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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jeremy, by Hugh Walpole
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Jeremy
+
+Author: Hugh Walpole
+
+Posting Date: February 5, 2009 [EBook #3474]
+Release Date: October, 2002
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEREMY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+JEREMY
+
+By Hugh Walpole
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+          BRUCE
+          FROM
+          HIS LOVING UNCLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     CHAPTER
+
+        I  THE BIRTHDAY
+
+       II  THE FAMILY DOG
+
+      III  CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME
+
+       IV  MISS JONES
+
+        V  THE SEA-CAPTAIN
+
+       VI  FAMILY PRIDE
+
+      VII  RELIGION
+
+     VIII  TO COW FARM
+
+       IX  THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE
+
+        X  MARY
+
+       XI  THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
+
+      XII  HAMLET WAITS
+
+
+
+
+          “It is due to him to say that he was
+          an obedient boy and a boy whose word
+          could be depended on...”
+
+          Jackanapes
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE BIRTHDAY
+
+
+I
+
+
+About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side of
+Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say “was”; the
+shell of it is still there, and the people who now live in it are quite
+unaware, I suppose, that anything has happened to the inside of it,
+except that they are certainly assured that their furniture is vastly
+superior to the furniture of their predecessors. They have a gramophone,
+a pianola, and a lift to bring the plates from the kitchen into the
+dining-room, and a small motor garage at the back where the old pump
+used to be, and a very modern rock garden where once was the pond with
+the fountain that never worked. Let them cherish their satisfaction.
+No one grudges it to them. The Coles were, by modern standards,
+old-fashioned people, and the Stone House was an old-fashioned house.
+
+Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the
+morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the morning of
+December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo clock had just
+struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this very moment, for the
+first time in his life, eight years old. He had gone to bed at eight
+o'clock on the preceding evening with the choking consciousness that he
+would awake in the morning a different creature. Although he had
+slept, there had permeated the texture of his dreams that same choking
+excitement, and now, wide awake, as though he had asked the cuckoo to
+call him in order that he might not be late for the great occasion,
+he stared into the black distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a
+beating heart, upon the great event. He was eight years old, and he had
+as much right now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen
+had.
+
+That was his first definite realisation of approaching triumph.
+Throughout the whole of his seventh year he had fought with Helen, who
+was most unjustly a year older than he and persistently proud of that
+injustice, as to his right to use the wicker arm-chair whensoever it
+pleased him. So destructive of the general peace of the house had
+these incessant battles been, so unavailing the suggestions of elderly
+relations that gentlemen always yielded to ladies, that a compromise had
+been arrived at. When Jeremy was eight he should have equal rights with
+Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had yielded to that. It was the only decent
+chair in the nursery. Into the place where the wicker, yielding to
+rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one's body might be
+most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the
+handsomest creaking noises when one rocked in it--and, in any case,
+Helen was only a girl.
+
+But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him. As he
+sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his back and his
+throat very dry; he was disappointingly aware that he was still the same
+Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was exactly that he had
+expected, but he did not feel at present that confident proud glory for
+which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was too early.
+
+He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half-muttered,
+half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once again asleep.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He awoke to the customary sound of the bath water running into the bath.
+His room was flooded with sunshine, and old Jampot, the nurse (her name
+was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot), was saying as usual:
+“Now, Master Jeremy, eight o'clock; no lying in bed--out--you
+get--bath--ready.”
+
+He stared at her, blinking.
+
+“You should say 'Many Happy Returns of the Day, Master Jeremy,'” he
+remarked. Then suddenly, with a leap, he was out of bed, had crossed
+the floor, pushed back the nursery door, and was sitting in the wicker
+arm-chair, his naked feet kicking a triumphant dance.
+
+“Helen! Helen!” he called. “I'm in the chair.”
+
+No sound.
+
+“I'm eight,” he shouted, “and I'm in the chair.”
+
+Mrs. Preston, breathless and exclaiming, hurried across to him.
+
+“Oh, you naughty boy... death of cold... in your nightshirt.”
+
+“I'm eight,” he said, looking at her scornfully, “and I can sit here as
+long as I please.”
+
+Helen, her pigtails flapping on either shoulder, her nose red, as it
+always was early in the morning, appeared at the opposite end of the
+nursery.
+
+“Nurse, he mustn't, must he? Tell him not to. I don't care how old you
+are. It's my chair. Mother said--”
+
+“No, she didn't. Mother said--”
+
+“Yes, she did. Mother said--”
+
+“Mother said that when--”
+
+“Oh, you story. You know that Mother said--” Then suddenly a new,
+stiffening, trusting dignity filled him, as though he had with a turn of
+the head discovered himself in golden armour.
+
+He was above this vulgar wrangling now. That was for girls. He was
+superior to them all. He got down from the chair and stood, his head
+up, on the old Turkey rug (red with yellow cockatoos) in front of the
+roaring fire.
+
+“You may have your old chair,” he said to Helen. “I'm eight now, and I
+don't want it any more... although if I do want it I shall have it,” he
+added.
+
+He was a small, square boy with a pug-nosed face. His hair was light
+brown, thin and stiff, so that it was difficult to brush, and although
+you watered it, stood up in unexpected places and stared at you. His
+eyes were good, dark brown and large, but he was in no way handsome; his
+neck, his nose ridiculous. His mouth was too large, and his chin stuck
+out like a hammer.
+
+He was, plainly, obstinate and possibly sulky, although when he smiled
+his whole face was lighted with humour. Helen was the only beautiful
+Cole child, and she was abundantly aware of that fact. The Coles had
+never been a good-looking family.
+
+He stood in front of the fireplace now as he had seen his father do, his
+short legs apart, his head up, and his hands behind his back.
+
+“Now, Master Jeremy,” the Jampot continued, “you may be eight years old,
+but it isn't a reason for disobedience the very first minute, and, of
+course, your bath is ready and you catching your death with naked feet,
+which you've always been told to put your slippers on and not to keep
+the bath waiting, when there's Miss Helen and Miss Mary, as you very
+well know, and breakfast coming in five minutes, which there's sausages
+this morning, because it's your birthday, and them all getting cold--”
+
+“Sausages!”
+
+He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt and
+was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement
+and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always even on
+birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling fire and
+marmalade, perhaps--and then all the presents.
+
+Oh, he was happy. As he rubbed his back with the towel a wonderful
+glowing Christian charity spread from his head to his toes and tingled
+through every inch of him. Helen should sit in the chair when she
+pleased; Mary should be allowed to dress and undress the large woollen
+dog, known as “Sulks,” his own especial and beloved property, so often
+as she wished; Jampot should poke the twisted end of the towel in his
+ears and brush his hair with the hard brushes, and he would not say a
+word. Aunt Mary should kiss him (as, of course, she would want to do),
+and he would not shiver; he would (bravest deed of all) allow Mary to
+read “Alice in Wonderland” in her sing-sing voice so long as ever she
+wanted... Sausages! Sausages!
+
+In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at
+his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted:
+
+“Helen, there are sausages--because it's my birthday. Aren't you glad?”
+
+And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's
+voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: “Oh, you do pull so; you're
+hurting!”--his charity was not checked.
+
+Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front of
+the fire a shyness stole over him. He knew that the moment for Presents
+was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be
+kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and
+again, “Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” that he would have his usual
+consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that
+they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary never worried about such
+things. They delighted in kissing and hugging and multitudes of words.
+If only he might have had his presents by himself and then stolen out
+and said “Thank you” to the lot of them and have done with it.
+
+He watched the breakfast-table with increasing satisfaction--the large
+teapot with the red roses, the dark blue porridge plates, the glass jar
+with the marmalade a rich yellow inside it, the huge loaf with the
+soft pieces bursting out between the crusty pieces, the solid square of
+butter, so beautiful a colour and marked with a large cow and a tree on
+the top (he had seen once in the kitchen the wooden shape with which
+the cook made this handsome thing). There were also his own silver mug,
+given him at his christening by Canon Trenchard, his godfather, and his
+silver spoon, given him on the same occasion by Uncle Samuel.
+
+All these things glittered and glowed in the firelight, and a kettle was
+singing on the hob and Martha the canary was singing in her cage in
+the window. (No one really knew whether the canary were a lady or a
+gentleman, but the name had been Martha after a beloved housemaid, now
+married to the gardener, and the sex had followed the name.)
+
+There were also all the other familiar nursery things. The hole in the
+Turkey carpet near the bookcase, the rocking-horse, very shiny where you
+sit and very Christmas-tree-like as to its tail; the doll's house, now
+deserted, because Helen was too old and Mary too clever; the pictures
+of “Church on Christmas Morning” (everyone with their mouths very wide
+open, singing a Christmas hymn, with holly), “Dignity and Impudence,”
+ after Landseer, “The Shepherds and the Angels,” and “The Charge of the
+Light Brigade.” So packed was the nursery with history for Jeremy that
+it would have taken quite a week to relate it all. There was the
+spot where he had bitten the Jampot's fingers, for which deed he had
+afterwards been slippered by his father; there the corner where they
+stood for punishment (he knew exactly how many ships with sails, how
+many ridges of waves, and how many setting suns there were on that
+especial piece of corner wallpaper--three ships, twelve ridges, two and
+a half suns); there was the place where he had broken the ink bottle
+over his shoes and the carpet, there by the window, where Mary had read
+to him once when he had toothache, and he had not known whether her
+reading or the toothache agonised him the more; and so on, an endless
+sequence of sensational history.
+
+His reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of Gladys with the
+porridge. Gladys, who was only the between-maid, but was nevertheless
+stout, breathless from her climb and the sentiment of the occasion,
+produced from a deep pocket a dirty envelope, which she laid upon the
+table.
+
+“Many 'appy returns, Master Jeremy.” Giggle... giggle... “Lord save
+us if I 'aven't gone and forgotten they spunes,” and she vanished. The
+present-giving had begun.
+
+He had an instant's struggle as to whether it were better to wait
+until all the presents had accumulated, or whether he would take them
+separately as they arrived. The dirty envelope lured him. He advanced
+towards it and seized it. He could not read very easily the sprawling
+writing on the cover, but he guessed that it said “From Gladys to Master
+Jeremy.” Within was a marvellous card, tied together with glistening
+cord and shining with all the colours of the rainbow. It was apparently
+a survival from last Christmas, as there was a church in snow and a peal
+of bells; he was, nevertheless, very happy to have it.
+
+After his introduction events moved swiftly. First Helen and Mary
+appeared, their faces shining and solemn and mysterious--Helen
+self-conscious and Mary staring through her spectacles like a profound
+owl.
+
+Because Jeremy had known Mary ever since he could remember, he was
+unaware that there was anything very peculiar about her. But in truth
+she was a strange looking child. Very thin, she had a large head,
+with big outstanding ears, spectacles, and yellow hair pulled back
+and “stringy.” Her large hands were always red, and her forehead was
+freckled. She was as plain a child as you were ever likely to see, but
+there was character in her mouth and eyes, and although she was only
+seven years old, she could read quite difficult books (she was engaged
+at this particular time upon “Ivanhoe”), and she was a genius at sums.
+
+The passion of her life, as the family were all aware, was Jeremy,
+but it was an unfortunate and uncomfortable passion. She bothered and
+worried him, she was insanely jealous; she would sulk for days did he
+ever seem to prefer Helen to herself. No one understood her; she was
+considered a “difficult child,” quite unlike any other member of the
+family, except possibly Samuel, Mr. Cole's brother-in-law, who was an
+unsuccessful painter and therefore “odd.”
+
+As Mary was at present only seven years of age it would be too much to
+say that the family was afraid of her. Aunt Amy's attitude was: “Well,
+after all, she's sure to be clever when she grows up, poor child;” and
+although the parishioners of Mary's father always alluded to her as “the
+ludicrous Cole child,” they told awed little stories about the infant's
+mental capacities, and concluded comfortably, “I'm glad Alice (or Jane
+or Matilda or Anabel) isn't clever like that. They overwork when they
+are young, and then when they grow up--”
+
+Meanwhile Mary led her private life. She attached herself to no one
+but Jeremy; she was delicate and suffered from perpetual colds; she
+therefore spent much of her time in the nursery reading, her huge
+spectacles close to the page, her thin legs like black sticks stuck
+up on the fender in front of the fire or curled up under her on the
+window-seat.
+
+Very different was Helen. Helen had a mass of dark black hair, big black
+eyes with thick eye-lashes, a thin white neck, little feet, and already
+an eye to “effects” in dress. She was charming to strangers, to the
+queer curates who haunted the family hall, to poor people and rich
+people, to old people and young people. She was warm-hearted but not
+impulsive, intelligent but not clever, sympathetic but not sentimental,
+impatient but never uncontrolled. She liked almost everyone and almost
+everything, but no one and nothing mattered to her very deeply; she
+liked going to church, always learnt her Collect first on Sunday, and
+gave half her pocket-money to the morning collection. She was generous
+but never extravagant, enjoyed food but was not greedy. She was quite
+aware that she was pretty and might one day be beautiful, and she was
+glad of that, but she was never silly about her looks.
+
+When Aunt Amy, who was always silly about everything, said in her
+presence to visitors, “Isn't Helen the loveliest thing you ever saw?”
+ she managed by her shy self-confidence to suggest that she was pretty,
+that Aunt Amy was a fool, and life was altogether very agreeable, but
+that none of these things was of any great importance. She was very good
+friends with Jeremy, but she played no part in his life at all. At
+the same time she often fought with him, simply from her real deep
+consciousness of her superiority to him. She valued her authority
+and asserted it incessantly. That authority had until last year been
+unchallenged, but Jeremy now was growing. She had, although she did not
+as yet realise it, a difficult time before her.
+
+Helen and Mary advanced with their presents, laid them on the
+breakfast-table, and then retreated to watch the effect of it all.
+
+“Shall I now?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“Yes, now,” said Helen and Mary.
+
+There were three parcels, one large and “shoppy,” two small and bound
+with family paper, tied by family hands with family string. He grasped
+immediately the situation. The shoppy parcel was bought with mother's
+money and only “pretended” to be from his sisters; the two small parcels
+were the very handiwork of the ladies themselves, the same having been
+seen by all eyes at work for the last six months, sometimes, indeed,
+under the cloak of attempted secrecy, but more often--because weariness
+or ill-temper made them careless--in the full light of day.
+
+His interest was centred almost entirely in the “shoppy” parcel, which
+by its shape might be “soldiers”; but he knew the rules of the game,
+and disregarding the large, ostentatious brown-papered thing, he went
+magnificently for the two small incoherent bundles.
+
+He opened them. A flat green table-centre with a red pattern of roses, a
+thick table-napkin ring worked in yellow worsted, these were revealed.
+
+“Oh!” he cried, “just what I wanted.” (Father always said that on his
+birthday.)
+
+“Is it?” said Mary and Helen.
+
+“Mine's the ring,” said Mary. “It's dirty rather, but it would have
+got dirty, anyway, afterwards.” She watched anxiously to see whether he
+preferred Helen's.
+
+He watched them nervously, lest he should be expected to kiss them. He
+wiped his mouth with his hand instead, and began rapidly to talk:
+
+“Jampot will know now which mine is. She's always giving me the wrong
+one. I'll have it always, and the green thing too.”
+
+“It's for the middle of a table,” Helen interrupted.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Jeremy hurriedly. “I'll always have it too--like
+Mary's--when I'm grown up and all.... I say, shall I open the other one
+now?”
+
+“Yes, you can,” said Helen and Mary, ceasing to take the central place
+in the ceremony, spectators now and eagerly excited.
+
+But Mary had a last word.
+
+“You do like mine, don't you?”
+
+“Of course, like anything.”
+
+She wanted to say “Better than Helen's?” but restrained herself.
+
+“I was ever so long doing it; I thought I wouldn't finish it in time.”
+
+He saw with terror that she meditated a descent upon him; a kiss was in
+the air. She moved forward; then, to his extreme relief, the door opened
+and the elders arriving saved him.
+
+There were Father and Mother, Uncle Samuel and Aunt Amy, all with
+presents, faces of birthday tolerance and “do-as-you-please-to-day,
+dear” expressions.
+
+The Rev. Herbert Cole was forty years of age, rector of St. James's,
+Polchester, during the last ten years, and marked out for greater
+preferment in the near future. To be a rector at thirty is unusual,
+but he had great religious gifts, preached an admirable “as-man-to-man”
+ sermon, and did not believe in thinking about more than he could see. He
+was an excellent father in the abstract sense, but the parish absorbed
+too much of his time to allow of intimacies with anyone.
+
+Mrs. Cole was the most placid lady in Europe. She had a comfortable
+figure, but was not stout, here a dimple and there a dimple. Nothing
+could disturb her. Children, servants, her husband's sermons, district
+visiting, her Tuesday “at homes,” the butcher, the dean's wife, the
+wives of the canons, the Polchester climate, bills, clothes, other
+women's clothes--over all these rocks of peril in the sea of daily life
+her barque happily floated. Some ill-natured people thought her stupid,
+but in her younger days she had liked Trollope's novels in the Cornhill,
+disapproved placidly of “Jane Eyre,” and admired Tennyson, so that she
+could not be considered unliterary.
+
+She was economical, warm-hearted, loved her children, talked only the
+gentlest scandal, and was a completely happy woman--all this in the
+placidest way in the world. Miss Amy Trefusis, her sister, was very
+different, being thin both in her figure and her emotions. She skirted
+tempestuously over the surface of things, was the most sentimental of
+human beings, was often in tears over reminiscences of books or the
+weather, was deeply religious in a superficial way, and really--although
+she would have been entirely astonished had you told her so--cared for
+no one in the world but herself. She was dressed always in dark colours,
+with the high shoulders of the day, elegant bonnets and little chains
+that jingled as she moved. In her soul she feared and distrusted
+children, but she did not know this. She did know, however, that she
+feared and distrusted her brother Samuel.
+
+Her brother Samuel was all that the Trefusis family, as a conservative
+body who believed in tradition, had least reason for understanding. He
+had been a failure from the first moment of his entry into the Grammar
+School in Polchester thirty-five years before this story. He had
+continued a failure at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford. He had
+desired to be a painter; he had broken from the family and gone to
+study Art in Paris. He had starved and starved, was at death's door,
+was dragged home, and there suddenly had relapsed into Polchester, lived
+first on his father, then on his brother-in-law, painted about the town,
+painted, made cynical remarks about the Polcastrians, painted, made
+blasphemous remarks about the bishop, the dean and all the canons,
+painted, and refused to leave his brother-in-law's house. He was a
+scandal, of course; he was fat, untidy, wore a blue tam-o'-shanter when
+he was “out,” and sometimes went down Orange Street in carpet slippers.
+
+He was a scandal, but what are you to do if a relative is obstinate and
+refuses to go? At least make him shave, say the wives of the canons. But
+no one had ever made Samuel Trefusis do anything that he did not want to
+do. He was sometimes not shaved for three whole days and nights. At any
+rate, there he is. It is of no use saying that he does not exist, as
+many of the Close ladies try to do. And at least he does not paint
+strange women; he prefers flowers and cows and the Polchester woods,
+although anything less like cows, flowers and woods, Mrs. Sampson, wife
+of the Dean, who once had a water-colour in the Academy, says she has
+never seen. Samuel Trefusis is a failure, and, what is truly awful, he
+does not mind; nobody buys his pictures and he does not care; and, worst
+taste of all, he laughs at his relations, although he lives on them.
+Nothing further need be said.
+
+To Helen, Mary and Jeremy he had always been a fascinating object,
+although they realised, with that sharp worldly wisdom to be found in
+all infants of tender years, that he was a failure, a dirty man, and
+disliked children. He very rarely spoke to them; was once quite wildly
+enraged when Mary was discovered licking his paints. (It was the paints
+he seemed anxious about, not in the least the poor little thing's
+health, as his sister Amy said), and had publicly been heard to say that
+his brother-in-law had only got the children he deserved.
+
+Nevertheless Jeremy had always been interested in him. He liked his fat
+round shape, his rough, untidy grey hair, his scarlet slippers, his blue
+tam-o'-shanter, the smudges of paint sometimes to be discovered on his
+cheeks, and the jingling noises he made in his pocket with his money. He
+was certainly more fun than Aunt Amy.
+
+There, then, they all were with their presents and their birthday faces.
+
+“Shall I undo them for you, darling?” of course said Aunt Amy. Jeremy
+shook his head (he did not say what he thought of her) and continued to
+tug at the string. He was given a large pair of scissors. He received
+(from Father) a silver watch, (from Mother) a paint-box, a dark blue and
+gold prayer book with a thick squashy leather cover (from Aunt Amy).
+
+He was in an ecstasy. How he had longed for a watch, just such a
+turnip-shaped one, and a paint-box. What colours he could make! Even
+Aunt Amy's prayer book was something, with its squashy cover and silk
+marker (only why did Aunt Amy never give him anything sensible?). He
+stood there, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling, the watch in one hand
+and the paint-box in the other. Remarks were heard like: “You mustn't
+poke it with, your finger, Jerry darling, or you'll break the hands
+off”; and “I thought he'd, better have the square sort, and not the
+tubes. They're so squashy”; and “You'll be able to learn your Collect so
+easily with that big print, Jerry dear. Very kind of you, Amy.”
+
+Meanwhile he was aware that Uncle Samuel had given him nothing. There
+was a little thick catch of disappointment in his throat, not because
+he wanted a present, but because he liked Uncle Samuel. Suddenly, from
+somewhere behind him his uncle said: “Shut your eyes, Jerry. Don't open
+them until I tell you”--then rather crossly, “No, Amy, leave me alone. I
+know what I'm about, thank you.”
+
+Jeremy shut his eyes tight. He closed them so that the eyelids seemed to
+turn right inwards and red lights flashed. He stood there for at least
+a century, all in darkness, no one saying anything save that once Mary
+cried “Oh!” and clapped her hands, which same cry excited him to such
+a pitch that he would have dug his nails into his hands had he not so
+consistently in the past bitten them that there were no nails with which
+to dig. He waited. He waited. He waited. He was not eight, he was eighty
+when at last Uncle Samuel said, “Now you may look.”
+
+He opened his eyes and turned; for a moment the nursery, too, rocked in
+the unfamiliar light. Then he saw. On the middle of the nursery carpet
+was a village, a real village, six houses with red roofs, green windows
+and white porches, a church with a tower and a tiny bell, an orchard
+with flowers on the fruit trees, a green lawn, a street with a butcher's
+shop, a post office, and a grocer's. Villager Noah, Mrs. Noah and the
+little Noahs, a field with cows, horses, dogs, a farm with chickens and
+even two pigs...
+
+He stood, he stared, he drew a deep breath.
+
+“It comes all the way from Germany,” said Aunt Amy, who always made
+things uninteresting if she possibly could.
+
+There was much delighted talk. Jeremy said nothing. But Uncle Samuel
+understood.
+
+“Glad you like it,” he said, and left the room.
+
+“Aren't you pleased?” said Helen.
+
+Jeremy still said nothing.
+
+“Sausages. Sausages!” cried Mary, as Gladys, grinning, entered with a
+dish of a lovely and pleasant smell. But Jeremy did not turn. He simply
+stood there--staring.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+It is of the essence of birthdays that they cannot maintain throughout
+a long day the glorious character of their early dawning. In Polchester
+thirty years ago there were no cinematographs, no theatre save for
+an occasional amateur performance at the Assembly Rooms and, once and
+again, a magic-lantern show. On this particular day, moreover, Mr. and
+Mrs. Cole were immensely busied with preparations for some parochial
+tea. Miss Trefusis had calls to make, and, of course, Uncle Samuel was
+invisible. The Birthday then suddenly became no longer a birthday but
+an ordinary day--with an extraordinary standard. This is why so many
+birthdays end in tears.
+
+But Jeremy, as was usual with him, took everything quietly. He might cry
+aloud about such an affair as the conquest of the wicker chair because
+that did not deeply matter to him, but about the real things he was
+silent. The village was one of the real things; during all the morning
+he remained shut up in his soul with it, the wide world closed off from
+them by many muffled doors. How had Uncle Samuel known that he had deep
+in his own inside, so deep that he had not mentioned it even to himself,
+wanted something just like this? Thirty years ago there were none of the
+presents that there are for children now--no wonderful railways that
+run round the nursery from Monte Carlo to Paris with all the stations
+marked; no dolls that are so like fashionable women that you are given a
+manicure set with them to keep their nails tidy; no miniature motor-cars
+that run of themselves and go for miles round the floor without being
+wound up. Jeremy knew none of these things, and was the happier that he
+did not. To such a boy such a village was a miracle.... It had not come
+from Germany, as Aunt Amy said, but from heaven. But it was even more
+of Uncle Samuel than the village that he was thinking. When they
+started--Helen, Mary and he in charge of the Jampot--upon their
+afternoon walk, he was still asking himself the same questions. How had
+Uncle Samuel known so exactly? Had it been a great trouble to bring from
+so far away? Had Uncle Samuel thought it bad of him not to thank him?
+
+He was lost in such considerations when the Jampot inquired of him the
+way that their walk should take--it was his choice because it was his
+Birthday. He had no choice. There was one walk that far exceeded all
+others in glory, straight down Orange Street, straight again through the
+Market, past the Assembly Rooms and the Town Hall, past the flower and
+fruit stalls, and the old banana woman under the green umbrella and
+the toy stall with coloured balloons, the china dogs and the nodding
+donkeys, up the High Street, into the cobble-stones of the Close, whence
+one could look down, between the houses on to the orchards, round the
+Cathedral with the meadows, Pol Meads sloping down to the river, so
+through Orchard Lane into Orange Street once again.
+
+Such a walk combined every magic and delight known to the heart of man,
+but it was not generally allowed, because Jeremy would drag past the
+shops, the stalls in the Market Place and the walk behind the Cathedral,
+whence one might sometimes see boats on the river, sheep and cows in the
+meads, and, in their proper season, delight of delights--lambs.
+
+They set out...
+
+Thirty years ago the winter weather in Polchester was wonderful. Now,
+of course, there are no hard winters, no frost, no snow, no waits, no
+snowmen, and no skating on the Pol. Then there were all those things.
+To-day was of a hard, glittering frost; the sun, like a round, red
+lacquer tray, fell heavily, slowly through a faint pale sky that was
+not strong enough to sustain it. The air had the cold, sweet twang of
+peppermints in the throat. Polchester was a painted town upon a blue
+screen, the Cathedral towers purple against the sky; the air was scented
+with burning leaves, and cries from the town rose up clear and hard,
+lingering and falling like notes of music. Somewhere they were playing
+football, and the shouting was distant and regular like the tramp of
+armed men. “Three” struck the Cathedral clock, as though it were calling
+“Open Sesame.” Other lesser clocks repeated the challenge cry through
+the town. “Woppley--Woppley--Why!” sung the man who was selling skins
+down Orange Street. The sky, turning slowly from blue to gold, shone
+mysteriously through the glass of the street lamps, and the sun began to
+wrap itself in tints of purple and crocus and iris.
+
+“Woppley--Woppley--Why!” screamed the skin-man suddenly appearing at the
+top of the street.
+
+“Now 'urry, Master Jeremy,” said the Jampot, “or we shall never get
+'ome this night, and I might have known you'd choose the longest walk
+possible. Come along, Miss Mary, now--none of that dawdling.”
+
+Jeremy, in his H.M.S. Adventure's cap and rough blue navy coat, felt
+himself superior to the Jampot, so he only said, “Oh, don't bother,
+Nurse,” and then in the same breath, “I'll run you down the hill, Mary,”
+ and before anyone could say a word there they were at the bottom of
+Orange Street, as though they had fallen into a well. The sun was gone,
+the golden horizon was gone--only the purple lights began to gather
+about their feet and climb slowly the high black houses.
+
+Mary liked this, because she now had Jeremy to herself. She began
+hurriedly, so that she should lose no time:
+
+“Shall I tell you a story, Jeremy? I've got a new one. Once upon a time
+there were three little boys, and they lived in a wood, and an old witch
+ate them, and the Princess who had heaps of jewellery and a white horse
+and a lovely gold dress came, and it was snowing and the witch--”
+
+This was always Mary's way. She loved to tell Jeremy interesting
+stories, and he did not mind because he did not listen and could
+meanwhile think his own thoughts.
+
+His chief decision arrived at as he marched along was that he would keep
+the village to himself; no one else should put their fingers into it,
+arrange the orchard with the coloured trees, decide upon the names of
+the Noah family, settle the village street in its final order, ring
+the bell of the church, or milk the cows. He alone would do all these
+things. And, so considering, he seemed to himself very like God. God,
+he supposed, could pull Polchester about, root out a house here, another
+there, knock the Assembly Rooms down and send a thunderbolt on to the
+apple woman's umbrella. Well, then--so could he with his village. He
+walked swollen with pride. He arrived at the first Island of Circe,
+namely, the window of Mr. Thompson, the jeweller in Market Street,
+pressed his nose to the pane, and refused to listen when the Jampot
+suggested that he should move forward.
+
+He could see the diamonds like drops of water in the sun, and the pearls
+like drops of milk, and the rubies like drops of blood, but it was not
+of diamonds, pearls or rubies that he was thinking--he thought only of
+his village. He would ring the church bell, and then all the Noah family
+should start out of the door, down the garden, up the village street...
+It did not matter if one of the younger Noahs should be lazy and wish to
+stay at home beneath the flowering trees of the orchard. She would not
+be allowed... He was as God.. . He was as God... The butcher should
+go (if he was not stuck to his shop), and even some of his cows might
+go.... He was as God...
+
+He heard Mary's voice in his ear.
+
+“And after that they all ate chocolates with white cream and red cream,
+and they sucked it off pins, and there were hard bits and soft bits, and
+the Princess (she was a frog now. You remember, don't you, Jeremy? The
+witch turned her) hotted the oven like cook has, with black doors, and
+hotted it and hotted it, but suddenly there was a noise--”
+
+And, on the other side, the Jampot's voice: “You naughty boy, stoppin'
+'ere for everyone to see, just because it's your birthday, which I wish
+there wasn't no birthdays, nor there wouldn't be if I had my way.”
+
+Jeremy turned from Mr. Thompson's window, a scornful smile on his face:
+
+“I'm bigger'n you, Nurse,” he said. “If I said out loud, 'I won't go,' I
+wouldn't go, and no one could make me.”
+
+“Well, come along, then,” said Nurse.
+
+“Don't be so stupid, Jerry,” said Helen calmly. “If a policeman came and
+said you had to go home you'd have to go.”
+
+“No I wouldn't,” said Jeremy.
+
+“Then they'd put you in prison.”
+
+“They could.”
+
+“They'd hang you, perhaps.”
+
+“They could,” replied Jeremy.
+
+Farther than this argument cannot go, so Helen shrugged her shoulders
+and said: “You are silly.”
+
+And they all moved forward.
+
+He found then that this new sense or God-like power detracted a little
+from the excitements of the Market Place, although the flower-stall was
+dazzling with flowers; there was a new kind of pig that lifted its tail
+and lowered it again on the toy stall, and the apple-woman was as fat as
+ever and had thick clumps of yellow bananas hanging most richly around
+her head. They ascended the High Street and reached the Close. It was
+half-past three, and the Cathedral bells had begun to ring for evensong.
+All the houses in the Close were painted with a pale yellow light;
+across the long green Cathedral lawn thin black shadows like the fingers
+of giants pointed to the Cathedral door. All was so silent here that the
+bells danced against the houses and back again, the echoes lingering in
+the high elms and mingling with the placid cooing of the rooks.
+
+“There's Mrs. Sampson,” said Jeremy. “Aunt Amy says she's a wicked
+woman. Do you think she's a wicked woman, Nurse?” He gazed at the stout
+figure with interest. If he were truly God he would turn her into a
+rabbit. This thought amused him, and he began to laugh.
+
+“You naughty boy; now come along, do,” said the Jampot, who distrusted
+laughter in Jerry.
+
+“I'll ring the bells when I grow up,” he said, “and I'll ring them in
+the middle of the night, so that everyone will have to go to church when
+they don't want to. I'll be able to do what I like when I grow up.”
+
+“No, you won't,” said Helen. “Father and Mother can't do what they
+like.”
+
+“Yes they can,” said Jeremy.
+
+“No they can't,” answered Helen, “or they would.”
+
+“So they do,” said Jeremy--“silly.”
+
+“Silly yourself,” said Helen very calmly, because she knew very well
+that she was not silly.
+
+“Now, children, stop it, do,” said the Jampot.
+
+Jeremy's sense of newly received power reached its climax when they
+walked round the Close and reached the back of the Cathedral. I know
+that now, both for Jeremy and me, that prospect has dwindled into
+its proper grown-up proportions, but how can a man, be he come to
+threescore and ten and more, ever forget the size, the splendour, the
+stupendous extravagance of that early vision?
+
+Jeremy saw that day the old fragment of castle wall, the green expanse
+falling like a sheeted waterfall from the Cathedral heights, the blue
+line of river flashing in the evening sun between the bare-boughed
+trees, the long spaces of black shadow spreading slowly over the colour,
+as though it were all being rolled up and laid away for another day;
+the brown frosty path of the Rope Walk, the farther bank climbing into
+fields and hedges, ending in the ridge of wood, black against the golden
+sky. And all so still! As the children stood there they could catch
+nestlings' faint cries, stirrings of dead leaves and twigs, as birds
+and beasts moved to their homes; the cooing of the rooks about the black
+branches seemed to promise that this world should be for ever tranquil,
+for ever cloistered and removed; the sun, red and flaming above the dark
+wood, flung white mists hither and thither to veil its departure. The
+silence deepened, the last light flamed on the river and died upon the
+hill.
+
+“Now, children, come along do,” said the Jampot who had been held
+in spite of herself, and would pay for it, she knew, in rheumatism
+to-morrow. It was then that Jeremy's God-flung sense of power, born
+from that moment early in the day when he had sat in the wicker chair,
+reached its climax. He stood there, his legs apart, looking upon the
+darkening world and felt that he could do anything--anything...
+
+At any rate, there was one thing that he could do, disobey the Jampot.
+
+“I'm not coming,” he said, “till I choose.”
+
+“You wicked boy!” she cried, her temper rising with the evening chills,
+her desire for a cup of hot tea, and an aching longing for a comfortable
+chair. “When everyone's been so good to you to-day and the things you've
+been given and all--why, it's a wicked shame.”
+
+The Jampot, who was a woman happily without imagination, saw a naughty
+small boy spoiled and needing the slipper.
+
+A rook, taking a last look at the world before retiring to rest,
+watching from his leafless bough, saw a mortal spirit defying the
+universe, and sympathised with it.
+
+“I shall tell your mother,” said the Jampot. “Now come, Master Jeremy,
+be a good boy.”
+
+“Oh, don't bother, Nurse,” he answered impatiently. “You're such a
+fuss.”
+
+She realised in that moment that he was suddenly beyond her power, that
+he would never be within it again. She had nursed him for eight years,
+she had loved him in her own way; she, dull perhaps in the ways of
+the world, but wise in the ways of nurses, ways that are built up of
+surrender and surrender, gave him, then and there, to the larger life...
+
+“You may behave as you like, Master Jeremy,” she said. “It won't be for
+long that I'll have the dealing with you, praise be. You'll be going to
+school next September, and then we'll see what'll happen to your wicked
+pride.”
+
+“School!” he turned upon her, his eyes wide and staring.
+
+“School!” he stared at them all.
+
+The world tumbled from him. In his soul was a confusion of triumph and
+dismay, of excitement and loneliness, of the sudden falling from him of
+all old standards, old horizons, of pride and humility... How little
+now was the Village to him. He looked at them to see whether they could
+understand. They could not.
+
+Very quietly he followed them home. His birthday had achieved its
+climax...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY DOG
+
+
+I
+
+
+That winter of Jeremy's eighth birthday was famous for its snow.
