issued in its 
 thousands. His advertising was consummate, for it 
 convinced the ordinary man he ought to know that 
 particular Thing-in-the-Air-To-day, just as he ought ■ 
 to wear a high collar with his evening clothes or a 
 slit in his coat behind. with flannels. He aimed at 
 the men as the machine-made novel aims at the 
 women. 
 
 Wimble, the trzveller facile princeps, for this kind 
 of goods, knew, therefore, everything that was 'in-the- 
 air-to-day,' without knowing in the least why it was 
 to be believed, or what the arguments were. And yet 
 
V THE PROMISE OF AIR 63 
 
 he knew that he was right. He knew things as a bird 
 does, gathering them on every wind, and shaping his 
 inner life swiftly, unburdened by reasoning calculation 
 built on facts. Thus, useless in debate, his mind was 
 packed with knowledge. He was a walking Index. 
 
 And the feeling in him that everything flowed and 
 nothing was stationary was strong. He dealt in 
 shooting ideas, not in dead, photographic detail. He 
 flashed from one subject to another ; flowed through 
 all categories, ancient and modern ; skimmed the 
 cream off current tendencies, and swept above the 
 knowledge of the day with a bird's-eye view, un- 
 burdened by fact or argument. 
 
 Of late, moreover, he had enjoyed these curious 
 upside-down and inside-out experiences, because he 
 had filled himself to the saturation point, and become, 
 as it were, stationary. He could hold no more with- 
 out a change. He stopped. He took a snapshot 
 photograph of himself, realised that he existed as 
 a separate, vital entity, and thenceforward watched 
 himself expectantly to see what the change was going 
 to be, for he knew he would not stay still. Hitherto 
 he had been mechanical, whereas now he was an 
 engine capable of self-direction — an engine stoked 
 to the brim. When the air is at the saturation point, 
 the tiniest additional percentage of moisture causes 
 rain to fall. It's the final straw that makes the camel 
 pause. So with Joseph Wimble. He was ready to 
 discharge. 
 
64 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 And it was this chance remark of his under-ground 
 wife asking who the widow was that took the photo- 
 graph, and made him say, ' I am.' All he had read 
 was included in the affirmation. The epitomes had 
 become part of his consciousness. Like the weary 
 camel, like the moisture tired of balancing in the 
 air, he wanted to sit down now and consider. His 
 daughter's longing for the country was his too. And 
 it was she who now brought out all this. 
 
 At dinner that night in a West End restaurant 
 near Piccadilly Circus he broached the subject and 
 listened patiently to his wife's objections. 
 
 ' What's the good, even if we had the means, Joe .? 
 Burying ourselves like that.' 
 
 Joan hopped, as it were. She recognised her 
 mother's instinctive dread that she would go under 
 ground or under water and never come up again. 
 
 ' None of the nice people, the county families, 
 would call. There'd only be the vicar and the local 
 doctor, or p'r'aps a gentleman-farmer or two. We 
 know much better class in town, and there's always 
 chances of getting to know better still. Besides, 
 who'd there be for Joan .'' The girl wouldn't have 
 a look-in, simply. And the winters are so sloppy in 
 a country cottage. Think of the Sundays. And the 
 chickens and pigs I really couldn't abide, and howling 
 winds at night, and owls in the eaves, and rats in the 
 attics. You see, we'd have no standing at all.' 
 
 ' But just a week-end cottage, Mother,' Joan put 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 65 
 
 in, 'just a place of flowers and orchards and a little 
 stream to flit down to overnight, so to say — that 
 now you'd like, wouldn't you ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, that's different,' she said more brightly, 
 ' only that's not what father means. He means a 
 place to live in altogether. The week-end idea is 
 right enough. That's what everybody does who can 
 affbrd to — a bungalow on the Thames. But that 
 means more money than we shall ever see, and even 
 for that you want to keep a motor or a horse and 
 dog-cart, or a little steam launch to get about in. 
 Then the handy places are very expensive, and we 
 couldn't go very far because of Tom. Tom could 
 come down and bring his friends if it was near 
 enough.' 
 
 ' Grandfather might give us a little nest cheap,' 
 suggested Joan. She didn't ' see ' Tom in the 
 cottage. 
 
 But mother turned up her nose as she sipped 
 her glass of Asti Spumante that accompanied the 
 west-end dinner by way of champagne. She didn't 
 approve of Norfolk. 
 
 ' There's no society,' she said. ' It's flat and chilly. 
 Your grandfather only stays there because there's 
 the business to keep going. If we ever did such a 
 thing as to move to the country, it'd have to be the 
 Surrey pine woods or the Thames.' 
 
 She looked across the table questioningly at her 
 husband. The music played ragtime. The waiters 
 
66 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 bustled. There was movement and excitement in 
 the air about them. Joe looked quite distinguished 
 in his evening dress, and she felt proud and dis- 
 tinguished herself. She only wished he were a 
 publisher. Still, no one need feel ashamed of being 
 interested in the book line. Literature was not a trade. 
 
 ' Some place, yes, where the country's really alive,' 
 he agreed. ' I don't want to vegetate any more than 
 you do, dear, I can assure you.' 
 
 ' Nor I, mother,' laughed Joan. ' I simply want 
 to fly about all the time.' 
 
 ' Joan,' was the reply, half reproachfully, ' you 
 always talk as if we kept you in a cage at home. 
 The more you fly the better we like it ; I only say 
 choose places worth flying to ' 
 
 Her husband interrupted abruptly. 
 
 ' It was nothing but a little dream of my own, 
 really,' he said lightly. ' A castle in the air, a flash 
 of country in the brain.' He laughed and called 
 the waiter. 
 
 ' Black, white, or Turkish ? ' he asked his wife. 
 ' And what liqueur, dear .'' ' 
 
 ' Turkish and Grand Marnier,' was the prompt 
 reply, and she would have said ^fine champagne,' only 
 felt uncertain h.o^ fine should be pronounced. They 
 sipped their coffee and talked of other things. It 
 was no good, this specvilative talk, it was too much 
 in the air. 
 
 The key of mother's mind was always : Who 
 
V THE PROMISE OF AIR 67 
 
 was she ? What'U they say ? She lived under- 
 ground, using the worn old narrow routes. Joan 
 and her father made their own pathways in the track- 
 less air. During the remainder of the evening they 
 kept to the earth beside mother. 
 
 That night in the poky flat, after the girl had 
 gone to bed, Mrs. Wimble observed to her husband : 
 
 ' Do you know, Joe, I think a little change would 
 do her a lot of good. She's getting restless here, and 
 seems to take to nobody. Why not take her with 
 you sometimes on your literary trips ? ' 
 
 This was her name for his journeys to provincial 
 booksellers, or when sent to interview one of the 
 Primer writers upon some practical detail. 
 
 ' If we could afford it,' he replied. 
 
 'Father might help,' she said, showing that she 
 had considered the matter already. ' It would be 
 good for her — educational, I mean.' 
 
 Her husband agreed, and they fell asleep on that 
 agreement. 
 
 A isw days later a reply was received from Mrs. 
 Wimble's father, the corn-chandler in Norfolk, 
 enclosing a cheque for ;^20 'as a starter.' The 
 parents were delighted. Joan preened her wings 
 and began at once her short flying journeys about 
 the country with her father. He avoided the 
 Commercial Traveller Hotels and took her to little 
 Inns, where they were very cosy together. They 
 went from Norfolk to the edge of Wales. She 
 
68 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 acquired a bird's-eye knowledge of the map of 
 Southern England. These short trips gave her 
 somehow the general ' feel ' of the various counties, 
 each with its different ' note,' in much the same way 
 as the Primers gave her father his surface impression 
 of England's mental condition. She noticed and 
 remembered the living arteries which are rivers, he 
 the streams of thought and theory which are 
 tendencies. The two maps were shown and ex- 
 plained, and each was wonderfully alert in under- 
 standing the other's meaning. The girl drank in 
 her father's knowledge, while he in his turn ' felt ' 
 the country as a dancing sheet beneath them, flowing, 
 liquid, alive. A new language grew into existence 
 between them, a kind of shorthand, almost a symbol 
 language. They realised it first when talking of 
 their journeys at the dinner-table, and Mrs. Wimble 
 looked puzzled. Her face betrayed anxiety ; she 
 asked perplexed questions, looking up at them as 
 a badger might look up at wheeling pigeons from 
 the opening of its hole. Mentally she turned tail 
 and dived out of sight below ground, where, with 
 her feet on solid earth, her back and sides touching 
 material that did not yield, she felt more at home, 
 the darkness comforting and safe. Her husband 
 and Joan flew too near the sun. It dazzled her. 
 They could have talked for hours without her catch- 
 ing the drift, only they were far too fond of her to 
 do so. They resented going underground with her, 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 69 
 
 but they came down and settled on earth, folded 
 their wings, used words instead of unintelligible 
 chirrupings, and chatted with her through the 
 opening of the hole. 
 
 One afternoon, then, in Chester, they received a 
 telegram from her that, for a moment, stopped the 
 flow of things, though immediately afterwards the 
 rush went on with greater impetus than ever. 
 
 Father passed away peacefully return at once funeral 
 to-morrow Swaffham. 
 
 And the family found itself with a solid little 
 income of its own, fi-ee to fly and settle where it 
 would. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Nothing showed more vividly the peculiarity of 
 Joan's unearthly airiness than the way in which the 
 death aiFected her. It was the first time the great 
 thing all talk about but none realise until they touch 
 it, had come near her. It gave her a feeling of 
 insecurity. She felt the solid earth — so called — 
 unreal. Not that she had a feather of affection for 
 her mother's father. She regarded him as a second- 
 rate animal of prey, like a jackal, and always shrank 
 when he was near. There was something ' sticky ' 
 in him ; she classed him with her father's father, 
 earthy, but not ' clean-earthy ' ; muddy rather. But 
 that an earthy person could disappear in such a way 
 made her feel shaky. If he couldn't stay on the 
 earth, who could ? 
 
 Outwardly, and according to the newspapers, he 
 had died rather well, leaving money to hospitals and 
 waif Societies ; but, inwardly, he had died in deep 
 disgrace, a bankrupt soul with a heavy overdraft at the 
 bank. He had been a self-seeker of that notorious 
 kind that achieves worldly success without much 
 
 70 
 
CHAP. VI THE PROMISE OF AIR 71 
 
 thought for others. Now that he was gone, mother 
 declared he was a hero, father denounced him 
 privately as ignoble, — and their daughter divined 
 secretly that he was a jackal. 
 
 His record, however, has nothing to do with this 
 story, and is mentioned only because his departure 
 affected the members of his family. Mother wept 
 and pasted the obituary notices from the Norfolk 
 papers in a book ; father soothed her with ' earth to 
 earth, my dear, you know,' and Joan remarked 
 beneath her breath ' he belongs there, he never really 
 left it.' And felt an entirely new sensation. 
 
 For death puzzled her. She realised it as a fact 
 in her own life — she, too, would come to an end, 
 stop, go out. Yet that life could come to an end 
 astonished her; she simply didn't believe it. In her 
 own queer way she looked into the odd occurrence. 
 The corn-chandler's death had raised a dust ; but it 
 was an unjustifiable disappearance somehow ; once 
 the dust settled she would surely see how and why it 
 was unjustifiable. He would still be on the earth. 
 But the dust did not settle, the chandler did not 
 come back. He was beneath the earth. The feeling 
 of insecurity remained in her. Earth, evidently, was 
 not her element. 
 
 She envisaged then suddenly a delightful thing, 
 and possibly being a mere child still, in spite of her 
 years, she actually believed it. It was wondrous 
 enough anyhow to be worth believing. For it 
 
72 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 occurred to her that the body of earth went back 
 merely to its own, earth to earth, sweetly, naturally, 
 while Something that had used that bit of earth, 
 borrowing it, was set free. It — that marvellous 
 Something — likewise returned to its own element — 
 air. ' The airy part — that's me — flies off, if 
 it's there at all.' Only grandfather had made the 
 mistake of identifying himself with his borrowed 
 earth, so he was finished and done with. Mother 
 had the same downward tendency. If she wasn't 
 careful, she would be finished and done with too. 
 It was a matter of choice. But how could they ? 
 How could any one ? She and her father ' knew 
 different ' — it was mother's phrase — and identified 
 themselves with the airy part that was the reality. 
 
 She looked the thing in the face as well as she 
 could, trying to hold it steady for a photograph. 
 Death, to her mind, seemed to photograph the life it 
 put an end to. The long series of acts and move- 
 ments ceased. There came an abrupt full stop. 
 Like a photograph this was somewhere, somehow, 
 false. Wings folded for the last time ; air failed 
 for ever ; there was a sudden drop to earth. Her 
 grandfather, whom death had photographed, had 
 gone, yet surely only gone — elsewhere ; his record in 
 the world of men and women was his attitude in the 
 photograph ; he was posing elsewhere now, but even 
 he had not really stopped. Her little Song of Being 
 did not mention anything of the sort. ' Flow, fly — 
 
V. THE PROMISE OF AIR 73 
 
 stop ! Wherever I am — I drop ! ' was merely wrong. 
 A living thing could never end. It could neither 
 drop nor stop. Some one had made a big mistake 
 about death. She felt insecure. 
 
 And then she saw the matter differently, as though 
 her mind made a sudden swerving turn into bright 
 sunlight. And the sense of insecurity began to pass. 
 This act of death revealed another meaning, connect- 
 ing her with a vaster centre somehow, joining her up 
 with a main central power. Death was returning to 
 the main. She recovered the immense sense of unity 
 she had momentarily lost. It made her realise that 
 this tremendous centre, this main, was elsewhere 
 than on the earth. Her conception of this unity 
 deepened. To join the majority was more than a 
 neat phrase. The photograph analogy came back 
 of its own accord. Life here on the earth was in- 
 deed but a photograph, taken almost instantaneously 
 though it seemed quite long, of a — moment's pose. 
 The shutter snapped, the sitter flashed elsewhere, 
 flashed away to resume big interrupted activities, 
 behind space, behind time, where no hurry was — into 
 a universal, mothering state she felt as air. Man's 
 life was a suburb of this state, a furnished house in 
 that suburb, a Maida Vale tenancy, as it were ; but 
 there was this vast metropolis of air, the main, the 
 centre, where the ' majority ' lived, and whither all 
 lines of flight converged. A thought of Everlasting 
 Wings came to her with amazing comfort. And she 
 
74 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 realised that the insecurity she felt belonged to the 
 suburb earth, rather than to herself. Others looked 
 upon it as the one secure and solid permanency ; for 
 air was unsafe but earth did not change ; air meant 
 giddiness, absence of support, bewilderment, and 
 terror of being lost, while earth stood for the reverse 
 of all these dangers — permanent security. Her 
 mother, for instance, simply dared not leave it for an 
 instant. Whereas, it came to Joan suddenly now, that 
 it was earth that crumbled, melted, got easily broken 
 and dispersed, while air, though it moved, could 
 never be destroyed. ' You can photograph earth,' 
 she said, ' but no one has ever photographed the air.' 
 
 ' A person just goes out — like that .'' ' she asked 
 her father, snapping her fingers. ' How can it be, 
 exactly .'' Time ends for him : is that it .'' ' Her face 
 was distressed and puckered. She had no language 
 to express the ugly thing that blocked her running, 
 flowing mind. ' Once you're in among minutes, 
 hours, years,' she went on, ' how can you ever get 
 out of them } They don't stop.' 
 
 It seemed to her, apparently, that once a living 
 thing exists it should not cease to exist unless Time, 
 which bore it, ceased as well. And then another 
 notion flashed upon her. 
 
 ' Or perhaps they're just a trick,' she exclaimed, 
 referring to days and minutes, ' and you've been 
 alive somewhere else all the time too — and when 
 you die you go back to that ! ' 
 
VI THE PROMISE OF AIR 75 
 
 Her father glanced up frorn the ordnance map he 
 was studying and smiled with a sort of bewildered 
 happy amusement on his face. Mother, however, 
 turned with an uncomfortable sigh. ' That reminds 
 me,' she stated inconsequently, ' I must go and sit 
 in the Park.' She turned as a cow that prefers 
 the rain upon its tail instead of in its eyes. ' I'll 
 take a taxi, dear,' she added from the door. ' Do,' 
 said her husband, suppressing with difficulty an 
 intense desire to laugh out loud. ' Ask the porter 
 in the hall. Or shall I call one for you ? ' ' The 
 porter'U do,' she said. ' I'll go and get ready.' 
 He said good-bye kindly, and she went. 
 
 'Time doesn't stop, of course,' he went on to 
 Joan. ' Tou don't stop either, I suppose, if the 
 whole truth were known.' He eyed her quizzically, 
 for he delighted in her wild, nonsensical questioning. 
 Behind it he divined that she knew something he 
 didn't know, but only guessed. Or perhaps he had 
 known it in his youth and since forgotten it. He 
 remembered the ecstasy which had produced her. 
 
 ' But why do we know a bit of the truth and not 
 the whole ? It's all one piece. It must be, father. 
 What hides the rest, then .-' ' 
 
 But he ignored the new questions. 'At death,' 
 he said, ' you just go into another category perhaps. 
 I suspect that's it. You continue, sure enough, but 
 in another direction, as it were.' 
 
 Joan brushed the map aside and lit with a hop 
 
76 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 upon the table as though she fluttered down from 
 above his head. Her hands rested on his shoulders, 
 and her eyes stared hard into his own. They were 
 very bright and twinkling. ' That's just throwing 
 words at me,' she told him earnestly. ' That catty- 
 thing, as you call it, isn't in our language and you 
 know it. You nipped it out of a book.' She shook 
 her finger at him solemnly. ' What / mean is ' — 
 thrusting her keen face with its London pallor and 
 shining eyes closer to him — ' how in the world can 
 any one get out of Time, once they're in it ? ' She 
 drew back as though to focus him better and 
 command a true reply. ' Tell me that, please, 
 father, will you ? ' 
 
 ' That's a question, isn't it .-' ' he said laughingly . 
 yet not really trying to evade her. He wanted to 
 hear her own answer, her own explanation. He 
 knew quite well — had not the Primer on Expression 
 said so ? — that the things they discussed in this way 
 lay just beyond known words. Only by apparent 
 nonsense -talk could they be brought within sight 
 at all. 
 
 ' It's a thing we ought to know,' Joan went on 
 gravely. 'I do know it somewhere — only I haven't 
 found it out quite.' Then, with another flash of her 
 blue eyes, she stated : ' If a person goes from here — 
 from now, I mean — they must go to somewhere else. 
 I suppose they go back to the bigger thing. They 
 go all over the place at once, perhaps.' And again 
 
VI THE PROMISE OF AIR 77 
 
 she drew back a moment, staring at him as if judging 
 height and distance before taking a breathless swoop 
 down into a lower branch. 
 
 ' Something like that, I imagine,' her father began. 
 ' Time, you see, is only a point, a single point — the 
 present. And if ' 
 
 But Joan was already following her own wild 
 swoop, and hardly listening. 
 
 ' That I can understand,' she said rapidly. ' You 
 escape at death from a point where you've been stuck 
 — like in a photograph. You go all over then.' Her 
 mind tried to say a hundred things. ' I understand. 
 That's easy. I'm an all-over person myself; I do 
 several things at once — like a flock of birds or a 
 great high wind. And when I do things like that 
 they're always right, but if I wait and think about 
 one of them, they go wrong and I'm in an awful 
 muddle ' 
 
 ' Your intuition being stronger than your reason,' 
 he put in with a gasp. 
 
 She did not notice the interruption ; she had 
 reached her tree ; she saw a thousand things below 
 her simultaneously, grouped, as it were, into one. 
 
 ' But what I don't see plainly,' she returned to 
 her original puzzle, ' is how a person — by dying — 
 can get out of all this.' She flung her arms out wide 
 to include the room. 'Out of all this air and stuff.' 
 
 ' Space ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, Space ! ' She darted upon the word with 
 
78 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 a twitter of satisfaction. ' I feel much more free 
 among yards and miles, up and down, across and 
 round and through — than I do just in minutes and 
 days and years. Oh, I've got it,' she cried so 
 suddenly that it startled him ; ' Space is several 
 things, and Time is only one. Space has throughth 
 — you go through it in several directions at once. 
 Time hasn't ! ' 
 
 He caught his breath and stared obliquely at her, 
 for the fact was she was taking these ideas out of his 
 own head. He had found them in his Primers, of 
 course ; now, she was taking them from his mind, 
 sharing his knowledge by some strange, instinctive 
 method of her own. In some such way, perhaps, 
 birds shared and communicated ideas with one 
 another. He felt dizzy ; there was confusion in 
 him as though he flew at fifty miles an hour through 
 the air and was without support, seeing many things 
 at once below. One of those moments was near 
 when he stood upon his head. He was up a tree 
 with the girl ; he felt the wind ; he, too, saw a 
 thousand things at-once ; he swayed. 
 
 ' Space,' he mentioned, as soon as he had re- 
 covered breath, and drawing upon his inexhaustible 
 reserve of Primers, ' has three dimensions, height, 
 breadth, and length. But Time has only one — 
 length. In Time you go forwards only, never back, 
 or to the left or right. Time is a line. Don't pinch 
 — it hurts ! ' he cried, for in her excitement she 
 
VI THE PROMISE OF AIR 79 
 
 leaned forward and seized his coat-sleeve, taking up 
 the flesh. ' So, possibly, at death,' he continued as 
 soon as she released him, * a person ' 
 
 ' Goes ofF sideways,' she laughed, clapping her 
 hands ; ' disappears off sideways ' 
 
 ' In a new direction,' he suggested. ' That's what 
 I said long ago — another category, where a body 
 isn't necessary.' 
 
 ' It's not a full stop, anyhow,' she cried ; " it's a 
 flight.' 
 
 ' Provided you've been already moving,' he said ; 
 ' some people don't move. They haven't started. 
 And for them, I suppose, it's a biggish change — 
 difficult, uncomfortable, painful too, possibly,' he 
 added reflectively. 
 
 ' They start for the first time — at death.' She 
 ran to the window, but the same second was back 
 again beside him. 
 
 ' They get off the ground — off the map , alto- 
 gether. But they go into the air. They get alive,' 
 and she picked the ordnance maps from the floor 
 where her impetuous movements had tossed them. 
 ' Death is just a change of direction then, really ; 
 that's all.' And the door slammed after her flying 
 figure, though it seemed to her father that she might 
 equally have gone by the window or the chimney, so 
 swift and sudden was her way of vanishing. ' Bless 
 me, Joan, how you do fly about, to be sure ! ' he 
 heard his wife complaining in the passage. ' You 
 
8o THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 bang about like a squirrel in a cage. Whatever will 
 the neighbours say ? ' 
 
 She had taken all this time to clothe herself suit- 
 ably for the Park. Mr. Wimble saw her to the lift. 
 
 ' That's it,' he reflected a moment, before return- 
 ing to search the map for a suitable country place to 
 settle down in ; ' that's it exactly. Mother says 
 " Who was she ? " and " What'll people say .? " 
 Joan says " Where, why, who am I ? " Mother is 
 past and Joan is future. That's it exactly. And I 
 — well, what do I say ? ' He rose and looked at 
 himself in the mirror with the artistic frame his 
 wife had ' selected ' at Liberty's Bazaar. 
 
 ' I just say " I am," ' he concluded. ' So I'm 
 present. That's it exactly.' He chuckled inwardly. 
 ' Past, present, future, that's what we are ! Yet 
 somehow Joan's all three at once, a sort of universal 
 point of view. Ah ! ' He paused. ' Ah ! she's 
 not future. She's now ! ' He caught dimly at the 
 idea she tried to convey. To think of many subjects 
 simultaneously was to escape time, avoiding sequence 
 of events and minutes, obliterating — or, rather, seeing 
 through — perspective which pretends that a tree ten 
 yards away is nearer to one than the forest just be- 
 yond it. The centre, for her, was everywhere. To 
 see things lengthwise only, in time or space, was a 
 slow addition sum achieved laboriously by the mind, 
 whereas, subconsciously, the bird's-eye view (as with 
 the prodigy) perceived everything at once, making 
 
V, THE PROMISE OF AIR 8i 
 
 separate addition, or two and two make four, absurd. 
 He was aware of a power in her, an attitude, a point 
 of view, higher than this precious intellect which 
 knows things lengthwise only, concentrating upon 
 separate points, one at a time, consecutively. Joan 
 knew everything at once. Her conception of per- 
 ceiving things was all-embracing — as air. She flew ; 
 wherever she was, she went. ' Throughth ' was the 
 word she coined to express it. 
 
 He felt very happy, there was a peculiar sense 
 of joy and lightness in him, and yet he sighed. It 
 was his mind that sighed. He was completely 
 muddled. Yet another part of him, something 
 he shared rather, was bright and clear and lucid. 
 And, putting on his hat, he went after his wife and 
 sat with her in the Park for half an hour, feeling the 
 need of a little wholesome earth to counteract the 
 dose of air Joan had administered to him. 
 
 They watched the people pass, the distinguished 
 people as his wife called them, but actually the 
 people who were dressed in the fashion merely, 
 ordinary as sheep, shocked by the slightest evidence of 
 originality, — un-distinguished in their very essence. 
 Mr. Wimble knew this, but Mrs. Wimble remained 
 uninformed. The review of rich, commonplace 
 types passed to and fro before their penny chairs, 
 while they eyed them, Mrs. Wimble thinking, ' This 
 is the great London world, the people whose names 
 and dresses the newspapers refer to in Society 
 
82 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 columns. Oh dear ! ' Park Lane was the back- 
 ground ; none of them dined till half-past eight ; 
 they kept numei-ous servants and were carelessly 
 immoral, carelessly in debt, intimate with ' foreign 
 diplomats,' reserved and unemotional — the aileet, as 
 Mrs. Wimble called them. But, according to Mr. 
 Wimble, they were animals, a herd of animals. 
 They couldn't escape from the line of Time. They 
 knew ' through ' in Space, but not in Time. The 
 bird-thing was not in them. 
 
 ' Joan's coming on a bit,' ventured the father 
 presently, trying to keep himself down upon the 
 earth. 
 
 ' If you call it coming on,' replied his wife, with 
 a touch of acid superiority she caught momentarily 
 from her overdressed surroundings. ' It's a pity, it 
 seems to me. She's not English, Joan isn't, what- 
 ever else she is.' 
 
 ' Oh, come now,' said Mr. Wimble cautiously, 
 adding, a moment afterwards, ' perhaps.' 
 
 ' It'll be the ruin of her, if we don't stop it in 
 time,' came presently in what he recognised as her 
 ' Park ' voice. ' She don't get it from me, Joe.' 
 Her words became inaudible a moment as she turned 
 her head to follow a vision she imagined was at least 
 a duchess, though her husband could have told her 
 it had emerged, like themselves, from a suburban 
 flat. ' I sometimes think the girl's got a soupsong 
 of the East in her,' continued Mrs. Wimble, glancing 
 
VI THE PROMISE OF AIR 83 
 
 with what she meant to be an aristocratic hint of 
 wickedness and suspicion at her untidy husband. 
 
 ' She may have,' he replied innocently, ' for all 
 I know. Something very old and very new. It's 
 not silly now, but it might become silly. She's 
 too careless somehow for this world — and too wise 
 at the same time. I can't make it out quite.' He 
 looked up at the trees as the wind passed rustling 
 among the dull green leaves. How blue the sky 
 was ! How sweet and fresh the taste of the air ! 
 There was room up there to move in. He saw 
 a swallow wheeling. And the old yearning burned 
 in him. He thought of the phrase ' bird-happy ' — 
 happy as a singing-bird. 
 
 ' It's a pity she's so peculiar. She'll make a mess 
 of her life unless you're careful, dear.' Mrs. 
 Wimble said it out of a full heart really, but she 
 used the careless accent her surroundings prompted. 
 She said it with an air. And, to her keen annoy- 
 ance, the County Council man came up just then 
 and asked for tickets, Mr. Wimble producing two 
 plebeian coppers out of a dirty leather purse to 
 settle the account. The pennies spoilt her dream. 
 Money — but a lot of money — was what counted in 
 life. 
 
 ' Tom's doing exceptionally, I'm glad to say,' she 
 resumed, by way of relieving an emotion that 
 exasperated her. ' He'll make money. He'll be 
 somebody — some day.' 
 
84 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, vi 
 
 ' Tom's a good boy. He's safe and normal,' 
 agreed her husband. 
 
 When the taxi had rushed them back to Maida 
 Vale, and Mrs. Wimble had gone up in the lift, 
 Mr. Wimble decided that he would like to go for 
 a little walk before coming in. It was towards 
 sunset as he ambled off. Joan, from the roof, 
 watching the birds as they dashed racing through 
 the air at play, caught sight of him below and waved 
 her hand. But he did not see her ; he did not look 
 up ; his eyes were on the ground. Yet he had a 
 springy walk as if he might rise any moment. Joan 
 watched him for some time, signalling as it were, 
 making a series of slight movements and gestures 
 that seemed a method of communication almost. 
 Had he glanced up and seen her he must have 
 noticed and understood what she was trying to say, 
 as a bird on the lawn would understand what its 
 companion, perched in the cedars overhead, was 
 saying, distance no bar at all. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 And then, suddenly, he did look up. Feeling his 
 attention drawn, he turned and raised his eyes to her. 
 The rays of the setting sun fell on her dress of white 
 and yellow. She looked like a bird showing its under- 
 plumage. He waved his hand in return, instinctively 
 making gestures similar to her own, and as he did so, 
 a Flock of Ideas flew down upon him like a shower 
 of leaves — nothing very distinct and sharp, but just 
 loose, flying ideas that were in-the-air-to-day. 
 
 They seemed to result from the signalling ; they 
 interpreted something he could not frame in words. 
 They fluttered about his mind, trying to get in and 
 lodge. It was wireless communication — the kind 
 used by animals, fish, moths, insects, above all, birds. 
 He remembered the female Emperor -moth that, 
 hidden in a closed box during the short breeding 
 season, summoned the males across twenty miles of 
 country until her antennae were cut off, when no 
 male came near her. He felt as if Joan transmitted 
 ideas to him, shaking them through the air from in- 
 visible antennae. He received the currents, but could 
 
 8s 
 
86 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 not properly de-code them. He waved back to her 
 again, then was lost to view round the corner. 
 
 ' It's a queer thing,' ran through his mind, as 
 though catching the drift of something she had 
 flashed towards him, ' but Joan's got something no 
 one else has got — yet. It's coming into the world. 
 Telepathy and wireless are signs, only she's got it 
 naturally, she's born with it. She's in touch with 
 everything and everybody everywhere, as though 
 Time and Space don't trick her as they trick the 
 rest. It's life, but a new kind of life. It's air life. 
 That's what she means by saying she's an all-at-once 
 and an all - over person. I understand it, but I 
 haven't got it myself — and, as if to prove it, he 
 ran into another pedestrian who cursed him, and, 
 before he could recover himself, collided the next 
 minute with a lamp-post. 
 
 The current that had been pouring through him 
 was interrupted ; it switched elsewhere. 
 
 ' When more of us get like that,' it went on 
 brokenly, ' when the whole world feels it ' — he 
 snatched at an immense and brilliant certainty that 
 was gone before he could .switch it completely into 
 his mind — ' it will be brotherhood ! The world will 
 feel together, — one ! It's beginning already. Only 
 people can't quite manage it yet.' 
 
 And the strange lost mood of his youth poured 
 through him, the point of view that made everybody 
 seem one to him, when air and birds offered the 
 
v.. THE PROMISE OF AIR 87 
 
 dream of some inexpressible ideal. . . . He lost 
 himself among the buttercup fields of spring . . . 
 wandered through Algerian gardens where the missel- 
 thrush sang in the moonlight and the radiant air 
 was perfumed with a thousand scents . . . then 
 pulled himself up just in time to avoid collision 
 with a policeman who came heavily along the solid 
 earth against him. 
 
 ' Look where you're a-going,' growled the police- 
 man. 
 
 ' Go where you're looking,.' he answered silently 
 in his mind. ' That's the important thing — to look 
 and to go ! ' 
 
 He steadied himself then. His mind scurried 
 through the Primers, but found nothing that helped 
 him much. Joan had asked him about Time and 
 Space, and he had replied almost as though she had 
 put the words into him first. Never before had he 
 actually thought in such a way. Time and Space, as 
 a Primer reminded him, were merely ' Modes under 
 which physical phenomena are presented to our con- 
 sciousness, under which our senses act and by which 
 our thoughts are limited.' Both were illusory, figments 
 of our finite minds ; both could be subdivided or 
 extended infinitely ; both, therefore, were unrealities. 
 They were false, as a picture is false that makes a 
 pebble in the foreground as large as a cathedral in the 
 background in order to convey so-called perspective. 
 
 And Joan, somehow or other, was aware of this, 
 
88 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 for she saw things all-at-once and all-over. He 
 thought of her word ' throughth ' ; it wasn't bad. 
 For she applied it to time as well as space. Time 
 was more than a line to her, it had several directions, 
 like space. He smiled and felt light and airy. 
 Joan knew a landscape all at once, as though she 
 had another sense almost. Every man believes he 
 sees a landscape all at once, but in reality each spot 
 is past by the time he sees it ; it happened several 
 seconds ago ; he sees it as it was when the light left 
 it to travel to his eye. Each spot has its separate 
 now ; there is no absolute Now. He had been 
 wrong to tell her there was only the present ; he 
 saw it ; she had flashed this into him somehow. To 
 think the future is not there until it is reached was as 
 false as to think his flat was not there until he stepped 
 into it. He laughed happily, aware of a strange, 
 light-hearted carelessness known in childhood first, 
 then known again when he fell in love and so shared 
 everything in the world. An immensely exalted 
 point of view seemed almost within his reach from 
 which he could know, see and i'e everything at once. 
 Joan would know and understand what it meant ; 
 yet he had created Joan . . . and had forgotten . . . 
 He thought of light. 
 
