"The country is just now at its freshest," said the poet, waving his
hand towards the open window and the green lawn. "The world is waking
again to its--er, spring holiday, Tommy, and you must be out in the air
and the open fields, and share it while you may."
The poet beamed, a little apprehensively it is true, across the
breakfast table at Tommy, who was mastering a large plate of eggs and
bacon with courage and facility.
"It's jolly good of you to have me, you know," observed Tommy, pausing a
moment to regard his host.
"On the contrary, it is my very glad privilege. I have often felt that
my youth has been left behind a little oversoon--I am getting, I fancy,
a trifle stiff and narrowed. You must lead me, Tommy, into the world of
action and sport--we will play games together--hide and go seek. You
must buy me a hoop, and we will play marbles and cricket--" and the
poet smiled complacently over his spectacles.
Tommy wriggled a little uneasily in his chair, and looked out of the
window.
The trees were bending to the morning wind, which sang through the
budding branches and hovered over the garden daffodils. Away beyond the
lawn and the meadows the hills rose clear and bracing to the eye, and
through a chain of willows sped the wavering blue gleam of sunny waters.
"I--I'm an awful duffer at games," said Tommy, with a blush on his brown
cheeks, and horrid visions of the poet and himself bowling hoops.
The poet drew a deep breath of relief.
"You love nature, dear boy--the sights and sounds and mysteries of the
hedgerow and the stream--is it not so?"
"Yes," said Tommy, dubiously. "I--I'm rather a hot shot with a
catapult."
The poet gazed out across the garden. A small green mound beneath the
chestnut tree marked the grave of the fond Delicia--a tribute to Tommy's
skill.
Involuntarily, the poet sighed.
Tommy looked up from the marmalade.
"You don't mind, do you?" he asked anxiously.
"No, no, of course not, dear boy," said the poet with an effort. "That
is--you--you won't hit anything, will you?"
"Rather," cried Tommy. "You jolly well see if I don't."
Delicia's successor looked up from her saucer on the rug, and the
"Morning Post" slipped from the poet's nerveless grasp.
"You--oh Tommy, you will spare the tabby," he gasped tragically,
indicating the rug and its occupant.
Tommy grinned.
"All right," he said,--adding as a comforting afterthought, "And cats
are awful poor sport, you know--they're so jolly slow."
But the poet was far away.
With every meal Mrs. Chundle brought a pencil and paper, for as likely
as not inspiration would not scorn to come with coffee or hover over a
rasher of bacon. And it was even so, at this present.
Tommy watched the process with some curiosity. Then he stole to the
window, for all the world was calling him.
But he paused with one foot on the first step, as the poet looked up
from his manuscript.
"How do you like this?" he asked eagerly:
Oh the daffodils sing of my lady's gown,
The hyacinths dream of her eyes,
And the wandering breezes across the down,
The harmonies dropt from the skies,
Are full of the song of the love that swept
My citadel by surprise.
Oh the woods they are bright with my lady's voice,
The paths they are sweet with her tread,
And the kiss of her gown makes the lawn rejoice,
The violet lift her head.
Yet, lady, I know not if I must smile
Or weep for the days long sped.
The poet blinked rapturously through his glasses at Tommy, listening
respectfully, by the window.
"They're jolly good--but I say, who is she?"
The poet seemed a little puzzled.
"I am afraid I do not comprehend you," he said.
"The lady," observed Tommy. "I didn't know you were in love, you know,
or anything of that sort."
The poet rose to his feet, with some dignity.
"I am not in love, Thomas," he said. "I--I never even think about such
things." Tommy turned back.
"I say, if you're going to the post-office with that will you buy me
some elastic--for my catty, you know?" he said.
Just then the housekeeper entered, and Tommy went out upon the lawn.
"Please, sir, there's a friend o' Mister Thomas's a settin' in the
kitchen, an' 'e's bin there a hower, pretty nigh--an' 'is talk--it
fairly makes me blood rise, and me pore stomach that sour--an', please,
'e wants ter know if Mister Thomas is ready to go after them rats 'e was
talkin' of, an' if the Cholmondeleys, which is me blood relations, 'ad
'eard 'im--Lord."
Mrs. Chundle wiped her brow at this appalling supposition, and the poet
gazed helplessly at her.
"Did you say a friend of Mr. Thomas's?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, an' that common 'e--'e's almost took the shine off of the
plates."
"Dear, dear! how very--very peculiar, Mrs. Chundle."
A genial, red countenance appeared at the doorway.
"Beg pawdon, sir, but the young gemman 'e wanted me to show 'im a nest
or two o' rats down Becklington stream, sir--rare fat uns they be, sir,
too."
"I--I do not approve of sport--of slaying innocent beings--even if they
be but rodents; I must ask you to leave me."
The poet waved his hand.
The rubicund sportsman looked disappointed. "Beg pawdon, sir, I'm sure.
Thought 's 'ow it were all right, sir."
"I do not blame you, my good man. I merely protest against the ruling
spirit of destruction which our country worships so deplorably. You may
go."
And all this while Tommy stood bare-headed on the lawn, filling his
lungs with the morning's sweetness, and feeling the grip of its appeal
in his heart and blood and limbs. A sturdy little figure he was, clad in
a short jacket and attenuated flannel knickerbockers which left his
brown knees bare above his stockings.
The blood in his round cheeks shone red beneath the tan, and there were
some freckles at the bridge of his nose. In his hand was a battered
wide-awake hat--his usual headgear--and the origin of his sobriquet--for
he will, I imagine, be known as Tommy Wideawake until the crack of doom,
and, maybe, even after that.
