THE LEADER
IV
He was a ragged-looking being, yet his loose, untidy clothing becamehim so well that his appearance seemed almost neat--it was certainlynatural: he was dressed in the day, the garden, the open air. Judy andTim ran up fearlessly and began fingering the bits of stuff that clungto him from the fields and ditches. In his beard were some stray roseleaves and the feather of a little bird. The children had an air ofsheltering against a tree trunk--woodland creatures--mice or squirrelschattering among the roots, or birds flown in to settle on a hedge.They were not one whit afraid. For nothing surprised them on thismarvellous morning; everything that happened they--accepted.
"He's shining underneath," Judy whispered in Tim's ear, cocking herhead sideways so that she could catch her brother's eye and at the sametime 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 notitemized--"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 onewhit afraid, they whispered. Perhaps the wonder of it choked theirutterance a little.
The Tramp smiled at them. All four smiled. The way he had emerged fromamong the rose trees made them smile. It was as natural as though hehad been there all the time, growing out of the earth, waving in themorning air and sunlight. There was something simple and very beautifulabout 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." Thelittle familiar phrase said everything in a quite astonishing way. Itwas like a song.
"_Good_-morning," replied the Tramp. "It is. I was wondering how longit 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 thegarden--so like a bit of the garden, I mean--that we didn't notice youat first. But we heard--" he broke off in the middle of thesentence--"That _was_ you singing, wasn't it?" he asked with a note ofhushed admiration in his voice.
The smile upon the great woodland face broadened perceptibly. It was asthough 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 andlooking--and know it."
He spoke with a sound as though he had swallowed the entire morning, aforest rustling in his chest, singing water just behind the lips.
_"Looking!"_ exclaimed Uncle Felix, picking out the word. He movedcloser; the children caught his hands; the three of them shelteredagainst the spreading figure till the four together seemed like asingle item of the landscape. "Looking!" he repeated, "that's odd.We've lost something too. You said too,--just now--something about--asign, I think?" Uncle Felix added shyly.
All waited, but the Tramp gave no direct reply. He smiled again andfolded two mighty arms about them. Two big feathery wings seemed roundthem. Judy thought of a nest, Tim of a cozy rabbit hole, Uncle Felixhad the amazing impression that there were wild flowers growing in hisheart, or that a flock of robins had hopped in and began to sing.
"Lost something, have you?" the Tramp enquired genially at length; andthe slow, leisurely way he said it, the curious half-singing utterancehe used, the words falling from his great beard with this sound as ofwind through leaves or water over sand and pebbles--somehow includedthem 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 sunand earth and flowers together, marvellously linked and caught withinsome common purpose. Question and answer in the ordinary sense werewrong and useless. They must _feel_--feel as he did--to find what theysought.
It was Uncle Felix who presently replied: "Something--we've--mis-laid,"he said hesitatingly, as though a little ashamed that he expressed thetruth 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 stillfalteringly, "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 awater-wagtail's--and appeared to reflect a moment. He held the softfeather tenderly between a thumb and finger that were thick as awalking-stick and stained with roadside mud and yellow withflower-pollen too.
"Hiding, is he?" He held up the feather as if to see which way itfluttered in the wind. "Hiding?" he repeated, with a distinctbroadening of the smile that was already big enough to cover half thelawn. It shone out of him almost like rays of light, of sunshine, offire. "Aha! That's his way, maybe, just a little way he has--of playingwith you."
"You know him, then! You know who it is?" two eager voices askedinstantly. "Tell us at once. You're leader now!" The children, in theirexcitement, almost burrowed into him; Uncle Felix drew a deep breathand stared. His whole body listened.
And slowly the Tramp turned round his shaggy head and gazed into theirfaces, each in turn. He answered in his leisurely, laborious way asthough each word were a bank-note that he dealt out carefully, fixingattention upon its enormous value. There was certainly a tremor in hisrumbling voice. But there was no hurry.
"I've--seen him," he said with feeling, "seen him--once or twice. Mylife's thick with memories--"
"Seen him!" sprang from three mouths simultaneously.
"Once or twice, I said." He paused and sighed. Wind stirred the rosetrees just behind him. He went on murmuring in a lower tone; and as hespoke a sense of exquisite new beauty stole across the old-worldgarden. "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 threeof them at once. The enchantment of their own dim memories of thedawn--of a robin, of swallows, and of an up-and-under bird flashedmagically back.
The Tramp nodded his great head slowly; he bowed it to the sunlight, asit were. There was a great light flaming in his eyes. He seemed to giveout heat.
"Just seen him--and no more," he went on marvellously, as thoughspeaking of a wonderful secret of his own. "Seen him a-stealing pastme--in the dawn. Just looked at me--and went--went back again behindthe rushing minutes!"
"Was it long ago? How long?" asked Judy with eager impatienceimpossible to suppress. They did not notice the reference to Time,apparently.
The wanderer scratched his tangled crop of hair and seemed to calculatea moment. He gazed down at the small white feather in his hand. But thefeather held quite still. No breath of wind was stirring. "When I wasyoung," 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 stretchof 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--andwondering--and looking--ever since," he repeated in the same slow way,while the feather between his great fingers began to wave a little intime with the dragging speech.
The wonder of it enveloped them all three like a perfume rising fromthe entire earth.
"We've been looking for ages too," cried Judy.
"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 morefeathers in it.