+Glebeshire has never yielded to the wishes of its children in the matter
+of snowy Christmases, and Polchester has the reputation of muggy warmth
+and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions were fulfilled
+in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies were treated to a
+present of snow on so fine a scale that certainly for the rest of their
+days they will go about saying: “Ah, you should see the winters we used
+to have when we were children...”
+
+The snow began on the very day after Jeremy's birthday, coming down
+doubtfully, slowly, little grey flakes against a grey sky, then
+sparkling white, then vanishing flashes of moisture on a wet,
+unsympathetic soil. That day the snow did not lie; and for a week it did
+not come again; then with a whirl it seized the land, and for two
+days and nights did not loosen its grip. From the nursery windows the
+children watched it, their noses making little rings on the window-pane,
+their delighted eyes snatching fascinating glimpses of figures tossed
+through the storm, cabs beating their way, the rabbit-skin man, the
+milkman, the postman, brave adventurers all, fighting, as it seemed, for
+their very lives.
+
+For two days the children did not leave the house, and the natural
+result of that was that on the second afternoon tempers were, like so
+many dogs, straining, tugging, pulling at their chains.
+
+It could not be denied that Jeremy had been tiresome to everyone since
+the afternoon when he had heard the news of his going to school next
+September. It had seemed to him a tremendous event, the Beginning of the
+End. To the others, who lived in the immediate present, it was a crisis
+so remote as scarcely to count at all. Mary would have liked to be
+sentimental about it, but from this she was sternly prevented. There was
+then nothing more to be said...
+
+Jeremy was suddenly isolated from them all. His destiny was peculiar.
+They were girls, he was a boy. They understood neither his fears nor his
+ambitions; he needed terribly a companion. The snow, shutting them in,
+laughed at their struggles against monotony. The nursery clock struck
+three and they realised that two whole hours must pass before the next
+meal. Mary, her nose red from pressing on the window-pane, her eyes
+gazing through her huge spectacles wistfully at Jeremy, longed to
+suggest that she should read aloud to him. She knew that he hated it;
+she pretended to herself that she did not know.
+
+Jeremy stared desperately at Helen who was sitting, dignified and
+collected, in the wicker chair hemming a minute handkerchief.
+
+“We might play Pirates,” Jeremy said with a little cough, the better to
+secure her attention. There was no answer.
+
+“Or there's the hut in the wood--if anyone likes it better,” he added
+politely. He did not know what was the matter. Had the Jampot not told
+him about school he would at this very moment be playing most happily
+with his village. It spread out there before him on the nursery floor,
+the Noah family engaged upon tea in the orchard, the butcher staring
+with fixed gaze from the door of his shop, three cows and a sheep
+absorbed in the architecture of the church.
+
+He sighed, then said again: “Perhaps Pirates would be better.”
+
+Still Helen did not reply. He abandoned the attempted control of his
+passions.
+
+“It's very rude,” he said, “not to answer when gentlemen speak to you.”
+
+“I don't see any gentlemen,” answered Helen quietly, without raising her
+eyes, which was, as she knew, a provoking habit.
+
+“Yes, you do,” almost screamed Jeremy. “I'm one.”
+
+“You're not,” continued Helen; “you're only eight. Gentlemen must be
+over twenty like Father or Mr. Jellybrand.”
+
+“I hate Mr. Jellybrand and I hate you,” replied Jeremy.
+
+“I don't care,” said Helen.
+
+“Yes, you do,” said Jeremy, then suddenly, as though even a good quarrel
+were not worth while on this heavily burdened afternoon, he said gently:
+“You might play Pirates, Helen. You can be Sir Roger.”
+
+“I've got this to finish.”
+
+“It's a dirty old thing,” continued Jeremy, pursuing an argument, “and
+it'll be dirtier soon, and the Jampot says you do all the stitches
+wrong. I wish I was at school.”
+
+“I wish you were,” said Helen.
+
+There was a pause after this. Jeremy went sadly back to his window-seat.
+Mary felt that her moment had arrived. Sniffing, as was her habit when
+she wanted something very badly, she said in a voice that was little
+more than a whisper:
+
+“It would be fun, wouldn't it, perhaps if I read something, Jeremy?”
+
+Jeremy was a gentleman, although he was only eight. He looked at her and
+saw behind the spectacles eyes beseeching his permission.
+
+“Well, it wouldn't be much fun,” he said, “but it's all beastly this
+afternoon, anyway.”
+
+“Can I sit on the window too?” asked Mary.
+
+“Not too close, because it tickles my ear, but you can if you like.”
+
+She hurried across to the bookshelf. “There's 'Stumps' and 'Rags and
+Tatters,' and 'Engel the Fearless,' and 'Herr Baby' and 'Alice' and--”
+
+“'Alice' is best,” said Jeremy, sighing. “You know it better than the
+others.” He curled himself into a corner of the window-seat. From his
+position there he had a fine view. Immediately below him was the garden,
+white and grey under the grey sky, the broken fountain standing up like
+a snow man in the middle of it. The snow had ceased to fall and a great
+stillness held the world.
+
+Beyond the little iron gate of the garden that always sneezed “Tishoo”
+ when you closed it, was the top of Orange Street; then down the hill
+on the right was the tower of his father's church; exactly opposite the
+gate was the road that led to the Orchards, and on the right of that was
+the Polchester High School for Young Ladies, held in great contempt by
+Jeremy, the more that Helen would shortly be a day-boarder there, would
+scream with the other girls, and, worst of all, would soon be seen
+walking with her arm round another girl's neck, chattering and eating
+sweets...
+
+The whole world seemed deserted. No colour, no movement, no sound. He
+sighed once more--“I'd like to eat jam and jam--lots of it,” he thought.
+“It would be fun to be sick.”
+
+Mary arrived and swung herself up on to the window-seat.
+
+“It's the 'Looking Glass' one. I hope you don't mind,” she said
+apprehensively.
+
+“Oh, it's all right,” he allowed. He flung a glance back to the lighted
+nursery. It seemed by contrast with that grey world outside to blaze
+with colour; the red-painted ships on the wallpaper, the bright lights
+and shadows of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the salmon fronts of
+the doll's house, the green and red of the village on the floor with the
+flowery trees, the blue tablecloth, the shining brass coal-scuttle all
+alive and sparkling in the flames and shadows of the fire, caught and
+held by the fine gold of the higher fender. Beyond that dead white--soon
+it would be dark, the curtains would be drawn, and still there would be
+nothing to do. He sighed again.
+
+“It's a nice bit about the shop,” said Mary. Jeremy said nothing, so she
+began. She started at a run:
+
+“She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have '“--sniff, sniff--“,'
+sud-den-ly suddenly wra-wra-w-r-a-p-p-e-d wrapped--'”
+
+“Wrapped?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“I don't know,” said Mary, rubbing her nose, “what it means, but perhaps
+we'll see presently, herself up in w-o-o-l wool. 'Alice rubbed her eyes
+and looked again she couldn't--'”
+
+“'Looked again she couldn't'?” asked Jeremy. “It should be, 'she
+couldn't look again.'”
+
+“Oh, there's a stop,” said Mary. “I didn't see. After 'again' there's a
+stop. 'She couldn't make out what had happened at all--'”
+
+“I can't either,” said Jeremy crossly. “It would be better perhaps if I
+read it myself.”
+
+“It will be all right in a minute,” said Mary confidently. “'Was she in
+a shop? And was that really--was it really a ship that was sitting on
+the counter?'” she finished with a run.
+
+“A what?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“A ship--”
+
+“A ship! How could it sit on a counter?” he asked.
+
+“Oh no, it's a sheep. How silly I am!” Mary exclaimed.
+
+“You do read badly,” he agreed frankly. “I never can understand
+nothing.” And it was at that very moment that he saw the Dog.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He had been staring down into the garden with a gaze half abstracted,
+half speculative, listening with one ear to Mary, with the other to
+the stir of the fire, the heavy beat of the clock and the rustlings of
+Martha the canary.
+
+He watched the snowy expanse of garden, the black gate, the road beyond.
+A vast wave of pale grey light, the herald of approaching dusk, swept
+the horizon, the snowy roofs, the streets, and Jeremy felt some contact
+with the strange air, the mysterious omens that the first snows of the
+winter spread about the land. He watched as though he were waiting for
+something to happen.
+
+The creature came up very slowly over the crest of Orange Street. No
+one else was in sight, no cart, no horse, no weather-beaten wayfarer. At
+first the dog was only a little black smudge against the snow; then,
+as he arrived at the Coles' garden-gate, Jeremy could see him very
+distinctly. He was, it appeared, quite alone; he had been, it was
+evident, badly beaten by the storm. Intended by nature to be a rough
+and hairy dog, he now appeared before God and men a shivering battered
+creature, dripping and wind-tossed, bedraggled and bewildered. And
+yet, even in that first distant glimpse, Jeremy discerned a fine
+independence. He was a short stumpy dog, in no way designed for
+dignified attitudes and patronising superiority; nevertheless, as he now
+wandered slowly up the street, his nose was in the air and he said to
+the whole world: “The storm may have done its best to defeat me--it has
+failed. I am as I was. I ask charity of no man. I know what is due to
+me.”
+
+It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a
+slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot, and
+the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions had been
+resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation for sulkiness
+had been soundly established with all his circle.
+
+Mary was reading...! “'an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting,
+and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair
+of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!'”
+
+He touched her arm and whispered:
+
+“I say, Mary, stop a minute--look at that dog down there.”
+
+They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the gate;
+it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very slowly but
+with real dignity continued its way up the road.
+
+“Poor thing,” said Jeremy. “It IS in a mess.” Then to their astonishment
+the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again as though it
+had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as though it were not
+wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the gate.
+
+“Oh,” said Mary and Jeremy together.
+
+“It's like Mother,” said Jeremy, “when she's going to see someone and
+isn't sure whether it's the right house.”
+
+Then, most marvellous of unexpected climaxes, the dog suddenly began to
+squeeze itself between the bottom bar of the gate and the ground. The
+interval was fortunately a large one; a moment later the animal was in
+the Coles' garden.
+
+The motives that led Jeremy to behave as he did are uncertain. It may
+have been something to do with the general boredom of the afternoon,
+it may have been that he felt pity for the bedraggled aspect of
+the animal--most probable reason of all, was that devil-may-care
+independence flung up from the road, as it were, expressly at himself.
+
+The dog obviously did not feel any great respect for the Cole household.
+He wandered about the garden, sniffing and smelling exactly as though
+the whole place belonged to him, and a ridiculous stump of tail,
+unsubdued by the weather, gave him the ludicrous dignity of a Malvolio.
+
+“I'm going down,” whispered Jeremy, flinging a cautious glance at Helen
+who was absorbed in her sewing.
+
+Mary's eyes grew wide with horror and admiration. “You're not going
+out,” she whispered. “In the snow. Oh, Jeremy. They WILL be angry.”
+
+“I don't care,” whispered Jeremy back again. “They can be.”
+
+Indeed, before Mary's frightened whisper he had not intended to do more
+than creep down into the pantry and watch the dog at close range; now
+it was as though Mary had challenged him. He knew that it was the most
+wicked thing that he could do--to go out into the snow without a coat
+and in his slippers. He might even, according to Aunt Amy, die of
+it, but as death at present meant no more to him than a position of
+importance and a quantity of red-currant jelly and chicken, THAT
+prospect did not deter him. He left the room so quietly that Helen did
+not even lift her eyes.
+
+Then upon the landing he waited and listened. The house had all the
+lighted trembling dusk of the snowy afternoon; there was no sound save
+the ticking of the clocks. He might come upon the Jampot at any moment,
+but this was just the hour when she liked to drink her cup of tea in the
+kitchen; he knew from deep and constant study every movement of her
+day. Fortune favoured him. He reached without trouble the little dark
+corkscrew servants' staircase. Down this he crept, and found himself
+beside the little gardener's door. Although here there was only snow-lit
+dusk, he felt for the handle of the lock, found it, turned it, and was,
+at once, over the steps, into the garden.
+
+Here, with a vengeance, he felt the full romance and danger of his
+enterprise. It was horribly cold; he had been in the nursery for two
+whole days, wrapped up and warm, and now the snowy world seemed to
+leap up at him and drag him down as though into an icy well. Mysterious
+shadows hovered over the garden; the fountain pointed darkly against the
+sky, and he could feel from the feathery touches upon his face that the
+snow had begun to fall again.
+
+He moved forward a few steps; the house was so dark behind him, the
+world so dim and uncertain in front of him, that for a moment his heart
+failed him. He might have to search the whole garden for the dog.
+
+Then he heard a sniff, felt something wet against his leg--he had almost
+stepped upon the animal. He bent down and stroked its wet coat. The dog
+stood quite still, then moved forward towards the house, sniffed at the
+steps, at last walked calmly through the open door as though the house
+belonged to him. Jeremy followed, closed the door behind him; then there
+they were in the little dark passage with the boy's heart beating like a
+drum, his teeth chattering, and a terrible temptation to sneeze hovering
+around him. Let him reach the nursery and establish the animal there and
+all might be well, but let them be discovered, cold and shivering, in
+the passage, and out the dog would be flung. He knew so exactly what
+would happen. He could hear the voices in the kitchen. He knew that they
+were sitting warm there by the fire, but that at any moment Jampot might
+think good to climb the stairs and see “what mischief they children were
+up to.” Everything depended upon the dog. Did he bark or whine, out into
+the night he must go again, probably to die in the cold. But Jeremy,
+the least sentimental of that most sentimental race the English, was too
+intent upon his threatened sneeze to pay much attention to these awful
+possibilities.
+
+He took off his slippers and began to climb the stairs, the dog close
+behind him, very grave and dignified, in spite of the little trail of
+snow and water that he left in his track. The nursery door was reached,
+pushed softly open, and the startled gaze of Mary and Helen fell
+wide-eyed upon the adventurer and his prize.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The dog went directly to the fire; there, sitting in the very middle of
+the golden cockatoos on the Turkey rug, he began to lick himself. He did
+this by sitting very square on three legs and spreading out the fourth
+stiff and erect, as though it had been not a leg at all but something of
+wood or iron. The melted snow poured off him, making a fine little pool
+about the golden cockatoos. He must have been a strange-looking animal
+at any time, being built quite square like a toy dog, with a great
+deal of hair, very short legs, and a thick stubborn neck; his eyes were
+brown, and now could be seen very clearly because the hair that usually
+covered them was plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day
+his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore
+a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in
+one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs,
+a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want
+to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his
+great-great-great-grandson “Jacob,” described in the Chronicles of the
+Beaminster Family.
+
+The children meanwhile gazed, and for a long time no one said a word.
+Then Helen said: “Father WILL be angry.”
+
+But she did not mean it. The three were, by the entrance of the dog,
+instantly united into an offensive and defensive alliance. They knew
+well that shortly an attack from the Outside World must be delivered,
+and without a word spoken or a look exchanged they were agreed to defend
+both themselves and the dog with all the strength in their power. They
+had always wanted a dog; they had been prevented by the stupid and
+selfish arguments of uncomprehending elders.
+
+Now this dog was here; they would keep him.
+
+“Oh, he's perfectly sweet,” suddenly said Helen.
+
+The dog paused for a moment from his ablutions, raised his eyes, and
+regarded her with a look of cold contempt, then returned to his task.
+
+“Don't be so silly,” said Jeremy. “You know you always hate it when Aunt
+Amy says things like that about you.”
+
+“Did Nurse see?” asked Mary.
+
+“No, she didn't,” said Jeremy; “but she'll be up in a minute.”
+
+“What are you going to do?” asked Mary her mouth wide open.
+
+“Do? Keep him, of course,” said Jeremy stoutly; at the same time
+his heart a little failed him as he saw the pool of the water slowly
+spreading and embracing one cockatoo after another in its ruinous flood.
+
+“We ought to wipe him with a towel,” said Jeremy; “if we could get him
+dry before Nurse comes up she mightn't say so much.”
+
+But alas, it was too late for any towel; the door opened, and the Jampot
+entered, humming a hymn, very cheerful and rosy from the kitchen fire
+and an abundant series of chronicles of human failings and misfortunes.
+The hymn ceased abruptly. She stayed there where she was, “frozen into
+an image,” as she afterwards described it. She also said: “You could
+'ave knocked me down with a feather.”
+
+The dog did not look at her, but crocked under him the leg that had been
+stiff like a ramrod and spread out another. The children did not speak.
+
+“Well!” For a moment words failed her; then she began, her hands spread
+out as though she was addressing a Suffragette meeting in Trafalgar
+Square. (She knew, happy woman, nothing of Suffragettes.) “Of all the
+things, and it's you, Master Jeremy, that 'as done it, as anyone might
+have guessed by the way you've been be'aving this last fortnight, and
+what's come over you is more nor I nor anyone else can tell, which I was
+saying only yesterday to your mother that it's more than one body
+and pair of hands is up to the managing of now you've got so wild and
+wicked; and wherever from did you get the dirty animal dropping water
+all over the nursery carpet and smelling awful, I'll be bound, which
+anyone can see that's got eyes, and you'd know what your father will
+do to you when he knows of it, and so he shall, as sure as my name is
+Lizzie Preston.... Go on out, you ugly, dirty animal-ough, you 'orrible
+creature you. I'll--”
+
+But her advance was stopped. Jeremy stopped it. Standing in front of the
+dog, his short thick legs spread defiantly apart, his fists clenched, he
+almost shouted:
+
+“You shan't touch him.... No, you shan't. I don't care. He shan't go out
+again and die. You're a cruel, wicked woman.”
+
+The Jampot gasped. Never, no, never in all her long nursing experience
+had she been so defied, so insulted.
+
+Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being
+that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not
+reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show.
+
+She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked. She began:
+“The moment your mother comes I give her notice. To think that all these
+years I've slaved and slaved only to be told such things by a boy as--”
+
+Then a very dramatic thing occurred. The door opened, just as it might
+in the third act of a play by M. Sardou, and revealed the smiling faces
+of Mrs. Cole, Miss Amy Trefusis and the Rev. William Jellybrand, Senior
+Curate of St. James's, Orange Street.
+
+Mr. Jellybrand had arrived, as he very often did, to tea. He had
+expressed a desire, as he very often did, to see the “dear children.”
+ Mrs. Cole, liking to show her children to visitors, even to such regular
+and ordinary ones as Mr. Jellybrand, at once was eager to gratify his
+desire.
+
+“We'll catch them just before their tea,” she said happily.
+
+There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of our Press and stage to
+caricature our curates; this tendency I would willingly avoid. It should
+be easy enough to do, as I am writing about Polchester, a town that
+simply abounds--and also abounded thirty years ago--in curates of the
+most splendid and manly type. But, unfortunately, Mr. Jellybrand was
+not one of these. I, myself, remember him very well, and can see him now
+flinging his thin, black, and--as it seemed to me then--gigantic figure
+up Orange Street, his coat flapping behind him, his enormous boots
+flapping in front of him, and his huge hands flapping on each side of
+him like a huge gesticulating crow.
+
+He had, the Polchester people who liked him said, “a rich voice.” The
+others who did not like him called him “an affected ass.” He ran up and
+down the scale like this:
+
+    ______________________________________________________________
+                                 Mrs.
+    ______________________________________________________________
+                        dear
+    ______________________________________________________________
+                  My
+    ______________________________________________________________
+                                        Cole.
+    ______________________________________________________________
+
+
+and his blue cheeks looked colder than any iceberg. But then I must
+confess that I am prejudiced. I did not like him; no children did.
+
+The Cole children hated him. Jeremy because he had damp hands, Helen
+because he never looked at her, Mary because he once said to her,
+“Little girls must play as well as work, you know.” He always talked
+down to us as though we were beings of another and inferior planet. He
+called it, “Getting on with the little ones.” No, he was not popular
+with us.
+
+He stood on this particular and dramatic occasion in front of the
+group in the doorway and stared--as well he might. Unfortunately the
+situation, already bad enough, was aggravated by this dark prominence of
+Mr. Jellybrand. It cannot be found in any chronicles that Mr. Jellybrand
+and the dog had met before; it is simply a fact that the dog,
+raising his eyes at the opening of the door and catching sight of the
+black-coated figure, forgot instantly his toilet, rose dripping from his
+rug, and advanced growling, his lips back, his ears out, his tail erect,
+towards the door. Then everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who
+had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken
+for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered
+a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed
+placidity, said: “Nurse... Nurse...” Jeremy cried: “It's all right, he
+wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly.” Mary and Helen together
+moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be
+heard in a confused wail: “Not me, Mum... Wickedest boy... better give
+notice... as never listens... dog... dog...”
+
+The animal, however, showed himself now, as at that first earlier view
+of him, indifferent to his surroundings. He continued his advance and
+then, being only a fraction of an inch from Mr. Jellybrand's tempting
+gleaming black trousers, he stopped, crouched like a tiger, and with
+teeth still bared continued his kettle-like reverberations. Aunt
+Amy, who hated dogs, loved Mr. Jellybrand, and was not in the least
+sentimental when her personal safety was in danger, cried in a shrill
+voice: “But take it away. Take it away. Alice, tell him. It's going to
+bite Mr. Jellybrand.”
+
+The dog raised one eye from his dreamy contemplation of the trousers and
+glanced at Aunt Amy; from that moment may be dated a feud which death
+only concluded. This dog was not a forgetful dog.
+
+Jeremy advanced. “It's all right,” he cried scornfully. “He wouldn't
+bite anything.” He bent down, took the animal by the scruff of the neck,
+and proceeded to lead it back to the fire. The animal went without a
+moment's hesitation; it would be too much to say that it exchanged a
+wink with Jeremy, but something certainly passed between them. Back
+again on the Turkey rug he became master of the situation. He did the
+only thing possible: he disregarded entirely the general company and
+addressed himself to the only person of ultimate importance--namely,
+Mrs. Cole. He lay down on all fours, looked up directly into her face,
+bared his teeth this time in a smile and not in a growl, and wagged his
+farcical tail.
+
+Mrs. Cole's psychology was of the simplest: if you were nice to her she
+would do anything for you, but in spite of all her placidity she was
+sometimes hurt in her most sensitive places. These wounds she never
+displayed, and no one ever knew of them, and indeed they passed
+very quickly--but there they occasionally were. Now on what slender
+circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon
+Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed
+with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing
+meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at
+the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the
+nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings at the Rectory; she
+liked the cheerful chatter, the hospitality, the gentle scandal and her
+own position as hostess.
+
+She did not like--she never liked--Miss Maple, who was always pushing
+herself forward, criticising and back-biting. Mr. Jellybrand should not
+have settled this without consulting her. He had taken it for granted
+that she would agree. He had said: “I agreed with Miss Maple that it
+would be better to have it at her house. I'm sure you will think as
+I do.” Why should he be sure? Was he not forgetting his position a
+little?...
+
+Kindest woman in the world, she had seen with a strange un-Christian
+pleasure the dog's advance upon the black trousers. Then Mr. Jellybrand
+had been obviously afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she too had been
+afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she was not mistress in her house,
+that she could be browbeaten by her sister and her nurse.
+
+She smiled at him. “There's no reason to be afraid, Mr. Jellybrand. ...
+He's such a little dog.”
+
+Then the dog smiled at her.
+
+“Poor little thing,” she said. “He must have nearly died in the snow.”
+
+Thus Miss Maple, bitterest of spinsters, influenced, all unwitting, the
+lives not only of a dog and a curate, but of the entire Cole family, and
+through them, of endless generations both of dogs and men as yet unborn.
+Miss Maple, sitting in her little yellow-curtained parlour drinking,
+in jaundiced contentment, her afternoon's cup of tea, was, of course,
+unaware of this. A good thing that she was unaware--she was quite
+conceited enough already.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+After that smiling judgment of Mrs. Cole's, affairs were quickly
+settled.
+
+“Of course it can only be for the night, children. Father will arrange
+something in the morning. Poor little thing. Where did you find him?”
+
+“We saw him from the window,” said Jeremy quickly, “and he was shivering
+like anything, so we called him in to warm him.”
+
+“My dear Alice, you surely don't mean--” began Aunt Amy, and the Jampot
+said: “I really think, Mum-,” and Mr. Jellybrand, in his rich voice,
+murmured: “Is it quite wise, dear Mrs. Cole, do you think?”
+
+With thoughts of Miss Maple she smiled upon them all.
+
+“Oh, for one night, I think we can manage. He seems a clean little dog,
+and really we can't turn him out into the snow at once. It would be
+too cruel. But mind, children, it's only for one night. He looks a good
+little dog.”
+
+When the “quality” had departed, Jeremy's mind was in a confused
+condition of horror and delight. Such a victory as he had won over the
+Jampot, a victory that was a further stage in the fight for independence
+begun on his birthday, might have very awful qualities. There would
+begin now one of the Jampot's sulks--moods well known to the Cole
+family, and lasting from a day to a week, according to the gravity of
+the offence. Yes, they had already begun. There she sat in her chair by
+the fire, sewing, sewing, her fat, roly-poly face carved into a parody
+of deep displeasure. Life would be very unpleasant now. No tops of eggs,
+no marmalade on toast, no skins of milk, no stories of “when I was a
+young girl,” no sitting up five minutes “later,” no stopping in the
+market-place for a talk with the banana woman--only stern insistence on
+every detail of daily life; swift judgment were anything left undone or
+done wrong.
+
+Jeremy sighed; yes, it would be horrid and, for the sake of the world in
+general, which meant Mary and Helen, he must see what a little diplomacy
+would do. Kneeling down by the dog, he looked up into her face with the
+gaze of ingenuous innocence.
+
+“You wouldn't have wanted the poor little dog to have died in the snow,
+would you, Nurse?... It might, you know. It won't be any trouble, I
+expect--”
+
+There was no reply. He could hear Mary and Helen drawing in their
+breaths with excited attention.
+
+“Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older--and
+we are older now.”
+
+Still no word.
+
+“We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember once
+you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you cried
+when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how your mother
+said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and sent it away,
+and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said that p'r'aps we'll
+have one one day?--and now we've got one.”
+
+He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at
+them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral tones:
+
+“Either it goes, or I go.”
+
+The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go?... They could
+hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot go?
+
+“Oh, Nurse, would you really?” whispered Mary. This innocent remark of
+Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than was,
+perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of colour
+rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have said is
+uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed
+by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle
+Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly
+fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile.
+
+“Excuse me one moment,” he said; “I hear you have a dog.”
+
+The Jampot rose, as good manners demanded, but said nothing.
+
+“Where is the creature?” he asked.
+
+The new addition to the Cole family had finished his washing; the
+blazing fire had almost dried him, and his hair stuck out now from his
+body in little stiff prickles, hedgehog fashion, giving him a truly
+original appearance. His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador,
+and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish
+hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed
+his dignity.
+
+“There he is,” said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of
+delight, at the Jampot. “Isn't he lovely?”
+
+“Lovely. My word!” Uncle Samuel's smile broadened. “He's about the most
+hideous mongrel it's ever been my lot to set eyes on. But he has his
+points. He despises you all, I'm glad to see.”
+
+Jeremy, as usual with Uncle Samuel, was uncertain as to his sincerity.
+
+“He looks a bit funny just now,” he explained. “He's been drying on the
+rug. He'll be all right soon. He wanted to bite Mr. Jellybrand. It was
+funny. Mr. Jellybrand was frightened as anything.”
+
+“Yes, that must have been delightful,” agreed Uncle Samuel. “What's his
+name?”
+
+“We haven't given him one yet. Wouldn't you think of one, Uncle Samuel?”
+
+The uncle considered the dog. The dog, with grave and scornful eyes,
+considered the uncle.
+
+“Well, if you really ask me,” said that gentleman, “if you name him by
+his character I should say Hamlet would be as good as anything.”
+
+“What's Hamlet?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“He isn't anything just now. But he was a prince who Was unhappy because
+he thought so much about himself.”
+
+“Hamlet'll do,” said Jeremy comfortably. “I've never heard of a dog
+called that, but it's easy to say.”
+
+“Well, I must go,” said Uncle Samuel, making one of his usual sudden
+departures. “Glad to have seen the animal. Good-bye.”
+
+He vanished.
+
+“Hamlet,” repeated Jeremy thoughtfully. “I wonder whether he'll like
+that-”
+
+His attention, however, was caught by the Jampot's sudden outburst.
+
+“All of them,” she cried, “supporting you in your wickedness and
+disobedience. I won't 'ave it nor endure it not a minute longer. They
+can 'ave my notice this moment, and I won't take it back, not if they
+ask me on their bended knees--no, I won't--and that's straight.”
+
+For an instant she frowned upon them all--then she was gone, the door
+banging after her.
+
+They gazed at one another.
+
+There was a dreadful silence. Once Mary whispered: “Suppose she really
+does.”
+
+Hamlet only was unmoved.
+
+Ten minutes later, Rose, the housemaid, entered with the tea-things. For
+a little she was silent. Then the three faces raised to hers compelled
+her confidence.
+
+“Nurse has been and given notice,” she said, “and the Missis has
+taken it. She's going at the end of the month. She's crying now in the
+kitchen.”
+
+They were alone again. Mary and Helen looked at Jeremy as though waiting
+to follow his lead. He did not know what to say. There was Tragedy,
+there was Victory, there was Remorse, there was Triumph. He was sorry,
+he was glad. His eyes fell upon Hamlet, who was now stretched out upon
+the rug, his nose between his paws, fast asleep.
+
+Then he looked at his sisters.
+
+“Well,” he said slowly, “it's awfully nice to have a dog--anyway.”
+
+Such is the true and faithful account of Hamlet's entrance into the
+train of the Coles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME
+
+
+I
+
+
+I am sometimes inclined to wonder whether, in very truth, those
+Polchester Christmases of nearly thirty years ago were so marvellous
+as now in retrospect they seem. I can give details of those splendours,
+facts and figures, that to the onlooker are less than nothing at all--a
+sugar elephant in a stocking, a box of pencils on a Christmas tree,
+“Hark, the Herald Angels...” at three in the morning below one's window,
+a lighted plum-pudding, a postman four hours late, his back bent with
+bursting parcels. And it is something further--behind the sugar cherries
+and the paper caps and the lighted tree--that remains to give magic
+to those days; a sense of expectancy, a sense of richness, a sense of
+worship, a visit from the Three Kings who have so seldom come to visit
+one since.
+
+That Christmas of Jeremy's ninth year was one of the best that he ever
+had; it was perhaps the last of the MAGICAL Christmases. After this he
+was to know too much, was to see Father Christmas vanish before a sum
+in arithmetic, and a stocking change into something that “boys who go
+to school never have”--the last of the Christmases of divine magic, when
+the snow fell and the waits sang and the stockings were filled and the
+turkey fattened and the candles blazed and the holly crackled by the
+will of God rather than the power of man. It would be many years before
+he would realise that, after all, in those early days he had been
+right...
+
+A very fat book could be written about all that had happened during that
+wonderful Christmas, how Hamlet the Dog caught a rat to his own immense
+surprise; how the Coles' Christmas dinner was followed by a play acted
+with complete success by the junior members of the family, and it was
+only Mr. Jellybrand the curate who disapproved; how Aunt Amy had a new
+dress in which, by general consent, she looked ridiculous; how Mary,
+owing to the foolish kindness of Mrs. Bartholomew, the Precentor's wife,
+was introduced to the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge and became quite
+impossible in consequence; how Miss Maple had a children's party at
+which there was nothing to eat, so that all the children cried with
+disappointment, and one small boy (the youngest son of the Precentor)
+actually bit Miss Maple; how for two whole days it really seemed that
+there would be skating on The Pool, and everyone bought skates, and
+then, of course, the ice broke, and so on, and so on... there is no end
+to the dramatic incidents of that great sensational time.
+
+The theme that I sing, however, is Jeremy's Progress, and although even
+Hamlet's catching of a rat influenced his development, there was one
+incident of this Christmas that stands out and away from all the others,
+an affair that he will never all his days forget, and that even now, at
+this distance of time and experience, causes his heart to beat roughly
+with the remembered excitement and pleasure.
+
+Several weeks before Christmas there appeared upon the town walls
+and hoardings the pictured announcements of the approaching visit to
+Polchester of Denny's Great Christmas Pantomime “Dick Whittington.”
+ Boxing Night was to see the first performance at our Assembly Rooms,
+and during every afternoon and evening of the next three weeks this
+performance was to be repeated.
+
+A pantomime had, I believe, never visited our town before; there had, of
+course, for many years been the Great Christmas Pantomime at the Theatre
+Royal, Drymouth, but in those days trains were not easy, and if you
+wished to attend an afternoon performance at the Drymouth Theatre you
+must rise very early in the morning by the candle-light and return late
+in the evening, with the cab forgetting to meet you at the station as
+commanded, and the long walk up Orange Street, and a headache and a bad
+temper next day.
+
+It happened naturally then that the majority of the Polchester children
+had never set their inquisitive noses within the doors of a theatre, and
+although the two eldest daughters of the Dean, aged ten and eleven, had
+been once to London and to Drury Lane Theatre, their sense of glory and
+distinction so clouded their powers of accuracy and clarity that we were
+no nearer, by their help and authority, to the understanding of what a
+pantomime might really be.
+
+I can myself recall the glory of those “Dick Whittington” pictures. Just
+above Martin's the pastry-cook's (where they sold lemon biscuits),
+near the Cathedral, there was a big wooden hoarding, and on to this was
+pasted a marvellous representation of Dick and his Cat dining with the
+King of the Zanzibar Islands. The King, a Mulatto, sat with his court
+in a hall with golden pillars, and the rats were to be seen flying in a
+confused flood towards the golden gates, whilst Dick, in red plush and
+diamond buckles, stood in dignified majesty, the Cat at his side. There
+was another wonderful picture of Dick asleep at the Cross Roads, fairies
+watching over him, and London Town in a lighted purple distance--and
+another of the streets of Old London with a comic fat serving man,
+diamond-paned windows, cobblestones and high pointing eaves to the
+houses.
+
+Jeremy saw these pictures for the first time during one of his afternoon
+walks, and returned home in such a state of choking excitement that
+he could not drink his tea. As was ever his way he was silent and
+controlled about the matter, asked very few questions, and although
+he talked to himself a little did not disturb the general peace of the
+nursery. On Mary and Helen the effect of the posters had been less. Mary
+was following the adventures of the May family in “The Daisy Chain,” and
+Helen was making necklaces for herself out of a box of beads that had
+been given her.
+
+When Jeremy said once, “Who was the man in the red trousers with gold
+on them?” no one paid any attention save Hamlet, who wagged his tail,
+looked wise and growled a little.
+
+Who indeed could tell how he ached and longed and desired He had a very
+vague idea as to the nature of a play; they had often dressed up at home
+and pretended to be different things and people, and, of course, he knew
+by heart the whole history of Dick Whittington, but this knowledge
+and experience did not in the least force him to realise that this
+performance of Mr. Denny's was simply a larger, more developed “dressing
+up” and pretending. In some mysterious but nevertheless direct fashion
+Dick Whittington was coming to Polchester. It was just as he had
+heard for a long time of the existence of Aunt Emily who lived in
+Manchester--and then one day she appeared in a black bonnet and a shawl,
+and gave them wet kisses and sixpence apiece.
+
+Dick Whittington was coming, having perhaps heard that Polchester was
+a very jolly place. So might come any day Jack of the Beanstalk,
+Cinderella, Queen Victoria, and God.
+
+There were questions meanwhile that he would like to ask, but he was
+already a victim to that properly English fear of making a fool of
+himself, so he asked nothing. He dragged out his toy village and
+tried to make it a bridge in his imagination between the nursery and
+Whittington's world. As the village opened a door from the nursery, so
+might Whittington open a door from the village.