 By overtaking the rays of light thrown ofF from 
 the battle of Waterloo he could see it happening 
 now ; if he moved forward at the same pace as the 
 rays he could see Waterloo stationary ; if he moved 
 
VII THE PROMISE OF AIR 89 
 
 faster he could see the battle going backwards, of 
 course. But Waterloo remained always — there. 
 Time and space were mere tricks. The unit of 
 perception decided the childish dream of measure- 
 ment. ' Ha, ha ! ' he chuckled. ' Real perception 
 is for the inner self, then, omnipresent, omniscient — 
 at-once and all-over.' To realise ' I am ' was to 
 identify oneself with all, and everywhere. ' Wher- 
 ever I am, I — go ! ' 
 
 ' That's it,' he concluded abruptly, dropping upon 
 a bench in a little Park he had reached, 'Joan 
 doesn't think or reason. She just knows. She's an 
 all-over and all-at-once person ! ' And he put the 
 Primers, with their neat, clever explanations, out of 
 his head forthwith. 
 
 ' Cleverness,' he reflected, leaning back in the soft 
 smothering dusk, ' is the hall-mark of To-day. It is 
 worthless. It is the devil. It separates, shuts off, 
 confines and crystallises what should flow and fly. 
 Birds ain't clever. They just know. There's no 
 cleverness in that Southern Tour, there's knowledge 
 — all shared together.' The Primer writers, men 
 who had made their names, were clever merely. By 
 concentrating on a single thing they could describe 
 it, but they didn't know it, because the whole was out 
 of sight. They explained the bit of truth. Joan, 
 ignorant of the photographic details they described 
 and explained, yet knew the whole — somehow. But 
 how .'' Wherever she was, she went ! 
 
90 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 He drew a long breath as if he had flown ten 
 miles. 
 
 ' She's something new perhaps,' he felt run 
 through him, ' something new and brilliant flashing 
 down into the old, tired world.' He lit his pipe with 
 difficulty in the wind, fascinated by the marvel of the 
 little flaming match. ' She's ofF the earth — a new 
 type of consciousness altogether — sees old things in 
 another way — from above and all at once. She's 
 got the bird in her — ' Half-angel and half-bird,' he 
 remembered with a sigh. Only that morning an 
 essay on Rhythm in his newspaper, The Times, had 
 mentioned : ' Angels have been called the Birds of 
 God, and an angel, as we imagine him, is a being 
 that can do all good things as easily as a bird flies. 
 When we represent him with bodily wings we are 
 thinking of the wings of his spirit, and of a soaring 
 power of action and thought for which we have no 
 analogy in this world except in the physical beauty 
 of flight.' ' By Jove ! ' he cried aloud. 
 
 A flock of sparrows, startled by a cat, rose like a 
 fountain of grey feathers past him, whirring through 
 the air. There were fifty of them, but they moved 
 like one. 
 
 ' Got a whole flock in her ! ' he added. 
 
 He watched the fluttering mass of busy wings 
 as they shot into a leafy plane tree overhead and 
 vanished. A touch of awe stole over him. 'There's 
 a whole flight of birds in her. She's a lot, yet one,' 
 
VII THE PROMISE OF AIR 91 
 
 he went on under his breath, thinking that the fifty 
 sparrows went out of sight like one person who turns 
 a corner and is gone. How did they manage it r 
 By what magical sympathy, as though one single 
 consciousness actuated them all, did 'they swerve 
 instantly together ? 
 
 There was something uncanny about it. He felt 
 a little creepy even. . . . The shadows were stealing 
 over the deserted Park. A low wind shivered through 
 the iron fence. A vast nameless power came close. 
 . . . He got up slowly, heavily, and went out into 
 the crowded street, glad a moment to feel himself 
 surrounded by men and women, all following routine, 
 thick, solid, reasoning folk, unable to fly. A swallow, 
 flashing like visible wind across the paling sky of 
 pink and gold, went past him. He looked up. He 
 sighed. He wondered. Something marvellously 
 sweet and lofty stirred in him. With intense 
 yearning he thought of his little, strange, birdy 
 daughter, Joan, again. His absorbing love for her 
 spread softly to include the world. ' If she should 
 teach them . . . ! ' came the bewildering idea, as 
 though the swallow dropped it into him. 'Drag 
 them out of their holes, show them air and wings, 
 make them bird-happy . . . teach them that ! ' 
 
 A tremendous freedom, lofty and careless, beckoned 
 to him, — release, escape at full speed into the infinite 
 air ; all cages opened, all bars destroyed, doors wide 
 and ceilings gone ; that was what he felt. 
 
92 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, vn 
 
 But lack of words blocked the completion of the 
 wild, big thought in him, for he had nevfer felt quite 
 like this since early youth, and had no means of 
 describing the swift yet deep emotion that was in 
 him. He could not express it — unless he sang. And 
 he was afraid to sing. The County Council would 
 misinterpret Joy. There was an attendant in the 
 Park, a policeman in the road ; he would be locked 
 up merely. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 He plunged into the stream of pedestrians and it 
 struck him how thickly, heavily clothed they were ; 
 the street resembled a sluggish river of dark liquid ; 
 he struggled through it, inimersed to his shoulders. 
 
 And the flock of curious, elusive thoughts, half- 
 formed, fluttered above his mind just near enough to 
 drop their shadows before they scattered and passed 
 on. Much as a kitten pounces on the shadow of 
 shifting foliage on a lawn his brain pursued and 
 pounced upon them, bringing up the best words 
 available, yet that did not suit because the necessary 
 words do not exist. It was only the shadow of the 
 ideas he captured. 
 
 ' A new language is wanted,' he decided, ' a flying 
 language, with a rapid air vocabulary, condensed, 
 intense. Everything else is speeding up nowadays, 
 but language lags behind. It's old-fashioned, slow. 
 All these ideas I've got, for instance, ought to go 
 into a word or two by rights. Joan put 'em into me 
 just now from the roof by a couple of gestures — 
 enough to fill a dozen Primers with words. Ah, 
 
 93 
 
94 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 that's it ! What comes to me in a single thought — 
 and in a second — takes thousands of words to get 
 itself told in language. Words are too detailed and 
 clever : they miss the whole. Aha ! There's a new 
 language floating into the world from the air — a new 
 way, a bird-way, of communicating. We shall share 
 as the birds do. We shall all understand each other 
 by gesture — thought — feeling ! Instant understand- 
 ing means a new sympathy ; that, again, means a 
 divine carelessness, based on a common trust and 
 faith.' And the immensely lofty point of view — as 
 from a dizzy height in space — once more floated 
 past him. 
 
 He steadied himself by pausing to look in at the 
 shop windows. On a chemist's shelves he saw various 
 things to stimulate, coax and feed people into keener 
 life. The Invisible Sticking Plaster was there, too, to 
 patch them up. Next door was a book-shop, where 
 he remained glued to the window like a fly to treacle- 
 paper. ' Success and how to attain It,' he read, ' in 
 twelve lessons, is.' ; ' Train your Will and earn more 
 Money, 4|-d.' ; ' The Mysteries of Life, Here and 
 Hereafter, all explained, 6d. net.' And second-hand 
 copies of various books, marked ' All in this row 2d. 
 only,' including several of the ' What's-in-the-Air- 
 To-day ' Primers. 
 
 Beyond was a window full of clothing, woollen 
 garments guaranteed not to shrink ; electric or 
 magnetic belts, to store energy, ' special line — a 
 
VII, THE PROMISE OF AIR 95 
 
 bargain,' and various goods for keeping warmth in 
 various parts of the body. All these shops, he 
 reflected, sold things intended to increase or preserve 
 life, artificial things, cheaply made, and sold to the 
 public as dearly as possible, things intended to increase 
 life and prevent its going. In other shops he saw 
 mechanical means for stimulating, intensifying, driving 
 life along. Life had come to this : All these artificial 
 tricks were necessary to keep it going. Food, know- 
 ledge, clothes, speed that a bird possessed naturally 
 in abundance. A robin's temperature in the snow 
 was 1 10°. Yet human beings required thousands of 
 shops that sold the conditions for keeping alive, — at 
 a profit. He passed an undertaker's shop — to die 
 was a, costly artificial business too. There was too 
 much earth in the whole affair. He remembered 
 that no one ever saw a bird dead, when its death was 
 a natural death. It slipped away and hid itself — 
 ashamed of being caught dead ! 
 
 A crowd collected round him, thinking he had 
 discovered something exciting, and it jostled him 
 until he elbowed his way out. He swerved dizzily 
 amid the booming, thundering traffic, as he crossed 
 the road and brought up against a toy-shop, where 
 the sight of balls and butterfly nets, ships and trains 
 and coloured masks restored his equilibrium. ' Real 
 things are still to be had,' the fluttering shadows 
 danced across his mind, ' And there are folk who 
 like them ! ' he added in his own words, as two 
 
96 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 tousled-headed children came up and stood beside 
 him, staring hungrily. He gave sixpence to each, 
 told them to go in and buy something, and then 
 continued his evening walk along the crowded pave- 
 ment. ' Life is a great grand thing,' he realised, ' if 
 we could all get together somehow. It's coming, I 
 think. A change is coming, something light and 
 
 airy penetrating all this — this sluggish mass ' he 
 
 broke off, again unable to express the idea that 
 fluttered round him — ' ah ! it's good to be alive ! ' 
 he went on, ' but to know it is better still. But you 
 have no right to live unless you can be grateful to 
 life, and create your own reason for existing. It 
 means dancing, singing, flying ! ' He felt new life 
 everywhere near him ; a new supply of a lighter, 
 more vivid kind was descending from the air. ' It's 
 a new thing coming down into the world ; it's 
 beginning to burst through everywhere : a change, 
 
 a change of direction ' 
 
 He repeated this to himself as he moved slowly 
 through the surging crowd. Joan, he remembered, 
 had called death a change of direction only. But as 
 he reached the word ' change,' it seemed to jump up 
 at him and hang blazing with fire before his eyes. He 
 had caught it flying ; he held it fast and looked at it. 
 The other shadows careered away, but this one stayed. 
 He had caught the thing that cast it. The flock of 
 shadows, he realised, were not cast by actual thoughts ; 
 they were the faint passage through his mind of 
 
VIII THE PROMISE OF AIR 97 
 
 mysterious premonitions that Joan's gestures had 
 tossed carelessly towards him through the air. 
 Coming ideas cast their shadow before. This one, 
 at least, he had captured in a word, a figure of speech. 
 He had pounced and caught it by the tail. It 
 fluttered, but could not wholly get away. 
 
 Change was the keyword. A gigantic change 
 was coming, but coming gently, stealing along almost 
 like a thief in the night, emerging into view wherever 
 a channel offered itself. Life was being geared up 
 everywhere. Human activities, physical, mental, 
 spiritual, too, were increasing speed. Humanity was 
 being quickened. They were passing from earth 
 to air. 
 
 Signs were plentiful, though mysterious. His 
 mind roamed through the Epitomes of his Primers, 
 skimming ofF the cream. Thinkers, artists, preachers, 
 although they hardly realised it, were beginning to 
 look up instead of down ; from pulpit, press, and 
 platform the little signs peeped out and flashed about 
 the mass of expectant men and women. The entire 
 world seemed standing on tip-toe, ready for a tenta- 
 tive flight at last. There was a universal expectation 
 abroad that was almost anticipation. 
 
 But change involved dislocation here and there, 
 and this dislocation was apparent in the general 
 confusion that reigned in the affairs of the world. 
 Stupendous hope was felt, though not yet realised 
 and fulfilled. No one as yet could justify it. 
 
98 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 Pessimism and confidence, both strangely funda- 
 mental, were violently active. So long accustomed 
 to terra firma, the world asked questions of its little 
 coming wings, and the new element of air frightened 
 even while it attracted — nervous, timid, wild, uneasy 
 questions were asked on every side. Deprived of 
 the old, comfortable ideas of Heaven and Hell, and 
 suspicious of the newly hinted promise of survival, 
 hearts trembled while they listened to so sweet 
 whispers of escape into the air. The old shibboleths, 
 distrusted, were slinking one by one into their holes. 
 Science could, perhaps, go usefully no further ; Reason, 
 still proud upon her pinnacle, yet hesitated, unable to 
 advance ; Theology looked round her with dim, tired 
 eyes. The whole starving earth paused upon a 
 mighty change that should usher in a new and single 
 thing — a new direction. Alone the few who knew, 
 felt glad and confident- — joy. But they felt it only, 
 for as yet they could not tell it in language usefully. 
 
 They might Hve it, though ! 
 
 ' Live it — ah ! ' he exclaimed, and his thoughts 
 came back again to his queer, birdy daughter. For 
 Joan, he told himself, brimmed over with it. She 
 had in her the lightness, speed, and shining of the new 
 element ; she was glad and confident, full of joy, 
 bird-happy, aware of principles rather than of details. 
 She sang. Of all creatures this spontaneous expres- 
 sion of joy in life was known to birds alone. No 
 other creatures sang. The essential ecstasy that 
 
vni THE PROMISE OF AIR 99 
 
 dwells in air, making its inhabitants soar, fly, sing, 
 was liberated in her human heart. 
 
 True. . . . The weary world stood everywhere 
 on tiptoe, craning its neck into the air for some new 
 expected prophet who should take it by the — wing. 
 
 It was a marvellous, delightful thought, and it 
 sent his imagination whirring into space. The wings 
 of his mind went shivering. He gave expression to 
 it by a sudden gesture of his arms and head, making, 
 it seemed, a spontaneous effort to rise and fly — and, 
 luckily, no one observed him making It. It was 
 similar, however, to the movement Joan had made 
 upon the roof as she stood outlined against the red 
 and yellow sky ; similar, also, to the flashing curve 
 the swallow had shown him not long afterwards. It 
 conveyed a thousand laborious sentences in a small 
 spontaneous gesture that was rhythmical. Ah ! there 
 was a change of rhythm coming ! And in rhythm 
 lay a new means of instantaneous communication. 
 Two persons in the same rhythm knew and under- 
 stood each other completely — felt together. Then 
 why not all .'' 
 
 The flock of shifting shadows fell more thickly 
 down upon the floor of his receptive mind. He 
 pounced upon them eagerly. 
 
 ' Yes, it's an air-thing somehow,' he felt, watching 
 the amazing pattern, 'a bird-thing coming. And 
 she knows it. She's born with it.' He again re- 
 membered the buttercup meadows of Cambridge and 
 
loo THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 the singing gardens of Algeria, the ecstasy, the light 
 and heat of that exalted passion. ' Her mother had 
 the germ of it, but in Joan it's blossomed out. 
 People would call her primitive, backward, even a 
 little crazy, "hysterical" is the word they'd use to- 
 day, I suppose — but in reality she's — er — awfully 
 advanced. To be behind the race is the same as to be 
 ahead of it, for life is circular and to run fast ahead 
 is to overtake your tail. Signs of going back are 
 equally signs of going forward. The same place is 
 passed again and again until all it can teach has been 
 caught from it ; so the brain may be justifying 
 scientifically To-day what was known instinctively 
 to ancient times. The subconscious becomes the 
 conscious.' 
 
 ' No, no,' the shadows painted somewhere behind 
 his thought, ' it's not circular, it's spiral. We come 
 round to the same place again, only higher up, above 
 — in the air. And with the bird's-eye view from 
 above comes understanding.' 
 
 Joan, he remembered, had said a few days before, 
 speaking of his button-hole : ' A flower is a stone 
 put up several octaves.' That was flight in itself — 
 all she said had flight in it. Her statement was true, 
 literally, scientifically, spiritually, yet evolution was 
 a word certainly unknown to her, and the spiral 
 movement equally beyond her mental vocabulary. 
 
 The shadows danced and grouped themselves anew. 
 
 He reviewed strange signs that were-in-the-air- 
 
VIII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR loi 
 
 to-day, seeing them all as aspects of one single thing. 
 They were not really disconnected ; their apparent 
 separation was caused by the various angles of survey, 
 just as a floor seen from below became a ceiling. 
 All that he was thinking now was, similarly, one big 
 thing caught from various points of view. Some 
 power swifter, surer than thought in him surveyed 
 it all at once ; the tiresome descriptions his mind 
 laboured over took in the details separately — the 
 shifting shadows ; yet the pattern as a whole was in 
 him, captured by some kind of instantaneous know- 
 ledge such as birds possess. Like Joan, he caught 
 the bird's-eye view, in principle. Yet she refused to 
 be blinded and smothered by the details, whereas 
 they certainly muddled him. It was necessary to 
 select the details one thought about evidently. He 
 tried to stand outside himself and see the single 
 something that included all the details, and in pro- 
 portion as he did so he seemed to rise into the air. 
 
 He reviewed these details flashily, and, so doing, 
 got a glimpse, an inkling, of the entirety whence 
 they arose. All seemed to him significant evidence 
 of one and the same vast thing ; this new, queer, 
 rushing supply of air-life flowing through everything 
 everywhere, forcing a swift and rhythmical way in 
 the most unlikely places, modifying human activities 
 in all directions unaccountably. He saw a hundred 
 of his Primer- Writers sitting in a studious group 
 about it, each describing certain specific details, while 
 
I02 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 the general outline of the whole escaped them in- 
 dividually. Each called his scrap by different names, 
 little aware that all sat regarding the same one thing. 
 It came up bubbling, dancing, pouring forth with 
 rhythm, bringing lightness into solid details, un- 
 settling the old-fashioned, and carrying many off 
 their feet into the air. It was so brimming that it 
 overflowed ; to resist it brought confusion, insecurity, 
 distress ; to go with it was the only way to under- 
 stand it — accepting the huge new rhythm. Yet it 
 had so many guises, so many protean forms. Proteus 
 was, indeed, a deathless truth, things changing into 
 one another because they all are one. 
 
 He felt this new thing as synthesis, unity. The 
 signs he reviewed combined in a single gesture that 
 conveyed it. Earth, with its reason, logic, facts, 
 could teach no more ; Science was blocked from 
 sheer accumulation of undigested detail ; the new 
 knowledge was not there ; a new element was needed. 
 And it was coming : Air. 
 
 Already there was a change even in sight itself, 
 and artists saw things in a new direction. Mere 
 foolishness to the majority, the cubists, futurists and 
 the like presented objects to others — others quite as 
 intelligent as the majority, quite as competent to 
 judge — with an authentic fiat of truth and beauty. 
 They conveyed an essentially new view of objects, 
 warning the man in the street that the objective world 
 is illusory and that concepts built upon the reports 
 
vin THE PROMISE OF AIR 103 
 
 of the senses are radically deceptive. A city seen 
 from an aeroplane resembled a cubist picture. This 
 new sight seemed a bird's-eye view, again, though 
 using — going back to — the primitive, naked, savage 
 sight, yet a stage above it, higher, a tumultuous 
 rhythm in it. The spiral again ! 
 
 Side by side with it ran a strange new hearing 
 too. The musicians — he recalled the names that 
 showered through the Primer pages — called attention 
 to this new hearing-from-another-angle. And, here 
 again, it was a going back apparently. Debussy 
 used the old, primitive tone scale, while Strauss and 
 Scriabin, to say nothing of a hundred lesser ears, 
 extended the rhythm of music to include the world 
 of sounds as none have dared before. In literature, 
 more swiftly assimilative and interpretative of the 
 airy inrush, the signs were thickly bewildering. 
 Only, for the majority, Pan being still misunderstood, 
 the God of Air came more slowly to his own. But 
 the signs were everywhere, like birds and buttercups 
 in spring. The bird's-eye view, flashing marvellously, 
 imperishably lovely, was on the way into the hearts of 
 men, the fairy touch, the protean aspect, the light, 
 electric rhythm running from the air upon the creak- 
 ing ground, urging the mass upwards with singing, 
 dancing, into a synthesis, a unity like a flock of birds. 
 
 The nonsense of unintelligible words and decapi- 
 tated sentences tried to catch hold of what he felt, 
 only failed to express it because it was too big for 
 
I04 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 used-up, pedestrian language. He felt this coming 
 change and swept along with it. He was aware of 
 it all over. 
 
 It came, he realised, flushing the most sensitive, 
 receptive channels first — the artists chiefly — and the 
 apparent ugliness here and there was due to distortion 
 and exaggeration, to that violence necessary to over- 
 come the inertia of habit in a narrow groove, the 
 tyranny of Mode. The accumulated momentum of 
 habit flowing so long in one direction called for a 
 prodigious rhythm to stop it first, then turn it back — 
 into the new direction. Mode was the devil — der 
 Geist der stets verneint — forbidding change, destroying 
 innovators, worshipping that formal, dull routine 
 which is ever anti-spiritual because it photographs a 
 moment and fixes it to earth for always. ... It 
 was, of course, attacked, as all new movements are 
 attacked, with contempt, with ridicule, with anger ; 
 but the attacks were negligible, and could not stay 
 its gathering flow. The bright little minds of the 
 day charged against it, stuck their clever shafts, 
 and scuttled back again into the obscurity of their 
 safe, accustomed groove. Mistaking stagnation for 
 balance, they clung to the solid earth of years ago, 
 but knew it not. 
 
 Of all this his mind did not frame, much less 
 utter, a single word. But the pattern of its coming 
 fell glowingly across his feelings. Life too long had 
 been a single photograph ; it seemed now a rush- 
 
vui THE PROMISE OF AIR 105 
 
 ing cinematograph, revolving, advancing, mounting 
 spirally into the air. He felt it thus. Something 
 new was pushing up the map from underneath to 
 meet the air ; it was sprouting everywhere, going 
 back to deep Pagan joy and wonder, yet with Reason 
 added to it. Reason looked back breathless to 
 Instinct long despised and cried, ' Come ! Help me 
 out ! ' And into his mind leaped the symbolic image 
 of a Centaur combining both these faculties. He 
 added wings to it. 
 
 ' Reason — oh, of course ! Without reason who 
 could know that at a certain station there must be 
 a change of carriage ? ' The train and station once 
 there, that method of roving once accepted, Reason 
 was as necessary as a railway ticket. Only — well, he 
 thought of the great Southern Tour and the perfect 
 motion and perfect knowledge that led those tiny 
 travellers to their distant destination and brought them 
 home again to the identical hedge and bush and twig 
 six months later. There was another way of com- 
 munication. Birds knew it. The female Emperor- 
 moth used it. Our wireless poles and instruments 
 followed laboriously to achieve it. Yet the power 
 itself lay in ourselves too, somewhere, waiting to be 
 recognised without costly mechanism. 
 
 Yes, there surely was another way of travelling, 
 of motion, coming, a bird-way, yet even swifter, 
 surer still, because independent of the earthy body. 
 The real, airy part of men and women were acquiring 
 
io6 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 it already, their real selves, thought and consciousness, 
 learning the new mighty rhythm by degrees. The 
 transference of thought and consciousness was close 
 upon them — from the air ; wireless communication 
 with all parts of space ; the mysterious, unconscious 
 wisdom of the bird, organised and directed consciously 
 by men and women. 
 
 An immense thrill passed over him. -He began 
 to sing softly to himself, but so softly, luckily, 
 that no one overheard him : ' Flow, fly, flow ; 
 Wherever I am, I go[' Joan knew it all uncon- 
 sciously. She just sang it. 
 
 And bits of a bird-primer flew across his mind, 
 casting the same delicate, protean shadows against 
 the wall where thought stopped helplessly. The 
 precocious intelligence of feathered life was still a 
 mystery no primer-writer could explain. The curlew, 
 he recalled, after wintering in New Zealand, paused 
 to mate and nest in the South of England on his way 
 to Northern Siberia, while awaiting the summons to 
 complete its journey when the ice is gone. 'It is a 
 fact, proved and attested beyond dispute, that the 
 evening the curlew leaves the South of England is 
 invariably the day on which the ice breaks in the 
 north, at least two thousand miles distant.' How 
 does the curlew know it .'' 
 
 He thought of the plover with five drums in his 
 ear, able to hear the ' slow, sinuous movement of the 
 worm in the soil, eight inches below the hard-crusted 
 
viii THE PROMISE OF AIR 107 
 
 surface ' ; of the lapwing who imitates the sound of 
 rain by drumming with his feet to bring the worms 
 up ; of the cuckoo matching her egg with those of 
 the foster-mother selected for her baby — hundreds of 
 variations ; of the swallow, mating like the night- 
 ingale for life, and of a certain pair of swallows, in 
 particular, who ' for fifteen consecutive years returned 
 to the same spot, after wintering in Cape Colony, to 
 build their nest, arriving invariably on the same day 
 of the year — the nth of April ' ; of the nightingales 
 who winter separately, but return faithfully together 
 to England in the spring, the female, perhaps, from 
 India, the male from Persia. 
 
 A hundred marvels of air-life came back to him ; 
 all ' instinct ' — only ' mere instinct ' ! Birds, birds, 
 birds ! The wisdom of the birds ! Their communi- 
 cations, their flocking together, their swift rhythmical 
 movements, their singing language, their unity, 
 their — brotherhood ! 
 
 From the air the new thing was rushing down 
 upon the world, yes. Yet not alone the sensitive 
 artist-temperament perceived it ; it came overflowing 
 into far less delicate channels as well, breaking up the 
 old with difficulty, but producing first a tumult of 
 disturbance that would later fall into harmonious 
 rhythm too. There were everywhere new men, new 
 women ; behind the Woman Movement, for all its 
 first excess, was a colossal, necessary, inevitable thing. 
 Once rhythmical, the disorder and extravagance 
 
io8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 would become order, balance. The neuter woman 
 was a passing moment In it, not to endure. The 
 new woman was but another sign of the airy invasion 
 which the painters and musicians, the writers and the 
 preachers, felt. And the air-man, with new nerves, 
 new courage, new outlook upon energy, even new 
 bird-like face and strange lightning eyes, was another 
 obvious, physical, yet only half-physical, expression. 
 His audacious courage seemed somehow to focus the 
 new consciousness preparing. The birds were coming 
 everywhere. A new element, a new direction ! 
 
 In advance of the invasion, making way for 
 it, old solid obstacles were everywhere breaking 
 down. He seemed to recognise a crumbling of 
 religions, of religious forms. The rigid creeds and 
 dogmas, made by man, and imprisoning him so long, 
 were turning fluid before the stress of the new arrival, 
 melting down like sand-castles when the tide comes 
 in. They must hurry to adapt themselves, or else 
 cease to exist. Formal, elaborate, dead-letter theology 
 must go, to let in — Religion. The churches seemed 
 to have become unreal already, continuing, parrot- 
 like, to teach traditional doctrines the people have 
 long ago abandoned. He heard another Primer 
 whisper in his ear. ' Every one is aware of the failure 
 of the churches to touch modern life ; to escape from 
 their grooves ; to cease to deal in conventional and 
 monotonous iterations of old-fashioned formulae, 
 instead of finding vital, human, developing expressions 
 
vni 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 109 
 
 of the spiritual craving in man. They do not teach 
 that the Kingdom of Heaven is on earth. They have 
 isolated religion from practical life. Religion must 
 evolve with the evolution of human culture ' — or 
 disappear. Its teaching must take wings and rise 
 to lead into the air, or remain stagnant on the ground 
 in ruins, stony, motionless, dead, a photograph. 
 
 The ' wireless imagination ' of the futurist was 
 not so meaningless as it sounded. The exaggeration 
 that preceded the new arrival would soon pass. 
 Only, the first flight took the breath away a little, 
 as when a man, from walking, breaks into a run to 
 leap into an unknown element. Through the scientific 
 world the quiver was running too. What's coming 
 next } What in the world is going to happen .'' 
 seemed the universal cry. The composite face of the 
 world already assumed the eager lineaments of the 
 great bird-visage. The air was coming. 
 
 The rhythm of life was everywhere being acceler- 
 ated, and side by side with the mechanical express- 
 ion in telephones and wireless communications, a 
 quickening transformation of human sensibility was 
 taking place as well. It was the running start for a 
 leap into the air. Facilities for increasing the spon- 
 taneity of living existed at every street corner^ but it 
 was air that first produced them. Air made them 
 possible. There was even approach towards the 
 unification of the senses, one man hearing through 
 his teeth and skull, another seeing through his 
 
no THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 temples. The localisation of sensibility was merging 
 into a unified perception whereby people would 
 presently know all-over and at-once. They would 
 realise the eternal principle and ignore the obscuring 
 details. Once they all felt together as the bird did, 
 brotherhood, which is sharing all in natural sympathy, 
 would be close. . . . 
 
 The shadow-patterns flashed and rustled on across 
 his mind. In a couple of minutes all these wild ideas 
 occurred to him. They were extraordinarily elusive, 
 yet extraordinarily real. In an interval as brief as that 
 between saying ' Quite well, thank you,' to some one 
 who asks ' How are you ? ' this flock of suggestions 
 swept over him and went their way. They never 
 grew clear enough to be actual thoughts ; they were 
 just passing hints of what was in-the-air-to-day. All 
 telescoped together in a rapid rush, marked him, 
 vanished, yet left behind them something that was 
 real. They came through his skin, he fancied, rather 
 than through his brain. They came all over. 
 
 The pedestrians, meanwhile, shuffled past him 
 heavily ; he made his way with difficulty, the thick 
 stream opening to let him through, then closing in 
 again behind him. He felt closely in touch with 
 them all, in more ways than one ; but the majority 
 were still groping on the ground, hunting for 
 luxurious holes to shelter in. Only a few were 
 looking up. He saw, here and there, an eager face 
 turned skywards, tipped with the beauty of a flushing 
 
vn. THE PROMISE OF AIR iii 
 
 dawn. These, perhaps, felt it coming. But few as 
 yet — one in a million, say — would dare to fly. 
 
 He watched them as he passed along, feeling them 
 gathering him in. He saw the endless, seething 
 crowd as a unit. He felt their strength, their beauty. 
 He was aware of democracy, virile, proud, inevitable. 
 He felt the hovering bird above it somewhere, 
 immense, inspiring. The advancing tide was rising, 
 undermining caste and class distinctions steadily, 
 breaking down conventions, the feeblest sand-castles 
 children ever built. He heard an awful thunder too. 
 It revealed a storming majesty, shattering, cataclysmic, 
 making most hearts afraid — the opening and stirring 
 of multitudinous huge wings. Yet it was merely the 
 new element coming, the great invasion with its 
 irresistible rhythm. Democracy wore striped wings 
 beneath its Sunday black, powerful, magnificent 
 eagle-wings. Birds flying in their thousands, he 
 recalled, convey sublimity. But yet he shuddered. 
 The rising of such tremendous wings involved some- 
 where — blood. 
 
 He saw, with his bird's-eye view, the general 
 levelling up, or levelling down, in progress. No 
 big outstanding figure led the world to-day. There 
 were no giants anywhere. Much of a muchness 
 ruled in art and business, as in statesmanship. No 
 towering figures showed the way into the air. On 
 the other hand there was degeneracy that could not 
 be denied. He saw it, however, like the dirty 
 
112 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 flotsam seaweed pushed in front of a great high-tide. 
 Degeneracy precedes new growth when that growth 
 is of a different kind. Out of decaying wood springs 
 a tree of fairer type, and from the ashes of a burnt 
 hemlock forest emerge maple, birch and oak, while 
 the flaming Fireweed lights the way with beauty. 
 When a Canadian forest is destroyed by fire, the 
 growth next spring is of a totally new kind, and no 
 one has yet told whence came the seed of this new, 
 different growth. After a prairie fire, similarly, 
 new flowers spring up that were not there before. 
 The subsoil possibly has concealed them ; they are 
 discovered by the fiery heat. The decay of old, 
 true grandeur he saw everywhere, the democratic 
 vulgarisation of beauty, the universal levelling up 
 and levelling down, but he saw these as evidence of 
 that crumbling of too in-bred forms which announced 
 the new coming harvest from the air. It was but 
 the decay of old foundations which have served 
 their time. 
 
 ' We shall build lighter,' he half sang, half 
 whispered to himself, squeezing between a lamp-post 
 and a workman who came rolling unsteadily out of a 
 tavern door ; ' birds'-nests, up among the swinging 
 trees ! We shall live more carelessly, and nearer 
 to the stars ! No cellars any more, no basements, 
 but gardens on the roof! Winds, colours, sun- 
 shine, air ! Oh ! ' as the man bumped into him 
 
 and sent him off the pavement with ' Beg parding, 
 
viii THE PROMISE OF AIR 113 
 
 sir ! ' * No, I beg yours,' he replied, and came down 
 to earth with a crash, remembering that supper was at 
 seven-thirty and he must be turning homewards. 
 
 So he turned and retraced his steps, feeling some- 
 how that he had come down from the mountain tops 
 or from a skimming rush along high windy cliffs. 
 The net result of all these strange half-thoughts was 
 fairly simple. His imagination had been stirred by 
 the sight of his daughter in the sunset making those 
 suggestive gestures against the coloured sky. With 
 her hands she had flung a shower of silver threads 
 about him ; along these, somehow, her own queer 
 ideas flashed into him. A new point of view, a new 
 attitude to life, something with the light, swift 
 rhythm of a bird's flight was coming into the minds 
 of men. Most of those who felt it were hardly 
 conscious, perhaps, that they did so, because carried 
 along with it. The old were frightened, change 
 being difficult for them ; but the young, the more 
 sensitive ones among them at any rate, stretched out 
 their arms and legs to meet the flowing, flying 
 invasion. ' Flow, fly, flow ; wherever I am — I go,^ 
 was in the air to-day. Joan knew. New hope, new 
 light, new language, all aspects of joy and confidence, 
 seemed dawning. Air and birds were symbols of it. 
 It was rhythmical, swift, spontaneous. It sang. It 
 was bird-happy and bird-wise. It was a new kind 
 of consciousness, yet more than a mere expansion 
 
 of present consciousness. It was a new direction 
 
 I 
 
114 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 altogether, while its object, purpose, aim was the 
 oldest dream known to this old -tired world- — 
 brotherhood and unity. A bird brotherhood ! The 
 wisdom of the Flock ! 
 