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"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 forgottenrather--"
"Forgotten what he looks like. That's it. Same trouble here," and hetapped his breast. "We're all together, doing the same old thing. Thewhole world's doing it. It's the only thing to do." And he looked sowise and knowing that their wonder increased to a kind of climax; theywere tapping their own breasts before they knew it.
"Doing it everywhere," he went on, weighing his speech as usual; "onlysome don't know they're doing it." He looked significantly into theirshining eyes, then finished with a note of triumph in his voice. "Wedo!"
"Hooray!" cried Tim. "We can all start looking together now."
"Maybe," agreed the wanderer, very sweetly for a tramp, they thought.
They glanced at their Uncle first for his approval; the Tramp glancedat him too; his face was flushed and happy, the eyes very bright. Butthere was an air of bewilderment about him too. He nodded his head, andrepeated in a shy, contented voice--as though he surrendered himself tosome enchantment too great to understand--"I think so; I hope so;I--wonder!"
"We've looked everywhere already," Tim shouted by way ofexplanation--when the Tramp cut him short with a burst of rollinglaughter:
"But in the wrong kind of places, maybe," he suggested, moving forwardlike a hedge or bit of hayfield the wind pretends to shift.
"Oh, well--perhaps," the boy admitted.
"Probly," said Judy, keeping close beside him.
"Of course," decided Uncle Felix; "but we've been pretty warm once ortwice all the same." He lumbered after the other three, yet somethingfrisky about him, as about a pony released into a field and stilluncertain of its bounding strength.
"Have you really?" remarked their leader, good-humouredly, but with atouch of sarcasm. "Good and right, so far as it goes; only 'warm' isnot enough; we want to be hot, burning hot and steaming all the time.That's the way to find him." He paused and turned towards them; hegathered them nearer to him with his smiling eyes somehow. "It's likethis," he went on more slowly than ever: "A good hider doesn't choosethe difficult places; he chooses the common ordinary places wherenobody would ever think of looking." He kept his eyes upon them to makesure they understood him. "The little, common places," he continuedwith emphasis, "that no one thinks worth while. He hides in theopen--bang out in the open!"
"In the open!" cried the children. "The open air!"
"In the open!" gasped Uncle Felix. "The open sea!"
The Tramp almost winked at them. He looked like a lot of ordinarypeople. He looked like everybody. He looked like the whole worldsomehow. He smiled just like a multitude. He spoke, as it were, for allthe world--said the one simple thing that everybody everywhere wastrying to say in millions of muddled words and sentences. The wind andtrees and sunshine said it with him, for him, after him, before him. Hesaid the thing--so Uncle Felix felt, at any rate,--that was alwayssaying itself, that was everywhere heard, though rarely listened to;but, according to the children, the thing they knew and believedalready. Only it was nice to hear it stated definitely--_they_ felt.
And the tide of enchantment rose higher and higher; in a tide offlowing gold it poured about all three.
"That's it," the Tramp continued, as though he had not noticed therapture his very ordinary words had caused. "Sea and land and airtogether. But more than that--he hides deep and beautiful."
"Deeply and beautifully," murmured the writer of historical novels, allof them entirely forgotten now.
"Deep and beautiful," repeated the other, as though he preferred therhythm of his own expression. He drew himself up and swallowed a longand satisfying draught of air and sunshine. He waved the littlewagtail's feather before their eyes. He touched their faces with itstip. "Deep, tender, kind, and beautiful," he elaborated. "Those are thesigns--signs that he's been along--just passed that way. The wholeworld's looking, and the whole world's full of signs!"
For a moment all stood still together like a group of leafy things apassing wind has shaken, then left motionless; a wild rose-bush, aclimbing vine, a clinging ivy branch--all three kept close to thestalwart figure of their big, incomparable leader.
And Judy knew at last the thing she didn't know; Tim felt himselffinally in the eternal centre of his haunted wood; in the eyes of UncleFelix there was a glistening moisture that caught the sunlight like dewupon the early lawn. He staggered a little as though he were on a deckand the sea was rolling underneath him.
"How ever did you find it out?" he asked, after an interval that no onehad cared to interrupt. "What in the world made you first think of it?"And though his voice was very soft and clear, it was just a littleshaky.
"Well," drawled the Tramp, "maybe it was just because I thought ofnothing else. On the road we live sort of simply. There's never anyhurry; the wind's a-blowing free; everything's sweet and careless--andso am I." And he chuckled happily to himself.
"Let's begin at once!" cried Tim impatiently. "I feel warm already--hotall over--simply burning."
The Tramp signified his agreement. "But you must each get a featherfirst," he told them, "a feather that a bird has dropped. It's a signthat we belong together. Birds know everything first. They goeverywhere and see everything all at once. They're in the air, and onthe ground, and on the water, and under it as well. They live in theopen--sea or land. And if you have a feather in your hand--well, itmeans keeping in touch with everything that's going. They go light andeasy; we must go light and easy too."
They stared at him with wonder at the breaking point. It all seemed soobviously and marvellously true. How had they missed it up till now?
"So get a feather," he went on quietly, "and then we can begin to lookat once."
No one objected, no one criticised, no one hesitated. Tim knew whereall the feathers were because he knew every nest in the garden. He ledthe way. In less than two minutes all had small, soft feathers in theirhands.
"Now, we'll begin to look," the Tramp announced. "It's the loveliestgame on earth, and the only one. It's Hide-and-Seek behind the rushingminutes. And, remember," he added, holding up a finger and chucklinghappily, "there's no hurry, the wind's a-blowing free, the sun is warm,everything's sweet and careless--and so are we."