The Extra Day Part 36

"How could it?" Judy corrected him quickly. "There was--no time--" then stopped abruptly. She turned towards Come-Back Stumper; she gave him a hurried and affectionate hug. "And then," she asked, "what happened next?"

Stumper returned the hug, including Tim in it too. "I found _this_--fluttering in my hand," he said, and held up a small grey feather for them to admire. "It's the only clue I've got. The pigeon left it."

While they admired the feather and exhibited their own, Tim crying, "We've got five now, nearly a whole wing!" Stumper was heard to murmur above their heads, "And since I--came out to look--I've felt--quite different."

"Your secret's in the wind and open sky!" cried Judy, dancing round him with excitement. Her voice came flying from the air.

"You're awfully warm--you're hot--you're burning!" shouted Tim, clapping his hands. His voice seemed to rise out of the earth.

"We've all seen it, all had a glimpse," roared Uncle Felix with a sound of falling water, rolling up nearer as he spoke. "It's too wonderful to see for long, too wonderful to remember quite. But we shall find it in the end. We're all looking!" He began a sort of dancing step. "And when we find it--" he went on.

"We'll change the world," shouted Stumper, as though he uttered a final word of command.

"It's a he, remember," interrupted Tim. "Come along!"

And then the Tramp, who had been standing quietly by, smiling to himself but saying nothing, came nearer, opened his great arms and drew the four of them together. His voice, his s.h.i.+ning presence, the warm brilliance that glowed about him, seemed to envelop them like a flame of fire and a fire of--love.

"We're thinking and arguing too much," he drawled in his leisurely, big voice, "we lose the trail that way, we lose the rhythm. Just love and look and wonder--then we'll find him. There is no hurry, life has just begun. But keep on looking all the time." He turned to Stumper with a chuckle. "You said you had a flash," he reminded him. "What's become of it? You can't have lost it--with that pigeon's feather in your hand!"

"It's waggling," announced Tim, holding up his own, while the others followed suit. The little feathers all bent one way--towards the bramble clump. Their tiny, singing music was just audible in the pause.

"Yes," replied Come-Back Stumper at length. "I've had a flash--flashes, in fact! What's more," he added proudly, "I was after a couple of them--just when you arrived."

Everybody talked at once then. Uncle Felix and the children fell to explaining the signs and traces they had already discovered, each affirming vehemently that their own particular sign was the loveliest--the dragon-fly, the flowers, the wind, the bending reeds, even the lizard and the b.u.mble-bee. The chorus of sound was like the chattering of rooks among the tree-tops; in fact, though the quality of tone of course was different, the resemblance to a concert of birds, all singing together in a summer garden, was quite striking. Out of the hubbub single words emerged occasionally--a "robin," "swallows," an "up-and-under bird"--yet, strange to say, so far as Stumper was concerned, only one thing was said; all said the same one thing; he heard this one thing only--as though the words and sentences they used were but different ways of p.r.o.nouncing it, of spelling it, of uttering it. Moreover, the wind in the feather said it too, for the sound and intonation were similar. It was the thing that wind and running water said, that flame roared in the fireplace, that rain-drops pattered on the leaves, even house-flies, buzzing across the window-panes--everything everywhere, the whole earth, said it.

He stood still, listening in amazement. His face had dried by now; he pa.s.sed his hand across it; he tugged at his fierce military moustache.

"Hiding--near us--in the open--everywhere," he muttered, though no one heard him; "I've had my flashes too."

"Different people get different signs, of course," the Tramp made himself heard at length, "but they're all the same. All lie along the trail. The earth's a globe and circle, so everything leads to the same place--in the end."

"Yes," said Stumper; "thank you"--as though he knew it already, but felt that it was neatly put.

"Follow up your flash," added the Tramp. "Smell--then follow. That is--keep on looking."

Stumper turned, pirouetting on what the children called his "living leg." "I will," he cried, with an air of self-abandonment, and promptly diving by a clever manoeuvre out of their hands, he fell heavily upon all fours, and disappeared beneath the dense bramble bushes just behind them. Panting, and certainly perspiring afresh, he forced his way in among the network of thick leaves and p.r.i.c.kly branches. They heard him puffing; it seemed they heard him singing too, as he reached forward with both arms into the dark interior. Caught by his whole-hearted energy, they tried to help; they pushed behind; they did their best to open a way for his head between the entwining brambles.

"Don't!" he roared inside. "You'll scratch my eyes out. I shan't see--anything!" His mouth apparently was full of earth. They watched the retreating soles of his heavy shooting-boots. Slowly the feet were dragged in after him. They disappeared from sight. Stumper was gone.

"He'll come back, though," mentioned Judy. The performance had been so interesting that she almost forgot its object, however. Tim reminded her. "But he won't find anything in a smelly place like that," he declared. "I mean," he added, "it can't be a beetle or a grub that we're--looking for." Yet there was doubt and wonder in his voice.

Stumper, a "man like that," and a soldier, a hunter too, who had done scouting in an Indian jungle, and met tigers face to face--a chap like that could hardly disappear on all fours into a clump of bramble bushes without an excellent reason!

An interval of comparative silence followed, broken only by the faint murmur of the wind that stirred their humming feathers. They stood in a row and listened intently. Hardly a sound came from the interior of the bramble bushes. The soldier had justified his t.i.tle. He had retired pletely. To Judy it occurred that he might be suffocated, to Tim that he might have been eaten by some animal, to Uncle Felix that he might have slipped out at the other side and made his escape. But no one expressed these idle thoughts in words. They believed in Stumper really. He invariably came back. This time would be no exception to the rule.

