THE LEADER
IV
He was a ragged-looking being, yet his loose, untidy clothing became him so well that his appearance seemed almost neat — it was certainly natural: he was dressed in the day, the garden, the open air. Judy and Tim ran up fearlessly and began fingering the bits of stuff that clung to him from the fields and ditches. In his beard were some stray rose leaves and the feather of a little bird. The children had an air of sheltering against a tree trunk — woodland creatures — mice or squirrels chattering among the roots, or birds flown in to settle on a hedge. They were not one whit afraid. For nothing surprised them on this marvellous morning; everything that happened they — accepted.
“He’s shining underneath,” Judy whispered in Tim’s ear, cocking her head sideways so that she could catch her brother’s eye and at the same time feel the great comfort of the new arrival against her cheek.
“And awfully strong,” was the admiring reply.
“So soft, too,” she declared — though whether of mind or body was not itemized— “like feathers.”
“And smells delicious,” affirmed Tim, “like hay and rabbits.”
Each child picked out the quality the heart desired and approved; almost, it seemed, each felt him differently. Yet, although not one whit afraid, they whispered. Perhaps the wonder of it choked their utterance a little.
The Tramp smiled at them. All four smiled. The way he had emerged from among the rose trees made them smile. It was as natural as though he had been there all the time, growing out of the earth, waving in the morning air and sunlight. There was something simple and very beautiful about him, perhaps, that made them smile like this. Then Uncle Felix, whom the first shock of surprise had apparently deprived of speech, found his voice and observed, “Good-morning to you, good-morning.” The little familiar phrase said everything in a quite astonishing way. It was like a song.
“Good-morning,” replied the Tramp. “It is. I was wondering how long it would be before you saw me.”
“Ah!” said Judy and Tim in the same breath, “of course.”
“The fact is,” stammered Uncle Felix, “you’re so like the rest of the garden — so like a bit of the garden, I mean — that we didn’t notice you at first. But we heard—” he broke off in the middle of the sentence— “That was you singing, wasn’t it?” he asked with a note of hushed admiration in his voice.
The smile upon the great woodland face broadened perceptibly. It was as though the sun burst through a cloud. “That’s hard to say,” he replied, “when the whole place is singing. I’m just like everything else — alive. It’s natural to sing, and natural to dance — when you’re alive and looking — and know it.”
He spoke with a sound as though he had swallowed the entire morning, a forest rustling in his chest, singing water just behind the lips.
“Looking!” exclaimed Uncle Felix, picking out the word. He moved closer; the children caught his hands; the three of them sheltered against the spreading figure till the four together seemed like a single item of the landscape. “Looking!” he repeated, “that’s odd. We’ve lost something too. You said too, — just now — something about — a sign, I think?” Uncle Felix added shyly.
All waited, but the Tramp gave no direct reply. He smiled again and folded two mighty arms about them. Two big feathery wings seemed round them. Judy thought of a nest, Tim of a cozy rabbit hole, Uncle Felix had the amazing impression that there were wild flowers growing in his heart, or that a flock of robins had hopped in and began to sing.
“Lost something, have you?” the Tramp enquired genially at length; and the slow, leisurely way he said it, the curious half-singing utterance he used, the words falling from his great beard with this sound as of wind through leaves or water over sand and pebbles — somehow included them in the rhythm of existence to which he himself naturally belonged. They all seemed part of the garden, part of the day, part of the sun and earth and flowers together, marvellously linked and caught within some common purpose. Question and answer in the ordinary sense were wrong and useless. They must feel — feel as he did — to find what they sought.
It was Uncle Felix who presently replied: “Something — we’ve — mis-laid,” he said hesitatingly, as though a little ashamed that he expressed the truth so lamely.
“Mis-laid?” asked the Tramp. “Mis-laid, eh?”
“Forgotten,” put in Tim.
“Mis-laid or forgotten,” repeated the other. “That all?”
“Somebody, I should have said,” explained Uncle Felix yet still falteringly, “somebody we’ve lost, that is.”
“Hiding,” Tim said quickly.
“About,” added Judy. There was a hush in all their voices.
The Tramp picked the small feather from his beard — apparently a water-wagtail’s — and appeared to reflect a moment. He held the soft feather tenderly between a thumb and finger that were thick as a walking-stick and stained with roadside mud and yellow with flower-pollen too.
“Hiding, is he?” He held up the feather as if to see which way it fluttered in the wind. “Hiding?” he repeated, with a distinct broadening of the smile that was already big enough to cover half the lawn. It shone out of him almost like rays of light, of sunshine, of fire. “Aha! That’s his way, maybe, just a little way he has — of playing with you.”
“You know him, then! You know who it is?” two eager voices asked instantly. “Tell us at once. You’re leader now!” The children, in their excitement, almost burrowed into him; Uncle Felix drew a deep breath and stared. His whole body listened.
And slowly the Tramp turned round his shaggy head and gazed into their faces, each in turn. He answered in his leisurely, laborious way as though each word were a bank-note that he dealt out carefully, fixing attention upon its enormous value. There was certainly a tremor in his rumbling voice. But there was no hurry.
