The Dark Star

A child on the floor, flat on her stomach in the red light of the

stove, drawing pictures; her mother by the shaded lamp mending

stockings; her father reading; a faint odour of kerosene from the

glass lamp in the room, and the rattle of sleet on roof and window;

this was one of her childhood memories which never faded through all

the years of Ruhannah's life.

Of her waking hours she preferred that hour after supper when, lying

prone on the worn carpet, with pencil and paper, just outside the

lamp's yellow circle of light, her youthful imagination kindled and

caught fire.

For at that hour the magic of the stove's glowing eyes transformed the

sitting-room chairs to furtive watchers of herself, made of her

mother's work-table a sly and spidery thing on legs, crouching in

ambush; bewitched the ancient cottage piano so that its ivory keys

menaced her like a row of monstrous teeth.

She adored it all. The tall secretary stared at her with owlish

significance. Through that neutral veil where lamplight and shadow

meet upon the wall, the engraved portrait of a famous and godly

missionary peered down at her out of altered and malicious eyes; the

claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap

her with wide, inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the

edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and

baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handles. And as for

Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was

ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to

hippogriff, until the earnestness of pretence sent agreeable shivers

down her back, and she edged a trifle nearer to her mother.

But when pretence became a bit too real and too grotesque she had

always a perfect antidote. It was merely necessary to make a quick

picture of an angel or two, a fairy prince, a swan, and she felt

herself in their company, and delightfully protected.

* * * * *

There was a night when the flowing roar of the gale outside filled the

lamplit silence; when the snow was drifting level with the window

sills; when Adoniram, unable to prowl abroad, lay curled up tight and

sound asleep beside her where she sat on the carpet in the stove

radiance. Wearied of drawing castles and swans, she had been listening

to her father reading passages aloud from the book on his knees to her

mother who was sewing by the lamp.

Presently he continued his reading: "I asked Alaro the angel: 'Which place is this, and which people are

these?' "And he answered: 'This place is the star-track; and these are they

who in the world offered no prayers and chanted no liturgies. Through

other works they have attained felicity.'"