Chapter VIII: Up a Tree

AND now came a spell of hot weather. Tomina spent most of her time in a hammock in her garden. Harry was still her chief joy. One morning she promised to take him fishing.

"We will take our dinner with us, and spend a day on the river. We'll drive out to it, for I've heard there's good trout-fishing four miles out."

Harry was enchanted. Susan said rather grimly that she thought a bent pin and a worm at the end of a piece of string in the nearest brook would be enough for him. But Tomina said—

"You forget that I'm a fisherwoman, Susan. I've landed small salmon by myself in Scotland and I'm going to teach him proper fly-fishing. You won't see us till dusk. Pack a good big basket. I've got leave to fish where I'm going. Dr. Merton owns that bit of the river."

The hired trap took the two of them, accompanied by Thor, along the lanes in the early morning. It was an ideal day for fishing. Still and grey, with not much sun. But it was oppressively warm.

Tomina had meant to put up her trap at a little farm near the river, but when they came to it, they found the people away for the day. So she drove on, and tied the horse to some stout oak fencing. Then she and Harry began their sport; but they had no luck. Harry was a restless little soul, and he soon got tired of holding his line at a stiff angle and waiting for a bite which would not come.

"I expect the poor fis' don't want to be killed to-day, Tommie," he said. "Tommie" had told him he might call her what he liked, and he had responded at once. "Let's take off our shoes and stockings and get into the water," he said.

"Tommie" declined, but she let him play about in a shallow part of the stream, and rather gladly reeled up her line and lay down under the shadow of an old oak tree. She was an adept at doing nothing in the open-air.

The coolness of the fresh-running stream refreshed and soothed her. Presently, she fell asleep, and a little later awoke with a start.

Where was Harry? There was no sound or sight of him. Her old horse was still munching in the hedge. But Thor had disappeared. She called, but there was no reply.

"Oh dear!" she said to herself. "Why do I bother myself with a child? They're always an anxiety."

She walked for some way along the banks of the river. Could he possibly have fallen in, or been carried down by the current? She wondered, and a little shudder came over her at the thought. Then she thought of Thor, and was reassured. Surely he would have returned to her. There was a slight clearing in the woods which stretched along one side of the river, and in the distance she suddenly espied Harry's straw hat.

That brought relief to her mind.

"The little imp has run off into the wood."

She walked on, calling him by name as she went. And at last in the distance she heard his voice and the quick, short bark of Thor.

"Tommie, oh, Tommie, come quick!"

She hastened her step. There was a group of old trees in front of her. As she came up to them, a small voice cried to her from the topmost boughs of one—

"Oh, Tommie, I can't come down! I've climbed up too high. I'm frightened. Fetch me down!"

Looking up through the thick leaves of an oak, she saw a white-faced child clinging desperately round a bough. Thor was standing below, looking up in a perplexed fashion.

Tomina's heart sank within her. Then she pulled herself together.

"Harry, you mustn't be a coward! You climbed up—you can climb down. I can't come up to fetch you. Be a brave boy and come down."

Harry began to sob, and kick feebly with one leg.

"There's nothing to step on, there troofully isn't! I've tried all I can. I'm going to fall. Do ask God to help me. I've asked Him till I'm tired. I'm so 'fraid He wants me to be killed this afternoon, and I don't want to be!"

A vision came back to Tomina of her childhood, when a kitten had climbed a tree and had been rescued by a fat butler on the top of a tall ladder. She looked wildly round for help. Harry must be rescued, but she could not be his rescuer.

"Do come up!" cried the child. "I'm sure you could climb easy, and then you'd help me down."

"I haven't climbed a tree since I was a child," said Tomina, helplessly. "Oh, Harry dear, I can't! Do try to come down. There's a branch below you. Can't you reach it?"

"My legs won't stretch," sobbed Harry, "and I can't hold much longer!"

Then, after another wild and fruitless glance around, Tomina nerved herself for the effort. She tucked up her skirt and began the ascent. It was not a difficult tree to climb, otherwise Harry would not have attempted it. She was surprised at herself for the ease with which she did it, but happening to glance down when she was fairly high up, terror seized her.