+
+He considered Hamlet and wondered whether he knew anything about it.
+Hamlet, in spite of his mongrel appearance, was a very clever dog. He
+had his especial corners in the garden, the kitchen and the nursery. He
+never misbehaved, was never in the way, and was able to amuse himself
+for hours together. Although he attached himself quite deliberately to
+Jeremy, he did this in no sentimental fashion, and in his animosities
+towards the Jampot, Aunt Amy and the boy who helped with the boots and
+the knives, he was always restrained and courteous. He did indeed
+growl at Aunt Amy, but always with such a sense of humour that everyone
+(except Aunt Amy) was charmed, and he never actually supported the
+children in their rebellions against the Jampot, although you could see
+that he liked and approved of such things. The Jampot hated him with a
+passion that caused the nursery to quiver with emotion. Was he not the
+cause of her approaching departure, his first appearance having led her
+into a tempest of passion that had caused her to offer a “notice” that
+she had never for an instant imagined would be accepted? Was he not a
+devilish dog who, with, his quiet movements and sly expressions, was
+more than human? “Mark my words,” she said in the kitchen, “there's
+a devil in that there animal, and so they'll find before they're many
+years older--'Amlet indeed--a 'eathenish name and a 'eathenish beast.”
+
+Her enemy had discovered that in one corner of the nursery there were
+signs and symbols that witnessed to something in the nature of a
+mouse or a rat. That nursery corner became the centre of all his more
+adventurous instincts. It happened to be just the corner where the
+Jampot kept her sewing machine, and you would think, if you came to the
+nursery as a stranger, and saw him sitting, his eyes fixed beamingly
+upon the machine, his tail erect, and his body here and there quivering
+a little, that from duties of manly devotion he was protecting the
+Jampot's property. She knew better; she regarded, in some undefined way,
+this continued contemplation by him of her possessions as an ironical
+insult. She did everything possible to drive him from the corner; he
+inevitably returned, and as he always delicately stepped aside when she
+approached, it could not be said that he was in her way. Once she struck
+him; he looked at her in such a fashion that “her flesh crept.”... She
+never struck him again.
+
+For Jeremy he became more and more of a delight. He understood so
+much. He sympathised, he congratulated, he sported, always at the right
+moment. He would sit gravely at Jeremy's feet, his body pressed against
+Jeremy's leg, one leg stuck out square, his eyes fixed inquisitively
+upon the nursery scene. He would be motionless; then suddenly some
+thought would electrify him--his ears would cock, his eyes shine,
+his nose quiver, his tail tumble. The crisis would pass; he would be
+composed once more. He would slide down to the floor, his whole body
+collapsing; his head would rest upon Jeremy's foot; he would dream of
+cats, of rats, of birds, of the Jampot, of beef and gravy, of sugar, of
+being washed, of the dogs' Valhalla, of fire and warmth, of Jeremy, of
+walks when every piece of flying paper was a challenge, of dogs, dogs
+that he had known of when he was a puppy, of doing things he shouldn't,
+of punishment and wisdom, pride and anger, of love-affairs of his youth,
+of battle, of settling-down, of love-affairs in the future, again of
+cats and beef, and smells--smells--smells, again of Jeremy, whom he
+loved. And Jeremy, watching him now, thus sleeping, and thinking of Dick
+Whittington, wondered why it was that a dog would understand so easily,
+without explanations, the thoughts and desires he had, and that
+all grown-up people would not understand, and would demand so many
+explanations, and would laugh at one, and pity one, and despise one. Why
+was it? he asked himself.
+
+“I know,” he suddenly cried, turning upon Helen; “it can be your
+birthday treat!”
+
+“What can?” she asked.
+
+“Why, going to Dick Whittington--all of us.”
+
+Helen had, most unfortunately for herself, a birthday only a week after
+Christmas, the result being that, in her own opinion at any rate,
+she never received “proper presents” on either of those two great
+present-giving occasions. She was always allowed, however, a “treat”;
+her requests were generally in the nature of food; once of a ride in the
+train; once even a visit to the Polchester Museum... It was difficult in
+those days to find “treats” in Polchester.
+
+“Oh, do you think they'd let us?” she said, her eyes wide.
+
+“We can try,” said Jeremy. “I heard Aunt Amy say the other day that she
+didn't think it was right for children to see acting, and Mother always
+does the opposite to what Aunt Amy says, so p'r'aps it will be all
+right. I wish Hamlet could go,” he added.
+
+“Don't be silly!” said Helen.
+
+“It isn't silly,” Jeremy said indignantly. “It's all about a cat,
+anyway, and he'd love to see all the rats and things. He wouldn't bark
+if we told him not to, and I held his collar.”
+
+“If Aunt Amy sat next him he would,” said Mary.
+
+“Oh, bother Aunt Amy,” said Jeremy.
+
+After this Helen needed a great deal of urging; but she heard that Lucy
+and Angela, the aforesaid daughters of the Dean, were going, and the
+spirit of rivalry drove her forward.
+
+It happened that the Dean himself one day said something to Mr. Cole
+about “supporting a very praiseworthy effort. They are presenting,
+I understand, the proceeds of the first performance to the Cathedral
+Orphanage.”
+
+Helen was surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.
+
+“We'll all go,” said Mr. Cole, in his genial, pastoral fashion. “Good
+for us... good for us... to see the little ones laugh. .. good for us
+all.”
+
+Only Uncle Samuel said “that nothing would induce him--”
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+I pass swiftly over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after,
+although I should like to linger upon these sumptuous dates. Jeremy had
+a sumptuous time; Hamlet had a sumptuous time (a whole sugar rat, plates
+and plates of bones, and a shoe of Aunt Amy's); Mary and Helen had
+sumptuous times in their own feminine fashion.
+
+Upon the evening of Christmas Eve, when the earth was snow-lit, and
+the street-lamps sparkled with crystals, and the rime on the doorsteps
+crackled beneath one's feet, Jeremy accompanied his mother on a
+present-leaving expedition. The excitement of that! The wonderful shapes
+and sizes of the parcels, the mysterious streets, the door-handles and
+the door-bells, the glittering stars, the maidservants, the sense of the
+lighted house, as though you opened a box full of excitements and then
+hurriedly shut the lid down again. Jeremy trembled and shook, not with
+cold, but with exalting, completely satisfying happiness.
+
+There followed the Stocking, the Waits, the Carols, the Turkey, the
+Christmas Cake, the Tree, the Presents, Snapdragon, Bed... There
+followed Headache, Ill-temper, Smacking of Mary, Afternoon Walk, Good
+Temper again, Complete Weariness, Hamlet sick on the Golden Cockatoos,
+Hamlet Beaten, Five minutes with Mother downstairs, Bed. .. Christmas
+was over.
+
+From that moment of the passing of Boxing Day it was simply the counting
+of the minutes to “Dick Whittington.” Six days from Boxing Day. Say you
+slept from eight to seven--eleven hours; that left thirteen hours; six
+thirteen hours was, so Helen said, seventy-eight. Seventy-eight hours,
+and Sunday twice as long as the other days, and that made thirteen more;
+ninety-one, said Helen, her nose in the air.
+
+The week dragged along, very difficult work for everybody, and even
+Hamlet felt the excitement and watched his corner with the Jampot's
+sewing machine in it with more quivering intensity than ever. The Day
+Before The Day arrived, the evening before The Day, the last supper
+before The Day, the last bed before The Day... Suddenly, like a
+Jack-in-the-Box, The Day itself.
+
+Then the awful thing happened.
+
+Jeremy awoke to the consciousness that something terrific was about to
+occur. He lay for a minute thinking--then he was up, running about the
+nursery floor as though he were a young man in Mr. Rossetti's poetry
+shouting: “Helen! Mary! Mary! Helen!... It's Dick Whittington! Dick
+Whittington!”
+
+On such occasions he lost entirely his natural reserve and caution. He
+dressed with immense speed, as though that would hasten the coming of
+the evening. He ran into the nursery, carrying the black tie that went
+under his sailor-collar.
+
+He held it out to the Jampot, who eyed him with disfavour. She was
+leaving them all in a week and was a strange confusion of sentiment and
+bad temper, love and hatred, wounded pride and injured dignity.
+
+“Nurse. Please. Fasten it,” he said impatiently.
+
+“And that's not the way to speak, Master Jeremy, and well you know it,”
+ she said. “'Ave you cleaned your teeth?”
+
+“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. It was not until the word was
+spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed him
+with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a very
+bad hand at a lie...
+
+He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back--but
+something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over
+his mouth. His face flamed.
+
+“You've truly cleaned them?” she said.
+
+“Yes, truly,” he answered, his eyes on the ground. Never was there a
+more obvious liar in all the world.
+
+She said no more; he moved to the fireplace. His joy was gone. There
+was a cold clammy sensation about his heart. Slowly, very slowly, the
+consciousness stole upon him that he was a liar. He had not thought it a
+lie when he had first spoken, now he knew.
+
+Still there was time. Had he turned round and spoken, all might still
+have been well. But now obstinacy held him. He was not going to give the
+Jampot an opportunity for triumphing over him. After all, he would clean
+them so soon as she went to brush Helen's hair. In a moment what he had
+said would be true.
+
+But he was miserable. Hamlet came up from the nether regions where
+he had spent the night, showing his teeth, wagging his tail, and even
+rolling on the cockatoos. Jeremy paid no attention. The weight in his
+heart grew heavier and heavier. He watched, from under his eyelids, the
+Jampot. In a moment she must go into Helen's room. But she did not. She
+stayed for a little arranging the things on the breakfast-table--then
+suddenly, without a word, she turned into Jeremy's bedchamber. His heart
+began to hammer. There was an awful pause; he heard from miles away
+Mary's voice: “Do do that button, Helen, I can't get it!” and Helen's
+“Oh, bother!”
+
+Then, like Judgment, the Jampot appeared again. She stood in the
+doorway, looking across at him.
+
+“You 'ave not cleaned your teeth, Master Jeremy,” she said. “The glass
+isn't touched, nor your toothbrush... You wicked, wicked boy. So it's a
+liar you've become, added on to all your other wickedness.”
+
+“I forgot,” he muttered sullenly. “I thought I had.”
+
+She smiled the smile of approaching triumph.
+
+“No, you did not,” she said. “You knew you'd told a lie. It was in your
+face. All of a piece--all of a piece.”
+
+The way she said this, like a pirate counting over his captured
+treasure, was enraging. Jeremy could feel the wild fury at himself, at
+her, at the stupid blunder of the whole business rising to his throat.
+
+“If you think I'm going to let this pass you're making a mighty
+mistake,” she continued, “which I wouldn't do not if you paid me all the
+gold in the kingdom. I mayn't be good enough to keep my place and look
+after such as you, but anyways I'm able to stop your lying for another
+week or two. I know my duty even though there's them as thinks I don't.”
+
+She positively snorted, and the excitement of her own vindication and
+the just condemnation of Jeremy was such that her hands trembled.
+
+“I don't care what you do,” Jeremy shouted. “You can tell anyone you
+like. I don't care what you do. You're a beastly woman.”
+
+She turned upon him, her face purple. “That's enough, Master Jeremy,”
+ she said, her voice low and trembling. “I'm not here to be called names
+by such as you. You'll be sorry for this before you're much older....
+You see.”
+
+There was then an awful and sickly pause. Jeremy seemed to himself to
+be sinking lower and lower into a damp clammy depth of degradation. What
+must this world be that it could change itself so instantly from a place
+of gay and happy pleasure into a dim groping room of punishment and
+dismay?
+
+His feelings were utterly confused. He supposed that he was terribly
+wicked. But he did not feel wicked. He only felt miserable, sick and
+defiant. Mary and Helen came in, their eyes open to a crisis, their
+bodies tuned sympathetically to the atmosphere of sin and crime that
+they discerned around them.
+
+Then Mr. Cole came in as was his daily habit--for a moment before his
+breakfast.
+
+“Well, here are you all,” he cried. “Ready for to-night? No breakfast
+yet? Why, now...?”
+
+Then perceiving, as all practised fathers instantly must, that the
+atmosphere was sinful, he changed his voice to that of the Children's
+Sunday Afternoon Service--a voice well known in his family.
+
+“Please, sir,” began the Jampot, “I'm sorry to 'ave to tell you, sir,
+that Master Jeremy's not been at all good this morning.”
+
+“Well, Jeremy,” he said, turning to his son, “what is it?”
+
+Jeremy's face, raised to his father's, was hard and set and sullen.
+
+“I've told a lie,” he said; “I said I'd cleaned my teeth when I hadn't.
+Nurse went and looked, and then I called her a beastly woman.”
+
+The Jampot's face expressed a grieved and at the same time triumphant
+confirmation of this.
+
+“You told a lie?” Mr. Cole's voice was full of a lingering sorrow.
+
+“Yes,” said Jeremy.
+
+“Are you sorry?”
+
+“I'm sorry that I told a lie, but I'm not sorry I called Nurse a beastly
+woman.”
+
+“Jeremy!”
+
+“No, I'm not. She is a beastly woman.”
+
+Mr. Cole was always at a loss when anyone defied him, even though it
+were only a small boy of eight. He took refuge now in his ecclesiastical
+and parental authority.
+
+“I'm very distressed--very distressed indeed. I hope that punishment,
+Jeremy, will show you how wrong you have been. I'm afraid you cannot
+come with us to the Pantomime to-night.”
+
+At that judgement a quiver for an instant held Jeremy's face, turning
+it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had
+given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign.
+He simply stood there waiting.
+
+Mr. Cole was baffled, as he always was by Jeremy's moods, so he
+continued:
+
+“And until you've apologised to Nurse for your rudeness you must remain
+by yourself. I shall forbid your sisters to speak to you. Mary and
+Helen, you are not to speak to your brother until he has apologised to
+Nurse.”
+
+“Yes, Father,” said Helen
+
+“Oh, Father, mayn't he come to-night?” said Mary.
+
+“No, Mary, I'm afraid not.”
+
+A tear rolled down her cheek. “It won't be any fun without Jeremy,” she
+said. She wished to make the further sacrifice of saying that she would
+not go unless Jeremy did, but some natural caution restrained her.
+
+Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery of
+Jeremy's face the Jampot's hear--in reality a kind and even sentimental
+heart--repented her.
+
+“There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say your
+father will take you, after all; and we won't think no more about what
+you said to me in the 'eat of the moment.”
+
+But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of bacon,
+nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that poured into
+the room from the frosty world outside.
+
+A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this thing
+with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not dreamt of it
+for days and nights and nights and days, as he had done. Their whole
+future existence did not depend upon their witnessing this, as did his.
+
+During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something caged
+and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that children
+are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise something of
+the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole world had gone.
+
+He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he
+would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie... And he would not
+meet Dick Whittington.
+
+The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron chain.
+Childhood's tragedies are terrible tragedies, because a child has no
+sense of time; a moment's dismay is eternal; a careless word from an
+elder is a lasting judgment; an instant's folly is a lifetime's mistake.
+
+The day dragged its weary length along, and he scarcely moved from his
+corner by the fire. He did not attempt conversation with anyone. Once or
+twice the Jampot tried to penetrate behind that little mask of anger and
+dismay.
+
+“Come, now, things aren't so bad as all that. You be a good boy, and
+go and tell your father you're sorry...” or “Well, then, Master Jeremy,
+there'll be another time, I dare say, you can go to the the-ayter...”
+
+But she found no response. If there was one thing that she hated, it was
+sulks. Here they were, sulks of the worst--and so, like many wiser
+than herself, she covered up with a word a situation that she did not
+understand, and left it at that.
+
+The evening came on; the curtains were drawn. Tea arrived; still Jeremy
+sat there, not speaking, not raising his eyes, a condemned creature.
+Mary and Helen and Hamlet had had a wretched day. They all sympathised
+with him.
+
+The girls went to dress. Seven o'clock struck. They were taken
+downstairs by Nurse, who had her evening out. Rose, the housemaid, would
+sit with Master Jeremy.
+
+Doors closed, doors opened, voices echoed, carriage-wheels were heard.
+
+Jeremy and Hamlet were left to themselves...
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The last door had closed, and the sudden sense that everyone had gone
+and that he might behave now as he pleased, removed the armour in which
+all day he had encased himself.
+
+He raised his head, looked about the deserted nursery, and then, with
+the sudden consciousness of that other lighted and busied place where
+Whittington was pursuing his adventures, he burst into tears. He sobbed,
+his head down upon his arms, and his body squeezed together so that his
+knees were close to his nose and his hair in his boots. Hamlet
+restored him to himself. Instead of assisting his master's grief, as a
+sentimental dog would have done, by sighing or sniffing or howling, he
+yawned, stretched himself, and rolled on the carpet. He did not
+believe in giving way to feelings, and he was surprised, and perhaps
+disappointed, at Jeremy's lack of restraint.
+
+Jeremy felt this, and in a little while sobs came very slowly, and at
+last were only little shudders, rather pleasant and healthy. He looked
+about him, rubbed his red nose with a hideously dirty handkerchief, and
+felt immensely sleepy.
+
+No, he would not cry any more. Rose would shortly appear, and he did
+not intend to cry before housemaids. Nevertheless, his desolation was
+supreme. He was a liar. He had told lies before, but they had not been
+discovered, and so they were scarcely lies... Now, in some strange way,
+the publication of his lie had shown him what truly impossible things
+lies were. He had witnessed this effect upon the general public; he
+had not believed that he was so wicked. He did not even now feel really
+wicked, but he saw quite clearly that there was one world for liars and
+one for truthful men. He wanted, terribly badly, someone to tell him
+that he was still in the right world...
+
+And then, on the other side, the thought that Mary and Helen were at
+this very moment witnessing the coloured history of Dick Whittinglon,
+the history that he had pursued ceaselessly during all these days and
+nights--that picture of them all in the lighted theatre--once more
+nearly overcame him. But he pulled himself together.
+
+He sniffed, left his dirty handkerchief, and went slowly and sorrowfully
+to drag out his toy village from its corner and see whether anything
+could be done with it.... After all, he was going to school in
+September. His punishment could not be quite limitless. Hamlet had just
+shown his approval of this manly conduct by strolling up and sniffing
+at the Noah family, who were, as usual, on their way to church, when the
+door suddenly opened, and in came Uncle Samuel.
+
+Jeremy had forgotten his uncle, and now blinked up at him from the
+floor, where he was squatting, rather ashamed of his swollen eyes and
+red nose.
+
+Uncle Samuel, however, had no time for details; he was apparently in
+a hurry. He did not wear his blue painting-smock, but was in a
+comparatively clean black suit, and on the back of his head was a
+squashy brown hat.
+
+“Come on,” he said, “or we shall be too late.”
+
+Jeremy choked. “Too late?” he repeated.
+
+“You're coming, aren't you--to the Pantomime? They sent me back for
+you.”
+
+The room suddenly got on to its legs, like the food and the families
+during Alice's feast in the “Looking Glass,” and swung round, lurching
+from side to side, and causing the fire to run into the gas and the gas
+to fly out of the window.
+
+“I--don't--understand,” Jeremy stammered.
+
+“Well, if you don't understand in half a shake,” said Uncle Samuel,
+“you won't see any of the show at all. Go on. Wash your face. There are
+streaks of dirt all down it as though you were a painted Indian; stick
+on your cap and coat and boots and come along.”
+
+Exactly as one moves in sleep so Jeremy now moved. He had once had a
+wonderful dream, in which he had been at a meal that included every
+thing that he had most loved--fish-cakes, sausages, ices, strawberry
+jam, sponge-cake, chocolates, and scrambled eggs--and he had been
+able to eat, and eat, and had never been satisfied, and had never felt
+sick--a lovely dream.
+
+He often thought of it. And now in the same bewildering fashion he found
+his boots and cap and coat and then, deliberately keeping from him the
+thought of the Pantomime lest he should suddenly wake up, he said:
+
+“I'm ready, Uncle.”
+
+Samuel Trefusia looked at him.
+
+“You're a strange kid,” he said; “you take everything so quietly--but,
+thank God, I don't understand children.”
+
+“There's Hamlet,” said Jeremy, wondering whether perhaps the dream would
+extend to his friend. “I suppose he can't come too.”
+
+“No, he certainly can't,” said Uncle Samuel grimly.
+
+“And there's Rose. She'll wonder where I've gone.”
+
+“I've told her. Don't you worry. What a conscientious infant you are.
+Just like your father. Anything else?”
+
+“No,” said Jeremy breathlessly, and nearly murdered himself going
+downstairs because he shut his eyes in order to continue the dream
+so long as it was possible. Then in the cold night air, grasping his
+uncle's hand with a feverish hold, he stammered:
+
+“Is it really true? Are we going--really?”
+
+“Of course we're going. Come on--step out or you'll miss the Giant.”
+
+“But--but--oh!” he drew a deep breath. “Then they don't think me a liar
+any more?”
+
+“They--who?”
+
+“Father and Mother and everyone.”
+
+“Don't you think about them. You'd better enjoy yourself.”
+
+“But you said you wouldn't go to the Pantomime--not for anything?”
+
+“Well, I've changed my mind. Don't talk so much. You know I hate you
+children chattering. Always got something to say.”
+
+So Jeremy was silent. They raced down Orange Street, Jeremy being
+almost carried off his feet. This was exactly like a dream. This rushing
+movement and the way that the lamp-posts ran up to you as though they
+were going to knock you down, and the way that the stars crackled and
+sputtered and trembled overhead. But Uncle Samuel's hand was flesh and
+blood, and the heel of Jeremy's right shoe hurt him and he felt the
+tickle of his sailor-collar at the back of his neck, just as he did when
+he was awake.
+
+Then there they were at the Assembly Rooms door, Jeremy having become
+so breathless that Uncle Samuel had to hold him up for a moment or he'd
+have fallen.
+
+“Bit too fast for you, was it? Well, you shouldn't be so fat. You eat
+too much. Now we're not going to sit with your father and mother--there
+isn't room for you there. So don't you go calling out to them or
+anything. We're sitting in the back and you'd better be quiet or they'll
+turn you out.”
+
+“I'll be quiet,” gasped Jeremy.
+
+Uncle Samuel paused at a lighted hole in the wall and spoke to a large
+lady in black silk who was drinking a cup of tea. Jeremy caught the
+jingle of money. Then they moved forward, stumbling in the dark up a
+number of stone steps, pushing at a heavy black curtain, then suddenly
+bathed in a bewildering glow of light and scent and colour.
+
+Jeremy's first impression, as he fell into this new world, was of an
+ugly, harsh, but funny voice crying out very loudly indeed: “Oh, my
+great aunt! Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!” A roar of laughter
+rose about him, almost lifting him off his feet, and close to his car a
+Glebeshire voice sobbed: “Eh, my dear. Poor worm! Poor worm!”
+
+He was aware then of a strong smell of oranges, of Uncle Samuel pushing
+him forward, of stumbling over boots, knees, and large hands that were
+clapping in his very nose, of falling into a seat and then clinging to
+it as though it was his only hope in this strange puzzling world. The
+high funny voice rose again: “Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!” And
+again it was followed by the rough roar of delighted laughter.
+
+He was aware then that about him on every side gas was sizzling, and
+then, as he recovered slowly his breath, his gaze was drawn to the great
+blaze of light in the distance, against which figures were dimly moving,
+and from the heart of which the strange voice came. He heard a woman's
+voice, then several voices together; then suddenly the whole scene
+shifted into focus, his eyes were tied to the light; the oranges and
+the gas and the smell of clothes and heated bodies slipped back into
+distance--he was caught into the world where he had longed to be.
+
+He saw that it was a shop--and he loved shops. His heart beat thickly as
+his eyes travelled up and up and up over the rows and rows of shelves;
+here were bales of cloth, red and green and blue; carpets from the East,
+table-covers, sheets and blankets. Behind the long yellow counters young
+men in strange clothes were standing. In the middle of the scene was
+a funny old woman, her hat tumbling off her head, her shabby skirt
+dragging, large boots, and a red nose. It was from this strange creature
+that the deep ugly voice proceeded. She had, this old woman, a number of
+bales of cloth under her arms, and she tried to carry them all, but one
+slipped, and then another, and then another; she bent to pick them up
+and her hat fell off; she turned for her hat and all the bales tumbled
+together. Jeremy began to laugh--everyone laughed; the strange voice
+came again and again, lamenting, bewailing, she had secured one bale, a
+smile of cautious triumph began to spread over her ugly face, then the
+bales all fell again, and once more she was on her knees. It was then
+that her voice or some movement brought to Jeremy's eyes so vividly
+the figure of their old gardener, Jordan, that he turned round to Uncle
+Samuel, and suddenly grasping that gentleman's fat thigh, exclaimed
+convulsively: “Why, she's a man!”
+
+What a strange topsy-turvy world this was in which women were men, and
+shops turned (as with a sudden creaking and darkness and clattering did
+this one) into gardens by the sea. Jeremy drew his breath deeply and
+held on. His mouth was open and his hair on end.. .
+
+It is impossible to define exactly Jeremy's ultimate impression as
+the entertainment proceeded. Perhaps he had no ultimate impression. It
+cannot in reality have been a very wonderful Pantomime. Even at Drury
+Lane thirty years back there were many things that they did not know,
+and it is not likely that a touring company fitted into so inadequate
+an old building as our Assembly Rooms would have provided anything very
+fine. But Jeremy will never again discover so complete a realisation
+for his illusions. Whatever failures in the presentation there were, he
+himself made good.
+
+As a finale to the first half of the entertainment there was given
+Dick's dream at the Cross-Roads. He lay on the hard ground, his head
+upon his bundle, the cat as large as he watching sympathetically beside
+him. In the distance were the lights of London, and then, out of the
+half dusk, fairies glittering with stars and silver danced up and
+down the dusky road whilst all the London bells rang out “Turn again,
+Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”
+
+Had Jeremy been of the age and wisdom of Uncle Samuel he would have
+discovered that Dick was a stout lady and probably the mother of a
+growing family; that the fairies knew as much about dancing as the
+Glebeshire wives sitting on the bench behind; that the London bells
+were two hand instruments worked by a youth in shirt sleeves behind the
+scenes so energetically that the High Road and the painted London blew
+backwards and forwards in sympathy with his movements. Jeremy, happily,
+was not so worldly wise as his uncle. This scene created for him then a
+tradition of imperishable beauty that would never fade again. The world
+after that night would be a more magical place than it had ever been
+before. “Turn again, Whittington” continued the education that the Toy
+Village and Hamlet had already advanced.
+
+When the gas rose once again, sizzling like crackling bacon, he was
+white with excitement. The only remark that he made was: “It's much
+better than the pictures outside Martin's, isn't it, Uncle Samuel?” to
+which Uncle Samuel, who had been railing for weeks at the deflowering
+of Polchester by those abominable posters, could truthfully reply, “Much
+better.” Little by little he withdrew himself from the other world and
+realised his own. He could see that he and his uncle were certainly not
+amongst the Quality. Large ladies, their dresses tucked up over their
+knees, sucked oranges. Country farmers with huge knobbly looking sticks
+were there, and even some sailors, on their way probably to Drymouth.
+He recognised the lady who kept charge of the small Orange Street
+post-office, and waved to her with delighted excitement. The atmosphere
+was thick with gas and oranges, and I'm afraid that Uncle Samuel must
+have suffered a great deal. I can only put it on record that he, the
+most selfish of human beings, never breathed a word of complaint.
+
+They were all packed very closely together up there in the gallery,
+where seventy years before an orchestra straight from Jane Austen's
+novels had played to the dancing of the contemporaries of Elizabeth
+Bennett, Emma Woodhouse, and the dear lady of “Persuasion.” Another
+thirty-two years and that same gallery would be listening to recruiting
+appeals and echoing the drums and fifes of a martial band. The best
+times are always the old times. The huge lady in the seat next to Jeremy
+almost swallowed him up, so that he peered out from under her thick
+arm, and heard every crunch and crackle of the peppermints that she was
+enjoying. He grew hotter and hotter, so that at last he seemed, as once
+he had read in some warning tract about a greedy boy that Aunt Amy had
+given him, “to swim in his own fat.” But he did not mind. Discomfort
+only emphasised his happiness. Then, peering forward beneath that stout
+black arm, he suddenly perceived, far below in the swimming distance,
+the back of his mother, the tops of the heads of Mary and Helen, the
+stiff white collar of his father, and the well-known coral necklace of
+Aunt Amy. For a moment dismay seized him, the morning's lie which he
+had entirely forgotten suddenly jumping up and facing him. But they had
+forgiven him.
+
+“Shall I wave to them?” he asked excitedly of Uncle Samuel.
+
+“No, no,” said his uncle very hurriedly. “Nonsense. They wouldn't see
+you if you did. Leave them alone.”
+
+He felt immensely superior to them up where he was, and he wouldn't
+have changed places with them for anything. He gave a little sigh of
+satisfaction. “I could drop an orange on to Aunt Amy's head,” he said.
+“Wouldn't she jump!”
+
+“You must keep quiet,” said Uncle Samuel. “You're good enough as you
+are.”
+
+“I'd rather be here,” said Jeremy. “It's beautifully hot here and
+there's a lovely smell.”
+
+“There is,” said Uncle Samuel.
+
+Then the gas went down, and the curtain went up, and Dick, now in a suit
+of red silk with golden buttons, continued his adventures. I have not
+space here to describe in detail the further events of his life--how,
+receiving a telegram from the King of the Zanzibars about the plague of
+rats, he took ship with his cat and Alderman Fitzwarren and his wife,
+how they were all swallowed by a whale, cast up by a most lucky chance
+on the Zanzibars, nearly cooked by the natives, and rescued by the King
+of the Zanzibars' beautiful daughter, killed all the rats, were given a
+huge feast, with dance and song, and finally Dick, although tempted by
+the dusky Princess, refused a large fortune and returned to Alice of
+Eastcheap, the true lady of his heart. There were, of course, many other
+things, such as the aspirations and misadventures of Mrs. Fitzwarren,
+the deep-voiced lady who had already so greatly amused Jeremy. And then
+there was a Transformation Scene, in which roses turned into tulips and
+tulips into the Hall of Gold, down whose blazing steps marched stout
+representatives of all the nations.
+
+It was in the middle of this last thrilling spectacle, when Jeremy's
+heart was in his mouth and he was so deeply excited that he did not know
+whether it were he or the lady next to him who was eating peppermints,
+that his uncle plucked him by the sleeve and said in his ear: “Come on.
+It's close on the end. We must go.”
+
+Jeremy very reluctantly got up, and stumbled out over knees and legs and
+exclamations like:
+
+“There's Japan!” “No, it ain't; it's Chiney!” “You's a fine, hearty
+young woman!” and so on. He was dragged through the black curtain, down
+the stone steps, and into the street.
+
+“But it wasn't the end,” he said.
+
+“It will be in one minute,” said his uncle. “And I want us to get home
+first.”
+
+“Why?” said Jeremy.
+
+“Never you mind. Come on; we'll race it.”
+
+They arrived home breathless, and then, once again in the old familiar
+hall, Uncle Samuel said:
+
+“Now you nip up to the nursery, and then they'll never know you've been
+out at all.”
+
+“Never know?” said Jeremy. “But you said they'd sent for me.”
+
+“Well,” said Uncle Samuel, “that wasn't exactly true. As a matter of
+fact, they don't know you were there.”
+
+“Oh!” said Jeremy, the corner of his mouth turning down. “Then I've told
+a lie again!”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Uncle Samuel impatiently. “It wasn't you; it was I.”
+
+“And doesn't it matter your telling lies?” asked Jeremy.
+
+The answer to this difficult question was, happily for Uncle Samuel,
+interrupted by the arrival of the household, who had careened up Orange
+Street in a cab.
+
+When Mr. and Mrs. Cole saw Jeremy standing in the hall, his great coat
+still on and his muffler round his neck, there was a fine scene of
+wonder and amazement.
+
+Uncle Samuel explained. “It was my fault. I told him you'd forgiven him
+and sent for him to come, after all. He's in an awful state now that you
+shouldn't forgive him.”
+
+Whatever they thought of Uncle Samuel, this was obviously neither the
+time nor the place to speak out. Mrs. Cole looked at her son. His body
+defiant, sleepy, excited. His mouth was obstinate, but his eyes appealed
+to her on the scene of the common marvellous experience that they had
+just enjoyed.
+
+She hugged him.
+
+“And you won't tell a lie again, will you, Jeremy, dear?”
+
+“Oh, no!” And then, hurrying on: “And when the old woman tumbled
+down the steps, Mother, wasn't it lovely? And the fairies in Dick
+Whittington's sleep, and when the furniture all fell all over the
+place--”
+
+He went slowly upstairs to the nursery, the happiest boy in the kingdom.
+But through all his happiness there was this puzzle: Uncle Samuel had
+told a lie, and no one had thought that it mattered. There were good
+lies and bad ones then. Or was it that grown-up people could tell lies
+and children mustn't?...
+
+He tumbled into the warm, lighted nursery half asleep. There was Hamlet
+watching in front of the Jampot's sewing machine.
+
+He would have things to think about for years and years and years...
+
+There was the Jampot.
+
+“I'm sorry I called you a beastly woman,” he said.
+
+She sniffed.
+
+“Well, I hope you'll be a good boy now,” she said.
+
+“Oh, I'll be good,” he smiled. “But, Nurse, are there some people can
+tell lies and others mustn't?”
+
+“All them that tell lies goes to Hell,” said the Jampot. “And now,
+Master Jeremy, come along and take your things off. It's past eleven,
+and what you'll be like to-morrow--”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. MISS JONES
+
+
+I
+
+
+The coming of the new year meant the going of the Jampot, and the
+going of the Jampot meant the breaking of a life-time's traditions. The
+departure was depressing and unsettling; the weather was--as it always
+is during January in Glebeshire--at its worst, and the Jampot, feeling
+it all very deeply, maintained a terrible Spartan composure, which was
+meant to show indifference and a sense of injustice. She had to the very
+last believed it incredible that she should really go. She had been
+in the old Orange Street house for eight years, and had intended to be
+there until she died. She was forced to admit that Master Jeremy was
+going beyond her; but in September he would go to school, and then she
+could help with the sewing and other things about the house. The real
+truth of the matter was that she had never been a very good servant,
+having too much of the Glebeshire pride and independence and too little
+of the Glebeshire fidelity.
+
+Mrs. Cole had been glad of the opportunity that Hamlet's arrival in the
+family had given her. The Jampot, only a week before the date of her
+departure, came to her mistress and begged, with floods of tears, to
+be allowed to continue in her service. But Mrs. Cole, with all her
+placidity, was firm. The Jampot had to go.
+
+I would like to paint a pleasant picture of the sentiment of the Cole
+children on this touching occasion; something, perhaps, in the vein of
+tragi-comedy with which Mr. Kenneth Graham embroiders a similar occasion
+in his famous masterpiece--but in this case there was very little
+sentiment and no tragedy at all. They did not think of the event
+beforehand, and then when it suddenly occurred there was all the
+excitement of being looked after by Rose, the housemaid, of having
+a longer time with their mother in the evening, and, best of all,
+a delightful walk with Aunt Amy, whose virginal peace of mind they
+attacked from every possible quarter.
