Tommy gave a pa.s.sing moment to remembrance. Then he jumped up.
"I"m quite dry again," he said, looking down at me. "So I guess I"ll hop in."
The remark appeared to me slightly inconsequent, but Tommy laughed and drew back under the shade of the tree. Then came a rush of white limbs, and he was bobbing up again in the middle of the sunny pool.
"Well dived," I cried, encouragingly, but he looked a little contemptuous.
"It was a jolly bad one," he said, "a beastly...." Delicacy forbids me to record the exact word he used, but it ended with "flopper."
He crawled out again, and shook the water from his eyes.
"I say, won"t you come in?" he cried eagerly. "It"s simply grand in there, and a gravel bottom."
But I am a man of careful habits, and sober ways, with a reputation for some stateliness both of behaviour and bearing, and I shook my head.
Tommy urged again.
"It"s not as if you were an old man," he cried.
The thought had not occurred to me. Age, in our little fraternity had been a matter of but small interest. We had pursued the same routine of gentle exercise, and dignified diversion, quiet jest and cultured occupation, for so many years now, that we had seemed to be alike removed from youth and age, in a quiet, unalterable, back-water of life, quite apart from the hurrying stream of contemporary event.
No, I was certainly not an old man, unless a well preserved specimen of forty-eight, with simple habits, can so be styled.
Tommy stood expectant before me, his bare feet well apart, a very embodiment of young health, and, as I looked at him, a horrid doubt crept into my mind--had I--could I possibly have become that most objectionable of persons, a man in a groove?
"Do come," said Tommy.
"Don"t be a fool," said Wisdom (only I was not quite sure of the speaker).
I looked round at the meadow, and the wood, and saw that we were alone.
"It is April," I said weakly.
"But it"s quite warm--it is really." And so I fell.
To you, O reader, it may seem a quite small matter, but to me it was far from being so, for as I climbed the bank from each glad plunge I felt in my blood a strange desire growing to do something, to achieve, to surmount.
Such emotions I had not known for years--not since--a time, when, on a day, I had set myself to love seclusion and inactivity, and to live in study and retrospect, on the small means that were mine.
Ah, Tommy, never think that if any one desire be unfulfilled, life has therefore lost its sweetness, and its mission, and its responsibility!
"Cave," hissed Tommy, from the water.
I held my breath, and sure enough there were voices along the path, and close at hand, too.
I made a desperate leap, and entered the water with a quite colossal flop, for I am moderately stout.
And, even so, I had barely time to wade in up to my neck, before two figures, those of a little girl and a young lady, tripped into sight.
"Why," said the little girl, "there"s old Mr. Mathews and a little boy in the pool. How funny."
The young lady--it was Lady Chantrey"s governess--hesitated a moment and then courageously held on.
"Yes," I heard her say. "It certainly is peculiar, quite peculiar."
Whether she referred to me, or the situation, or an affair of previous conversation, I did not know.
I did not, indeed, much care, for surely this was enough that I, a philosopher of dignity, a bachelor of some importance, at any rate in Camslove, should have been seen in a small pool, with only a draggled head above the surface, by Lady Chantrey"s daughter, and her governess.
I crept out, and had perforce to sit in the sun to dry, praying earnestly lest any other members of the surrounding families should come that way.
Tommy was in high spirits.
"It"s done you lots of good," he said.
I glared at him.
"What do you mean?" I asked coldly, for his words seemed suggestive.
"You look so jolly fresh," he observed, dressing himself leisurely.
I felt that it was time I returned, and invited Tommy to partake of lunch with me. He declined, however, as he had thoughtfully provided himself with food, before starting out with the poet.
"So long," he said.
As I glanced up the brook, before returning homewards, I saw a sailor hat, navigating a small rapid.
"But I have no walking-stick," I reflected. "And it is in the middle of the stream."
IV
IN WHICH A YOUNG LADY IS LEFT UPON THE BANK
The sailor hat bobbed, merrily, down the stream, scorning each friendly brown boulder that would have stopped it, and dodging every drooping bough that would have held it back. For was not its legend of H. M. S.
Daring, and must not the honour of Britain"s navy be manfully maintained?
Tommy sat peacefully just above the bathing pool, munching his sandwiches, and letting the clear water trickle across his toes, very much contented with himself, and, consequently, with his environment also.
"Oh please--my hat," said a pathetic voice.
Tommy turned round, and on the path behind him stood the little girl, who had pa.s.sed, a short while before.
She was quite breathless, and her hair was very tangled, as it crept about her cheeks, and hung over her brow.