Part 6

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 at night, 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' no one 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 Tommy talking 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, following her 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.

XVI

IN WHICH TOMMY CROSSES THE PLOUGHING

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--then guessed 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 arms about her neck and kissed her cheek--once, twice.

But what he said to her only the great night, and the old plough, know.

XVII

IN WHICH TOMMY TAKES THE UPLAND ROAD

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 was almost 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 very _raison 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 sure that 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 about life 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 worth striving 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."

Tommy was silent, plucking uncomfortably at the grass.

"You haven't thought much about these things?"

"No."

"Ah, but you must, though. You see, until a fellow knows the road he is on, he cannot achieve, nor even begin to surmount."

"How did you know the road you're on, then?"

"I had a friend."

"And he knew?"

"Yes, been over it all before, knew every turn, and all the steep places. He has come with me. He is with me now."

Tommy peered up the darkening road.

"I can't see him," he said.

"Ah, but you will. I'm sure you will."

"What is his name?"

The stranger rose to his feet, and held out his hand.

"Christ," he said, as Tommy looked into his eyes. Then,

"Good-bye, old chap--meet again somewhere, perhaps--and, I say, about the road, shall it be the upland road for both of us?"

Tommy was silent, then, as they shook hands.

"Yes," he said.

* * * * *

"Hullo, Tommy," said I, on my return that night, from the doctor's study, "Enjoyed the evening?"

"Had some awful good practice with the doctor's bat."

"We saw you on the downs afterwards."

Tommy looked at me, with bright eyes, as if about to tell me something, but he changed his mind.

"Yes," he said, "I met a stranger there."

XVIII

AND LAST

And so these brief sketches plucked here and there from the boyhood of Tommy Wideawake, and patched unskilfully together, must be gathered up and docketed as closed, even as the boyhood from which they have been drawn.

Yet the story of Tommy Wideawake is still being written, where all may read who have eyes for the strength, and godliness of a country squire's life, and a hand for his stalwart grip.

On the occasion of Tommy's twenty-first birthday, there were, of course, great rejoicings in Camslove, and a general gathering of the country-side to the old Grange.

Tommy, in the course of a successful, if not eloquent speech, made some extravagant remarks as to the debt he owed to his four friends, and guardians--the poet, the vicar, the doctor, and myself.

Modesty forbids their repetition, and doubtless youthful enthusiasm accounted for their absurdity.

One other he mentioned in his speech--a stranger whom, long ago, he had met on the upland road.

Thus Tommy in his maiden speech.

Three years later he brought a bride to Camslove, and her name was Madge, and the rest of us live on in much the old way, excepting of course the poet, who, as a married man, affects a fine pity for us less fortunate ones.

And yet we are not altogether the same men, I fancy, as in those days.

The vicar's house has become a perfect playground for the poet's children, and my own is occasionally sadly mauled by certain sacrilegious nephews, much to the annoyance of my man.

The doctor is president, and indeed the shining light of the village cricket team, and we, at Camslove, flatter ourselves that we can put up a very decent game.

So I lay aside my pen awhile and read what I have written, and as I read I am glad that I am led from garden to valley, and stream, and mill, and over the common, and up the windy down.

For if a boy's will be indeed the wind's will, let it be that of the wind on the heath, which the gipsies breathe. And if the thoughts of a boy be long, long thoughts, let them be born of earth, and air, and sun.

And his sins, since sin and sunlight are incompatible, must needs be easy of correction.

And his faith, when of a sudden he shall find that there is God in all these things, shall be so deep that not all the criticism of all the schools shall be able to root it out of his heart.

And the moral, if you must needs hammer one out, would be this, that soundness is more to be desired than scholarship, and that the heart of boyhood is, by nature, nearer to God than that of later life.

But let him who would draw the veil aside, do so with tender hands.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE OUTLOOK" FOR PERMISSION TO REPRINT SUNDRY VERSES THE AUTHORS THANKS ARE DUE

TWO BOOKS VERY LIKE TOMMY WIDEAWAKE

ARE

KENNETH GRAHAME'S

THE GOLDEN AGE

AND

DREAM DAYS

MR. RICHARD LEGALLIENNE:

"I can think of no truer praise of Mr. Kenneth Grahame's 'Golden Age' than that it is worthy of being called 'A Child's Garden--of Prose.'"

MR. ISRAEL ZANGWILL:

"No more enjoyable interpretation of the child's mind has been accorded us since Stevenson's 'Child's Garden of Verses.'"

MR. SWINBURNE:

"The art of writing adequately and acceptably about children is among the rarest and most precious of arts.... 'The Golden Age' is one of the few books which are well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise.... The fit reader--and the 'fit' readers should be far from 'few'--finds himself a child again while reading it. Immortality should be the reward.... Praise would be as superfluous as analysis would be impertinent."

THE NEW YORK TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW:

"In this province, the reconstruction of child life, Kenneth Grahame is masterly. In fact we know of no one his equal."

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