'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 overweighted 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!'
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 spontaneously 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 all-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 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; they disappeared. But in settling thus, they made the solid green seem light as air, shiny, almost fluid.