Tommy spent his Christmas in town, with a distant relative, for I had been called abroad upon a matter of business, and his Easter holidays, since I was still away, were passed in Camslove vicarage.
It was, therefore, a year before I saw Tommy again, and on an August morning I met him at the little station.
I think we were both glad to see each other, and I found Tommy a little longer, perhaps a little leaner, but as brown and ruddy as ever.
"I say, it is ripping to get back here again, an' I've got into the third eleven, an' that bat you sent me is an absolute clinker, an' how's the poet, an' did you have a good time in Italy, an', I say, you are shoving on weight, you know, an' there's old Berrill, an' I say, Berrill, that's a ripping young jackdaw you sent, an' he's an' awful thief—that is,he was, you know, but young Jones's dog eat him, or most of him, an' I punched young Jones's head for letting 'em be together, an' I say—how ripping the downs are looking, aren't they?"
Tommy's spirits were infectious, and on the way home it would be hard to say which of us talked the most nonsense.
Our journey through the village was slow, for Tommy's friends were numerous, and spread out over the whole social scale, from the hand-to-mouth daysman to the unctuous chemist and stationer. They included the vicar, leaning over his garden gate, in his shirt-sleeves, surrounded by implements of horticulture, and also, I regret to say, the pot-boy of the Flaming Lion—a graceless young scamp, with poacher written in every lineament of his being.
I was not unprepared for his royal progress, since, during the summer, I had been frequently accosted by his friends, of varying rank and respectability, enquiring of "Master Thomas, sir."
"That young 'awk, sir, as I sent him last week?"
"Made many runs this year, sir, d'ye know?"
"Master Thomas in pretty good 'ealth, sir. Bad livin' in they big schools, sir, ben't it?"
And so on.
Far down the road I saw a horseman, but Tommy could not, by any means, be hurried, and a meeting I did not wish became inevitable.
As young Morris rode up he looked at me a little insolently—maybe it was only my fancy, for prejudice is a poor interpreter of expression—and nodded good day.
I saw that Tommy looked a little uncomfortable and his flow of chatter ceased suddenly.
Morris bent from the saddle and called him, and as I turned to the shop window I could hear them greeting one another.
I did not hear their further conversation, and it was only brief, but the Tommy whowalked home with me thenceforward was not the same who had met me so buoyantly at the station.
Ah, these clouds, that are no greater than a man's hand and by reason of their very slenderness are so difficult to dispel!
The early days of August sped away happily enough, and their adventures were merely those of field, and stream, and valley, engrossing enough of the time and fraught no doubt with lessons of experience, but too trivial, I suppose, for record.
And yet I would rather write of them than of the day—the 8th of August—when the Borcombe eleven beat Camslove by many runs.
And yet again, I am not sure, for a peril realised early, even through a fall, may be the presage of ultimate victory.
I had been in town all day myself, and therefore had not been amongst the enthusiastic little crowd gathered in the field behind the church to watch this annual encounter, and a typical English country crowd it was,brimful of sport—see the eager movements of those gnarled hands and the light in the clear open-air eyes and wrinkled faces.
Camslove, too, had more than justified the prediction of their adherents and had made a hundred and fifty runs, a very creditable score.
"An' if they can stand Berrill's fast 'uns they bees good 'uns," chuckled they of Camslove, as they settled down to watch the Borcombe innings.
Tommy was hanging about the little tin-roofed pavilion, divided between a natural patriotism and a desire to see his hero perform wonders, for Squire Morris's son had consented to represent Borcombe.
Young Morris had never played for his village before, but his reputation as a cricketer was considerable, and the country-side awaited his display with some curiosity.
Nor were they disappointed, for in every way he played admirable cricket, and even Berrill's fast ones merely appeared to offer him opportunities of making boundary hits.His fellow cricketers spent more or less brief periods in his company, and disconsolately sought the shade of the pavilion and the trees, but Morris flogged away so mercilessly that the Camslove score was easily surpassed, with three wickets yet to fall, and in the end Borcombe obtained a very solid victory.
Young Morris was not held in high esteem in the country-side, and there were many who cordially disliked him—it was even whispered that one or two had sworn, deeply, a condign revenge for certain deeds of his—but he had played the innings of a master, and, as such, he received great applause on his return to the pavilion.
Tommy was in the highest spirits, and, full of a reflected glory, strode manfully, on his hero's arm, down the village street.
In the bar-room of the Flaming Lion many healths were drunk to the victors, to the defeated, to Berrill's fast 'uns, to the young squire's long success, to Tommy Wideawake.
Tommy, flushed and exultant, stoodamong the little group, with glowing cheeks.
Presently a grimy hand pulled his sleeve. It was the pot-boy.
"Don't 'ee 'ave no more, sir—not now," he whispered. But Tommy looked at him hotly.
"Can't a gentleman drink when he likes—damn you?" he asked.
The pot-boy slunk away, and a loud laugh rang round the little audience.
"Good on you, Tommy," cried Morris.
"Gentlemen, the girls—bless 'em." He filled their glasses, at his expense, and coupled a nameless wish with his toast.
Tommy, unconscious of its meaning, drank with the others.
Then he walked unsteadily to the door. There was a strange buzzing in his head, and a dawning feeling of nausea in him, which he strove to fight down.
And as he stood at the porch, flushed and bright-eyed, Madge Chantrey and the pale boy passed along the road. They weregoing to meet Miss Gerald, but Tommy staggered out and faced them.
