TIM

‘Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women’ London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891 First Edition October 1891 Reprinted November 1891

To her for whose entertainment it was originally written, this story belongs as of right. On the shrine of her deathless memory I lay my little book.

{1}

CHAPTER I

Tim’s real name was not Tim: so much is certain. What it was, I have never inquired. The nickname had been bestowed on him so early in life that the memory of such men and women as knew him ran not to the contrary. Tim was Tim by immemorial custom; even his father, who had little reverence for established usages, never thought of altering this one, and, as one name is as good as another, we too will call him by the only one by which he was ever known.

{2}

Tim was a slightly-made, lean, brown child, but without the pretty colour brown children usually have. He had such regular little features and such a pale little face that he might almost have been called faded, had he ever looked otherwise. Mrs. Quitchett had pronounced him to be ‘the thinnest and lightest baby ever she see,’ when he was transferred to her care from that of the monthly nurse, in which opinion she was supported by that lady, who might be said to be an authority on such matters. Possibly she too might throw some light on the question of how he came by that pre-baptismal nickname of his, for she alone had had much to do with him previous to the day when he had been carried, a poor little skinny Christian-elect, to be received into the pale of the Church.

That event was seven years into the past at the time I write of, and Tim, despite his puny appearance, having struggled through the usual maladies of childhood, and cut several{3} of his second teeth, was living in an old house in one of the western counties of England.

The Stoke Ashton manor-house, of which the most modern rooms dated from the days of Elizabeth, had been the home of the Darley family through ages of unbroken descent, until a part of it having been destroyed by fire in the year of our Lord 1780, the then existing Darley had built the big house up in the park, and called it Darley Court. Thenceforward for the next seventy years or so, what was left of the manor-house became the abode of widowed mothers, spinster sisters, or married sons, until the day when, no such relative laying claim to it at the moment, old Squire Darley let it to Tim’s parents.

The first seven years of the child’s life in the queer old house could not well have been less eventful. He was happy enough in the company of Mrs. Quitchett and his old setter Bess, partly perhaps from never having known any other.

{4}

‘His father,’ nurse told him, ‘was in India.’

‘Where was that?’ asked Tim.

‘Oh! a long way off.’

‘Farther than Granthurst?’

‘Yes, much farther.’

The schoolmaster, who came and gave him a lesson now and then, showed him India on the map, but he was not much the wiser. His mother, Mrs. Quitchett never mentioned, and as she never introduced the subject, he asked no questions, having the habit of deferring to her in all matters, and her rule, though absolute, was not a hard one. There was only one point on which he ever questioned her authority: in his determination on no account to wear a hat, he was adamant. We all have our idiosyncrasies, and this was Tim’s. On Sundays alone could he be prevailed upon to allow a small round covering of mixed straw to be stuck on the extreme back of his head, when Mrs. Quitchett took him to church in his best{5} clothes. At first, when he was very little, his picture-book used to be taken with him; but when he was considered to have reached an age at which the rector’s discourses would be of service to him, this indulgence was withdrawn, and he found thenceforward his principal entertainment in the painted window just opposite his seat. It

had been put up in memory of some dead child, and the subject had a great fascination for Tim, who used to call it ‘his’ window. It represented a long stretch of quiet upland, arched by a twilight sky paling into a streak of soft light where it disappeared on the distant horizon; walking across the green came the tender gracious figure of the good shepherd bearing a lamb in his loving arms. Tim knew just such a bit of down where the lambs played, and could almost fancy sometimes that he saw the figure coming towards him from out of the sunset. The whole picture was subdued in colouring, and set for sharp contrast in a frame of tall lilies and jubilant golden{6}haired angels. Not less bright was the head of the Squire’s little grandson, who sometimes knelt in the big Court pew hard by, where, almost hidden from the rest of the church, old Mr. Darley persisted in attending worship, to the scandal of his daughter Miss Kate, who inclined to High Church, and to whom tall family pews which turned their backs on the altar were an abomination.

