Tommy Wideawake Part 18

For a moment Tommy stood, white with anger. Then he thought of Madge, who had been a spectator of the tragedy. But she was nowhere to be seen, and he walked gloomily down the lane.

Now Madge, with a beating heart and a stricken conscience, had fled for help, running blindly down the lane, with the idea of securing the first ally who should appear.

And she almost ran into the arms of the pale boy from the Grange.

"Hullo, what's the matter?" he asked, looking at Madge curiously.

Madge blurted out the story, with eager eyes.

'Could he help her? Was there anybody near who could save Tommy from a probable and violent death?'

The pale boy looked at her admiringly, as he considered the question.

Then,

"My father knows the man--he owes my father some money, I think. I'll see if I can do anything."

They ran down the lane together, and doing so encountered Tommy, flushed and ruffled.

"O, Tommy"--Madge began, but stopped suddenly, at the look on Tommy's face.

For to Tommy this seemed the lowest depth of his degradation, that the pale boy should be a witness of his discomfiture.

He looked at them angrily, and then, turning on his heel, struck out across the fields, the iron entering deeply into his soul.

Youth is imitative, and Tommy had often heard the phrase.

"I--I don't care a d.a.m.n," he said.

For a moment he felt half-frightened, but the birds were still singing in the hedge, and, in the next field, the reapers still chattered gaily at their work.

Moreover, the phrase seemed both consolatory and emphatic.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n," he repeated, slowly, climbing the stile, into the next field.

Said a voice from behind the hedge:

"Girl in it?"

Tommy looked round, and encountered a tall young man in tweeds. He was looking at him, with amused eyes.

"I--I don't know what you mean," said Tommy.

The young man laughed.

"They're the devil, girls are," he observed.

Tommy was puzzled and eyed the stranger cautiously, thinking him the handsomest man he had seen.

Nor, in a way, was he at fault, for the young man was straight, and tall, and comely.

But there was something in the eyes--a lack of honest l.u.s.tre--and in the lips--too sensuous for true manliness, that would have warned Tommy, had he been older, or even in a different frame of mind. Just now, however, a friend was welcome, and Tommy told his tale, as they strolled through the fields together.

Presently,

"You belong to Camslove Grange, don't you?" asked the stranger.

"I did."

"And will again, I suppose, eh?"

Tommy looked doubtful, and the young man laughed.

"Sorry--I ought to have put it the other way round, for it will belong to you."

Tommy shook his head.

"I don't think so," he said. "Some other Johnny's got it, you see."

The young man looked at his watch.

"My name's Morris--I live at Borcombe House--you'd better come and feed with me."

"Thanks, I'd like to, awfully."

"That's right--the old man will be glad to see you, and we'll have a game of billiards."

"I can't play."

"Never mind. I'll teach you--good game, pills."

Squire Morris was cordial from the grip of his hand to the moisture in his baggy eyes.

"The heir of Camslove," he said. "Well, well, I am so glad to see you, dear boy, so very glad to see you. You must come often."

For a moment a misgiving arose in Tommy's heart.

"Did you know my father?" he asked, as the old man held his hand.

"Yes, yes; not as well as I would have liked to know him, by no means as well as I would have liked to know him--but I knew him, oh yes. I knew him well enough."

Tommy felt rea.s.sured, and the three entered the old hall, hung with trophies of gun and rod and chase.

"A bachelor's abode," laughed the young man. "We're wedded to sport--no use for girls here, eh dad?"

The squire laughed wheezily.

"The dog," he chuckled, "the young dog."