"Hullo, Madge, old girl," he said, but she drew back, staring at him, with wide eyes.
The pale boy laughed.
"Why, he's drunk—dead drunk," he said.
Tommy lurched forward and struck him in the face, and in a moment the pale boy had sent him rolling heavily in the road. I picked him up, for I was passing on my way home from the station, and noticed the flush on his cheeks, and saw that they were streaked with blood and dust.
They tell me that I, too, lost my temper, and even now I cannot remember all I said to Morris and his satellites and the little crowd in the Flaming Lion. I remember taking Tommy home, and helping my man to undress and wash him and put him to bed, and I shall never forget the evening that I spent downstairs in my study, staring dumbly over the misty valleyto the far downs, and seeing only two grave grey eyes looking rebukingly into mine.
Late in the evening the vicar joined me, and we sat silently together in the little study.
My man lit the lamp, and brought us our coffee, and came again to fetch it away, untasted.
Perhaps you smile as you read this.
"You ridiculous old men," I can hear you say. "To magnify so trivial an incident into a veritable calamity."
And, again, I can only plead that, in our quiet life, maybe, we attached undue importance to such a slight occurrence.
Yet, nevertheless, to us it was very real, almost overwhelmingly real, and the tragedy of it lay, nearly two years back, in the panelled study of Camslove Grange.
Presently the vicar looked at me, and his face, in the red lamplight, seemed almost haggard.
"'I could never repay the man who taughtmy boy to love God,'" he repeated, "and he said those words to me—to me."
I bowed my head.
"And I—I accepted the responsibility, and it has come to this."
I was silent, and, indeed, what was there to say?
I suppose we both tried to think out the best course for the future, but for myself my brain refused to do aught but call up, and recall, and recall again, that last meeting in Camslove Grange:
"I want the old place to have a good master.
"I want my son to be a gentleman.
"God bless you, old comrades."
Back they came, those old ghosts of the past, until the gentle, well-bred voice seemed even now appealing to me, and the well-loved form apparent before my eyes. And I writhed in my chair.
A little later the poet came in. He looked almost frightened, and spoke in a hushed voice.
"Is—is he better?" he asked.
"He is asleep," I answered, moodily.
The poet sighed.
"Ah! that's good, that's good."
For a little while we talked, the aimless, useless talk of unnerved men, and at last the poet suggested we should go upstairs.
As I held the candle over Tommy's bed we could see that the flush had faded from his cheeks, and as he lay there he might well have been a healthy cherub on some earthly holiday.
I think the sight cheered us all, and in some measure restored our hope.
The vicar turned to us, gravely.
"There is one thing we can all do," he said; "we ought to have thought of it first, and it is surely the best."
As we parted, the poet turned to me.
"I will take him over the downs with me to-morrow; they always appeal to Tommy, and one is never saner, or nearer to God, or more ready for repentance, than out there upon the ranges."
There was a sound of wheels down the lane, and in a minute the doctor drove by.
"Hullo," he called out, cheerily, "I have just got myself a new bat."
It is one of the privileges of youth that alimentary indulgence is but rarely penalized, and if either of us next morning was pale and disinclined for breakfast it was certainly not Tommy.
On the contrary, he seemed cool, and fit, and hungry, and although he looked at me occasionally in a shy, questioning way, yet he chattered away much as usual, and made no reference to yesterday's adventures.
Only when the poet called for him and at the window I laid a hand upon his shoulder to bid him a happy day, he turned to me, impulsively:
"You are a ripper," he said.
There is no sweeter or more genuine praise than a boy's.
I watched them down the lane, and my eyes sought the downs, clear, and wide, and sunny. I thought of the tawdry inn, andits associations, and prayed that Tommy might learn a lesson from the contrast.
Says Jasper the gipsy:
"Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"
Hark back to your well-thumbed Lavengro and you will find, if you do not remember, his reasons.
Nor are they weightier than these:
"Night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath."
Deep in the heart of every boy lies something of the gipsy, and even if, in after life, it grows sick and stifled by reason of much traffic among crowded streets, yet I doubt if it ever so far vanishes that to it the wind on the heath shall appeal in vain. Nor was the poet wrong in his prognosis, for to Tommy, at any rate, it was full of unspoken messages on this August morning. Wind on the heath—yes, it is always there, clean, and strong, and happy, lingering withsoft wings over furze and bracken, full of whispered melodies from the harp of God.
Are you in trouble?
Go up and face this wind on the heath. Bare your head to it, open your lungs to it. Let it steal about your heart, with its messages of greatness, and futurity, and hope.
Are you listless and discouraged?
Go up and breathe this wind on the heath, and it will sting to life the ambition and resolve in you, and in it you will hear, if you listen aright, the saga of victory.
"In sickness, Jasper?"
"There's the sun and stars, brother."
"In blindness, Jasper?"
"There's the wind on the heath, brother: if I could only feel that, I would gladly live forever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves, and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother."
Tommy and the poet were bound for some ruins which lay across Becklington common and beyond the downs.
Harvest ruled the world, and the fields in the valley and on the hillside were dotted with stooks and stacks.
It was a day on which it was good to be alive, and, if a little subdued, yet they were both in good spirits.
The poet's latest volume, ahead of the autumn rush of poetry and fiction, had been favourably criticised.
