Tommy Wideawake Part 4

"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 gra.s.s, 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 b.u.t.terfly.

He was always most uncommunicative where he felt most, so I waited with discretion.

"All right?" he queried, presently, in a nonchalant voice.

I nodded.

"He says he's afraid you're not very strong."

Tommy stared, then he looked a little frightened.

"I--of course I'm not _very_ strong, you know," he said thoughtfully, casting a glance down his st.u.r.dy young arms. "But I can lick young Collins, an' he weighs seven pounds more than me, an' I can pull up on the bar at gym--"

I hastened to rea.s.sure him.

"He referred to your attack last summer, you know, after the Chantrey affair."

Tommy grinned expansively.

"I expect the pater didn't know what it was," he said.

"But I did."

"You--you never told him?" in an anxious voice.

"No."

Tommy sighed.

"The pater does hate a chap being greedy, you see, and--those strawbobs were so awfully good. I couldn't help it--an' father thought I'd got a--intestinal chill, I think he said."