Thus once a week did Tim conform to laws social and religious, but the other six days saw him scudding bareheaded over the fields, searching for flowers along the hedgerows, or, tired at last with his wanderings, sitting by the side of some little brook nursing his knees, and singing low to himself little quaint snatches of song culled here and there from old books, and set to the nursery tunes Mrs. Quitchett hummed to him, or to others picked up, Heaven knows where,—perhaps from the birds.

No place came amiss to Tim as a restingplace except a chair; he would sit on the{7} soft green grass, in a tree, on a stile, a table, a window-sill,—anywhere but on those articles of furniture which custom has set aside for the purpose. In the winter he and Bess curled themselves up in the shaggy bearskin rug before the fire and fell asleep; in the summer he sat in the patches of sun on the carpet, and told Bess stories from the Arabian Nights, of which he had discovered a copy with pictures in the old library. The fairy Pari-banou unlocked the wonders of her palace for that patient hound; Prince Firouz Shah flew by on the enchanted horse, Morgiana whirled in her dance, and Gulnaré rose from the sea to be the bride of the Persian king; only the story of the lady who whipped the little dogs Tim never related, out of consideration for his companion’s feelings.

Such was Tim’s life: reading to a dog, singing to the streams, having fellowship with birds and flowers, in a strange world of his own creation, hatless, lean, brown, and{8} happy. The hours slipped softly by him without his noting their passing. He knew when it was Sunday, was glad when it was fine, not sorry when it rained, full of strange dreams and fancies, companionless yet not alone, for nature was with him. And so Tim grew to be eight years old.

One day the postman brought Mrs. Quitchett a letter which had come all the way from India,—and a long way it was in those days when no Suez Canal existed to shorten the journey. The letter had no beginning, because Tim’s father, who had written it, was a man who never quite knew how to begin his letters to an old nurse. To say ‘Dear Mrs. Quitchett’ seemed to imply undue familiarity. ‘Madam’ was altogether out of the question. ‘Mrs. Quitchett’ sounded harsh and dictatorial, which he had no wish to be, and to write a long letter in the third person would have been a needless exertion. So the letter came to the point at once, without preliminary compliment.

{9}

‘You will perhaps be surprised to hear,’ it said, in neat upstrokes and downstrokes and beautifully straight lines, ‘that I intend coming home for good. My doctor strongly advises my leaving India, and I am the more inclined to consent that I am very desirous of seeing my son, to whom I am of opinion that the personal care of a father may be of more service during such time as I am spared to him, than a somewhat larger fortune at my death.’

Nurse Quitchett glanced over her venerable spectacles at Tim, who was lying asleep on the window-seat, with his arm round the neck of the faithful Bess, but returned without making any remark to her reading.

‘You will have the goodness to acquaint my son with my change of plans. I shall probably reach home by about October, and shall hope to find my boy ready to give me a welcome. I am afraid his education must have been rather neglected, but he is young{10} yet, and that deficiency may easily be supplied; while I am sure that in your hands his health at least must have been well looked after. I have always disapproved of the selfishness of some Indian parents who, keeping their children with them in an unhealthy climate for their own gratification, injure their health perhaps for life. I hope to be repaid for my six years’ separation from my only child by finding a true, sturdy little pink-and-white Briton waiting to greet me on my return. With my best thanks for your care of the boy and the regular reports you have sent me of him, believe me, truly yours,

‘William Ebbesley.’

Mrs. Quitchett put down the letter, took off her glasses, which were somehow quite wet, and looked again, not without apprehension, at the sleeping boy. In vain she tried to make any of the epithets used in the letter fit the child before her: he was as unlike the picture of the true, sturdy little pink-and-white Briton,{11} on which his father’s fancy dwelt so fondly, as one boy could be unlike another.