It was stronger, happier, more real, said the critics, than any other from his pen.
If not great, said they, it was at any rate graceful, and even, in some places, vigorous. Therefore was the poet happy.
And Tommy—well, there was the sun and the wind, good red blood in his arteries, and no care in his heart—and though he could not have told you so, these, no doubt, were strong enough reasons for the buoyancy of his spirit.
As they climbed the green side of the downs they met a shepherd singing, a happy, irresponsible fellow, with his coat over his head, and his sleek flock browsing round him.
And as they passed him with a welcome, the poet remembered some lines which he repeated to Tommy:
Wouldst a song o' shepherding, out upon the down,Splendid days o' summer-time, an' roaring days o' spring?I could sing it fine,If e'er a word were mine,But there's no words could tell it you—the song that I would sing.Wide horizons beckoning, far beyond the hill,Little lazy villages, sleeping in the vale,Greatness overheadThe flock's contented treadAn' trample o' the morning wind adown the open trail.Bitter storms o' winter-time ringing down the range,Angel nights above the hill, beautiful with rest,I would sing o' Life,O' Enterprise, and Strife,O' Love along the upland road, an' God beyond the crest.An' this should be my matin song—magic o' the down,Mystery, an' majesty, an' wistfulness, an' hope,I would sing the layO' Destiny an' Day,As morning mounts the hill with me, an' summer storms the slope.But this would be my vesper song—best at last is PeaceWhispered where the valleys lie, all deep in dying gold,Stealing through the gloamTo speed the shepherd homeWith one last dreamy echo o' the music in the fold.Wouldst a song o' shepherding, out upon the down,Splendid days o' summer-time, an' roaring days o' spring?I could sing it fine,If e'er a word were mine,But there's no words could tell it you—the song that I would sing.
"Jolly good," said Tommy, easiest of critics, and the poet smiled.
"Ah, Tommy," he said, "I wish you were a publisher."
Over the crest of the downs rose a thin wisp of blue smoke; and as they descended on the other side, some dark-eyed children looked out of a little brown tent.
They reminded the poet of Jasper and his company of Pharaoh's children, and he repeated to Tommy the conversation I have touched upon.
Tommy's eyes sparkled.
"That's good," he said, approvingly. "Just what a fellow feels, you know."
They walked on across the green springy turf, and for a time both were silent.
There was something, too, in the day and its purity that was speaking to Tommy.
Presently he spoke, hesitatingly.
"I—I was drunk last night, wasn't I?" he asked anxiously.
The poet affected not to have heard the question, but Tommy persisted.
"Yes."
Tommy sighed.
"I say," he said, after a pause, "I—I'd have licked that fellow hollow if my head hadn't been so jolly queer."
The poet looked at him, curiously.
"I expect you would," he said.
Tommy took a deep breath, and looked straight at the poet.
"I'll never touch it again—never," he said slowly.
They shook hands there on the hillside.
Thus it was, and for this reason, that Tommy took upon himself a vow that he has to my best belief never broken.
"Ah, but the motive?" you ask.
Well, maybe the shrug of your shoulder is justified, but, after all, the result was brought about by nature, who seldom errs, and to the poet, who, in spite of all, was really a simple soul—the result was abundantly gratifying.
As they walked home in the evening, Tommy turned to the poet.
"I say, what was it that gipsy fellow said—at the end, you know?"
"Dosta, we'll now go to the tent and put on the gloves, and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother."
Tommy looked grimly into the twilight.
"It would be a jolly good thing to teach that fellow at the Grange," he said, "only I'm blowed if I'll take any gloves."
Madge sat by the window, swinging disconsolate legs and struggling, with a nauseated heart, to master those Latin prepositions which govern the ablative case. A more degraded army she had never encountered, and though some misguided sage had committed them to rhyme, this device merely added a flavour of hypocrisy to their obvious malevolence. Moreover, the whole universe appeared to be so disgustingly cheerful that the contrast was well nigh unbearable.
Beyond the open window the day was young and bright, and the honey bees sang briskly over the lawn.
Even the gardener, most dismal of men, was humming: "A few more years shall roll," a sure sign of unwonted buoyancy of spirit. Miss Gerald was writing some letters for Lady Chantrey in another room, and Madge was alone in the study.
Thus, every factor combined to make temptation almost irresistible.
And, naturally enough, it came, and in the guise of a well-known, long-agreed-on whistle.
From the laurels it rose, low and clear, and Madge's heart jumped quickly as she heard, for the whistle was Tommy's, and she could not remember how long ago it was since she had heard it.
Then she remembered that it must not be answered—for was not Tommy in disgrace—at any rate, as far as she was concerned?
And had they not quarrelled so deeply that repair was almost an impossibility?
It was very presumptuous of him to think that she should answer it.
She would remain where she was, in icy stillness, mastering the prepositions with an iron hand.
A pleasing sense of virtue stole into her being, mixed with visions of a downcast, brown face somewhere in the shrubbery, andfor five long minutes silence reigned. Then the whistle rang out again, a little louder, and surely it sounded almost penitent.
A picture of a broken-hearted Tommy, whistling in dry-eyed sorrow, rose to her eyes.
It was true that his offences had been great, but then, was not forgiveness divine?
Madge felt sure that this was so. Was it not written in fair characters in her last copy-book?
She closed her book and stood by the glass doors.