With great self-control she looked up at Harry, and went on climbing. She reached a strong bough beneath him, and sitting astride on it caught hold of him, and the next minute, he was by her side. He clung hold of her and smiled through a mist of tears.

"I do love you, Tommie! I'm quite safe now. I thought I was going to fall."

"You are a little wretch, and as to being safe, I don't know about that. Why is it so much easier to climb up than down, I wonder?"

Tomina looked down through the leafy branches with fearful eyes.

"I broke one branch on my climb up, and I don't believe I shall be any cleverer than you. There is no foothold for either of us, Harry, unless you can find the way. Can you climb down now?"

"I can get on your back while you do it," suggested Harry, cheerfully.

And Tomina laughed in spite of herself.

"You've inveigled me up into a tree, and here we shall have to stay. It's ridiculous! Look here, I'll hold your hand, and you must start away down."

Harry valiantly did his best, but the branches beneath swayed in an alarming way with a sudden gust of wind. And in terror, he climbed back to the safe, strong bough on which Tomina was sitting.

"I can't! I can't!" he said. "You go first, Tommie dear."

Tomina made the attempt, but found it impossible. And the sudden rushing wind that now was sweeping through the wood filled her with fresh alarm.

"A storm is coming up," she said. "I knew that sultry feeling in the air was a sign of it."

Then she looked down at Thor, who was whining uneasily at the foot of the tree.

"Go home, sir! Fetch help! Fetch it! Fetch any one!"

Thor bounded to his feet, looked round wildly and dashed away.

"He's gone!" cried Harry, in delight. "He'll fetch Susan!"

"Susan!" gasped Tomina. "A lot of good Susan would do! I hope he'll have sense enough to bring a man. Oh, Harry, you have brought disaster on us!"

As she spoke, there was a low rumble of thunder in the distance, and heavy drops of rain fell with a thud upon them.

She took Harry into her arms, got into a more comfortable position, and then awaited, with all the calmness she could muster, the coming storm.

"In a tree in a thunderstorm," she murmured. "It is sheer madness, but things are so bad that they can't be worse."

"Do you think God will take care of us? I don't like thunder," whimpered Harry. "Do ask God to keep us safe."

It was not the first time that Harry had forced Tomina to pray.

She murmured in a low tone—

"O God, protect us and send some one to our help. For Christ's sake.
Amen."

"It's such a pity," said Harry, after a moment's silence, "that God 'dosn't' want us to see Him before we go to Heaven, else He could just step down out of a cloud quite easy and lift us down."

Tomina did not know how to reply to this assertion.

Louder and nearer rolled the thunder clouds, then came a vivid flash of lightning, and then a crash of thunder overhead. Harry clutched hold of Tomina in trembling fright.

"It's awful to be up so close," he said. "Don't you wish we could get into a nest like the birds and hide our heads?"

Tomina's courage was oozing fast. She could but hold the child and keep silence. Then her sense of humour came uppermost, and she began to laugh.

When Harry looked up with a shocked face, she excused herself—

"I was only wishing some of my friends in London could see me," she said.

For some moments after that, the storm was too violent for them to speak. It seemed as if it were raging on the top of them. Then it rolled on and away from them, but the rain came on faster than ever. It shot down upon them in such sheets of water that, in spite of the thick foliage above them, they were drenched through.

In about a quarter of an hour, it stopped as suddenly as it came. Tomina lifted her face with a long sigh of relief.

"It's over, Harry sweet! Where do you think Thor can be? He has never come back. What shall we do? I am getting the cramp, I believe. Let us give a co-ee!"

So they co-eed, and the birds flew away in fright, and the rabbits scuttled to their holes, and still there was no sign of any one coming.

"I'm so hungry!" said Harry, plaintively.

Tomina rose desperately from her perilous perch, determined to make one more effort to descend.

"If only I had not broken that branch, I could do it," she said. "It seems as if we shall never be discovered here. I wonder if I could let myself drop, but it looks such an awful height from the ground!"

She had hardly finished speaking before Harry gave a joyful cry.

There was a crashing in the thicket a little way off, and in another moment Thor came bounding to the foot of the tree, followed by a man in a mackintosh. Harry gave a delighted yell, but Tomina's face changed as she recognised the man.

It was Colonel Norman.