 ' I declare,' he murmured, laughing quietly to 
 himself, ' if any one could hear me — see inside my 
 mind just now — they'd say I was ! ' 
 
 And that reminded him of his wife. He 
 remembered that he was thinking of moving into the 
 country with his family before very long. He came 
 back to a definite thought again. He pondered facts 
 and ways and means. He was very practical really 
 at heart, no mere dreamer by any means. He 
 weighed the difficulties. Mother was one of them. 
 Sad, sad, the bird had left her ; she was a badger 
 now. He felt uneasy, troubled in his mind. But 
 he smiled. He was fond of her. 
 
 ' How ever shall we manage ? ' he asked himself. 
 ' There are so many incongruous things to reconcile. 
 Gently, kindly, softly, airily is the way.' 
 
 Then, suddenly, a bird-thought came to help 
 him. Ah, it was practically useful, this inspiration 
 from the air. It was not merely nonsense, then ! 
 
 ' If I just hope and believe, and do my best, and 
 don't think — too much — it will all come right. I 
 must be spontaneous and instinctive, not over- 
 weighted by worrying and detailed reason. I must 
 believe and trust. That's the way to get what's 
 called good judgment. See it whole from the air ! ' 
 
v„r THE PROMISE OF AIR 115 
 
 For the details that perplexed him were, after all, 
 merely different aspects of one and the same thing — 
 the several points of view of Mother, Joan, Tom, 
 himself. Hold in the mind the details in solution, 
 and the problem must solve itself. If he understood 
 each one — that was necessary — while viewing the 
 problem as a whole, the solution must come spon- 
 taneously of itself. The bird's-eye view would show 
 the way, while he remained nominally leader, like 
 the bird that heads the triangular wedge of wild 
 geese across a hundred miles of sky. This flashed 
 upon him like a song. 
 
 And as he realised this, his trouble vanished ; 
 joy took its place ; with it came a sense of confidence, 
 power, even wisdom. Though the matter was trivial 
 enough, it was the triumph of instinct : Reason laid 
 out the details, instinct pieced them together, then 
 Intuition led. It was seeing all-over, knowing aU- 
 at-once. Already he had begun to live like a bird, 
 and Joan, though he knew not how exactly, had 
 taught him. 
 
 ' Wherever I am, I go,' went darting through his 
 head. He smiled, felt light and happy — and strangely 
 wise. Perhaps he could help. Perhaps he was 
 going to be a teacher even. A Teacher, he realised, 
 must first of all find out the point of view of the 
 person to be taught, and then discover a new point 
 of view which will make the wrong or foolish attitude 
 harmonise with reality. Everybody is right where 
 
ii6 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 he is, however wrong he may be. Only he must not 
 stay there. The Teacher is a priest who supplies the 
 new point of view. New teaching, however, was 
 not necessary ; the world was choked to the brim 
 with teaching already. A new airy understanding 
 of old teaching was the thing. . . . 
 
 He was now close to the iron gates of Sun Court 
 Mansions, where he lived. In the diminutive, yet 
 pretentious, plot of garden stood a tall, leafy tree. 
 A gust of wind blew past him at that moment with 
 a roaring sound that was like laughter, and he saw 
 the tree shake and tremble. The countless branches 
 tossed in a dozen directions, hopelessly in disorder, 
 each branch, each twig obeying its own particular 
 little rhythm. That they all belonged to a single, 
 central object seemed incredible, so brave the show 
 they made of being independent and apart. 
 
 Then, as he stood and watched, seventy thousand 
 leaves turned all one way, showing their delicate 
 under-skins. The great tree suddenly blew open. 
 He saw the trunk to which leaves and branches 
 all belonged. And at the wind's order the tree 
 behaved as a single thing, even the most outlying 
 portions answering to the one harmonious rhythm. 
 At which moment, once again, a flock of birds rose 
 from somewhere near with an effortless rush and 
 swooped in among the leaves with one great gesture 
 common to each one. They settled with the utmost 
 ease. The myriad little busy details merged in one ; 
 
vm THE PROMISE OF AIR 117 
 
 they disappeared. But in settling thus, they made 
 the solid green seem light as air, shiny, almost fluid. 
 
 And Wimble, taking the odd hint, felt too that 
 his own difficulties had similarly turned fluid, melted, 
 disappeared. The details merged into a whole ; they 
 were referred, at any rate, to some central authority 
 that hid deep within him. A wind of inspiration, 
 as it were, had blown him wide open too. Details 
 that tossed in different directions, apparently hostile 
 to one another, betrayed their common trunk. They 
 showed their under-sides. He was aware of an 
 essential unity to which all belonged. 
 
 Something in him shone. He had taught him- 
 self, at any rate. He went upstairs, confident and 
 light-hearted, breathless a little too, as though he 
 had enjoyed an exhilarating flight of leagues, instead 
 of a two-mile trudge along the solid, crowded pave- 
 ments of Maida Vale. 
 
 And later, when he went to bed, he fell asleep 
 upon a gorgeous, airy conviction : ' The Golden Age 
 lies in front of us, and not behind ! ' It was a 
 birdy thought. He flew into dreamland with it in 
 his wings. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Mrs. Wimble felt the death in another manner. It 
 disconnected her from life. It cut her off from a 
 network of safe, accustomed grooves. Something 
 solid she had clung to subsided under ground. A 
 final link with childhood, youth, and beauty broke. 
 Death has a way of making survivors older suddenly. 
 Mrs. . Wimble now admitted age to herself; wore 
 unsightly and depressing black ; felt sentimental 
 about a big ' p ' Past ; and ruminated uneasily about 
 other worlds. Black with her was an admission that 
 an after-life was at best an open question. It was a 
 lugubrious conventional act symbolical of selfish grief, 
 a denial of true religious teaching which should have 
 faith, and therefore joy, as its illuminating principle. 
 She did not understand the question. She had no 
 answer ready. She said, ' What ? ' 
 
 She referred to the ' lost ' at intervals. It did not 
 occur to her that what is lost is open to recovery. 
 When she said 'lost' she really meant annihilated. 
 For, though a Christian nominally, and a faithful 
 church-goer, when she had clothes she considered fit 
 
 ii8 
 
CHAP, ix THE PROMISE OF AIR 119 
 
 for the Deity to see her in, her notions of a future 
 state were mental conceptions merely that contained 
 no real belief. She was not aware that she did not 
 believe, but this was, of course, the fact. Her father, 
 moreover, had long ago destroyed the reality of the 
 two after-death places generally accepted, soon after 
 he had taught her that they both existed. Not 
 wittingly for his part, nor for her part, consciously. 
 But since ' heavenly ' was a term he used to describe 
 large sales of corn, and ' Go to hell, you idiot ' was a 
 phrase he applied frequently to underlings in yard 
 and oflSce, his daughter had grown up with less 
 respect for the actuality of these localities than she 
 might otherwise have had. 
 
 And with regard to her love for him — it was not 
 love at all, but a selfish dependence tempered with 
 mild affection. He was now gone ; she missed him. 
 A prop had sunk, a tie with the distant nursery 
 snapped, the sense of continuity with the fragrance 
 of early days, of toys, of romance and Christmas 
 presents was no longer there. Instead of looking 
 backwards — still possible while a parent lives — she 
 now looked forward into a muddled, shadowy future 
 that brought depression and low spirits. It was a 
 subterranean look. She went down under ground 
 into her hole, yet backwards, still peering with 
 pathetic eagerness into the sunshine of life that she 
 must leave behind. 
 
 Therefore, for her father at any rate, she knew 
 
I20 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 not love. For the one thing certain and positive 
 about love is that those who feel it know, and to 
 mention loss in the sense of annihilation is but childish 
 ignorance. There is physical disappearance, separa- 
 tion, going elsewhere, but these are temporary, another 
 direction, as Joan expressed it. Love shouts the fact, 
 contemptuous of exact photographic proof. No 
 mother worth her salt, at any rate, believes that death 
 is final loss. She has known union ; and Love brings, 
 above all, the absolute consciousness of eternal union. 
 ' Loss,' used of death, is a devil-word where love is, 
 and as ignorant as ' loss of appetite ' when food has 
 become a portion of the eater. One's self is not 
 separable from its-self. Love, having absorbed the 
 essentials of what it loves, remains because it is ; 
 for ever indivisible ; there. The beloved dead step 
 nearer when their bodies drop aside. ' The dead 
 know where they are, and what they're doing,' as 
 Joan mentioned. ' It's not for us to worry — in that 
 way. And they're out of hours and minutes. They 
 probably have no time to come back and tell us.' 
 
 To which Mother's whole attitude replied with 
 an exasperated ' What 1 I don't think you know 
 what you mean, child.' 
 
 Joan answered in a flash, her face clouding slightly, 
 then breaking into a happy smile again : ' But, 
 mother, what people think about a thing has nothing 
 to do with the real meaning.' 
 
 ' Eh ? ' said Mother. 
 
IX THE PROMISE OF AIR 121 
 
 ' Their opinion doesn't matter.' 
 
 Mrs. Wimble bridled a little. She was not yet 
 ready to be taught to fly. In this airy element she 
 felt unsafe, bewildered, and therefore irritable. 
 
 ' Then you'll find out later, Joan, that it does 
 matter,' she replied emphatically with ruffled dignity. 
 ' One can't play fast and loose with things like that, 
 not in this world, my dear. One must be fixed to 
 something — somewhere. Life isn't nonsense. And 
 you'll remember later that I said so.' 
 
 Joan peeped at her sideways, as a robin might 
 peep at a barking dog. A tender and earnest ex- 
 pression lit upon her sparkling little face. 
 
 ' But life is a vision,' she said with a glow in her 
 voice ; * it begins and goes on just like that,' and 
 she clicked her fingers in the air. ' If you see it 
 from above, from outside — like a swallow — you know 
 it all at once like in a dream and vision, and it 
 means everything there is to be meant. You put in 
 the details afterwards.' She was perched upon the 
 window-sill again, her long legs dangling. She began 
 to sing her bird-song. 
 
 ' There, there,' expostulated Mr. Wimble, who 
 was listening, ' we're not birds yet, Joan, whatever 
 we're going to be,' but the last seven words dropped 
 unconsciously into the rhythm of her singing tune. 
 He felt a wind blow from her into his heart. Mrs. 
 Wimble, however, remained concealed behind her 
 World. She was not actually reading anything. 
 
122 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, ix 
 
 because her eyes moved too quickly from paragraph 
 to paragraph. But she said nothing for some 
 moments, and presently she folded the paper with 
 great deliberation, laying it beside her on the table, 
 and patting it emphatically. 
 
 ' Visions are for those that like them,' she an- 
 nounced, moving towards the door and casting a side- 
 ways look of surprise and contempt at her husband 
 whose silence seemed to favour Joan. ' To my way 
 of thinking, they're unsettling. What time does Tom 
 come in to-night ? ' 
 
 They discussed Tom for a few moments, and it 
 was remembered that he had a latch-key and could 
 let himself in, and that therefore they might go to 
 bed without anxiety. But what Mrs. Wimble said 
 upon this unnecessary topic meant really : ' You're 
 both too much for me ; my hopes are set on Tom.' 
 She continued her perusal of the World in her 
 room, retiring shortly afterwards to sleep heavily for 
 nine full hours without a break. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Her father stood upside-down — mentally, of course, 
 not physically. Certain of the Primer ' Epitomes ' 
 came in helter-skelter to support his daughter's 
 nonsense. At the same time he was aware that he 
 ought to chide her. And probably he would have 
 done so but for the fact that before he knew it, the 
 girl was asking to be forgiven. He had not seen her 
 move ; his mental sight was still following Mother. 
 There was a flutter of something white across the 
 air— and there Joan was — upon his knee. 
 
 And so he did not chide her. Nor did he rebuke 
 her for singing under her breath what she called 
 ' Mother's Song,' beginning 
 
 O Disaster ! 
 You're my Master ! 
 
 'Your mother's tired to-night,' he observed. 
 ' But all the same, you are a nasty little tease, you 
 know.' Her arms felt like warm, smooth feathers 
 as he stroked them. He seemed floating lightly in 
 mid -air above the roof. And he remembered 
 vaguely the fairy tales of his youth when Princesses 
 
 123 
 
124 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 turned suddenly into swans. Oh, how beautiful it 
 was, this bird idea, this seeing and feeling things in 
 the terms of birds. Those girls in Greece the gods 
 changed into a nightingale and a swallow — what a 
 delightful, exhilarating experience ! Easy — and how 
 true ! ' The feathery change came o'er you,' he 
 murmured from the Treasury of Song, then, inter- 
 rupting his own mood of curious enjoyment, turned 
 to Joan abruptly. 
 
 ' Why did you talk like that ? ' he inquired. 
 
 ' To make Mother move " 
 
 ' To bed, you mean ? ' he asked, almost severely. 
 
 ' Yes, no,' said Joan. 
 
 ' Answer me properly, girl,' he observed. 
 
 ' Of course not. Move nearer to you — and me — 
 even to grandpa. We ought to be a flock somehow, 
 I felt. But we looked so separate and apart, you 
 two on chairs, reading, him out of sight, and me on 
 the window-sill.' 
 
 'Eh?' 
 
 ' We ought to be one thing more. The whole 
 world ought to be. Not crowded — oh, there'd be 
 heaps of room to move in — but all together some- 
 how like birds. It's only bad birds that are apart — 
 ravens, hawks, and birds of prey. All the others 
 flock.' She darted from his knee and stood upon 
 her toes a second before him, staring down into 
 his eyes. ' It's coming, you know. Daddy. It's 
 coming, anyhow ! ' She said it brightly, eagerly, 
 
X THE PROMISE OF AIR 125 
 
 yet with a singular conviction in her tone. ' The 
 whole world's flocking somehow — somewhere — for 
 I feel it. We shall all be happy together once we 
 get into the country.' 
 
 A shiver of beauty passed through him as he 
 heard her. He remembered his walk up Maida 
 Vale, and the rushing, shadowy presentiment in his 
 mind that something new was on the way. 
 
 ' Like a single big family, you mean ? All after 
 one high big thing together ? ' He asked it, greatly 
 wondering at her. But her reply made him gasp: 
 Where had she learned such things, unless from 
 the air ? 
 
 ' Your language is so draughty, Daddy. / mean 
 a bird-world. Birds aren't unselfish, they're just — 
 together.' 
 
 He rubbed his forehead, saying nothing, while 
 she fluttered down upon his knees again. 
 
 ' Like my body,' she said. ' Don't you see ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, no,' he laughed, using her method un- 
 consciously. 
 
 ' I can't lace my boot with one hand, but the 
 other isn't unselfish when it comes to help. My 
 head is no farther from me than my boot, is it .'' ' 
 And she sang softly her bird-song of movement and 
 delight,, until he felt the quality of her volatile, 
 aerial mind flash down into his own and lighten it 
 amazingly. 
 
 ' My precious little daughter,' he cried, ' you are 
 
126 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 a bird, and you shall teach me all your flying secrets. 
 But, tell me,' he whispered, ' how in the world did 
 you find out all this ? ' 
 
 'Oh, I can't tell that^ she replied almost im- 
 patiently, ' for once I begin to think it all goes, and 
 I feel like an animal in a hole. But I'll tell you 
 soon — when the right moment comes^ — in the fields. 
 I just go about and it all shoots into me.' 
 
 It was the true bird-quality, always singing, 
 always on the alert, swift to notice and be glad. 
 
 ' Yet I said it without thinking,' she went on, 
 ' and the meaning came in afterwards at the end — 
 all of its own accord. And that's really the way to 
 live together. At least, it's coming ' 
 
 ' The next stage, the next move ! ' 
 
 ' Flight ! ' she cried, half singing it. 
 
 ' You live and talk,' he laughed, ' like a German 
 sentence that carries all in the head and suddenly 
 puts the verb down at the end.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes,' he realised after she had gone to bed, 
 while he sat there, pondering her fluid statements, 
 ' there is this new thing coming into life, and it is 
 in some sense indeed a bird-thing. It's a new 
 outlook ! ' 
 
 He caught at her feathery meanings none the 
 less. A great aerial movement had begun, an 
 etherialisation, a spiritualisation of life. And in 
 true spirituality there was nothing vague ; its ex- 
 pression was terrifically definite, stupendously alive. 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 127 
 
 swift, sure, and steady as a mighty bird. Spirit 
 was a bird of fire. Joan left him in that dreary 
 sitting-room with a feeling that life was glorious 
 and that the entire population of the globe must 
 presently take flight and wing its way to some less 
 ponderous star — migration. Joan's language was 
 absurd, yet she left winged ideas rushing like 
 imperial eagles through his mind. Humanity was 
 really one, but on earth alone it would never, never 
 find it out. In the air it would. Its upward 
 struggles were not mere figures of speech. Routine 
 oppressed and deadened life, prisoning it within a 
 network of rigid, fixed ideas, and behind barriers of 
 concentrated effort which turned the fluid stagnant 
 — hard. Routine was dulling, anti-spiritual. To 
 live like a quicksand before you get fixed and sank, 
 this was the way. To be ready for a fire that 
 should burn up all you had. Life flows, flies, 
 flows ; it has rhythm and abandon ; self, by means 
 of boundaries and casting limits, resists this 
 universal flow towards expansion characteristic of 
 all Nature. A bird was poised. True ! But it was 
 ready to go in any direction instantly, for it was 
 more various and less intense, by no means pur- 
 poseless, and never bound. It was spontaneous, 
 instantaneous, for ever on the run. That was living, 
 that was ' fun.' People, like animals, were con- 
 gested. But life was growing quicker, lighter, with 
 rhythm, movement everywhere. 
 
128 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 The shadow dance began again deliciously. 
 
 Yet to act intuitively seemed a dangerous plan 
 for the majority at present, to live on impulse 
 seemed mere recklessness. But it would come. 
 Already people were tired of knowing exact and 
 detailed reasons for all they did. Confusion would 
 come first, of course, but out of that confusion, as 
 out of the apparent trouble of a rising flock of birds, 
 or the scattered muddle of leaves and branches in a 
 wind-tossed tree, would follow magnificent concerted 
 life. Democracy was growing wings. Soon it 
 would sing for joy. 
 
 Yes, there was truth in it. Majestic powers 
 were moving already past the visible curtain of 
 fixed and rigid formulae. To obey an intuition the 
 instant it came, was to find the opportunity at hand 
 for carrying it out effectively. To wait and hesitate, 
 consider, reflect and reason out, was to lose the 
 chance. It was disobedience, and disobedience 
 detached from power. Fate was controlled by an 
 obedient and instantaneous mind, for it meant acting 
 in harmony with these majestic powers. Under- 
 standing followed later, as with Joan's outlook ; the 
 verb came down at the end, explaining, justifying 
 all that had preceded it. Good and evil were, after 
 all, misnomers of the nursery. In rhythm or out 
 of rhythm was common, aye, the commonest sense. 
 Rhythip was simply ease, as separateness, due to 
 want of rhythm, was dis-ease. 
 
X THE PROMISE OF AIR 129 
 
 ' Oh dear ! ' sighed Joseph Wimble, as he turned 
 the light out and pattered down the corridor to bed. 
 ' I feel carried ofF my feet. What a buoyant thing 
 life is, to be sure ! It gets big and light and 
 happy when you least expect it ! Evidently, there's 
 a big universal thing underlying it all — that's what 
 she means by air — and to lean upon that — sub- 
 consciously, I suppose — to act in rhythm with it ' 
 
 He broke off, colliding with a chest of drawers 
 Mother would keep in the narrow passage. 
 
 Then, suddenly, as he switched the light on in 
 his bedroom, he realised something very big and 
 striking : 
 
 ' Of course, I'm a cosmic, not merely a planetary, 
 being . . . ! ' 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 But what followed that night, while it may have 
 caught him into the air, as he phrased it, and given 
 him an airy point of view, took his breath away at 
 the same time. He was not ready yet for so strange 
 a revelation. 
 
 He did not sleep very soundly. Too many ideas 
 were rustling in his brain. ' Rise out of rigid ideas,' 
 a voice kept whispering. ' Hold ideas loosely in the 
 mind. Cultivate agility of thought. Re-fresh, re- 
 make your thought. Destroy the hard walls that 
 hide God from you. He is so close to you always. 
 Shatter your idols and get free ! Rise out of the 
 network of fixed ideas ! Watch life without sink- 
 ing into your own personality. That is, share every 
 point of view and think in every corner of your 
 body. Grow alive all over. Don't think things 
 out in your head ; just see them ! Embrace all 
 possibilities ! Get into the air ! Melt down that 
 absurdity, the scientific materialist, and show him 
 LIFE ! ' 
 
 He heard these whispered sentences traversing 
 130 
 
CHAP. XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 131 
 
 the darkness like singing arrows whose whistling 
 speed made a noise of words. Even in sleep he 
 stood upon his head. But the arrows, of course, 
 were feathered. They were feathers. Wings flashed 
 and fluttered everywhere about him. He was in a 
 cage. He must escape. He tried. Somehow, it 
 seemed, he used his whole body instead of his brain 
 alone. He was escaping. . . . Life, blown open 
 by a wind, seemed to show its under-side where 
 everything was one. . . . 
 
 By this time he was half awake. ' I must do 
 something ; I must act,' he dimly realised. He 
 turned over in his bed, and the sound of arrowy, 
 rushing air went farther into the distance as he did so. 
 
 ' It's imagination,' sneered a tiny, wakeful point 
 in his mediocre brain. Another part of him not 
 brain was alight and shining. 
 
 'But you're no farther from Reality by letting 
 your imagination loose,' sang a returning arrow — in 
 his head. It came from something bigger than his 
 mind. His mind, strutting and arrogant, seemed 
 such an insignificant part of him, whereas the rest, 
 where the arrows flashed and flew, seemed so enor- 
 mous that he was conscious of the ' nightmare touch ' 
 of Size. Mind strove to justify itself, however, and 
 Reason snatched at names and labels. 
 
 'But that's right,' a flying sentence laughed. 
 ' You do not see a thing until you've named it. You 
 only feel it. Once, however, it's described, it's seen !' 
 
132 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Aha ! That's Joan's fairy-tale method gro- 
 tesquely cropping up in my dreams,' he realised — 
 and so, of course, awoke properly. 
 
 And it was here that his breath got shorter and 
 his heart beat irregularly. 
 
 The room was dark and silent, but he heard a 
 murmuring as though Night were talking in her 
 sleep. The dizziness of great heights was still 
 about him, and remained a little even when he turned 
 the lights on. It was four o'clock. The room wore 
 a waiting, listening air, as though a moment before 
 it had all been whirling, and his waking at this un- 
 lawful hour had disturbed it. Waking had rolled 
 the darkness back, let in light, and taken — a photo- 
 graph. He felt mad and happy — madly happy. 
 There was nonsense in him that belonged to careless 
 joy. The curious notion came that he ought to 
 introduce himself to the various objects — chairs, cup- 
 boards, book-shelf, writing-table — and apologise to 
 them for having believed himself separate from them. 
 He ought to explain. But the same second he real- 
 ised this as wrong, for he himself had been moving, 
 whirling, too. Everything had stopped, himself in- 
 cluded, when he awoke. He had stepped aside to 
 look at it. He had photographed it. Of course it 
 stopped. 
 
 ' I am,' he remembered, ' but wherever I am, 
 IgoV 
 
 And then, before further Explanation could explain 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 133 
 
 away the truth, he seized at another diving arrow and 
 saw it whole, though it vanished the same instant : 
 
 ' I am the whole room. I am my surroundings ! ' 
 
 Some new point of view had leaped into him, 
 something almost daemonic that suggested limitless 
 confidence in his power to overcome all obstacles, 
 because they were part of his own being. 
 
 Objects, thing's, details — during that amazing 
 second at least — no longer seemed separate, alone, 
 apart from one another. They were not anywhere 
 cut ofF. Seen thus, a chair was a cupboard, a table 
 was a basin, he was the ceiling, bed, and carpet. 
 Equally, a cat was a peacock, a mouse was an elephant. 
 
 He said these words to himself in an astonished 
 whisper, and in doing so he understood something 
 he didn't understand. The sentence waited for the 
 verb, the meaning, and it suddenly came down pop — 
 at the end. Reason helped a little there, for he had 
 named and described, and therefore seen what before 
 he had only felt. Perhaps further understanding 
 would foUow. The verb would come. He would 
 get up and try. He would do something — act — act 
 out his mood. Action seemed suddenly a new kind 
 of language, a three-dimensional language, an ever- 
 moving language in which objects took on character 
 and played parts for the sake of expression. A 
 language of action ! You are whatever you do. . . . ! 
 
 And as this arrow shot its message past him it 
 seemed that certain objects in the room were about 
 
134 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 to jump at him. They did not actually move, but 
 they were just about to move — ready and alert. 
 The instant he slept they would rise and fly together 
 again. It was his point of view, his mind in him, 
 that made them appear separate. Each object was 
 clothed in its own story of information, as it were. 
 Objects were telling him something. They were 
 demonstrating an idea. 
 
 ' I am not alone, although I'm only one,' he said 
 aloud. ' In arithmetic one is not more lonely than 
 seven.' But, again, he didn't understand quite why 
 he said it, while yet he understood perfectly at the 
 same time. ' I'm not quite myself at any rate,' he 
 added, and it was true. Perhaps he was a trifle 
 frightened, still hovering on the nightmare edge of 
 sleep. For all this happened in a single instant when 
 he turned the light up. With sight his breath came 
 more easily at once, his heart beat steadily again. 
 
 Yet there was certainly a sense of rhythm in the 
 room, though lessening rapidly. He must hurry. 
 The cage was closing round him again. He heard 
 the flying voices farther and farther in the distance, 
 but still sweet with a rhythmical new music. 
 
 ' Use the mood of the moment, but first under- 
 stand why it is the mood of the moment ! ' 
 
 ' Use the material you have at once ! Don't wait 
 for something diff^erent ! ' 
 
 ' There is no need to wait ; to wait shows incom- 
 petence ! ' 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 135 
 
 ' Act instantly ! Don't reason, calculate, think ! 
 Operate in a flash ! ' 
 
 He felt, that is, rather as a bird might feel. 
 There was haste, yet no hurry, purpose yet leisure, 
 delight without delay, spontaneity. So he got out 
 of bed, put on dressing-gown and slippers, and went 
 on tiptoe into the passage. Then, standing in the 
 shaft of light from his room, the dark corridor in 
 front of him, he realised that the entire flat — the 
 furnished flat that Dizzy & Dizzy had let to him 
 — was alive. The feathered arrows were not imagined, 
 the voice was not a dream. Inanimate things stirred 
 everywhere about him. He perceived their under- 
 sides and his own. Their apartness that so dislocated 
 the upper, outer, surface-life was only apparent after 
 all. Bars melted. He felt instantaneous. ' Wher- 
 ever I am I go ! ' But objects shared the same 
 illusion : wherever they were, they went ! The 
 sensations of a flock were in him. A new order of 
 consciousness was close. 
 
 He paused and listened. No sound was audible. 
 Mother's door was closed, but Joan's, he saw, just 
 opposite, stood ajar. A draught blew coldly on him. 
 He tapped gently and, receiving no reply, pushed the 
 door wider and peeped through. The light from 
 the corridor behind poured in. The room was empty, 
 but the sheets, he saw, had not been lain in. 
 
 Recalling then her state of excitement when she 
 went to bed, he searched the flat, peering cautiously 
 
136 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 even into Mother's room, but without result. The 
 front door was bolted on the inner side. She had 
 not left the building. He felt alarmed. Then a 
 cold air stirred the hair of his head, and, looking up, 
 he saw that the trap-door in the ceiling was open and 
 that the ladder looked inviting. It 'jumped ' at him, 
 as he called it, that is it drew his attention as with 
 meaning. So he snatched a rug from the shelf 
 beneath the hat-rack, and, throwing it round his 
 shoulders, clambered up on to the roof. 
 
 It was September and the sky was soft with haze, 
 yet still empty and hungry for the swallows. Round 
 balls of vapour pretending to be solid were being 
 driven by an upper wind across the stars ; but the 
 stars were brilliant and shone through the edges of 
 the vapour. And the night seemed in a glow. The 
 wind did not come down, the roof was still ; the 
 mass of London lay like a smouldering furnace far 
 below, bright patches alternating with deep continents 
 of shadow. He heard the town booming in its sleep, 
 a thick and heavy sound, yet resonant. And at first 
 he saw only a confused forest of chimneys about him 
 that rose somewhat ominously into the air, their 
 crests invisible. Then, suddenly, one of them bent 
 over in a curve, fell silently with marvellous grace 
 upon the leaden covering ; and, fluttering towards 
 him softly as an owl, came some one who had been 
 standing against it — Joan. 
 
 This happened in the first few seconds ; but even 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 137 
 
 before she came he was aware that the strange 
 stirring of inanimate nature in the room below had 
 transferred its magic up here. It was not dis- 
 continuous, that is, but everywhere. It had come 
 down into the flat, as from the outside world, but the 
 singular rhythm emanated first from here — above. 
 Joan had to do with it. 
 
 It was exquisite, this soft feathery way she came 
 to him across the London roof, swooping low as 
 with the flight of an owl, an owl that flies so easily 
 and buoyantly, it seems it never could drop. It 
 was lovely. In some such way a spirit, a dis- 
 embodied life, might be expected to move. He 
 listened with eager intensity for the first word she 
 would utter. 
 
 ' Father,' she whispered, ' it's the Bird 1 ' 
 He felt his entire life leap out on wings into 
 open space. He had asked no questions. She stood 
 in front of him. Her voice, with its curious lilt, 
 seemed on the verge of singing. It came from her 
 lips, but it sounded everywhere about him, as though 
 delivered by the air itself, as though it dropped from 
 the unravelling clouds, as though it fell singing 
 from the paling stars. Night breathed it. And it 
 frightened him — for a moment — out of himself. His 
 ordinary mind seemed loose, uprooted, floating away 
 as though compelling music swayed it into great 
 happiness. His stream of easy breath increased. He 
 touched that indefinable ecstasy which is extension 
 
138 THE PROMISE OF AIR cHAr. 
 
 of consciousness, caused by what men call crudely 
 Beauty. Joy flooded him. 
 
 ' The Bird ! ' He repeated the words below his 
 breath. ' What do you mean } ' Yet, even as he 
 did so, something in him knew. ' A bird in her 
 bosom ' flashed across him from some printed page. 
 The girl, he realised, had been communing with that 
 type of life to which she was so mysteriously akin. 
 Its approach had stirred inanimate nature into 
 language. Meaning had invaded objects, striking 
 rhythm, almost speech, from inert details. Joan had 
 brought this new living thing — new point of view — 
 into the very slates and furniture. 
 
 ' The Bird ! ' he whispered again. 
 
 ' Our Bird ! Daddy.' And she opened her arms 
 like soft white wings, the shawl fluttering from them 
 in the starlight. 
 
 He ought to have said — ' Nonsense ; go back to 
 bed ; you'll catch your death of cold ! ' Or to have 
 asked ' What bird .'' I don't see any bird ! ' — and 
 laughed. Instead he merely echoed her strange 
 remark. He agreed with her. Instinctively, again, 
 he knew something that he didn't know. 
 
 ' So it is ! ' he exclaimed in a whisper of excitement, 
 taking a deeper breath and peering expectantly about 
 him, as though some exhilarating power drew closer 
 with the dawn. ' I do declare ! The Bird — our 
 Bird ! ' 
 
 He caught her hand in his. She was very warm. 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 139 
 
 And, touching her, he was instantly aware of fuller 
 knowledge, yet of less explanation. A sensation of 
 keen delight rose in him, free, light, and airy, new 
 vast possibilities in sight, almost within reach. He 
 caught, for instance, at the meaning of this great 
 rhythm everywhere, this impression that dead objects 
 moved and conveyed a revelation that was so full of 
 meaning it was almost language. Birds saw them 
 thus, flashing above them, noting one swift, crowded 
 series of objects one upon another. It was a runic 
 script in the landscape that birds read and understood 
 in long sentences of colour, shade, and surface, pages 
 full of significant pictured outlines, turning rapidly 
 over as they skimmed the earth. It was a new 
 language, a movement-language. Birds read it out 
 to one another as they flew. They acted it. Their 
 language was one of movement and of action, three- 
 dimensional ; and, whether they flitted from one 
 chimney to another, or travelled from Primrose Hill 
 to the suns of Abyssinia, their lives acted out this 
 significant, silent language. 
 
 High, sweet rapture caught him. Of course birds 
 sang, where men only grunted and animals, still 
 nearer to the ground, were inarticulate with un- 
 rhythmical noises. 
 
 All this flashed and vanished even while his eye 
 lost its way in the canopy of smoky air immediately 
 above him. 
 
 ' Listen ! ' he heard in his ear, like the faint first 
 
I40 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 opening whistle of some tiny songster. 'They're 
 waking now all over England. You felt it in your 
 sleep ! That's what brought you up. It's the 
 moment just before the dawn ! ' 
 
 A million, ten, twenty million birds were waking 
 out of sleep. In field and wood, in copse and hedge 
 and barn, in tall rushes by the lakes, in willows upon 
 river banks, in glens and parks and gardens, on gaunt 
 cliffs above the sea, and on lonely dim salt marshes — 
 everywhere over England the birds were coming 
 back to consciousness. 
 
 It was this vast collective consciousness that had 
 awakened him. He had somehow or other taken on, 
 through Joan, certain conditions of the great Bird- 
 mind. It was marvellous, yet at the time seemed 
 natural. He recalled the strange sentences : all 
 descriptive of a bird's mentality, put into words, of 
 course, by his own brain. The movement of objects 
 was merely their new appearance, seen from above in 
 rapid passage, all speaking, telling something, report- 
 ing to the rushing bird the conditions of the surface 
 where they lay. And those at the point of lowest 
 approach in the curve of flight appeared to ' jump.' 
 The sense of rhythm, moreover, was the outstanding 
 characteristic of feathered life — in song, in movement, 
 in beat of wing, in swinging habits of the larger kind 
 when migration regularly sets in and there is known 
 that ' mighty breath which, in a powerful language, 
 felt not heard, instructs the fowls of heaven.' He 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 141 
 
 had responded somehow to the world of greater 
 rhythms in which all airy life existed, and com- 
 pared with which human existence seemed disjointed, 
 disconnected, incomplete in rhythm. 
 