It is but rarely that we rise to the divine. Yet here was an opportunity, and down the steps she ran, light-footed, over the thin strip of lawn and into the deep laurels.
And it was not Tommy after all, but only the pale boy who, with commendable perspicacity, had borrowed Tommy's whistle.
For a moment Madge flushed angrily, for she did not greatly like the pale boy, and this was a deception.
But the morning was sweet, and the pale boy was surely better than a preposition.
"I say: let's go through the wood," he said. "I've hidden some sandwiches in a tree up there and we'll have a picnic, and you can be back in time for lunch."
"All right," said Madge, "come along."
And in the wood they met Tommy, with the light of resolve in his eye and battle written in his face.
Madge was not quite sure whether she was glad or sorry to meet him, nor could she tell, as they looked straight into one another's eyes, the nature of Tommy's feelings on the subject.
He looked a little grave, and spoke as one who had rehearsed against a probable encounter.
"I want to apologise to you for our meeting the other day," he said stiffly.
Madge stared, and Tommy turned to the pale boy.
"And to you," he said.
The pale boy looked a little puzzled, but grinned.
"That's all right," he said. "I could see—"
"Excuse me, I haven't quite finished"—and the pale boy stopped, with his mouth open.
"I think you had better go home, Madge."
"Why—Tommy?"
Tommy looked down.
"You had better—really," he repeated.
The pale boy interposed.
"She is out with me," he said.
"So I see—she had better go home."
"Why—who says so?"
"If she doesn't she will see you get a licking. P'raps—p'raps she wouldn't like that."
Tommy still looked at the path.
"I—I'm not going to fight anyone to-day."
"You are—you're jolly well going to fight me, now."
The pale boy smiled, a little uncertainly.
"You—I shouldn't have thought you'd want a second dose," he said.
"Rather," said Tommy, cheerfully.
Madge looked from one to the other.
"Don't fight," she said. "Please—please don't fight—why should you?"
"You'd much better run home," said Tommy again.
"I shan't—I shall stay here."
Tommy sighed.
"All right," he said, taking off his coat. "Then, of course, you must, you know."
"I tell you I'm not going to fight," repeated the pale boy.
"Rot," said Tommy.
Five minutes later Tommy contentedly resumed his coat, his face flushed with victory.
The pale boy was leaning against a tree, with a handkerchief to his nose and one eye awry, whimpering vindictive epithets at his opponent—but Madge was nowhere to be seen.
Tommy looked up and down the leafy vistas a little disappointedly. Then,
"Never mind," he said, philosophically.
"By Jove, it's a jolly sweet thing is life—ripping, simply ripping. Good bye, old chap. Sniff upwards and it'll soon stop. So long."
In a brake where the wood falls back a little from the inroad of the common the poet paused, for the gleam of a straw hat against a dark background caught his eye.
"Why surely—no—yes, it is—how singular—so it is," he murmured, wiping his glasses.
He left the path and struck out over the springy turf into the shade of the wood, keeping his eyes nevertheless upon the ground, and walking guilelessly, as one who contemplates.
And by chance his meditations were broken, and before him, among some tall foxgloves, stood Mollie Gerald.
The poet looked surprised.
"How—how quietly you must walk, Miss Gerald," he said.
She laughed.
"How deeply you must think," she said.
"It—it is good to wake from thought to—to this, you know," he answered, with a bow.
Miss Gerald looked comprehensively into the wood.
"It is pretty, isn't it?" she said.
"I was not referring to the wood," said the poet, hardily.
Miss Gerald bent over a foxglove rising gracefully over the bracken:
"Aren't they lovely?" she asked, showing the poet a handful of the purple flowers.
"You came out to gather flowers?"
"Why, no. I came to look for my pupil."
"Surely not again a truant?"
"I am afraid so."
"It is hard to believe."
"And I stopped in my search to gather some of these. After all, it isn't much good looking for a child in a wood, is it?"
"Quite useless, I should think."
"If they want to be found they'll come home, and if they don't, they know the woods far better than we, and they'll hide."
"They always come back at meal-times—at least, Tommy does."
"I think meal-times are among the happiest hours of an average childhood."
"Before the higher faculties have gained their powers of appreciation—it depends on the child."
"Madge is not an imaginative child."
"Nor Tommy, I think, and yet I don't know. It is hard to appraise the impressions that children receive and cannot record."
"And the experiment—how does it progress?"
"Alas, it is an experiment no longer; it is a very real responsibility, and I am inadequate. Individually, I fancy we are all inadequate, and, collectively, we do not seem quite to have found the way."
Miss Gerald nodded emphatically.
"Good," she said.
"Eh?"
"To feel inadequate is the beginning of wisdom; is it not so? There, I have gathered my bunch."
"May I beg one foxglove for my coat?"
She laughed.
"There are plenty all round you. Why, you are standing in the middle of a plant at this moment."
The poet stooped a little disconsolately, and plucked a stalk, and when he looked up Miss Gerald was already threading her way through the slender trunks.
"Good-bye," she cried, gaily, over her shoulder, and the poet raised his hat.
As he sauntered back to the path the doctor rode by on his pony.
"Hullo," he said; "been picking flowers?"
The poet looked up.
"A pretty flower, the foxglove," he murmured.
"Digitalis purpurea—a drug, too, is it not?"
The doctor nodded.
"It has an action on the heart," he said. "Steadies and slows it, you know."
But the poet shook his head.
