Tommy.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue IX, 30 August 1902, Page 568

Tommy.

Janet’s statement that she did not care for dolls seemed hardly consistent with her devotion to Tommy. And yet Tbrntny was a thing apart. Even those of us who only knew him slightly found it impossible to include him in the world of dummies and unrealities, and for Janet, his friend and intimate, beyond a doubt he lived. And if to us Tommy’s features suggested simply the waxen innocence of a happy babyhood, to Janet they were instinct with change and growth. Even while she was singing him to sleep in his cradle, or risking his complexion in a morning bath, her thoughts were busy with the time when he would be a child no longer.

Indeed she spent a great part of her leisure in writing books for Tommy. Only one of these has been preserved. On its cover is printed in large plain letters: “Persins to be Avoided, and Why. Written by Janet Clayton for Tommy by the time he is older.” The book begins with a list of names: “Mrs Dark. “The Rev. Dawson and family. “Uncle Harry. “Peter Winkworth (although he looks nice). “Mr Pratt and his second wife. “Miss Berry (the thin one). “The frizzled Miss Bate.” One tinj' page after another is filled in this way, and at the end there are words o' explanation and advice. “Do not think, my dear Tommy, that in shunning certain persins, I wish you to be unkind. Tis that the perßins the names of which is here written will do you harm and not good! The reesin you will understand when you are older. And do not, if they give you sweets or toys, freeget what I have said. For that is their deceitftilness. If it seems rude to refoose, take them and eat them, but do not freeget whht I have said, pertitkly in the case of the frizzled Miss Bate.”.

With her brothers. Jack and Edgar. Janet never discussed Tommy’s future, but they gathered from incidental phrases how strenuous the life was to which he was destined.

“When Tommy begins Greek,” she would say, or “When Tommy is at Eton,” or, finally, “When Tommy takes Orders.”

Unfortunately, the boys did not share Janet’s enthusiasm for Tommy’s career. In fact, they found contrast between his present apathy and the mental activity constantly predicted for him. distinctly irritating. Life was dull in the nursery, worse than dull in the school-room, and Jack and Edgar made the discovery that any want of deference in their treatment of Tommy put Janet into a state that at least secured them against monotony. Tears and passionate recriminations were followed by apologies, so that a stormy but not uninteresting afternoon would end in the chastened joy of reconciliation.

One morning when Janet awoke she found Tommy had left his cot and was sitting complacently astride the rail at the bottom of her bed. Worse than that, one of his baby thumbs was placed at the end of his nose and the other in a line with it. A few days later when she came in from her walk, Janet found Tommy bending over the nursery table with an imitation of her grandfather’s skull-cap on his head, a pair of wire spectacles on his nose, and the Book of Common Prayer propped up in front of him. Jack, who had been kept in with a cold, must have done this.

When the boys saw the effect they * had produced they were always half sorry for what they had done, and would try weakly to bribe her back to friendliness. But she could not be bought. Her method was to stand off completely and then say: “Swear, both of you, to treat Tommy just as if he lived.” 4 And they swore, with such solemnity that Janet, even when they had broken their oath time after time, was constrained to believe them.

Yet things grew worse and worse, and Janet began to realise that Tommy’s life was becoming insupportable. One day, after she had fouijd him legs upwards in a flower-pot, a long fit of dumb resentment took the place of her usual outburst of temper. At this Jack’s ardour distinctly cooled, and he and Edgar agreed that it was time to stop. Then, after one or two unsuccessful overtures, they came to the conclusion that Janet in her present inood was unapproachable, and sadly decided that it was only by attacking Tommy once more, by once more rousing Janet to anger and defiance, that the final reconciliation could be brought about. A week passed before Janet’s watchfulness gave them an opportunity of getting at Tommy unawares. At last, deceived by the boys’ apparent passivity, she left him alone asleep in the nursery. hour afterwards she came back, afid while her hand was still on the door she thought she saw in the uncertain firelight something hanging in the middle of the room.

It was Tommy dangling from the gas-bracket; and a tiny note with “My confession” written on it was pinned to his little nightshirt.

Janet, without a moment’s pause, seized the knife that one of the boys had left on the table, cut Tommy down, and taking the note from him threw it unopened into the fire. Then for a few seconds, holding Tommy tight, she stood tense and irresolute.

Her mind made up, she ran noiselessly out of the house, down through the winding paths to the walled vegetable garden. At the bottom in one corner was a rockery. This she climbed, and peered for a few moments into the darkness beyond, where only a few yards away was a disused qtnarry. Then with all her might she flung Tommy from, her, waited one second to hear him drop, and sped breathless back to the house. There alone in her own small room she flung herself on the bed, and murmuring:

“Tommy, Tommy, they can’t now, they can’t,” burst in to childish abandoned tears. ' ' ADA WALLAS.