O Royal and radiant soul, Thou dost return, thine influences return Upon thy children as in life, and death Turns stingless! W. E. HENLEY.
Whooping-cough was still bad in the village on the Sabbath following their famous tiger-game, and again Miss Esperance did not take her great-nephews to church.
Again, moreover, the Sunday was memorable, not so much because they did not attend church, as because Mr. Wycherly did.
The little boys knew there had been a funeral the day before. Mr. Wycherly had gone to it, and their aunt had sewn a black band upon the sleeve of each little white blouse. They felt solemn and important; and for once they would even have been glad to go to church in order to show this unusual adornment. When they discovered that not only were they to be left at home, but left at home without Mr. Wycherly, such immunity was shorn of all its more pleasing attributes.
They were sorry about Mrs. Gloag, with the curious, impersonal sorrow that children experience in considering the troubles of others. She was a kind lady, and they liked her. She knew many rhymes and funny stories, and was almost as good a playmate as that unequalled tiger-man. But they had not seen her often lately, and at present their chief concern was with the unusual and uncomfortable sense of depression that seemed in some subtle, indefinable fashion to separate them from their aunt and Mr. Wycherly.
And now, having gone to a funeral on Saturday, Mr. Wycherly was going to church on Sunday. Why was Mr. Wycherly going to church?
That was the question that grievously exercised the little boys, and perhaps Mr. Wycherly himself would have been hard put to it to explain his reasons.
There was the protective instinct, the feeling that he could not let Miss Esperance go alone, so small and sad and solitary: the desire to do something comforting: an equally strong desire to show his affectionate respect for Mrs. Gloag, and the hope that perhaps by this means he might to some small extent show his sympathy with the minister. And at the back of all these mixed motives and through every one of them there sounded the voices of habit and tradition; voices which every day of late had called more and more imperatively to Mr. Wycherly. In the old days it had been a matter of course that he should take part in any public ceremony; now, in spite of his long aloofness from any part or lot in the lives of his neighbours, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some open and public demonstration of his share in this common sorrow.
When he first came to live with Miss Esperance, Mrs. Gloag had always been kind and friendly, stopped him in the road when he would fain have passed her by, and yet always left him unconsciously cheered by her greeting. Few others had been kind and friendly then, and Mr. Wycherly did not forget.
It was surprising how many people remembered such things of her now. It seemed that every man, woman, and child in the village could and did tell of something kind Mrs. Gloag had done, of something merry and heartening she had said. People forgot now that she had sometimes laughed when it would have been more fitting to look grave. They only remembered that she had cheered the despondent, strengthened the weak-hearted, made peace where there were quarrels, and brought gaiety and good humour into homes where before there were gloom and discontent.
Not for years had the church been so full as on that Sabbath morning, that sunny Sabbath morning when Mr. Wycherly went to church with Miss Esperance.
The minister looked much as usual. His face was stern and set, though his eyes under the bushy, overhanging gray eyebrows were the eyes of a man who had slept but little. Yet his voice was strong and full, and he prayed and read the Bible with his customary earnestness and vigour.
The congregation were a little fluttered to notice that in the Manse pew there were three tall young men, and that the white-haired, Oxfordy gentleman who lived with Miss Esperance was in her seat, but otherwise the service was much as usual.
It was not until the time came for the sermon that there was throughout the congregation that little thrill of excited expectation which proclaims deep interest.
"What would be the minister's text?"
To most people it was a surprise: it was not even a whole text. The minister preached upon the four words, "Be pitiful, be courteous." His sermon was the shortest he had ever given in that church, lasting only half an hour.
Mr. Wycherly sat with his elbow on the desk in front of him, his white, slender hand shading his eyes.
Miss Esperance was visibly affected; and of the three young men in the Manse seat, one laid his head down on his crossed arms, but he assuredly was not sleeping.
When the service was over and Mr. Wycherly and Miss Esperance were walking home, she said timidly: "It was a beautiful discourse, don't you think?"
"I think," said Mr. Wycherly, "that he preached that sermon for his wife; and that it will be remembered when all his other sermons are forgotten. I am glad to have been there."
That afternoon the little boys took their Sunday picture-books into the garden and sat on the grass under the alder tree; Mr. Wycherly, too, sat in a garden chair reading a sober-looking calf-bound book.
Miss Esperance had returned from afternoon church, but she was so tired and upset that Elsa persuaded her for once to go and lie down in her room, and the children were warned not to disturb their aunt.
Edmund's book was a large Bible Alphabet with gaily-coloured pictures, which Miss Maggie Moffat had given him at the New Year. Montagu had brought out "Peep of Day," a work he detested, but choice on the Sabbath was limited in the house of Miss Esperance, so he looked at the "Child's Bible Alphabet" with Edmund, and so often had they pored over the volume that they were familiar with all the characters from Abraham to Zacchaeus.
Presently Edmund shut the book with a bang. "I shall know all these folks when I meet 'em, anyway," he said decidedly. "I've looked at 'em and looked: I've had enough of seeing them, Isaac and Noah and Jacob and Mrs. Potiphar and that dancing woman, Miriam—none of them very handsome, either," Edmund continued discontentedly. "Oh, I do wish the Sabbath was over, it's such a long, long day."
"I wonder," said Montagu musingly, "why the Bible people are always so ugly in pictures; so red and blue: real people aren't as ugly as that even if they are a bit plain. Can you tell how it is, Guardie, dear? D'you suppose they're really like the people in Edmund's book?"