“I’ve — seen him,” he said with feeling, “seen him — once or twice. My life’s thick with memories—”
“Seen him!” sprang from three mouths simultaneously.
“Once or twice, I said.” He paused and sighed. Wind stirred the rose trees just behind him. He went on murmuring in a lower tone; and as he spoke a sense of exquisite new beauty stole across the old-world garden. “It was — in the morning — very early,” he said below his breath.
“At dawn!” Uncle Felix whispered.
“When the birds begin,” from Judy very softly.
“To sing,” Tim added, a single shiver of joy running through all three of them at once. The enchantment of their own dim memories of the dawn — of a robin, of swallows, and of an up-and-under bird flashed magically back.
The Tramp nodded his great head slowly; he bowed it to the sunlight, as it were. There was a great light flaming in his eyes. He seemed to give out heat.
“Just seen him — and no more,” he went on marvellously, as though speaking of a wonderful secret of his own. “Seen him a-stealing past me — in the dawn. Just looked at me — and went — went back again behind the rushing minutes!”
“Was it long ago? How long?” asked Judy with eager impatience impossible to suppress. They did not notice the reference to Time, apparently.
The wanderer scratched his tangled crop of hair and seemed to calculate a moment. He gazed down at the small white feather in his hand. But the feather held quite still. No breath of wind was stirring. “When I was young,” he said, with an expression half quizzical, half yearning. “When I first took to the road — as a boy — and began to look.”
“As long ago as that!” Tim murmured breathlessly. It was like a stretch of history.
The Tramp put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I was about your age,” he said, “when I got tired of the ordinary life, and started wandering. And I’ve been wandering and looking ever since. Wandering — and wondering — and looking — ever since,” he repeated in the same slow way, while the feather between his great fingers began to wave a little in time with the dragging
speech.
The wonder of it enveloped them all three like a perfume rising from the entire earth.
“We’ve been looking for ages too,” cried Judy.
“And we’ve seen him,” exclaimed her brother quickly.
“Somebody,” added Uncle Felix, more to himself than to the others.
The Tramp combed his splendid beard, as if he hoped to find more feathers in it.
“This morning, wasn’t it?” he asked gently, “very early?”
They reflected a moment, but the reflection did not help them much. “Ages and ages ago,” they answered. “So long that we’ve forgotten rather—”
“Forgotten what he looks like. That’s it. Same trouble here,” and he tapped his breast. “We’re all together, doing the same old thing. The whole world’s doing it. It’s the only thing to do.” And he looked so wise and knowing that their wonder increased to a kind of climax; they were tapping their own breasts before they knew it.
“Doing it everywhere,” he went on, weighing his speech as usual; “only some don’t know they’re doing it.” He looked significantly into their shining eyes, then finished with a note of triumph in his voice. “We do!”
“Hooray!” cried Tim. “We can all start looking together now.”
“Maybe,” agreed the wanderer, very sweetly for a tramp, they thought.
They glanced at their Uncle first for his approval; the Tramp glanced at him too; his face was flushed and happy, the eyes very bright. But there was an air of bewilderment about him too. He nodded his head, and repeated in a shy, contented voice — as though he surrendered himself to some enchantment too great to understand— “I think so; I hope so; I — wonder!”
“We’ve looked everywhere already,” Tim shouted by way of explanation — when the Tramp cut him short with a burst of rolling laughter:
“But in the wrong kind of places, maybe,” he suggested, moving forward like a hedge or bit of hayfield the wind pretends to shift.
“Oh, well — perhaps,” the boy admitted.
“Probly,” said Judy, keeping close beside him.
“Of course,” decided Uncle Felix; “but we’ve been pretty warm once or twice all the same.” He lumbered after the other three, yet something frisky about him, as about a pony released into a field and still uncertain of its bounding strength.
“Have you really?” remarked their leader, good-humouredly, but with a touch of sarcasm. “Good and right, so far as it goes; only ‘warm’ is not enough; we want to be hot, burning hot and steaming all the time. That’s the way to find him.” He paused and turned towards them; he gathered them nearer to him with his smiling eyes somehow. “It’s like this,” he went on more slowly than ever: “A good hider doesn’t choose the difficult places; he chooses the common ordinary places where nobody would ever think of looking.” He kept his eyes upon them to make sure they understood him. “The little, common places,” he continued with emphasis, “that no one thinks worth while. He hides in the open — bang out in the open!”
“In the open!” cried the children. “The open air!”
“In the open!” gasped Uncle Felix. “The open sea!”
The Tramp almost winked at them. He looked like a lot of ordinary people. He looked like everybody. He looked like the whole world somehow. He smiled just like a multitude. He spoke, as it were, for all the world — said the one simple thing that everybody everywhere was trying to say in millions of muddled words and sentences. The wind and trees and sunshine said it with him, for him, after him, before him. He said the thing — so Uncle Felix felt, at any rate, — that was always saying itself, that was everywhere heard, though rarely listened to; but, according to the children, the thing they knew and believed already. Only it was nice to hear it stated definitely — they felt.
And the tide of enchantment rose higher and higher; in a tide of flowing gold it poured about all three.