+
+The Jampot left in a high state of sulks, declaring to the kitchen that
+no woman had ever been so unfairly treated; that her married sister
+Sarah Francis, of Rafiel, with whom she was now to live, should be told
+all about it, and that the citizens of Rafiel should be compelled to
+sympathise. The children were not unfeeling, but they hated the Jampot's
+sulks, and while she waited in the nursery, longing for a word or
+movement of affection, but wearing a face of stony disapproval, they
+stood awkwardly beholding her, and aching for her to go. She was the
+more unapproachable in that she wore her Sunday silks and a heavy black
+bonnet with shiny rattling globes of some dark metal that nodded and
+becked and bowed like live things. Hamlet, who had, of course, always
+hated the Jampot, barked at this bonnet furiously, and would have bitten
+at it had it been within his reach. She had meant to leave them all with
+little sentences about life and morals; but the noise of the dog, the
+indifference of the children, and the general air of impatience for her
+departure strangled her aphorisms. Poor Jampot! She was departing to a
+married sister who did not want her, and would often tell her so;
+her prospects in life were not bright, and it is sad to think that no
+inhabitant of the Orange Street house felt any sorrow at the sight of
+the last gesticulating wave of her black bonnet as she stepped into the
+old mouldy Polchester cab.
+
+“The King is dead--long live the King!” The Jampot as a power in the
+Cole family has ceased to be.
+
+The day following the Jampot's departure offered up the news that, for
+the first time in the history of the Coles, there was to be a governess.
+The word “governess” had an awful sound, and the children trembled with
+a mixture of delight and terror. Jeremy pretended indifference.
+
+“It's only another woman,” he said. “She'll be like the Jampot--only, a
+lady, so she won't be able to punish us as the Jampot could.”
+
+I expect that Mr. and Mrs. Cole had great difficulty in finding anyone
+who would do. Thirty years ago governesses were an incapable race, and
+belonged too closely either to the Becky Sharp or the Amelia type to be
+very satisfactory. It was then that the New Woman was bursting upon the
+scene, but she was not to be found amongst the governesses. No one in
+Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume, it was several
+years before the publication of “The Heavenly Twins,” and Mr. Trollope's
+Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood.
+Mrs. Cole, therefore, had to choose between idiotic young women and
+crabbed old maids, and she finally chose an old maid. I don't think that
+Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made, but time
+was short. Jeremy, aided by Hamlet, was growing terribly independent,
+and Mr. Cole had neither the humour nor the courage to deal with him.
+No, Miss Jones was not ideal, but the Dean had strongly recommended her.
+It is true that the Dean had never seen her, but her brother, with whom
+she had lived for many years, had once been the Dean's curate. It was
+true that he had been a failure as a curate, but that made the Dean the
+more anxious to be kind now to his memory, he--Mr. Jones--having just
+died of general bad-temper and selfishness.
+
+Miss Jones, buried during the last twenty years in the green depths of
+a Glebeshire valley, found herself now, at the age of fifty, without
+friends, without money, without relations. She thought that she would be
+a governess.
+
+The Dean recommended her, Mrs. Cole approved of her birth, education and
+sobriety, Mr. Cole liked the severity of her countenance when she came
+to call, and she was engaged.
+
+“Jeremy needs a tight hand,” said Mr. Cole. “It's no use having a young
+girl.”
+
+“Miss Jones easily escapes that charge,” said Uncle Samuel, who had met
+her in the hall.
+
+The children were prepared to be good. Jeremy felt that it was time to
+take life seriously. He put away his toy village, scolded Hamlet for
+eating Mary's pincushion, and dragged out his dirty exercise-book in
+which he did sums.
+
+“I do hate sums!” he said, with a sigh, regarding the hideous smudges
+of thumbs and tears that scored the page. “I shall never understand
+anything about them.”
+
+“I'll help you,” said Mary, who was greatly excited at the thought of a
+governess. “We'll do them together.”
+
+“No we won't,” said Jeremy, who hated to be dependent.
+
+“I'll learn it myself--if only the paper didn't get dirty so quickly.”
+
+“Mother says,” remarked Helen, “that she's had a very hard life, and no
+one's ever been kind to her. 'She wants affection,' Mother says.”
+
+“I'll give her my napkin-ring that you gave me last Christmas, Mary,”
+ said Jeremy. “You don't mind, do you? It's all dirty now. I hope Hamlet
+won't bark at her.”
+
+Hamlet was worrying Mary's pincushion at the moment, holding it between
+his paws, his body stretched out in quivering excitement, his short,
+“snappy” tail, as Uncle Samuel called it, standing up straight in air.
+He stopped for an instant when he heard his name, and shook one ear.
+
+“Mother says,” continued Helen, “that she lived with a brother who never
+gave her enough to eat.”
+
+Jeremy opened his eyes. This seemed to him a horrible thing.
+
+“She shall have my porridge, if she likes,” he said; “I don't like it
+very much. And I'll give her that chocolate that Mr. Jellybrand sent us.
+There's still some, although it's rather damp now, I expect.”
+
+“How silly you are!” said Helen scornfully. “Of course, Mother will give
+her anything she wants.”
+
+“It isn't silly,” said Jeremy. “Perhaps she'll want more than she really
+wants. I often do.”
+
+“Oh, you!” said Helen.
+
+“And if for ever so long,” said Jeremy, “she hasn't had enough to eat,
+she'll want twice as big meals now as other people--to make up.”
+
+“Mother says we've got to remember she's a lady,” said Helen.
+
+“What's the difference,” asked Jeremy, “between a lady and not a lady?”
+
+“Oh, you are!” said Helen. “Why, Aunt Amy's a lady, and Rose isn't.”
+
+“Rose is nicer,” said Jeremy.
+
+Miss Jones had, I am sorry to say, lied to Mrs. Cole in one particular.
+She had told her that “she had had to do with children all her life,”
+ the fact being that on several occasions some little cousins had come to
+stay with herself and her brother. On these occasions the little
+cousins had been so paralysed with terror that discipline had not been
+difficult. It was from these experiences that Miss Jones flattered
+herself that “she understood children.”
+
+So audacious a self-confidence is doomed to invite the scornful
+punishment of the gods.
+
+Miss Jones arrived upon a wet January afternoon, one of those Glebeshire
+days when the town sinks into a bath of mud and mist and all the pipes
+run water and the eaves drip and horses splash and only ducks are happy.
+Out of a blurred lamp-lit dusk stumbled Miss Jones's cab, and out of a
+blurred unlit cab stumbled Miss Jones.
+
+As she stood in the hall trying to look warm and amiable, Mrs. Cole's
+heart forsook her. On that earlier day of her visit Miss Jones had
+looked possible, sitting up in Mrs. Cole's drawing-room, smiling her
+brightest, because she so desperately needed the situation, and wearing
+her best dress. Now she was all in pieces; she had had to leave her
+little village early in the morning to catch the village bus; she had
+waited at wayside stations, as in Glebeshire only one can wait; the
+world had dripped upon her head and spattered upon her legs. She had
+neuralgia and a pain in her back; she had worn her older dress because,
+upon such a day, it would not do to travel in her best; and then, as a
+climax to everything, she had left her umbrella in the train. How she
+could do such a thing upon such a day! Her memory was not her strongest
+point, poor lady, and it was a good umbrella, and she could not afford
+to buy another. Perhaps they would find it for her, but it was very
+unlikely.
+
+She had had it for a number of years.
+
+She was a little woman, all skin and bone, with dried withered cheeks,
+a large brown nose and protruding ears. Her face had formed severe lines
+in self-defence against her brother, but her eyes were mild, and when
+she smiled her mouth was rather pleasantly pathetic.
+
+“Oh, she'll never do,” thought Mrs. Cole, as she looked at her dripping
+in the hall.
+
+“I can't think how I forgot it,” said the poor lady, her mind fixed upon
+her umbrella. “They said that perhaps they would find it for me, but
+there was a man in my carriage, I remember, who will most certainly have
+taken it--and it was a nice one with a silver handle.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Mrs. Cole cheerfully, “I'm sure they'll find it. You
+must come up to the nursery--or the schoolroom I suppose we must call
+it now; there's a lovely fire there, and we'll both have tea with
+the children to-day, so as to feel at home, all of us, as quickly as
+possible.”
+
+What Miss Jones wanted was to lie down on a bed in a dark room and try
+and conquer her neuralgia. The thought of a lighted nursery filled her
+with dismay. However, first impressions are so important. She pulled
+herself together.
+
+The children had heard the arrival; they waited in a bunch by the fire,
+their eyes partly fixed on the door, partly on the strawberry jam that
+they were allowed to-day as a treat in the new governess's honour.
+Hamlet, his eyes and ears also upon the door, expecting perhaps a rat,
+perhaps Aunt Amy, sat in front of the group, its bodyguard.
+
+“She's in the hall,” said Helen, “and now Mother's saying: 'Do take off
+your things. You must be wet,' and now she's saying: 'You'll like to see
+the children, I expect,' and now--”
+
+There they were, standing in the doorway, Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones.
+There followed a dismal pause. The children had not expected anyone so
+old and so ugly as Miss Jones. Hamlet did not bark--nothing occurred.
+
+At last Mrs. Cole said: “Now, children, come and say, 'How do you do?'
+to Miss Jones. This is Helen, our eldest--this Mary--and this Jeremy.”
+
+Miss Jones did a dreadful thing. In her eagerness to be pleasant and
+friendly she kissed the girls, and then, before anyone could stop her,
+kissed Jeremy. He took it like a man, never turning his head nor wiping
+his mouth with his hand afterwards, but she might have seen in his eyes,
+had she looked, what he felt about it.
+
+She said: “I hope we shall be happy together, dears.”
+
+The children said nothing, and presently they all sat down to tea.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was unfortunate that there was so little precedent on both sides.
+Miss Jones had never been a governess before and the children had never
+had one. Of course, many mistakes were made. Miss Jones had had a true
+admiration for what she used to call “her brother's indomitable spirit,”
+ her name for his selfishness and bad temper. She was herself neither
+selfish nor bad-tempered, but she was ignorant, nervous, over-anxious,
+and desperately afraid of losing her situation. She had during so many
+years lived without affection that the wells of it had dried up within
+her, and now, without being at all a bad old lady, she was simply
+preoccupied with the business of managing her neuralgia, living
+on nothing a week, and building to her deceased brother's memory a
+monument, of heroic character and self-sacrifice. She was short-sighted
+and had a perpetual cold; she was forgetful and careless. She had,
+nevertheless, a real knowledge of many things, a warm heart somewhere
+could she be encouraged to look for it again, and a sense of humour
+buried deep beneath her cares and preoccupations. There were many worse
+persons in the world than Miss Jones. But, most unfortunately, her
+love for her brother's memory led her to resolve on what she called
+“firmness.” Mrs. Cole had told her that Jeremy was “getting too much”
+ for his nurse; she approached Jeremy with exactly the tremors and
+quaking boldness that she would have summoned to her aid before a
+bull loose in a field. She really did look frightening with her large
+spectacles on the end of her large nose, her mouth firmly set, and a
+ruler in her hand. “I insist on absolute obedience,” was her motto.
+Jeremy looked at her but said no word. It was made clear to them all
+that the new regime was to be far other than the earlier nursery one.
+There were to be regular lesson hours--nine to twelve and four to five.
+A neat piece of white paper was fastened to the wall with “Monday:
+Geography 9-10, Arithmetic 10-11,” and so on. A careful graduation of
+punishments was instituted, copies to be written so many times, standing
+on a chair, three strokes on the hand with a ruler, and, worst of all,
+standing in the corner wearing a paper Dunce's cap. (This last she had
+read of in books.) At first Jeremy had every intention of behaving well,
+in spite of that unfortunate embrace. He was proud of his advance in
+life; he was no longer a baby; the nursery was now a schoolroom; he
+stayed up an hour later at night; he was to be allowed twopence a week
+pocket-money; his whole social status had risen. He began to read for
+pleasure, and discovered that it was easier than he had expected, so
+that he passed quite quickly through “Lottie's Visit to Grandmama” into
+“Stumps” and out again in “Jackanapes.” He heard some elder say that the
+road to a large fortune lay through “Sums,” and, although this seemed to
+him an extremely mysterious statement, he determined to give the theory
+a chance. In fact, he sat down the first day at the schoolroom table,
+Mary and Helen on each side of him, and Miss Jones facing them, with
+fine resolves and high ambitions. Before him lay a pure white page, and
+at the head of this the noble words in a running hand: “Slow and steady
+wins the race.” He grasped his pencil, and Miss Jones, eager to lose no
+time in asserting her authority, cried: “But that's not the way to hold
+your pencil, Jeremy, your thumb so, your finger so.” He scowled and
+found that lifting his thumb over the pencil was as difficult as lifting
+Hamlet over a gate. He made a bold attempt, but the pencil refused to
+move.
+
+“Can't hold it that way,” he said.
+
+“You must never say 'can't,' Jeremy,” remarked Miss Jones. “There isn't
+such a word.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Mary eagerly, “there is; I've seen it in books.”
+
+“You musn't contradict, Mary,” said Miss Jones. “I only meant that you
+must behave as though there isn't, because nothing is impossible to one
+who truly tries.”
+
+“My pencil waggles this way,” said Jeremy politely. “I think I'll hold
+it the old way, please.”
+
+“There's only one way of doing anything,” said Miss Jones, “and that's
+the right way.”
+
+“This is the right way for me,” said Jeremy.
+
+“If I say it's not the right way--”
+
+“But it waggles,” cried Jeremy.
+
+The discussion was interrupted by a cry from Helen.
+
+“Oh, do look, Miss Jones, Hamlet's got your spectacle-case. He thinks
+it's a mouse.”
+
+There followed general confusion. Miss Jones jumped up, and, with little
+cries of distress, pursued Hamlet, who hastened into his favourite
+corner and began to worry the spectacle-case, with one eye on Miss Jones
+and one on his spoils.
+
+Jeremy hurried up crying: “Put it down, Hamlet, naughty dog, naughty
+dog,” and Mary and Helen laughed with frantic delight.
+
+At last Miss Jones, her face red and her hair in disorder, rescued her
+property and returned to the table, Hamlet meanwhile wagging his tail,
+panting and watching for a further game.
+
+“I can't possibly,” said Miss Jones, “allow that dog in here during
+lesson hours. It's impossible.”
+
+“Oh, but Miss Jones--” began Jeremy.
+
+“Not one word,” said she, “let us have no more of this. Lead him from
+the room, Jeremy!”
+
+“But, Miss Jones, he must be here. He's learning too. In a day or two
+he'll be as good as anything, really he will. He's so intelligent. He
+really thought it was his to play with, and he did give it up, didn't
+he, as soon as I said--”
+
+“Enough,” said Miss Jones, “I will listen to no more. I say he is not to
+remain--”
+
+“But if I promise--” said Jeremy.
+
+Then Miss Jones made a bad mistake. Wearied of the argument, wishing to
+continue the lesson, and hoping perhaps to please her tormentors, she
+said meekly:
+
+“Well, if he really is good, perhaps--”
+
+From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance
+of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed
+Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and
+even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its
+power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small
+boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more
+malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for
+those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.
+
+It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something
+indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now
+for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known
+it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses,
+that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries
+from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half
+understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood
+of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it
+until he died.
+
+He had never felt anything like this power before. With the Jampot
+his relations had been quite simple; he had been rebellious, naughty,
+disobedient, and had been punished, and there was an end. Now there was
+a game like tracking Red Indians in the prairie or tigers in the jungle.
+
+He watched Miss Jones and discovered many things about her. He
+discovered that when she made mistakes in the things that she taught
+them she was afraid to confess to her mistakes, and so made them worse
+and worse. He discovered that she was very nervous, and that a sudden
+noise made her jump and turn white and put her hand to her heart. He
+discovered that she would punish him and then try to please him by
+saying he need not finish his punishment. He discovered that she would
+lose things, like her spectacles, her handkerchief, or her purse,
+and then be afraid to confess that she had lost them and endeavour to
+proceed without them. He discovered that she hated to hit him on the
+hand with a ruler (he scarcely felt the strokes). He discovered that
+when his mother or father was in the room she was terrified lest he
+should misbehave.
+
+He discovered that she was despised by the servants, who quite openly
+insulted her.
+
+All these things fed his sense of power. He did not consider her a human
+being at all; she was simply something upon which he could exercise his
+ingenuity and cleverness. Mary followed him in whatever he did; Helen
+pretended to be superior, but was not. Yes, Miss Jones was in the hands
+of her tormentors, and there was no escape for her.
+
+Surely it must have been some outside power that drove Jeremy on. The
+children called it “teasing Miss Jones,” and the aboriginal savagery in
+their behaviour was as unconscious as their daily speech or fashion of
+eating their food--some instinct inherited, perhaps, from the days when
+the gentleman with the biggest muscles extracted for his daily amusement
+the teeth and nails of his less happily muscular friends.
+
+There were many games to be played with Miss Jones. She always began
+her morning with a fine show of authority, accumulated, perhaps, during
+hours of Spartan resolution whilst the rest of the household slept.
+“To-morrow I'll see that they do what I tell them--”
+
+“Now, children,” she would say, “I'm determined to stand no nonsense
+this morning. Get out your copy books.” Five minutes later would begin:
+“Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better
+one?” Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would
+disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say very
+politely: “Miss Jones, I think I know where it is. May I help her
+to find it?” Then Jeremy's head would disappear. There would follow
+giggles, whispers, again giggles; then from the cupboard a book tumbles,
+then another, then another. Then Miss Jones would say: “Now, Jeremy,
+come back to the table. You've had quite enough time--” interrupted by a
+perfect avalanche of books. Mary crying:
+
+“Oh, Jeremy!” Jeremy crying: “I didn't; it was you!” Miss Jones: “Now,
+children--”
+
+Then Jeremy, very politely:
+
+“Please, Miss Jones, may I help Mary to pick the books up? There are
+rather a lot.” Then, both on their knees, more whispers and giggles.
+Miss Jones, her voice trembling: “Children, I really insist--” And
+more books dropped, and more whispers and more protests, and so on ad
+infinitum. A beautiful game to be played all the morning.
+
+Or there was the game of Not Hearing. Miss Jones would say: “And twice
+two are four.” Mary would repeat loudly: “And twice two is five--”
+
+“Four, Mary.”
+
+“Oh, I thought you said five.”
+
+And then a second later Jeremy would ask:
+
+“Did you say four or five, Miss Jones?”
+
+“I told Mary I said four--”
+
+“Oh, I've written five--and now it's all wrong. Didn't you write five,
+Mary?”
+
+“Yes, I've written five. You did say four, didn't you, Miss Jones?”
+
+“Yes--yes. And three makes--”
+
+“What did you say made five?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“I didn't say five. I said four. Twice two.”
+
+“Is that as well as 'add three,' Miss Jones? I've got twice two, and
+then add three, and then twice two--”
+
+“No, no. I was only telling Jeremy--”
+
+“Please, Miss Jones, would you mind beginning again--”
+
+This is a very unpleasant game for a lady with neuralgia.
+
+Or there is the game of Making a Noise. At this game, without any
+earlier training or practice, Jeremy was a perfect master. The three
+children would be sitting there very, very quiet, learning the first
+verse of “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright--” A very gentle creaking sound
+would break the stillness--a creaking sound that can be made, if you are
+clever, by rubbing a boot against a boot. It would not come regularly,
+but once, twice, thrice, a pause, and then once, twice and another
+pause.
+
+“Who's making a noise?”
+
+Dead silence. A very long pause, and then it would begin again.
+
+“That noise must cease, I say. Jeremy, what are you doing?”
+
+He would lift to her then eyes full of meekness and love.
+
+“Nothing, Miss Jones.”
+
+Soon it would begin again. Miss Jones would be silent this time, and
+then Mary would speak.
+
+“Please, would you ask Jeremy not to rub his boots together? I can't
+learn my verse--”
+
+“I didn't know I was,” says Jeremy.
+
+Then it would begin again. Jeremy would say:
+
+“Please, may I take my boots off?”
+
+“Take your boots off? Why?”
+
+“They will rub together, and I can't stop them, because I don't know
+when I do it, and it is hard for Mary--”
+
+“Of course not! I never heard of such a thing! Next time you do it you
+must stand on your chair.”
+
+Soon Jeremy is standing on his chair. Soon his poetry book drops with
+a terrible crash to the ground, and five million pins stab Miss Jones's
+heart. With white face and trembling hands, she says:
+
+“Go and stand in the corner, Jeremy! I shall have to speak to your
+mother!”
+
+He goes, grinning at Mary, and stands there knowing that his victim is
+watching the door in an agony lest Mrs. Cole should suddenly come in
+and inquire what Jeremy had done, and that so the whole story of his
+insubordination be revealed and Miss Jones lose her situation for
+incapacity.
+
+How did he discover this final weakness of Miss Jones? No one told him;
+but he knew, and, as the days passed, rejoiced in his power and his
+might and his glory.
+
+Then came the climax. The children were not perfectly sure whether,
+after all, Miss Jones might not tell their mother. They did not wish
+this to happen, and so long as this calamity was possible they were not
+complete masters of the poor lady. Then came a morning when they had
+been extremely naughty, when every game had been played and every
+triumph scored. Miss Jones, almost in tears, had threatened four times
+that the Powers Above should be informed. Suddenly Mrs. Cole entered.
+
+“Well, Miss Jones, how have the children been this morning? If they've
+been good I have a little treat to propose.”
+
+The children waited, their eyes upon their governess. Her eyes stared
+back upon her tormentors. Her hands worked together. She struggled. Why
+not call in Mrs. Cole's authority to her aid? No; she knew what it would
+mean--“I'm very sorry, Miss Jones, but I think a younger governess,
+perhaps--”
+
+Her throat moved.
+
+“They've been very good this morning, Mrs. Cole.”
+
+The eyes of Mary and of Jeremy were alight with triumph.
+
+They had won their final victory.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+I know what Miss Jones suffered during those weeks. She was not an old
+lady of very great power of resistance, and it must have positively
+terrified her that these small children should so vindictively hate
+her. She could not have seen it as anything but hatred, being entirely
+ignorant of children and the strange forces to whose power they are
+subject, and she must have shivered in her bedroom at the dreariness
+and terror of the prospect before her. Many, many times she must have
+resolved not to be beaten, and many, many times she must have admitted
+herself beaten as badly as any one can be.
+
+Her life with the people downstairs was not intimate enough, nor were
+those people themselves perceptive enough for any realisation of what
+was occurring to penetrate.
+
+“I hope you're happy with the children, Miss Jones,” once or twice said
+Mrs. Cole.
+
+“Very, thank you,” said Miss Jones.
+
+“They're good children, I think, although parents are always prejudiced,
+of course. Jeremy is a little difficult perhaps. It's so hard to tell
+what he's really thinking. You find him a quiet, reserved little boy?”
+
+“Very,” said Miss Jones.
+
+“In a little while, when you know him better, he will come out. Only you
+have to let him take his time. He doesn't like to be forced--”
+
+“No,” said Miss Jones.
+
+Meanwhile, that morning descent into the schoolroom was real hell
+for her. She had to summon up her courage, walking about her bedroom,
+pressing her hands together, evoking the memory of her magnificent
+iron-souled brother, who would, she knew, despise such tremors. If only
+she could have discovered some remedy! But sentiment, attempted tyranny,
+anger, contempt, at all these things they laughed. She could not touch
+them anywhere. And she saw Jeremy as a real child of Evil in the very
+baldest sense. She could not imagine how anyone so young could be
+so cruel, so heartless, so maliciously clever in his elaborate
+machinations. She regarded him with real horror, and on the occasions
+when she found him acting kindly towards his sisters or a servant, or
+when she watched him discoursing solemnly to Hamlet, she was helplessly
+puzzled, and decided that these better manifestations were simply masks
+to hide his devilish young heart. She perceived meanwhile the inevitable
+crisis slowly approaching, when she would be compelled to invite Mrs.
+Cole's support. That would mean her dismissal and a hopeless future.
+There was no one to whom she might turn. She had not a relation, not a
+friend--too late to make friends now.
+
+She could see nothing in front of her at all.
+
+The crisis did come, but not as she expected it.
+
+There arrived a morning when the dark mist outside and badly made
+porridge inside tempted the children to their very worst. Miss Jones
+had had a wakeful night struggling with neuralgia and her own hesitating
+spirit. The children had lost even their customary half-humourous,
+half-contemptuous reserve. They let themselves appear for what they
+were--infant savages discontented with food, weather and education.
+
+I will not detail the incidents of that morning. The episodes that were
+on other mornings games were today tortures. There was the Torture of
+Losing Things, the Torture of Not Hearing, the Torture of Many Noises,
+the Torture of Sudden Alarm, the Torture of Outright Defiance, the
+Torture of Expressed Contempt. When twelve struck and the children were
+free, Miss Jones was not far from a nervous panic that can be called,
+without any exaggeration, incipient madness. The neuralgia tore at her
+brain, her own self-contempt tore at her heart, her baffled impotence
+bewildered and blinded her. She did not leave the schoolroom with the
+children, but went to the broad window-sill and sat there looking out
+into the dreary prospect. Then, suddenly for no reason except general
+weakness and physical and spiritual collapse she began to cry.
+
+Jeremy was considered to have a cold, and was, therefore, not permitted
+to accompany his mother and sisters on an exciting shopping expedition,
+which would certainly lead as far as old Poole's, the bookseller, and
+might even extend to Martins', the pastrycook, who made lemon biscuits
+next door to the Cathedral. He was, therefore, in a very bad temper
+indeed when he returned sulkily to the schoolroom. He stood for a moment
+there unaware that there was anybody in the room, hesitating as to
+whether he should continue “A Flat Iron for a Farthing” or hunt up
+Hamlet. Suddenly he heard the sound of sobbing. He turned and saw Miss
+Jones.
+
+He would have fled had flight been in any way possible, but she had
+looked up and seen him, and her sudden arrested sniff held them both
+there as though by some third invisible power. He saw that she was
+crying; he saw her red nose, mottled cheeks, untidy hair. It was the
+most awful moment of his young life. He had never seen a grown-up person
+cry before; he had no idea that they ever did cry. He had, indeed, never
+realised that grown-up persons had any active histories at all, any
+histories in the sense in which he and Mary had them. They were all a
+background, simply a background that blew backwards and forwards like
+tapestry according to one's need of them. His torture of Miss Jones had
+been founded on no sort of realisation of her as a human being; she
+had been a silly old woman, of course, but just as the battered
+weather-beaten Aunt Sally in the garden was a silly old woman.
+
+Her crying horrified, terrified, and disgusted him. It was all so
+dreary, the horrible weather outside, the beginning of a cold in his
+head, the schoolroom fire almost out, everyone's bad temper, including
+his own, and this sudden horrible jumping-to-life of a grown-up human
+being. She, meanwhile, was too deeply involved now in the waters of her
+affliction to care very deeply who saw her or what anyone said to her.
+She did feel dimly that she ought not to be crying in front of a small
+boy of eight years old, and that it would be better to hide herself in
+her bedroom, but she did not mind--she COULD not mind--her neuralgia was
+too bad.
+
+“It's the neuralgia in my head,” she said in a muffled confused voice.
+That he could understand. He also had pains in his head. He drew closer
+to her, flinging a longing backward look at the door. She went on in
+convulsed tones:
+
+“It's the pain--awake all night, and the lessons. I can't make them
+attend; they learn nothing. They're not afraid of me--they hate me. I've
+never really known children before--”
+
+He did not know what to say. Had it been Mary or Helen the formula would
+have been simple. He moved his legs restlessly one against the other.
+
+Miss Jones went on:
+
+“And now, of course, I must go. It's quite impossible for me to stay
+when I manage so badly--” She looked up and suddenly realised that it
+was truly Jeremy. “You're only a little boy, but you know very well that
+I can't manage you. And then where am I to go to? No one will take me
+after I've been such a failure.”
+
+The colour stole into his cheeks. He was immensely proud. No grown-up
+person had ever before spoken to him as though he was himself a grown-up
+person--always laughing at him like Uncle Samuel, or talking down to
+him like Aunt Amy, or despising him like Mr. Jellybrand. But Miss Jones
+appealed to him simply as one grown-up to another. Unfortunately he did
+not in the least know what to say. The only thing he could think of at
+the moment was: “You can have my handkerchief, if you like. It's pretty
+clean--”
+
+But she went on: “If my brother had been alive he would have advised
+me. He was a splendid man. He rowed in his college boat when he was
+at Cambridge, but that, of course, was forty years ago. He could keep
+children in order. I thought it would be so easy. Perhaps if my health
+had been better it wouldn't have been so hard.”
+
+“Do your pains come often?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“Yes. They're very bad.”
+
+“I have them, too,” said Jeremy. “It's generally, I expect, because I
+eat too much--at least, the Jampot used to say so. They're in my head
+sometimes, too. And then I'm really sick. Do you feel sick?”
+
+Miss Jones began to pull herself together. She wiped her eyes and patted
+her hair.
+
+“It's my neuralgia,” she said again. “It's from my eyes partly, I
+expect.”
+
+“It's better to be sick,” continued Jeremy, “if you can be--”
+
+She flung him then a desperate look, as though she were really an animal
+at bay.
+
+“You see, I can't go away,” she said. “I've nowhere to go to. I've no
+friends, nor relations, and no one will take me for their children, if
+Mrs. Cole says I can't keep order.”
+
+“Then I suppose you'd go to the workhouse,” continued Jeremy, pursuing
+her case with excited interest. “That's what the Jampot always used
+to say, that one day she'd end in the workhouse; and that's a horrible
+place, SHE said, where there was nothing but porridge to eat, and
+sometimes they took all your clothes off and scrubbed your back with
+that hard yellow soap they wash Hamlet with.”
+
+His eyes grew wide with the horrible picture.
+
+“Oh, Miss Jones, you mustn't go there!”
+
+“Would you mind,” she said, “just getting me some water from the jug over
+there? There's a glass there.”
+
+Still proud of the level to which he had been raised, but puzzled beyond
+any words as to this new realisation of Miss Jones, he fetched her the
+water, then, standing quite close to her, he said:
+
+“You must stay with us, always.”
+
+She looked up at him, and they exchanged a glance.
+
+With that glance Miss Jones learnt more about children than she had ever
+learnt before--more, indeed, than most people learn in all their mortal
+lives.
+
+“I can't stay,” she said, and she even smiled a little, “if you're
+always naughty.”
+
+“We won't be naughty any more.” He sighed. “It was great fun, of course,
+but we won't do it any more. We never knew you minded.”
+
+“Never knew I minded?”
+
+“At least, we never thought about you at all. Helen did sometimes. She
+said you had a headache when you were very yellow in the morning, but I
+said it was only because you were old. But we'll be good now. I'll tell
+them too--”
+
+Then he added: “But you won't go away now even if we're not always good?
+We won't always be, I suppose; and I'm going to school in September,
+and it will be better then, I expect. I'm too old, really, to learn with
+girls now.”
+
+She wanted terribly to kiss him, and, had she done so, the whole good
+work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware
+of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his
+eyes. The moment passed.
+
+“You won't go away, will you?” he said again.
+
+“Not if you're good,” she said.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Half an hour later, when Mary and Helen returned from their walk, they
+were addressed by Jeremy.
+
+“She was crying because we'd been so naughty, and she had pains in her
+head, and her brother was dead. Her brother was very strong, and he
+used to row in a boat forty years ago. She told me all about it, just as
+though I'd been Aunt Amy or Mother. And she says that if we go on being
+naughty she'll go away, and no one else will have her, because they'll
+hear about our having been naughty. And I told her about the workhouse
+and the porridge and the yellow soap that the Jampot told us of, and it
+would be awful if she went there because of us, wouldn't it?”
+
+“Awful,” said Mary.
+
+But Helen said: “She wouldn't go there. She'd take a little house,
+like Miss Dobell, and have tea-parties on Thursdays--somewhere near the
+Cathedral.”
+
+“No, she wouldn't!” said Jeremy excitedly. “How could she take a little
+house if she hadn't any money? She told me she hadn't, and no friends,
+nor nobody, and she cried like anything--” He paused for breath, then
+concluded: “So we've got to be good now, and learn sums, and not make
+her jump. Really and truly, we must.”
+
+“I always thought you were very silly to make so much noise,” said Helen
+in a superior fashion. “You and Mary--babies!”
+
+“We're not babies,” shouted Jeremy.
+
+“Yes, you are.”
+
+“No, we're not.”
+
+Miss Jones was no longer the subject of the conversation.
+
+That same day it happened that rumours were brought to Mrs. Cole through
+Rose, the housemaid, or some other medium for the first time, of Miss
+Jones's incapacity.
+
+That evening Jeremy was spending his last half-hour before bedtime in
+his mother's room happily in a corner with his toy village. He suddenly
+heard his mother say to Aunt Amy:
+
+“I'm afraid Miss Jones won't do. I thought she was managing the
+children, but now I hear that she can't keep order at all. I'm
+sorry--it's so difficult to get anyone.”
+
+Jeremy sprang up from the floor, startling the ladies, who had forgotten
+that he was there.
+
+“She's all right,” he cried. “Really she is, Mother. We're going to be
+as good as anything, really we are. You won't send her away, will you?”
+
+“My dear Jeremy,” his mother said, “I'd forgotten you were there. Rose
+says you don't do anything Miss Jones tells you.”
+
+“Rose is silly,” he answered. “She doesn't know anything about it. But
+you will keep her, won't you, Mother?”
+
+“I don't know--if she can't manage you--”
+
+“But she can manage us. We'll be good as anything, I promise. You will
+keep her, won't you, Mother?”
+
+“Really, Jeremy,” said Aunt Amy, “to bother your mother so! And it's
+nearly time you went to bed.”
+
+He brushed her aside. “You will keep her, Mother, won't you?”
+
+“It depends, dear,” said Mrs. Cole, laughing. “You see--”
+
+“No--we'll be bad with everyone else,” he cried. “We will,
+really--everyone else. And we'll be good with Miss Jones.”
+
+“Well, so long as you're good, dear,” she said. “I'd no idea you liked
+her so much.”
+
+“Oh, she's all right,” he said. “But it isn't that--” Then he stopped;
+he couldn't explain--especially with that idiot Aunt Amy there, who'd
+only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else horrible.
+
+Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in the
+dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him, only the
+clocks whispering.
+
+What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were dead!
+And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At the same
+time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most strangely
+moved him--her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack of relations.
+Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps she also cried!
+
+The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging figures,
+all with businesses of their own.
+
+It was very odd.
+
+He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE SEA-CAPTAIN
+
+
+I
+
+
+Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will
+understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives thirty
+years ago in Polchester.
+
+It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a
+considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on the
+highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would not be
+able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true, although I
+myself can never be completely assured, possessing so vividly as I do a
+memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the edge of Merazion Woods
+and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet of ships full-sail upon the
+bluest of seas, and would not be persuaded that it was merely wrack of
+clouds. That may be or no; the fact remains that Polchester sniffed
+the sea from afar, was caught with sea breezes and bathed in reflected
+sea-lights; again and again of an evening the Cathedral sailed on dust
+and shadow towards the horizon, a great white ghost of a galleon, and
+the young citizens of the town with wondering eyes, watched it go. But
+there were more positive influences than mere cloud and light. We had,
+in the lower part of our town, sailors, quite a number of them. There
+were the old white-bearded ones who would sit upon tubs and tell
+smuggling tales; these haunted the River Pol, fished in it, ferried
+people across it, and let out boats for hire. There were younger sailors
+who, tired of the still life of their little villages and dreading the
+real hard work of a life at sea, lurched and slouched by the Pol's river
+bed, fishing a little, sleeping, eating and drinking a great deal.
+
+And there were the true sailors, passing through perhaps on their way
+to Drymouth to join their ships, staying in the town for a day or two
+to visit their relations, or simply stopping for an hour or so to gaze
+open-mouthed at the Cathedral and the market-place and the Canons and
+the old women. These men had sometimes gold rings in their ears, and
+their faces were often coloured a dark rich brown, and they carried
+bundles across their backs all in the traditional style.