"I expect," Mr. Wycherly said cautiously, laying down his "Alcestis" and smiling at Montagu's earnest upturned face, "that they were very like the people we see every day, some neither very handsome nor very plain. Some beautiful and delightful."
"I shall be disappointed," Edmund remarked, "if, after all, they turn out to be different from what they are in my book, after I've taken so much trouble to know them when Aunt Esperance covers the little poem at the bottom and the letter. You do think they'll be like they are here, don't you?" he asked anxiously.
"I fear not," Mr. Wycherly said, shaking his head. "We can't tell what they were like. You see, the artists who made the pictures in your book could only give their idea of the people they wished to represent——"
"Then they aren't kind of fortygraphs!" Edmund exclaimed aghast. "I sha'n't really know them when I meet them, after all—they may be quite different! What a shame!"
"I wish we might have the Theogony out on Sunday," Montagu grumbled. "The people there are pretty enough. Do you think we could, Guardie, dear?"
"I fear not. I don't think Miss Esperance would like it."
"Is your book a Sunday book?" Edmund asked severely.
"Well, no, perhaps not exactly; it is a very beautiful play."
"What's a play?"
"Something that can be acted."
"Is it wicked to act?"
"No, I don't think so—but there are people——"
"Why, then, did Elsa say the tiger-man was wicked?" Edmund interposed. "He's an actor, isn't he?"
Mr. Wycherly was spared an answer to this question, as at that very moment some one was seen coming through the garden toward them—a tall young man in black, who proved to be none other than the tiger-man himself.
The boys rushed at him, shouting joyfully. "Oh, tiger-man, have you come to play with us? You promised you would, you know."
"I've come to say good-bye," he said, as each child seized a hand and hung on to him. "I have to go to-night."
"But you'll have a little play with us first; just one? It's been such a long Sabbath, and it isn't nearly tea-time yet."
Edmund's voice was very piteous.
"Poor mites," said the tiger-man. "I'll tell you what we'll do. You go down to the bottom of the garden under the trees and wait for me for five minutes. Then I'll come to you and we'll do something—it mustn't be noisy—but we'll make some sort of a play. Just let me have five minutes with Mr. Wycherly here—see, there's my watch—when the five minutes are up you give me a call."
As he spoke he took off his watch and chain and gave it to Montagu. The little boys ran to the end of the garden and waited by the wall.
"He must have climbed over," Edmund said. "I suppose it isn't very high when your legs are so long."
"Edmund," said Montagu very seriously, "I don't think we ought to bother him to play. He looks very sorry. You see, his mother's just dead—perhaps he doesn't feel at all like playing. You see, before, when we had that lovely game, he was just going to see her—now——"
Edmund's face fell. The tiger-man's advent had seemed a direct interposition of Providence on his behalf. Now, it appeared that he was not to avail himself of it after all.
"Sha'n't you call him when it's the five minutes?" he asked.
"No," said Montagu, "it would be kinder not, don't you think?"
Edmund's mouth went down at the corners. "It's been so mizzable all day," he sighed. "Aunt Esperance is sorry, and Guardie is sorry, and now you're sorry, and say he mustn't play wiv me. How long must people keep on being sorry? He said he'd play his own self."
Montagu was puzzled. He sympathised with his small brother—it had been a long, dull day for him, too—but yet he felt that the tiger-man ought not to be bothered. Montagu was sensitive and sympathetic, and even as he had caught sight of the tiger-man walking up the path he realised that it was a different tiger-man from the one of a week ago who had rolled over and over in the grass so joyously.
He looked at the watch in his hand. "It's more'n five minutes now," he said. "You can call if you like, I sha'n't."
But Edmund did not call. Montagu moved nearer his little brother and put his arm round him. "We ought to be sorry for the tiger-man, you know," he said softly. "He's like Guardie and us now."
Edmund leaned against Montagu and sighed. It really was a very sad and puzzling day.
"Surely, it's more than five minutes," said a voice behind them, and there was the tiger-man, pale certainly, with red rims round his eyes, but evidently ready to play.
"Do you mind? Are you sure you don't mind?" Edmund asked eagerly. "If you'd rather not—we'd rather not, too."
The tiger-man sat down on the rough grass near the wall—it was one of his agreeable qualities that he was ready to sit down anywhere at any moment. He held out his hand to each of the little boys, and they sat down one on each side and cuddled up against him.
"You're jolly, decent little chaps," he said, "and I know just what you mean, but I'd like to keep my promise because—well, most of all, because she'd like me to. So now I'll try and be amusing."
And he was amusing. Edmund forgot his low spirits and rolled over and over on the grass in paroxysms of stifled laughter at the things the tiger-man did and said.
All too soon the game ended. The tiger-man put on his watch, and kissed both the little boys in farewell. "Good-bye," he said, "I'm afraid it will be some time before we meet again, but I sha'n't forget you."
"We sha'n't forget you. Good-bye, good-bye," called the little boys, watching the tiger-man as he vaulted lightly over the wall. Montagu ran after him. "I'd like to whisper," he said breathlessly.
The tiger-man leant over the wall, and Montagu caught him round the neck:
"Although we laughed and enjoyed it so," he whispered, "we are sorry, we really are."
The tiger-man kissed Montagu once more, but this time he said nothing at all.