"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 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, c.o.c.king 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 s.h.a.ggy 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."