+
+Then there were influences more subtle than either clouds or men. There
+were the influences of the places that we had ourselves seen in our
+summer holidays--Rafiel and St. Lowe, Marion Bay or Borhaze--and, on
+the other coast, Newbock with its vast stretch of yellow sand, St. Borse
+with its wild seas and giant Borse Head, or St. Nails-in-Cove with its
+coloured rocks and sparkling shells. Every child had his own place; my
+place was, like Jeremy's, Rafiel, and a better, more beautiful place, in
+the whole world you will not find. And each place has its own legend:
+at Rafiel the Gold lured Pirates, and the Turnip-Field; at Polwint the
+Giant Excise Man; at Borhaze the Smugglers of Trezent Rock; at St. Borse
+the wreck of “The Golden Galleon” in the year 1563, with its wonderful
+treasure; and at St. Maitsin Cove the famous Witch of St. Maitsin Church
+Town who turned men's bones into water and filled St. Maitsin Church
+with snakes. Back from one summer holiday, treasuring these stories
+together with our collections of shells and seaweed and dried flowers,
+we came, and so the tales settled in Polchester streets and crept into
+the heart of the Polchester cobbles and haunted the Polchester corners
+by the fire, and even invaded with their romantic, peering, mischievous
+faces the solemn aisles of the Cathedral itself.
+
+The sea was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze
+blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or
+dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses
+and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore,
+or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the
+Smugglers of Trezent or the Gold-laced Pirates of Rafiel.
+
+But I think that none of us adored the sea as Jeremy did. From that
+first moment when, as a small baby, he had been held up in Rafiel Cove
+to see the tops of the waves catch the morning light as they rolled over
+to shore, he had adored it. He had never felt any fear of it; he had
+been able to swim since he could remember, and he simply lived for those
+days at the end of July when they would all, in a frantic hurry and
+confusion, take the train for Rafiel and arrive at Cow Farm in the
+evening, with the roar of the sea coming across the quiet fields to
+mingle with the lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep. He had
+in his bedroom a wonderful collection of dusty and sticky sea-shells,
+and these he would turn over and over, letting them run through his
+fingers as a miner counts his gold.
+
+Let him catch the faintest glimpse of a shadow of a sailor in the street
+and he was after it, and he had once, when he was only four or five,
+been caught by the terrified Jampot, only just in time, walking away
+confidently down the market-place, his hand in the huge grasp of a
+villainous looking mariner. He was exceedingly happy in his home, but he
+did often wonder whether he would not run away to sea; of course, he
+was going to be a sailor, but it seemed so long to wait until he was
+thirteen or fourteen, and there was the sea all the time rolling in and
+out and inviting him to come.
+
+Mrs. Cole warned Miss Jones of this taste of Jeremy's: “Never let him
+speak to a sailor, Miss Jones. There are some horrible men in the town,
+and Jeremy simply is not to be trusted when sailors are concerned.”
+
+Miss Jones, however, could not be always on her guard, and Fate is
+stronger than any governess...
+
+Early in February there came one of those hints of spring that in
+Glebeshire more than in any other place in the world thrill and stir the
+heart. Generally they give very little in actual reward and are followed
+by weeks of hail and sleet and wind, but for that reason alone their
+burning promise is beyond all other promises beguiling. Jeremy got up
+one morning to feel that somewhere behind the thick wet mists of the
+early hours there was a blazing sun. After breakfast, opening the window
+and leaning out, he could see the leaves of the garden still shining
+with their early glitter and the earth channelled into fissures and
+breaks, dark and hard under the silver-threaded frost; beneath the rind
+of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer
+the call of the sun above it. Far down the road towards the Orchards a
+dim veil of gold was spreading behind the walls of mist; the sparrows
+on the almond tree near his window chattered like the girls of the High
+School, and blue shadows stole into the dim grey sky, just as light
+breaks upon an early morning sea; the air was warm behind the outer wall
+of the frosty morning, and the faint gold of the first crocus beneath
+the garden wall near the pantry door, where always the first crocuses
+came, caught his eye. Even as he watched the sun burst the mist, the
+trees changed from dim grey to sharp black, the blue flooded the sky,
+and the Cathedral beyond the trees shone like a house of crystal.
+
+All this meant spring, and spring meant hunting for snowdrops in the
+Meads. Jeremy informed Miss Jones, and Miss Jones was, of course,
+agreeable. They would walk that way after luncheon.
+
+The Meads fall in a broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement
+down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered
+with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally
+bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank.
+Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils first, and the
+primroses afterwards, are so thick that, from the Cathedral walls, the
+Rope Walk looks as though it wandered between pools and lakes of gold.
+In the Orchards on the hill also they run like rivers.
+
+Upon this afternoon there were only the trees, faintly pink, along the
+river and the wide unbroken carpet of green. Miss Jones walked up and
+down the Rope Walk, whilst Mary told her an endless and exceedingly
+confused story that had begun more than a week ago and had reached by
+now such a state of “To be continued in our next” that Miss Jones had
+only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore
+wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary's audiences, and Mary
+never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her
+enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses,
+white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile
+thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she
+had seen in Thornley's windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by
+Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.
+
+Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about
+rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and
+it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of
+the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but
+never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded
+that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that
+certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could,
+his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him
+at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting
+the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts
+haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt
+Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he
+saw them scale the air and swim the stream--now, he was close on their
+trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole...
+sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them;
+always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy
+tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.
+
+Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to
+breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked
+and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously
+motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed
+at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful
+afternoon...
+
+Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for
+snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas
+that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and
+what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's
+youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.
+
+He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the
+little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep
+rich voice say:
+
+“I suppose you 'aven't such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young
+gentleman?”
+
+He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to
+possess, but, of course, he hadn't one, owing to the stupidity of
+elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: “No, I'm afraid
+I haven't.” Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There,
+standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking
+down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of
+the world would have most certainly described as “seedy.”
+
+Jeremy did not see his “seediness.” He saw first his face, which was of
+a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple;
+ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling
+mouth. He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and
+the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle.
+He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many
+stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the
+elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at
+bursting point. He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down
+the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their
+owner's chest heaved.
+
+And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could
+be so thick and so broad. The back, spreading to the farthest limits of
+the shiny seams of the coat, was like a wall. The thighs were pillows,
+the arms bolsters and yet not fat, mind you, simply muscle, all of
+it. One could see in a minute that it was all muscle, the chest thrust
+forward, the legs spread wide, the bull-neck bursting the handkerchief,
+everything that Jeremy himself most wished to be. A sailor, a monument
+of strength, with the scent of his “shag” strong enough to smell a mile
+away, and--yes, most marvellous of all, gold rings in his ears! His
+chest would be tatooed probably, and perhaps his legs also!
+
+There, on the back of his hand, was a blue anchor.... Jeremy looked
+up and trembled lest the vision should fade, then flung a hurried look
+around him to see whether Miss Jones were near. No one was about. He was
+alone with the desire of his life.
+
+“I'm so so sorry I haven't a match,” he said. “I'm not allowed to have
+them, you know.”
+
+“No, I suppose not,” said the vision. “Just my blamed luck. There I am
+with 'undreds of pounds lying around my room at 'ome careless as you
+please, and then held up for a bloomin' match. What's gold to a man like
+me? But a match... there you are... that's life.”
+
+He looked at Jeremy with great interest; he took in, as Jeremy realised,
+every detail of his personal appearance.
+
+“I like boys,” he said. “'Ad two myself--'ealthy little nippers they
+was. Both dead-'ere to-day and gone to-morrer, as you might say. Got
+your nurse 'anging around anywhere?”
+
+“Nurse?” said Jeremy indignantly. “I don't have a nurse. I'm much too
+old! There is a governess, but she's over there talking to Mary. She's
+my sister--but they won't bother yet--not till the Cathedral bell
+begins.”
+
+“No intention of 'urting your feelings, young fellow my lad. Didn't
+think you'd want a nurse of course--big chap like you. Thought you might
+'ave a baby brother or such. No offence--I suppose you 'aven't begun to
+smoke yet. Can't offer you some tobacco.”
+
+Jeremy coloured. The man was laughing at him.
+
+“I'm eight if you want to know,” he said, “and I'm going to school in
+September.”
+
+“School!” said the mariner, sniffing contemptuously. “I don't think much
+of school if you ask me. Now I never went to school, and I can't see
+that I'm much the worse for not 'aving been there. Contrariwise--I've
+seen many a fine promising lad spoiled by too much schoolin'. Be a man
+of the world, I say; that's the direction you want to sail in.”
+
+“Did you really never go to school?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“Not I!” relied the sailor. “Flung out at the age of six, I was, turned
+into a boat sailing to the West Indies and left to shift for myself--and
+'ere I am to-day a Captain of as fine a craft as you're ever likely to
+see, with gold in 'er lockers and peacocks in the 'old--all in a manner
+of speaking, you know.”
+
+Jeremy's eyes glittered; his face was flushed a brilliant red. Hamlet
+had returned from his rabbit hunting and sat with his tongue out and a
+wild adventurous eye glittering up at his master from behind his hair,
+yet he was not noticed.
+
+“You were very lucky,” he said devoutly, then he went on hurriedly:
+“Would you mind--you see, Miss Jones may come at any moment--would you
+mind--” he choked.
+
+“Would I mind what?” asked the Captain.
+
+“Would you mind telling me? Are you tatooed on your body, snakes and
+ships and things, like a gardener once we had? He had a sea-serpent all
+down his back. He showed me one day.”
+
+The Captain smiled proudly.
+
+“Tatooed! Talk of tatooing! I'll show yer--and it isn't everybody I'd do
+it for neither. But I've taken a fancy to you, like my own young nipper
+what died.”
+
+With an air of vast ceremony, as though he were throwing open the door
+to all the universe, he slowly unwound from about his neck the dark blue
+handkerchief, unbuttoned his coat, then a grimy shirt and displayed a
+wall of deep brown chest. This fine expanse had no hair upon it, but
+was illuminated with a superb picture of a ship in full sail against
+a setting sun, all worked in the most handsome of blue tatoo. Jeremy
+gasped. He had never dreamed that such things could be. He ventured to
+touch the ship with his finger, and he could feel the Captain's manly
+heart thumping like a muffled hammer beneath the skin.
+
+“There's Queen Victoria on my right thigh and Nelson on my left, and the
+battle of Trafalgar on the middle of my back. P'raps I'll show 'em you
+one day. It wouldn't be decent exactly 'ere--too public. But one day you
+come to my little place and I'll show 'em you.”
+
+“Will you really?” said Jeremy. “Didn't it hurt terribly?”
+
+“Hurt!” said the Captain. “I should just think it did. I 'ad to put
+cotton wool behind my teeth to prevent myself from screaming. But that's
+nothing. What do you say to being tortured by the Caribbees natives
+every day after breakfast for three 'ole months. A tooth out a day--”
+
+“But your teeth are all there,” said Jeremy.
+
+“False,” said the Captain. “Every one of 'em. And the things they'll do
+to your toenails--it 'ud make your 'air creep on your 'ead to listen to
+the things I could tell you--”
+
+“Oh, it's awful!” said Jeremy. “And where is your ship now?”
+
+“Ah, my ship!” the Captain replied, winking in the most mysterious
+fashion; “it would be telling to say where that is. I can trust you,
+I know; I'm a great judge o' character, I am, but not even with my
+own mother, gone to glory now twenty years and as holy a soul as ever
+breathed, I wouldn't trust even 'er with the secret.”
+
+“Why is it a secret?” asked Jeremy breathlessly.
+
+“Treasure,” said the Captain, dropping his voice.
+
+“Treasure, nothing less nor more. Between you and me there's enough gold
+on that there ship to satisfy the Prime Minister 'imself, to say nothing
+of the jewels--rubies, pearls, diamonds. My word, if you could see them
+diamonds. I'm looking about me now for an extra man or two, and then I'm
+off again--silent come, silent go's my motto--”
+
+“I suppose you don't happen to want a cabin-boy?” gasped Jeremy, his
+voice choked in his throat.
+
+“Well, now, that's a funny thing,” said the Captain. “It's one of the
+very things. But I'm afraid you're a bit young. Yet I don't know. We
+might--”
+
+He broke off, suddenly lifted his finger to his lip, whispered:
+
+“Keep your eyes open. I'll be round again,” and had vanished.
+
+Directly after Jeremy heard Miss Jones's unwelcome voice: “Why, Jeremy,
+we couldn't find you anywhere. It's turning cold--tea-time--”
+ With a thump and a thud and a bang he fell back into the homely world.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Jeremy was a perfectly normal little boy, and I defy anyone to
+have discovered in him at this stage in his progress, those strange
+morbidities and irregular instincts that were to be found in such
+unhappy human beings as Dostoieffsky's young hero in “Podrostok,” or the
+unpleasant son and heir of Jude and Sue. Nevertheless, eight years
+old is not too early for stranger impulses and wilder dreams than most
+parents ever conceive of, and the fortnight that followed Jeremy's
+meeting with the Sea-Captain was as peculiar and fantastic a fortnight
+as he was ever, in all his later life, to know.
+
+For he was haunted--really haunted in the good old solid practical
+meaning of the term--haunted with the haunting that pursued Sintram
+and many another famous hero. And he was haunted not only by the
+Sea-Captain, but by a thousand things that attended in that hero's
+company. He was haunted by a picture--whence it had come to him he did
+not know--of a dead-white high road, dropping over the hill into shadow,
+the light fading around it, black, heavy hedges on every side of it.
+From below the hill came the pounding of the sea, exactly as he had
+heard it so many many times on the hill above Rafiel, and he knew,
+although his eyes could not catch it, that in the valley round the head
+of the road was the fishing village with the lights just coming in the
+windows, and beyond the village the sloping shingly Cove. But he could
+see only the dead-white road, and upon this his eyes were always fixed
+as though he were expecting someone. And he could smell the sea-pinks
+and the grass damp with evening dew, and the cold dust of the road, and
+the sea-smell in the wind. And he waited, knowing that the time would
+come when he would be told to descend the hill, pass through the
+village, and step out, under the heavy grey clouds, upon the little
+shingly beach. He was aware then that out at sea a dark, black ship was
+riding, slipping a little with the tide, one light gleaming and swinging
+against the pale glow of the dusky horizon. The church clock struck
+four below the hill; he was still on the high road waiting, his eyes
+straining for figures... He was prepared for some journey, because he
+had at his feet a bundle. And he knew that he ought not to be there.
+He knew that something awful was about to happen and that, when it had
+occurred, he would be committed always to something or someone... A
+little cold breeze then would rise in the hedges and against the silence
+that followed the chiming of the clock he could hear first the bleating
+of a sheep, then a sudden pounding of the sea as though the breakers
+responded to the sudden rising of the wind, then the hoofs of a horse,
+clear and hard, upon the road... At that moment the picture clouded
+and was dim. Had this been a dream? Was it simply a confusion of summer
+visits to Rafiel, stories told him by Mary, pictures in books (a fine
+illustrated edition of “Redgauntlet” had been a treasure to him since
+he was a baby), the exciting figure of the Captain, and the beginning of
+spring? And yet the vision was so vividly detailed that it was precisely
+like a remembered event. He had always seen things in pictures;
+punishment meant standing in the corner counting the ships on the
+wallpaper; summer holidays meant the deep green meadows of Cow Farm,
+or a purple pool under an afternoon sun; religion meant walking up
+the great wide aisle of the Cathedral in creaking boots and clean
+underclothes, and so on. It was nothing new for him to make a picture,
+and to let that picture stand for a whole complex phase of life. But
+this? What had it to do with the Sea-Captain, and why was it, as he knew
+in his heart that it was, wicked and wrong and furtive? For this had
+begun as a high adventurous romance. There had been nothing wrong
+in that first talk in the Meads, when the Captain had shown him the
+tatooes. The wickedness of it had developed partly with his growing
+longing to see the Captain again, partly with the meeting that actually
+followed, and partly with the sense that grew and grew as the days
+passed that the Captain was always watching him.
+
+The Captain, during these weeks, seemed to be everywhere. Never was
+there an afternoon that Jeremy walked out with Miss Jones and his
+sisters that he did not appear. It was not very difficult to snatch
+a conversation with him. Because the beauty of the spring weather
+continued, the children went every day for a walk in the Meads, and on
+at least three separate occasions Jeremy and the Captain enjoyed quite
+long conversations together. These were, none of them, so good as that
+first one had been. The Captain was not so genial, nor so light-hearted;
+it seemed that he had something on his mind. Sometimes he put his hand
+on Jeremy's shoulder, and the heavy pressure of his great fingers made
+Jeremy tremble, partly with terror, partly with pleasure. His face,
+also, was scarcely so agreeable as it had seemed at first sight. His
+tremendous nose seemed to burn down upon Jeremy like a malignant fire.
+His eyes were so small that sometimes they disappeared under his fat
+cheeks altogether, or only gleamed like little sharp points of light
+from under his heavy, shaggy eyebrows. Then, although he tried to make
+his voice pleasant, Jeremy felt that that complaisant friendliness was
+not his natural tone. Sometimes there would be a sharp, barking note
+that made Jeremy jump and his cheek pale. The Captain told him no more
+fascinating stories, and when Jeremy wanted to know about the ship with
+the diamonds and rubies and the little sea village where she lay hid and
+the Caribbees natives, and the chances of becoming a cabin boy, and
+the further exploitation of the tatooes--all these things the Captain
+brushed aside as though they no longer interested him in the least. He,
+on the other hand, wanted now to know exactly where Jeremy lived, what
+the house was like, where the back doors were, how the windows opened,
+where Jeremy slept, and so on. Jeremy, pleased at this interest in
+his daily life, told him as many things as he could, hoping to pass
+on afterwards to more exciting topics; how, for instance, the kitchen
+windows were fastened always last thing at night, but you could undo
+them from the garden if you liked with your knife, and Jeremy knew this
+because Uncle Samuel had done it once on a Sunday afternoon when the
+maids were all out and he'd forgotten his door key. He would have told
+the Captain all about the schoolroom and the toy village and the
+Jampot and the fun they had had teasing Miss Jones had not, the Captain
+fiercely told him that these things did not interest him, and that he
+had better just answer the questions that were put to him. It was indeed
+strange to see how, with every interview, the Captain grew fiercer and
+fiercer and sharper and sharper. He made no allusions now to “'is
+little nipper,” said nothing about that holy soul his mother, and never
+mentioned his liking for Jeremy. There was evidently something on his
+mind, and if he had seemed mysterious at their first meeting it was
+nothing to the secrecy that he practised now.
+
+And yet, in spite of all this, his hold over Jeremy grew and grew. That
+dream of the bending white road was always with Jeremy. He could think
+of nothing but the Captain, and while he was certainly afraid and would
+jump at the slightest sound, he was also certainly excited beyond all
+earlier experience. He longed, as he lay awake at night, to see the
+Captain. He seemed to have always in front of his eyes the great wall of
+a chest with the blue ship on it, and the bolster legs, and the gigantic
+hands. Strangest of all was the sense of evil that came with the
+attraction.
+
+He longed to be in the man's company as he longed to do something that
+he had been always told not to do, and when he caught sight of him
+a sudden, hot, choking hand was pressed upon his heart, and he was
+terrified, delighted, frightened, ashamed, all in one. The Captain
+always alluded to the things that he would tell him, would show him
+one day--“When you come to my little place I'll teach yer a thing or
+two”--and Jeremy would wonder for hours what this little place would
+be like and what the Captain would teach him. Meanwhile, he saw him
+everywhere, even when he was not there--behind lamp-posts, at street
+corners, behind the old woman's umbrella in the market-place, peering
+round the statues in the Cathedral, jerking up his head from behind
+chimney pots, looking through the nursery windows just when dusk was
+coming on, in the passages, under stairs, out in the dark garden--and
+always behind him that horrid dream of the dead-white road and the
+shingly Cove... Yes, poor Jeremy was truly haunted.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+That Miss Jones suspected nothing of these meetings must be attributed
+partly to that lady's habit of wrapping herself in her own thoughts on
+her walks abroad, and partly to her natural short-sightedness. Once
+Mary said that she had noticed “a horrid man with a red face” staring
+at them; but Miss Jones, although she was not a vain woman, thought
+it nevertheless quite natural that men should stare, and fancied more
+frequently that they did so than was strictly the truth.
+
+Jeremy, meanwhile, was occupied now with the thought as to what he would
+do did the Captain really want him to go away with him. He discussed it
+with himself, but he did not doubt what he would do; he would go. And he
+would go, he knew, with fear and dread, and with a longing to stay, and
+be warm in the schoolroom, and have jam for tea, and half an hour before
+bedtime downstairs, and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays. But the Captain
+could make him do anything... Yes, the Captain could make him do
+anything...
+
+His afternoon walks now were prolonged agonies. He would turn his head
+at every moment, would stare into dark corners, would start at the sound
+of steps. His sleep now was broken with horrid dreams, and he would jump
+up and cry out; and one night he actually dreamt of his dead-white road
+and the sounds that came up from below the hill, the bell and the sea,
+and the distant rattle of the little carts.
+
+Then the Captain drew near to the very house itself. He haunted Orange
+Street, could be seen lounging against a lamp-post opposite the High
+School, looked once into the very garden of the Coles, Jeremy watching
+him with beating heart from the schoolroom window. It was incredible
+to Jeremy that no one else of the house perceived him; but no one ever
+mentioned him, and this made it appear all the more a dream, as though
+the Captain were invisible to everyone save himself. He began to hate
+him even more than he feared him, and yet with that hatred the pleasure
+and excitement remained. I remember how, years ago in Polchester, when
+I could not have been more than six years old, I myself was haunted
+with exactly that same mixture of pleasure and horror by the figure of
+a hunch-backed pedlar who used to come to our town. Many years after I
+heard that he had been hung for the murder of some wretched woman who
+had accompanied him on some of his journeys. I was not surprised; but
+when I heard the story I felt then again the old thrill of mingled
+pleasure and fear.
+
+One windy afternoon, near dusk, when they were returning from their
+walk, Jeremy suddenly heard the voice in his ear:
+
+“I may be coming to visit yer one o' these nights. Keep yer eyes open
+and yer tongue quiet if I do.”
+
+Jeremy saw the figures of Miss Jones and his sisters pass round the
+corner of the road.
+
+“What for?” he gasped.
+
+The Captain's figure seemed to swell gigantic against the white light of
+the fading sky. The wind whistled about their ears.
+
+“Just to visit yer, that's all. 'Cause I've taken a fancy to yer.” The
+Captain chuckled and had vanished...
+
+Jeremy flung one glance at the grey desolate road behind him, then ran
+for his life to join the others.
+
+What, after that, did he expect? He did not know. Only the Captain was
+drawing closer, and closer, and closer.
+
+He could feel now always his hot breath upon his ear. Two days after the
+whispered dialogue in the road, that first promise of spring broke down
+into a tempest of wind and rain. The Coles' house in Orange Street,
+although it looked, with its stout, white stone, strong enough, was old
+and shaky. Now, in the storm, it shook and wheezed and rattled in every
+one of its joints. Jeremy, at ordinary times, loved the sound of the
+wind about the house, when he himself was safe and warm and cosy; but
+this was now another affair. Lying in his bed he could hear the screams
+down the chimney, then the tug at his window-pane, the rattling
+clutch upon the wood, then the sweep under the bed and the rush up the
+wallpaper, until at last, from behind some badly defended spot where the
+paper was thin, there would come a wailing, whistling screech as though
+someone were being murdered in the next room. On other days Jeremy, when
+he heard this screech, shivered with a cosy, creeping thrill; but now he
+put his head under the bedclothes, shut his eyes very tight, and tried
+not to see the Captain with his ugly nose and tiny gimlet eyes.
+
+He would be half asleep.
+
+“Come,” said the Captain from the window, “the boat is waiting! You
+promised, you know. Come just as you are--no time to dress,” and poor
+Jeremy would feel the great, heavy hand upon his shoulder and wake
+shivering and shaking from head to foot.
+
+On the third day following his last interview with the Captain he went
+to bed a little reassured and comforted. Perhaps the Captain had gone
+away. For three days he had seen and heard nothing of him at all.
+
+That was a night of rain--rain that slashed and whipped the house as
+though it would batter it to the ground. The rain would come with a
+wild fury upon the panes, trembling with its excited anger, would crash
+against the glass, then fall back and hang waiting for a further attack;
+next the results of the first attack would slip and slide like the
+crawling of a thousand snakes, then fall and drop slowly and heavily
+as though every drop were foretelling some awful peril. Jeremy lay and
+listened; but he resolved that to-night he would not be frightened,
+would not think of the Captain.
+
+He said the Lord's Prayer five times, then counted sheep jumping over
+the gate, a safe solution for sleepless hours. He saw the sheep--first
+one a very fat one, then one a very thin one; but the gate stood at
+the bottom of a little hill, so that it was very difficult for the poor
+creatures, who jumped and slipped back on the incline. Then a lot
+of sheep insisted on jumping together, and he could hardly count
+them--forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.... He was asleep.
+
+After a long, long time of soundlessness, of lying upon a sea that was
+like a bed of down, and looking up, happily into clear blue light, he
+was once more conscious of the rain. Yes, there it was with its sweeping
+rush, its smash upon the pane, its withdrawal, its trickling patter and
+heavy drops as though it were striking time. Yes, that was the rain and
+that--What was that?
+
+He was wide awake, lying back against his pillow, but his eyes staring
+in front of them till they burnt. The house was absolutely dark,
+absolutely silent, but between the attacks of the rain there was a
+wound, something that had not to do with the house nor with the weather.
+He strained with his ears, sitting up in bed, his hands clutching the
+bed clothes. He heard it quite clearly now. Someone was moving in the
+nursery.
+
+With that the whole of his brain was awake and he knew quite clearly,
+beyond a shadow of any doubt, what had happened; the Captain had come
+to fetch him. With that knowledge an icy despair gripped him. He did
+not want to go. Oh, he did not want to go! He was trembling from head
+to foot so that the bed shook beneath him, his breath came in little hot
+gasping pants, and his eyes were wide with terror. He was helpless. The
+Captain would only say “Come,” and go he must, leave his warm house and
+his parents whom he loved and Mary and Helen and Hamlet, yes, and even
+Miss Jones. He would be dragged down the long white road, through the
+lighted village, out on to the shiny beach, in a boat out to the dark
+ship--and then he would be alone with the Captain, alone in the dark
+ship, with the Captain's heavy hand upon his shoulder, his mouth
+smiling, his great legs drawing him in as a spider draws a fly into its
+web, and everyone asleep, only the stars and the dark water. He tried
+to say the Lord's Prayer again, but the words would not come. The sweat
+began to trickle down his nose...
+
+Then he heard in the next room some movement against a piece of
+furniture and a voice muttering. That decided him: better to go and face
+it than to wait there, so as though he were moving in his sleep, he got
+out of bed, crossed the floor and entered the schoolroom.
+
+The first sound that he heard was the ticking of the old nursery clock,
+a strange familiar voice in this awful world, then suddenly, although
+the room was in black darkness, he himself was staring into blazing
+light.
+
+He started back and uttered a little cry, but even as he did so that
+well-remembered hand was upon his shoulder and the well-known voice in
+his ear:
+
+“Move an inch, utter a sound, and I blow yer brains out, yer--” the
+voice, very low, faded into, the dark. He was staring into a lantern,
+and above the lantern was the dark body of the Captain. Then as he
+looked up he was indeed near his last moment, for had he not been a
+brave boy, old for his years, and determined, he would have cried out
+with a scream that would have raised the house.
+
+The Captain had no face... The Captain had no face... Only out of a deep
+darkness those little eyes glittered like candle-points. Jeremy uttered
+no sound. Then catching the Captain's coat because he trembled so, he
+said: “I'm coming at once--but don't wake Mary and Helen. They'd be
+frightened. May I get a coat, because it raining?”
+
+“Coming!” whispered the Captain, his voice coming from that space in the
+air where were his eyes. “You move one inch from 'ere or utter one sound
+and I do yer in, yer--I'm watchin' yer, mind!”
+
+The lantern light suddenly vanished. The room was black. There was no
+sound but the ticking of the clock, and now the rain, which had seemed
+to stop during this terrible dialogue, beat with friendly comfort once
+more upon the pane. Jeremy stood there, his body held together as though
+in an iron case, scarcely breathing. There was no more sound at all.
+Quite clearly now Mary's snores could be heard coming from her room.
+
+Jeremy had only one thought--only one thought in all the world. The
+Captain did not want him. The Captain had gone and not taken him with
+him. He was safe; he was freed; the terror was over and he was at
+liberty.
+
+At last he moved back to his room. He got into bed again. He was
+terribly cold, and little spasms of shivers seized him, but he did not
+care. The Captain was gone, and he had not taken him with him...
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+He was not aware whether he slept or no, but suddenly sunlight was in
+the room, the bath-water was running, the canary was singing and Hamlet
+was scratching upon his door. He jumped out of bed and let the dog in.
+Then he heard Rose's voice from the next room:
+
+“... and 'e's taken everything, 'e 'as. All the silver candlesticks and
+the plate what was give to master by the Temp'rance Society, and Master
+Jeremy's mug what he 'ad at 'is christening and all the knives and
+forks--'e 'as--and the gold clock out o' the drorin'-room, and the mess!
+Why, I says to Cook 'e couldn't 'ave made more mess, I say, not if 'e'd
+come to do nothin' else. Grease everywhere, you never see nothin' like
+it, and all the drawers open and the papers scattered about. Thank
+'Eaven 'e never found Cook's earrings. Real gold they was, ever so many
+carat and give to Cook ever so many years ago by 'er John. Poor woman!
+She'd 'ave been in a terrible takin' if she'd lost 'em... And so quiet
+too--not a sound and everyone sleepin' all round 'im. Wonderful 'ow
+they does it! I thank the Lord I didn't 'ear 'im; I'd 'ave died of
+fright-shouldn't like! Why, Cook says she knew a 'ouse once...”
+
+But Jeremy did not listen, he did not care. As Hamlet sprang about him
+and licked his hand he thought of one thing alone.
+
+The Captain was gone! The Captain was gone! He was free! The Captain had
+not taken him, and he was free at last!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. FAMILY PRIDE
+
+
+I
+
+
+I am afraid that too great a part of this book is about old maids, but
+it is hard for anyone who knows only the thriving bustling world of
+today to realise how largely we children were hemmed in and surrounded
+by a proper phalanx of elderly single ladies and clergymen. I don't
+believe that we were any the worse for that, and to such heroines as
+Miss Jane Maple, Miss Mary Trefusis and old Miss Jessamin Trenchard, I
+here publicly acknowledge deep and lasting debt-but it did make our life
+a little monotonous, a little unadventurous, a little circumscribed
+-and because T am determined to give the whole truth and nothing but the
+truth about the year of Jeremy's life that I am describing, this
+book will also, I am afraid, be a little circumscribed, a little
+unadventurous.
+
+The elderly lady who most thoroughly circumscribed Jeremy was, of
+course--putting Miss Jones, who was a governess and therefore did not
+count, aside--Aunt Amy.
+
+Now Aunt Amy was probably the most conceited woman in Polchester. There
+is of course ordinary human conceit, of which every living being has his
+or her share. I am not speaking of that; Miss Amy Trefusis might be said
+to be fanatically conceited.
+
+Although she was now a really plain elderly woman it is possible that
+when she was a little girl she was pretty. In any case, it is certain
+that she was spoiled when she was a little girl, and because she
+was delicate and selfish she received a good deal more attention and
+obedience from weak and vacillating elders than she deserved.
+
+After her growing up she had a year or two of moderate looks and she
+received, during this period, several proposals; these she refused
+because they were not good enough and something better must be coming
+very shortly, but what really came very shortly was middle-age, and it
+came of course entirely unperceived by the lady. She dressed and behaved
+as though she were still twenty, although her brother Samuel tried to
+laugh her out of such absurdities. But no sister ever pays attention to
+a brother on such matters, and Aunt Amy wore coloured ribbons and went
+to balls and made eyes behind her fan for season after season. Then as
+time passed she was compelled by her mirror to realise that she was
+not quite so young as she had once been, so she hurriedly invented a
+thrilling past history for herself, alluding to affair after affair that
+had come to nothing only because she herself had ruthlessly slain them,
+and dressing herself more reasonably, but with little signs and hints,
+in the shape of chains and coloured bows and rings, that she could still
+be young if she so pleased, and that she was open to offers, although
+she could not promise them much encouragement. She liked the society of
+Canons, and was to be seen a great deal with old Canon Borlase, who was
+as great a flirt as he was an egotist, so that it did not matter to
+him in the least with whom he flirted, and sat at the feet of old Canon
+Morpheu, who was so crazy about the discoveries that he had made in the
+life of Ezekiel that it was quite immaterial to him to whom he explained
+them.
+
+She descended from these clerical flights into the bosom of family life
+with some natural discontent. Her brother Samuel she had always disliked
+because he laughed at her; her sister she did not care for because she
+was very innocently, poor lady, flaunting her superior married state;
+and her brother-in-law she did not like because he always behaved as
+though she were one of a vast public of elderly ladies who were useful
+for helping in clerical displays, but were otherwise non-existent. Then
+she hated children, so that she really often wondered why she continued
+to live with her brother-in-law, but it was cheap, comfortable and
+safe, and although she assured herself and everyone else that there were
+countless homes wildly eager to receive her, it was perhaps just as well
+not to put their eagerness too abruptly to the test.
+
+There had been war between her and Jeremy since Jeremy's birth, but
+it had been war of a rather mild and inoffensive character, consisting
+largely in Jeremy on his side putting out his tongue at her when she
+could not see him, and she on her side sending him to wash his ears when
+they really did not require to be washed. She had felt always in Jeremy
+an obstinate dislike of her, and as he had seemed to her neither a very
+clever nor intelligent child she had consoled herself very easily with
+the thought that he did not like her simply because he was stupid. So
+it had been until this year, and then suddenly they had been flung into
+sharper opposition. It was hard to say what had brought this about,
+but it was perhaps that Jeremy had sprung suddenly from the unconscious
+indifference of a young child into the active participation of a growing
+boy. Whatever the truth might have been, the coming of Hamlet had drawn
+their attitudes into positive conflict.
+
+Aunt Amy had felt from the first that Hamlet laughed at her. Had you
+asked her to state, as a part of her general experience, that she really
+believed that dogs could laugh at human beings she would indignantly
+have repudiated any idea so fantastic, nevertheless, unanalysed and
+unconfronted, that was her conviction. The dog laughed at her, he
+insulted her by walking into her bedroom with his muddy feet and then
+pretending that he hadn't known that it was her bedroom, regarding her
+through his hair with an ironical and malicious glance, barking suddenly
+when she made some statement as though he enjoyed immensely an excellent
+joke, but, above all, despising her, she felt, so that the wall of
+illusion that she had built around herself had been pulled down by at
+least one creature, more human, she knew, in spite of herself, than many
+human beings. Therefore, she hated Hamlet, and scarcely a day passed
+that she did not try to have him flung from the house, or at least kept
+in the kitchen offices.
+
+Hamlet had, however, won the hearts of the family; it was, indeed, Aunt
+Amy alone to whom he had not thought it worth while to pay court. To her
+alone he would not come when she called, by her alone he would not
+be cajoled, even though she offered him sugary tea, his deadliest
+temptation. No, he sat and looked at her through his hair, his fiery eye
+glinting, his peaked beard ironically humorous, his leg stuck out from
+his body, a pointing signal of derision.
+
+She resolved to wait for an opportunity when she might conquer Hamlet
+and Jeremy together, but her power in the house was slight, so long as
+Mr. and Mrs. Cole were there. “If I only had the children to myself,”
+ she would say, “I would improve their manners in many ways. Poor
+Alice--!” Then suddenly she did have them. At the beginning of May Mr.