With all his appreciation of the day, however, no word of the
conversation just recorded missed his ears, and I regret to say that
when the red-cheeked intruder turned a moment at the garden gate,
Tommy's right eyelashes trembled a moment upon his cheek while his lips
parted over some white teeth for the smallest fraction of a second.
Then he kicked viciously at a daisy and blinked up at the friendly sun.
The poet stepped out on the lawn beside him with a worried wrinkle on
his forehead.
"I feel rather upset," he said.
"Let's go for a walk," suggested Tommy.
The poet considered a moment.
An epic, which lagged somewhat, held out spectral arms to him from the
recesses of his writing-desk, but the birds' spring songs were too
winsome for prolonged resistance, and to their wooing the poet
capitulated.
"Let us come," he said, and they stepped through the wicker gate into
the water-meadows.
The Becklington brook is only a thin thread here, but lower down it
receives tributaries from two adjoining valleys and becomes a stream of
some importance, turning, indeed, a couple of mills, before it reaches
the Arrowley, which enters the Isis.
The day was hot--one of those early heralds of June so often encountered
in late April, and the meadows basked dreamily in the sun, while from
the hills came a dull glow of budding gorse.
The poet was full of fancies, and as the house grew farther behind them,
and the path led ever more deeply among copse and field, his natural
calm soon reasserted itself. From time to time he would jot down a happy
phrase or quaint expression, enlarging thereon to Tommy, who listened
patiently enough.
Plop.
A lazy ripple cut the surface of the stream, and another, and another.
Tommy lifted a warning hand and held his breath.
Yes, sure enough, there was a brown nose stemming the water.
In an instant Tommy was crouching in the reeds, his hand feeling in his
pocket, and his small body quivering.
The poet's mouth was open.
Followed a twang, and the whistle of a small projectile, and the rat
disappeared. But the stone had not hit him.
"Tommy!" protested the poet.
But his appeal fell on deaf ears, for Tommy was watching the far side of
the stream with an anxious gaze. Suddenly the brown nose reappeared.
He was a very ugly rat.
"Tommy!" said the poet again, weakly.
The rat was making for a bit of crumbled bank opposite, and Tommy stood
up for better aim. The poet held his breath.
One foot more and the prey would be lost, but Tommy stood like a young
statue--then whang; and slowly the rat turned over on his back and
vanished from sight, to float presently--a swollen corpse--down the
quiet stream.
"Well hit, sir," cried the poet.
Tommy turned with dancing eyes.
"Jolly nearly lost him," he said. "You should just see young Collins
with a catty. He's miles better than me."
But the poet had remembered himself.
"Tommy," he said, huskily, "I--I don't approve of sport of this kind.
Cannot you aim at--at inanimate objects?"
"It's a jolly poor game," said Tommy--then holding out the wooden fork,
with its pendant elastic.
"Have a try," he said.
The poet accepted a handful of ammunition.
"I must amuse the boy and enter into his sports as far as I may if I
would influence his character," he said to himself.
Tommy stuck a clod of earth on a stick some few yards away, at which,
for some time, the poet shot wildly enough.
Yet, with each successive attempt, the desire for success grew stronger
within him, and when at last the clod flew into a thousand crumbs, he
flushed with triumph, and had to wipe the dimness from his glasses.
Oh, poets! it is dangerous to play with fire.
Plop.
And another lusty rat held bravely out into the stream.
"Oh, get him, get him!" cried Tommy, jumping up and down. "Lend me the
catty. Let me have a shot. Do buck up."
But the poet waved him aside.
"There shall be no--" he hesitated.
This rat was surely uglier than the last.
"No unseemly haste," concluded the poet.
Did the rat scent danger? I know not, but, on a sudden, he turned back
to shelter. And, alas, this was too much for even Principle and
Conscience--and whang went the catapult, and lo, even as by a miracle
(which, indeed, it surely was), the bullet found its mark.
And I regret to say that the vicar, leaning unnoticed on a neighbouring
gate, heard the poet exclaim, with some exultation: "Got him."
"Oh, _well_ hit!" cried Tommy. "By Jove, that was a ripping shot."
The poet blushed at the praise--but alas for human pleasures, and
notably stolen ones, for they are fleeting.
"Hullo," said a sonorous voice.
They both turned, and the vicar smiled.
The poet was hatless and flushed. From one hand dangled a catapult; in
the other he clutched some convenient pebbles.
"Really," said the vicar, "I should never have thought it."
The poet sighed, and handed the weapon to Tommy.
"Run away now, old chap," he said, "and have a good time. I think I
shall go home."
Tommy trotted off into the wood, and the vicar and the poet held back
towards the village.
"How goes the experiment?" asked the former, magnanimously ignoring the
scene he had just witnessed.
The poet shook his head.
"It is hard to say yet," he replied. "I have not seen any _marked_
development of the poetical and imaginative side of him--and he brings
some very queer friends to my house. But he's a good boy, on the whole,
and the holidays have only just begun."
In the village street they paused.
"I--I want to go to the post-office," said the poet.
"All right," said the vicar.
"Don't--please don't wait for me," said the poet.
"It's a pleasure," replied the vicar. "The day is fine and young, and it
is also Monday. I am not busy."
"I really wish you wouldn't."
The vicar was a man of tact, and had known the poet since boyhood, so he
bowed.
"Good day," he said, and strolled towards the parsonage.
The poet looked up and down the long, lazy street. There was no one in
sight. Then he plunged into the little shop.
"Some elastic, please," he said, nervously. "Thick and square--for a
catapult."