"I fancy you are mistaken," he observed.
A sky of stolid grey had communicated a certain spirit of melancholy to the country-side—a spirit not wholly out of keeping with Tommy's mood.
The holidays were nearly over. The doctor was busy, the poet had a cold, Madge had been sent away to school, and Tommy, for the nonce, felt a little at a loss to know how to occupy these last mournful days of freedom.
As he tramped, a trifle moodily, down the lane, a point of light against a dark corner of the hedge caught his eye, and further examination revealed the pale boy, smoking a cigarette.
Tommy had not yet aspired to tobacco, and for a moment felt a little resentful.
But the memory of last week's battle restored his equanimity, and, indeed, broughtwith it a little complacent contempt for the pale boy and his ways.
"Hullo," said Tommy, pulling up in front of his reposing foe, and not sorry to have some one to talk to.
The pale boy looked at him coldly.
"Well," he observed, cheerlessly.
Tommy sat down on the grass.
"I say, let's forget about all that," he said.
The pale boy puffed away in silence.
"Let's forget; you—you'd probably have whopped me, you know, if you'd done some boxing at our place. You've a much longer reach than me, an'—an' you got me an awful nasty hit in the chest, you know."
The pale boy looked at him gloomily.
"I don't profess to know much about fighting," he said, with some dignity. "I think it's jolly low."
For a few minutes they sat in silence, then,
"Where do you go to school?" asked Tommy.
"I don't go anywhere; I've got a tutor."
"Oh!"
"You see, I'm not at all strong."
"Bad luck. You—ought you to smoke, if you're—if your constitution's rocky, you know?"
The pale boy knocked the ashes off his cigarette.
"I find it very soothing," he said. "Besides, it's all right, if you smoke good stuff. I wouldn't advise fellows who didn't know their way about a bit to take it up."
The pale boy spoke with an air of superiority that awed Tommy a little.
"How—how did you come to know all about it?" he asked.
"Oh—just knocking about town, you know," replied the other, carelessly.
Tommy sighed.
"I hardly know anything about London," he said.
The pale boy looked at him, pityingly.
"I've lived there all my life," he said, "Dormanter Gardens, in Bayswater—one of the best neighbourhoods, you know."
Tommy racked his memory.
"I was in London, at Christmas, with a sort of aunt-in-law," he said. "She lives in Eaton Square, I think it is—somewhere near Maskelyne & Cook's."
"I haven't heard of it," said the pale boy. "But London's so jolly big that it's impossible to know all of it, and I've spent most of my time in the West End."
Tommy was silent, but the pale boy seemed at home with his subject.
"I suppose you don't know the Cherry House," he continued. "It's an awful good place to feed in—near the Savoy, you know. Reggie, he's my cousin, takes me there sometimes. He always goes. He says there are such damned fine girls there. I don't care a bit about 'em, though."
The pale boy smoked contemplatively.
"I think it's awful rot, thinking such a beastly lot about girls, and all that sort of thing, you know, don't you?" said Tommy.
The pale boy nodded.
"Rather," he said. "I agree with dad.He says there's only one thing worth bothering about down here."
"What's that?"
"Money," snapped the pale boy, looking at Tommy, between narrowed eyelids. "I'm going to be a financier when I'm old enough to help dad."
Tommy stretched himself lazily.
"I'd rather be strong," he said.
The pale boy looked at him, curiously.
"What a rum chap you are. What's that got to do with it?"
Tommy lay back on the grass, and stared up at the passing clouds.
"I'm not a bit keen on making money, somehow," he said. "I'd just like to knock around, and have a dog, and—a jolly good time, you know."
"What—always?"
Tommy sat up.
"Yes—why not?"
The pale boy shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "But itseems funny, and don't you think you'd find it rather slow?"
Tommy stared at him, with open eyes.
"Rather not," he said. "Why, think how ripping it would be to go just where you liked, and come back when you liked, an' not to have any beastly meal-times to worry about, an' no terms, an' a horse or two to ride, an' wear the oldest clothes you had; by Jove, it would be like—something like Heaven, I should think."
The pale boy laughed as he rose to his feet.
"It's beginning to rain," he said.
"Never mind," said Tommy, "I like the rain. It doesn't hurt, either, and I like talking to you; you make me think of things."
The pale boy turned up his collar, and shivered a little.
"Let's find a shelter, somewhere," he said, looking round anxiously.
"We'd better walk home over the common," said Tommy. "Besides, it's rippingwalking in the rain, don't you think, an' it makes you feel so good, an' fit, when you're having grub afterwards, in front of the fire."
But the pale boy shook his head.
"I hate it," he said, "and I'm going up to the farm there, till it stops."
Tommy cast an accustomed eye round the horizon.
"It won't stop for a jolly long while," he said. "However, do as you like. We don't seem to agree about things much, do we? So long."
"Good-bye. It's all the way a fellow's brought up, you know."
And as Tommy shouldered sturdily through the rain, the pale boy lit another cigarette and turned back towards the farm door.
Never was such a harvest—such crops—such long splendid days—such great yellow moons. Even now the folk tell of it when harvest-time comes round.
"Ah," say they, and shake their heads, "that were a harvest an' no mistake, an' long, an' long will it be afore us sees another such a one."
Through the great white fields of wheat the binders sang from dew-dry to dew-fall, and over the hills rang the call of the reapers.