+Cole was summoned to take a mission to the seamen of Drymouth, and Mrs.
+Cole, who had relations in Drymouth, accompanied him. They would be
+absent from Pelchester a whole week.
+
+“Oh, won't Aunt Amy be a nuisance,” said Jeremy, realising the
+situation. Then turning to Mary he added: “We'll pretend to do what she
+tells us and not do it really. That's much the easiest.”
+
+A week is a short time, especially at the beginning of a shining and
+burning May, but Aunt Amy did her best not only with the children but
+with the servants, and even old Jordan, the gardener, who had been with
+the Cole family for twenty years. During that short week the cook, the
+parlourmaid, Rose, the housemaid, and the bootboy all gave notice, and
+Mrs. Cole was only able to keep them (on her return) by raising the
+wages of all of them. Jordan, who was an old man with a long white
+beard, said to her when she advised him to plant pinks where he had
+planted tulips and tulips where he had planted pinks, and further
+inquired why the cauliflower that he sent in was so poor and the
+cabbages so small: “Leave things alone, Miss, Nature's wiser than we
+be, not but what you mayn't mean well, but fussin's never done any good
+where Nature's concerned, nor never will”; and when she said that he was
+very rude to her, he shook his head and answered:
+
+“Maybe yes, and maybe no. What's rude to one ain't rude to another”--out
+of which answer she could make nothing at all.
+
+In the schoolroom she sustained complete defeat. At the very outset she
+was baffled by Miss Jones. She had always despised Miss Jones as a
+poor unfortunate female who was forced to teach children in her old
+age because she must earn her living--a stupid, sentimental, cowed,
+old woman at whom the children laughed. She found now that the children
+instead of laughing at her laughed with her, formed a phalanx of
+protection around her and refused to be disobedient. Miss Jones herself
+was discovered to have a dry, rather caustic, sense of humour that Aunt
+Amy felt to be impertinence, but could not penetrate.
+
+“And is that really how you teach them history, Miss Jones? Not quite
+the simplest way, surely... I remember an excellent governess whom we
+once had--”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Miss Jones, gently, “you would give them a history
+lesson yourself, Miss Trefusis. I would be so glad to pick up any little
+hints--”
+
+“I have, of course, no time,” said Aunt Amy hurriedly, “but, speaking
+generally, I am afraid I can't approve altogether of your system.”
+
+“It isn't very good, I'm afraid,” said Miss Jones weakly. “The children
+would be glad, I know, to have a few hints from you if you could spare a
+moment--”
+
+Jeremy, who was listening, giggled, tried to turn the giggle into a
+sneeze and choked.
+
+“Jeremy!” said Aunt Amy severely.
+
+“Oh, do look, Aunt Amy!” cried Mary, always Jeremy's faithful ally, “all
+your hairpins are dropping out!”
+
+She devoted herself then to Jeremy and worried him in every possible
+way, and after two days of this he hated her with a deep and bitter
+hatred, very different from that earlier teasing of Miss Jones. That had
+sprung from a sudden delicious discovery of power, and had been directed
+against no one. This was a real personal hatred that children of a less
+solid and tenacious temperament than Jeremy would have been incapable of
+feeling.
+
+He did not laugh at her, he did not tease her, he no longer put out his
+tongue at her. He was older than that now--he was simply reserved and
+silent, watching her with his large eyes, his square body set, and
+resolved as though he knew that his moment would come.
+
+Her experience with him was baffling. She punished him, petted him, she
+ignored him, she stormed at him; it seemed that she would do anything
+could she only win from him an acknowledgment of her power, her
+capability. But she could not. He only said: “Yes, Aunt Amy.” “No, Aunt
+Amy.”
+
+She burst out: “You're a sullen, wicked little boy, Jeremy. Do you know
+what happens to little boys who sulk?”
+
+“No, Aunt Amy.”
+
+“They grow into cross, bad-tempered men whom nobody likes and nobody
+trusts. Do you want to be like that when you're a man?”
+
+“I don't care.”
+
+“You know what happened to 'Don't Care.' I shall have to punish you if
+you're rude to me.”
+
+“What have I done that's rude?”
+
+“You mustn't speak to me like that. Is that the way you speak to your
+mother?”
+
+“No, Aunt Amy.”
+
+“Well, then, if you don't speak to your mother like that, you mustn't
+speak to me like that, either.”
+
+“No, Aunt Amy.”
+
+“Well, then...”
+
+This hatred was quite new to him. He had once, years ago, hated a
+black-faced doll that had been given to him. He had not known why he
+hated it, but there it had been. He had thrown it out of the window, and
+the gardener had found it and brought it into the house again, battered
+and bruised, but still alive, with its horrid red smile, and this had
+terrified him... He had begun to burn it, and the nurse had caught him
+and slapped him. He had begun to cut it with scissors, and when the
+sawdust flowed he was more terrified than ever. But that doll was quite
+different from Aunt Amy. He was not terrified of her at all. He hated
+her. Hated the fringe of her black hair, the heavy eyelashes, the thin
+down on her upper lip, the way that the gold cross fell up and down on
+her breast, her thin, blue-veined hands, her black shoes. She was his
+first enemy, and he waited, as an ambush hides and watches, for his
+opportunity...
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+One of our nicest old maids, Miss Maddison, gave every year what she
+called her “early summer party.” This was different from all our other
+parties, because it occurred neither in the summer nor in the winter,
+but always during those wonderful days when the spring first began
+to fade into the high bright colours, the dry warmth, the deep green
+shadows of the heat of the year. It was early in May that Miss Maddison
+had her party, and we played games on her little sloping green lawn,
+and peered over her pink-brick wall down on to the brown roofs of the
+houses below the Close, and had a tremendous tea of every kind of cake
+and every kind of jam in her wainscoted dining-room that looked out
+through its tall open windows on to the garden. Those old houses that
+run in a half-moon round the Close, and face the green sward and the
+great western door of the Cathedral, are the very heart of Polchester.
+Walking down the cobbled street, one may still to-day look through the
+open door, down the dusky line of the little hall, out into the swimming
+colour of the garden beyond. In these little gardens, what did not grow?
+Hollyhocks, pinks, tulips, nasturtiums, pansies, lilies of the valley,
+roses, honeysuckle, sweet-williams, stocks--I remember them all at their
+different seasons in that muddled, absurd profusion. I can smell them
+now, can see them in their fluttering colours, the great grey wall of
+the Cathedral, with its high carved door and watching saints behind me,
+the sun beating on to the cobbles, the muffled beat of the summer day,
+the sleepy noises of the town, the pigeons cutting the thin, papery blue
+into arcs and curves and circles, the little lattice-windowed houses,
+with crooked chimneys and shining doors, smiling down upon me. I can
+smell, too, that especial smell that belonged to those summer hours, a
+smell of dried blotting-paper, of corn and poppies from the fields, of
+cobble-stones and new-baked bread and lemonade; and behind the warmth
+and colour the cool note of the Cathedral bell echoed through the town,
+down the High Street, over the meads, across the river, out into the
+heart of the dark woods and the long spaces of the summer fields. I can
+see myself, too, toiling up the High Street, my cap on the back of my
+head, little beads of perspiration on my forehead, and my eyes always
+gazing into the air, so that I stumbled over the cobbles and knocked
+against doorsteps. All these things had to do with Miss Maddison's
+parly, and it was always her party that marked the beginning of them
+for us; she waited for the fine weather, and so soon as it came the
+invitations were sent out, the flower-beds were trimmed, the little
+green wooden seats under the mulberry tree were cleaned, and Poupee, the
+black poodle, was clipped.
+
+It happened this year that Miss Maddison gave her party during the
+very week that Mr. and Mrs. Cole went to Drymouth. She sent out her
+invitations only three days before the great event, because the summer
+had come with so fine a rush. “Master Jeremy and the Misses Cole...
+Would they give Miss Maddison the pleasure...?” Yes, of course they
+would. Aunt Amy would take them.
+
+On the morning of the great day Jeremy poured the contents of his
+watering-can upon Aunt Amy's head. It was a most unfortunate accident,
+arranged obviously by a malignant fate. Jeremy had been presented with
+a pot of pinks, and these, every morning, he most faithfully watered. He
+had a bright-red watering-can, bought with his own money, and, because
+it held more water than the pinks needed, he was in the daily habit of
+emptying the remnant in a glittering shower out of the pantry window
+on to the bed nearest the garden wall. Upon this morning someone called
+him; he turned his head; the water still flowed, and Aunt Amy, hatless
+and defenceless, received it as it tumbled with that sudden rush which
+always seizes a watering-can at its last gasp. Jeremy was banished into
+his bedroom, where he employed the sunny morning in drawing pictures of
+Aunt Amy as a witch upon the wallpaper. For doing this he was caned
+by Aunt Amy herself with a ruler, and at the end of the operation
+he laughed and said she hadn't hurt him at all. In return for this
+impertinence he was robbed, at luncheon, of his pudding--which was,
+of course, on that very day, marmalade pudding--and then, Mary being
+discovered putting some of hers into a piece of paper, to be delivered
+to him in due course, they were both stood in different corners of the
+room “until you say you're sorry.”
+
+When the jingle arrived at three o'clock they had still not made this
+acknowledgment, and Jeremy said he never would, “not if he lived till
+he was ninety-nine.” At quarter past three Jeremy might have been seen
+sitting up very straight in the jingle, his face crimson from washing
+and temper. He was wearing his new sailor suit, which tickled him and
+was hot and sticky; he sat there devoting the whole of his energies to
+the business of hating Aunt Amy.
+
+As I have said, he had never hated anyone before, and he was surprised
+at the glow of virtuous triumph that this new emotion spread over his
+body. He positively loved to hate Aunt Amy, and as Parkes, the pony,
+slowly toiled up the hill to the Cathedral, he sat stiff and proud with
+an almost humorous anger. Then, as they turned over the hot shining
+cobbles into the Close and saw the green trees swimming in the sun, he
+turned his mind to the party. What games would they play? Who would be
+there? What would there be for tea? He felt creeping over him the stiff
+shyness that always comes when one is approaching a party, and he wished
+that the first handshaking and the first plunge into the stares of the
+critical guests might be over. But he did not really care. His hatred
+of Aunt Amy braced him up; when one was capable of so fine and manly an
+emotion as this hatred, one need not bother about fellow-guests. Then
+the jingle stopped outside a house immediately opposite the great
+west-end door of the Cathedral; in the little hall Miss Maddison was
+standing, and from the glittering garden behind her the sun struck
+through the house into the shadowed street.
+
+Jeremy's public manners were, when he pleased, quite beautiful--“the
+true, old-fashioned courtesy,” gushing friends of the Cole family used
+to say. He was preparing to be very polite now, when suddenly the voice
+of the Dean's Ernest ordering people about in the garden struck upon his
+ear. He had not seen the Dean's Ernest for nearly three months, for the
+very good reason that that gentleman had been experiencing his first
+term at his private school. Last year young Ernest and Jeremy had been,
+on the whole, friendly, although Ernest, who was nine, and strong for
+his age, had always patronised. And now? Jeremy longed to inform his
+friend that he also shortly would proceed to school, that in another
+six months' time there would be practically no difference between them.
+Nevertheless, at the present moment there was a difference... Ernest had
+a whole term to his credit.
+
+New arrivals gently insinuated the Cole family into the garden. Helen,
+proud and cold, Mary, blinking and nervous, stood pressed close together
+whilst other little girls stared and giggled, moved forward and then
+backward again, until suddenly Canon Lasker's Emily, who was fifteen
+and had such long legs that she was known as “the Giraffe,” came up
+and said: “Isn't it hot! Do you play croquet? Please-do! I'll
+have--the--blue ball...” And the Coles were initiated.
+
+Meanwhile, Aunt Amy had said: “Now, Jeremy, dear, run about and make
+friends.” Which so deeply infuriated him that he choked. Oh! supposing
+the Dean's Ernest had heard her!...
+
+And he had! A mocking voice behind him said: “Now, Jeremy, dear--”
+
+Jeremy turned round and beheld the Dean's Ernest mockingly waiting his
+retort. And he could not retort. No words would come, and he could only
+stand there, his cheeks flushed, aware that Ernest had grown and grown
+during those three months, that he wore a straw hat with a black-and-red
+ribbon upon it, that round his long ugly neck was a stiff white collar,
+and across his waistcoat a thick silver watch-chain.
+
+“Hallo!” said Jeremy.
+
+“Hallo!” said the new Ernest scornfully.
+
+A long pause.
+
+Then Ernest, turning on his heel, said to someone behind him: “Let's get
+away from all these girls!” The tears burnt in Jeremy's eyes, hot and
+salt. He clenched his fists and gazed upon a garden that swam in a
+mist of tears and sunlight. He felt a sudden strange impulse of family
+affection. He would like to have gathered behind him his father and
+mother, Mary, Helen, Hamlet, Uncle Samuel--yes, and even Aunt Amy, and
+to have advanced not only upon Ernest, but upon the whole Dean's family.
+It would have given him great pleasure to have set his teeth into the
+fat legs of the Dean himself; he would gladly have torn the hat from
+the head of Mrs. Dean... Upon Ernest there was no torture he would not
+employ.
+
+He would get even; he resolved that before he left that house he would
+have his revenge.
+
+Kind Miss Maddison, tripping along and seeing him as a pathetic little
+boy in a sailor suit without guile or malice, swept him into an “I spy”
+ party composed for the most part of small girls who fell down and cried
+and said they would go home.
+
+Jeremy, hiding behind a tree, watched the thin back of Ernest as it
+lifted itself autocratically above two small boys who looked up to him
+with saucer-eyes. Ernest was obviously talking about his school. Jeremy,
+lost in the contemplation of his vengeance, forgot his game, and was
+taken prisoner with the greatest of ease. He did not care. The afternoon
+was spoilt for him. He was not even hungry. Why could he not go to
+school to-morrow, and then challenge Ernest to combat? But he might
+challenge Ernest without going to school... He had never fought a real
+fight, but the sight of his enemy's thin, peaky body was encouraging.
+
+“Now, Jeremy, dear,” said Miss Maddison, “it's your turn to hide...”
+
+Soon they all went in to tea. Everyone was thoroughly at home by this
+time, and screamed and shouted quite in the most natural manner in the
+world. The long table stretched down the whole room, almost from wall to
+wall; the sunlight played in pools and splashes upon the carpet and the
+flowers and the pictures. There was every sort of thing to eat--thin
+bread-and-butter rolled up into little curly sandwiches, little cakes
+and big cakes, seed cakes and sugar cakes, and, of course, saffron buns,
+jam in little shining dishes, and hot buttered toast so buttery that, it
+dripped on to your fingers.
+
+Jeremy sat next to Mary, and behind him hovered Aunt Amy. Only half an
+hour ago how this would have angered him! To have her interfering with
+him, saying: “Not two at a time, Jeremy,” or “Pass the little girl the
+sugar, Jeremy--remember your manners.” or “Not so big a piece, Jeremy.”
+ But now--he did not know... She was one of the family, and he felt as
+though the Dean's Ernest had scorned her as well as himself. Also Mary.
+He felt kind to Mary, and when she whispered “Are you enjoying it,
+Jeremy?” he answered “Yes; are you?” Not because he was really enjoying
+it, but because he knew that she wanted him to say that.
+
+He could see Ernest from where he sat, and he knew that Ernest was
+laughing at him. He remembered that he had given Ernest three splendid
+marbles, just before his departure to school, as a keepsake. How he
+wished that he had kept them! He would never give Ernest anything again
+except blows. Mary might be tiresome sometimes, but she was his sister,
+and he greatly preferred her as a girl to Ernest's sisters. He could see
+them now, greedy, ugly things...
+
+“Now, Jeremy, wipe your mouth,” said Aunt Amy.
+
+He obeyed at once.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Tea over, they all trooped out into the garden again. The evening light
+now painted upon the little green lawn strange trembling shadows of
+purple and grey; the old red garden wall seemed to have crept forwards,
+as though it would protect the house and the garden from the night; and
+a sky of the faintest blue seemed, with gentle approval, to bless the
+quiet town fading into dusk beneath it. Over the centre of the lawn the
+sun was still shining, and there it was warm and light. But from every
+side the shadows stealthily crept forward. A group of children played
+against the golden colour, their white dresses patterns that formed
+figures and broke and formed again. The Cathedral bell was ringing for
+evensong, and its notes stole about the garden, and in and out amongst
+the children, as though some guardian spirit watching over their safety
+counted their numbers.
+
+Jeremy, feeling rather neglected and miserable, stood in the shadow near
+the oak on the farther side of the lawn. He did not want to play with
+those little girls, and yet he was hurt because he had not been asked.
+The party had been a most miserable failure, and a year ago it would
+have been such a success. He did not know that he was standing now, in
+the middle of his eighth year, at the parting of the ways; that only
+yesterday he had been a baby, and that he would never be a baby again.
+He did not feel his independence--he felt only inclined to tears and
+a longing, that he would never, never confess, even to himself, that
+someone should come and comfort him! Nevertheless, even at this very
+moment, although he did not know it, he, a free, independent man, was
+facing the world for the first time on his own legs. His mother might
+have realised it had she been there--but she was not. Mary, however, was
+there, and in the very middle of her game, searching for him, as she was
+always doing, she found him desolate under the shadow of the oak. She
+slipped away, and, coming up to him with the shyness and fear that she
+always had when she approached him, because she loved him so much and he
+could so easily hurt her, said:
+
+“Aren't you coming to play, Jeremy?”
+
+“I don't care,” he answered gruffly.
+
+“It isn't any fun without you.” She paused, and added: “Would you mind
+if I stayed here too?”
+
+“I'd rather you played,” he said; and yet he was comforted by her,
+determined, as he was, that she should never know it!
+
+“I'd rather stay,” she said, and then gazed, with that melancholy stare
+through her large spectacles that always irritated Jeremy, out across
+the garden.
+
+“I'm all right,” he said again; “only my stocking tickles, and I can't
+get at it--it's the back of my leg. I say, Mary, don't you hate the
+Dean's Ernest?”
+
+“Yes, I do,” she answered fervently, although she had not thought about
+him at all--enough for her that Jeremy should hate him! Then she gasped:
+“Here he comes--”
+
+He was walking towards them with a swagger of his long yellow neck
+and his thin leggy body that Jeremy found especially offensive. Jeremy
+“bristled,” and Mary was conscious of that bristling.
+
+“Hallo!” said Ernest.
+
+“Hallo!” said Jeremy.
+
+“What rot these silly games are!” said Ernest. “Why can't they have
+something decent, like cricket?”
+
+Jeremy had never played cricket, so he said nothing. “At our school,”
+ said Ernest, “we're very good at cricket. We win all our matches
+always--”
+
+“I don't care about your school,” said Jeremy, breathing through his
+nose.
+
+The Dean's Ernest was obviously surprised by this; he had not expected
+it. His pale neck began to flush.
+
+“Look here, young Cole,” he said, “none of your cheek.”
+
+This was a new dialect to Jeremy, who had no friends who went to school.
+All he said, however, breathing more fiercely than before, was: “I don't
+care--”
+
+“Oh, don't you?” said Ernest. “Now, look here--” Then he paused,
+apparently uncertain, for a moment, of his courage. The sight of Mary's
+timorous anxiety, however, reassured him, and he continued: “It's all
+right for you, this sort of thing. You ought to be in the nursery with
+your old podge-faced nurse. Kids like you oughtn't to be allowed out of
+their prams.”
+
+“I don't care,” said Jeremy again, seeing in front of him the whole
+family of the Reverend Dean. “Your school isn't much anyway, I expect,
+and I'm going to school in September, and I'll wear just the same things
+as you do and--”
+
+He wanted to comment upon the plain features of Ernest's sisters, but
+his gentlemanly courtesy restrained him. He paused for breath, and
+Ernest seized his advantage.
+
+“You have to have an old aunt to look after you anyway--an ugly old
+aunt. I wouldn't have an old aunt always hanging over me--'Now, Jeremy
+dear--' 'Blow your nose, Jeremy dear--' 'Wipe your feet, Jeremy dear.'
+Look at the things she wears and the way she walks. If I did have to
+have an aunt always I'd have a decent one, not an old clothes bag.”
+
+What happened to Jeremy at the moment? Did he recollect that only a few
+hours before he had been hating Aunt Amy with a fine frenzy of hatred?
+For nearly a week he had been chafing under her restraint, combating her
+commands, defying her orders. He had been seeing her as everything that
+the Dean's Ernest had but now been calling her. Now he only saw her as
+someone to be defended, someone who was his, someone even who depended
+on him for support. He would have challenged a whole world of Deans in
+her defence.
+
+He said something, but no one could hear his words; then he sprang upon
+the startled Ernest.
+
+It was not a very distinguished combat; it was Jeremy's first battle,
+and he knew at that time nothing of the science of fighting. The Dean's
+Ernest, in spite of his term at school, also knew nothing--and the
+Dean's Ernest was a coward...
+
+It lasted but a short while, for Mary, after the first pause of
+horrified amazement (aware only that Ernest was twice as big as her
+Jeremy), ran to appeal to authority. Jeremy himself was aware neither of
+time nor prudence. He realised immediately that Ernest was a coward, and
+this realisation filled him with joy and happiness. He had seized Ernest
+by his long yellow neck, and, with his other hand, he struck at eyes and
+cheeks and nose. He did not secure much purchase for his blows because
+their bodies were very close against one another, but he felt the soft
+flesh yield and suddenly something wet against his hand which must, he
+knew, be blood. And all the time he was thinking to himself: “I'll teach
+him to say things about Aunt Amy! Aunt Amy's mine! I'll teach him! He
+shan't touch Aunt Amy! He shan't touch Aunt Amy!...”
+
+Ernest meanwhile kicked and kicked hard; he also tried to bite Jeremy's
+hand and also to pull his hair. But his own terror handicapped him;
+every inch of his body was alarmed, and that alarm prevented the freedom
+of his limbs. Then when he felt the blood from his nose trickle on to
+his cheek his resistance was at an end; panic flooded over him like
+water. He broke away and flung himself howling on to the ground, kicking
+his legs and screaming:
+
+“It isn't fair! He's bitten me! Take him away! Take him away!”
+
+Jeremy himself was no beautiful sight. His hair was wild, his white navy
+collar crumpled and soiled, the buttons of his tunic torn, his stocking
+down, and his legs already displaying purple bruises. But he did not
+care; he was well now; he was no longer unhappy.
+
+He had beaten Ernest and he was a man; he had risen victorious from his
+first fight, and Authority might storm as it pleased. Authority soon
+arrived, and there were, of course, many cries and exclamations. Ernest
+was led away still howling; Jeremy, stubborn, obstinate, and silent, was
+also led away.... A disgraceful incident.
+
+Aunt Amy, of course, was disgusted. Couldn't leave the boy alone one
+minute but he must misbehave himself, upset the party, be the little
+ruffian that he always was. She had always said that his mother spoiled
+him, and here were the fruits of that foolishness. How could she ever
+say enough to Miss Maddison? Her delightful party completely ruined!...
+Shocking!... Shocking!... Too terrible!. .. And Ernest, such a quiet,
+well-behaved little boy as a rule. It must have been Jeremy who...
+
+While they were waiting in the decent dusk of Miss Maddison's
+sitting-room for a cleaned and chastened Jeremy, Mary touched her aunt's
+arm and whispered in her nervous voice:
+
+“Aunt Amy--Jeremy hit Ernest because he said rude things about you.”
+
+“About me! Nonsense, child.”
+
+“No, but it was, really. Ernest said horrid things about you, and then
+Jeremy hit him.”
+
+“About me? What things?”
+
+“That you were ugly,” eagerly continued Mary--never a tactful child,
+and intent now only upon Jeremy's reputation--“and wore ugly clothes and
+horrid things. He did really. I heard it all.”
+
+Aunt Amy was deeply moved. Her conceit, her abnormal all-embracing
+conceit was wounded--yes, even by so insignificant a creature as the
+Dean's Ernest; but she was also unexpectedly touched. She would have
+greatly preferred not to be touched, but there it was, she could not
+help herself. She did not know that, in all her life before, anyone had
+ever fought for her, and that now of all champions in the world fate
+should have chosen Jeremy, who was, she had supposed, her enemy--never
+her defender!
+
+And that horrid child of the Dean--she had always disliked him, with
+his long yellow neck and watery eyes! How dared he say such things about
+her! He had always been rude to her. She remembered once--
+
+Jeremy arrived, washed, brushed, and obstinate. He would, of course, be
+scolded to within an inch of his life, and he did not care. He had seen
+the Dean's Ernest howling and kicking on the ground; he had soiled his
+straw hat for him, dirtied his stiff white collar for him, and made
+his nose bleed. He glared at his aunt (one eye was rapidly disappearing
+beneath a blue bruise), and he was proud, triumphant, and very tired.
+
+Farewells were made--again many apologies--“Nothing, I assure you,
+nothing. Boys will be boys, I know,” from Miss Maddison.
+
+Then they were seated in the jingle, Jeremy next to Aunt Amy, awaiting
+his scolding. It did not come. Aunt Amy tried; she knew what she should
+say. She should be very angry, disgusted, ashamed. She could not be any
+of these things. That horrid boy had insulted her. She was touched and
+proud as she had never been touched and proud in her life before.
+
+Jeremy waited, and then as nothing came his weariness grew upon him. As
+the old fat pony jogged along, as the evening colours of street and sky
+danced before him, sleep came nearer and nearer.
+
+He nodded, recovered, nodded and nodded again. His body pressed closer
+to Aunt Amy's, leaned against her. His head rested upon her shoulder.
+
+After a moment's pause she put her arm round him--so, holding him, she
+stared, defiantly and crossly, upon the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. RELIGION
+
+
+I
+
+
+Always in after years Jeremy remembered that party of Miss Maddison's,
+not because it had been there that he had won his first fight, but for
+the deeper reason that from that day his life received a new colour,
+woven into the texture of it; even now when he thinks of those hours
+that followed Miss Maddison's party he catches his breath and glances
+around him to see whether everything is safe. The children, on arriving
+home that evening, found that their father and mother had already
+returned from Drymouth. Jeremy, sleepy though he was, rushed to his
+mother, held her hand, explained his black eye, and then suddenly, in a
+way that he had, fell asleep, there as he was, and had to be carried up
+to bed.
+
+When he awoke next morning his first thought was of his mother. He did
+not know why; she was so definitely part of the background of his daily
+life that he felt too sure of her continual and abiding presence to need
+deliberate thought of her. But this morning he wanted to get up quickly
+and find her. Perhaps her absence had made him feel more insecure,
+but there had also been something that night, something in her face,
+something in the touch of her hand.
+
+And the other thing that he realised was that summer had truly come.
+He knew at once that hot smell that pressed even through the closed
+window-panes of his room; the bars and squares of light on the floor
+when he jumped out of bed and stood upon them seemed to burn the soles
+of his feet, and the rays of light on the ceiling quivered as only
+summer sunlight can quiver. The two windows of his bedroom looked back
+behind Polchester over fields and hedges to a dim purple line of wood. A
+tiny stream ran through the first two fields, and this little river
+was shining now with a white hot light that had yet the breeze of the
+morning ruffling it. He ran to his window and opened it. Beyond the wall
+that bordered their house was a little brown path, and down this path,
+even as he watched, a company of cows were slowly wandering along.
+Already they were flapping their ears lazily in anticipation of the
+flies, and the boy who was driving them was whistling as one only
+whistles on a summer morning. He could see the buttercups, too, in the
+nearest field; they seemed to have sprung to life in the space of a
+night. Someone was pulling the rope of a well somewhere and someone else
+was pouring water out upon some stone court. Even as he watched, a bee
+came blundering up to his window, hesitated for a moment, and then went
+whirring off again, and through all the sun and glitter and the sparkle
+of the little river there was a scent of pinks, and mignonette, and
+even, although it could not really be so, of the gorse. The sky was a
+pale white blue, so pale that it was scarcely any colour at all and
+a few puffs of clouds, dead white like the purest smoke, hovered in
+dancing procession, above the purple wood. The sun burnt upon his bare
+feet and his head and his hands.
+
+This coming of summer meant so much more to him than merely the
+immediate joy of it--it meant Rafiel and Cow Farm and the Cove and green
+pools with crabs in them, and shrimping and paddling and riding home in
+the evening on haycarts, and drinking milk out of tin cans, and cows and
+small pigs, and peeling sticks and apples, and collecting shells, and
+fishermen's nets, and sandwiches, and saffron buns mixed with sand,
+and hot ginger beer, and one's ears peeling with the sun, and church on
+Sunday with the Rafiel sheep cropping the grass just outside the church
+door, and Dick Marriott, the fisherman, and slipping along over the
+green water, trailing one's fingers in the water, in his boat, and fishy
+smells by the sea-wall, and red masses of dog-fish on the pier, and the
+still cool feel of the farmhouse sheets just after getting into bed--all
+these things and a thousand more the coming of summer meant to Jeremy.
+
+But this morning he did not feel his customary joy. Closing his window
+and dressing slowly, he wondered what was the matter. What could it be?
+It was not his eye--certainly it was a funny colour this morning and it
+hurt when you touched it, but he was proud of that. No, it was not his
+eye. And it was not the dog, who came into his room, after scratching
+on the door, and made his usual morning pretence of having come for any
+other purpose than to see his friend and master, first looking under the
+bed, then going up to the window pretending to gaze out of it (which he
+could not do), barking, then rolling on a square of sunlit carpet,
+and, after that, lying on his back, his legs out stiff, his ridiculous
+“Imperial” pointed and ironical, then suddenly turning, with a twist on
+his legs, rushing at last up to Jeremy, barking at him, laughing at
+him, licking him, and even biting his stockings--last of all seizing a
+bedroom slipper and rushing wildly into the schoolroom with it.
+
+No, there was nothing the matter with Hamlet. Nor was there anything the
+matter with Miss Jones, free, happily, from her customary neuralgia,
+and delighted with the new number of the Church Times. Nor was it the
+breakfast, which to-day included bacon and strawberry jam. Nor, finally,
+was it Mary or Helen, who, pleased with the summer weather (and Mary
+additionally pleased with the virtues of Lance as minutely recorded in
+the second volume of “The Pillars of the House”), were both in the most
+amiable of tempers. No, it must be something inside Jeremy himself.
+
+He waited until the end of breakfast to ask his question:
+
+“Can I go and see Mother, Miss Jones?”
+
+Mary and Helen looked across at him inquisitively.
+
+“What do you want to see your mother for now, Jeremy? You always see her
+at twelve o'clock.” Miss Jones pushed her spectacles lower upon her nose
+and continued her reading.
+
+“I want to.”
+
+“Well, you can't now.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because I say not--that's enough.”
+
+But Jeremy was gentle to-day. He got off his chair, went round to Miss
+Jones's chair, and, looking up at her out of his bruised eye, said in
+the most touching voice:
+
+“But, please, Miss Jones, I want to. I really do.”
+
+Then she said what he had known all the time was coming:
+
+“I'm afraid you won't see your mother to-day, dear. She's not well.
+She's in bed.”
+
+“Why? Is she ill?”
+
+“She's tired after her journey yesterday, I expect.”
+
+He said no more.
+
+He tried during the whole of that day not to think of his mother, and he
+found that, for the first time in his life, he could do nothing else but
+think of her. During the morning he sat very silently over his lessons,
+did all that he was told, did not once kick Mary under the table, nor
+ask Miss Jones to sharpen his pencil, nor make faces at Hamlet. Once or
+twice, in a way that he had, he leaned his head on his hand as though
+he were an ancient professor with a whole library of great works behind
+him, and when Miss Jones asked him whether he had a headache he said:
+“No, thank you,” instead of seizing on the wonderful opportunity of
+release that such a question offered him. When they all went for a walk
+in the afternoon, he sprang for a moment into something of his natural
+vivacity. They came upon a thin, ill-shaven tramp dressed as a sailor,
+with a patch over one eye, producing terrible discordance from a fiddle.
+This individual held in one hand a black tin cup, and at his side
+crouched a mongrel terrier, whose beaten and dishevelled appearance
+created at once hopes in the breast of the flamboyant Hamlet. This
+couple were posted just outside Mr. Poole's second-hand bookshop, close
+to the “2d.” box, and for a moment Jeremy was enthralled. He wanted to
+give the hero his week's penny, and upon finding that his week's
+penny was not, owing to sweet purchases on the previous day, he began
+elaborate bargainings with Miss Jones as to the forestalling of future
+pennies. Meanwhile, Hamlet leapt, with every sign of joyful expectation,
+upon the pauper dog; the blind sailor began to hit wildly about with
+his stick, Mr. Poole's “2d.” box was upset, and the sailor's black patch
+fell off, revealing him as the possessor of two beautiful eyes, just
+like any other gentleman, and a fine, vigorous stock of the best
+Glebeshire profanities. Mr. Poole, an irascible old man, himself came
+out, a policeman approached, two old ladies from the Close, well known
+to Jeremy, were shocked by the tramp, and the Cathedral bell, as though
+it had just awoken up to its real responsibilities, suddenly began to
+ring.
+
+All this was, of course, delightful to Jeremy, and offered so many
+possible veins of interest that he could have stayed there for hours.
+He wanted very badly to ask the sailor why he covered up a perfectly
+wholesome eye with a black patch, and he would have liked to see what
+Hamlet could do in the direction of eating up the scattered remnants of
+Mr. Poole's “2d.” box; but he was dragged away by the agitated hand
+of Miss Jones, having to console himself finally with a wink from the
+august policeman, who, known throughout Polchester as Tom Noddy, was a
+kindly soul and liked gentlemanly little boys, but persecuted the street
+sort.
+
+For a moment this exciting adventure carried him away, and he even
+listened for a minute or two to Mary, who, seizing her opportunity,
+began hurriedly: “Once upon a time there lived a sailor, very thin,
+and he never washed, and he had a dog and a violin--” But soon he
+remembered, and sighed and said: “Oh, bother, Mary!” and then walked
+on by himself. And still, all through that hot afternoon, when even the
+Rope Walk did not offer any shade, and when the Pol was of so clear a
+colour that you could see trout and emerald stones and golden sand as
+under glass, and when Hamlet was compelled to run ahead and find a piece
+of shade and lie there stretched, panting, with his tongue out, until
+they came up to him--even all these signs of a true and marvellous
+summer did not relieve Jeremy of his burden. Something horrible was
+going to happen. He knew it with such certainty that he wondered how
+Mary and Helen could be so gaily light-hearted, and despised them for
+their carelessness. This was connected in some way with the hot weather;
+he felt as though, were a cold breeze suddenly to come, and rain to
+fall, he would be happy again. There had been once a boy, older than
+he, called Jimmy Bain, a fat, plump boy, who had lived next door to the
+Coles. Whenever he had the opportunity he bullied Jeremy, pinching his
+arms, putting pins into his legs, and shouting suddenly into his ears.
+Jeremy, who had feared Johnny Bain, had always “felt” the stout youth's
+arrival before he appeared. The sky had seemed to darken, the air to
+thicken, the birds to gather in the “rooky” wood.
+
+He had trembled and shaken, his teeth had chattered and his throat grown
+dry for no reason at all. As he had once felt about Johnny Bain so
+now he felt about life in general. Something horrible was going to
+happen.... Something to do with Mother.... As he came up the road to
+their house his heart beat so that he could not hear his own steps.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+They entered the house, and at once even Mary, preoccupied as she was
+with her story about the sailor, noticed that something was wrong.
+
+“Rose! Rose!” she called out loudly.
+
+“Hush!” said Miss Jones. “You must be quiet, dear.”
+
+“Why?” said Mary. “I want Rose to--”
+
+“Your mother isn't at all well, dear. I--”
+
+And she was interrupted by Rose, who, coming suddenly downstairs, with a
+face very different from her usual cheerful one, said something to Miss
+Jones in a low voice.