Some words she had heard read in church came into her mind—

"'And hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'"

He looked up and their eyes met.

Tomina felt that her position did not warrant any show of dignity on her part, so she said slowly—

"I suppose Thor fetched you. I am very sorry you troubled to come. You see our predicament. Owing to a broken branch our descent has been impossible. We want a ladder badly."

"Oh, I think we can dispense with a ladder!" said Colonel Norman, briskly.

There was a little twinkle in his eyes, which happily Tomina did not see.

He threw off his mackintosh, and said—

"I'm afraid you've been out in all this storm. I was caught in it, and was swinging along home when Thor bounced up. It was fortunate I was in this direction. Your dog has all his wit—he brought me straight here. Now then!"

With a light spring, he commenced to climb, and in a very few minutes had Harry in his arms and brought him down to the ground.

Tomina began to feel distinctly nervous.

"We aren't very far from the farm where I hoped to put up my horse and trap. They are out for the day, but I should think you could find a ladder about."

"That would be a very roundabout way of proceeding. I will have you down in a minute."

"I will wait for a ladder," Tomina said.

He made no answer, but climbed up beside her.

"Now give me your hand. That is it. Now put your foot there. Don't be afraid; I have hold of you. That's splendid! Now then, it is fairly easy."

He had taken possession of her so quickly and thoroughly that she had no choice but to follow his guidance. But she was angry when, on nearly completing the descent, he had sprung down in front of her, and had lifted her bodily down, and held her in his arms for a moment quite unnecessarily.

"What a little bit of a thing you are!" he said. "You are lighter than ever. There is nothing substantial about you!"

Tomina released herself very indignantly.

"You are far too officious. But I thank you. Harry and I will find our way home all right now."

She turned from him, but Colonel Norman could not be so easily dismissed. He placed his hand on her arm.

"You are wet to the skin," he said. "Now, look here, Tomina, treat me like a stranger if you like. But a stranger would not go off and leave you in this plight. I am coming with you to find your trap."

Then Harry spoke—

"I call her 'Tommie,'" he said. "Do you know her? I'm so glad you got us down. We haven't had our dinner yet. And my socks is sticking with the rain."

"Run along and see if our trap is where we left it," said Tomina.

Then as he obeyed her, she said to her companion: "It seems to be my luckless fate to run up against you when I least desire it. I have thanked you for your help, but if our trap is here, I beg that you will leave us. I am quite capable of driving home myself. This sounds ungrateful—"

"Oh, I didn't expect you to feel pleasantly towards me!" said Colonel Norman, cheerfully. "Only I knew from your dog that you were in a fix, and so I came along. And I am not going to let you drive home in that thin, wet dress. You must at least put on my mackintosh."

Tomina made no reply. She quickened her steps towards the spot where she had left her trap. Harry was scampering about, and now ran back to her.

"The horse isn't there. He's runned away, and the trap too!"

Tomina gave a little gasp.

It was too true. Frightened by the storm, the horse had broken loose from the fence, and had evidently found the road and bolted along it; for the whip was lying on the ground some distance away.

"We must just walk home," said Tomina, bravely. "After all, it is only five miles. I expect old Jim has made for home. They will think we have been upset. What a comfort it is to think that it is only Susan who will be concerned! We have nobody else belonging to us."

But she did not relish a five mile walk back with Colonel Norman. He said very little, but shouldered their fishing rods and again offered his coat to Tomina, who refused.

"How could I walk in a thing like that, trailing yards of it on the ground, and being smothered in it? I wish you would leave us, Colonel Norman; we have our lunch to eat, and it is fine now. I don't feel inclined to hurry home."

"Then sit on this fence and eat it, and I will go over to the farm and see if any one is stirring there yet. Perhaps we might borrow a trap."

He strode away. Tomina felt angry at her own ungraciousness, and still angrier with the one who caused it.

"How could I ever have been in love with him?" she muttered to herself. "But I must say he always took good care of me. Nobody has ever done it since. I hated it then, but—"

She stopped, and resolutely turned her thoughts and attention to Harry, who was gleefully and eagerly unpacking their basket of food. She and he had a merry meal together, in spite of all their misfortunes.

