"And so my boy has taken up his abode with our friend, the poet," wrote
the colonel to me. "Do you know, I fancy it will be good for both of
them. I have long felt that our poet was getting too solitary and
remote--too self-centred, shall I say?
"And yet I have, too, some misgivings as to his power of controlling
Tommy--although my faith in Mrs. Chundle is profound.
"Tommy, as you know, is not perhaps quite so strong as he might be, and
needs careful watching--changing clothes and so on. You recollect his
sudden and quite severe illness just after the Chantrey's garden party
last year."
I laid down the letter and smiled, for I had wondered at the time at
Tommy's survival, so appalling had been his powers of absorption.
"Poor colonel," I reflected. "He is too ridiculously wrapped up in the
young rascal, for anything."
The letter ran on:
"Spare no expense as to his keep and the supplying of his reasonable
wishes, but do not let him know, at any rate for the present, that he is
heir to Camslove--I think he does not realise it yet--and for a while it
is better he should not.
"My greeting to all the brothers. There are wars and rumours of wars in
the air of the Northwest...."
I restored the letter to my pocket, and lay back in the grass, beneath
the branches.
Wars and rumours of wars--well, they were far enough from here, as every
twittering birdling manifested.
The colonel had always been the man of action among us, though he, of us
all, had the wherewithal to be the most at ease.
One of those strange incongruities with which life abounds, and which, I
reflected, must be accepted with resignation.
I had always rather prided myself upon the completeness with which I
had resigned myself to my lot of idleness and obscurity, and to my own
mind was a philosopher of no small merit.
I lay back under the trees full of the content of the day and the green
woods and abandoned myself to meditation.
Whether it was the spirit of Spring or some latent essence of activity
in my being, I do not know, but certain it is that a wave of discontent
spread over me--a weariness (very unfamiliar) of myself and my cheap
philosophy.
I sat up, wondering at the change and its suddenness, groping in my mind
for a solution to the problem.
Could it be that my rule of life was based on a fallacy?
Surely not. Suddenly I thought of Tommy and took a deep breath of the
sweet woodland air, for I had found what I had wanted.
Resignation--it was a sacrilege to use the word on such a day.
Yes, I thought, there is no doubt that the instinctive philosophy of
boyhood is the true rule of life, as indeed one ought to have suspected
long ago.
To enjoy the present with all the capacity of every sense, to regard the
past with comparative indifference, since it is irrevocable, and the
future with a healthy abandonment, since it is unknown, and to leave the
sorrows of introspection to those who know no better--avaunt with your
resignation. And even as I said it I saw the reeds by the pool quiver
and a pair of brown eyes twinkle joyously at me from their midst.
"Hello, Tommy!" I cried.
He emerged, clad only in an inconspicuous triangular garment about his
waist.
"I've been watching you ever so long," he said triumphantly.
"Been bathing?" I asked.
"Rather. It's jolly fine and not a bit cold. I say, you should have seen
the old boy potting rats."
"The poet?" I murmured in amaze.
Tommy nodded.
"He is getting quite a good shot," he said. "He was doing awful well
till the vicar saw him about an hour ago--an' then he wouldn't go on any
more."
"I should think not," said I. "The humanitarian, the naturalist, the
anti-vivisectionist, the anti-destructionist--it passes comprehension."
Tommy took a header and came up on to the sunny bank beside me, where he
stood a moment with glowing cheeks and lithe shining limbs.
"This is ripping," he said--every letter an italic. "This is just
ab-solutely ripping."
I laughed at his enthusiasm, and, as I laughed, shared it--oh the wine
of it, of youth and health and spring--was I talking about resignation
just now?--surely not.
Tommy squatted down beside me on his bare haunches, with his hands
clasped over his knees.
"I have heard from your father to-day," I said.
Tommy grunted, and threw a stick at an early butterfly.
He was always most uncommunicative where he felt most, so I waited with
discretion.
"All right?" he queried, presently, in a nonchalant voice.