All hands were called to the gathering, the gipsies from the hedge and the shepherd from his early fold, and the stooks were built over the stubble and drawn away into stacks, and still the skies shone cloudless and the great moons rose over the dusk. Never was such a harvest. And little we at home saw of Tommy in these days, save when, late atnight, he would wander back from one and another field, lean and sunburnt and glad of sleep. One day the poet tracked him to the harvesting on the down-side fields, and found him in his shirt-sleeves, stooking with the best.
For a little while the poet, under considerable pressure from Tommy, assisted also, but the unaccustomed toil soon became distasteful, and he retired to the shade of a stook for purposes of rest and meditation.
And here, as he sat, he was joined by the same genial shepherd whom they had met on the day they trod the downs to the Roman ruins.
"Deserted the flocks, then?" asked the poet.
The shepherd grinned.
"'Ess, sir. Folded 'em early, do 'ee see, sir, an' come down to make some money at the harvest, sir."
He paused to fill his mouth with bread, taking at the same time a long pull of cold tea.
"Hungry work, sir, it be, this harvest work."
"It must undoubtedly stimulate the appetite, as you say."
"'Ess, sir, that it do. But it's good work fer the likes o' I, sir, it be, means more money, doan't 'ee see, sir; not as I bees in want o' money, sir, but it's always welcome, sir. No, sir, I needn't do no work fer a year an' more, sir, an' live like a gen'lman arl the time, too, sir."
"You have saved, then?"
"'Ess, that I have, an' there's a many as knows it, sir, an' asked I to marry 'em, sir, too, they 'as, but not I, sir. I sticks to what I makes, sir. An' look 'ee 'ere, sir, money's easy spent along o' they gals, sir, ben't it, onst they gets their 'ands on it?"
The poet looked at him reflectively.
"They ask you then, do they?"
"'Ess, sir, fower or five on 'em, sir. But I wants none on 'em, sir, an' I tells 'em straight, sir."
The poet sighed.
"It must save a lot of trouble to—when the suggestion comes from the fairer side."
The shepherd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Fower or five on 'em," he observed, meditatively.
"Dear, dear, what a—what a conqueror of hearts you must be!"
The shepherd looked at him a little dubiously.
"Fower or five on 'em," he repeated. "An' one on 'em earnin' eighteen shillin' a week an' forty pound laid by. An' I walked out wi' 'er a bit, I did, sir, but I warn't 'avin' none on 'er when she asked I to marry 'er, an' I told 'er, an' my parents, they was main angry, too, wi' me, they was, sir.
"But there y'are, sir. I didn't want none o' 'er forty pounds, sir, an' you bees got to stick to 'em wen you marries 'em, ben't 'ee, sir?"
The shepherd shook his head.
"No, sir, I don't believe in marryin' noone as you doesn't kind o' like, do 'ee see, sir."
The poet nodded.
"An excellent sentiment," he said.
"Money ben't everything sir, bee 't, as I told 'em, sir, all on 'em. Money ben't everythin'."
"But isn't it—isn't it a little embarrassing to be sought in matrimony by four or five ladies?"
The shepherd paused, between two bites, and looked at the poet, in some bewilderment.
"If 'ee means worrittin', sir—it bees a deal more worrittin' to ask 'em, yourself, sir—fower or five on 'em."
He rose and lurched off to join his comrades, and the poet looked after him, with something of envy in his eyes.
"O you fortunate man," he murmured, as he lay back, watching the busy scene, with half-closed eyes.
Presently he half started to his feet, for at the far end of the field he could see Tommytalking to two newcomers, a tall, slender figure, with a carriage and poise possessed by one alone, and a little girl in a smock frock.
He rose and wandered slowly down the field.
"Four or five," he murmured, "and they asked him—O the lucky, lucky man—they asked him. Dear me, dear me."
"A lovely evening, Miss Gerald."
Mollie looked up, with a smile, from the sheaf she was binding.
"Isn't it jolly—it must be a glad life these open-air folk lead, don't you think?"
"The best of lives—but they don't know it."
Mollie rose, and tossed back a wisp or two of hair from her forehead.
"I am sure I should love it, if it were my lot—the white stems on my arms and the warm sun on my face, and the songs in the wagon, at dusk. Listen to that man singing there—I'm sure he is just glad of life."
"A strange man," said the poet, followingher gaze. "A most curious, fortunate person."
"You know him?"
"A little—he is quite a Napoleon of hearts."
Mollie laughed.
"He doesn't look even a little bit romantic."
"Oh, he isn't. I fancy the romance, if there is any, must be usually on the other side. He has had four or five offers of marriage."
"What a perfectly horrid idea."
The poet stroked his chin.
"Yet think of the confusion and questioning of heart, and of the hours of agony that it would save a diffident man."
"He doesn't look diffident."
"He may not be. I merely make a supposition."
"I think it's an appalling idea."
"Oh, I know, I know, and yet I can imagine it a bridge to paradise."
"I don't understand."
"Then, suppose a man so stormed by love that by it all life has been renewed and made beautiful for him; and suppose this man so utterly and in every way unsuited to its realisation, that though all there is in him urges him to speak of it, yet he dare not lest he should lose even the cold solace of friendship. Do you not see how it might——?"
Mollie's grey eyes looked him straight in the face.
"No," she said. "It would be better for him never to speak, than to lose his ideal, as he assuredly would."