+
+Miss Jones gave a little cry: “So soon?... A girl....” And then added:
+“How is she?”
+
+Then Rose said something more, which the children could not catch, and
+vanished.
+
+“Very quietly, children,” said Miss Jones, in a voice that trembled;
+“and you mustn't leave the schoolroom till I tell you. Your mother--”
+ She broke off as though she were afraid of showing emotion.
+
+“What is it?” said Jeremy in a voice that seemed new to them all--older,
+more resolute, strangely challenging for so small a boy.
+
+“Your mother's very ill, Jeremy, dear. You must be a very good boy, and
+help your sisters.”
+
+“Mightn't I go for just a minute?”
+
+“No, certainly not.”
+
+They all went upstairs. Then, in the schoolroom, Miss Jones said an
+amazing thing. She said:
+
+“I must tell you all, children, that you've got a new little sister.”
+
+“A new sister!” screamed Mary.
+
+Helen said: “Oh, Miss Jones!”
+
+Jeremy said: “What did she come for just now, when Mother is ill?”
+
+“God wanted her to come, dear,” said Miss Jones. “You must all be very
+kind to her, and do all you can--”
+
+She was interrupted by a torrent of questions from the two girls. What
+was she like? What was her name? Could she walk? Where did she come
+from? Did Father and Mother find her in Drymouth? And so on. Jeremy was
+silent. At last he said: “We don't want any more girls here.”
+
+“Better than having another boy,” said Helen.
+
+But he would not take up the challenge. He sat on his favourite seat
+on the window-ledge, dragged up a reluctant Hamlet to sit with him, and
+gazed out down into the garden that was misty now in the evening golden
+light, the trees and the soil black beneath the gold, the rooks slowly
+swinging across the sty above the farther side of the road. Hamlet
+wriggled. He always detested that he should be cuddled, and he would
+press first with one leg, then with another, against Jeremy's coat; then
+he would lie dead for a moment, suddenly springing, with his head up,
+in the hope that the surprise would free him; then he would turn into a
+snake, twisting his body under Jeremy's arm, and dropping with a flop
+on to the floor. All these manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy
+held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet
+whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections
+against the imbecile tyrannies of man, fell, to his own surprise,
+asleep.
+
+Jeremy sat there whilst the dusk fell and all the beautiful lights were
+drawn from the sky and the rooks went to bed. Rose came to draw the
+curtains, and then he left his window-seat, dragged out his toy village
+and pretended to play with it. He looked at his sisters. They seemed
+quite tranquil. Helen was sewing, and Mary deep in “The Pillars of the
+House.” The clock ticked. Hamlet, lost in sleep, snored and sputtered;
+the whole world pursued its ordinary way. Only in himself something was
+changed; he was unhappy, and he could not account for his unhappiness.
+It should have been because his mother was ill, and yet she had been ill
+before, and he had been only disturbed for a moment. After all, grown-up
+people always got well. There had been Aunt Amy, who had had measles,
+and the wife of the Dean, who had had something, and even the Bishop
+once... But now he was frightened. There was some perception, coming
+to him now for the first time in his life, that this world was not
+absolutely stable--that people left it, people came into it, that
+there was change and danger and something stronger.... Gradually this
+perception was approaching him as though it had been some dark figure
+who had entered the house, and now, with muffled step and veiled face,
+was slowly climbing the stairs towards him. He only knew that his mother
+could not go; she could not go. She was part of his life, and she would
+always be so. Why, now, when he thought of it, he could do nothing
+without his mother; every day he must tell her what he had done and what
+he was going to do, must show her what he had acquired and must explain
+to her what he had lost, must go to her when he was hurt and when he was
+frightened and when he was glad... And of all these things he had never
+even thought until now.
+
+As he sat there the house seemed to grow ever quieter and quieter
+about him. He felt as though he would have liked to have gone to the
+schoolroom door and listened. It was terrible imagining the house behind
+the door--quite silent--so that the clocks had stopped, and no one
+walked upon the stairs and no one laughed down in the pantry. He wished
+that they would make more noise in the schoolroom. He upset the church
+and the orchard and Mrs. Noah.
+
+But the silence after the noise was worse than ever.
+
+Soon Miss Jones took the two girls away to her room to fit on some
+clothes, an operation which Helen adored and Mary hated. Jeremy was left
+alone, and he was, at once, terribly frightened. He knew that it was of
+no use to be frightened, and he tried to go on with his game, putting
+the church with the apple trees around it and the Noah family all
+sleeping under the trees, but at every moment something compelled him to
+raise his head and see that no one was there, and he felt so small and
+so lonely that he would like to have hidden under something.
+
+Then when he thought of his mother all alone and the house so quiet
+around her and no one able to go to her he felt so miserable that he
+turned round from his village and stared desolately into the
+fireplace. The thought of his new sister came to him, but was dismissed
+impatiently. He did not want a new sister--Mary and Helen were trouble
+enough as it was--and he felt, with an old weary air, that it was time,
+indeed, that he was off to school. Nothing was the same. Always new
+people. Never any peace.
+
+He was startled by the sound of the opening door, and, turning, saw his
+father. His father and he were never very easy together. Mr. Cole had
+very little time for the individual, being engaged in saving souls in
+the mass, and his cheery, good-tempered Christianity had a strange,
+startling fashion of proving unavailing before some single human case.
+
+He did not understand children except when they were placed in masses
+before him. His own children, having been named, on their arrival,
+“Gifts from God,” had kept much of that incorporeal atmosphere
+throughout their growing years.
+
+But to-night he was a different man. As he looked at his small son
+across the schoolroom floor there was terror in his eyes. Nothing could
+have been easier or more simple than his lifelong assumption that,
+because God was in His heaven all was right with the world. He had given
+thanks every evening for the blessings that he had received and every
+morning for the blessings that he was going to receive, and he had had
+no reason to complain. He had the wife, the children, the work that he
+deserved, and his life had been so hemmed in with security that he
+had had no difficulty in assuring his congregation on every possible
+occasion that God was good and far-seeing, and that “not one sparrow...”
+
+And now lie was threatened--threatened most desperately. Mrs. Cole was
+so ill that it was doubtful whether she would live through the night. He
+was completely helpless. He had turned from one side to another, simply
+demanding an assurance from someone or something that she could not be
+taken from him. No one could give him that assurance. Life without her
+would be impossible; he would not know what to do about the simplest
+matter. Life without her...oh! but it was incredible!
+
+Like a blind man he had groped his way up to the schoolroom. He did not
+want to see the children, nor Miss Jones, but he must be moving, must
+be doing something that would break in upon that terrible ominous pause
+that the whole world seemed to him, at this moment, to be making.
+
+Then he saw Jeremy. He said:
+
+“Oh! Where's Miss Jones?”
+
+“She's in the next room,” said Jeremy, looking at his father.
+
+“Oh!” He began to walk up and down the schoolroom. Jeremy left his toy
+village and stood up.
+
+“Is Mother better, Father?”
+
+He stopped in his walk and looked at the boy as though he were trying to
+recollect who he was.
+
+“No... No--that is--No, my boy, I'm afraid not.”
+
+“Is she very bad, Father--like the Dean's wife when she had fever?”
+
+His father didn't answer. He walked to the end of the room, then turned
+suddenly as though he had seen something there that terrified him, and
+hurried from the room.
+
+Jeremy, suddenly left alone, had a desperate impulse to scream that
+someone must come, that he was frightened, that something horrible was
+in the house. He stood up, staring at the closed door, his face white,
+his eyes large and full of fear. Then he flung himself down by Hamlet
+and, taking him by the neck, whispered:
+
+“I'm frightened! I'm frightened! Bark or something!... There's someone
+here!”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Next morning Mrs. Cole was still alive. There had been no change during
+the night; to-day, the doctor said, would be the critical day. To-day
+was Sunday, and Mr. Cole took his morning service at his church as
+usual. He had been up all night; he looked haggard and pale, still
+wearing that expression as of a man lost in a world that he had always
+trusted. But he would not fail in his duty. “When two or three are
+gathered together in my name....” Perhaps God would hear him.
+
+It was a day of wonderful heat for May. No one had ever remembered so
+hot a day at so early a time of year. The windows of the church were
+open, but no breeze blew through the aisles. The relentless blazing blue
+of the sky penetrated into the cool shadows of the church, and it was as
+though the congregation sat there under shimmering glass. The waves of
+light shifted, rose and fell above the bonnets and hats and bare heads,
+and all the little choir boys fell asleep during the sermon.
+
+The Cole family did not fall asleep. They sat with pale faces and stiff
+backs staring at their father and thinking about their mother. Mary
+and Helen were frightened; the house was so strange, everyone spoke in
+whispers, and, on the way into church, many ladies had asked them how
+their mother was.
+
+They felt important as well as sad. But Jeremy did not feel important.
+He had not heard the ladies and their questions--he would not have cared
+if he had. People had always called him “a queer little boy,” simply
+because he was independent and thought more than he spoke. Nevertheless,
+he had always in reality been normal enough until now. To-day he was
+really “queer,” was conscious for the first time of the existence of a
+world whose adjacence to the real world was, in after days, to trouble
+him so often and to complicate life for him so grievously. The terror
+that had come down upon him when his father had left him seemed to-day
+utterly to soak through into the very heart of him. His mother was going
+to die unless something or somebody saved her. What was dying? Going
+away, he had always been told, with a golden harp, to sing hymns in a
+foreign country. But to-day the picture would not form so easily. There
+was silence and darkness and confusion about this Death. His mother
+was going, against her will, and no one could tell him whither she was
+going. If he could only stop her dying, force God to leave her alone, to
+leave her with them all as she had been before...
+
+He fixed his eyes upon his father, who climbed slowly into his pulpit
+and gave out the text of his sermon. To-day he would talk about the
+sacrifice of Isaac. “Abraham, as his hearers would remember...” and so
+on.
+
+Jeremy listened, and gradually there grew before his eyes the figure of
+a strange and terrible God. This was no new figure. He had never thought
+directly about God, but for a very long time now he had had Him in the
+background of his life as Polchester Town Hall was in the background.
+But now he definitely and actively figured to himself this God, this God
+Who was taking his mother away and was intending apparently to put
+her into some dark place where she would know nobody. It must be some
+horrible place, because his father looked so frightened, which he would
+not look if his mother was simply going, with a golden harp, to sing
+hymns. Jeremy had always heard that this God was loving and kind and
+tender, but the figure whom his father was now drawing for the benefit
+of the congregation was none of these things.
+
+Mr. Cole spoke of a God just and terrible, but a God Who apparently
+for the merest fancy put His faithful servant to terrible anguish and
+distress, and then for another fancy, as light as the first, spared him
+his sorrow. Mr. Cole emphasised the necessity for obedience, the need
+for a willing surrender of anything that may be dear to us, “because the
+love of God must be greater than anything that holds us here on earth.”
+ But Jeremy did not listen to these remarks; his mind was filled with
+this picture of a vast shadowy figure, seated in the sky, his white
+beard flowing beneath eyes that frowned from dark rocky eyebrows
+out upon people like Jeremy who, although doing their best, were
+nevertheless at the mercy of any whim that He might have. This terrible
+figure was the author of the hot day, author of the silent house and the
+shimmering darkened church, author of the decision to take his mother
+away from all that she loved and put her somewhere where she would be
+alone and cold and silent--“simply because He wishes...”
+
+“From this beautiful passage,” concluded Mr. Cole, “we learn that God is
+just and merciful, but that He demands our obedience. We must be ready
+at any instant to give up what we love most and best....”
+
+Afterwards they all trooped out into the splendid sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+There was a horrible Sunday dinner when--the silence and the roast
+beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the dining-room quivering with heat,
+emphasised every minute of the solemn ticking clock--Mary suddenly burst
+into tears, choked over a glass of water, and was led from the room.
+Jeremy ate his beef and rice pudding in silence, except that once or
+twice in a low, hoarse voice whispered: “Pass the mustard, please,” or
+“Pass the salt, please.” Miss Jones, watching his white face and the
+tremble of his upper lip, longed to say something to comfort him, but
+wisely held her peace.
+
+After dinner Jeremy collected Hamlet and went to the conservatory. This,
+like so many other English conservatories, was a desolate and desperate
+little place, where boxes of sand, dry corded-looking bulbs, and an
+unhappy plant or two languished, forgotten and forlorn. It had been
+inherited with the house many years ago, and, at first, the Coles had
+had the ambition to make it blaze with colour, to grow there the most
+marvellous grapes, the richest tomatoes, and even--although it was
+a little out of place in the house of a clergyman of the Church
+of England--the most sinister of orchids. Very quickly the little
+conservatory had been abandoned; the heating apparatus had failed, the
+plants had refused to grow, the tomatoes never appeared, the bulbs would
+not burst into colour.
+
+For Jeremy the place had had always an indescribable fascination. When
+he was very young there had been absolute trust that things would grow;
+that every kind of wonder might spring before one's eyes at any moment
+of the day. Then, when no wonder came, there had been the thrill of the
+empty boxes of earth; the probing with one's fingers to see what the
+funny-looking bulbs would be, and watching the fronds of the pale vine.
+Afterwards, there was another fascination--the fascination of some
+strange and sinister atmosphere that he was much too young to define.
+The place, he knew, was different from the rest of the house. It
+projected, conventionally enough, from the drawing-room; but the heavy
+door with thick windows of red glass shut it off from the whole world.
+Its rather dirty and obscure windows looked over the same country that
+Jeremy's bedroom window commanded. It also caught all the sun, so that
+in the summer it was terribly hot. But Jeremy loved the heat. He was
+discovered once by the scandalised Jampot quite naked dancing on the
+wooden boards, his face and hands black with grime. No one could ever
+understand “what he saw in the dirty place,” and at one time he had been
+forbidden to go there. Then he had cried and stamped and shouted, so
+that he had been allowed to return. Amongst the things that he saw there
+were the reflections that the outside world made upon the glass; it
+would be stained, sometimes, with a strange, green reflection of the
+fields beyond the wall; sometimes it would catch the blue of the sky,
+or the red and gold of the setting sun; sometimes it would be grey
+with waving shadows across its surface, as though one were under water.
+Through the dirty windows the country, on fine days, shone like distant
+tapestry, and in the glass that covered the farther side of the place
+strange reflections were caught: of cows, horses, walls, and trees--as
+though in a kind of magic mirror.
+
+Another thing that Jeremy felt there, was that he was in a glass cage
+swinging over the whole world. If one shut one's eyes one could easily
+fancy that one was swinging out--swinging--swinging, and that, suddenly
+perhaps, the cage would be detached from the house and go sailing,
+like a magic carpet, to Arabia and Persia, and anywhere you pleased to
+command.
+
+To-day the glass burnt like fire, and the green fields came floating
+up to be transfigured there like running water. The house was utterly
+still; the red glass door shut off the world. Jeremy sat, his arms
+tightly round Hamlet's neck, on the dirty floor, a strange mixture of
+misery, weariness, fright, and anger. There was already in him a strain
+of impatience, so that he could not bear simply to sit down and bewail
+something as, for instance, both his sisters were doing at this moment.
+He must act. They could not bo happy without their mother; he himself
+wanted her so badly that even now, there in the flaming conservatory, if
+he had allowed himself to do such a thing, he would have sat and cried
+and cried and cried. But he was not going to cry. Mary and Helen could
+cry--they were girls; he was going to do something.
+
+As he sat there, getting hotter and hotter, there grew, larger and
+larger before his eyes, the figure of Terrible God. That image of
+Someone of a vast size sitting in the red-hot sky, his white beard
+flowing, his eyes frowning, grew ever more and more awful. Jeremy stared
+up into the glass, his eyes blinking, the sweat beginning to pour down
+his nose, and yet his body shivering with terror. But he had strung
+himself up to meet Him. Somehow he was going to save his mother and
+hinder her departure. At an instant, inside him, he was crying: “I want
+my mother! I want my mother!” like a little boy who had been left in the
+street, and at the other, “You shan't have her! You shan't have her!” as
+though someone were trying to steal his Toy-Village or Hamlet away from
+him. His sleepy, bemused, heated brain wandered, in dazed fashion, back
+to his father's sermon of that morning. Abraham and Isaac! Abraham and
+Isaac!
+
+Abraham and Isaac! Suddenly, as though through the flaming glass
+something had been flung to him, an idea came. Perhaps God, that huge,
+ugly God was teasing the Coles just as once He had teased Abraham.
+Perhaps He wished to see whether they were truly obedient as the
+Jampot had sometimes wished in the old days. He was only, it might be,
+pretending. Perhaps He was demanding that one of them should give up
+something--something of great value. Even Jeremy, himself!...
+
+If he had to sacrifice something to save his mother, what would be the
+hardest sacrifice? Would it be his Toy-Village, or Mary or Helen, or
+his soldiers, or his paint-box, or his gold fish that he had in a bowl,
+or--No, of course, he had known from the first what would be hardest--it
+would, of course, be Hamlet.
+
+At this stage in his thinking he removed his arm from Hamlet's neck and
+looked at the animal. At the same moment the light that had filled the
+glass-house with a fiery radiance that burnt to the very heart of the
+place was clouded. Above, in the sky, black, smoky clouds, rolling in
+fold after fold, as though some demon were flinging them out across the
+sky as one flings a carpet, piled up and up, each one darker than the
+last. The light vanished; the conservatory was filled with a thick,
+murky glow, and far across the fields, from the heart of the black wood,
+came the low rumble of thunder. But Jeremy did not hear that; he was
+busy with his thoughts. He stared at the dog, who was lying stretched
+out on the dirty floor, his nose between his toes. It cannot truthfully
+be said that the resolve that was forming in Jeremy's head had its birth
+in any fine, noble idealisms. It was as though some bully, seizing his
+best marbles, had said: “I'll give you these back if you hand over this
+week's pocket-money!” His attitude to the bully could not truthfully be
+described as one of homage or reverence; rather was it one of anger and
+impotent rebellion.
+
+He loved Hamlet, and he loved his mother more than Hamlet; but he was
+not moved by sentiment. Grimly, his legs apart, his eyes shut tight, as
+they were when he said his prayers, he made his challenge.
+
+“I'll give you Hamlet if you don't take Mother--” A pause. “Only I can't
+cut Hamlet's throat. But I could lose him, if that would do.. . Only
+you must take him now--I couldn't do it to-morrow.” His voice began to
+tremble. He was frightened. He could feel behind his closed eyes that
+the darkness had gathered. The place seemed to be filled with rolling
+smoke, and the house was so terribly still!
+
+He said again: “You can take Hamlet. He's my best thing. You can--You
+can--”
+
+There followed then, with the promptitude of a most admirably managed
+theatrical climax, a peal of thunder that seemed to strike the house
+with the iron hand of a giant. Two more came, and then, for a second, a
+silence, more deadly than all the earlier havoc.
+
+Jeremy felt that God had leapt upon him. He opened his eyes, turned as
+though to run, and then saw, with a freezing check upon the very beat of
+his heart, that Hamlet was gone.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+There was no Hamlet!
+
+In that second of frantic unreasoning terror he received a conviction of
+God that no rationalistic training in later years was able to remove.
+
+There was no Hamlet!--only the dusky dirty place with a black
+torrent-driven world beyond it. With a rush as of a thousand whips
+slashing the air, the rain came down upon the glass. Jeremy turned,
+crying “Mother! Mother! I want Mother!” and flung himself at the red
+glass doors; fumbling in his terror for the handle, he felt as though
+the end of the world had come; such a panic had seized him as only
+belongs to the most desperate of nightmares. God had answered him.
+Hamlet was gone and in a moment Jeremy himself might be seized...
+
+He felt frantically for the door; he beat upon the glass.
+
+He cried “Mother! Mother! Mother!”
+
+He had found the door, but just as he turned the handle he was aware
+of a new sound, heard distantly, through the rain. Looking back he saw,
+from behind a rampart of dusty flower-pots, first a head, then a rough
+tousled body, then a tail that might be recognised amongst all the tails
+of Christendom.
+
+Hamlet (who had trained himself to meet with a fine natural show of
+bravery every possible violence save only thunder) crept ashamed, dirty
+and smiling towards his master. God had only played His trick--Abraham
+and Isaac after all.
+
+Then with a fine sense of victory and defiance Jeremy turned back,
+looked up at the slashing rain, gazed out upon the black country, at
+last seized Hamlet and dragging him out by his hind-legs, knelt there in
+the dust and suffered himself to be licked until his face was as though
+a snail had crossed over it.
+
+The thunder passed. Blue pushed up into the grey. A cool air blew
+through the world.
+
+Nevertheless, deep in his heart, the terror remained. In that moment he
+had met God face to face; he had delivered his first challenge.
+
+P.S.--To the incredulous and cynical of heart authoritative evidence can
+be shown to prove that it was on the evening of that Sunday that Mrs.
+Cole turned the corner towards recovery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. TO COW FARM!
+
+
+I
+
+
+This next episode in Jeremy's year has, be it thoroughly understood, no
+plot nor climax to it--it is simply the chronicle of an Odyssey. Nor
+can it be said to have been anything but a very ordinary Odyssey to the
+outside observer who, if he be a parent, will tell you that going to the
+seaside with the family is the most bothering thing in the world, and
+if he is a bachelor or old maid will tell you that being in the same
+carriage with other people's children who are going to the sea is an
+abominable business and the Law ought to have something to say to it.
+
+All through May, June and July Mrs. Cole slowly pulled back to something
+like her natural health. The new infant, Barbara by name, was as strong
+as a pony, and kicked and screamed and roared so that the house was
+quite a new place. Her arrival had done a great deal for Helen, whose
+gaze had hitherto been concentrated entirely upon herself; now she
+suddenly discovered a new element in life, and it was found that she
+was “ideal with a baby” and “a great help to nurse.” This made her more
+human, and Barbara, realising as babies always do who understands and
+who does not, would behave with Helen when she would behave with no one
+else. Mary could not be expected to transfer her allegiance from Jeremy,
+and then Barbara was frightened at her spectacles; Jeremy, having
+Hamlet, did not need a baby!
+
+There came a fine hot morning towards the end of July when Miss Jones
+said, suddenly, in the middle of the history lesson: “Saturday week
+we go to Rafiel.” Jeremy choked, kicked Mary under the table, and was
+generally impossible during the rest of the morning. It was Miss Jones's
+fault; she should have chosen her occasion more carefully. Before the
+evening Jeremy was standing in the corner for drawing on his bedroom
+wall-paper enormous figures in the blackest of black lead. These were
+to mark the days that remained before Saturday week, and it was, Jeremy
+maintained, a perfectly natural thing to do and didn't hurt the old
+wall-paper which was dirty enough anyway, and Mother had said, long ago,
+he should have a new one.
+
+Meanwhile, impossible to describe what Jeremy felt about it. Each year
+Cow Farm and Rafiel had grown more wonderful; this was now the fifth
+that would welcome them there. At first the horizon had been limited
+by physical incapacity, then the third year had been rainy, and the
+fourth--ah, the fourth! There had been very little the matter with that!
+But this would be better yet. For one thing, there had never been such
+a summer as this year was providing--a little rain at night, a little
+breeze at the hottest hour of the day--everything arranged on purpose
+for Jeremy's comfort. And then, although he did not know it, this was to
+be truly the wonderful summer for him, because after this he would be a
+schoolboy and, as is well known, schoolboys believe in nothing save what
+they can see with their own eyes and are told by other boys physically
+stronger than themselves.
+
+Five or six days before the great departure he began to worry himself
+about his box. Two years ago he had been given a little imitation green
+canvas luggage box exactly like his father's, except that this one was
+light enough to carry in one's hand. Jeremy adored this box and would
+have taken it out with him, had he been permitted, on all his walks, but
+he had a way of filling it with heavy stones and then asking Miss Jones
+to carry it for him; it had therefore been forbidden.
+
+But he would, of course, take it with him to Cow Farm, and it should
+contain all the things that he loved best. At first “all the things that
+he loved best” had not seemed so very numerous. There would, first of
+all, of course, be the Hottentot, a black and battered clown for whom
+he had long ceased to feel any affection, but he was compelled by an
+irritating sense of loyalty to include it in the party just as his
+mother might include some tiresome old maid “because she had nowhere to
+go to, poor thing.” After the Hottentot there would be his paint-box,
+after the paint-box a blue writing-case, after the writing-case
+the family photographs (Father, Mother, Mary and Helen), after the
+photographs a toy pistol, after the pistol Hamlet's ball (a worsted
+affair rendered by now shapeless and incoherent), after the ball “Alice
+in Wonderland” (Mary's copy, but she didn't know), after “Alice,” “Herr
+Baby,” after “Herr Baby” the Prayer Book that Aunt Amy gave him last
+birthday, after the Prayer Book some dried flowers which were to be
+presented to Mrs. Monk, the lady of Cow Farm (this might be called
+carrying coals to Newcastle), after the flowers a Bible, after the Bible
+four walnuts (very dry and hard ones), after the walnuts some transfer
+papers, after the transfer papers six marbles--the box was full and
+more than full, and he had not included the hammer and nails that Uncle
+Samuel had once given him, nor the cigarette-case (innocent now of
+cigarettes, and transformed first into a home for walking snails, second
+a grave for dead butterflies, third a mouse-trap), nor the butterfly
+net, nor “Struuwelpeter,” nor the picture of Queen Victoria cut from the
+chocolate-box, nor--most impossible omission of all--the toy-village.
+The toy-village! What must he do about that? Obviously impossible to
+take it all--and yet some of it he must have. Mr. and Mrs. Noah and the
+church, perhaps--or no, Mrs. Monk would want to see the garden--it would
+never do not to show her the orchard with the apple-trees, and then the
+youngest Miss Noah! She had always seemed to Jeremy so attractive with
+her straight blue gown and hard red cheeks. He must show her to Mrs.
+Monk. And the butcher's shop, and then the sheep, and the dogs and the
+cows!
+
+He was truly in despair. He sat on the schoolroom floor with his
+possessions all around him. Only Helen was in the room, and he knew
+that it would be no use to appeal to her--she had become so much more
+conceited since Barbara's arrival--and yet he must appeal to somebody,
+so he said to her very politely:
+
+“Please, Helen, I've got my box and so many things to put into it and
+it's nearly Saturday already--and I want to show the Noahs to Mrs.
+Monk.”
+
+This would have been a difficult sentence for the most clear-headed
+person to unravel, and Helen was, at that moment, trying to write a
+letter to an aunt whom she had never seen and for whom she had no sort
+of affection, so she answered him rather roughly:
+
+“Oh, don't bother with your box, Jeremy. Can't you see I'm busy?”
+
+“You may be busy,” said Jeremy, rising indignantly to his feet, “but I'm
+busy too, and my business is just as good as yours with your silly old
+letter.”
+
+“Oh, don't bother!” said Helen, whereupon Jeremy crept behind her and
+pinched her stocking. A battle followed, too commonplace in its details
+to demand description here. It need only be said that Hamlet joined in
+it and ran away with Helen's letter which had blown to the ground
+during the struggle, and that he ate it, in his corner, with great
+satisfaction. Then, when they were at their angriest, Helen suddenly
+began to laugh which she did sometimes, to her own intense annoyance,
+when she terribly wanted to be enraged, then Jeremy laughed too, and
+Hamlet yielded up fragments of the letter--so that all was well.
+
+But the problem of the box was not solved--and, in the end, the only
+part of the toy village that Mrs. Monk ever saw was the youngest Miss
+Noah and one apple-tree for her to sit under.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The ritual of the journey to Cow Farm was, by this time, of course,
+firmly established, and the first part of the ritual was that one should
+wake up at three in the morning. This year, however, for some strange
+mysterious reason Jeremy overslept himself and did not wake up until
+eight o'clock, to find then that everyone was already busy packing
+and brushing and rushing about, and that all his own most sacred
+preparations must be squeezed into no time at all if he were to be
+ready. Old Tom Collins's bus came along at twelve o'clock to catch the
+one o'clock train, so that Jeremy might be considered to have the whole
+morning for his labours, but that was not going to be enough for him
+unless he was very careful. Grown-up people had such a way of suddenly
+catching on to you and washing your ears, or making you brush
+your teeth, or sitting you down in a corner with a book, that
+circumnavigating them and outplotting them needed as much nerve and
+enterprise as tracking Red Indians. When things were fined down to the
+most naked accuracy he had apparently only two “jobs”: one to accustom
+Hamlet to walking with a “lead,” the other to close the green box; but
+of course Mary would want advice, and there would, in all probability,
+be a dispute or two about property that would take up the time.
+
+It was indeed an eventful morning. Trouble began with Mary suddenly
+discovering that she had lost her copy of “Alice in Wonderland” and
+rushing to Jeremy's box and upsetting all Jeremy's things to see whether
+it were there. Jeremy objected to this with an indignation that was
+scarcely in the sequel justified, because Mary found the book jammed
+against the paint-box and a dry walnut nestling in its centre. She cried
+and protested and then suddenly, with the disgusting sentimentality that
+was so characteristic of her, abandoned her position altogether and
+said that Jeremy could have it, and then cried again because he said he
+didn't want it.
+
+Then Jeremy had to put everything back into the box again, and in the
+middle of this Hamlet ran off with the red-checked Miss Noah between
+his teeth and began to lick the blue off her dress, looking up at the
+assembled company between every lick with a smile of the loveliest
+satisfaction. Then, when the box was almost closed, it was discovered by
+a shocked and virtuous Helen that Jeremy had left out his Bible.
+
+“There'll be one there,” said Jeremy in an angry agitated whisper,
+hoping to escape the attention of Miss Jones.
+
+“What's that, Jeremy dear?” said Miss Jones.
+
+“Oh, fancy, Miss Jones!” said Helen. “He's taking all his dirty old toys
+and even his old clown, and he's leaving out his Bible.”
+
+“I'm not!” cried Jeremy, taking it and trying to squeeze it down between
+three walnuts and the toy pistol.
+
+“Oh, Jeremy clear, that's not the way to treat your Bible. I'll give you
+some paper to wrap it up in, and you'd better take the things out again
+and put it in at the bottom of the box.” Yes, obviously he would not be
+ready in time.
+
+The matter of Hamlet and the “lead” was also very exhausting. Hamlet had
+never, in all his days, been tied to anyone or anything. Of course no
+one could tell what had been his history before he came strolling on to
+the Cole horizon, and it may be that once as a very small puppy he had
+been tied on to something. On the whole, that is probable, his
+protests on this occasion being of a kind so vehement as to argue some
+reminiscences behind them. Mrs. Cole had bought a beautiful “lead” of
+black leather; of course he had already a collar studded with little
+silver nails, and the point was very simply to fasten the “lead” on to
+the collar. Jeremy had been promised that he should conduct Hamlet, and
+it had seemed, when the promise had been made, as though it would be a
+very simple thing to carry out. Hamlet no sooner saw the cord than he
+began his ingenious protests, sitting up and smiling at it, suddenly
+darting at the recumbent Miss Noah and rushing round the room with her,
+finally catching the “lead” itself in his teeth and hiding with it under
+Miss Jones's skirt.
+
+The result was that Tom Collins's bus arrived when no one in the
+schoolroom was in the least prepared for it. Then what confusion there
+was! Mrs. Cole, looking strange in her hat and veil, as though she were
+dressed up for a play, came urging them to hurry, “because Father was
+waiting.” Then Hamlet tied himself and his “lead” round the leg of the
+table; then Mary said in her most tiresome manner, apropos of nothing at
+all, “You do love me, Jeremy, don't you?” just at the moment when he was
+trying to unlace Hamlet, and her lip began to tremble when he said, “Oh,
+don't bother,” so that he was compelled to add “Of course I do”; then
+Father came running up the stairs with “Really, this is too disgraceful.
+We shall miss that train!”
+
+Then Uncle Samuel appeared, looking so queer that Jeremy was compelled
+to stare at him. Jeremy had seen very little of Uncle Samuel during
+these last months. He had hoped, after that wonderful adventure of the
+Christmas Pantomime, that they were going to be friends, but it had not
+been so. He had been away somewhere, in some strange place, painting,
+and then, on his return, he had hid himself and his odd affairs away in
+some corner of the house where no one saw him. He had had his life and
+Jeremy had had his.
+
+Nevertheless Jeremy was delighted to see him. It would be fun to have
+him at Cow Farm with his squashy brown hat, his fat cheeks, his blue
+painting smock, and his short legs with huge boots. He was different, in
+some way, from all the rest of the world, and Jeremy, even at that early
+stage of his education, already perceived that he could learn more from
+Uncle Samuel than from any other member of the family.
+
+Now he put his head in through the door and said: “Well, you kids,
+aren't you ready? It's time!” Then, seeing Miss Jones, he said: “Good
+morning,” and bolted like a rabbit. Even then Jeremy noticed that he
+had paint on his fingers, and that two of his waistcoat buttons were
+unfastened.
+
+Then down in the hall what confusion there was! Boxes here, there
+and everywhere. Mother, Father, Aunt Amy, Uncle Samuel, and, most
+interesting of all, Barbara and the new nurse. The new nurse was called
+Mrs. Pateham, and she was stout, red-cheeked, and smiling. The bundle in
+white called Barbara was, most happily, sleeping; but Hamlet barked at
+Mrs. Pateham, and that woke Barbara, who began to cry. Then Collins came
+in with his coat off, and the muscles swelling on his shoulders, and
+handled the boxes as though they were paper, and the cook, and Rose, and
+William, the handy-boy, and old Jordan, the gardener, and Mrs. Preston,
+a lady from two doors down, who sometimes came in to help, all began to
+bob and smile, and Father said: “Now, my dear. Now, my dear,” and Hamlet
+wound himself and his lead round everything that he could see, and Helen
+fussed and said: “Now, Jeremy,” and Miss Jones said: “Now, children,”
+ and last of all Collins said: “Now, mum; now, sir,” and then they all
+were bundled into the bus, with the cart and the luggage coming along
+behind.
+
+The drive through the streets was, of course, as lovely as it could be;
+not in the least because anyone could see anything--that was hindered by
+the fact that the windows of the bus were so old that they were crusted
+with a kind of glassy mildew, and no amount of rubbing on the
+window-panes provided one with a view--but because the inside of the bus
+was inevitably connected with adventure--partly through its motion,
+partly through its noise, and partly through its lovely smell. These
+were, of course, Jeremy's views, and it can't definitely be asserted
+that all grown-up people shared them. But whenever Jeremy had ridden in
+that bus he had always been on his way to something delightful. The
+motion, therefore, rejoiced his heart, although the violence of it was
+such that everyone was thrown against everyone else, so that Uncle
+Samuel was suddenly hurled against the bonnet of Miss Jones, and Helen
+struck Aunt Amy in the chest, and Jeremy himself dived into his sister
+Barbara. As to the smell, it was that lovely well-known one that has in
+it mice and straw, wet umbrellas and whisky, goloshes and candle-grease,
+dust and green paint! Jeremy loved it, and sniffed on this occasion so
+often that Miss Jones told him to blow his nose. As to the noise, who is
+there who does not remember that rattle and clatter, that sudden,
+deafening report as of the firing of a hundred firearms, the sudden
+pause when every bolt and bar and hinge sighs and moans like the wind or
+a stormy sea, and then that sudden scream of the clattering windows,
+when it is as though a frenzied cook, having received notice to leave,
+was breaking every scrap of china in the kitchen? Who does not know
+that last maddened roar as the vehicle stumbles across the last piece of
+cobbled road--a roar that drowns, with a savage and determined triumph,
+all those last directions not to forget this, that, and the other; all
+those inquiries as to whether this, that, and the other had been
+remembered? Cobbles are gone now, and old buses sleep in deserted
+courts, and Collins, alas, is not. His youngest son has a motor-garage,
+and Polchester has asphalt--sic transit gloria, mundi.