 ' Air,' he remembered from one of the ridiculous 
 Primers, ' is the highest perception we have, yet we 
 need not be in the air to get this view. We have 
 placed the Heaven within us up there, because it was, 
 physically, our highest place to set it in.' 
 
 ' Listen ! and you'll feel it all over you,' Joan's 
 voice reached him. ' I often come here in the dawn. 
 I know things here.' 
 
 By ' listen ' she meant apparently ' receive,' for no 
 sound was audible except the hum of London town 
 still sleeping heavily. 
 
 ' So this is how you learn things ! From the air ? ' 
 
 ' I don't learn anything — in that sense,' she 
 murmured quickly. ' It's in me. It just flies out — 
 I see it.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' He caught a feather and understood. 
 
 ' Especially when I go like this ! Look, Daddy ! ' 
 And she darted from his side and began on tiptoe 
 a movement, half dance, half flight, between the 
 crowding chimney-stacks. She vanished and re- 
 appeared. He heard no sound. The shadows clothed 
 her, now close, now spread out, like wings whose 
 motion just escaped the measuring eye. And the 
 dance was revealing in some way he could not analyse. 
 She seemed to bring the dawn up. The ugly roof 
 
142 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 turned garden, the chimneys shaded off into trees, as 
 though her little dance flashed aspiration into rigid 
 bricks. She interpreted the flight of darkness, the 
 awakening of wings, the silent rush of dawn. No 
 modern dancer, interpreting Chopin, Schumann, 
 could have given a deeper, truer revelation. She 
 uttered in her movements a language that she read, 
 but a language for the majority at present un- 
 decipherable. Action and gesture interpreted the 
 inarticulate. 
 
 She expressed, he was aware, the return to con- 
 sciousness of the birds ; but at the same time she 
 expressed a new air -born consciousness that was 
 stealing out of the skies upon a yet sleeping world. 
 
 ' By doing it, I understand it,' she laughed softly, 
 but no whit breathless, as she floated back to his side. 
 ' But I can't tell it in words till long afterwards.' 
 
 The east grew lighter. The tips of the fl.ying 
 clouds turned red. A beauty, as of dawn in the 
 mountains, crept slowly over the towered London 
 world. It seemed the spires and soaring chimneys 
 steadied down, as though precipitating a pattern from 
 some intricate movement of the universe. Speech 
 failed him for the moment. For the language of 
 words is but an invention of civilisation, and he had 
 just heard the runic speech that is universal and has 
 no grammar but in natural signs of sky and earth. 
 And then the words he vainly sought dropped into 
 him suddenly from the air. Above him on a chimney 
 
XI THE PROMISE OF AIR 143 
 
 crest a group of starlings fell to chattering gaily ; 
 hidden in the leaves of trees far below he heard the 
 common sparrow chirrup ; the earliest swallows, just 
 awake, flashed overhead, telling the joy of morning 
 in their curves of joy. In the distance triUed a 
 rising lark. 
 
 The wonder and glory of that breaking dawn lay 
 for him, indeed, beyond all telling ; not that he had 
 been insensible to loveliness in Nature hitherto, but 
 that he saw new meaning in it now. In himself he 
 saw it. The point of view was new. To Joan, how- 
 ever, it was merely familiar and natural. But more 
 — he was aware that in him lay the germ, at least, 
 of a new airy consciousness that included it all, and 
 that he longed to share it with the still sleeping world 
 below. A mighty spiritual emotion swept him. 
 
 ' Mother would feel cold, and notice the blacks,' 
 she laughed, but there was love and pity in her 
 laughter. 
 
 For her it was all in the ordinary run and flow of 
 habitual life. She was aware of no exalted state of 
 emotion. She said it as normally as a swallow dares 
 to take an insect from the heart of an amazing sunset. 
 That sunset and that insect both belong to it. There 
 was no need to be hysterical about either one or other. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 He woke In the morning and decided that his 
 experience of the night had been a vivid dream- 
 experience, although that was not to deny a deep 
 reality to it. A sense of uplifting joy was in his 
 heart that was the rhythm of some larger life. A 
 new lightness pervaded his very flesh and bones ; it 
 sent him along the narrow passage to the bathroom — 
 dancing, much to the astonishment of the cook who 
 caught a glimpse of the phenomenon as she stirred 
 the porridge ; it made him sing while he sponged 
 himself, waking Mrs. Wimble earlier than usual and 
 stirring in her an unwelcome reminder that she was 
 older, stouter than she had been. For the singing 
 brought back to her a fugitive memory of a sunny 
 Algerian garden, where life sang to a measure of blue 
 and gold Romance, now vanished beyond recall. 
 ' Joe's odd this morning,' she thought, turning over 
 to sleep upon her other side. 
 
 But Joe, meanwhile, splashed in his bath and went 
 on singing just because he couldn't help himself; his 
 voice was meagre, yet it would come out. He dried 
 
 144 
 
CHAP. XII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 145 
 
 himself, standing in a hot sunbeam on the oil-cloth 
 that made him feel he caught the entire sun. Such 
 a deluge of happiness, confidence, natural bliss seemed 
 in him, seemed everywhere about him too. He could 
 not understand it, but he felt it, and therefore it was 
 real. In the rise and fall of some larger rhythm than 
 he had ever known he swung above a world that 
 could no longer cage him in. He saw the bars below 
 him. Alarm, anxiety, worry, even death were but 
 little obstacles that tried to trip him up and make 
 him stumble, stop, and give up existence as too 
 difficult to face. They lay below him now. He 
 saw them from above. He was in the air. It made 
 him laugh and sing to think that such tricks could 
 ever have frightened or discouraged him. Actually 
 they were but of use to stand on for a leap into the air 
 — taking-off-things, spots to jump from into space. 
 
 ' I can't explain it,' occurred to him, ' so it must 
 be true.' It was a thing his daughter might have 
 said. He shared her point of view, it seemed, 
 completely now. They were in the air together. 
 
 And, though later and by degrees, the airy 
 exhilaration left him, so that he came down to earth 
 and settled, the descent was gradual and without a 
 thud. Something of lightness and of wonder stayed. 
 The memory of some loftier point of view guided 
 him all day long amid the tangle of little difficulties 
 that usually seemed mountainous. He rose lightly 
 above all obstacles that opposed and hindered. He 
 
146 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 saw them from above, that is, he saw them in propor- 
 tion. Stepping on each in turn, he flew easily over 
 every one ; they served their purpose as jumping-off 
 spots for taking flight. It was the Bird's-eye point 
 of view. 
 
 But each time he flew thus, he left his mind 
 behind, using it as a cushion for landing later, 
 easily, without a jarring bump. And thus, before 
 the day was over, he realised somewhat this : that 
 the instantaneous, spontaneous attitude Joan stole 
 from the air and taught him meant simply that the 
 subconscious became convincingly, superbly, conscious. 
 The personality operated as a whole without friction 
 or delay from separate portions that held back and 
 hesitated. All these lesser, separate rhythms merged 
 in one. It mobilised, as with a lightning instinct, the 
 entire available forces of the being. He reacted to 
 every stimulus as a whole, instead of in separate parts. 
 Action and decision came in a single flash ; to reason, 
 judgment, the weighing of pros and cons, and so 
 forth, he appealed afterwards. That is, intuitive 
 knowledge became instantaneous action. 
 
 And, realising this, he also grasped what Joan 
 meant by describing a room as ' happening all at 
 once,' and found meaning also in her nonsense-dream 
 of feeling for the one-ness of all life everywhere. 
 The details of the room could be inserted later 
 according to judgment and desire, and four-footed 
 animals on the ground might also discover later the 
 
xn THE PROMISE OF AIR 147 
 
 point of view of birds who, from a high altitude in 
 the air, saw everything at once. Instantaneous action, 
 immediate conduct, spontaneous behaviour enlisted 
 the supporting drive of the entire universe behind 
 them. Properly accepted, absolutely obeyed, such a 
 way of living ensured inevitable success. It was 
 irresistible ; for since everything was one, each detail 
 was the whole, and no whole could be disobedient or 
 hostile to itself. And this was why he had danced 
 along the passage-way and sung into his sponge. 
 
 Yet this attitude of mind> this point of view, was 
 easily lost again ; it was difficult to hold permanently ; 
 to practise, still more difficult. How to translate it 
 into daily action was the problem. At breakfast this 
 new language of action seemed mere phantasy. He 
 certainly had enjoyed a dream of a three-dimensional 
 language in which objects and things helped to 
 interpret his own wishes ; he remembered that 
 distinctly ; and surely it was not all imagination ? 
 Imagination, he felt sure, included prophecy as well 
 as memory. 
 
 ' It's time we found our country cottage,' he 
 remarked, tasting his crisp Cambridge sausage and 
 bacon. ' I must get to work at once.' 
 
 Mother glanced up over the morning newspaper 
 she had crumpled till it looked like a bundle for 
 lighting the fire. She had ignored the news and 
 been deep in the advertisements. ' It's best to go 
 to the agents,' she observed, folding the paper with 
 
148 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 the creases uneven and the pages mixed, then patting 
 it into flatness. ' And if they're no good, we might 
 insert an advertisement stating our exact require- 
 ments.' She mopped up a remnant of fried egg with 
 a thick wedge of brown bread at the end of her fork. 
 ' A nice neighbourhood's the chief thing, isn't it ? ' 
 
 Her husband straightened the paper so that the 
 creases fitted evenly and the pages lay in sequence. 
 It hurt him acutely to see it twisted ; he felt some- 
 thing out of place inside himself, as though the 
 feathers of a wing were tangled. ' It'll turn up,' he 
 said airily, ' we shall come across it suddenly. I'll 
 go and see some agents all the same, though,' he 
 added. He had the feeling that the right place 
 would hardly come through agents, but would just 
 ' turn up.' Somehow he would be attracted to it : 
 it would be there before his eyes ; it would jump at 
 him. He had already seen so many agents. News- 
 paper advertisements never mentioned it. This 
 strange belief and faith was in him. ' I'll have a 
 look,' he added, as his wife put the plates together, 
 swept some crumbs carefully from the cloth, then 
 tapped the marmalade spoon on the rim of the 
 jar before she sucked it clean. 
 
 ' There's no good just hoping and trusting to 
 chance,' she said in a practical voice. ' Nothing 
 comes l/iat way.' She clicked her tongue, tasting 
 the marmalade reflectively. 
 
 ' On the contrary — everything comes that way.' 
 
XII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 149 
 
 To believe, he grasped, was to act with the Whole in 
 which all that was required lay contained. ' Enquire 
 within upon everything.' He laughed happily. But 
 his wife had not followed his thought — nor heard him. 
 
 ' That's turnip rind, not oranges,' she added. 
 ' They sell you anything nowadays, and everything's 
 adulterated ' and laid the spoon aside. 
 
 ' In the country we'll make our own,' her husband 
 interrupted. ' Delicious stuff! ' 
 
 ' If we ever get there,' she replied, ' and if sugar 
 ever goes down again, and we can get servants who'll 
 condescend to stay. There's no good being too 
 remote, remember, or we won't keep a single one. 
 Servants won't stand being dull.' She sighed. Life 
 to her spelt apprehension. 
 
 ' Well, we've agreed on Sussex, haven't we ? ' 
 he answered cheerfully, hunting for his lost new 
 attitude again. ' A nice bit of wayward Sussex, 
 where there are trees and fields and perhaps a snap 
 of running water so that the birds'U come — ' he saw 
 the cloud on Mother's face — ' Oh, but in a nice 
 neighbourhood with decent neighbours,' he added, 
 'and a town not too far away, with a cinema and 
 shops, and so on. Oh, it will come all right. Mother, 
 don't you worry. We'll find it sure enough — prob- 
 ably this very day. I feel it coming ; it's close 
 already ; I can almost see it at this moment.' 
 
 ' It's there, waiting for us all the time. The 
 very place,' said Joan suddenly, clapping her hands 
 
I50 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 softly, and meeting her father's eye. ' Only we've 
 got to want it enough and ' 
 
 ' Tidy up your place, child,' said Mother sharply, 
 ' and fold your serviette. It's time you were at your 
 scales.' She sighed as Joan obeyed and left the 
 room, and two minutes later, while Mother made 
 notes on a squeaky slate for dinner, the sound of 
 C major came to them through the wall, going 
 rapidly up and down again with both hands. Only 
 it was accompanied by a clear and happy voice that 
 sang the notes, or rather sang a running melody to 
 them that turned even the technical routine into 
 music. The drudgery, though faithfully done, 
 brought its fulfilment almost within reach. Like a 
 bird, she leaped upon the promise and enjoyed it. 
 Scales and music, toil and its results, prophecy and 
 its accomplishment — even in this tiny detail — seemed 
 present in her simultaneously. Carelessness and 
 faithful plodding method went side by side. This 
 came to her father as he lit his pipe and listened to 
 the pure childish voice that unconsciously sang mean- 
 ing, even beauty, into formal rigid outline. 
 
 ' An all-at-once and all-over little creature,' he 
 heard something whisper to him. ' Care-less and 
 happy as a bird. The true air quality ! That's the 
 way, of course. I see it — a sort of bird's-eye view 
 of beginning and end in one. The joy of fulfil- 
 ment shining through the actual work. I'll find 
 the cottage that way too ! ' 
 
X.I THE PROMISE OF AIR 151 
 
 He pufFed thick clouds of smoke between himself 
 and his wife, who stood watching him, a touch of 
 apprehension about her somewhere, impatience as 
 well. She too was listening. He recalled the smile 
 of the badger at the mouth of its hole. But, at any 
 rate, it was a faithful, practical, and affectionate 
 badger. Moreover, once — strange memory — it had 
 known wings, it had been a bird ! Wrong methods 
 had brought it down to earth. It puzzled him 
 dreadfully, yet rather sweetly. The bird, he fancied, 
 must still he hidden in her somewhere. 
 
 ' Joan never can do one thing properly at a time — 
 not even her scales,' she was saying. ' There she is, 
 trying to sing before she's learnt her notes. I wish 
 you'd speak to her about it. But, if you ask me, I 
 think it's good money wasted — those music lessons.' 
 
 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 ! ' 
 
15a THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' 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 passage 
 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 careless- 
 ness 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, every- 
 thing. 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 accom- 
 plishment 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'U^ 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 
 
xn THE PROMISE OF AIR 153 
 
 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 cocked 
 sideways at a crumb of bread — poise, alertness, happi- 
 ness in the attitude and gesture. 
 
 ' Well,' he asked, ' what is it now ? ' And point- 
 ing 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.' 
 
 ' AU 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'U 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. 
 
154 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 ' Ah,' he cried, ' I put all this into you uncon- 
 sciously, 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 Sussex 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 pass 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 attion. 
 The bird's-eye view, involving bird's-eye action, 
 alone could manage it. It was a case of flow, fly. 
 
xn THE PROMISE OF AIR 155 
 
 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 sure- 
 footed, 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 passages to dim old gleaming 
 Hercules adrift in open space, to Cassiopeia, 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 
 
156 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, xn 
 
 special favours, least of all suffer the smallest prick 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 advertisements 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 anticipatory 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 
 
 157 
 
1^8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 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 femily. 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 
 employe in some motor works, owned several ex- 
 pensive cars. 
 
 Joan, ignorant of the strange modern slang they 
 
xHi THE PROMISE OF AIR 159 
 
 used, hodded sweetly, then turned to watch the 
 surging throng of energetic humanity on the pave- 
 ment 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 goir^g 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 amuse- 
 ment 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 space, let them know freedom, light- 
 ness, spontaneous carelessness. If they would only 
 dance — it would be something. 
 
i6o THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' And all going to the same place,' she added 
 aloud. She sighed. 
 
 ' I hope to God they're not,' said Tom in his 
 scratchy voice, thinking of the cinema. 
 
 ' Eh ? ' remarked IVIr. Spindle, with a thrust 
 forward of his head. 
 
 The motor-bus lumbered into the Circus and 
 drew up, leaning over to one side. 
 
 ' So long,' said Tom to his friend, ' we push ofF 
 here.' 
 
 Mr. Spindle offered his hand to Joan, who shook 
 it, but looked past him, refusing the gleaming eye 
 he offered her at the same time. They clambered 
 down to their parents on the pavement, and joined 
 the throng that swept heavily into the pretentious 
 doorways of the cinema building. As they went 
 in Joan glanced at her mother and realised that she 
 loved her. She looked so worried and so helpless. 
 It was pathetic how heavily she moved. Age ! The 
 age of the body, of course. But why should she be 
 old ? She was barely forty. She was out, seeking 
 with a good expenditure of energy, for pleasure. It 
 struck the girl suddenly that her mother's ignor- 
 ance was singular. She knew so little. Somewhere 
 about her — at the corners of her mouth, flickering 
 in her opaque eyes, in the tilt of her ears — was still a 
 vestige of youth and fun and joy. But Mother 
 ignored it, crawling willingly with the herd. Yet 
 the bird lurked in her surely. In spite of this heavy 
 
XIII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR i6i 
 
 crawling, there were wings tucked away in her 
 somewhere. 
 
 ' Mother, we're out on a spree,' whispered Joan. 
 ' Wherever we are, we go ! Let me carry your 
 bag?' 
 
 ' Eh, Joan ? What d'you say ? Don't shove, my 
 love. We shall get nowhere thai way.' It was the 
 Is-my-hat-on-straight tone of voice — self the centre. 
 She yielded the tiresome bag gratefully. 
 
 ' Everywhere, mother,' Joan whispered gaily. 
 ' We'll get everywhere because we belong everywhere. 
 Besides I'm not shoving.' 
 
 She glanced round at the other people, all pressing 
 thickly towards the booking-office. All of them had 
 troubles, joys, hopes, fears, and vague desires. All 
 were out to enjoy themselves. Only their faces were 
 so anxious, lined, and care-worn. They wore an 
 enormous quantity of manufactured clothing, and 
 each article of clothing represented similar joys, 
 hopes, fears, and vague desires, complicated toil of 
 those who had made and sold them. 
 
 She felt a curious longing — to collect them all 
 together on the roof one morning so that they 
 might dance and hear the birds sing at dawn. If 
 only they could realise the bird-life and what it 
 meant — care-less, happy, singing, dancing ; deep 
 purpose underneath it all, but that purpose not 
 clogged with the stupefying detail of unimport- 
 ant items. The trouble all had taken to clothe 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 themselves suitably for this particular enjoyment was 
 alone enough to kill any spontaneity. She smelt 
 the fields, the keen, fresh air, the dew. She heard 
 a lark rise whistling through the silver air. . . . 
 
 And she glanced back at her mother. Her mother 
 was obviously adorned — with effort and difRculty. 
 She looked as if she had walked through a Liberty 
 curtain and parts of the curtain had stuck to her in 
 patches. This complexity of cloth and silk and 
 beads was wrong — funny at any rate. She sighed. 
 
 ' It's all right,' said her father, catching the sigh 
 behind him. 'We must take our turn, you know. 
 But I'm out for the best seats — no matter what it 
 costs.' It was like a breath of air to hear him say it. 
 
 ' Extravagance,' put in Mother under her breath, 
 overhearing. ' But it is an exception, isn't it .'' ' 
 Her mind fixed upon the difficxilt side of existence, 
 the cost in labour and in pain. 
 
 ' Eh .'' ' said Wimble. He put his gaudy tie 
 straight with a free half-finger. 
 
 ' It isn't every night, I mean,' whispered Mother. 
 ' It's an exception.' She looked challengingly at 
 the listening crowd. It was very warm. The air 
 smelt of people, clothes, and cheap scent. She was 
 aware of scullery-maids, boot-polish, stable-boys, and 
 wages. The ham in the larder — had they put the 
 fly-cover over it ? Oh dear, how sordid even enjoy- 
 ment was ! 
 
 ' Move on, please,' boomed the deep voice of a 
 
xm THE PROMISE OF AIR 163 
 
 policeman, and everybody moved on a step or half 
 a step, casting looks of admiration, respect, and 
 exasperation at the Great Bobby who represented 
 rigidity, law, order, and that vague, distant power — 
 the Government. To be spontaneous meant to be 
 arrested, evidently. 
 
 ' Wot've you got left ? ' asked Wimble mildly, 
 facing at last the booking-clerk, then added quickly, 
 ' Good. I'll take the three,' and put the money 
 down. ' No — four, I mean ; four, of course. How 
 stupid of me ! Thanks, thanks very much.' He had 
 forgotten himself. Also, he had felt for a second that 
 he couldn't afford the price, but yet somehow it didn't 
 matter. It was stupid, it was extravagant, it was un- 
 practical ; no one in their senses could have approved 
 his conduct. The clerk had explained briefly that no 
 cheap seats were left ; there was nothing under four 
 shillings — and Wimble, without an instant's hesita- 
 tion, had snapped up the expensive seats. 
 
 Joan witnessed it with a rush of joy. She saw 
 her father slip several silver discs across the counter 
 and take pink slips of paper in exchange. But it 
 was not his extravagance, nor the prospect of greater 
 comfort, that caused her joy ; it was the unhesitating 
 spontaneity. Daddy had not haggled ; without hesi- 
 tation he had taken the risk. He had flown. . . . 
 In reality he could not afford it, yet only a stingy 
 convention might have urged him to be careful. 
 And he had not been care-full. 
 
1 64 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Take no thought . . . ' whispered a voice — was 
 it Joan's ? — in his ear, as they pressed forward. And, 
 as a consequence, he immediately bought several 
 programmes where one would have been sufficient. 
 Ah ! They were in full flight. Their wings were 
 spread. The earth lay mapped beneath them. In 
 the silver, dewy dawn they flew. How keen the 
 sweet, fresh air. . . . ! 
 
 He looked at her. ' You don't earn the family 
 income, my dear,' he observed drily, half-ashamed, 
 half-proud. He fingered the pink tickets nervously, 
 clumsily. 
 
 ' But I will,' she replied. ' Besides, there's heaps 
 for everybody really.' 
 
 ' You're an unpractical absurdity,' he murmured — 
 then gasped. 
 
 It was the child's reply that made him gasp : 
 
 ' We're ahve ! So we deserve it.' 
 
 They swept the meadows and the pine copse in their 
 flight. There was a crimson dawn. They smelt the sea, 
 the wide salt marshes. Freedom of space was theirs. 
 
 Perhaps he didn't quite understand what she 
 meant, yet it made him feel happy and careless. In 
 a sense it made him feel — spiritual. She had said 
 something that was beyond the reach of language, 
 of accurate language. But it was true, true as a 
 turnip. It satisfied him as a mouthful of mashed 
 potatoes, and was as easy to eat and swallow. What 
 a simile ! He laughed to himself. 
 
xm THE PROMISE OF AIR 165 
 
 ' Be more accurate in your language,' he said 
 slyly. 
 
 ' And stick in grammar all your life ! ' she replied. 
 They moved on. Tom looked superior and aloof. 
 He did not belong to this ridiculous party. 
 
 ' Hurry up, Daddy,' and Joan poked him in the 
 ribs. ' Mother's waiting. You're thinking of your 
 old Primers.' It was true. He had paused a 
 moment. A sentence had flashed into his mind and 
 made him stop, while Mother and Tom were waiting 
 in the corridor beyond, something about the ' courage 
 of a fly.' 
 
 A fly, the most fearless of attack of all creatures, 
 an insect incapable of fear. He remembered that 
 Athena gave Menelaus, in order that he might resist 
 Hector — what .'' Not weapons or money or skill 
 or strength. No. Athena gave him — ' the courage 
 of a fly.' 
 
 It struck him suddenly that the reckless courage 
 of a fly — a fly that settles on the nose, the lips, the 
 hand of a being enormously more powerful and 
 terrible than itself — was unequalled among all living 
 creatures. No lion or tiger dared the half, no man 
 the quarter. But a fly, depending solely on its 
 swift, unconquerable wings and power of darting 
 flight, risked these amazing odds. He — in paying 
 this high price for the tickets recklessly — had shown 
 the courage of the fly : the sneers of Tom, the abuse 
 of Mother, the scorn of cautious and careful con- 
 
1 66 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 vention. He had the money in his pocket, then 
 why not spend it ? His labour had deserved it ; he 
 had earned it ; he was indeed ' alive.' Like an 
 audacious fly he had settled on the nose of Fate. 
 And all this Joan had snapped into a sentence : 
 
 ' We deserve it. We're alive ! ' 
 
 ' Is it all right, dear 1 ' asked Mother anxiously. 
 She was stuck with her elaborate flounces in a corner 
 of the corridor. The programme-seller was at her 
 elbow, pressingly. 
 
 ' All right,' he replied, waving the programmes 
 like a flag of victory, and led the way towards the 
 seats. ' Everything's paid.' He bowed, dismiss- 
 ingly, to the girl. He walked on his toes. 
 
 They went in. Mother flounced down proudly, 
 as though the cost, the risk, were hers. Anyhow, 
 they had paid for their seats and had a right to 
 them. Now they could see the show in comfort 
 and with easy consciences. There was a vague feel- 
 ing that too much had been expended, but it was 
 discreetly ignored. Vanity forbade. Economy 
 might follow. Let it follow. They could enjoy 
 themselves for a few hours. They wouU enjoy them- 
 selves. Some one had paid good money and money 
 well earned. Uneasiness was vulgar. Daddy's flying 
 attitude influenced them all secretly, and the great 
 human power of make-believe, so gingerly expended 
 as a rule, asserted itself. They took the moment as 
 birds take the air. They flew with him. 
 
xui THE PROMISE OF AIR 167 
 
 Settling; themselves into their front-row seats, 
 they fingered their programmes, and felt like Royalty. 
 
 Mother looked round her at the inferior human 
 mass. ' We can see quite well,' she observed. 
 ' You were lucky, Joe. You got good seats.' She 
 was wholly unaware that she tried her wings. 
 
 ' Not b^d,' scratched Tom, equally unaware that 
 he flew behind her, though parting from the sticky 
 loamy soil with difficulty. Had his companion of 
 the motor-bus been with him, he would doubtless 
 have said ' Good egg ! ' instead. 
 
 ' It's all right,' said Wimble. ' Like to see a 
 programme ? ' He passed over several — all he had. 
 He felt uplifted, without knowing why. He felt 
 reckless, extravagant, careless, happy. He had 
 touched the element of air without knowing it. 
 He had forgotten ' money,' toil, conventional rigid 
 formality, the terror of the herd, everything that 
 compressed life into a four-footed rut, like the rut 
 trodden by cows and pigs and rabbits. He had, 
 for a moment, left the earth. He had, however, no 
 idea that he was hovering in mid-air. Having 
 taken a risk with courage — the courage of the 
 fly — he was not quite positive of his dizzy elevation. 
 The strange, intuitive, natural certainty of Joan was 
 not yet quite his. He caught his breath a little in 
 this rarefied air, from this spiritual point of view — 
 this bird's-eye aspect — he was by no means sure of 
 himself. 
 
1 68 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 The rush of the wonderful cinema then began, 
 and he forgot himself. 
 
 They experienced the sense such a performance 
 leaves behind of having been — as Mother put it — all 
 over the place. Sitting in the dark the individual 
 at first is conscious only of himself, neighbours 
 ignored if not forgotten. The screen then flashes 
 into light, and with the picture, consciousness flashes 
 across the world. The lie of the stationary photo- 
 graph is corrected, time is denied, partially at least, 
 and space is unable to boast and swagger as it loves 
 to do. The cinema frees and extends the conscious- 
 ness, restores the past, and sets distance close beneath 
 the eyes. Only the watching self remains — pregnant 
 symbol !^ — in the darkness. 
 
 It was one of the best performances in London ; 
 within an hour or two the audience danced from the 
 dingy streets of the metropolis into the sunlight of 
 India, Africa, and of islands among far southern seas. 
 The kaleidoscope of other lands and other ways of 
 thinking, acting, living carried them away with 
 understanding sympathy. From savage wild life 
 drinking at water-holes in the sun-drenched Tropics, 
 they darted across half-charted oceans and watched 
 the penguin and the polar bear amid arctic ice. Over 
 mountains, down craters, flying above cities and 
 peering deep under water, the various experiences of 
 strange distant life came into their ken. They flew 
 about the planet. The leaders of the world gazed 
 
xin THE PROMISE OF AIR 169 
 
 at them, so close and real that their emotions were 
 legible on their magnified features. They smiled or 
 frowned, then flashed away, and yet still were there, 
 living, thinking, willing this and that. Widely 
 separated portions of the vast human family pre- 
 sented themselves vigorously, registered a tie of 
 kinship, and were gone again about their business, 
 now become in some sense the business of the 
 audience too. Fighting, toiling, loving, hating, 
 meeting death and adventure by sea and land, 
 creating and destroying, differing much in colour, 
 custom, clothing, and the rest, yet human as Wimble 
 and his family were human, possessed with the same 
 griefs, hopes, and joys, the same passion to live, the 
 same fear of death — one great family. 
 
 Joan slipped her arm into that of her father ; 
 they nestled closely, very much in sympathy as the 
 world rushed past their eyes upon the screen. 
 
 ' We're flying,' she whispered, with a squeeze, as 
 the penguins on the polar ice gave place to a scene 
 of negroes sweating in the sun and munching sugar- 
 cane while they lazily picked the fluffy cotton. 
 ' We're everywhere all-at-once, don't you see ? ' A 
 moment later, as though to point her words, they 
 looked down upon a mapped-out county from an 
 aeroplane. The unimportance of earth was visible 
 in the distance. 
 
 ' You can't fly under water anyhow,' mumbled 
 Wimble, as they left the air and flashed with a sub- 
 
170 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 marine upon sponges, coral, and inquisitive, perfectly 
 poised fish. A black man was trying to knife a 
 shark. 
 
 ' I can see what they feel though,' was the 
 whispered answer. ' Inside their watery minds, I 
 mean.' 
 
 ' Wherever I am I go,' he thought, but didn't 
 say it, because by the time he had reflected how 
 foolish it was to remain stuck only upon the minute 
 point of his own tiny personal experience, they were 
 climbing with a scientific Italian of eminence down 
 a crater full of smoke and steam, and could almost 
 hear the thunder of the explosions. But while they 
 went down, everything else went up. Smoke, steam, 
 masses of rock all trying to rise. ' Gravity is the 
 devil,' he remembered ; ' it keeps us from flying into 
 the sun.' 
 
 The idea made him chuckle, and Joan pinched 
 his arm, giggling too audibly in her excitement. 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said Mother. They watched in silence 
 then ; a bird's-eye view of the planet was what they 
 watched. With each picture they took part. Every 
 corner of the globe, with its different activities, 
 touched their hearts and minds with interest — busy, 
 rushing life in various forms, and all going on 
 simultaneously, at this very moment — now. Life 
 obviously was one. The strange unity was con- 
 vincing. Nothing they saw was alien to themselves, 
 for they took part in it. In each picture they 
 
XIII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 171 
 
 ' wondered what it felt like.' They took for an 
 instant, longer or shorter, the point of view of a new 
 aspect of life, of something as yet they had not 
 actually experienced. They longed — or dreaded — to 
 stand within that huge cavern of blue lonely ice and 
 hear the waves of the Polar Sea lick up the snow ; 
 to taste that sugary cane with animal-white teeth, and 
 feel the fluffy cotton between thick, lumpy fingers ; 
 to swim under water and look up instead of down ; 
 to crawl fearfully a little nearer to the molten centre 
 of the planet through smoke and fire and awful 
 thundering explosions. They longed , or dreaded. 
 Mentally, that is, they experienced a new relationship 
 in each separate case, a relationship that stretched 
 a suburban consciousness beyond its normal ken. 
 
 ' It's very tiring,' mentioned Mother, during a 
 brief interval of glaring light, * and hurts my eyes. 
 And I can't see why they want to show us those half- 
 naked natives. I'm glad I'm English. Disgusting 
 people, I call them.' 
 
 ' They'll improve it, you know,' observed Tom ; 
 'the flickering, I mean. It's a great invention. Some- 
 body made a bit of cash there all right.' 
 
 One couple, at any rate, in the four-shilling seats 
 felt the tie and knew their consciousness extended to 
 include them all. They were engaged with all these 
 various folk and multifarious activities. Humanity 
 was one. The cinema shouted it aloud. The sense 
 of collective consciousness was stirred. 
 
172 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Well,' gasped Mother, blinking her eyes in the 
 sudden light at the end, ' that was a show, wasn't it ? ' 
 She seemed tired rather than exhilarated. 
 
 'Not half,' declared Tom, feeling for his cigarettes. 
 He kept the programmes, putting both into his 
 pocket. 
 
 ' I'm glad I'm English anyhow,' repeated Mother, 
 stationary at the mouth of her hole in the ground ; 
 but whether she despised the Hottentots, the Eskimo, 
 or the penguins, she did not specify. It was her 
 final verdict merely. The statement said simply 
 that she was satisfied to be her little self, balanced 
 safely on a clod of earth, in a spot of the universe 
 called England. Extension of consciousness gave 
 her no joy at all. She felt unsafe. 
 
 They left the theatre slowly, their minds shrinking 
 back with a touch of disappointment, almost of pain, 
 within the prescribed limits of normal, practical life 
 again. Wimble felt he had been flying, and had just 
 come back ; he settled with difficulty. In the brief 
 space between the vestibule and the door his thoughts 
 continued flying. There was excitement and antici- 
 pation in him. ' The next stage,' he said to him- 
 self, ' will be hearing. We shall hear the people 
 talk. After that — not so very far away either — we 
 shall see 'em now, and no interval of time at all. 
 Machinery won't be used. Our minds will do the 
 trick. We'll see everywhere with our thoughts ! ' 
 He remembered his Telepathy Primer, giving in- 
 
xni THE PROMISE OF AIR 173 
 
 dividual instances, as authentic and well proven as 
 any reasonable person could desire. He felt sure 
 this vast, general development must follow — some 
 faculty of air, swift and flashing as light— the bird's- 
 eye view. 
 
