But none of them had found what they were looking for….
They had looked in all the difficult places where a clever player would be most likely to conceal himself, yet in vain; there was no definite sign of him, no footprints on the flower-beds or along the edge of the shrubberies. The garden proper had been searched from end to end without result. The children had been to the particular hiding-places each knew best, Tim to the dirty nook between the ilex and the larder window, and Judy to the scooped-out trunk of the rotten elm, and both together to the somewhat smelly channel between the yew trees and a disused outhouse—all equally untenanted.
In the latter gloomy place, in fact, they met. No sunlight pierced the dense canopy of branches; it was barely light enough to see. Judy and Tim advanced towards each other on tiptoe, confident of discovery at last. They only realised their mistake at five yards’ distance.
“You!” exclaimed Tim, in a disappointed whisper. “I thought it was going to be a sign.” “I felt positive he’d be in here somewhere,” said Judy.
“Perhaps we’re both signs,” they declared together, then paused, and held a secret discussion about it all.
“He’s got a splendid hide,” was the boy’s opinion. “D’you think Uncle
Felix knows anything? You heard what he said about signs…!”
They decided without argument that he didn’t. He just went “thumping about” in the usual places. He’d never find him. They agreed it was very wonderful. Tim advanced his pet idea—it had been growing on him: “I think he knows some special place we’d never look in—a hole or something.” But Judy met the suggestion with superior knowledge: “He moves about,” she announced. “He doesn’t stop in a hole. He flies at an awful rate—from place to place. That’s—signs, I expect.”
“Wings?” suggested Tim.
Judy hesitated. “You remember—at breakfast, wasn’t it?—ages and ages ago—all had wings—those things—”
She broke off and pointed significantly at the figure of Uncle Felix who was standing with his head cocked up at an awkward angle, staring into the sky. Shading his eyes with one hand, he was apparently examining the topmost branches of the tall horse-chestnuts.
“He couldn’t have got up a tree, could he, or into a bird’s nest?” said the girl. She offered the suggestion timidly, yet her brother did not laugh at her. There was this strange feeling that the hider might be anywhere—simply anywhere. This was no ordinary game.
“There’s such a lot,” Tim answered vaguely.
She looked at him with intense admiration. The wonder of this marvellous game was in their hearts. The moment when they would find him was simply too extraordinary to think about.
Judy moved a step closer in the darkness. “Can he get small, then—like that?” she whispered.
But the question was too much for Tim.
“Anyhow he gets about, doesn’t he?” was the reply, the vagueness of uncertain knowledge covering the disappointment. “There are simply millions of trees and nests and—and rabbit-holes all over the place.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Judy asked, still more timidly:
“I say, Tim?”
“Well.”
“What does he really look like? I can’t remember quite. I mean—shall we recognise him?”
Tim stared at her. “My dear!” he gasped, as though the question almost shocked him. “Why, he touched me—on the head! I felt it!”
Judy laughed softly; it was only that she wanted to remind herself of something too precious to be forgotten.
“I kissed him!” she whispered, a hint of triumph in her voice and eyes.
They stood staring at one another for a little while, weighing the proofs thus given; then Tim broke the silence with a question of his own. It was the result of this interval of reflection. It was an unexpected sort of question:
“Do you know what it is we want?” he asked. “I do,” he added hurriedly, lest she should answer first.
“What?” she said, seeing from his tone and manner that it was important.
“We shall never, never find him this way,” he said decisively.
“What?” she repeated with impatience.
Tim lowered his voice. “What we want,” he said with the emphasis of true conviction, “is—a Leader.”
Judy repeated the word after him immediately; it was obvious; why hadn’t she thought of it herself? “Of course,” she agreed. “That’s it exactly.”
“We’re looking wrong somewhere,” her brother added, and they both turned their heads in the direction of Uncle Felix who was still standing on the lawn in a state of bewilderment, examining the treetops. He expected something from the air, it seemed. Perhaps he was looking for rain—he loved water so. But evidently he was not a proper leader; he was even more bewildered than themselves; he, too, was looking wrong somewhere, somehow. They needed some one to show them how and where to look. Instinctively they felt their uncle was no better at this mighty game than they were. If only somebody who knew and understood—a leader—would turn up!
And it was just then that Judy clutched her brother by the arm and said in a startled whisper, “Hark!”
They harked. Through the hum of leaves and insects that filled the air this sweet June morning they heard another sound—a voice that reached them even here beneath the dense roof of shrubbery. They heard words distinctly, though from far away, rising, falling, floating across the lawn as though some one as yet invisible were singing to himself.
For it was the voice of a man, and it certainly was a song. Moreover, without being able to explain it exactly, they felt that it was just the kind of singing that belonged to the kind of day: it was right and natural, a fresh and windy sound in the careless notes, almost as though it was a bird that sang. So exquisite was it, indeed, that they listened spellbound without moving, standing hand in hand beneath the dark bushes. And Uncle Felix evidently heard it too, for he turned his head; instead of examining the tree-tops he peered into the rose trees just behind him, both hands held to his ears to catch the happy song. There was both joy and laughter in the very sound of it:
My secret’s in the wind and open sky;
There is no longer any Time—to lose;
The world is young with laughter; we can fly
Among the imprisoned hours as we choose.
The rushing minutes pause; an unused day
Breaks into dawn and cheats the tired sun.
The birds are singing. Hark! Come out and play!
There is no hurry; life has just begun.
The voice died away among the rose trees, and the birds burst into a chorus of singing everywhere, as if they carried on the song among themselves. Then, in its turn, their chorus also died away. Tim looked at his sister. He seemed about to burst—if not into song, then into a thousand pieces.
“A leader!” he exclaimed, scarcely able to get the word out in his excitement. “Did you hear it?”
“Tim!” she gasped—and they flew out, hand in hand still, to join their uncle in the sunshine.
“Found anything?” he greeted them before they could say a word. “I heard some one singing—a man, or something—over there among the rose trees—”
“And the birds,” interrupted Judy. “Did you hear them?”
“Uncle,” cried Tim with intense conviction, “it’s a sign. I do believe it’s a sign—”
“That’s exactly what it is,” a deep voice broke in behind them “—a sign; and no mistake about it either.”
All three turned with a start. The utterance was curiously slow; there was a little dragging pause between each word. The rose trees parted, and they found themselves face to face with some one whom they had seen twice before in their lives, and who now made his appearance for the third time therefore—the man from the End of the World: the Tramp.
THE LEADER
..................
IV
HE WAS A RAGGED-LOOKING BEING, yet his loose, untidy clot
hing 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?”
“Some_body_, 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.
&nbs
p; “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—”
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 124