We were sitting round the fire, in the study--five men, all of us
middle-aged and sober-minded, four of us bachelors, one a widower.
And it was he who spoke, with an anxious light in his grey eyes, and two
thoughtful wrinkles at the bridge of his military nose.
"Tommy," he observed, "Tommy is not an ordinary boy."
We were silent, and I could see the doctor's lips twitching beneath his
moustache, as he gazed hard into the fire, and sucked at his cigar. The
colonel knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and resumed:
"I suppose," he said, "that it is a comparatively unusual circumstance
to find five men, unrelated by birth or marriage, who, having been
friends at school and college and having reached years of maturity,
find themselves resident in the same village, with that early
friendship not merely still existent, but, if I may say so, stronger
than ever."
We nodded.
"It is unusual," observed the vicar.
"As you know," proceeded the colonel, a little laboriously, for he was a
poor conversationalist, "the calls of my profession have forbidden me,
of late years, to enjoy as much of your company as I could have
wished--and now, after a very pleasant winter together, I must once
again take the Eastern trail for an indefinite period."
We were regretfully silent--perhaps also a little curious, for our
friend was not wont to discourse thus fully to us.
The poet appeared even a little dismayed, owing, doubtless, to that
intuition which has made him so justly renowned in his circle of
admirers, for the colonel's next remarks filled us all with a similar
emotion.
"Dear friends," he said, leaning forward in his chair, and placing his
pipe upon the whist table, "may I--would you allow me so to trespass on
this friendship of ours, as to ask for your interest in my only son,
Thomas?"
For a minute all of us, I fancy, trod the fields of memory.
The poet's thoughts hovered round a small grave in his garden, wherein
lay an erstwhile feline comrade of his solitude, whose soul had leaped
into space at the assault of an unerring pebble.
The vicar and the doctor would seem to have had similar
reminiscences--and had I not seen a youthful figure wading complacently
through my cucumber frames? We all were interested in Tommy.
Another chord was touched.
"He is motherless, you see, and very alone," the colonel pleaded, as
though our thoughts had been audible.
We remembered the brief bright years, and the long grey ones, and
steeled our hearts for service.
"I have seen so little of him, myself," continued the colonel. "He is at
school and he will go to college, but a boy needs more than school and
college can give him--he needs a hand to guide his thoughts and fancies,
and liberty, in which they may unfold. He needs developing in a way in
which no school or college can develop him. I would have him see nature,
and learn her lessons; see men and things, and know how to discern and
appreciate. I would have him a little different--wider shall I
say?--than the mere stereotyped public-school and varsity
product--admirable as it is. I would have him cultured, but not a
worshipper of culture, to the neglect of those deeper qualities without
which culture is a mere husk.
"I would have him athletic, but not of those who deify athletics.
"Above all, I would have him such a gentleman as only he can be who
realises that the privilege of good birth is in no way due to indigenous
merit."
He paused, and for a while we smoked in silence.
"He will, of course, be away at school for the greater part of each
year. But if you, dear friends, would undertake--in turn, if you
will--to supervise his holidays, I should be more than grateful. We
grown men regard our life in terms--a boy punctuates his, by
holidays--and it is in them, that I would beg of you to influence him
for good."
He turned to the poet.
"Tommy," he said, "has, I feel sure, a deeply imaginative nature, and I
am by no means certain that he is not poetical. In fact, I believe he
once wrote something about a star, which was really quite
creditable--quite creditable."
The poet looked a little bewildered.
"And I believe that Tommy has scientific bents"--the colonel looked at
the doctor, who bowed silently.
Then he regarded me a little doubtfully--after a pause.
"Tommy is not an ordinary boy," he repeated, somewhat ambiguously I
thought. Lastly, he turned to the vicar, "I could never repay the man
who taught my boy to love God," he said simply, and we fell once more to
our silence, and our smoking, while the flames leaped merrily in the old
grate, and flung strange shadows over the black wainscot and polished
floor.
Camslove Grange was old and serene and aristocratic, an antithesis, in
all respects, to its future owner, whose round head pressed a pillow
upstairs, while his spirit wandered, at play, through a boy's dreamland.
The colonel waved his hand.
"It will all be his, you see, one day," he said, almost apologetically,
"and I want the old place to have a good master."
I have said that the colonel's request had filled us with dismay, and
this indeed was very much the case.
We all had our habits. We all--even the doctor, who was the youngest of
us by some years--loved peace and regularity. Moreover, we all, if not
possessed of an actual dislike for boys, nevertheless preferred them at
a considerable distance.
And yet, in spite of all these things, we could not but fall in with the
colonel's appeal, both for the sake of unbroken friendship--and in one
case, at least (he will not mind, if I confess it), for the sake of a
sweet lost face.
And so it came about that we clasped hands, in the silence of the old
study, where, if rumour be true, more than one famous treaty has been
made and signed, and took upon our shoulders the burden of Thomas, only
son of our departing friend.
The colonel rose to his feet, and there was a glad light in his eyes. He
held out both hands towards us.
"God bless you, old comrades," he said. Then, in answer to a question,
"Tommy returns to school, to-morrow, for the Easter term, and his
holiday will be in April, I fancy. To whom is he to go first?"
We all looked at each other with questioning eyes--then we looked at the
fire.
The silence began to get awkward.
"Shall we--er--shall we toss--draw lots, that is?" suggested the vicar,
rather nervously.
The idea seemed good, and we resorted to the time-honoured, yet most
unsatisfactory, expedient of spinning a penny in the air.
The results, combined with a process of exclusion, left the choice
between the poet and the doctor.
The vicar spun, and the poet called. "Heads!" he cried, feverishly.
And heads it was.
A smile of relief and triumph was dawning on the doctor's face, when the
poet looked at him, anxiously.
"Is there not--" he asked. "Is there not a method of procedure, by which
one may call thrice?"
"Threes," remarked the vicar, genially.
"Of course there is--would you like me to toss again?"
"I--I think I would," said the poet, meekly. Then turning,
apologetically, to the colonel,
"It's better to make _quite_ sure, don't you think?"
The doctor looked a little crestfallen, but agreed, and the vicar once
more sent the coin into the air.
"Tails," cried the poet, and as the coin fell, the sovereign's head lay
upward.
The poet drew a deep breath.
"It would seem," he said, bowing to the doctor, "that Tommy may yet
become your guest."
"There is another go," said the doctor, and the vicar tossed a third
time.
"Heads," cried the poet, and heads it proved to be.
The poet wiped his forehead, after which the colonel grasped his hand.
"Write and tell me how he gets on," he said. "I cannot tell you how
grateful I am to you--to all of you."
"No, of course not--that is, it's nothing you know--only too delighted
to have the dear boy," stammered the poet. "Er--does he--can he undress
himself and--and all that, you know?"
The colonel laughed.
"Why, he's thirteen," he cried.
A little later we took our departure.
In a shadowy part of the drive the poet pulled my sleeve.
"Can boys of that age undress themselves and brush their own teeth, do
you suppose?" he asked.
"I believe so," I answered.
The poet shook his head sorrowfully.
"I don't know what Mrs. Chundle will say," he remarked.
And at the end of the drive we parted, with averted looks and scarce
concealed distress, each taking a contemplative path to the hitherto
calm of his bachelor shrine.