 The murky street, with its damp and chilly air, 
 struck him in the face as he stood with his family a 
 moment, then walked down the steps. There was 
 still a luminous glow in the western sky above the 
 roofs. Mother took his arm to steady herself ; Tom 
 was behind, his eyes roving hungrily ; Joan flitted 
 just in front. 
 
 ' Our 'bus is over there,' said Mother, pointing 
 with a black-gloved hand. 
 
 ' We'll take a taxi, my dear,' was his reply. He 
 hailed one, bundled his astonished family inside, 
 wished the driver ' Good-evening ' with a smile, and 
 slammed the door upon his own coat-tails. 
 
 'But you haven't told him the address,' said Mother. 
 
 ' He ought to know,' exclaimed Wimble, ' but 
 he's not a bird yet, so I'd better tell him.' 
 
 ' It might be safer,' added his wife sarcastically, 
 holding on to his coat-tails as he leaned out of the 
 window to do so. 
 
 He watched the crowd as they whirled away ; he 
 felt happy, happy, happy. With the damp London 
 air he felt as though a part of him still sweltered in 
 the golden sunshine, diving under blue clear water 
 where the sponges and the corals grew. Soft breezes 
 
174 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, xm 
 
 touched his cheek one minute, the next he laid his 
 hand on glittering ice. He heard the surf crashing 
 upon a palm-clad reef. . . . These thronging people, 
 policemen, costers, shop-folk, pale-faced workers, 
 and over-dressed men and women of the big houses, 
 all had some link with himself, that had been drawn 
 closer ; but so had the swarthy half-naked folk at the 
 Antipodes who had just claimed his consciousness. 
 They were all one really. Each nation seemed a mood. 
 The sense of oneness leaped upon his heart and 
 seized him. 
 
 ' It all happened without our even moving,' as 
 Joan had said on the way home. ' I suppose every- 
 thing's in us then, really. We're everywhere.' And 
 while Tom's superior ' Oh, cut it out ' seemed more 
 than usually ignorant and silly. Wimble's heart 
 flamed within him. For it came to him, like a 
 promise of wind-borne freedom, that there existed in 
 his own being an immense and mighty under-side 
 that was only waiting to be organised into fuller, 
 even into all-embracing, consciousness. Man, he 
 felt sure again, was a cosmic, not only a planetary, 
 being. He could know the stars. The real self 
 was of air. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ' Look here, Father,' said Joan next day, * why is 
 
 it ' then paused, unable apparently to express 
 
 herself. 
 
 'Eh, child?' He gasped, thinking her question 
 consisted of those three words alone, and wondering 
 how in the world he was going to satisfy her. 
 
 'Why is it,' she went on the next moment, 'that 
 wherever we are we want to be somewhere else, and 
 whatever we know we want to know something else 
 — more at any rate ? And we never want it alone. 
 We' want to tell everything to some one else, I mean.' 
 
 Father almost preferred the first question — it left 
 openings for vaguer answers. This definiteness in- 
 creased his difficulty rather. He scratched his head 
 and passed his fingers through his hair, which looked 
 just then as if it would neither stay on nor down. 
 He smoothed it deliberately, thinking as hard and 
 quickly as he could. He knew what the girl meant, 
 of course, more or less. 
 
 ' The instinct to share what we like is, I suppose, 
 
 a proof that we ' he was going to say. 
 
 I7S 
 
176 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 Before he could utter the words, however, she 
 answered for him : ' Because we ought to be every- 
 v^ere at once and know everything at once — like in 
 that cinema. Isn't that it ? ' 
 
 Mother, it so chanced, just then went past the 
 open door along the corridor ; she went steadily, 
 not to say heavily ; she was obviously in one place 
 at a time, doing one thing at a time, a worthy, 
 practical, useful human being, and what the world 
 considers a valuable unit of humanity — yet surely, 
 oh, surely, wrong and a wing-less entity clogged with 
 earth and the limits that earth-ignorance involved. 
 She was on her way to scold the servant, to order 
 dinner, or to fetch socks to mend. Good. But it was 
 the way she went about her job — the un-birdy way — 
 that proved the badger in her. Air and the careless joy 
 of air was nowhere in her, not even in her most helpful 
 actions. ' One should take life as a bird takes the air,' 
 he was thinking again. It had become a motto. 
 
 And a flood of shadowy thoughts swept down 
 upon his mind. Joan, when he turned to find her, 
 had already gone from the room. He was alone. 
 The half-read newspaper lay upon his knee ; Tom 
 had long since gone to the office ; the sun shone in 
 across the sea of roofs and chimney-pots ; he saw a 
 white, soft, fluffy cloud bedded in the blue. A 
 swift shot gloriously across the narrow strip of sky. 
 And this flood of shadow thoughts poured in and 
 out of his mind like a hundred thousand swifts. 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 177 
 
 They would have filled an entire Primer if written 
 out and printed ; but in his mind, together with 
 their host of suggestive correlations, they flashed and 
 vanished with the speed and ease of the swift, a bird 
 that seemed only wings, without body, legs, or head — 
 powerful, graceful flight personified. The laborious 
 absurdity of words made him feel helpless and rather 
 stupid. He felt lonely, too, exiled from a finer, 
 easier state of being to which something in him 
 properly and rightfully belonged. The wings of the 
 spirit stirred and fluttered in him. He sighed. 
 Joan's sentence vibrated in him like a song, for 
 nothing so much as music sets free the bird in human 
 beings, enabling the soul to soar beyond all possible 
 categories of time and space, beyond all confinements 
 and limitations, even beyond death. 
 
 It was his daughter's remark that led in this 
 rushing shower of thoughts that followed : ' Why is 
 it that, wherever we are, we want to be elsewhere .'' ' 
 
 People as a whole were always afflicted with this 
 desire to be somewhere else. It was true. In 
 London he longed for windy lanes, but in the windy 
 lanes he thought how nice it would be to see the 
 shops and people in the streets ; at a party he would 
 think with longing of the cosy room at home, the 
 book and chair beside the fire-corner with his pipe, 
 yet in that corner with pipe and book he would 
 suddenly lay them down and remember with envy 
 the gaiety of company, the talk, the laughter, and 
 
178 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 the bright companionship he was missing. It was 
 often, if not always, so : the desire to be elsewhere 
 and otherwise seemed inherent in human beings ; 
 they were never content or satisfied with the place 
 they were in at a given moment. 
 
 ' It's the restlessness of the race,' he decided, ' for 
 whom movement is so laborious, slow, and costly. 
 If they moved as a bird moves, swiftly, instantly, 
 and without trouble or cost, this restlessness would 
 not be felt.' 
 
 Then he paused. ' But it's not merely that,' 
 flashed through him, ' far, far more. It's the ex- 
 pression of a strange and deep belief : the belief that 
 we ought to be, and should be, can be everywhere 
 at once. This power lies in us somewhere, only as 
 yet we haven't discovered how to use it. . . . But 
 it's coming, and air and flight, wings and speed 
 are already its beckoning symbols. We're being 
 mysteriously quickened. We ought to be able to 
 know everything, and to be everywhere, at once, in 
 touch with all the universe, able to draw on all its 
 powers. We have the right. This longing so to 
 know and be, this uneasy yearning in us, what is it but 
 an affirmation, a conviction that we can so be ? Our 
 wings go fluttering in our tiny cages. Wherever I am 
 I go — and I am wherever my thought and desire are.' 
 
 He sat back and thought about it. It seemed to 
 him a great discovery. He felt sure that somewhere 
 in himself lay the power to be everywhere at once. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 179 
 
 one with everybody and everything. To be aware 
 of everybody everywhere was the first step at any 
 rate, and the cinema had dropped a hint that it was 
 coming. 
 
 ' Well — but the practical meaning of it — what ? 
 The use that people like Mother should make of it — 
 what ? Bodies will never actually, fly. Certainly 
 not, but thought flies already, and it only remains 
 for consciousness to accompany it. Bodies, of course, 
 are earth ; yet they will, they must, grow lighter, 
 more responsive, both as receiving and transmitting 
 instruments, consciousness no longer focussed only 
 where the body is. We shall be human cinemas,' 
 he thought, 'going where we will, instantaneously 
 and easily as a bird, seeing all and knowing all. 
 Universal consciousness, of course, is a spiritual con- 
 dition ; it is an Air quality, space and time denied. 
 The Kingdom of Air is within us. We shall 
 experience air with its collective instantaneity. . . .' 
 
 He folded his newspaper and went down the 
 narrow corridor to his little private den. ' Oh, that 
 I had the wings of a dove,' occurred to him and 
 made him smile. ' A cry of the soul, of course,' he 
 realised, as he took his twenty limited steps between 
 the rigid walls. He stubbed his toe against the 
 desk, and sat down in his revolving chair. 
 
 The ideas set in motion by Joan's remark con- 
 tinued flowing, flying through him. He seized what 
 he could catch. 
 
i8o THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Our bodies, responding to a swifter, happier, more 
 careless attitude of mind, will gradually grow lighter, 
 more sensitive ; become less dense and earthy ; until 
 at last we shall feel with everybody everywhere. No 
 longer separate and cut off from others, divided as 
 earth is divided, we shall win this immense increase 
 of sympathy and be everywhere we want to be, 
 every-at-once, as Joan put it. We shall move with 
 our thought — air ! We shall have instantaneity — 
 air again ! Our bodies may not fly, but our con- 
 sciousness will fly to one another, as light flies across 
 the universe unerringly from sun to sun — bodies of 
 light. Like the birds in England, we shall know 
 when the Siberian ice has broken. We shall be ofi^ ! ' 
 
 The thrill of some mighty wisdom came very near. 
 
 He became strangely aware — it was like the 
 lifting of great wings within his soul — that this 
 collective, airy consciousness was already gathering 
 the world into a flock ; and it was the cinema, 
 explained by Joan's brief sentence, that flashed 
 the amazing and uplifting thought upon him. 
 
 Whirling round and round in his revolving chair, 
 reason tried to grapple with the rush of ideas. The 
 contents of a hundred Primers rose higgledy-piggledy, 
 to congest his mind and memory. But his soul, 
 rising like a lark, outdistanced everything he had ever 
 read. The one clear dazzling certainty was this : 
 ' We shall no longer be cut oiF and separate from 
 others.' A variant, surely, of loving, and therefore 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR i8i 
 
 knowing, all neighbours as ourselves. A thousand 
 years as one day ! To be everywhere at once and to 
 know everybody was, after all, but to slip the cables 
 of the tiny, separate self, and experience the Whole. 
 Hence the desire to be always elsewhere and other- 
 wise. Hence, too, the innate yearning to share 
 experiences of all kinds with others. ' Nirvana ' 
 dropped from a forgotten Primer into him, and for 
 the first time pages of laborious explanation utterly 
 ignored, he grasped its gracious meaning fully. ' To 
 meet the Lord in the air and be for ever with him,' 
 came another cliche. They poured and rained upon 
 him in their naked meanings, undisguised by words. 
 
 ' Ah ! To live in the Whole was not, then, to 
 lose individuality, but to extend and share it ! ' He 
 spun round and round happily in his chair. ' Grand 
 bird idea, and air ideal ! ' He saw in his heart the 
 nations taking wing at last, leaving earth below 
 them, free of space and free of time, sharing this new 
 and undivided consciousness. It was spiritual, of 
 course ; yet not an inaccessible nor a different state ; 
 it was a state growing naturally and truly out of the 
 physical. Spontaneous living and the bird's-eye point 
 of view were the first faint signs of its approach. . . . 
 
 The chair stopped turning, while he filled and lit 
 his pipe, watching the clouds of blue smoke float here 
 and there in wreaths and eddies. Joan's eyes peered 
 across it at him like a phantom's. . . . ' It's immense, 
 but very simple,' he was thinking, ' her funny little 
 
1 82 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 song puts it all in a nutshell . . . and the way she 
 tries to live . . .' when a heavy tread disturbed him 
 and something came into the room. 
 
 ' Joe dear ! ' said his wife as she entered, — ' but 
 you've got no air here ! ' She opened a window, 
 while he at once sprang up and opened another. 
 Her manner gave him the impression that she had 
 come in with a definite purpose ; she had something 
 important she wished to say. He decided to let it 
 come out naturally. He would wait. 
 
 ' Not both,' she said, ' it makes a draught,' and 
 closed her own. 
 
 ' Bless you, my dear,' he exclaimed, ' you do look 
 after me splendidly.' He gave her a sudden hug 
 and kiss that startled her. Looking at him in a 
 puzzled, wistful way, she smiled, and something of 
 long-forgotten days slipped in magically between them 
 for an instant. He saw a yellow scarf across the 
 smoke ; she saw perhaps, a breathless boy with a field 
 of golden buttercups behind him. . . . 
 
 ' You catch cold so easily,' she mumbled, then 
 added quickly, ' the country will suit us all better, 
 won't it .'' ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered, ' yet, once we're there, we 
 shall want to be somewhere else, I suppose ' 
 
 ' Oh, I hope not, Joe,' with a Martha sigh. 
 ' Whatever makes you think that ? ' 
 
 ' We can be, anyhow ; we must remember that.' 
 
 ' Oh dear, Joe, you're very restless these days,' 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 183 
 
 she exclaimed, and the way she said it made him 
 realise her customary load of apprehension, her care- 
 full, heavy way of taking life, seeing the difficulties 
 first. Pessimism was a sure sign of waning life- 
 forces. He felt pity and sympathy. And instantly 
 an eddy of his recent whirlwind ideas swept down 
 upon him and joy followed. He longed to com- 
 municate this joy to his wife, the joy she had known 
 in her days of courtship long ago when the airy 
 consciousness had touched her. And, as though to 
 emphasise the contrast between their points of view, a 
 wasp buzzed in through the open window just then, 
 and Mother — shrank. 
 
 In a flash he understood her very clearly. Her 
 attitude to life was fear. Unable to leave the ground, 
 she was always afraid of being caught. If she met a 
 cow, it would toss her ; a goat, it meant to butt her ; 
 a dog, a cat only waited an opportunity to bite or 
 scratch, a wasp came in on purpose to sting her and 
 not merely because it had lost its way. She invariably 
 locked the door of her room and looked under the 
 bed ; she was nervous about lamps — they would 
 blow up if she tried to put them out. Probably all 
 these disasters would happen to her ; her shrinking 
 attitude of fear attracted the very thing she dreaded. 
 People similarly would deceive her, since she expected, 
 even demanded, it of them. In a word, the trouble 
 she dreaded she attracted. 
 
 ' Fly at anything you're afraid of,' he said 
 
1 84 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 suddenly. ' That paralyses it. It can't happen then. 
 Or, better still, fly over it.' But she looked so 
 bewildered, puzzled, even unhappy, that he got up 
 and took her hand. ' Don't mind me, Mother dear,' 
 he said soothingly ; ' I've got an idea, that's all.' 
 His heart brimmed full with comfort ; her face said 
 so plainly ' I don't understand, I feel out of it, I'm 
 a little frightened ! Only I can't express it quite.' 
 'It's immense but very simple,' he went on; 'Joan 
 put it into me, I believe, first, and Joan was born out 
 of us both, out of you and me, in those brilliant 
 happy days when we were afraid of nothing. So it 
 belongs to you, too, you see.' He paused, giving her 
 an opportunity to state her mission. 
 
 ' It's all a bit beyond me, I'm afraid,' said Mother 
 patiently, an anxious expression in her eyes. But 
 there was admiration as well. It occurred to her 
 perhaps that she might have married a genius after 
 all. She did not yet make her special and particular 
 announcement, however. She ^would do so in her 
 own way presently, no doubt. 
 
 ' Mother,' he said abruptly, ' there's nothing in 
 the universe beyond you.' He dropped her hand 
 and stood erect, opening his short arms to the sky 
 outside the window. The wasp buzzed out at that 
 moment, and left him her undivided attention. His 
 eyes were fixed upon the clouds where the swallows 
 darted. ' Mother,' he went on, ' I'm illogical, un- 
 scientific, ignorant rather, and very confused in mind 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 185 
 
 — in mind^ he emphasised ' but this immense idea 
 beyond all books and learning has come to me, and 
 I'm sure it's wisdom, though I call it Air.' 
 
 ' Air,' she repeated slowly. ' Yes, dear.' 
 
 'Air, dear, yes, and that means living like the 
 birds, more carelessly, more lightly, taking no thought 
 for the morrow — not shirking work and duties and 
 so on, but ' 
 
 ' But we know all that,' she interrupted. ' I mean, 
 we've read it. It's this sort of having-faith business. 
 It's all right for people with money.' 
 
 ' The very people,' he corrected her, ' for whom 
 it's most difficult.' 
 
 ' Oh dear,' and she heaved another Martha sigh. 
 There was a pause. ' Couldn't you put it in a book, 
 Joe — write it ? ' she asked, pride in one eye and am- 
 bition in the other. He looked very much of a 
 man, standing there so erect with his eyes fixed 
 on space above her head. ' We could do with a bit 
 extra, too.' 
 
 ' And might help other people,' he added, ' eh ? ' 
 
 She said nothing to that. ' It might sell ; you 
 never know.' 
 
 He shook his head. He realised, once again, the 
 pathos in her, and at the same time that she vampired 
 him. It's the pathetic people that ever vampire and 
 exhaust those who are more vital. 
 
 ' I'm not literary,' he replied, ' not literary in that 
 way. Only the it"^ with air in them would catch my 
 
i86 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 idea, and the others, the commonplace Press in par- 
 ticular which decides the sale of a book, would find 
 a joke they could understand and call it air. And 
 air is gas, you know.' He chuckled. ' Whereas 
 what /mean is Air — instantaneous unifier of thought 
 and action, the L.C.D. of a new order of existence, a 
 new point of view born of collective sympathy, as with 
 a flock of birds, community involving something akin 
 to the strange bird-wisdom and bird-knowledge — ' 
 he took a deep breath — ' the solvent of all philosophic 
 and religioiis problems ' 
 
 She caught a word and clutched it. ' Religious 
 people,' she put it hurriedly, ' might buy it — a book 
 like that.' 
 
 He came back from his flight with a thud, landing 
 beside her. ' Their imagination is too sluggish, dear. 
 As a rule, too, they have not intellect enough to 
 detect the comic element in life. They can't laugh 
 at themselves. They exclude joy and fun and play. 
 They never really sing.' 
 
 ' They do, yes,' said Mother — ' I mean they don't. 
 That's quite true.' 
 
 She settled herself more comfortably in her chair. 
 Evidently she appreciated his talking to her of his 
 intimate thought ; she felt herself taken into his con- 
 fidence and liked it. It made it easier for her to say 
 what she had come to say. Noticing her gesture 
 his own sympathy and pity deepened. ' Ah, Mother 
 dear,' he exclaimed, touched by a sudden pathos, ' it's 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 187 
 
 wonderful to be alive, isn't it ? And to be able to think 
 and feel ideas tearing about inside you ? It's worth 
 everything — ^just to be able to say " I am," and still 
 more wonderful if you can add " I go." That's the 
 secret. Live in the interest of the actual moment, 
 but never imagine that it ties you there, eh ? Life 
 lies at your feet in a map ; you can take what direc- 
 tion you please. Choice is your own, you can take 
 or leave — as literally as when you stand above a 
 jeweller's counter. One person chooses the bright 
 stones, another the dark. It's all a matter of selec- 
 tion. On a picnic you may select the midge that 
 stings you, the few drops of rain that fell, or the 
 midges that did not sting you. . . . You can choose 
 gloom or joy, I mean, just as you ' 
 
 ' Joe dear,' she interrupted, sitting forward in her 
 chair, ' there's something I wanted to say to you — 
 seriously.' 
 
 He took her hand again. He had noticed the 
 growing pucker between her eyes and knew the 
 difficulty she experienced in unburdening herself of 
 something. He had chattered in this way to give 
 her confidence and show his sympathy. But she had 
 not followed, had not understood. She had remained 
 safe in the mouth of her hole. 
 
 ' Talking of religion, as you were just now,' she 
 went on with an effort rather, ' I — I wanted to talk 
 to you about it.' There was a hint, but a very tiny 
 hint, of challenge in her voice. 
 
1 88 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Of course, of course,' he said encouragingly, 
 patting the hand he held. 
 
 There was a moment's silence, while their eyes 
 met and he smiled into her troubled face. What 
 she was about to say meant much to her, and she 
 feared opposition. She took a deeper breath. 
 
 ' I'm thinking of becoming High Church,' she 
 announced. 
 
 ' Admirable ! ' he exclaimed. ' I'm delighted ! ' 
 
 ' What ! You don't mind, dear ? ' 
 
 ' It's just exactly what'll suit you,' he replied 
 happily. ' Just what you need.' 
 
 ' But very High Church — it means confession, 
 you know,' she went on quickly, relieving herself of 
 ideas evidently long pent up, ' and it must be very 
 helpful, I think, knowing one's sins forgiven.' 
 
 ' Helpful, and very pleasant,' he agreed, lowering 
 his eyes from hers. The sudden sense of his own 
 failure towards her pained him. She needed some one 
 to lean on, to confide in, to unburden herself upon, 
 and she turned to a paid official instead of to himself. 
 She didn't know yet that she could confess to herself 
 and so forgive herself, which meant understanding 
 her sins and deciding not to repeat them. She 
 needed some one who could do this for her. It was 
 the stage she was at. ' Splendid,' he reflected, ' there 
 were creeds for every stage. What a mercy ! ' And 
 while she explained herself now without shyness, but 
 with a confusion as great as his own, at his stage. 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 189 
 
 he listened to her as vaguely as, doubtless, she 
 had listened to him. He glanced down at his news- 
 paper, not to read it exactly, but in the way a man 
 who wants to think — to think subconsciously perhaps 
 — takes up the object nearest to his hand and regards 
 it attentively. His eye ran along the print, while 
 his thought was : ' She wants something, some one to 
 lean upon, of course, poor soul. I'm not sufficient, 
 I don't give her sympathy enough. I'll do better in 
 future. Her wings are on the flutter.' 
 
 ' . . . Something to guide and help one a bit,' he 
 heard her saying. 
 
 ' The very thing, Mother, the very thing,' he put 
 in. ' I'm so glad. It'll speed you up. Quickening — 
 that's it, isn't it ? Quickening of the spirit, and of 
 the body too,' he added. ' You'll be flying with us 
 next ! ' 
 
 And while she poured into his ears the confused 
 but genuine story of her need, his own mind con- 
 tinued its own wordless thoughts. He saw the 
 millions of history wading through the creeds, and, 
 thank heaven, there were creeds enough to satisfy 
 every type. For himself, a creed seemed to play 
 the role of a porter in a mountain climb — carrying 
 the weight from the climber's shoulders, but never 
 guiding. Nevertheless, he blessed them all, and 
 the Creed Primers in a long series with red covers 
 and black lettering flashed across his memory. 
 ' All true,' he realised, ' every blessed one of them. 
 
igo THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 And no wonder each man swears by his own that 
 it alone io true. For it is true ; it's exactly what 
 he needs.' 
 
 ' . . . I was sure you wouldn't mind, Joe dear. 
 I knew you'd understand,' came from Mother at last. 
 
 ' And so you shall, dear. It'll help you along 
 magnificently. We'll start the moment we get into 
 the country — start it up, eh ? ' 
 
 ' I have begun already,' she said, more sure of 
 herself. 
 
 ' Better still,' was his reply. 
 
 She got up, patted his shoulder awkwardly, kissed 
 him, and stood a moment by his chair ; a second 
 later the door closed behind her. But hardly had 
 her step died away along the corridor than the 
 words his eye had rested upon absent-mindedly in 
 the newspaper, rose and offered themselves. It was 
 a coincidence, of course, but coincidences do occur. 
 The sentence lay in the middle of a paragraph 
 concerned with some new book or other, a book on 
 Russia, he discovered, by glancing higher : '. . . She 
 has a far-reaching vision, and her Church at least 
 has for long been preoccupied with the idea of the 
 union of humanity. . . . The idea of brotherhood and 
 even universal brotherhood, permeates all classes of 
 society. . .' ; while opposite, and level with it in the 
 adjoining column, oddly enough, was a notice of an 
 article in some important Review or other with the 
 title ' The New Religion.' The sentence quoted 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 191 
 
 that caught his eye referred to the Church of England : 
 ' A pitifully forlorn body, bankrupt in valour and 
 policy, resource and prestige.' No one To-day with 
 spiritual needs could, apparently, rely upon it ; the 
 new spirit regarded it as prehistoric. The people 
 were far ahead of it already. . . . 
 
 He laid the paper, down and wondered ; the two 
 statements capped his flying ideas so appositely. 
 
 ' Yes, there's a new thing coming into life,' he 
 exclaimed aloud. ' It's in the air, even in this vulgar 
 halfpenny paper.' He relit his pipe and smoked a 
 moment hard. ' Of course it's not generally realised 
 yet,' he went on to himself between the puffs ; ' but 
 that's not odd after all : it's taken the world two 
 thousand years to realise Christ, and only a few 
 realised Him when He was there. When — how — 
 will this new spirit touch us all . . .? What's got 
 to happen first, I wonder ? ' 
 
 He sighed and a curious shiver ran down his spine. 
 Nothing, he remembered, was born, nothing big and 
 deep ever came to birth, without travail and up- 
 heaval. He was conscious of this strange shiver in 
 his being. He almost shuddered. His pipe went 
 out. Through the open window he looked down 
 upon the crowded pavements, but the next instant 
 looked up to where the swallows danced and twittered 
 happily in the summer light and air. 
 
 The vision in Maida Vale came back to him when 
 the masses, clothed in black, had seemed to rise and 
 
192 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 open a million mighty wings. He remembered the 
 singular idea of blood that had accompanied it. And 
 again a shudder touched him. 
 
 ' Something's got to happen first,' he sighed, 
 'before all can take the air. Something's got to 
 happen.' And then, as a burst of sunshine and cool 
 wind entered the room together by the window, a 
 sudden conviction swept him off his feet. The world 
 blew open ; the nations rose in a stupendous flock 
 before his eyes ; humanity as a unit spread its wings. 
 ' Something's going to happen^ he exclaimed, ' but out 
 of it will grow the new birth of happy air ! ' There 
 was both joy and shuddering in his heart, but the joy 
 was uppermost. 
 
 . He met his wife in the passage on his way out a 
 little later. She button-holed him for a moment, a 
 new confidence and lightness in her, it almost seemed. 
 She was High Church now. It concerned their 
 daughter. Joan, she mentioned, was not quite like 
 other girls of her own age. She was growing very 
 fast in mind as well as in body. She suggested a 
 doctor for her. ' A London doctor, and before we 
 go to the country. We might have her overhauled, 
 you know. She seems to me light-headed some- 
 times.' Mother felt sure it would be wise. This 
 time she was not anxious, did not worry as usual ; 
 she merely thought of the girl's welfare in the best 
 way that occurred to her. From her new High 
 
XIV THE PROMISE OF AIR 193 
 
 Church pedestal she looked out upon the world with 
 a temporary new confidence, at any rate. 
 
 ' Admirable,' agreed her husband. ' I'll take her 
 myself to-morrow.' 
 
 ' Why not to-day, dear ? ' she asked, relieved that 
 she need not go herself. 
 
 ' We're off to look at cottages,' he told her. ' I'll 
 take her to-morrow.' And the matter was settled 
 thus. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The visit to the doctor was a great success, and 
 Wimble left two guineas on the marble mantelpiece 
 without regret. Joan was growing rapidly in mind 
 and body, and mind and body should develop evenly 
 if possible, otherwise there must be unbalance some- 
 where. ' It's a nervous, restless age we live in,' 
 observed the physician ; ' the mind is apt to take in 
 too much nourishment and shoot ahead much quicker 
 than it did when we were young, Mr. Wimble, and 
 unless the body is well cared for, the nervous system 
 cannot possibly keep even pace with the mass of 
 instruction it receives at every turn. The young it 
 is wisest to consider as healthy animals that need 
 play, food, and rest in right proportions. Personally, 
 I prefer to see the mind develop a trifle late, 
 rather than too early.' He advised, therefore, play, 
 rest, and ample nourishment. ' Half an hour's rest 
 in the afternoon, or better still, an hour,' he added, 
 ' is an excellent thing.' He looked at Joan search- 
 ingly, with both severity and kindness, for he had 
 that mixture of father and policeman which belongs 
 
 194 
 
CHAP. XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 195 
 
 to most successful doctors. Joan felt a little guilty. 
 She had not read Erewhon, of course, yet was vaguely 
 aware she had done something wrong. To be obliged 
 to see a doctor touched the sense of shame in her. 
 ' The country's just the thing for you,' the specialist 
 mentioned, ignoring the two guineas that lay within 
 the reach of his hand, ' the very place.' And Wimble 
 felt relieved as he went out. It was like a visit to 
 the police that had ended happily. Neither he nor 
 Joan had been arrested, but they had been told they 
 must not do it again. He had paid a fine. 
 
 ' Mother '11 be very pleased with that,' he remarked, 
 while Joan, glancing up quickly, seemed glad it was 
 over. ' It's the first time I've ever felt ill,' she said. 
 ' The moment I saw him I felt I ought to be ill.' 
 
 ' Suggestion,' he mumbled. ' Never mind. 
 Mother'll feel better now that you've been. That's 
 something.' 
 
 They walked happily down Seymour Street 
 together. ' Don't skip, child. It looks funny in a 
 town. Besides, you're too big to skip.' She took 
 a slower pace to suit his slower little legs. But even 
 so there were springs in her feet, and her movements 
 seemed to push the solid earth away as though she 
 wanted to rise. ' Flow, fly, flow,' she hummed, 
 ' wherever I am, I go.' 
 
 ' I shouldn't hum in the street, dear, if I were 
 you,' he chided. People were staring, he noticed. 
 ' It looks so odd. I mean it sounds unusual.' 
 
196 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 She turned her bright, happy eyes upon him. 
 ' Daddy, that's the doctor,' she warned him, ' you're 
 saying " No " to everything.' She came close and 
 took his arm, whispering at the same time, ' I believe 
 you're sorry about the two guineas. You're trying 
 to get your money's worth, as Tom calls it,' and the 
 shaft was so true it made him laugh. 
 
 They turned down into the great thoroughfare 
 of Oxford Street. It was brimmed with people, a 
 river filled and running over. They crossed it 
 somehow, he rather like a bewildered rabbit, a step 
 forwards, a pause, a hesitating step backwards, a 
 glance in both directions that saw nothing accurately, 
 and then a flurried run ; Joan catching his out- 
 stretched hand and pulling him against his will and 
 better judgment, while his little coat-tails flapped in 
 the wind. They landed on the curb, merged in the 
 stream of pedestrians, bumped into some, collided 
 with others, and were swept round the swirling 
 corner of the Circus into the downhill torrent of 
 Regent Street. 
 
 ' Yet a bird,' he remembered, ' plunges headlong, 
 at fifty miles an hour, into a forest of branches, 
 swaying possibly in a wind, avoided the slightest 
 collision, and with unerring and instant calculation 
 selects a twig and lands on it, balancing with perfect 
 security on feet so tiny they're not worth mentioning ! ' 
 He felt clumsy and inferior. What co-ordination 
 of sight and muscle ! What confidence ! What 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 197 
 
 poise. . . . The throng of awkward, crawling, heavy- 
 footed humans sprawled in all directions ; he was 
 one of them, one of the least steady too. And yet 
 he was aware of something in himself that did not 
 shake and wobble, something secure and balanced, 
 something that went gliding with swift and certain 
 safety. He noted the easy grace of Joan passing 
 the shop windows like a nut-hatch along a twig, 
 half dancing and half flitting on her toes. It was 
 not a physical thing he felt. It was not that. It 
 was a quality— a careless, exquisite balance in her- 
 self. It entered him too as he watched her. His 
 soul rested securely amid the turmoil by means of 
 it. It was poise. 
 
 His thoughts ran on. . . . 
 
 ' Look, Daddy,' Joan interrupted him. ' Here's 
 a funny sign. What does it mean .'' Let's go in.' 
 
 He drew up beside her, a trifle breathless. They 
 were in a side street, the main stream of people 
 pouring away at right angles now, bathed in the 
 autumn sunshine. 
 
 ' Look,' she repeated. ' Wings.' She pointed 
 to a brass plate advertisement in a little hall-way. 
 ' Isn't it funny ? ' He read the sign in neat black 
 letters against the shining metal : ' Aquarian Society, 
 Membership Free,' and wondered what it meant. 
 Ruins and battered objects of the past occurred to 
 him, for at first he connected the word with ' anti- 
 quarian.' Above them, black tipped with gold, were 
 
198 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 a pair of outspread wings, the badge of the Society 
 apparently. In brackets was ' First Floor,' and a 
 piece of paper pasted below bore a notice : ' Meeting 
 Daily from 11.30 to i. All welcome.' 
 
 ' Let's go up, Daddy,' Joan said again. ' There's 
 a meeting going on now, and it's free. What does 
 it mean .'' Something about birds ' 
 
 ' Water birds, probably,' he said, still puzzling 
 about the strange word ; ' old water birds appar- 
 ently,' he added, combining both possible derivations ; 
 ' perhaps a society to preserve old water birds and 
 provide artificial paddles when their webbed feet 
 wear out.' 
 
 They laughed at the idea, but their laughter 
 hushed as a couple of ladies, beautifully dressed and 
 with what is called refined, distinguished bearing, 
 brushed past them and went upstairs, evidently going 
 to the meeting. Though they were unknown to 
 him, and it was obvious, in his black tail-coat and 
 brown boots, that he was a commercial traveller of 
 sorts, they bowed with a pleasant little smile of 
 polite apology for pushing past. ' A duchess and 
 her daughter at least ! Old families certainly ! ' he 
 thought ; ' yet they treated us as equals ! ' It 
 startled him, it was so un-English. He raised his 
 hat and smiled. In their manner and the expression 
 of face he caught something new, a kindness, a 
 sympathy, a touch of light perhaps, something at 
 any rate quick and alert and gentle that brought the 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 199 
 
 word ' sympathy ' intuitively across his mind. He 
 held his hat in his hand a moment. ' They've got 
 air in them,' flashed into him. ' I wonder if they're 
 members.' 
 
