Tommy Wideawake Part 14

"Don't know anything about that--got it from the agents for six years--like to see the deed, heh?" and he chuckled, a little ponderously.

Tommy looked downcast and hesitant, and the big man turned to his son.

"Well, well," he said, "I guess they'll know better next time. Take 'em down the drive, Ernie, and show 'em out decently."

The three walked silently down the old avenue.

At the gate, the pale boy turned to Tommy.

"Back my father's got more money than yours," he said.

Tommy's eyes swept him with a look of profound contempt, but a lump in his throat forbade retort, and he turned away silent.

Madge, dear little woman, saw the sorrow in his eyes, and held her peace, picking flowers from the bank as they walked slowly down the path.

On a green spray a little way ahead a bird was singing full-throated and joyous, but to Tommy its music was mockery.

He took a long aim and brought the little songster, warm and quivering, on to the pathway in front of them.

As they came to it he kicked it aside, but Madge, stooping, lifted it from the long gra.s.s and hid it, quite dead, in her frock.

The tears had risen to her eyes, and she was on the point of challenging this seemingly wanton cruelty.

But there was something in Tommy's face that her eyes were quick to notice, and she was silent.

Thus is tact so largely a matter of instinct.

And, in a minute, Tommy turned to her.

"I--I should jolly well like to--to kill that chap," he said.

Madge said nothing, fondling the warm little body that she held beneath her pinafore.

As they turned the corner of the hedge, they came into the full flood of the sunlight over the meadows, and Tommy smiled.

"I say, I'm awfully sorry we should have got turned out like that, Madge, but I--I didn't know there was somebody else in there--an' that I wasn't to go there, an' that."

"Never mind," said Madge, "let's come up home, and I'll show you my cave--I've got one, too. It's not so good as yours, of course, because you're a boy, but I think it's very pretty all the same, and it's _almost_ as hard to get at."

VIII

IN WHICH TWO ADJECTIVES ARE APPLIED TO TOMMY

My lady's lawn is splashed with shade All intertwined with sun, And strayingly beneath the boughs Their tapestry is spun, For the angel hands of summer-time Have woven them in one.

My lady's lawn is wrapped with peace, Its life throbs sweet and strong.

Caressingly across its breast The laughing breezes throng, And the angel wings of summer-time Have touched it into song.

"Thank you," said Lady Chantrey. "I feel so honoured, you know, to have my little garden immortalised in verse."

The poet wrapped up his papers and restored them to his pocket, with a smile.

"Not immortalised, Lady Chantrey," he replied modestly, "not even described--only, if I may say so, appreciated."

From her invalid chair, in the shade, Lady Chantrey looked out over the lawn, sunny and fragrant, a sweet foreground to the wide hills beyond.

She turned to the poet with something like a sigh.

"I wonder why it is that we fortunate ones are so few," she said. "Why we few should be allowed to drown ourselves in all this beauty, that so many can only dream about. It would almost seem a waste of earth's good things."

The poet was silent.

"After all, they can dream--the others, I mean," he said, presently.

"But never attain."

"It is good that they know it is all here--somewhere."

Lady Chantrey lay back in her chair.

"I wish I could give it to them," she said, opening her hands. "I wish I could give it to them, but I am so stupid, and weak, and poor;--you can."

"I?" stammered the poet.

She looked at him, with bright eyes.

"You have the gift," she said. "You can at any rate minister to their dreams."

"But n.o.body reads poetry, and I--I do not write for the crowd."

She shook her head.

"I think everybody reads poetry," she said, "and I think, in every house, if one could but find it, there is some line or thought or dream, if you will, cut out, long since, and guarded secretly--and more, read--read often, as a memory, perhaps only as a dream, but, for all that, a very present help--I would like to be the writer of such a poem."

"It would certainly be gratifying," a.s.sented the poet.

"It would be worth living for."

The poet looked at her gravely--at the sweet-lined face, and the white hair, and tired grey eyes.

"Do you know, Lady Chantrey," he said, "you always give me fresh inspiration. I--I wonder--"

But what the poet wondered was only the wonder, I suppose, of all writers of all ages, and, in any case, it was not put into words, for across the lawn came a rustle of silk and muslin, heralding visitors, and the poet became busy about tea-cups and cream.