“That’s it,” the Tramp continued, as though he had not noticed the rapture his very ordinary words had caused. “Sea and land and air together. But more than that — he hides deep and beautiful.”
“Deeply and beautifully,” murmured the writer of historical novels, all of them entirely forgotten now.
“Deep and beautiful,” repeated the other, as though he preferred the rhythm of his own expression. He drew himself up and swallowed a long and satisfying draught of air and sunshine. He waved the little wagtail’s feather before their eyes. He touched their faces with its tip. “Deep, tender, kind, and beautiful,” he elaborated. “Those are the signs — signs that he’s been along — just passed that way. The whole world’s looking, and the whole world’s full of signs!”
For a moment all stood still together like a group of leafy things a passing wind has shaken, then left motionless; a wild rose-bush, a climbing vine, a clinging ivy branch — all three kept close to the stalwart figure of their big, incomparable leader.
And Judy knew at last the thing she didn’t know; Tim felt himself finally in the eternal centre of his haunted wood; in the eyes of Uncle Felix there was a glistening moisture that caught the sunlight like dew upon the early lawn. He staggered a little as though he were on a deck and the sea was rolling underneath him.
“How ever did you find it out?” he asked, after an interval that no one had cared to interrupt. “What in the world made you first think of it?” And though his voice was very soft and clear, it was just a little shaky.
“Well,” drawled the Tramp, “maybe it was just because I thought of nothing else. On the road we live sort of simply. There’s never any hurry; the wind’s a-blowing free; everything’s sweet and careless — and so am I.” And he chuckled happily to himself.
“Let’s begin at once!” cried Tim impatiently. “I feel warm already — hot all over — simply burning.”
The Tramp signified his agreement. “But you must each get a feather first,” he told them, “a feather that a bird has dropped. It’s a sign that we belong together. Birds know everything first. They go everywhere and see everything all at once. They’re in the air, and on the ground, and on the water, and under it as well. They live in the open — sea or land. And if you have a feather in your hand — well, it means keeping in touch with everything that’s going. They go light and easy; we must go light and easy too.”
They stared at him with wonder at the breaking point. It all seemed so obviously and marvellously true. How had they missed it up till now?
“So get a feather,” he went on quietly, “and then we can begin to look at once.”
No one objected, no one criticised, no one hesitated. Tim knew where all the feathers were because he knew every nest in the garden. He led the way. In less than two minutes all had small, soft feathers in their hands.
“Now, we’ll begin to look,” the Tramp announced. “It’s the loveliest game on earth, and the only one. It’s Hide-and-Seek behind the rushing minutes. And, remember,” he added, holding up a finger and chuckling happily, “there’s no hurry, the wind’s a-blowing free, the sun is warm, everything’s sweet and careless — and so are we.”
THE COMMON SIGNS
V
“But has he called yet?” asked Tim, remembering suddenly that it wasn’t fair to begin till the hider announced that he was ready. “He’s got to hoot first, you know. Hasn’t he?” he added doubtfully.
“Listen!” replied the man of the long white roads. And he held his feather close against his ear, while the others copied him. Fixing their eyes upon a distant point, they listened, and as they listened, their lips relaxed, their mouths opened slowly, their eyebrows lifted — they heard, apparently, something too wonderful to be believed.
To Uncle Felix, still fumbling in his mind among unnecessary questions, it seemed that the power of hearing had awakened for the first time, or else had grown of a sudden extraordinarily acute. The children merely listened and said “Oh, oh, oh!”; the sound they heard was familiar, though never fully understood till now. For him, it was, perhaps, th
e recovery of a power he had long forgotten. At any rate he — heard. For the air passed through the tiny fronds of the feather — through the veined web of its delicate resistance — round the hollow stem and across the fluffy breadth of it — with a humming music as of wind among the telegraph wires, only infinitely sweet and far away. There were several notes in it, a chord — the music that accompanies all flying things, even a butterfly or settling leaf, and ever fills the air with unguessed melody.
It opened their power of hearing to a degree as yet undreamed of even by the all-believing children. Their feathers became wee, accurate, tuning-forks for all existence. They understood that everything in the whole world sang; that no rose leaf fluttered to the earth, no rabbit twitched its ears, no mouse its tail, no single bluebell waved a head towards its bluer neighbour, without this exquisite accompaniment of fairy music.
“Listen, listen!” the Tramp repeated softly from time to time, watching their faces keenly. “Listen, and you’ll hear him calling…!”
And this fairy humming, having so marvellously attuned their hearing, then led them on to the larger, louder sounds; they pricked their ears up, as the saying goes; they noticed the deeper music everywhere. For the morning breeze was rustling and whispering among the leaves and blades of grass with a thousand happy voices. It was the ordinary summer sound of moving air that no one pays attention to.
“Oh, that!” exclaimed Uncle Felix. “I hadn’t noticed it.” He felt ashamed. He who had taught them the beauty of the self-advertising Night-Wind, had somehow missed and overlooked the wonder — the searching, yearning beauty — of this meek, incomparable music: because it was so usual. For the first time in his life he heard the wind as it slipped between the leaves, shaking them into rapture.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 280