 ' Your head's in a draught, Daddy,' said Joan. 
 He put his hat on. A scrap of conversation reached 
 them from the stairs : ' I'd rather sit well at the 
 back, I think,' said the younger of the two. 
 
 ' We shall have to, probably,' was the reply ; ' it's 
 always full. And remember — just keep an open 
 mind and listen. The quackery doesn't matter, nor 
 the grammar. He was only a railway guard ' — then 
 something inaudible as they turned the corner — ' his 
 idea of a New Age is true somewhere, I'm positive. 
 It was the speed of the train, you know — always 
 rushing through space — that made him . . .' And 
 the voices died away. 
 
 ' Come, Joan, we'll go in too. What are you 
 dawdling about for ? ' exclaimed Wimble on the 
 spur of the moment. Something in that interrupted 
 sentence caught him. 
 
 ' You, Daddy,' she said, as she tripped after him 
 up the stairs. 
 
 People were standing in the corridor and in 
 the little hall ; the room beyond, where a heavily- 
 moustached man, with an eager, soap-polished face, 
 cheerful expression, and bright earnest eyes, stood 
 lecturing, was full. The two ladies who had pre- 
 ceded them were sitting on a window-sill. ' I'm 
 
200 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 afraid there are no seats l&ft,' whispered a pleasant, 
 earnest woman beside the door, ' but I've sent for 
 some chairs. They'll be here presently. I hope 
 you'll hear something out here.' Wimble thanked 
 her with a nod and smile ; he leaned against the 
 wall with Joan and looked about him. 
 
 Some thirty people were crowded into the small 
 inner room, three-quarters of their number women, 
 what are called ' nice ' women. They were well 
 dressed ; there was a rustle of silk, a faint atmo- 
 sphere of perfume, and fur, and soft expensive 
 garments ; young and old, he saw, a good many ot 
 them in mourning. The men looked, generally 
 speaking, like well-to-do business men ; he noticed 
 one clergyman ; a few were shabbily dressed ; one 
 or two were workmen, mechanics possibly. There 
 was an aiert attention on most of the faces, and in 
 the air a kind of eager expectancy, serious, watchful, 
 yearning, and waiting to be satisfied ; sympathetic, 
 it seemed, on the whole, rather than critical. One 
 or two listeners looked vexed and scowling, and a 
 tall, thin-visaged man in the corner was almost angry. 
 But as a whole he got the impression of people just 
 listening patiently, people for the most part empty, 
 hungry, wondering if what they heard might fill 
 them. He was aware of minds on tiptoe. Here, 
 evidently, he judged, was a group of enquiring folk 
 following a new Movement. 'One of the Signs of 
 what's in the air To-day,' he thought. ' Five years 
 
xy THE PROMISE OF AIR 201 
 
 ago these people would have been in Church, con- 
 vinced they were miserable sinners with no good in 
 them. That mechanic-looking fellow would have 
 been in Chapel. That portly man with the stolid 
 face, wearing a black tail-coat, a low collar, a heavy 
 gold watch-chain and a black and white striped tie 
 surely took round the plate in Kensington.' The 
 thin - faced angry man was merely a professional 
 iconoclast. 
 
 He wondered. He thought a moment of the 
 unimaginative English standing about the island in 
 hordes, marvellously reliable, marvellously brave, 
 with big, deep hearts, but childishly unobservant, 
 conservative, conventional, not to be moved till the 
 fire burns the soles of their feet, sturdy and un- 
 emotional, and constitutionally suspicious of all new 
 things. He saw these hordes, strong in their great 
 earth-qualities, ballast of the world, but at the same 
 time world-rulers. . . . And then his thought flashed 
 back with a snap to the scene before him. What 
 was this group after ? Why was it dissatisfied .'' 
 Why had it turned from the ancient shibboleths ? 
 Something, of course, was up. He wondered. 
 These people looked so earnest. This Aquarian 
 Society, he knew, was one of a hundred, a thousand 
 others. It might be rubbish, it might contain a true 
 idea, it was sure to prove exaggerated. The people, 
 however, were enquiring. He glanced at Joan, but 
 her eyes were fixed intently upon the speaker's face 
 
202 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 — the face of a former railway guard whose familiar- 
 ity with speed (certainly not on his own crawling line, 
 thought Wimble ! ), with rushing transit from scene 
 to scene through the air, had opened his mind to 
 some new idea or other. 
 
 ' I wonder if he sang " Wherever I am, I go ! " ' 
 he whispered to Joan. ' He ought to, anyhow ! ' 
 But Joan was too intent to hear him. He swallowed 
 his smile and listened. The speaker's rough, uncul- 
 tivated voice rang with sincerity. There was a glow 
 about his face that only deep conviction brings. To 
 Wimble, however, it all sounded at the moment as if 
 he had fallen out of his Express Train and picked 
 up his ideas as he picked up himself 
 
 For at first he could not understand a single word, 
 as though, coming out of the busy human street, he 
 had plunged neck-deep into a stream of ideas that 
 took his breath away. Having missed what had 
 gone before, he could not catch the drift of what he 
 heard. Then gradually, and by degrees, his listening 
 mind fell into the rhythm of the minds about him ; 
 he slipped into the mood of the meeting ; his intelli- 
 gence merged with the collective intelligence of the 
 others ; he merged with the group-consciousness of 
 the little crowd. The hostile interjections had no 
 meaning for him, since those who made them, not 
 being included in the group-consciousness, spoke an 
 unintelligible language. 
 
 The speaker was very much in earnest evidently ; 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 203 
 
 he believed what he was saying, at the moment any- 
 how. Possibly this belief was permanent ; possibly 
 it was merely self-persuasion. Though obviously he 
 expected hostile comment from time to time, when 
 it came — usually from the iconoclast in the corner — 
 he rarely replied to it. This method of ignoring 
 criticism was not only easier than answering it, it 
 induced an appearance of contemptuous superiority 
 that increased his authority. 
 
 Wimble and his daughter had come in at a happy 
 moment, for the long stretch of argument and ex- 
 planation was just over, it seemed, and a summing up 
 was about to begin. 
 
 ' So where are we, then, with it all ? ' asked the 
 lecturer. ' Where 'ave we got to ? Where do we 
 stand ? ' 
 
 He paused, and into the pause fell the angry voice 
 of the thin-faced man : ' Exactly where we started. 
 You haven't stated one single fact as yet.' 
 
 The speaker looked straight in front of him with- 
 out a word, and the audience, almost to an individual, 
 ignored the criticism. They supported the lecturer 
 loyally, to the point at least of not even turning their 
 heads away. They stared patiently and waited. 
 
 ' Where 'ave we got to,' repeated the man on the 
 platform, ' that's wot we want to know, isn't it ? 
 After all we've listened to this morning, 'ow do we 
 stand about it ? ' 
 
 ' That's it exactly,' from the interrupter in a con- 
 
204 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 temptuous but intense tone of voice. He seemed 
 annoyed that no one was intelligent enough to sup- 
 port him. At a Society of Rationalist Control across 
 the road he would have been at home. He, too, 
 was a seeker, and a very earnest one, only he had 
 tumbled into the wrong group. Across the road he 
 might have been constructive ; here he was destructive 
 merely. 
 
 ' Well, on the physical plane,' resumed the speaker, 
 ' on wot I might call the scientific and materialistic 
 plane, as I've tried to show you, the 'ole trend of 
 modern civilisation is towards speed and universality. 
 That's clear — at least I 'ope I've made it so. Air, 
 and wot air represents, shows itself in the physical 
 plane like that. Distant countries are getting all 
 linked up everywhere — by wireless, by motor, by 
 aviation, by cinematograph, and the like. A kind of 
 telepathy all over the world is — ' he hesitated an 
 instant — ' engendered.' 
 
 ' Go on,' from the critic, ' any word will do as 
 well.' 
 
 'That's the scientific side of the business, as it 
 were,' he went on, ' the practical, everyday aspect we 
 can all understand. It's the universality of the new 
 element, air, as it affects the practical mind, so to 
 speak ; the technical understanding and mastery or 
 space — wot I called aether a little while ago, as you'll 
 remember — or, as the Aquarian Society prefers to 
 call it, as being simpler and shorter — air.' 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 205 
 
 'Well,' he added, ' we now want to see 'ow we 
 stand with regard to the 'igher side of life, the mental, 
 spiritual aspect. Wot does this new Age, in which 
 air is the key — the symbol like — wot does it mean 
 to the race on that side ? ' 
 
 ' Gas,' interjected the other, but in a lower voice. 
 
 From several books lying beside the water-bottle 
 the lecturer selected one. He adjusted a pair of 
 heavy reading-glasses to his eyes. 
 
 ' The link between the two is better expressed 
 than wot I can express it,' he resumed quickly, ' in this 
 little volume. The New Science of Colour — and colour 
 means light, remember, and light means aether, and 
 aether means space, universality — so it's all the same.' 
 
 ' Every bit of it,' came the contemptuous comment 
 from the corner. 
 
 ' Just this short paragraph — I came across it by 
 chance — except that there reely is no chance at all — 
 and it puts it well. It supplies the link. So I'll 
 read it.' He heavily emphasised certain words: 
 
 ' We are approaching an age of mental telepathy, 
 in which the organism of the race is about to become 
 attuned to the second sense of the earth and to the 
 third element that sustains her — i.e. air — and in which 
 our action and our outlook will alike assume the 
 characteristics of that element, which are elasticity and 
 brilliance.^ 
 
 He laid down the book, slowly removing the 
 heavy glasses from his nose, and while ' that's no 
 
2o6 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 proof was heard to snap from the corner, the other 
 repeated with emphasis of manner, yet lowering his 
 voice at the same time : ' the organism of the race — 
 becoming attuned to air — elasticity and brilliance.' 
 
 Fingering his glasses and looking very thoughtful, 
 the speaker kept silence for a minute or so. He 
 drank a few sips of water slowly, while everybody, 
 even the interjector, waited, and those who had been 
 staring at him turned their eyes away from his face, 
 as though embarrassed to watch him drink. He 
 produced a big handkerchief from his coat-tail 
 pocket, wiped his lips, and replaced the handkerchief 
 with some difficulty whence it came. The pause 
 lengthened, but no one stirred. Then the earnest- 
 faced woman near the door touched Wimble on the 
 arm and indicated an empty chair, but Wimble, too 
 absorbed in the proceedings, shook his head im- 
 patiently. Joan slipped into it. Joan, he noticed, 
 did not seem interested ; the keen attention she had 
 shown at first had left her face, she looked half 
 bewildered and half bored. ' She's too much in it 
 to need explanation,' flashed across him. 
 
 The slight shuffling warned the lecturer that the 
 mind of his audience needed holding lest it begin to 
 wander. Picking up a sheet of paper covered with 
 notes, he advanced to the edge of the little platform 
 and cleared his throat. 
 
 ' As I've been trying to explain,' he began, 
 ' 'umanity has now reached a crushial moment in its 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 207 
 
 development. The planet we live on belongs to 
 the sun, and the sun has just entered — in 1881, to be 
 igsact, — the sign of Aquarius. Aquarius, according to 
 the old Chaldean system, is wot's called an Air Sign, 
 and the new powers waking in us all — coming down 
 into our world now — will be ruled by the element 
 of air. The Age of Pisces, a Water Sign, is just 
 finished and done with. We are entering another 
 period. A new Age is beginning — the Age of Air.' 
 And he glanced about him as though to catch any 
 evidence of challenge. 
 
 ' What is an Age ? ' asked a thin voice from the 
 rear. It was not hostile, and heads were turned to 
 find the questioner, but without success. 
 
 ' An accomplice,' muttered the habitual interrupter 
 to himself. No one noticed the comment, and 
 Wimble, now completely captured by the collective 
 sympathy, even wondered what he meant. 
 
 ' I'll tell you,' continued the lecturer, and referred 
 to the sheet of notes in his hand. ' I'll tell you again 
 with pleasure.' He emphasised the word ' again.' 
 The glasses were readjusted. With a certain air of 
 mystery, as though he knew far more than he cared 
 to impart, he read aloud, emphasising frequent 
 passages as his habit was, and making here and there 
 effective and semi-theatrical pauses. Behind this 
 cheapness, however, burned obviously a deep sincerity 
 and belief. He deemed himself a prophet, and he 
 knew a prophet's proverbial fate. 
 
2o8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' Astronomers tell us that our sun and his fam'ly 
 of planets revolve around a central sun, which is 
 millions of miles distant,' he read slowly, ' and that it 
 requires about 26,000 years to make one revolution.' 
 
 Remembering one of his most successful Primers, 
 Wimble sat forward on his chair, all eagerness. Here 
 was what the critic called a ' fact ' at any rate. 
 
 ' This orbit is called the Zodiac,' continued the 
 other, ' and it is divided into twelve signs.' He 
 mentioned them, beginning with Aries and Taurus, 
 and ending with Aquarius and Pisces. ' Now, you 
 asked what is an Age, didn't you ? ' He paused a 
 second. ' Well, our solar system takes a bit over 
 2000 years to pass through each of these Signs, and 
 this time is the measurement of an Age. And with 
 each Age certain new things 'appen.' 
 
 He made this announcement with a certain 
 mysterious significance. 
 
 ' Certain things 'appen to the planet and to us as 
 lives on it. Certain changes come. They're sure 
 as summer and winter is sure — that is, you can count 
 on them. Those who know can count on them — 
 prophets and people with inner vision. There you 
 get prophecy and the meaning of prophecy. Vision ! 
 And without a vision the people perish — miss their 
 chances, that is. The seers, the mystics, always 
 know and see ahead, and this end of the Age — and 
 of the world as it's sometimes called stupidly — has 
 been prophesied by many.' 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 209 
 
 The audience was on tiptoe with anticipation. 
 Each individual possibly hoped that certain personal 
 peculiarities of his own were going to be explained, 
 made wonderful. Wimble was particularly aware of 
 this excitement ; it dawned upon him that he was 
 about to receive an explanation, and a semi-scientific 
 explanation too, of his own strange ideas and feelings. 
 He glanced across at Joan. She seemed, to his 
 amazement, asleep ; her eyes were closed, at any rate ; 
 her attention was not held. He wanted to poke 
 her. He wanted to say ' I told you so,' or rather 
 ' You told me so.' But the speaker had ended his 
 pause, and, to Wimble's delight, was explaining 
 that this movement of the sun passes through the 
 Zodiacal Signs in reverse order — ' precession of the 
 equinoxes,' as it is called — Pisces therefore preceding 
 Aquarius instead of following it. Here was another 
 ' fact ' that his Knowledge Primer justified. 
 
 The personal anticipation in the audience was 
 not immediately satisfied, however. The speaker 
 intensified it first by a slight delay. Aware that he 
 held the minds before him, he took his time. 
 
 ' Now, these Signs ' — lifting his eyes from the 
 sheet of paper and fixing them upon a woman in 
 the front row, who at once showed nervousness, as 
 though she would believe black was white, if only 
 he would stare at some one else — ' these Signs ain't 
 just dead things. They reveal and express and 
 convey intelligent life. They're immense intelligences, 
 
 p 
 
2IO THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 they're Zodiacal Intelligences. That's wot they are. 
 The 'ole universe, remember, is alive, and you and I 
 ain't the only living beings in it, nor the 'ighest 
 either. We're not the only bodies. No one can say 
 wot constitoots a body, a living body, nor define it. 
 Our planet is a tuppeny-'alfpenny affair compared 
 to the others, and we're nothing but a lot of hinsects 
 like ants and so forth on it. But if the 'ole universe 
 is alive — and we know it is ' 
 
 ' Hanwell,' interrupted the angry man. 
 
 ' each and every part of it must be alive too. 
 
 And you can't leave out the planets, stars, and suns, 
 the most magnificent bodies, called the 'eavenly 
 bodies, as you know. They're all living bodies. 
 They're the bodies of beings, living beings, but beings 
 far higher than wot we are. And the Zodiacal Signs 
 are 'igher still. They represent functions of the 
 universe, as the ancients knew quite well. They're 
 a kind of intelligence we may call per'aps a Group 
 Intelligence.' 
 
 Again he paused a moment. Then, as no inter- 
 ruption came, he went on with greater emphasis than 
 before : 
 
 ' Now, each of these Zodiacal Intelligences — as 
 the sun, with our little earth alongside, passes through 
 it — rules over its partickler period. With every 
 period we enter a new current of forces. Each 
 period, therefore, of about 2000 years has new Gods, 
 new characteristics, new types of 'uman beings with 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 211 
 
 new tendencies and powers and possibilities in them 
 — a new point of view, if you like to call it so, or, as 
 we Aquarians call it, a new consciousness. Well, the 
 Aquarius Sign just beginning, is an Air Sign. We're 
 getting our new powers, our new point of view and 
 hattitude, our new consciousness— from the air.' 
 
 In his excitement and deep belief the word 'air' was 
 dangerously near ' hair,' but no one smiled. Perhaps 
 even the critic experienced similar difficulties in his 
 home circle that prevented his noticing it, or caring 
 to take advantage of it if he did. 
 
 ' I've already referred,' the speaker continued, ' to 
 its effect on the physical plane, new inventions and 
 the like, and 'ow men now navigate the air as fish 
 do the sea, and send their thoughts spinning round 
 the world with the speed of lightning. That's easy 
 enough. I mean, you can all see it for yourselves. 
 The areoplane's a fac' nobody can't get away from, 
 whichever way you take it. But the effect on the 
 spiritual plane is not so simple. It's not so easy to de- 
 scribe — far from it, I admit. When a new mode of 
 consciousness begins to hoperate in men and women, 
 they find difficulty in expressing it. They're puzzled 
 a bit. They don't know where they are with it quite. 
 Those '00 get it first are called quacks and charlituns, 
 and maybe swindlers too. The slower ones regard 
 them with suspicion, and they may think themselves 
 lucky if they 'ain't stoned or burned alive or crucified 
 as they once was.' 
 
212 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 He smiled, and the audience smiled deprecatingly 
 with him. 
 
 ' And the chief reason for their difficulty,' he 
 went on, ' is simply this : They 'aven't got the 
 language. Nor the words. That's it. The words to 
 describe the experiences of a new type of conscious- 
 ness don't exist at first. They come later, slowly, 
 gradually. They evolve as the new powers in the 
 race evolve.' 
 
 He took his glasses off and wiped them carefully. 
 
 ' So wot's the result ? ' he asked. ' Why, this. 
 There's only feeling left. The people that first get 
 the new consciousness feel it in them. But they 
 can't prove it to others because their power is small. 
 And they can't explain it in words, because the words 
 don't exist. So there you are. Only the truth is 
 there too jest the same.' 
 
 The challenge in his tone was unmistakable, but 
 no one took it up. The critic was making notes on 
 his cufF and probably had not heard it. Some one 
 coughed, however, and feet shuffled here and there. 
 
 ' 7 know it's true, and some of you 'ere in front 
 of me know it's true,' the speaker resumed quickly, 
 his eyes alight and intense conviction in his tone and 
 manner, ' but we can't do more at first than feel it 
 and be glad. All we can do is to show it in our 
 lives. We can live it. We can feel the joy and 
 speed and lightness of the air, and we can live it, 
 show it. We can express it that way, leaving the 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 213 
 
 words to follow in good time. And that's a lot, for 
 example guides the world.' 
 
 A murmur of applause greeted the emphatic 
 statement, and Wimble, for one, was tempted to rise 
 on his toes with waving hands and give his confession 
 of faith in no uncertain voice. This railway guard, 
 half quack, half prophet, this man of the people 
 whose knowledge was as faulty as his grammar, had 
 offered the first explanation he had yet heard of his 
 own strange attitude to life and of his experiences 
 since boyhood. This man, similarly, had caught his 
 secret from the air. His exposition might be as 
 exaggerated and wild as the critic suggested, yet it 
 was somewhere true, he felt. The man, owing to 
 his very ignorance perchance, had caught at the 
 skirts of a new and mighty truth that in a century 
 would have become a commonplace, but that at the 
 present moment caused others with better education 
 than himself to talk of Hanwell. Wimble felt this 
 excitement in him— to get up before them all and 
 say that he, too, had felt and tried to live this light, 
 new, swift and spontaneous airy consciousness. The 
 impulse, the generous desire to help, caught at him. 
 Another minute and he might have been on his toes, 
 bearing stammering witness to the truth that was in 
 him. The lecturer himself, however, prevented. 
 
 ' We stand to-day,' he said, using his notes again, 
 ' upon the cusp of the Aquarian Age. The Piscean 
 Age lies behind us. The Zodiacal Intelligences of 
 
214 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 that Piscean Age were watery powers and water was 
 its keynote and its symbol. It was the Age of 
 Jesus. Now, listen, please, listen closely, for 'istory 
 bears me out' 
 
 He moved nearer to the edge of the platform, 
 and heads were craned forward to lose no word. 
 
 ' The sun,' he said, in a lowered tone, ' entered the 
 sign of Taurus in the days of our pre'istoric Adam. 
 That was the Taurian Age. Next came the Arian 
 Age — about the time that Abra'am lived, and with 
 Aries the ram replaced the bull. With the rise of 
 the Roman Empire the sun entered the sign of Pisces, 
 and the Piscean Age began. It took the fish for its 
 symbol. That was the Christian Dispensation with 
 its new outlook and attitude, its new powers, its 
 new type of consciousness. Jesus introduced water 
 baptism, and water became the symbol of purifica- 
 tion. It was a watery sign, as I told you. While 
 it lasted, as you'll notice — the last 2000 years — this 
 Piscean Age, with a fish for its symbol, 'as certainly 
 been one of water, and the many uses of that element 
 'ave been emphasised, and sea and lake and river 
 navigation have been brought to a 'igh degree of 
 efficiency.' 
 
 He waited for the impression this was bound to 
 produce. It was evidenced by deep silence, broken 
 only by the rustle of paper and soft garments. 
 
 ' Jesus Himself referred to the beginning of this 
 Aquarian Age in these words,' he continued solemnly 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 215 
 
 and reverently, 'as you'll find in one of Wisdom 
 Books they don't include in our own Bible ; 
 
 ' And then the man who bears the pitcher will walk forth 
 across an arc of 'eaven ; the sign and signet of the Son of 
 Man will stand forth in the Eastern sky. The wise will 
 then lift up their heads and know that the redemption of the 
 earth is near.' 
 
 He paused significantly. Then he added, his hands 
 raised aloft and his eyes turned toward the ceiling : 
 
 ' We're already in it, the new Dispensation, the 
 New Age — air.' 
 
 ' Compressed air,' added the critic, after his long 
 silence. 
 
 ' Bravo ! bravo ! ' exclaimed Wimble, unable to 
 suppress himself. 
 
 ' But surely a new Age can only begin in each 
 person individually, and not in any other sense,' put 
 in the thin voice that had spoken once before. 
 
 Unperturbed, the speaker repeated with deep 
 emphasis, his eyes and hands still raised aloft : 
 
 ' And air means spiritual. The Aquarian Age is 
 pre-eminently a spiritual age ; and its meaning may 
 now be apprehended by multitudes of people, 'ungry 
 for truth, who will now come — are already coming 
 — into an advanced spiritual consciousness. Our air- 
 bodies is being quickened.' 
 
 The last few words seemed to produce a strange 
 effect upon the chief critic. Apparently they enraged 
 him. He fidgeted, half rising from his chair as 
 
2i6 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 though about to make a violent speech in reply. In 
 the end, however, he did nothing beyond shrugging 
 his shoulders, with a muttered ' Consciousness indeed ! 
 Why, you don't even know the meaning of the 
 word ! ' He leaned back in his seat, unwilling to 
 stay, yet too annoyed to leave ; he resigned himself, 
 keeping his great onslaught perhaps for the close of 
 the meeting. Then, suddenly changing his mind, he 
 leaped to his feet. But the lecturer was before him. 
 In a ringing voice that held his audience and drowned 
 the interruption, he dominated the room. He was 
 about to satisfy the anticipation raised some ten 
 minutes earlier. He took his listeners into his con- 
 fidence. 
 
 'Now, ladies and gentlemen,' he cried, 'or brothers 
 and sisters, as I'd prefer to call you if you've no ob- 
 jection, wot is it we Aquarians means when we talk of 
 air, when we speak of air as the sign of the New 
 Age .'' We call it spiritual. Wot do we reely mean 
 by that ? 'Ow can we show it in our lives ? Let us 
 come down to plain words, the language of the 
 street.' 
 
 There was again a rustle, as pencils and paper were 
 prepared anew for taking notes. 
 
 ' It means this — to put it quite plainly, simply : 
 It means living lightly, carelessly, spontaneously, as 
 a bird does, so to speak, 'oose 'ome is air and 'oo 
 works 'ard without taking too much thought. It 
 means living by faith and that means — ' he uttered 
 
THE PROMISE OF AIR 217 
 
 the next words with great emphasis — ' living by the 
 subconsciousness — by intuition.' 
 
 'A bird's heart,' he cried, 'lies in the centre of 
 its body. We must live from the centre too. 
 
 ' That's the secret, and that's the first sign that 
 you're getting it. There you get the first 'int of 
 this new Aquarian Age, and from the moment we 
 entered it — not so long ago, forty years or so — this 
 idea of the Subconsciousness 'as showed itself as the 
 key-word of the day. It's everywhere already. Even 
 the scientific men 'as got it. Bergson began with 
 'is intuition, and professors like Frood of Vienna 
 and Young of Zurich caught on like lightning. 
 William James too, and a 'undred others. Why, it's 
 got down into our poietry and novels, and even the 
 pore old dying pulpits 'ave a smack at it just to try 
 and keep their heads above water. 
 
 * To live by your subconscious knowledge, instead 
 of by your slow old calculating reason, means a new, 
 airy way of living. And it's spiritual, I say, because 
 it stands for the beginning of a new knowledge and 
 understanding, and therefore a new sympathy with 
 each other. With everybody ! All sorts of powers 
 lie in our subconsciousness, powers of the 'ole race, 
 powers forgotten and powers to come, and it's in 
 touch with greater powers still that so far 'ave been 
 beyond us as a race. All knowledge 'ides there — 
 God. 
 
 ' And if you rely upon it, it will guide you — and 
 
2i8 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 guide you quickly, surely, in a flash. Nor you won't 
 go wrong either, for in your subconsciousness you 
 touch everybody else ; we all join on down there — 
 within — and that's where the Kingdom of 'eaven lies 
 — and if you rely upon the Kingdom of 'eaven it 
 will guide you right. We all touch 'ands if you go 
 deep enough, and that means brotherhood, don't it ? 
 For it means sympathy, understanding, love. The 
 'ottentot's your neighbour.' 
 
 He stepped back, squaring his shoulders and 
 drawing a deep breath as he surveyed his audience. 
 
 ' Well, it's only just beginning. Some of us, 
 many of us likely, don't know about it yet, don't feel 
 it. We're only ankle-deep as yet. And those 'oo 
 ain't aware of this great subconscious life, no amount 
 of argument or explanation won't put it into them. 
 A new Age touches individuals first, one 'ere, one 
 there. The end of the world, as some call it, 
 'appens to each heart alone, as somebody said just 
 now. But it'll come to all in the end. It's coming 
 now. We're in Aquarius, and sooner or later we'll 
 all get into the air and know it. And the new 
 inventions, the new tricks everywhere, as I told you, 
 are paving the way already on the physical plane so 
 that even the hintellectuals and materialists are bound 
 to feel its bigger side before long. 
 
 ' Air ! Why, think of it, and wot a lovely symbol 
 it is ! It's everywhere. It flows. Nothing belong- 
 ing to the sky is stationary. It all moves. Light 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 219 
 
 grows and wanes, wind fails and rises, clouds, birds 
 pass rapidly across it. It 'as nothing rigid about it 
 anywhere. Breath is the first sign of life in your 
 body when you're born, and the breath of the spirit is 
 the first sign of life in your soul when you are born 
 again. And the bird, remember, the natural in'abitant 
 of air, 'as its heart in the centre of its body ! 
 
 ' The subconscious powers, the subconscious life — 
 yes, that's the secret. To rely upon it, live and act 
 by it, means to act with the 'ole world at once and 
 know the 'appiness of brother'ood and love. It 
 means to lose yourself — your little conscious, surface, 
 limited self — in the bigger ocean of the air. 'Itherto 
 it's been called living by faith and prayer. That's 
 all right enough, but it ain't enough. That means 
 touching the subconscious at moments only. We 
 want to touch it always and every minute. In this 
 new Aquarian Age it will be at our fingers' ends, so to 
 speak. The "sub" will disappear. The subconscious 
 will become the conscious. We shall know every- 
 thing, and everything at once ; we shall be everywhere, 
 and everywhere at once.' He raised his voice. 'We 
 shall be ONE, and know that we are ONE. We 
 shall 'ave spiritual consciousness.' 
 
 The noise of an overturned chair was heard. 
 Outside the shrill blast of distant factory whistles 
 suggested lunch and food. The critic, pushing 
 hastily past the hushed sitters near him, made his way 
 to the door. As he reached the passage he turned. 
 
2 20 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' That's the best recipe for hysteria I ever heard,' he 
 cried back, 'and the sooner you're safe in Hanwell, 
 the better for the world ! ' — and vanished. 
 
 It was an abrupt and violent interruption, but yet 
 it startled no one ; the thread of interest was not 
 broken ; a few heads turned to look, and then faced 
 towards the lecturer again. A general sigh was 
 heard, expressive of relief. The audience settled 
 itself more comfortably, and a deeper concentration 
 of interest was felt at once. The removal of the 
 hostile element produced an immediate increase of 
 attentive earnestness. It showed first in the lecturer's 
 face ; his eyes grew fixed and steady, his manner 
 more confident, more impressive, and his tone of 
 voice had a more authoritative ring than before. 
 
 He leaned forward with an air of mysterious 
 intimacy, as though about to share a secret knowledge 
 he had not dared to divulge before a scoffer. There 
 was a booming note about his voice that thrilled. The 
 charlatan that hides in every human soul slipped out, 
 unconsciously perhaps but unmistakably. It was 
 this, possibly, that affected Wimble as he watched 
 and waited, so eagerly attentive ; or, possibly, it was 
 some uncanny anticipation of what he was about to 
 hear. An emotion, at any rate, and one shared by 
 others in the small packed room, rose suddenly in 
 his soul. A little shiver ran down his spine, 
 he shuddered, as once before he had shuddered in 
 Maida Vale. 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 221 
 
 ' Before we close this little meeting,' the deep 
 voice rang, ' and before you go your way and I 
 go mine, per'aps not to come across each other's 
 path again for a tidy while — I want to just say this. 
 It's as well we all should know it, so as we are 
 prepared.' 
 
 He fixed his glowing eyes on one of his audience 
 — on Wimble, it so happened — and went on slowly, 
 choosing his words with care and uttering them with 
 a conviction that was not without its impressiveness : 
 
 ' I want to warn you all, to give you this little 
 word of warning. For I'm led to believe — in fact, 
 I may say it's been given me — that a dying Age — 
 don't die without an eiFort. An expiring Age, so to 
 say, seeks to prolong its life. With the result that, 
 just before it passes, its characteristics is first inten- 
 sified. The Powers that have ruled over us for 2000 
 years make themselves felt with extra strength ; and 
 these Powers, seeing that their time is past, are no 
 longer right. They're no longer what we need. 
 Good and right in their time, they now seem wrong, 
 and out of place. They're evil. We see them as 
 evil, any'ow, though they make for good in another 
 way. I don't know if you foUer me. Wot I mean 
 is that, when an old Age is passing and a new Age 
 coming to birth — there's conflict.' 
 
 There was a renewed rustling, as this sentence was 
 written down on many half-sheets that had so far 
 been blank. But Wimble had no need to make a 
 
222 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 note of it. He remembered that walk down Maida 
 Vale of several months before, and again the singular 
 shudder passed like a little wind of ice along his 
 nerves. 
 
 ' Conflict means trouble,' continued the speaker 
 amid a solemn hush, ' and nothing big ever comes to 
 birth without labour and travail and pain. We must 
 expect this pain and travail, and be ready for it. A 
 new 'eaven and a new earth will come, but they 
 won't come easily. They will be preceded by a 
 mighty effort of the old ones to keep going a bit 
 longer first. A 'uge up'eaval, physically and spiritu- 
 ally, will take place first — on the earth, that is, as well 
 as in our 'earts — before we all get caught up to meet 
 the Lord in the air.' 
 
 His sentences grew slower and more emphatic, 
 more charged with conviction and with warning. 
 He made privileged communications. There were 
 pauses between his utterances : 
 
 ' I warn you, I prepare you, so that when it comes 
 you will be ready and prepared — not for yourselves, 
 mind, but so as you may 'elp others wot won't quite 
 realise quite wot it all means. 
 
 ' For there'll be sacrifice as well. 
 
 ' There's always a sacrifice when a New Age 
 catches 'old of our old earth, and our old earth will 
 shake and tremble in the re-making, and some of us 
 will shake and tremble too. You'll feel, maybe, that 
 shudder in advance and know what it means. Signs 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 223 
 
 and wonders, men's 'earts failing them for fear, and 
 the instability of all solid things. 
 
 ' There will be death. ' 
 
 ' Death takes its 'undreds, aye, its thousands at a 
 time like that, and many — the best and finest usually 
 — go out before their time, as it seems. But — mark 
 this — they go out — to ^elp ! 
 
 ' There comes in the sacrifice. 
 
 ' They'll be taken off to 'elp, taken into the air, 
 but taken away from those they leave be'ind.' 
 
 His tone grew lower, and a deeper hush passed 
 over the little crowd before him. There was dull 
 fire in his eyes. An atmosphere of the prophet 
 clothed him. 
 
 ' It's just there,' he emphasised, ' that we — we 
 who know — can 'elp. 
 
