"Because we"re safe," said Uncle Felix. "It was a warning."
And then all turned their attention to Tim"s discovery of the keyhole.
For the stuffing had been removed. The white, dusty road gleamed through the hole in a spot of shining white.
"Hush!" whispered their guide. "There"s something moving."
"Perhaps it"s Jinks in his cemetery," thought Judy after a pause to listen.
"No," said Uncle Felix with decision. "It"s outside. It"s on the--road!"
His earnestness on these occasions always thrilled them; his gravity and the calm way he kept his head invariably won their confidence.
"The London Road!" they repeated. That meant the world.
"Something going past," he added, listening intently. They listened intently with him. All four were still holding hands.
"The great High Road outside," he repeated softly, while they moved instinctively to the highest part of the tree whence they could see over the fence. They craned their necks. The dusty road was flowing very swiftly, and like a river it had risen. Never before had it been so easily visible. They saw the ruts the carts had made, the hedge upon the opposite bank, the gra.s.sy ditch where the hemlock grew in feathery quant.i.ties. They even saw loose flints upon the edge. But the actual road was higher than before. It certainly was rising.
"Metropolis!" cried Tim. "I see an eye!"
Some one was looking through the keyhole at them.
"An eye!" exclaimed several voices in a hushed, expectant tone.
There was a pause, during which every one looked at every one else.
"It"s probably a tramp," said Uncle Felix gravely. "We"ll let him in."
The proposal, however, alarmed them, for they had expected something very different. To stuff the keyhole, run away and hide, or at least to barricade the fence was what he ought to have advised. Instead of this they heard the very opposite. The excitement became intense. For them a tramp meant danger, robbery with violence, intoxication, awful dirt, and an under-the-bed-at-midnight kind of terror. It was so long since they had seen the tramp--their own tramp--that they had forgotten his existence.
"They"ll kill us at once," said Maria, using the plural with the comprehensive and antic.i.p.atory vision of the child.
"They"re harmless as white mice," said her Uncle quickly, "once you know how to treat them, and full of adventures too. I do," he added with decision, referring to the treatment. And he stepped down to unbar the gate.
The children, breathless with interest, watched him go. On the trunk, of course, they felt comparatively safe, for it was "home"; but none the less the "girls" drew up their skirts a little, and Tim felt premonitory thrills run up his spidery legs into his spine. The wallflowers shook their tawny heads as a sudden breath of wind swept past them across the End of the World. It seemed an age before the audacious thing was accomplished and the door swung wide into the road outside. Uncle Felix might so easily have been stabbed or poisoned or suffocated--but instead they saw a shabby, tangled figure come shuffling through that open gate upon a cloud of dust.
"Quick! he"s a perjured man!" cried Judy, remembering a newspaper article. "Shut the gate!" She sprang down to help. "He"ll be arrested for a highway violence and be incarc-"
There was confusion in her mind. She felt pity for this woebegone shadow of a human being, and terror lest the Policeman, who lived on the white, summery high road, would catch him and send him to the gallows before he was safe inside. Her love was ever with the under dog.
There was a rush and a scramble, the gate was shut, and the Tramp stood gasping before them in the enchanted sanctuary of the End of the World.
"He"s ours!" exclaimed Judy. "It"s our old tramp!"
"Be very polite to him," Uncle Felix had time to whisper hurriedly, seeing that all three stood behind him. "He"s a great Adventurer and a Wanderer too."
CHAPTER IX
A PRIEST OF WONDER
He was a grey and nameless creature of shadowy outline and vague appearance. The eye focused him with difficulty. He had an air of a broken tombstone about him, with moss and lichen in wayward patches, for his face was split and cracked, and his beard seemed a continuation of his hair; but he had soft blue eyes that had got lost in the general tangle and seemed to stray about the place and peep out unexpectedly like flowers hiding in a thick-set hedge. The face might be anywhere; he might move suddenly in any direction; he was prepared, as it were, to move forward, sideways, or backwards according as the wind decided or the road appeared--a sort of universal scarecrow of a being altogether.
Yet, for all his forlorn and scattered att.i.tude, there hung about his rags an air of something n.o.ble and protective, something strangely inviting that welcomed without criticism all the day might bring.
Homeless himself, and with no place to lay his extraordinary body, the birds might have built their nests in him without alarm, or the furry creatures of fields and woods have burrowed among his voluminous misfit-clothing to shelter themselves from rain and cold. He would gladly have carried them all with him, safely hidden from guns or traps or policemen, glad to be useful, and careless of himself. That, at any rate, was the mixed impression that he gave.
"Thank you," he said in a comfortable sort of voice that sounded like wind among telegraph wires on a high road: then added "kindly all."
And instantly the children felt delighted with him; their sympathy was gained; fear vanished; the Policeman, like a scape-goat, took all their sins away. They did not actually move closer to the Tramp but their eyes went nestling in and out among his tattered figure. Judy, however, it was noticeable, looked at him as though spell-bound. To her he was, perhaps, as her Uncle said, the Great Adventurer, the type of romantic Wanderer for ever on the quest of perilous things--a Knight.
It was Uncle Felix who first broke the pause.
"You"ve come a long way," he suggested.
"Oh, about the same as usual," replied the Tramp, as though all distances and localities were one to him.
"Which means--?"
"From nowhere, and from everywhere."
"And you are going on to--?"
"Always the same place."
"Which is--?"
"The end." He said it in a rumbling voice that seemed to issue from a pocket of the torn old coat rather than from his bearded mouth.
"Oh, dear," sighed Judy, "that is a _very_ long way indeed. But, of course, you never get tired out?" Her eyes were brimmed with admiration.
He shrugged his great loose shoulders. It was odd how there seemed to be another thing within all that baggy clothing and behind the hair.
The s.h.a.ggy exterior covered a slimmer thing that was happy, laughing, dancing to break out. "Not tired out," he said, "a bit sleepy sometimes, p"r"aps." He glanced round him carelessly, his strange eyes resting finally on Judy"s face. "But there"s lots of beds about," he explained to her, "once you know how to make "em."
"Yes," the child murmured, with a kind of soft applause, "of course there must be."
"And those wot sleeps in ditches dreams the sweetest--that _I_ know."
"They must," agreed Judy, as though gra.s.s and dock leaves were familiar to her. "And you get up when you"re ready, don"t you?"
"That"s it," replied the wanderer. "Only you always _are_ ready."
"But how do you know the time?" asked Tim.
The Tramp turned round slowly and looked at his questioner.
"Time!" he snorted. And he exchanged a mysterious glance of sympathy with Maria, who lifted her eyes in return, but otherwise made no sign whatever. "Sit quiet like," he added, "and everything worth "aving comes of itself. That"s living that is. The "ole world belongs to you."