"You—you would bid him never speak?"
Mollie laughed.
"It depends on so many things—on how and why he was unsuitable, and by whose standard he gauged his shortcoming."
"His own."
"He might be wrong."
"Who could know better?"
"The girl he asked."
"You would bid him ask?"
She was silent; then,
"If—if he were quite sure the girl were worthy," she said, in a low voice.
The poet held out his hands.
"Mollie—my dear, my dear," he said.
"And she's quite young, too," observed Tommy, as they walked home in the starlight.
The poet waved his hand.
"Love laughs at age—takes no account of it," he said.
"Hurrah," cried Tommy.
The early days of January were shadowed by Lady Chantrey's illness.
I fancy that over all hung the presentiment that it would bear her away from our midst, and there was no home in Camslove or Becklington, nor a heart in any of the far-scattered farms around them, but would be the sadder for the loss.
And on a January afternoon she kissed Madge for the last time.
To Madge it seemed that heaven and earth alike had become black and desolate, for ever, as she sobbed upon the bed-clothes, and besought her mother to come back.
The household was too overwhelmed, and itself too sorrow-stricken to take much notice at first of the child, and for an hour or more she lay with her arms about her mother's neck.
Then, at last, she slipped from the bed and stole out into the dusk. A thin rain was falling over the country-side, but she hardly noticed it as she crossed the barren fields and stumbled through the naked hedges.
At the ploughing she stopped.
Something in the long, relentless furrows seemed to speak to her of the finality of it all, and it was only when she flung herself down upon the upturned earth that, as to all in sorrow, the great mother put forth her words of cheer to her, as who should say:
"See, now, the plough is set, the furrow drawn, and the old life hidden away; and who can make it any more the same? But Spring, little girl, is surely coming, and even, after long months, harvest."
Down the path, across the fields, came Tommy, dangling a contented catapult, and ruminating on the day's successes.
As he passed the ploughing he stopped, and gave a low whistle of surprise—thenguessed quickly enough what had happened. Madge lay stretched out, face downwards, upon the black loam, and for a moment Tommy stood perplexed.
Then he called, in a low voice, almost as he would have spoken in a church:
"Madge, Madge."
But she did not move.
He knelt beside her, and some strange instinct bade him doff his cap. Then he touched her shoulder and her black hair, with shy fingers.
"Madge," he called, again.
The child jumped to her feet, and tossing back her hair, looked at him with half-frightened eyes.
He noticed that her cheeks were stained with the soft earth, and he saw tears upon them.
Tommy had never willingly kissed anyone in his life—he had not known a mother—but now, without thought or hesitation—almost without consciousness, for he was still very much a child—he laid his armsabout her neck and kissed her cheek—once, twice.
But what he said to her only the great night, and the old plough, know.
If I have not, so far, touched upon Tommy's religious life it is chiefly for the reason that, to me, at this time, it was practically as a sealed book.
Nor had I ever talked with him on these matters. And this for two reasons—one of them being, no doubt, the natural hesitation of the average Englishman to lay his hands upon the veil of his neighbour's sanctuary, and one, a dawning doubt in my mind as to the capacity of my own creed to meet the requirements of Tommy's nature. For, to me, at this time, the idea of God was of One in some distant Olympus watching His long-formulated laws work out their appointed end—a Being infinitely beneficent, and revealed in all nature and beauty, but, spiritually, entirely remote.
And my religion had been that of a reverent habit and a peaceable moderation, and to live contented with my fellows.
But here was a boy put into my hands, with a future to be brought about, and already at the outset I had seen a glimpse of the dangers besetting his path, and the glimpse had, as I have already confessed, frightened me not a little. Nor had my musings so far comforted me, but rather shown me the lamentable weakness of my position. True, I could lay down rules, and advise and warn, but the whole of Tommy's every word and action showed me the powerlessness of such procedure.
And I dared not let things drift. The matter I felt sure should be approached on religious grounds, and it was this conviction that revealed to me my absolute impotence.
So far as I remembered, no great temptations had assailed me, no violent passions had held me in thrall.
My life had been a smooth one, and of moral struggle and defeat I seemed to know nothing. But that such would be Tommy's lot I felt doubtful, and the doubt (it wasalmost a certainty) filled me with many apprehensions.
So full was I of my musings that I had not noticed how in my walk I had reached the doctor's garden.
The click of a cricket bat struck into my thoughts and brought me into the warm afternoon again, with all its sweetness of scent and sound.
I could hear Tommy laughing, and as I drew back the bushes, I caught a glimpse of the doctor coaching him in the right manipulation of the bat.
"I say, I never knew you played cricket, you know," said Tommy. "I thought you were an awful ass at games, and all that sort of thing."
The doctor laughed.
"I'm jolly rusty at 'em, anyway," he said. "But I used to play a bit in the old days."
Tommy continued to bat, and I lounged, unnoticed, upon the rails, watching the practice.
Presently the doctor took a turn, and I,too, was surprised at his evident mastery of the art, for I had long since disregarded him as a sportsman.
Tommy's lobs were easy enough, and once the doctor drove a hot return straight at his legs.
Tommy jumped out of the way, but the doctor called to him sharply:
"Field up," he said, and Tommy coloured.
Another return came straight and hard, but Tommy stooped and held it, and the doctor dropped his bat.
"Good," I heard him say. "Stand up to 'em like a man—hurts a bit at the time—but it saves heaps of trouble in the end, and—and the other fellow doesn't score."