 ' For we know that death is nothing more nor 
 less than slipping back into your own subconscious- 
 ness, and so becoming greater and finer and more 
 active — more useful, too, and with grander powers — 
 than we ever 'ad in our limited, imperfect bodies. 
 And we know that this separate life, ended at death, 
 is nothing but an episode in our universal life which 
 death can never put an end to because it is im- 
 perishable. We are part of the universe, not of this 
 little planet alone. 
 
 ' There'll be mourning, but we can 'elp dry their 
 tears ; there'll be terror, but we can take their fear 
 away ; there'll be loneliness, but we can show them 
 
224 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 — show 'em by the way we live — that there'll be 
 reunion better than before. We all meet in the sub- 
 consciousness, and know each other face to face. For 
 it means reunion in the air, which is everywhere 
 at once and universal, and stands for that ' denial 
 of space and time — that spiritual haffirmation — we 
 Aquarians call NOW.' 
 
 He held out his hands as in blessing over the 
 intently listening and expectant throng. Gazing 
 above their heads into space, he appeared to con- 
 centrate his thoughts a moment. Then his face 
 lightened, as though his mental effort had succeeded. 
 
 ' After every meeting,' he then went on, but this 
 time in a conversational tone, as friend to friend, the 
 prophet and his flock put aside, ' it is our custom, as 
 you know, to find a carrying-away Sentence. Some- 
 thing you can take away and remember easily. Some- 
 thing that sums up all we've talked about together. 
 Something to keep in your minds and think about 
 every minute of the day until we meet again. Some- 
 thing you can try to live in your daily lives.' 
 
 He waited a moment to ensure that all listened 
 closely. 
 
 'The sentence I've chosen this time will 'elp you 
 to remember all we've said to-day. It's a symbol 
 that includes the 'ole promise of the air that's so 
 soon to be fulfilled in us. 
 
 ' I'll now give it out — if yer all ready.' 
 
 The expectant, eager, attentive faces were a con- 
 
XV THE PROMISE OF AIR 225 
 
 vincing proof that all were ready and listening 
 attentively. 
 
 With a happy and confiding smile, the speaker 
 then pronounced the carrying-away sentence : 
 
 ' The 'eart of a bird lies in the centre of its body.' 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The carrying-away sentence stuck in Wimble's mind 
 as he journeyed back to the flat on the top of a 
 motor omnibus with Joan, for it expressed a concrete 
 fact, a fact that he could understand. ' The heart 
 of a bird lies in the centre of its body,' he murmured 
 to himself happily. It gave him a secret thrill of 
 joy and wonder. His own heart, thrust to the left 
 though it was, felt ageless. The happy, invincible 
 optimism of the bird was in him. To live from the 
 centre was a neat way of expressing what he had 
 been trying to do for so long, and he had not been 
 far wrong in taking the life and attitude of a bird 
 for his symbol. It meant neglecting the strained, 
 laborious effort of the calculating mind, and lean- 
 ing for help and guidance upon something bigger, 
 deeper, less fallible than the strutting conscious self. 
 The railway guard labelled it the subconscious, that 
 mysterious region in which every soul is linked to 
 every other soul, involving thus that comprehensive 
 sympathy which is the beginning possibly of brother- 
 hood. He phrased it wildly, but that was what he 
 
 226 
 
CHAP. XVI THE PROMISE OF AIR 227 
 
 meant. The bigger self that lay like an ocean be- 
 hind his separate, personal thought shared everything 
 with every one. The joy, the wisdom of the birds ! 
 The elasticity and brilliance of the universal air ! 
 The divine carelessness that flows from living at the 
 centre ! 
 
 ' Flow, fly, flow ! 
 
 Wherever I am, I go ; 
 
 I live in the air 
 
 Without thought or care . . . ! ' 
 
 'Daddy, you mustn't hum in public. It sounds 
 so unusual, and people are staring,' Joan reminded 
 him. 'And you'll forget your hat and leave it 
 behind, if you don't put it on.' 
 
 He smoothed his ruffled hair and placed his black 
 billycock upon it. 
 
 ' So you've woken up at last, have you .? ' he replied, 
 laughing at her. 'You slept through most of the 
 lecture. What did you make of it, — eh ? ' 
 
 She looked at him with a puzzled expression in 
 her soft, bright eyes. 
 
 ' D'you think it was all nonsense ? Was it true, 
 I mean ? ' he repeated. 
 
 ' He didn't He, but he didn't tell the truth,' she 
 said at once. ' Besides, I wasn't asleep. I heard it 
 aU.' 
 
 'You mean he didn't explain it properly .'' ' he 
 asked. 
 
 ' It was the wrong way,' she said. 
 
228 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 ' Ah ! words ' 
 
 ' He ought to have danced it,' she said suddenly 
 with decision. ' It's too quick, too flashing for words. 
 T could have shown it to them easily, by dancing it.' 
 
 He remembered the amazing ideas her dancing 
 gestures on the roof had once put into him. Then, 
 thinking of the teachers of the world conveying their 
 meaning by dancing and gestures from the pulpits, 
 he chuckled. 
 
 ' Shall we join the Aquarians .'' ' he asked slyly. 
 ' What do you say to becoming members of their 
 Society ? ' 
 
 She took her answer out of his own mind, it 
 seemed. 
 
 ' If you belong, you belong. You needn't join. 
 Societies are only cages, Daddy. You're caught and 
 you can't fly on.' 
 
 ' We could spend the money better, yes,' he 
 mumbled. ' Garden -gloves for mother, a lawn- 
 mower, a hurricane lantern for stormy nights or 
 something ' 
 
 ' Much, much better,' she agreed. 
 
 ' When once we've found the cottage,' he went 
 on vaguely. 
 
 ' It's there,' she interrupted instantly. ' Let's 
 get the hurricane lantern. I'd love to choose it 
 with you. May I ? ' 
 
 Wimble looked about him as the heavy vehicle 
 lumbered clumsily along its swaying journey. The 
 
XVI THE PROMISE OF AIR 229 
 
 soft autumn sunshine of hazy gold lay on the streets, 
 but there was a nip, a sharpness in the air that put 
 an electric sparkle into everything. The solid world 
 was really lighter than it looked. There was a covert 
 brilliance ready to dart forth into swift-rushing flame. 
 He felt the throbbing sheen and rustle in the golden 
 light, and his heart sang with joy above the heavy 
 streets and pavements. He was aware of a point 
 of view that almost denied weight to inert matter, 
 making the dead mass of the universe alive and 
 dancing. This nip and sparkle in the air inter- 
 penetrated all these fixed and heavy things, these 
 laborious structures, these rigid forms, dissolving 
 them into flowing, ever-changing patterns of fluid 
 loveliness. He saw them again as powder, the parks 
 and road blown everywhere, the pavements lifted, 
 the walls wide open to the sky. The solid earth 
 became transparent, flooded with light and air. It 
 seemed etherealised. It spread great golden wings 
 towards the blazing sun and limitless sky. Air knew 
 no fixed and rigid forms. Societies, of course, were 
 only cages. He saw the huge cage of the earth blow 
 open. Humanity flew out at last. . . . 
 
 ' We'll get three, and at once,' he remarked, 
 referring to the lanterns. ' And a pair of hedge- 
 clippers as well, a ladder for the fruit trees, two pair 
 of best garden-gloves for mother, and a revolving 
 summer-house where she can follow the sun — and 
 sit in peace.' 
 
230 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 That ridiculous lecture acted like some mental 
 cuckoo that had chucked him finally out of the nest 
 into the air. If he did not actually fly, he certainly 
 walked on air, with the same faith that had once 
 been claimed for walking on the sea. He became a 
 daring and a happy soul. Air represented a confident 
 and free imagination in which everything was possible. 
 Earth he still loved, but only as a place to land on 
 and take ofF from. Imagination and intuition must 
 stiU, at his present stage, be backed and checked by 
 reason ; earth was still there to sleep on. But that 
 spontaneous way of living which is air, using the 
 ground merely as the swallow does — a swallow that 
 exists in space and almost entirely neglects its legs — 
 this careless and new attitude leaped forward in him 
 towards realisation. A bird, he remembered, though 
 apparently so free and careless, works actually with 
 an ordered precision towards great purposes. 
 
 He seemed conscious suddenly of a complete and 
 absolute independence, beyond the need of any one's 
 comprehension. Few, if any, would understand him, 
 but that did not matter. The need to be understood 
 was left behind, below. He had soared beyond the 
 loneliness even of a god. He felt very humble, 
 but very happy. And the loneliness would be but 
 temporary, for the rest of the world would follow 
 before long. . . . 
 
 The motor omnibus lurched and stopped with 
 grunting noises. Wimble, led by his more nimble 
 
XVI THE PROMISE OF AIR 231 
 
 daughter, climbed down the narrow spiral stair. He 
 glanced upwards longingly as he descended. He saw 
 the flashing birds. ' The brotherhood of the air,' he 
 thought. ' Oh, how the earth must yearn for it ! ' 
 
 ' There's an ironmonger,' cried Joan, pointing 
 across the road. And they went in to buy the 
 hurricane lanterns. They assumed, that is, that the 
 cottage was already found. 
 
 Then, after luncheon, while Mother criticised the 
 garden-gloves, observing with regard to the hurricane 
 lanterns that it was ' living backwards, rather, to buy 
 things before we have the place to use them in,' he 
 took from the book-shelf his copy of the Queen of 
 the Air and read once again a favourite passage. It 
 was thumb-marked, the margin scored by his pencil 
 long years ago. 
 
 ' . . . the bird, in which the breath, or spirit, is 
 more full than in any other creature and the earth- 
 power least. ... It is little more than a drift of the 
 air brought into form by plumes ; the. air is in all 
 its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and 
 flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like a blown 
 flame.: it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, 
 outraces it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, conquering 
 itself, ruling itself. 
 
 'Also, into the throat of the bird is given the 
 voice of the air. All that in the wind itself is 
 weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together in 
 its song . . . unwearied, rippling through the clear 
 
232 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion 
 through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim 
 and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and 
 twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat 
 of day, like little winds that only make the cowslip 
 bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. . . .' 
 
 His reading was interrupted by the entrance from 
 the passage of his wife, her face heavily veiled ; she 
 was dressed for the street, in solemn black ; she wore 
 a mysterious yet very confident expression. ' Joe 
 dear, I'm going out. I have an appointment at three 
 o'clock sharp. I mustn't be late.' 
 
 He watched her with an absent-minded air for a 
 moment, as though he saw her for the first time 
 almost ; all he could remember about her just then 
 was that during the cinema performance she had said 
 with proud superiority : ' I'm glad I'm English.' 
 Then, recognising his wife, he realised that she was 
 going to confession, of course, for he guessed it by 
 the way she folded her hands, waiting patiently for 
 a word of commendation. 
 
 ' All right, my dear,' he said, ' and good luck. 
 You'll be back for tea, I suppose.' He rose and 
 kissed her on her heavy veil, and she went out with 
 a smile. ' I'm so glad,' he added. 
 
 ' That's her stage,' he thought to himself, ' and 
 the critic and the Aquarian quack have their stage, 
 and I have mine. It's all right.' 
 
 There were immense tracts of experience in every- 
 
XV. THE PROMISE OF AIR 233 
 
 body, unknown, unused, but waiting to be known 
 and used. Some people lived in one tract only, 
 caged and fixed, unaware of the vast freedom a little 
 farther outside themselves. Different people knew 
 different tracts, each positive that his own particular 
 tract alone was right — as for him, assuredly, it was — 
 thinking also that it was the only one, the whole, 
 which, assuredly, it was not. There was, however, 
 assuredly, a point of view, the bird's, that saw all 
 these tracts at once, the boundaries and divisions 
 between them mere walls erected by the mind in 
 ignorance. The bird's-eye view looked down and 
 saw the landscape whole, the divisions unreal, the 
 separation false. This attitude was the attitude of 
 air ; air unified ; the unity of humanity was realised. 
 Consciousness, focussed hitherto upon little separate 
 tracts with feeble light, blazed upon all at once with 
 shining splendour. 
 
 It was true. A great world-telepathy was being 
 ' engendered,' barriers of creed and class were crumb- 
 ling, democracy was combing out its mighty wings ; 
 the ' tracts ' inhabited by Mother, Tom, the quack, 
 the critic, by himself and by Joan, by that narrow 
 snob and gossip at the tea-party who asked, ' Who 
 was she .'' ' — all these would be seen as adjoining 
 little strips belonging to the universal air which 
 knows neither strips, divisions nor boundaries. 
 
 A great light blazed into his heart. He wondered. 
 Apparently it was the little, simple, insignificant 
 
234 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, xvi 
 
 people, and not the great minds of the day, who 
 were the first to become aware of air. The great 
 ones were too rigid. Air rushed first into the hearts 
 of the uneducated, the ignorant, the unformed and 
 informal — the little children of the race. It has been 
 ever so. The learned, knowing too much, solid with 
 facts and explanations, are no longer fluid. They 
 neither flow nor fly. The brotherhood of air, he 
 grasped, would come first through the untaught babes 
 and little children of earth's vast, scattered family. 
 
 And, while these vague reflections danced across 
 his mind, dropping their curious shadows upon his 
 own little tract of experience, his wife was whispering 
 her sins to another mind who should forgive them 
 for her, the critic was writing a vehement pamphlet 
 to prove that he alone was right, Tom, in the office, 
 was scheming new plans for making money that 
 should satisfy his natural desires for pleasure and 
 self-indulgence, the quack was elaborating Zodiacal 
 Explanations in his studio next to his Private Consult- 
 ing Room, and Joan— — 
 
 He listened. A light, tripping step went down 
 the corridor, passed his door and began to climb the 
 ladder to the open skylight in the hall. He listened 
 closely, eagerly, a new rhythm catching at his heart. 
 The little song came to him faintly through the 
 obstructing barriers of brick and mortar. He caught 
 the tap and tremble of her feet upon the roof. 
 
 Joan sang and danced above the world. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ' Careless as a bird ! Bird-happy and bird-wise,' 
 he murmured to himself as they moved in a month 
 later. For he had found a cottage as by instinct. 
 It was not on the agents' list of modern, ugly and 
 comfortless cages, but was an old-world little place 
 that had caught his eye by the corner of the lane as 
 he returned to the country station, weary and almost 
 faith-less, after a vain inspection. A white board 
 suddenly peered at him through the branches of a 
 yew, there were roses up the walls, a tiny fountain 
 played on the lawn, and beyond he caught a glimpse 
 of a neglected orchard, sloping fields of yellow rag- 
 wort, and a stream. The stream, moreover, ran 
 under the road just there, so that he could look 
 down into it from the old stone bridge. The water 
 ran swiftly, but deep enough to grow long weeds of 
 green and gold that swung with the current like 
 thick fairy hair. Two or three silver birches shone 
 and rustled by the wicket-gate. He went in. A 
 robin hopped up, inspected him, and hopped away 
 into the shadow of the yew. 
 
 235 
 
236 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 The interior seemed to him like a bit of forest — 
 the beams, the panelling, the dark, stained settles. 
 Yet there was a bathroom, too, the kitchen was large 
 and light, the bedrooms airy, the living-rooms just 
 right in size and number. The front windows 
 looked out across the rose-plot to the little green 
 where the geese were gabbling, while the back ones 
 opened straight into the orchard, where fruit and 
 walnut trees stood ankle deep in uncut grass. The 
 windows, too, were wide and high, letting- in big 
 stretches of the sky. Also, there were a mulberry- 
 bush and several heavy quince trees. And the stream 
 ran singing and bubbling between the orchard and 
 the farther fields, where, amid the sprinkled gold of 
 the ragwort, scuttled countless rabbits. 
 
 Moreover, it was cheap, the drains were safe, 
 the church was as picturesque as an old-fashioned 
 Christmas card, and the vicar was brother to a peer. 
 Thus there was something for everybody. The nest 
 was found. Mother inspected it in due course and 
 gave her modified approval ; Tom said it ' sounded 
 ripping,' he would ' run down for week-ends ' when- 
 ever he could ; and Joan, catching her breath when 
 she saw it first on the afternoon of a golden-brown 
 October day, felt a lump in her throat and moisture 
 in her eyes, such happiness rose in her breast. She 
 stood with her father in the sandy lane, — Mother had 
 gone inside at once, — the larches rustling and the 
 excited geese examining their stiff town clothing 
 
XVII THE PROMISE OF AIR 237 
 
 from behind. On the topmost branch of an apple 
 tree a big brown thrush was singing its heart out 
 over the garden, its small packed outUne silhouetted 
 against the pale blue sky. Joan caught her father's 
 hand. 
 
 ' Look ! ' she whispered, pointing. ' Listen ! ' 
 He did so. He felt the strange excitement in 
 the child. Her lips were parted and her shining 
 eyes turned heavenwards a moment. The thrush 
 poured forth its liquid song deliciously ; and the 
 sound sank into his heart as though it expressed the 
 full happiness of the air that welcomed them to 
 the cottage and the garden. He experienced surely 
 something of the soft air-magic as he stood there 
 watching, listening. The natural joy and sweetness 
 of it touched him deeply. And his daughter sang a 
 strange thing then, murmuring it to herself. He 
 only just caught the curious words : 
 
 ' There's a bird for me 
 On the apple tree ! 
 It's explaining all the garden ! ' 
 
 Up the scafFolding of the quaint phrases he passed, 
 as it were, with her into the clear air beside the singing 
 bird : that scrap of nonsense 'explaining all the garden ' 
 did the trick. A sack of meanings seemed emptied 
 before him out of the sweet October sky. The 
 interesting, valuable ideas in life began, he realised, 
 just where language stops — intelligible, sensible 
 
238 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 language, that is. Then came either poetry, legend, 
 nonsense, or else mere silence. Joan used a combina- 
 tion of the former. 
 
 ' Words are parvenu people,' he recalled a Primer 
 sentence, ' as compared with thought and action. 
 Communications between God and man must always 
 be either above or below them ; for with words come 
 in translations.' 
 
 ' Explaining all the garden ! ' The touch of non- 
 sense brought a thousand ' translations ' into his 
 mind. The air was full of fluttering meanings that 
 showered about him. He balanced aloft on the twig 
 beside the singing thrush, his sight darting, as with 
 the bird's-eye view, upon recent happenings. He 
 read various translations instantaneously. 
 
 In front of him stood the cottage and garden, the 
 fields and trees and stream he had dreamed about 
 with his daughter — an accomplished, solid fact. It 
 had come as by magic, materialised by thought and 
 desire, and yet, as Mother said, ' by chance.' But 
 the chance included method, because Fate obeyed a 
 confident Belief. And circumstances were moulded 
 or modified by faith. He and Joan somehow held 
 the sure sweetness of fulfilment in their minds from 
 the beginning ; they had always believed, indeed had 
 known, the cottage would be found. And it had 
 been found. He had not fussed nor worried ; there 
 had been no friction due to the grit of doubt. Like 
 his queer, spontaneous daughter, he had believed in 
 
XVII THE PROMISE OF AIR 239 
 
 his dream — and at the same time kept his eyes wide 
 open like a hawk. 
 
 As he stood there, listening to the song of the 
 thrush and aware of its poise on the swaying twig 
 balanced so steadily, yet alert for spontaneous flight 
 in any direction, these fluttering translations of the 
 child's nonsense words shot through him . The joy 
 of the happy thrush shone in his heart, explaining 
 the garden that was life. 
 
 The bird, at that moment, flew ofi^ with a whirr of 
 wings, still singing as it vanished with an undulating 
 swoop over the roof towards the orchard. Across 
 the patch of watery blue sky he had been watching 
 shot half a dozen swallows, then intent only upon 
 darting insects, although on the eve of their huge 
 journey of ten thousand miles. Beyond them two 
 plover tumbled like blown leaves towards the ground, 
 yet rising again instantly before they touched it . . . 
 and into his hand he felt Joan's fingers creep softly. 
 He looked down into her eyes, moist with excitement, 
 joy, and wonder. The magic of the air seemed 
 all about them, in their minds and hearts and very 
 bodies even. 
 
 ' You've found a real nest, Daddy, but we can 
 travel everywhere from here.' It was said simply, 
 as though a bird had learned to speak. ' Think of 
 the journeys we shall make — ^just by staying here ! ' 
 
 ' The cottage seems swung in the branches, doesn't 
 it?'^he replied. 'Come on, now ; let's go inside.' 
 
240 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 And he walked across the lawn, lifting his feet 
 quickly, lightly, as though he feared his weight might 
 hurt the earth, yet still more as though he might any 
 instant spring into the air and follow the thrush, the 
 plover, or the swallows. 
 
 Upon the threshold of the open door, at that 
 minute. Mother faced them. Having made her 
 inspection of the arrangements and the furniture, 
 all that the workmen had done in the last is^^ days, 
 she came out to report. She stood there very solidly, 
 her feet in goloshes, planted tenaciously upon the 
 damp October earth. She was smiling contentedly ; 
 behind her gleamed the white apron of the parlour- 
 maid. Tea obviously was ready and she was waiting 
 for them to come in. A fire burned pleasantly in 
 the dining-room, glinting on a clean white table-cloth. 
 There were buttered toast and a jug of cream — solid 
 realities both. This atmosphere of wholesome, 
 earthly comfort glowed about her. Her very smile 
 conveyed it. 
 
 ' Mother's settled down already,' Joan whispered. 
 ' She likes it ! That means Tom'U like it too. But 
 she'll live indoors.' 
 
 In his own mind, however, rose another thought, 
 although he agreed with what she said. He was 
 thinking how odd it was that Mother always appeared 
 to be settled in the mouth of a hole. She stood, 
 framed by the dark doorway, as though a deep 
 burrow stretched behind her and below. The simile of 
 
XVII THE PROMISE OF AIR 241 
 
 the nervous badger, peering forth upon a dangerous 
 upper world, passed through him. A great tender- 
 ness rose in his heart. Mother, he knew, though 
 she had done no actual work, had felt the move a 
 heavy strain. To dig a new hole, of course, was a 
 dusty and laborious job, whereas to flutter across a 
 few fields to another tree was but a careless joy. 
 
 'I've been through all the rooms,' she said 
 cautiously, as they went down the passage, ' and 
 everything seems very nice indeed, Joe. The wood 
 makes it seem a bit dark, perhaps, but it's all very 
 respectable. And the parlour looks really quite' 
 distinguished. Tea's laid for us in the dining-room.' 
 
 They went in ; the fire shone brightly ; the lamp 
 was lit. Mother moved towards the great silver 
 tea-pot, letting herself down with a sigh into the 
 black horsehair arm-chair. It was as though she 
 went down into the earth. He sat with his cup of 
 tea in the wide settle of the ingle-nook, and Joan, 
 having first seen to her parents' wants, then took the 
 corner facing him. 
 
 They settled in. Yet this settling was character- 
 istic of the family, for whereas Mother settled down, 
 Mr. Wimble and his daughter became unsettled. 
 That is, they felt restless. Mother, with the security 
 of a comfortable home and comfortable income at 
 her back, cropped her food safely, yet wondered why 
 she felt dull and bored and lonely. There is no call 
 
 R 
 
242 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 to describe the actions and reactions of her familiar 
 type to the conditions of the quiet country life, and 
 her chief tragedy that winter was perhaps that when 
 ' his lordship, the vicar,' called, he surprised her in 
 old garden clothes, the fire in the ' distinguished 
 parlour ' (kept unused against just this particular 
 event) unlighted, so that she was obliged to receive 
 him in the dark dining-room with the ungentlemanly 
 settles. 
 
 Joan and her father were unsettled for the very 
 reason that made her settled. Mother felt her feet. 
 They felt their wings. 
 
 A week after the settling in, their restless feeling, 
 wholly unanticipated, came to a head. The windy 
 skies were already calling the swallows together 
 swiftly, collecting their mobile squadrons in a few 
 hours for the grand southern tour. And these 
 amazing birds seemed nothing less than an incarna- 
 tion of the air itself. There is nothing of earth 
 about them anywhere ; their feet are too weak to 
 stand on the ground ; every darting turn they make 
 is a movement of the entire creature, rather than of 
 the head first and then the body ; they have no necks, 
 their bullet heads turn simultaneously with the tail, 
 and all at once. Joan and her father watched them 
 daily going about their careless, windy life, gathering 
 on the telegraph wires, giving the young ones hints, 
 on the wing to the very last minute. They had no 
 packing-up to do. 
 
xvn THE PROMISE OF AIR 243 
 
 ' They'll be ofF soon now,' said Joan. ' Wher- 
 ever they are, they go — don't they ? ' There was 
 a tinge of restless desire in her eyes as she followed 
 their movements. 
 
 ' A few days, yes,' said her father. ' About the 
 middle of the month they leave. They know right 
 enough.' 
 
 And two days later — it was October 15 th — Joan 
 woke at dawn and looked out of her open window. 
 The twittering of many thousand voices had called 
 her out of sleep, but something in her heart had 
 called her too. It was very early, the daylight of 
 dawn, yet not the daylight quite, and everywhere, 
 from fields and trees, the chorus of bird-life was 
 audible. Birds sing their best and loudest always in 
 that half-hour which precedes the actual dawn. The 
 volume is astonishing. 'As the real daylight comes, 
 it sinks and almost ceases, and never in the whole 
 twenty-four hours is there such an hour again.' The 
 entire air seemed calling ' good-bye and safe return ' 
 to those about to leave. 
 
 Joan ran and woke her father. ' They're off,' 
 she whispered, as he crawled out of his warm bed, 
 careful not to waken his wife. ' Come and say 
 good-bye.' 
 
 The peculiar joy and mystery of early morning 
 was in the quiet house and in the sharp tang of the 
 fresh, cool autumn air. In nightgown and pyjamas, 
 a single rug about their shoulders, they leaned out 
 
244 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 of the upper window. The ivy rustled just beneath 
 them on the wall, there was a whisper among the 
 yellow walnut leaves to their right, the orchard trees 
 hung still and motionless, breathing out the perfume 
 of earth and fruit and heavy dew. 
 
 The sky, however, was alive ; it seemed all 
 motion ; even the streaky clouds tinged with pale 
 colour looked like stretched wings mightily extended. 
 And the vague murmur of a flock of birds rose 
 everywhere. There was a hurricane of wings above 
 the world, as the armies of the swallows came care- 
 lessly together. They left in scattered groups, but 
 with every party that left, another instantly assembled, 
 born out of empty space. Multitudes took the wing 
 towards the sea, while other darting multitudes col- 
 lected instantly behind them. The air, indeed, was 
 alive and whirring into a symbol of lovely, rushing 
 flight — swarming, settling, turning, wheeling in a 
 turmoil of ascending and descending feathers that yet 
 expressed a design of ordered beauty. Myriad 
 clusters formed, then instantly dispersed again, 
 threaded together upon one invisible pattern ; now 
 herded into a wedge, shaped like a wild black comet, 
 now circling, streaming, dividing, melting away into 
 a living cloud. The evolutions were bewildering. 
 
 As the eastern horizon began to burn with red 
 and gold, the wings took colour faintly, brightening 
 as an upward slant revealed their pallid under-sides, 
 then darkening again as they tilted backwards. The 
 
xvii THE PROMISE OF AIR 245 
 
 swallows alternately focussed and dispersed. Separate 
 hordes, turning at high velocity with one accord, shot 
 forth and away to the south. They rose, they sank, 
 they vanished. They went first to the coast ; for 
 their migration, led by the infallible sense of orienta- 
 tion which is subconscious knowledge, takes place 
 chiefly in the night — in darkness. Within a brief 
 half-hour the whole of the immense army disappeared. 
 The sky was still and silent, motionless and empty. 
 The swallows were gone. 
 
 ' They've taken part of me with them,' whispered 
 Joan, ' part of my warmth,' and she drew the rug 
 closer about her shoulders as the October sun came 
 up above the misty fields. 
 
 ' They'll be in Algeria to-morrow,' sighed her 
 father, ' and I'd like to be there too.' His thought 
 went back to the sun-drenched garden where night- 
 ingales sang in the February moonlight. . . . The 
 old romance stirred in him painfully. 'Mother, 
 poor old Mother,' he murmured to himself, ' she 
 seemed so wonderful then. How strange ! ' He 
 felt himself old suddenly. He felt himself caught, 
 caged — stuck. 
 
 ' That's where I was born, wasn't it ? ' Joan 
 asked, catching the sentence. She straightened her- 
 self suddenly, throwing the rug aside ; the sun shone 
 into her face and on her golden hair that fell rippling 
 over her nightgown. The light gleamed, too, in her 
 moistened eyes. He saw joy steal back upon her. 
 
246 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 ' But, Daddy,' she exclaimed with an odd touch of 
 confident wonder in her voice and look, ' we can be 
 there just the same, if we want to.' She raised herself 
 on her toes a moment as though she were going to 
 dance or fly. In the pale gold light of the sunrise 
 she looked like some ethereal bird of fire rising into 
 the air. 
 
 ' We can be everywhere — everywhere at once — 
 really ! Don't you see .'' We always want to be 
 somewhere else anyhow. That proves it.' 
 
 And as she said it, he remembered the cinema, and 
 felt his wings again ; he was free, uncaged ; of course 
 he could go anyv/here, everywhere at once almost. 
 He knew himself eternally young. He realised Air, 
 that which is everywhere at once and cannot age. 
 Earth obeys time, grows old, changes, and eventually 
 dies ; but air is ever changeless, free of time alto- 
 gether, unageing. It cannot wear away, it is 
 invisible, omnipresent. The wings of the spirit 
 opened in him, rose into space and light, then 
 flashed, darting after the amazing swallows. 'Wher- 
 ever I am, I go,' he hummed, as he went softly back 
 along the cold passage and crept cautiously into bed 
 beside his wife, who, heavily breathing still, had not 
 moved since he left her, and lay in ignorance of the 
 sunrise, as also of the army of happy wings that 
 by now were already out of England and far across 
 the sea. 
 
 And, later in the day, as he stood with her near 
 
xvn THE PROMISE OF AIR 247 
 
 a gravel-pit beside the road, watching a colony of 
 busy starlings, she objected : ' What a noise and fuss 
 about nothing ! What a nuisance they are, Joe. Do 
 come on, dear. There's really nothing to watch, and 
 I want to get in and change my things in case any 
 callers come.' 
 
 He remembered a passage about starlings written 
 by a strenuous big-game hunter, who yet had the air- 
 magic in his blood. He quoted it to her, as best he 
 could, and she said it was pretty : 
 
 ' Happy birdies ! What a bore all morality seems, 
 as one watches them. How tiresome it is to be high 
 in the scale (and human) ! Those who would shake 
 ofF the cobwebs — who are tired of teachings and 
 preachings and heavy-high novellings, who would 
 see things anew, and not mattering, rubbing their 
 eyes and forgetting their dignities, missions, destinies, 
 virtues, and the rest of it — let them come and watch 
 a colony of starlings at work in a gravel-pit.' 
 
 ' Yes,' he agreed, ' quite pretty. Selous got a 
 glimpse there — didn't he .? — but only a glimpse. The 
 great thing is to see it all. He forgot the swallows.' 
 
 His thought ran on, fragments becoming audible 
 sometimes. ' It's all one, you see. Stars and starlings 
 are the same one thing, only differently expressed. . . . 
 That's what genius does, of course. Genius has the 
 bird's-eye point of view. ... It sees analogies every- 
 where, the underlying unity of everything — sees the 
 similar in the dissimilar. It reduces the Many to 
 
248 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap, xvh 
 
 the One,' he added in a louder tone, as a Primer 
 came opportunely to his support. 
 
 ' I ask you, Mother,' he cried with enthusiasm, 
 ' what else is genius but that .'' I ask you .'' ' 
 
 ' What } ' said Mother, as they went indoors. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Wimble watched the year draw to its close and 
 run into the past. Born slowly out of sullen skies, 
 it had shaken ofF the glistening pearls of April and 
 slipped, radiant and laughing, into May ; at the end 
 of June, full-bosomed still and stately, it had begun 
 to hasten, lest the roses hold it prisoner for ever ; 
 pausing a moment in August, it looked out with 
 perfect eyes upon the world as from a pinnacle ; 
 then, poised and confident, began the grand descent 
 down the red slopes of Autumn into the peace of 
 winter and the snow. 
 
 Thus, at least, its history described itself in 
 Wimble's thoughts, because his little mind, standing 
 on tiptoe, saw it whole and from above. ' You 
 ought to publish it, dear,' said Mother, to whom he 
 mentioned it one December evening round the fire. 
 ' You really ought to write it.' He objected that 
 everybody knew it just as well as he did. ' It's 
 always happening to everybody, so why should 
 I remind them .'' ' ' Because they don't see it,' was 
 her answer. ' Besides, they'd think you wonderful.' 
 
 249 
 
2 so THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 But Wimble was no writer. He shook his untidy 
 head, yet secretly pleased with his wife's remark that 
 people don't see the obvious. It was almost an air- 
 remark. Mother was changing a little. . . . And he 
 dozed in his chair, thinking how easily the world 
 calls a man wonderful — he has but to startle it — and 
 how easily, too, that man is destroyed if he believes 
 its verdict. 
 
 With the rare exception of occasional signs like 
 this, however, his wife had not mobilised her being 
 radically for a big change. She retired into her 
 prosaic background, against which, as with certain 
 self-protecting, ultra-cautious animals and Insects, she 
 remained safely invisible. Back to the land proved 
 rather literal for her ; she wore her heavy garden- 
 gloves with pride. At the same time her practical 
 nature, streaked with afFection, patience, and un- 
 selfishness, took on, somehow, a tiny glint of gold. 
 Her eyes grew lighter, her movements less laborious. 
 Fear lessened in her ; joy often caught her by 
 surprise. Sparks, though not yet flame, lit up her 
 attitude to things, as if, close to her beloved element 
 of earth, the country life both soothed and blessed 
 her. She felt at home. She said ' what ' far less 
 frequently. This quiet, peaceful winter was perhaps 
 for her a period of gestation. The family gathered 
 about her more than in town. 
 
