"Tommy is not an ordinary boy," it said.
How we had smiled at the simple honest pride that this soldier had taken
in his son.
I turned over and groaned, as I thought of it all--our parting in the
old study--our promise--the half-comedy, half-responsibility of the
situation.
And we had borne it so lightly, tossed for the boy, taken him more as an
obstreperous plaything than a serious charge.
And now--well it matters not upon which of us the mantle of his legal
guardian had fallen, nor upon whom lay the administration of his
affairs--for we all had silently renewed our vows to one who was dead,
and felt that there was something sacred in this mission, which lay upon
the shoulders of each one of us.
Poor Tommy--none of us knew how the blow had taken him, for to none of
us had he written since the news reached England, save indeed when, in a
brief line to me, he had announced his return next week.
We had all written to him, as our separate natures and feelings had
dictated, but no reply had reached us--and how should we know that of
all the letters he had received, only one was deemed worthy of
preservation--and that written in a round childish hand?
"Dear Tommy--I am so sorry. Your loving Madge."
A damp sorry little note it was, but it remained in Tommy's pocket long
after our more stately compositions had been torn up and forgotten.
To us, leading our quiet commonplace peaceful life in this little
midland village, the shock had come with double force.
Perhaps we had been apt to dwell so little on the eternal verities of
chance and change and life and death as to have become almost oblivious
of their existence, at any rate in our own sphere.
Those of the villagers who, year by year, in twos and threes, were
gathered to their fathers, were old and wrinkled and ready for death,
resting quietly under the good red earth, well content with sleep.
And these we had missed, but scarcely mourned, feeling that, in the
fitness of things, it was well that they should cease from toil.
But here was our friend, straight and strong and vigorous, cut down by
some robber bullet in an Indian pass--and to us all, I fancy, the shock
came with something of terror, and something of awakening in its
tragedy. Outwardly we had shown little enough.
The poet, when the first stun of the blow had passed, had written his
grief in the best lines I had ever seen from his pen.
The vicar had preached a quiet scholarly sermon in our friend's memory.
And now all reference to the dead had ceased among us, for the time.
To-morrow, Tommy was to come back from school, and all of us, I fancy,
dreaded the first meeting.
We had arranged that each of our houses was to be open to him, and that
in each a bed should be prepared, so that, as the mood took him, he
might sleep where he thought best.
But the meeting, at the station, was a matter of considerable
trepidation to us.