Colonel Norman, returning, caught the sound of her happy ringing laugh, which was checked directly he came in sight.

"Can't get a trap. The house is still locked up, and a young blockhead in the stable told me the master had gone to town with the only horse in. We must walk, and trust to meeting some one."

A little later, the three of them tramped along the road. Tomina was very silent and very cross. Harry and the Colonel carried on most of the conversation. Once Tomina was asked—

"You saw my mother the other day. Do you think you will be able to come over and lunch with her one day—when I am out?"

"I don't go out to lunch," said Tomina, shortly. "I have given up society. I am doing a rest cure. I wrote to your mother and explained."

"I don't believe in these rest cures," Colonel Norman said. "I suppose they're a necessity of the age, and serve to distract and amuse a few of our tired-out pleasure-seekers. It only has the effect of making them fly round the faster when they leave them."

"You ought to have been in the Church," Tomina said.

A little colour deepened the Colonel's suntanned cheek.

"I don't want to gas," he said apologetically.

And then Harry claimed his attention, and however prosily he might talk to her, Tomina acknowledged in her heart that he talked charmingly to children.

Presently, as they came to four cross-roads, a trap appeared.

"Shall we hail it?" asked Colonel Norman, a little reluctantly. "It looks as if it is going our way."

"Of course," said Tomina, eagerly. "I would get up into a tinker's cart if it would take me home. You can't imagine that I enjoy this walk?"

So the trap was hailed, and it proved to be young Merryweather driving home. He was delighted to take up Tomina and Harry. She was sweetness itself to him, and Colonel Norman could not but note the marked contrast in her manner. He insisted, however, upon her wearing his mackintosh.

"You are still in your damp clothes, and you may get another heavy shower. Clouds are blowing up again."

"Yes, we shall have rain before we get home," said Philip Merryweather.

And Tomina very ungraciously allowed herself to be enveloped in it. She hardly thanked the Colonel for the loan.

"Good-bye," he said cheerily. "I do hope you will be none the worse for your experience; and I hope your trap and horse will be found at home."

"I will send back your coat to-morrow," said Tomina.

"Oh, don't trouble! I will call round for it."

"I will send it by the postman. He goes by your place."

Tomina spoke quite firmly. She gave him a curt little nod as they drove off. Harry waved his hand.

"Good-bye! And do come and see us soon. Tommie and me has such lovely games in the garden, and you could help us to build our bridge over the stream!"

Tomina talked away with feverish haste to young Merryweather, but in her heart she was saying to herself—

"I've been simply beastly to him—outrageously rude, but he makes me so."

The rain came on again, fast and furiously, and she thought of Colonel Norman plodding along the road without his coat. He had come to her rescue, done all he could to help her, had stripped himself of his mackintosh for her benefit, and had received from her nothing but rudeness. She gave herself a little shake as she thought of it.

As they passed the inn from which she had borrowed the trap, Tomina found that the horse had arrived safely home.

"I suppose you were rather alarmed about it?" she asked the landlord.

"Oh no, mem," was the reply; "we seed the halter round his head, and knewed he'd broken from where he'd been tied to. We guessed you were takin' shelter somewhere, and would find your way 'ome."

Tomina drove on indignantly.

"I shall never like that man again!" she declared. "He is callously selfish. He would never have sent any one to look for me if I had been pitched out on the road in a dying condition."

"Oh, Crake is rather a character! He says he never troubles about anything, and I don't think he does. He's a fatalist, and says that 'what happens is bound to happen, and nobody can prevent it.'"

"Is it a comforting creed?" Tomina questioned.

"It seems to comfort him."

Tomina was silent.

Philip Merryweather insisted on driving her home, and Susan wisely put both her and Harry to bed and gave them hot drinks.

It was surprising that the next day they seemed none the worse for their misadventure.

Colonel Norman received his mackintosh back by the postman the next morning.

It was done up neatly in a parcel.

He put it on almost affectionately when he walked out next in it. And then it was that he found a tiny twist of note-paper tucked away in the corner of one of the big pockets. He opened it with quickened heart-beats, but it contained only two words—

"Forgive me."

Colonel Norman kept that little peace offering locked up in his writing-desk with other mementoes of wayward Tomina.