 With a buoyancy hard to define and possibly not 
 justified. Wimble watched her. He looked out 
 
xvm THE PROMISE OF AIR 251 
 
 upon life about him. His health was good, but this 
 buoyancy was based on something deeper than that ; 
 his health was good because of it. Nothing mattered, 
 a foolish phrase of those who shirked responsibilities, 
 was far from him ; everything mattered equally ex- 
 pressed it better. The New Thing coming, which 
 he and Joan called Air, lay certainly in him, though 
 very far yet from finding full expression. The germ 
 of it at any rate lay in him, as in her. The fact that 
 they recognised it was proof of that. A divine 
 carelessness took charge of his whole life and being ; 
 Mother was aware of it ; even Tom responded 
 mildly : ' quite sets a fellow up,' as he expressed it 
 after his rare week-end visits, the Sunday spent in 
 killing rabbits ; ' town's overrated after all.' 
 
 They merged pleasantly enough with their sur- 
 roundings, melting, without shock into the life of 
 neighbours, sharing the community existence, narrow, 
 conventional, uninspired though it was. And all 
 through the dark and clouded months, the skies 
 emptied of birds, weighted at the low horizons, 
 afraid to shine, yet waiting for the marvellous coming 
 dawn — all through these heavy weeks and days 
 Joan's presence, flitting everywhere with careless 
 singing and dancing, shot the wintry gloom with 
 happy radiance. It was her spontaneous dancing 
 that especially made Wimble stare and wonder. It 
 conveyed meanings no words could compass, express- 
 ing better than anything else the new attitude he felt 
 
252 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 coming into life. He remembered the flood of 
 shadowy ideas her graceful gestures had poured mto 
 him once before when he walked up Maida Vale ; 
 and that strange night in the flat when, seeing her 
 dancing on the London roof, he was dimly aware of 
 a new language which included even inanimate objects. 
 The strange shudder that accompanied the vision he 
 had forgotten. 
 
 This magical rhythm was her secret. It stirred the 
 heart, making it vulnerable to impulses from some 
 brighter, happier state she knew instinctively and in 
 advance. Mother, he noticed, watched her too, 
 peering above her knitting-needles, moving her head 
 in sympathy, sometimes a faint, wondering smile 
 lighting upon her bewildered, careworn face. A real 
 smile, however, for it was in the eyes alone, and did 
 not touch the lips. Even Tom admired. ' You 
 ought to be taught,' he said guardedly. ' You'd 
 touch 'em up a bit. If you did that in church the 
 whole world would go.' He too, without knowing 
 it, realised that something sacred, inspired, regenerat- 
 ing was being whispered. 
 
 Yet Joan herself, though growing older, hardly 
 developed in the ordinary way. She did not grow 
 up. She remained backward somehow. She lived 
 subconsciously, perhaps. Some new knowledge, 
 gathering below the surface, found expression in this 
 spontaneous dancing. With the dawn, now slowly 
 coming, it would burst full-fledged upon the world, 
 
xvin THE PROMISE OF AIR 253 
 
 and the world itself would dance with joy. Mean- 
 while, a new bloom, a new beauty settled on the girl, 
 and Mother proudly insisted that she ' must go to 
 a good photographer and have her picture taken.' 
 But the result was commonplace, for in the rigid 
 black and white outline all the subtlety escaped, and, 
 regretting the money wasted, Mother wondered why 
 it had failed. Like the audience at the Vicarage 
 charities when Joan danced, she watched the perform- 
 ance, felt a hint of strange beauty, clapped her 
 hands and wondered ' what it meant.' 
 
 ' It's her life, you see,' Wimble comforted her. 
 'And you can't photograph life. To get her real 
 meaning, we ought to do it with her — dance it.' 
 
 ' She's light, rather, for her age,' replied Mother 
 ambiguously. ' But everybody seems to love her 
 somehow,' she added proudly. ' She seems to make 
 people happy. P'r'aps later she'll develop and get 
 sensible.' She sighed, and resumed her knitting. 
 Presently she got up to light the lamps. ' The days 
 are drawing out, Joe,' she mentioned, smiling. 
 ' Spring will be here before we know it.' He lifted 
 the chimney to help her, turned up the wick, struck 
 a match, and kissed her fondly. 
 
 The country life, it seemed, had brought them all 
 together more, made them aware of their underlying 
 unity, as it were. They flocked. Wimble, dressed 
 now in wide brown knickerbockers, wearing bright 
 stockings and brogue shoes with feathered tongues 
 
2 54 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 that flapped when he walked, noticed the change with 
 pleasure. The new attitude was only in his brain as 
 yet, but it was already stealing down into his heart. 
 This increased sense of a harmonious manifold unity 
 in the family impressed him, and it was Joan, he felt, 
 who made him see it, if she was not also the cause 
 of its coming to pass. Only some spiritual actuary 
 could make it quite clear, but he discerned the oneness 
 behind the different members of his family, uniting 
 them. In this subconscious, completer self lay full 
 understanding. There was no need to pay annual 
 subscriptions to an Aquarian Society to realise that ! 
 Moreover, if a small family with such divergent 
 interests and ambitions could flock and realise unity, 
 the larger family of a village, country, nation could do 
 the same — once the underlying unity were realised. 
 That was the difficulty. The whole world was, after 
 all, but a single family, humanity. ... In his quiet 
 country nook Wimble dreamed his great dream. 
 He saw the nations with but a single flag, a single 
 drum, a single anthem, true to a larger single patriot- 
 ism that could never again be split up into lesser 
 divisional patriotisms. The universal fraternity of 
 indivisible Air was coming ; the subconscious where 
 individuals pooled their surface differences would 
 become conscious ; that was the truth, he felt, the one 
 great thing the Aquarian lecturer had said. . . . He 
 remembered the cinema, with its mechanical suggestion 
 of a unification of world-experience faintly offered ; 
 
xvm THE PROMISE OF AIR 255 
 
 he remembered the free, happy, collective life of the 
 inhabitants of air, the natural singers of the world. 
 The deep underlying sense of unity buried in the 
 subconscious once realised, full understanding must 
 follow, and with complete understanding the way was 
 cleared for love. And it was Joan's dancing, some- 
 how, that set the dream within his heart. The new 
 attitude to life he imagined dawning on the world was 
 the first hint of a coming spiritual consciousness, and 
 for spiritual consciousness the totality of things is 
 present. ' All at once and everywhere at once,' as 
 she had put it. His heart swelled big within him as 
 he dreamed. . . . 
 
 ' Coal's getting very expensive,' mentioned Mother, 
 as she leaned forward beside him to poke the fire. 
 ' We'd better mix it with coke. You might find out, 
 Joe. We can't go on at this rate.' 
 
 ' I will, dear,' he replied. ' I'll write to Snodden 
 and Tupps at once.' He patted her knee and got up 
 to go to his little den where he kept his papers, books, 
 and pipes, reflecting as he did so that it was easy 
 enough to love the world ; it was loving the individual 
 that breaks the heart. Pricked by an instant of 
 remorse, then, it occurred to him that a pat on the 
 knee, as a sign of love, might be improved. He 
 trotted back and kissed her. ' We must flock more 
 and more and more,' he mumbled, and before she 
 could say ' What, Joe ? ' he gave her another kiss and 
 was gone to write to his coal merchant as she had 
 
256 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 suggested. He would bring back the bird into 
 Mother's heart or die in the attempt. If the new 
 thing he dreamed about didn't begin at home, it was 
 not worth much. He felt happy, so happy that he 
 longed to share it with others ; he would have liked 
 to mention it in his letter to the coal merchant. 
 Instead, he merely began, ' Dear Messrs. Snodden 
 and Tupps,' yet signed himself, ' Yours full of faith,' 
 since ' faithfully ' alone sounded insincere. 
 
 ' Odd,' he reflected, ' that unless happiness is 
 shared, it's incomplete, unsatisfying. The chief item 
 lacks. Selfish happiness is a contradiction in terms. 
 We are meant to share everything and be together 
 more. There's the instinctive proof of it.' If the 
 coal merchant felt equally happy, he might even 
 have shared his coal. ' But he'd only think me mad 
 if I suggested that,' thought Wimble, chuckling. 
 ' We can exchange coal and money and still love one 
 another.' He posted the letter before he could change 
 his mind, and came back to his wife. ' Some day,' he 
 said, as he sat down and poked the fire, * some day. 
 Mother, and not very far off either, we shall all be 
 sharing everything all over the world, just as birds 
 share the air and worms and water.' This time she 
 did not ask him to repeat his words. She smiled a 
 comfortable smile half-way between belief and in- 
 credulity. ' You really think so, Joe ? ' ' It's coming,' 
 he rejoined ; ' it's in the air, you know, for I feel it. 
 Don't you .'' ' he added. He leaned nearer and softly 
 
XVI.. THE PROMISE OF AIR 257 
 
 whispered in her ear, ' You're happy here, aren't you. 
 Mother ? Much happier than you used to be ? ' She 
 smiled again contentedly. 'The country air, Joe 
 dear,' she replied. ' The bird's flown back into you,' 
 he said, taking her hand and ignoring the bunch of 
 knitting-needles that came pricking with it. ' Perhaps,' 
 she mumbled, ' perhaps. Life's sweeter, easier than it 
 used to be — in some ways.' She flushed a little, 
 while Wimble murmured to himself, yet just low for 
 her to hear, ' and in your heart some late lark singing, 
 dear. A new thing is stealing down upon us all.' 
 ' There's something coming, certainly,' she agreed. 
 ' Come,' he corrected her, ' not coming. It's here 
 now.' Holding hands, they looked into each other's 
 eyes, as Joan's little song and dancing steps went 
 down the passage just outside. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Januarv sparkled, dropped like a broken icicle, 
 and was gone ; February, so eager for the sun that 
 she shortens her days while lengthening her searching 
 evening hours, summoned one night the tyrant winds 
 of March ; these shouted and blew the world awake, 
 then yielded with a sigh to the kiss of April's laughter. 
 A disturbing sweetness ran upon the world, agitating 
 the hearts and minds of men. Yearning stirred even 
 among deep city slums ; in the country hope and 
 desire burst into glad singing. Spring returned with 
 her eternal magic. The hawthorn was in bloom. 
 
 The birds came back, filling the air with song, 
 with the glance of wings and the whirr of feathers, 
 with the gold and confidence of coming summer. 
 The air was alive again with careless joy. Wimble 
 responded instantly. The thrill pierced to his very 
 marrow. Memories revived like wild-flowers, and 
 his thoughts, shot with the gold and blue of lost 
 i-omance, turned to the open air. He got some 
 sandwiches, mounted his bicycle, and, followed by 
 Joan, started in a southerly direction as once, long 
 
 258 
 
CHAP. XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 259 
 
 years ago, he had escaped from streets and lectures to 
 spend a day with his beloved birds. This time, how- 
 ever, it was not the willow-haunted Cambridge flats 
 that were his aim. He took Joan with him to the 
 bare open downs above the $ea. 
 
 It was a radiant morning, and a south-west wind 
 blew gently in their faces. Wimble's felt hat fluttered 
 behind him at the end of a string, as they skimmed 
 down the sandy lanes towards Lewes, the smooth, 
 scooped hollows of the downs coming nearer every 
 minute. Their majestic outline seemed hung down 
 from the sky itself, yet in spite of their mass they 
 had a light, almost transparent look in the morning 
 brilliance. They melted into the air. The noble 
 line of them flung upwards the space as though time 
 met eternity and disappeared. 
 
 Down the long hill into the ancient town Joan 
 shot past him. He noticed her balance, and thought 
 of the perfect equilibrium of a bird that shoots full 
 speed upon its resting-place, then stops, securely 
 poised, making no single effort to recover steadiness. 
 For all its tiny legs, no bird wobbles or overbalances, 
 much less trips or stumbles. Joan flew ahead of 
 him, both hands ofi^ the bars. The careless gesture 
 reminded him of the matchless grace of the wagtail. 
 He laughed aloud, coasting after her unconscious 
 ease with his own more deliberate, reasoned caution. 
 ' She could fly to Africa without a guide ! ' he thought, 
 aware for an instant of the great subconscious rhythm 
 
2 6o THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 
 in Nature birds obeyed instinctively. No wonder 
 their purposes were carelessly achieved. ' She's sure,' 
 he added. ' Something very big takes care of her, 
 and she knows it.' 
 
 They walked up the steep hill out of the town, 
 ran to the left along a chalky lane, dipped in between 
 the folds of grassy hills and great covering fields, 
 Joan leading always without hesitation. Once they 
 paused to watch the aerial evolutions of a body of 
 plover, rising, falling, tumbling, turning at full speed 
 without confusion or collision, as though one single 
 telepathic sympathy operated throughout the entire 
 mass of individuals. Instinct the Primers called it, 
 but Wimble, recalling the Aquarian lecture, caught 
 at another phrase — subconscious unity. It was a 
 power, at any rate, beyond man's conscious reasoning 
 mind. The careless safety of the birds amazed him. 
 ' Air wisdom ! ' he exclaimed aloud to Joan ; ' we shall 
 all have it some day ! ' It was odd how that crazy 
 lecture had lodged ideas in his thoughts, claiming 
 confirmation, returning again and again to his memory. 
 They coasted down a grassy track into a village, left 
 their bicycles behind a farmer's gate, and sat down a 
 moment to recover breath. It was ten o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 From the tiny hamlet, where a few flint cottages 
 and barns clustered about an ivied church, they took 
 the path southwards up the slope. In the cup of 
 the hills below them sheltered the toy buildings and 
 
XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 261 
 
 the trees. The rooks, advertising their clumsy flight 
 and semi-human ways, cawed noisily, playing in the 
 gusty wind. They showed ofF consciously, devoid of 
 grace. One minute the scene was visible below, a 
 perfect miniature ; the next it was hidden by a heavy 
 shoulder of ground ; the earth had swallowed it, 
 church, houses, trees, and all. No sound was audible. 
 Even the rooks had vanished. In front stretched an 
 open and a naked world. The human couple paused 
 a moment and stared. The wind went past their 
 ears. There was a sense of immensity and freedom. 
 There was great light. They were on the Downs. 
 
 ' Oh, Daddy,' cried Joan, ' we're out of England ! 
 This is the world 1 ' 
 
 ' And the world has blown wide open ! ' he replied. 
 ' I feel everywhere at once ! ' The gust whirled his 
 words and laughter into space. ' The misunder- 
 standing of streets and houses leaves ' he snatched 
 
 at the same time at his vanishing hat and seized the 
 cord. 
 
 Joan flung herself backwards against the wind 
 with arms spread out, her hat in one hand and a blue 
 ribbon that had tied her hair fluttering in the other. 
 The loosened hair streamed past her neck, great 
 strands of it flattened against the curve of her back 
 as well, her short skirts flapping with a noise like 
 sails. Then, turning about, she faced the gust, and 
 everything streamed the other way. The wind 
 clapped the clothes so tight against her slender figure 
 
262 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 that it seemed to undress her, or rather made them 
 fit as tight and neat as feathers. Like some bird of 
 paradise, indeed, she looked, the slim black legs 
 straining to take the air. She began to dance. 
 
 And as he watched the golden hair against the 
 blue, there flashed into him the memory of a distant 
 day, when a saffron scarf had set his heart on fire 
 with strange airy yearnings, and the blue and golden 
 earth had danced to the tune of another spring. The 
 tiny human outline amid this vast expanse seemed 
 wonderful, so safe, so exquisite, caught in some 
 rhythm born of the immensities of sky and earth and 
 ocean. A mile to the southward lay the sea. There 
 was a taste of clover- honey, a tang of salt, and 
 the gorse laid its sweetness in between the two. 
 Memories crowded upon him as he watched Joan 
 playing and dancing. The fervour and earnestness 
 of her pleasure exhilarated him. ' Blithe creature,' 
 he said to himself, ' you were surely born to fly ! ' 
 — and remembered Mother as she once had been and 
 as she was now. Why had it all left her, this joyous 
 rapture of their early days together ? Had the bird 
 flown really from her heart and into Joan ? Was it 
 not merely caged awhile ? Had he himself not 
 helped to cage it ? He recalled her radiant face 
 beside the pond among the emerald Cambridge fields, 
 and the old first love poured back upon him in a 
 flood. 
 
 In a lull of the wind he caught the ecstatic singing 
 
x.x THE PROMISE OF AIR 263 
 
 of a lark, and at the same moment Joan danced back 
 to his side suddenly and seized his arm. Her voice, 
 it almost seemed, carried on the trill and music of 
 the lark. ' It's all new as gold,' she cried. ' Every- 
 body 'd live for ever up here. We must bring 
 Mother. She'd flow fly flow all over ! ' 
 
 ' Dance, my child,' he exclaimed, ' don't talk ! 
 Go on with your dancing. It gives me ideas.' 
 
 ' But you're always thinking,' she said, still breath- 
 less from her exertions. ' It spoils everything, that 
 thinking and thinking ' 
 
 ' It's not thinking,' he interrupted, ' it's seeing. 
 When you dance I see things. I see everything at 
 once. It's like a huge vision, yet so small and simple 
 that it's all in my head at once. It explains the 
 universe somehow to me. Thinking indeed ! Why, 
 I never thought in my life ' 
 
 'There's a bird for me, On the apple tree. It's 
 explaining all the garden,' sang the girl, dancing away 
 towards the yellow gorse. Her father's words 
 conveyed no meaning to her ; she had not listened. 
 He watched her. Her movements, he felt, obeyed 
 the great unconscious rhythm that breathes through 
 nature, through the entire universe, from the spinning 
 midge to the most distant sun. Surely it must 
 include humanity as well, these millions of separate 
 individuals who had lost it temporarily, much as 
 Mother had lost the 'bird.' He, too, was caught 
 along with it, as though he shared it, did it, danced 
 
264 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 it. He could see what he could not say. He under- 
 stood. Immense, yet at lightning speed, the meaning 
 of Air slid with that simple dancing deep into his 
 heart. It was unity of life everywhere that he saw 
 interpreted, and the ease, the grace, the carelessness 
 were due to their being mothered and inspired by 
 Nature's great safe rhythm. Relying on this, as birds 
 did, there was safety, unerring intelligence, infallible 
 guidance, flight from Siberia to Abyssinia possible 
 without a leader. Birds migrated at night, he re- 
 membered, stopping at dawn to rest and sing, then 
 going on again in the twilight : surer of their inner 
 guidance in the darkness than in the blaze of 
 daylight. Amazing symbol ! Instinct, unconscious, 
 subconscious — whatever it might be called in rigid 
 language, this deep attitude, poised and steady, obeyed 
 the mighty rhythm that realised the underlying unity 
 of all that lives, of everything. Thought breaks 
 this rhythm, which it should merely guide ; reason 
 reduces, opposes, and finally interrupts it. His 
 backward child — and she was still a child for all her 
 eighteen years — had somehow tapped it. 
 
 ' Dance, my child, dance on ! ' he cried as he 
 followed her. ' You dance joy and brotherhood into 
 my heart.' And, looking more like a mechanical 
 gollywog than a human being who has discovered 
 truth, he floundered after her as a gnome might 
 chase a butterfly. Thus, swinging along between 
 the yellow gorse, over the tumuli, leaping the rabbit 
 
X.X THE PROMISE OF AIR 265 
 
 holes, he realised that the love and joy he sought 
 and dreamed about was here and now ; not in some 
 future Golden Age, but at his very feet upon the 
 earth. All that he meant by Air and the Airy Con- 
 sciousness was now. This little prophet without a 
 lyre saw it clear. Torn by the brambles, tripped by 
 the holes, he chased his marvellous dream as once, 
 years before, he had chased an elusive streak of gold 
 across the Cambridge flats. He was caught by the 
 elemental rhythm of the Downs, borrowed in its 
 turn from the suns of uttermost space that equally 
 obeyed and shared it. 
 
 He looked about him. Immense domed surfaces, 
 smooth as a pausing ocean, stretched undulating to 
 dim horizons ; air lifted the earth into immaterial 
 space ; they intermingled ; and sight roved every- 
 where without a break. Upon this vast expanse there 
 were no details to enchain attention, blocking the 
 rhythm of the eye ; no points of interest stood up, 
 as in mere ' scenery,' to fasten feeling to a limited 
 area. Enjoyment soared, unconfined, on wings. He 
 saw no barriers, no trees, no hedges or divisions ; no 
 summits startled him with ' See, how big I am ! ' all 
 self-asserting items lacked. Wind, sky, and sea offered 
 their unconditioned, limitless invitation. Even the 
 flowers were unobtrusive, the ragwort, thyme, and 
 yellow gorse claimed no deliberate notice, and the 
 thistle-down flew past like air made visible. It was, in 
 a word, this liberation from detail, snapping attention 
 
266 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 with definite objects, that set him free in mind, as 
 Joan already proved herself free in action. Earth 
 here was sublimated into air. 
 
 ' Good heavens ! ' his heart cried out. ' It's here, 
 it's now — this new thing coming from the Air ! ' 
 
 This deep rhythm of the landscape caught his very 
 feet, making even his physical movements elastic, 
 springy, sharing the rise and fall of flight expressed 
 in the waving surface of the world about him. He 
 no longer stumbled. Joan's dancing, though appar- 
 ently she merely leapt to catch the thistle-down, or 
 played with her flying hair and fluttering ribbon, 
 interpreted in the gestures of her young lithe figure 
 ail he felt, but reproduced it unconsciously. 
 
 This was, indeed, not England, but the world. 
 
 ' We're over the edge of everything,' sang Joan, 
 catching at his hand. 'Hold up, Daddy ! Hold up ! ' 
 She tugged him along to join her wild, happy dance. 
 ' You ought to sing. We're over the edge of the 
 world ! ' 
 
 ' Above it,' he cried breathlessly. ' We're in the 
 air. Look out, my dear ! ' 
 
 She had suddenly released his hand and sent him 
 spinning with the unaccustomed momentum. Her 
 yellow hair vanished beyond a sea of golden gorse. 
 Her figure melted against it, she was out of sight. 
 ' I'm not a bird yet, at any rate,' he gasped, settling 
 to rest upon a convenient mound and mopping his 
 forehead. ' Not in body, at least. I've got no 
 
XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 267 
 
 balance to speak of. I think too much — probably.' 
 He heard her singing somewhere far behind him, 
 and again a lark overhead took up the note and bore 
 it into space. 
 
 But with the repose of his creaking muscles and 
 elderly body, the rhythm he had tried to dance now 
 slipped under his ageless and untiring soul. Like a 
 rising wind the Downs were under him and he was 
 up. Seeking a point to settle on, his eye found only 
 strong, subtle lines against the blue, and running along 
 these lines, his spirit was flung forwards with them, 
 upward into limitless space. No peak, no precipice 
 blocked their endless utterance ; they flowed, they 
 flew, and Wimble's heart flew with them. The sense 
 of unity, characteristic of airy freedom, invaded his 
 soul triumphantly with its bird's-eye view. He saw 
 life whole beneath him. Perhaps he dozed, perhaps 
 he even slept ; at any rate he knew this strange 
 perspective that showed him life, with its huge freight 
 of plodding humanity, rising suddenly into the air. 
 
 To rely upon inner, subconscious guidance was to 
 rely upon that portion of his being — that greater 
 portion — which obeyed spontaneously an immense 
 rhythm of the mothering World-Spirit. Thought 
 broke this rhythm ; Reason was clever but not 
 wise. The subconscious powers, knowing nothing, 
 yet approached omniscience ; enjoyed omnipresence, 
 while still being here. In that state his individu- 
 ality pooled in sympathy with all others everywhere. 
 
268 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 tapping a universal wisdom which is available to 
 intuition but not to argument, and is so simple that 
 a child, a bird, may know it easily, singing and dancing 
 its expression naturally. Unerring, infallible, it is the 
 rhythm of divinity, it is reliance upon deity. 
 
 This germ of understanding sprouted in his heart, 
 aiKi practice would develop it. He realised himself 
 linked up, not alone with Nature, but with the entire 
 human family — and hence, with Mother. The 
 practice, it was obvious, began with Mother. He 
 must see to it at once. Yet, though clear as crystal in 
 his heart, in his mind it all remained confused, too shy 
 for language, so that he recalled what the railway guard 
 had said — it cannot yet be told, but it can be lived. 
 
 His heart flew like a bird through empty space, 
 above all obstacles, above all barriers. There was no 
 detail to enchain attention, nothing to obscure free 
 vision ; the soul in him, grand super-bird, took flight. 
 The airy attitude to life became divinely clear and 
 simple, because, with this bird's perspective, he saw 
 life whole. Details that blocked creative energy on 
 earth with fear and difficulty, seemed negligible after 
 all ; they were places to take off from. As wings 
 trust carelessly for support upon the universal, ethereal 
 element enveloping them, so could, so must, his will 
 know faith and safety in the immense and powerful 
 rhythms that guide that delicate thrush, the redwing, 
 from Siberia to England every autumn, and steer 
 Sirius unleashed, untroubled, towards his eternal 
 
XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 269 
 
 goal. He watched the little wheatears, back from 
 Africa, flitting from perch to perch of tufted grass, 
 soon to leave for their summer in distant Norway. 
 Obedient to this serene and mighty guidance, secure 
 upon these everlasting wings, he saw the bird in 
 humanity open its wings at last. A new reliance 
 upon subconscious inspiration, linking all together, 
 from the butterfly to the angel, flashed through him, 
 air its symbol, wings and flight its emblem. He 
 realised, with an instant's strange intensity, the unity 
 of indivisible air manifested in all forms of life the 
 planet bore. 
 
 This undetailed space about him inspired him 
 oddly, it symbolised his dream, the dream that had 
 haunted him since earliest youth. He looked down 
 upon the world beneath him, upon the stretch of 
 years he had flown over, upon the congested streets 
 and houses where men lived, upon the iron con- 
 ventions and traditions imprisoning their minds from 
 escape into freedom that yet lay so close. The ele- 
 ment of earth weighed still heavily upon them ; earth 
 builds forms ; air, being form-less, offered liberty. 
 He saw these million forms already crumbling; he 
 saw the masses at the upper windows, on the roofs, 
 all looking — up. With the coming of air, the day 
 of forms was passing. The ferment, the unrest, the 
 universal questing shone in these upturned eyes. 
 They would not look down again. The vital force 
 had drained out of a thousand forms which have 
 
270 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 served their day ; no past tradition was absolute ; 
 they had found it out. Everywhere he saw the 
 emergence of this new spirit, leaving behind it the 
 empty, unsatisfying forms, yearning for fuller self- 
 expression that the unifying ethereal element of air 
 now promised. The roofs were strangely crowded. 
 He saw the myriad figures. He saw that some of 
 them already sang and danced ! 
 
 Already the new mighty rhythm caught them 
 whirling into space, each soul more and more en 
 rapport with the universal world-soul. Into their 
 hearts, with the lift of wings and a happy bird-like 
 song, it stole subconsciously ; the formulae of doctrine 
 which change and shift were giving place to inner 
 experience, and inner experience cannot be destroyed, 
 since it is formless, acknowledging no boundaries, 
 obedient to no creed. Form was dying, life was 
 being born. . . . 
 
 He watched the tumbling plover, the sea-gulls 
 grandly sailing, the soaring lark ; the floating thistle- 
 down went past along the careless wind ; he saw his 
 un-thinking daughter's natural, happy dancing, one 
 and all interpreting this message of the air, this 
 promise of liberty that brimmed his deep heart and. 
 his uneducated mind. The huge simplicity of the 
 naked Downs made him see existence singularly as a 
 whole ; across the open sweep before him the air 
 came sweetly, blowing the tangle of artificial living 
 into easy rhythm and dancing everywhere. 
 
XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 271 
 
 He saw the accidental barriers between creed and 
 sect and nation blown away. A new spiritual unity 
 took their place, a synthetic life, the parts highly 
 specialised, as with birds, yet the whole in perfect har- 
 mony. The day of special, exclusive dispensations 
 had disappeared, and this organic spiritual unity, 
 with its new religion of service, lifted the people as 
 with mighty wings. 
 
 ' Dance on, my child ! dance on I ' he cried, ' it 
 makes me see things whole 1 ' He watched her light, 
 flying movements against the sea of yellow gorse, the 
 hair like a saffron scarf upon the wind, her radiant 
 face shining and laughing with the blue of endless 
 space behind it. She did not heed his words ; she 
 danced away again ; she seemed one with the 
 tumbling plover, the sailing sea-birds, and the drifting 
 thistle-down. She danced with the Spring, and the 
 air was in her heart. 
 
 The spirit quickened in him as he saw her. His 
 consciousness, he knew, was but a fragment of an 
 immense and deeper consciousness, of limitless scope 
 and powers ; this greater self made affirmations to 
 which no mere intellect would dare to set the 
 boundaries. With the air there was a return of joy, 
 belief and wonder into a world that has too long 
 denied all three. Intellect might stand aside a little 
 longer, watching cautiously, like Mother, the flights 
 of intuition, that flashing bird of fire that strikes and 
 vanishes ; but science, hitherto destructive chiefly, 
 
272 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 must enter a new field or be discredited. It must 
 become constructive, it must examine spiritual 
 states. The barrier between the organic and the 
 inorganic was already breached. 
 
 ' Dance on ! My heart flies dancing with you ! ' 
 With you ! Rather with everything and every 
 one ! For he had this curious inspiration, as though 
 all his past condensed now into a single moment — 
 that a new attitude, due to the subliminal conscious- 
 ness becoming consciously organised with its myriad 
 and mighty powers, was stealing down into the 
 hearts of men from the air. Since its outstanding 
 characteristic was a fuller understanding, a natural 
 sharing, a deep, instinctive sympathy, it involved an 
 actual realisation of spiritual unity that intellect alone 
 has never yet achieved, and never can. It was no 
 flabby, Utopian, idealistic brotherhood he saw, but a 
 practical, co-operative life based upon those greater 
 powers, and upon that completer understanding 
 lying, hid with God, in the subliminal regions of 
 humanity. Experienced hitherto sporadically, only, 
 he saw in what his heart called the promise of the 
 air, their universal acceptance and development. . . . 
 In a second of time, this all flashed into him as he 
 watched the dancing little human figure on the 
 gigantic landscape. And after it, if not actually with 
 it, rose that unaccountable, uneasy, half-terrible emo- 
 tion of deep-seated pain he had known before — the 
 shudder . . . He trembled, tried to sing. Then the 
 
XIX THE PROMISE OF AIR 273 
 
 gorse pricked him where he lay. He turned to 
 make himself more comfortable. He wriggled. The 
 attempt to sing tickled his throat and he coughed. 
 
 He sat up, feeling in his pockets for a pencil and 
 paper. For the first time in his life he felt he must 
 write. ' I must give it out,' he mumbled to himself. 
 ' It's so wonderful, so simple. I must share it. I 
 must tell it to others — to everybody.' He actually 
 made some notes. 'Ah,' he thought, as he read 
 them over a few days later, ' they're no good. I 
 don't quite understand them now, to tell the truth.' 
 He sighed. 'I'm only muddled,' he decided, 'just 
 a Man in the Street bewildered by a touch of 
 inspiration that blew into me ! ' 
 
 He Jay watching Joan for a little longer, dancing 
 in the middle distance still. The zest of a bird was 
 in her, the toss, the scamper. Lithe, spinning, sure, 
 her movements interpreted the air far more clearly 
 than his thoughts could compass it in words. Her 
 song came to him with the breeze. He watched her, 
 then waved the packet of sandwiches above his head. 
 He was hungry. They ate their lunch, and spent the 
 rest of the day exploring the great spaces round them. 
 
 It was evening when they got home ; they heard 
 the random sweetness of the thrush's song among 
 the laurels on the lawn ; a nightjar was churning in 
 . the dusk beyond ; there was a subdued and tiny 
 chattering of the swallows in the eaves. They found 
 Mother among the flower-beds, wearing her big 
 
274 THE PROMISE OF AIR chap. 
 
 garden-gloves. Wimble took her in his arms and 
 kissed her. 
 
 ' It's come, Mother, it's come,' he whispered 
 against her cheek. 'And, d'you know? — you've 
 been with us all day long.' 
 
 She looked up, peaceful and happy, a smell of 
 garden earth about her, and the glow of the sunset 
 in her eyes. ' Have I really, Joe dear ? ' she said. 
 ' How lovely ! ' And then she added : ' I believe it 
 is ; yes, I believe it is.' 
 
 Next morning Wimble woke very, very early — 
 close upon three o'clock. He peered out of the 
 window a moment. The dawn, he saw with a happy 
 sigh of wonder, was just beginning to break. The 
 gleam of light fell upon Mother's face ; and the 
 singing of a lark high up in the clearing air came to 
 him. At the same moment Mother moved in her 
 bed close by ; her heavy breathing was interrupted. 
 He listened. She was talking in her sleep, though 
 the words were indistinguishable. He waited, think- 
 ing she might get up and walk. Her eyes, how- 
 ever, did not open ; she lay still again. He slipped 
 over to tuck the blankets more securely round her. 
 ' Bless her ! ' he thought. ' She's asleep ! Her 
 surface consciousness is merged with her deep, safe, 
 
 wise subconsciousness ' And his thought broke 
 
 off abruptly. It had suddenly occurred to him that 
 the sleep-walker and the migrating bird both found 
 their way unerringly in the darkness, both obedient 
 
xix THE PROMISE OF AIR 275 
 
 to inner guidance. He stood still an instant, look- 
 ing down upon her face in the pale morning light. 
 ' Who, what guides the redwing over hills, and vales, 
 and seas ? ' he whispered. ' Who, what guides the 
 sleep-walker amid the intricacies of Maple furni- 
 ture ? ' He chuckled to himself. It was odd how 
 the comic Aquarian lecture cropped up in his 
 memory like this once more. 
 
 He bent down and kissed her lightly on the 
 cheek, then went back to bed. Mother still 
 mumbled in her sleep — ' Flow, fly, flow,' he seemed 
 to catch, ' it's coming, coming . . .' 
 
 ' It's the bird returning to her heart,' he whispered 
 to himself. Deep down inside her being something 
 sang ; outside, the carolling of the lark continued, 
 blithe and joyous in the breaking dawn. As he fell 
 asleep, the two sounds were so curiously mingled 
 that they seemed almost indistinguishable. . . . 
 
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