William Ebbesley, observing that Anglo-Indian babies were as a rule small and sallow, had concluded, with defective logic, that his child, not being brought up in India, would be neither the one nor the other. He had thought of this imaginary child of his, until, Prometheus-like, he had given life to the figure he had himself created; and had any one cared to inquire what the boy was like, would unhesitatingly have described him. Nowadays his illusions would be rudely dispelled by photography; but when Tim was a child, the art was also in its infancy, and it had not become the fashion to have babies photographed once a year. On one occasion, when Tim was three years old, Mrs. Quitchett had set up his hair in a sort of crest and carried him to a neighbouring town to be photographed, but the child could not be got to sit still, and ended by a flood of tears, so that the little card which finally went to Mr.{12} Ebbesley was hardly satisfactory as a likeness. Mrs. Quitchett herself confessed as much, and the father was quite indignant

at this libel on his child. It never even occurred to him that the photograph, bad as it was, had at least been taken from the real boy, and as such might be nearer the truth than the portrait his fancy had painted.

Writing not being a strong point of Mrs. Quitchett’s, her epistolary style was remarkable chiefly for its terseness, and she would as soon have thought of writing a novel at once as of launching into any description of Tim’s appearance, beyond such casual expressions of admiration as nurses use of their bantlings, and which are not meant to be taken literally.

After a while Tim stirred uneasily, and Bess, roused into semi-consciousness by his change of position, put up her cold nose and touched his cheek. The boy woke with a start and sat up, to find the eyes of his old nurse fixed on him with an expression he had never{13} seen in them before; it was gone as soon as she saw that he was awake, but not before he had remarked it, and springing quickly to her he asked, ‘Why do you look at me like that? What have you got there?’

The second question happily furnishing nurse with an excuse for evading the first, which she would have been puzzled how to answer, ‘It’s a letter from your papa,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got a surprise for you; what do you think is going to happen?’

‘He’s coming home,’ replied Tim quietly, as if he had known it all along.

‘Law bless the boy!’ called out Mrs. Quitchett. ‘Whoever could have told you? But there! nobody could, for I’ve just this minute finished reading the letter, and it’s not been out of my hand.’

Tim nodded sagaciously: ‘I dreamed it,’ he said, as he walked off into the garden, leaving his nurse in that condition which she would herself have described as a capability of being knocked down with a feather.

{14}

‘Well, of all the out-of-the-way odd children ever I see!’ she ejaculated under her breath; and then the father’s picture of the little Briton recurred to her so pathetically comic in its contrast to facts, that she could not help smiling, though the tears followed close after, as she thought, ‘He’ll come between me and my boy; well, I ought to ha’ known how it would be.’

But though the old nurse might shed a few tears in private, and to Tim the words ‘My father is coming’ conveyed, it is true, some misty sense of approaching change, the letter and its contents left no perceptible mark on the inhabitants of the manor-house. Mrs. Quitchett could not spare much time to speculation, and her charge had not contracted the habit of looking ahead; what difference his father’s home-coming would make in his life he knew not, and scarcely cared to imagine.

The summer passed away in no respect unlike those other five or six he could{15} remember. The roses bloomed and paled and fell; the birds built their nests, laid their eggs, hatched and reared their young, all in due order; the cornfields passed through all their accustomed phases; July succeeded to June, August to July, September to August, and ‘Nature the dear old nurse’ led this youngest of her nurslings through the peaceful hot months, unsuspicious of those that were to follow.

The first touch of autumn saddened our Tim; the waving fields of golden grain, with their wind-rippled orange shadows, had lent a thrill of happiness to a little soul alive to all such influences, and now that the meek, stately ears had bowed their heads to the sickle, he missed their presence, and sorrowed over the stubble.

This month, too, the guns were popping all over the country-side, and Tim hated guns for two reasons—first, because they startled the quiet of his usual rambles, giving a sense of insecurity even to the quietest fields; and{16} secondly, because each report that made the child jump and tremble, meant the death or wounding of a bird; and that was keen grief to him.

{17}

CHAPTER II

One day a party of gentlemen set out from Darley Court to shoot partridges. Old Squire Darley was an open-handed man, and loved his kind well enough to be glad to fill his house with them two or three times a year; but better than all else in the world did he love his grandson Carol, and Carol was worth loving. A brighter, truer, more boyish boy than Carol Darley did not exist in all England; he was straight as a little dart, had never had a day’s illness in his life, and was blessed, in addition to an excellent temper and tearing spirits, with a frame{18} slight as yet, but well knit and vigorous, a broad frank face, a joyous mouth, a bright colour, a shock of golden curls, and two such honest kindly blue eyes, that you might draw gladness from them like water from a well. And the old man would have loved him had he come to him with none of these claims for affection, for was he not the point in which all his hopes and cares centred, the sole survivor of his house, the child of his dead son? The child had come to the two old people like a

message straight from heaven, in their heaviest grief. The first reawakening to life after their crushing loss was the discovery that the little lips had been taught to call the old place ‘home.’

