The stranger laughed.
"For the matter of that no more do you," he observed.
"I"m not one," said Tommy.
The stranger smoked in silence for a little, and Tommy sat down beside him on the gra.s.s.
"I"m not one," he repeated.
"Shakespeare says we are all players in a great drama, of which the world is the stage, you know. I don"t quite know if that"s altogether true, but I"m pretty sure that we"re all of us tramps, going it with more or less zest, it is true, and in different costumes--but tramps at the last, every one of us."
Tommy looked at him with puzzled eyes.
"What a rum way of talking you have--something like the poet, only different somehow."
"The poet?"
"Down there at Camslove."
"Ah, I remember. I read some of his things; pretty little rhymes, too, if I remember rightly."
"They"re jolly good," said Tommy, warmly.
"A friend of yours, eh?"
Tommy nodded.
"He wrote one just here, where we"re sitting."
"Did he, by Jove--which was it?"
Tommy pondered.
"I forget most of it, but it was jolly good. He told it me one day on the downs, just as we met a shepherd singing, and it was about life and enterprise, and all that sort of thing, and love on the upland road and--and G.o.d beyond the crest."
"Sounds good, and partly true."
"How do you mean; why isn"t it altogether true?"
The stranger smoked a minute or two in silence, then:
"Where is the crest?" he asked.
Tommy pointed up into the twilight.
"It"s a long way to the crest," he said.
"Ah--and the fellows who never get there?"
"I don"t understand."
"If G.o.d be only beyond the crest, how shall they fare?"
Tommy was silent, looking away down the dusky valley.
He saw a light or two glimmering among the trees.
"It"s time I went back," he muttered, but sat where he was.
"You see what I mean?" continued the stranger. "There is only one crest worth striving for, and that is always beyond our reach, and G.o.d is beyond it and above it, all right. But there"s many a poor fellow who would have his back to it now if he were not sure that G.o.d was also on the upland road, among the tramps."
Tommy was silent, plucking uncomfortably at the gra.s.s.
"You haven"t thought much about these things?"
"No."
"Ah, but you must, though. You see, until a fellow knows the road he is on, he cannot achieve, nor even begin to surmount."
"How did you know the road you"re on, then?"
"I had a friend."
"And he knew?"
"Yes, been over it all before, knew every turn, and all the steep places. He has come with me. He is with me now."
Tommy peered up the darkening road.
"I can"t see him," he said.
"Ah, but you will. I"m sure you will."
"What is his name?"
The stranger rose to his feet, and held out his hand.
"Christ," he said, as Tommy looked into his eyes. Then,
"Good-bye, old chap--meet again somewhere, perhaps--and, I say, about the road, shall it be the upland road for both of us?"
Tommy was silent, then, as they shook hands.
"Yes," he said.
"Hullo, Tommy," said I, on my return that night, from the doctor"s study, "Enjoyed the evening?"