And, presently, as usual, Stumper did come back. They heard him grunting and panting long before a sign of him was visible. They heard his voice, "Got him! Knew I was right! Bah! Ugh!" as he spluttered earth and leaves from his mouth apparently. He emerged by degrees and backwards; backed out, indeed, like an enormous rabbit. His boots, his legs, his hands planted on the ground, his neck and then his face, looking out over his shoulder, appeared successively. "Just the kind of place he _would_ choose!" he exclaimed triumphantly, collapsing back upon his haunches and taking a long, deep breath. Beside the triumph in his voice there was a touch of indescribable, gruff sweetness the children knew was always in his heart--no amount of curried-liver trouble could smother _that_. Just now it was more marked than usual.

"Show us!" they cried, gathering round him. Judy helped him to his feet; he seemed a little unsteady. Purple with the exertion of the search, both cheeks smeared with earth, neck-tie crooked, and old grey shooting-coat half-way up his back, Come-Back Stumper stood upright, and looked at them with s.h.i.+ning eyes. He was the picture of a happy and successful man.

"There!" he growled, and held out a hand, palm upwards, still trembling with his recent exertions. "Didn't I tell you?"

They crowded round to examine a small object that lay between two smears of earth in the centre of the upturned palm. It was round and had a neat little opening on its under side. It was pretty, certainly.

Their heads pressed forward in a bunch, like cabbages heaped for market. But no one spoke.

"See it?" said Stumper impatiently; "see what it is?" He bent forward till his head mixed with theirs, his big aquiline nose in everybody's way.

"We see it--yes," said Uncle Felix without enthusiasm. "It's a snail sh.e.l.l--er--I believe?" The shade of disappointment in his voice was reflected in the children's faces too, as they all straightened up and gazed expectantly at the panting soldier. "Is that all?" was the sentence no one liked to utter.

But Stumper roared at them. "A snail sh.e.l.l!" he boomed; "of course it's a snail sh.e.l.l! But did you ever see such a snail sh.e.l.l in your lives before? Look at the colour! Look at the shape! Put it against your ears and hear it singing!" He was furious with their lack of appreciation.

"It's the common sort," said Uncle Felix, braver than the others, "something or other vulgaris--"

"Hundreds of them everywhere," mentioned Tim beneath his breath to Judy.

But Stumper overheard them.

"Common sort! Hundreds everywhere!" he shouted, his voice almost choking in his throat; "look at the colour! Look at the shape, I tell you! Listen to it!" He said the last words with a sudden softness.

They lowered their heads again for a new examination.

"What more d'you want, I'd like to know? There's colour for you!

There's wonder! There's a sheer bit of living beauty!" and he lowered his head again so eagerly that it knocked audibly against Tim's skull.

"Please move your nose away," said Tim, "I can't see."

"Common indeed!" growled the soldier, making room willingly enough, while they obeyed his booming orders. They felt a little ashamed of themselves for being so obtuse, for now that they looked closer they saw that the sh.e.l.l was certainly very beautiful. "Common indeed!" he muttered again. "Why, you don't know a sign when it's straight before your noses!"

Judy pulled the fingers apart to make it roll towards her; she felt it all over, stroking the smooth beauty of its delicate curves. It was exquisitely tinted. It shone and glistened in the morning sunlight. She put it against her ear and listened. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It _is_ singing," as the murmur of the wind explored its hollow windings.

"That's the Ganges," explained Stumper in a softer voice. "The waves of the Ganges breaking on the yellow sands of India. Wind in the jungle too." His face looked happy as he watched her; his explosions never lasted long.

She pa.s.sed it over to her brother, who crammed it against his ear and listened with incredible grimaces as though it hurt him. "I can hear the tigers' footsteps," he declared, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes, "and birds of paradise and all sorts of things." He handed it on reluctantly to his uncle, who listened so deeply in his turn that he had to shut both eyes. "I hear calling voices," he murmured to himself, "voices calling, calling everywhere....it's wonderful... like a sea of voices from the other side of the world... the whole world's singing...!"

"And look at the colour, will you?" urged Stumper, s.n.a.t.c.hing it away from the listener, who, seemed in danger of becoming entranced. "Why, he's not only pa.s.sed this way--he's actually touched it. That's his touch, I tell you!"

"That's right," mumbled the Tramp, watching the whole performance with approval. "Folks without something are always sharper than the others."

But this reference to a wooden leg was also too low for any one to hear it.

Besides Stumper was saying something wonderful just then; he lowered his voice to say it; there was suppressed excitement in him; he frowned and looked half savagely at them all:

"I found other signs as well," he whispered darkly. "Two other signs.

In the darkness of those bushes I saw--another flash--two of 'em!" And he slowly extended his other hand which till now he had kept behind his back. It was tightly clenched. He unloosed the fingers gradually.

"Look!" he whispered mysteriously. And the hand lay open before their eyes. "He's been hiding in those very bushes, I tell you. A moment sooner and we might have caught him."

His enthusiasm ran all over them as they pressed forward to examine the second grimy hand. There were two things visible in it, and both were moving. One, indeed, moved so fast that they hardly saw it. There was a s.h.i.+ning glimpse--a flash of lovely golden bronze shot through with blue--and it was gone. Like a wee veiled torch it scuttled across the palm, climbed the thumb, popped down the other side and dropped upon the ground. Vanished as soon as seen!

"A beetle!" exclaimed Uncle Felix. "A tiny beetle!"

"But dipped in colour," said Stumper with enthusiasm, "the colour of the dawn!"