They were looking straight into each other's eyes, as man to man, and after a pause the doctor spoke again, in a low voice. I could not hear what he said, but Tommy's face was grave as he listened.
I sauntered on down the lane, and a few minutes later felt a hand on my arm.
"Well, and what did you think of it?"
"Of what?"
"The boy's batting. I saw you watching."
"I am not an expert, but he'll do, won't he?"
"Yes—he'll do."
"I didn't know that you had kept up your cricket."
"I haven't. But I mean to revive it if I can. We—we must beat Borcombe next time, you know."
We walked on in silence for a little, then.
"Tommy's main desire appears to be a cricketer just now," observed the doctor.
"As it was to be a poacher, yesterday."
"Or a steam-roller driver, in the years gone by."
"And what, I wonder, to-morrow?"
The doctor was looking thoughtfully over the wide fields, red with sunset.
"To-morrow? Ah, who knows?" He pointed to a pile of cumulus clouds, marching magnificently in the southern sky, bright as Heaven, and changeable as circumstance.
"A boy's dreams," he said. "A little while here and a little while there, always changing but always tinged with a certain fleeting magnificence."
"And never realised?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't know. We most of us march and march to our cloud mountain-tops, and, maybe, some of us at the day's end find a little low-browed hill somewhere where our everlasting Alps had seemed to stand."
"Surely you are a pessimist."
"Not at all. If we had not marched for the clouds, maybe we should never have achieved the little hill."
"You would have Tommy march, then, for the clouds?"
The doctor laughed.
"He is an average boy. He will do that anyway. But I would have the true light on the clouds, to which he lifts his eyes."
"Ah—if his face were set upon them now," I said half to myself.
On the road to the downs was a small figure.
"See," said my companion, "He is on the upland road. Let us take it as an omen."
And we turned homeward.
Late into the night we talked, and I unfolded my fears for Tommy with a fulness that was foreign to me.
And our talk drifted, as such conversation will, into many and intimate matters, such as men rarely discuss between each other.
And in the end, as I rose to depart, the doctor held my hand.
"See, old friend," he said, "we are nearer to-night than ever for all our seeming fundamental differences, and you will not mind what I have to say.
"To you the idea of God is so great, so infinitely high, that the notion of personal friendship with such an One would seem to be an almost criminal impertinence, and the idea of His interference in our trivial hum-drum lives a gross profanity.
"To me, a plain man, and not greatly read, this personal God, this Friend Christ, is more than all else has to offer me.
"It is life's motive, and weapon, and solace, and joy. It is its light and colour and its veryraison d'etre. And I believe that for the great majority of men this idea of the Divine, and this only, is powerful enough to assure them real victory and moral strength.
"I grant you all the beauty, and majesty, and truth, of your ideal, but I would no more dare to lay it before an average healthy, passionate man alone than I would to send an army into battle—with a position to take—unarmed and leaderless."
The doctor paused. Then:
"Forgive me," he said, "I don't often talk like this, but, believe me, it is the knowledge of his God, as a strong, sympathetic, personal friend, that Tommy needs—that most of us need—to ensure life's truest success."
We shook hands again and parted.
"I am glad you have spoken," said I, "and thank you for your words."
"A tramp—merely a tramp," said the stranger, puffing contentedly at his pipe, on the winding road that led over the dim downs.
Tommy looked at him doubtfully.
He was very tall and broad, and clean, and his Norfolk suit was well made and of stout tweed.
"You don't look much like one," he said.
The stranger laughed.
"For the matter of that no more do you," he observed.
"I'm not one," said Tommy.
The stranger smoked in silence for a little, and Tommy sat down beside him on the grass.
"I'm not one," he repeated.
"Shakespeare says we are all players in a great drama, of which the world is the stage, you know. I don't quite know if that's altogether true, but I'm pretty surethat we're all of us tramps, going it with more or less zest, it is true, and in different costumes—but tramps at the last, every one of us."
Tommy looked at him with puzzled eyes.
"What a rum way of talking you have—something like the poet, only different somehow."
"The poet?"
"Down there at Camslove."
"Ah, I remember. I read some of his things; pretty little rhymes, too, if I remember rightly."
"They're jolly good," said Tommy, warmly.
"A friend of yours, eh?"
Tommy nodded.
"He wrote one just here, where we're sitting."
"Did he, by Jove—which was it?"
Tommy pondered.
"I forget most of it, but it was jolly good. He told it me one day on the downs, just as we met a shepherd singing, and it was aboutlife and enterprise, and all that sort of thing, and love on the upland road and—and God beyond the crest."
"Sounds good, and partly true."
"How do you mean; why isn't it altogether true?"
The stranger smoked a minute or two in silence, then:
"Where is the crest?" he asked.
Tommy pointed up into the twilight.
"It's a long way to the crest," he said.
"Ah—and the fellows who never get there?"
"I don't understand."
"If God be only beyond the crest, how shall they fare?"
Tommy was silent, looking away down the dusky valley.
He saw a light or two glimmering among the trees.
"It's time I went back," he muttered, but sat where he was.
"You see what I mean?" continued the stranger. "There is only one crest worthstriving for, and that is always beyond our reach, and God is beyond it and above it, all right. But there's many a poor fellow who would have his back to it now if he were not sure that God was also on the upland road, among the tramps."