Carol was thirteen on this particular morning, and to-day, in fulfilment of a promise of long standing, his grandfather had promoted him from trotting about after the shooters, as he had hitherto done, to carrying a gun of his own. Earth seemed to have nothing more to offer as he strutted{19} along in the clear September sunshine, bravely brushing last night’s raindrops from the heavy turnip-tops with his sturdy legs; already he foresaw himself the best shot in the county, as his father had been before him. To be sure, he had not shot anything as yet, and the little gun kicked rather and hurt his shoulder, but such trifles as these were powerless to dash his joy; only he did hope he should shoot something before he had to go home.

‘That’s a fine boy of yours, Darley,’ said one of the gentlemen; ‘he steps out well. Shall you send him into the army?’

The Squire swelled with honest pride as his eye fell on the boy. ‘Well, I hardly know yet,’ he answered; ‘it seems a good soldier wasted, and yet I have always set my heart on his making a figure in the county—going into Parliament, and all that; it wouldn’t be the first time a member had come from Darley. I used to hope his father—but there, we never know what is best for us,’ added the old man hastily. Mr. Darley felt{20} quite sorry that he could not bestow Carol on all the careers open to him; he was so eminently qualified to adorn whichever might finally be selected for honour, that it was difficult to make a wise choice. The army was a gentlemanly calling, but Mrs. Darley would not hear of that for a moment. ‘Suppose there should be a war,’ she said. Sometimes the Squire had leanings towards the Woolsack, or if Miss Kate suggested the Church, he had visions of Carol in lawn sleeves crowning sovereigns and christening royal infants; but on the whole, though with a sense that he was defrauding all the professions, he felt

that the important post of Squire of Darley was the one for which his treasure was pre-eminently fitted; and there at least I think he was right. The object of all this anxious thought was not as yet gone to Eton, which was to be the next step on his road to greatness, where he would wear a round jacket, and perhaps be whipped; but if the road we look along{21} be straight, the eye does not accurately measure the distance.

The party of shooters were walking along a turnip-field bordered on one side by a hazel coppice, when the dogs put up a covey of six birds a little in front of them. Two got away, two fell, and the remaining two flew for the coppice, on the side on which Carol was walking.

‘Now then, sir,’ cried his grandfather, ‘the birds are waiting for you; winged, by Jove! no, missed. You little goose! Bless my soul, what was that?’

‘That’ was a sort of cry which proceeded from the coppice into which most of Carol’s charge had gone, and quite unlike any note of partridge or other bird. The boy’s bright colour faded from his cheeks, and he put down his gun as though by impulse, but could not move; he stood wide-eyed, staring at the tangle of slender hazel rods from which the sound had come. Some of the party, however, knowing that these accidents were not{22} of a fatal kind, parted the branches and disclosed to view a small figure habited in an old holland blouse, stretched among the sticks and dry leaves which strewed the ground. The child lay quite still, and on nearer approach proved to have fainted. Carol now came near, steadying himself by his grandfather’s kind hand.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked in a whisper, all the horror of having killed his fellow-boy surging over his bright young heart like a drowning wave.

‘Dead! no, no, no,’ answered the Colonel good-naturedly (he who had asked whether Carol was to be put into the army); ‘he’s been grazed, nothing more. It’s the fright that made the poor child faint; any doctor will pick out the shot in five minutes, and to-morrow he’ll be trotting about again.’

Carol said nothing, but big tears of thankfulness swelled up in his bonnie blue eyes, and the Squire felt the boy’s grasp tighten in his. He had to turn away himself (tears are{23} so infectious), and to adopt a jovially bustling manner, as he asked the keeper if he knew whose child this was.