+
+Jeremy, clutching his green box with one hand and Hamlet's lead with the
+other, was in an ecstasy of happiness. The louder the noise, the rocking
+motion, the stronger the smell, the better. “Isn't it lovely?” he
+murmured to Miss Jones during one of the pauses.
+
+It may be that it was at this moment that Uncle Samuel finally made up
+his mind about Jeremy. In spite of his dislike, even hatred of children,
+he had been coming slowly, during the last two years, to an affection
+for, and interest in, his nephew that was something quite new to his
+cynical, egoistic nature. It had leapt into activity at Christmas time,
+then had died again. Now as, flung first into his sister's bony arms,
+then on to the terrified spectacles of his niece Mary, he tried to
+recover himself, he was caught and held by that picture of his small
+nephew, seated, solid and square, in his blue sailor suit, his bare
+knees swinging, his hand clutching his precious box with an energy that
+defied Fate itself to take it from him, his mouth set, his eyes staring,
+radiant with joy, in front of him.
+
+On arrival at the station it was found that the one o'clock to Liskane
+was “just about due,” so that there was no time to be lost. They had
+to rush along under the great iron dome, passing by the main line,
+disregarding the tempestuous express from Truxe that drew up, as it were
+disdainfully, just as they passed, and finding the modest side line
+to Liskane and St. Lowe. Here there was every kind of excitement for
+Jeremy. Anyone who has any kind of passion for observation must have
+discovered long ago that a side line has ever so much more charm and
+appeal about it than a main line. A main line is scornful of the station
+in whose heart it consents for a moment to linger, its eyes are staring
+forward towards the vast cities who are impatiently awaiting it; but a
+side line has its very home here. So much gossip passes from day to day
+above its rails (and gossip that has for its circumference five green
+fields, a country road, and a babbling brook), that it knows all its
+passengers by heart.
+
+To the people who travel on a side line, the train itself is still
+something of a wonder. How much more was that true thirty years ago. On
+this especial line there were only two stations-Liskane and St. Lowe,
+and, of a certainty, these stations would not even now be in existence
+were it not that St. Lowe was a fishing centre of very great importance.
+The little district that comprehended St. Lowe, Garth in Roselands,
+Stoep in Roselands, Lucent-Polwint, Rafiel, and all the smaller hamlets
+around them, was fed by this line; but, even so, the little train was
+never crowded. Tourists did not, and even now do not, go to Polwint and
+St. Lowe because “they smell so fishy,” nor to Rafield “because it's
+too far from the railway,” nor to the Roseland valleys “because there's
+nothing to see there.”, May these reasons hold good for many years to
+come!
+
+Today there were three farmers in brown leggings, with pipes, and thick
+knotted walking-sticks, two or three women with baskets, and a child or
+so, and an amiable, absent-minded clergyman in a black cloth so faded
+that it was now green, reading The Times, and shaking his head over it
+as he stumbled up and down the platform. One of the farmers had a large,
+woolly sheep-dog, who, of course, excited Hamlet to a frenzy. Jeremy,
+therefore, had his time fully occupied in checking this; but he had,
+nevertheless, the opportunity to observe how one of the farmers puffed
+the smoke out of his cheeks as though he were an engine; how one of the
+women, with a back as broad as a wall, had red stockings; and how the
+clergyman nearly fell on to the railway-line every time he turned round,
+and only saved himself from disaster by a miracle. The train arriving at
+last, they all climbed into it, and then had to wait for a hot, grilling
+half-hour whilst the engine made up its mind that it was worth its while
+to take all the trouble to start off again.
+
+“An hour late, upon my word,” said Mr. Cole angrily, when at last,
+with a snore and a heave, and a grunt and a scream, they started. “It's
+really too bad. I shall have to complain,” which, as everyone present
+knew, he had not the slightest intention of doing. In Jeremy's carriage
+there were his father, his mother, Uncle Samuel, himself, Mary, and, of
+course, Hamlet. Hamlet had never been, in a train before, and his terror
+at the way that the ground quivered under him was pitiful to see. He
+lay first under the seat, trying to hold himself tightly together, then,
+when that failed, he made startled frenzied leaps on to laps (the lead
+had been removed for the time), finally he cowered up into the corner
+behind Uncle Samuel, who seemed to understand his case and sympathised
+with it. Whenever the train stopped (which, being a Glebeshire train,
+it did continually), he recovered at once his savoir-faire, asserted his
+dignity, gazed through the windows at the fields and cows as though
+he owned them all, and barked with the friendly greeting of comrade to
+comrade whenever he saw another dog.
+
+The next thing that occupied Jeremy's attention was lunch. Many
+people despise sandwiches and milk out of beer-bottles and bananas and
+seed-cake. Jeremy, of course, did not. He loved anything eaten out of
+paper, from the ice-cream sold by the Barney man in Polchester Square
+(only once did he secure some) down to the frills that there are round
+the tail of any self-respecting ham. But the paper on this journey to
+Rafield! There was nothing in the world to touch it. In the first place
+you spread newspaper on your knees, then there was paper under the
+sandwiches (chicken), and more paper under the sandwiches (beef),
+and still more under the sandwiches (egg); there was paper round the
+seed-cake, and, most wonderful of all, paper round the jam-puffs.
+Jam-puffs with strawberry jam eaten in the odour of ginger-beer and
+eggshells! Is it possible for life at its very best to hold more? He
+kept his jam-puff so long as he could, until at last Mr. Cole said:
+“Now, my boy! Finish it up--finish it up. Paper out of the window-all
+neat and tidy; that's right!” speaking in that voice which Jeremy hated,
+because it was used, so especially, when cod-liver oil had to be taken.
+He swallowed his puff in a gulp, and then gazed out of the window
+lamenting its disappearance.
+
+“Did you like it?” whispered Mary hoarsely.
+
+“You've got some jam on the side of your nose,” said Jeremy.
+
+He was sitting next to his father, who had the corner seat, and he now
+devoted all his energies to prevent himself from falling asleep against
+his father's leg. But the ginger-beer, the glazed and shining fields
+beyond the window, the little blobs of sunlight that danced upon the
+floor of the carriage, the scents of food and flowers, and the
+hot breeze, the hum of the train, and the dancing of the telegraph
+wires--all these things were against him. His head began to nod and
+then to jump back with a sudden terrible spring as though an evil demon
+pulled it with a rope from behind, the carriage swelled like a balloon,
+then dwindled into a thin, straight line. The strangest things happened
+to his friends and relations. His mother, who was reading The Church
+Family Newspaper, developed two faces and a nose like a post, and Uncle
+Samuel, who had, in harsh reality, two chins, seemed to be all folds and
+creases like a balloon when it is shivering down into collapse. Jeremy
+fought with these fantasies; the lines on the newspaper doubled and
+redoubled, vanished and sprang to life again. He said: “I will not,”
+ and, instantly, his head on the soft part of his father's thigh, was
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In his dreams he was riding on a cloud all pink and gold, and behind
+came a row of shining, white clouds fluffy like bales of wool wrapped
+round lighted lanterns. His cloud rose and fell, rose and fell, and a
+voice said in his ear: “All is well! All is well! You can go on
+like this for ever. There will be jam-puffs soon, and ice-cream, and
+fish-cakes, and you can go to China this way whenever you like.”
+
+And he said: “Can't I take Hamlet with me?”
+
+And the voice answered: “Hamlet is with you already,” and there, behold,
+was Hamlet sitting on the pink cloud with a stiff gold collar round his
+neck, wagging his tail. And then the voice shouted so loudly that
+Jeremy jumped off the pink cloud in his astonishment: “Liskane! Liskane!
+Liskane!” and Jeremy jumped and fell and fell--right into his father's
+lap, with someone crying in his ear: “Wake up, Jeremy! We're there!
+We're there!”
+
+His first thought was for his green box, which was, he found, safely
+and securely in his hand. Then for Hamlet, who was, he saw with horror,
+already upon the platform, the lead trailing behind him like a neglected
+conscience, his burning eyes piercing his hair in search of another dog,
+whom he smelt but could not see.
+
+Jeremy, rushing out of the train, seized the lead, scolded his recovered
+property, who wore an expression of injured and abandoned innocence, and
+looked about him. Yes, this was Liskane--wonderful, marvellous, magical
+Liskane! To the bored and cynical adult Liskane may easily appear to
+be one of the ugliest, most deserted stations in the whole of Europe,
+having nothing on either side of it save barren grey fields that never
+grow grass but only stones and bottles, with its single decoration--a
+heavy iron bridge that crosses the rails and leads up to the higher
+road and the town of Liskane. Ugly enough, but to Jeremy, on this summer
+afternoon, the gate to a sure and certain Paradise.
+
+Although his family were fussing around him, Barbara crying, Mr. Cole
+saying: “Four, Five, Six... But where's the black box? Your black box,
+Amy... Six, Seven... But there should be Eight... Seven...” and Mrs.
+Cole saying: “And there's my brown bag. The little one with the black
+handle,” and Helen saying. “OO, was it adidums, then Nandy-Pandy,
+Nandy-Pandy...” and Miss Jones: “Now, Mary! Now, Jeremy! Now, Helen!”;
+although this was going on just as it always had gone on, his eyes were
+searching for the wagonette. Ah, there it was! He could just see the top
+of it beyond the iron bridge, and Jim, the man from the Farm, would
+be coming down to help with the boxes; yes, there he was crossing the
+bridge now, with his red face and broad shoulders, and the cap on the
+side of his head, just as he always wore it. Jeremy recognised him with
+a strange, little choking sensation. It was “coming home” to him, all
+this was--the great event of his life, and as he looked at the others he
+realised, young as he was, that none of them felt it as he did, and the
+realisation gave him a strange feeling, half of gratification, half
+of loneliness. He stood there, a little apart from the rest of them,
+clutching his box, and holding on to Hamlet's lead, feeling so deeply
+excited that his heart was like a hard, cold stone jumping up and down,
+bump, bump, behind his waistcoat.
+
+“That's Jim! That's Jim!” he whispered in a hoarse gasp to Miss Jones.
+
+“Now mind, dear,” she answered in her kindly, groping voice. “You'll be
+falling on to the rail if you aren't careful.”
+
+It strangely annoyed him that his father should greet Jim just as though
+he were some quite ordinary man in Polchester. He himself waited in a
+strange agitation until Jim should notice him. The man turned at last,
+bending down to pick up a box, saw him, touched his cap, smiling a
+long, crooked smile, and Jeremy blushed with happiness. It was the first
+recognition that he had had from the farm, and it pleased him.
+
+They all moved up to the higher road. Uncle Samuel, coming on at the
+last, in a dreamy, moody way, stopping on the bridge to look down at the
+railway-line, and then suddenly saying aloud:
+
+“Their minds are full of the number of boxes, and whether they'll get
+tea, and who's to pay what, and 'How badly I want a wash!' and already
+to-morrow they'll be wondering whether they oughn't to be getting home
+to Polchester. All sham! All sham!”
+
+He wasn't speaking to Jeremy, but to himself. However, Jeremy said: “Did
+you see Jim, Uncle?”
+
+“No, I did not.”
+
+“He's fatter and redder than last year.”
+
+“I shouldn't wonder.”
+
+“Are you going to paint, Uncle?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Oh, just lines and circles.”
+
+Jeremy paused, standing for a moment, and looked puzzled. Then he said:
+
+“Do you like babies, Uncle Samuel?”
+
+“No, I do not.”
+
+“Not even Barbara?”
+
+“No--certainly not.”
+
+“I don't, too... Why don't you paint cows and houses like other people,
+Uncle Samuel? I heard Father say once that he never knew what your
+pictures meant.”
+
+“That's why I paint them.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“So that your father shan't know what they mean.”
+
+Although he did not understand this any more than he understood his
+uncle, Jeremy was pleased with this conversation. It had been, somehow,
+in tone with the place and the hour; it had conveyed to him in some
+strange fashion that his uncle cared for all of this rather as he
+himself cared. Oh! he liked Uncle Samuel!
+
+He had hoped that he might have sat on the box next to Jim, but that
+place was now piled up with luggage, so he was squeezed in between his
+mother and Mrs. Patcham, with Hamlet, very uncomfortable, between his
+knees. They drove off down the high road, the hot smell of the grass
+came to his nostrils, the sun blazed down upon them, turning the path
+before them into gleaming steel, and the high Glebeshire hedges, covered
+with thin powder, rose on both sides above them, breaking once and again
+to show the folding valleys, and the faint blue hills, and the heavy,
+dark trees with their thick, black shadows staining the grass.
+
+The cows were clustered sleeping wherever they could find shadow;
+faintly sheep-bells tinkled in the distance, and now and then a stream,
+like broken glass, floated, cried, and was gone. They drove into a dark
+wood, and the sun scattered through the trees in pieces of gold and
+shadowy streams of arrowed light. The birds were singing, and whenever
+the hoofs of the horses and the wheels turned onto soft moss or lines of
+grass, in the sudden silence the air was filled with birds' voices. That
+proved that it must now be turning to the evening of the day; the sun
+was not very high above the wood, and the sea of blue was invaded by a
+high galleon of cloud that hovered with spreading sail, catching gold
+into its heart as it moved. They left the wood, crossed the River Garth,
+and came out on to moorland. Here, for the first time, Jeremy smelt the
+sea; the lanes had been hot, but here the wind blew across the moor,
+with the smell of sea-pinks and sea-gulls in it. The grass was short
+and rough; the soil was sand. On the horizon was the grey, melancholy
+tower of a deserted mine. Some bird flew with swiftly driving wings,
+crying as it went. The smell of the moor was as fresh as though the
+foot of man had never crossed it--deserted, but not alone; bare, but not
+empty; uninhabited, but peopled; silent, but full of voices.
+
+Jeremy's excitement grew. He knew now how every line of the road would
+be. They left the moor and were on the road leading to Rafield. These
+were the days before they built the road from Liskane wide enough for
+motor-cars and other horrible inventions. Thirty years ago the way was
+so narrow that the briars and ferns brushed your face as you passed, and
+you could reach out your hand and pluck snap-dragons and dandelions and
+fox-gloves. Many roads twisted in and out upon one another; the corners
+were so sharp that sometimes the wagonette seemed to hang upon one wheel
+as it turned. Still no sight of the sea, but the smell of it now was
+everywhere, and sometimes at a sudden bend there would come a faint
+beat, beat upon the ear with something rhyming and measured in it, like
+the murmur of a sleeping giant.
+
+They came to the bend where the hill suddenly dips at a fearful angle
+down into Rafield. Here they turned to the right, deep between edges
+again, then through a little copse, and then, as though with a whisk of
+the finger, right on to Cow Farm itself.
+
+It was an old square house, deep red brick, with crooked chimneys, and
+a stone court in front of it. To either side of the court there were
+barns. Behind the house thick trees, clouded with green, showed. In the
+middle of the court was a pump, and all about the flagged stones
+pigeons were delicately walking. As they drove up, the pigeons rose in
+a wheeling flight against the sky now staining faintly with amber; dogs
+rushed barking from the barns; a haycart turned the comer, its wheels
+creaking, and four little children perched high on the top of the
+hay. Then the hall-door opened, and behold Mrs. Monk, Mr. Monk, and,
+clustering shyly behind, the little Monks.
+
+In the scene that followed Jeremy was forgotten. He did not know what
+it was that made him hang behind the others, but he stood beside the
+wagonette, bent down and released Hamlet, and then waited, hiding under
+the shadow of the cart. His happiness was almost intolerable; he could
+not speak, he could not move, and in the heart of his happiness there
+was a strange unhappiness that he had never known before. The loneliness
+that he had felt at Liskane Station was intensified, so that he felt
+like a stranger who was seeing his father, or his mother, or aunt,
+or sisters for the first time. Everything about him emphasised the
+loneliness: the slow evening light that was stealing into the sky,
+the sound of some machine in the farm-house turning with a melancholy
+rhythmic whine, a voice calling in the fields, the rumble of the sea,
+the twittering of birds in the garden trees, the bark of a dog far, far
+away, and, through them all, the sense that the world was sinking down
+into silence, and that all the sounds were slipping away, like visitors
+hurrying from the park before the gates are shut; he stood there,
+listening, caught into a life that was utterly his own and had no share
+with any other. He looked around and saw that they were all going into
+the house, that Jim and Mr. Monk were busy with the boxes, and that no
+one was aware of him. He knew what he wanted.
+
+He slipped across the court, and dropped into the black cavernous hole
+of the farther barn. At first the darkness stopped him; but he knew his
+way, found the steps that led up to the loft, and was soon perched high
+behind a little square window that was now blue and gold against the
+velvety blackness behind him. This was his favourite spot in all the
+farm. Here, all the year, they stored the apples, and the smell of the
+fruit was thick in the air, sweet and strong, clinging about every fibre
+of the place, so that you could not disturb a strand nor a stone without
+sending some new drift of the scent up against your nostrils. All the
+year after his first visit, Jeremy had been longing to smell that smell
+again, and now he knelt up against the window, drinking it in. With his
+eyes he searched the horizon. From here you could see the garden with
+the sun-dial, the fields beyond, the sudden dip with the trees at the
+edge of it bent crossways by the wind, and there, in such a cup as one's
+hands might form, just beyond, was the sea...
+
+He stared as though his eyes would start from his head. Behind him was
+the cloudy smoke of the apple-scent; in front of him the sun was sinking
+towards the dark elms. Soon the trees would catch the sun and hide it;
+the galleon cloud that had been over them as they drove was new banked
+in red and gold across the horizon; birds slowly, lazily fled to their
+homes.
+
+He heard someone call, “Jeremy! Jeremy!” With a last gaze he saw the
+blue cup turn to gold, the sun reached the tops of the elms; the fields
+were lit with the glitter of shining glass, then, even as he watched,
+they were purple, then grey, then dim like smoke.
+
+Again the voice called “Jeremy!” He slipped from the window, found the
+little stair, ran across the dusky court and entered the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE
+
+
+I
+
+
+Towards the end of the first fortnight's stay at Cow Farm it was
+announced that very shortly there would be a picnic at Rafiel Cove.
+
+Jeremy had been waiting for this proclamation; once or twice he had
+asked whether they were going to the Cove and had been told “not to
+bother,” “all in good time,” and other ridiculous elderly finalities,
+but he knew that the day must come, as it had always come every year.
+The picnic at Rafield was always the central event of the summer. And
+he had this year another reason for excited anticipation--the wonderful
+Charlotte Le Page was to be present. Until now Jeremy had never taken
+the slightest interest in girls. Mary and Helen, being his sisters, were
+necessities and inevitabilities, but that did not mean that he could not
+get along very easily without them, and indeed Mary with her jealousies,
+her strange sulky temper and sudden sentimental repentances was
+certainly a burden and restraint. As to the little girls in Polchester,
+he had frankly found them tiresome and stupid, thinking of themselves,
+terrified of the most natural phenomena and untruthful in their
+statements. He had been always independent and reserved with everyone,
+and bud never, in all his life, had a close friend, but there had been,
+especially of late, boys with whom it had been amusing to spend an hour
+or two, and since his fight with the Dean's Ernest he had thought that
+it would be rather interesting to make a further trial of strength with
+whomsoever...
+
+Girls were stupid, uninteresting, conceited and slow. He never, in all
+his life, wanted to have anything to do with girls. But Charlotte Le
+Page was another matter. She had, in the first place, become quite
+a tradition in the Cole family. She was the daughter of a wealthy
+landowner, who always spent his holidays in Rafiel. She and her very
+beautiful, very superior mother had been seen on many occasions by the
+Coles driving about the Glebeshire roads in a fine and languid manner,
+a manner to which the Coles knew, very well, they themselves could never
+attain. Then Mrs. Cole had called, and Mrs. Le Page and Charlotte had
+come to tea at Cow Farm. This had been a year ago, when Jeremy had been
+only seven; nevertheless, he had been present during the first part of
+the ceremony, and Charlotte had struck him as entirely amazing.
+
+He had simply gazed at her with his mouth open, forgetting all his good
+manners. She was at this time nine or ten years of age but very small
+and, as they say of the most modern kind of doll, “perfect in every
+particular.” She had wonderful hair of a bright rippling gold; her
+cheeks were pink and her eyes were blue, and she was so beautifully
+dressed that you could not take in details but must simply surrender
+yourself to a cloudy film of white or blue, with everything so perfectly
+in its place that it seemed to the rough and ready Jeremy quite
+unearthly. Of course she had to be very careful how she walked, when she
+sat down, in what way she moved her hands and feet, and how she blew
+her nose. It was wonderful to see her do these things, she did them so
+naturally and yet always with a sense of an effort overcome for the
+good of humanity. Her mother never ceased to empty praises at her feet,
+appealing to visitors with: “Isn't Charlotte too lovely to-day?” or
+“Really, Mrs. Cole, did you ever see anything like Charlotte's hair?”
+ or “Just a moment, Mrs. Cole, I'm sure you've never seen such hands and
+feet on any human being before!”--and it was impossible to tell whether
+or no Charlotte was moved by these praises, because she never said
+anything at all. She was almost completely silent, and once, at the
+tea-gathering in Cow Farm, when she suddenly said: “I'm tired, Mama,”
+ Jeremy nearly jumped from his chair, so astonished he was.
+
+Jeremy had, during the year that intervened between that visit and this,
+sometimes thought of Charlotte, and he had looked back upon her, not as
+a little girl but as something strange, fantastic, wonderfully coloured,
+whom it would be interesting to see again. He wondered why Mary and
+Helen could not be like that, instead of running about and screaming and
+becoming red in the face. He said once to Mary that she should imitate
+Charlotte, and the scene that followed was terrible. Mary, from that
+moment, hated Charlotte with an overpowering hatred.
+
+Here this year they were again. Mrs. Le Page with her long neck,
+her beautiful pearl ear-rings, her pale watery eyes and her tapering
+fingers; Charlotte just as before, silent, beautiful and precious. There
+was again a tea-party at Cow Farm, and on this occasion Jeremy was
+asked to show Hamlet. But Hamlet behaved badly, trying to jump upon
+Charlotte's white frock and soil her blue ribbons. Charlotte screamed
+exactly as a doll screams when you press it in the stomach, and Hamlet
+was so deeply astonished at the unexpected noise that he stopped his
+bad behaviour, sat on his hind legs, and gazed up at her with an anxious
+wondering expression. In spite of this unfortunate incident, the visit
+went off well, and Mrs. Cole said that she had never seen anything so
+lovely as Charlotte, and Mrs. Le Page said, “No, had anyone ever?” and
+Charlotte never turned a hair. The final arrangement was that there
+should be a picnic and soon, because “Mr. Le Page has to return to
+Warwickshire to look after the Estate--so tiresome, but I've no doubt
+it's all going to wrack and ruin without him.”
+
+After the picnic had been arranged the Coles were, frankly, a little
+uneasy. The family of Le Page was not the easiest in the world to
+entertain, and the thought of a whole day with Mr. Le Page, who was a
+very black, very silent gentleman and looked as though he were always
+counting sums over in his head, was truly alarming. Moreover, in the
+ordinary way, a picnic, which depended so entirely for its success on
+the weather, was no great risk, because the Coles were indifferent
+to rain, as all true Glebeshire people must be. But that the Le Pages
+should be wet was quite another affair; the thought of a dripping Mrs.
+Le Page was intolerable, but of a dripping Charlotte quite impossible;
+moreover, the plain but excellent food--pasties, saffron cake, apples
+and ginger beer--enjoyed by the Coles seemed quite too terrestrial for
+the Le Pages. Mrs. Le Page and ginger beer! Charlotte and pasties!...
+nevertheless, the invitation had been given and accepted. The Coles
+could but anxiously inspect the sky...
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was another reason why Jeremy looked forward to the picnic with
+impatience. A funny old lady, named Miss Henhouse, who lived near Cow
+Farm in a little cottage all by herself, called sometimes upon the Coles
+and told them stories about the people and the place, which made them
+“sit up in their chairs.” She was an old lady with sharp eyes, a black
+moustache and a double chin, wore an old shabby bonnet, grey mittens and
+large shoes which banged after her as she walked. She leant on a cane
+with a silver knob to it, and she wore a huge cameo brooch on her breast
+with a miniature of herself inside it. She was what is called in novels
+“a character.” There was no one who knew so much about Rafiel and its
+neighbourhood; she had lived here for ever, her father had been a
+friend of Wellington's and had known members of the local Press Gang
+intimately. It was from her that Jeremy heard, in detail, the famous
+story of the Scarlet Admiral. It was, of course, in any case, a
+well-known story, and Jeremy had often heard it before, but Miss
+Henhouse made it a new, a most vivid and realistic thing. She sat
+forward in her chair, leaning on her silver-headed cane, her eyes
+staring in front of her, her two chins bobbing, gazing, gazing as though
+it all had happened before her very nose.
+
+How one night outside Rafiel Cove there was a terrible storm, and on the
+morning afterwards a wonderful, smiling calm, and how the village idiot,
+out for his early morning stroll, saw a splendid ship riding beyond
+the Cove, a ship of gold with sails of silk and jewelled masts. As he
+watched, from the ship a boat pushed out, and then landed on the sand of
+the Cove a wonderful company in cocked hats of gold lace, plush breeches
+of red, and shoes with diamond buckles. The leader of them was a little
+man with a vast cocked hat and a splendid sword all studded with jewels.
+The fool, peering over the hedge, saw him give orders to his men, and
+then walk, alone, up the little winding path, to the cliff-top. Straight
+up the path he came, then right past the fool himself, standing at last
+upon the turnip field of Farmer Ede, one of the greatest of the farmers
+of those parts. And here he waited, staring out to sea, his arms
+crossed, his eyes very fierce and very, very sad. Then a second time
+from the golden ship a boat pushed out, cutting its way through the
+glassy sea--and there landed on the beach a young man, very beautiful,
+in a suit of blue and gold, and he, without a glance at the waiting
+sailors, also slowly climbed the sea-path, and at last he too reached
+Farmer Ede's turnip field. Then he and the Scarlet Admiral bowed to one
+another, very beautifully, very sadly, and very, very fiercely. As the
+sun rose high in the sky, as the cows passed clumsily down the lane
+behind the field so the fool, with eyes staring and heart thumping, saw
+these two fight a duel to the death. There could be no question, from
+the first, how it would end. The beautiful young man in his fine blue
+suit and his white cambric shirt had despair upon his face. He knew that
+his hour had come. And the eyes of the Scarlet Admiral were ever sadder
+and ever fiercer. Then, with a sudden move, a little turn of his agile
+body, the Scarlet Admiral had the young man through the breast. The
+young man threw up his arms and cried; and as the Scarlet Admiral
+withdrew his sword, dripping with blood from his body, the young man
+fell backwards over the cliff into the sea. Then the Scarlet Admiral
+wiped his sword on the grass and, slowly and sadly, walked down the
+cliff-path even as he had walked up. He joined his men, they found their
+boat, pushed out to their ship, and even as they landed upon her she
+had disappeared. A moment later the fool saw the parson of Rafiel
+Church coming round the corner for his morning bathe, and two minutes
+afterwards nothing human was to be seen save the naked limbs of the
+parson and his little bundle of black clothes lying neatly upon a stone.
+Then the fool ran all the way home to his mother who was a widow, and
+sat and cried and cried for the beautiful young man who had been slain,
+nor would he eat, nor taste the excellent Rafiel beer, and he pined
+away, and at last he died, first telling this history to his mother,
+who, like all widows, was a garulous woman and loved a good story...
+
+Impossible to imagine with what life and fire old Miss Henhouse gave
+this history. You could see with your own eyes the golden ship, the
+diamond buckles of the Scarlet Admiral, the young man's sad eyes, the
+parson's black clothes. When she had finished it seemed to Jeremy that
+it must have been just so. She told him that now on a summer morning
+or evening the Scarlet Admiral might still be seen, climbing the
+cliff-path, wiping his sword upon the grass, gazing out with sad eyes to
+sea. Jeremy swore to himself that on the next occasion of visiting the
+Cove he would watch... he would watch-but to no single human being would
+he speak anything of this.
+
+This was the second reason why he had looked forward so eagerly to the
+sea-picnic.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The day arrived, and it was marvellously fine--one of those days in
+August when heat possesses the world and holds it tranced and still, but
+has in the very strength of its possession some scent of the decay and
+chill of autumn that is to follow so close upon its heels. There was
+no breeze, no wind from the sea, only a sky utterly without cloud and a
+world without sound.
+
+Punctually at eleven of the morning the splendid Le Page equipage
+arrived at Cow Farm. Splendid it was! A large wagonette, with a stout
+supercilious fellow on the box who sniffed at the healthy odours of the
+farm and stared haughtily at Mrs. Monk as though she should be ashamed
+to be alive. The Coles had provided a small plump “jingle” with a small
+plump pony, their regular conveyance; the pony was Bob, and he would not
+go up hills unless persuaded with sugar, but Jeremy loved him and
+would not have ridden behind any other steed in the whole world. How
+contemptuously the big black horses of the wagonette gazed down their
+nostrils at Bob, and how superbly Mrs. Le Page, sitting very upright
+under her white sunshade, greeted Mrs. Cole!
+
+“Dear Mrs. Cole. Such a hot morning, isn't it? Lovely, of course, but so
+hot.”
+
+“I'm afraid,” Jeremy heard his mother say, “that your carriage will
+never get down the Rafiel Lane, Mrs. Le Page. We hoped you'd come in the
+dog-cart. Plenty of room...”
+
+Superb to witness the fashion in which Mrs. Le Page gazed at the
+dog-cart.
+
+“For all of us?... Dear Mrs. Cole, I scarcely think--And Charlotte's
+frock...”
+
+Then Jeremy turned his eyes to Charlotte. She sat under a miniature
+sunshade of white silk and lace, a vision of loveliness. She was a
+shimmer of white, a little white cloud that had settled for a moment
+upon the seat of the carriage to allow the sun to dance upon it, to
+caress it with fingers of fire, so to separate it from the rest of the
+world for ever as something too precious to be touched. Jeremy had never
+seen anything so lovely.
+
+He blushed and scraped his boots the one against the other.
+
+“And this is Jeremy?” said Mrs. Le Page as though she said: “And this is
+where you keep your little pigs, Mr. Monk?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing.
+
+“Charlotte, you know Jeremy. You must be friends.”
+
+“Yes,” said Charlotte, without moving. Then Jeremy tumbled into the
+stern gaze of Mr. Le Page who, arrayed as he was in a very smart suit
+of the whitest flannels, looked with his black beard and fierce black
+eyebrows like a pirate king disguised.
+
+“How are you?” said Mr. Le Page in a deep bass voice.
+
+“Very well, thank you,” said Jeremy.
+
+To tell the truth, Mrs. Cole's heart sadly misgave her when she saw
+the Le Page family all sitting up so new and so bright in their new and
+bright carriage. She thought of the simple preparations that had been
+made--the pasties, the saffron buns and the ginger beer; she looked
+around her at the very plain but useful garments worn by her family, her
+husband in faded grey flannel trousers and a cricketing shirt, Helen and
+Mary in the simplest blue cotton, and Jeremy in his two-year-old sailor
+suit. She had intended to bring their bathing things in a bundle,
+but now she put them aside. It was obvious that the Le Pages had no
+intention of bathing. She sighed and foresaw a difficult day ahead of
+her.
+
+It was evident that the Le Pages did not intend to come one step farther
+into Cow Farm than was necessary.
+
+“Dear Mrs. Cole, on a hot day--how can you endure the smells of a
+farm... such a charming farm, too, with all its cows and pigs, but in
+this weather... Charlotte darling, you don't feel the heat? No? Hold
+your sun-shade a little more to the right, love. That's right. She
+was not quite the thing last night, Mrs. Cole. I had some doubts about
+bringing her, but I knew you'd all be so disappointed. She's looking
+rather lovely to-day, don't you think? You must forgive a mother's
+partiality... Oh, you're not bringing that little dog, are you?
+Surely--”
+
+Jeremy, who had from the first hated Mrs. Le Page, forgot his shyness
+and brought out fiercely:
+
+“Of course he's coming. Hamlet always goes everywhere with us.”
+
+“Hamlet!” said Mr. Le Page in his deep bass voice.
+
+“What a strange name for a dog!” said Mrs. Le Page in tones of vague
+distrust.
+
+At last it was settled that one member of the Cole party should ride
+with the Le Pages, and Mary was selected. Poor Mary! inevitably chosen
+when something unpleasant must be done. To-day it was especially hard
+for her, because she entertained so implacable a hatred for the lovely
+Charlotte and looked, it must be confessed, so plain and shabby by the
+side of her. Indeed, to any observer with a heart it must have been
+touching to see Mary driven away in that magnificent black carriage,
+staring with agonised hostility in front of her through her large
+spectacles, compelled to balance herself exactly between the magnificent
+sunshade of Mrs. Le Page and the smaller but also magnificent sunshade
+of the lovely Charlotte. Mrs. Cole, glancing in that direction, may
+have felt with a pang that she would never be able to make her children
+handsome and gay as she would like to do--but it was certainly a pang of
+only a moment's duration.
+
+She would not have exchanged her Mary for a wagon-load of Charlottes.
+
+And Jeremy, bumping along in the jingle, also felt the contrast. Why
+could not Mary wear her straw hat straight, and why must she have
+elastic under her chin? Why did she look so cross and so stupid? Why did
+she bother him so with her worries? Charlotte would never worry him. She
+would just sit there, looking beautiful, with her golden hair, and blue
+eyes and pink cheeks. Next week was to be Miss Jones's birthday, and
+in preparation for this he had bought for her in Polchester a silver
+thimble. He wondered whether he would not give Charlotte this thimble
+instead of Miss Jones. He could give Miss Jones some old thing he would
+find somewhere, or he would go out and pick for her some flowers. She
+would be pleased with anything. He wondered what Charlotte would say
+when he gave her the thimble. She would like it, of course. She would
+smile. She would open her eyes and look at him. Fortunately he had the
+thimble even now in his pocket. He had bought it when he was wearing
+this same suit. Yes, he would give it to her. As he decided this he
+looked at Miss Jones guiltily, but she was making such odd faces as she
+squinted to escape from the sun that he did not feel ashamed.
+
+They came to that steep hill just beyond Garth woods, and Bob, of
+course, refused to move. The superb Le Page affair dashed past them,
+shouted something at them, and disappeared over the brow of the hill.
+The last thing to be seen of them were the fierce despairing eyes of the
+imprisoned Mary. A strange sensation of relief instantly settled upon
+the Coles. For a moment they were alone; they began slowly to walk up
+the hill, dragging with them the reluctant Bob. About them was peace,
+absolute and unstained. The hard glitter of the day shone upon the white
+road, but behind them the wood was dark and cool, a green cloud against
+the sky. Behind the steep hedges the harvesters were moving. In the air
+a lark was singing, and along the ditch at the road side a tiny stream
+tumbled. And beyond these sounds there was a vast tranquil silence.
+
+The Coles moved up the hill very slowly, only Hamlet racing ahead to
+find spots of shadow where he might lie down and pant. They would not
+confess to themselves that this promised to be the happiest moment of
+their day. They went bravely forward.
+
+On the bend of the hill the Le Pages were waiting for them. What Mrs.
+Cole had foreseen had in truth occurred. The Le Page carriage would not
+go down the Rafiel Lane. No, it would, not... Nothing would induce it
+to.
+
+“James,” said Mrs. Le Page to her stout and disdainful attendant.
+
+“Nothing, ma'am,” said James.
+
+“Dear me, dear me,” said Mrs. Le Page. “Well then, we must walk,” said
+the deep despairing voice of the Pirate King.
+
+And walk they did.
+
+That walk was, as Mrs. Cole afterwards said, “a pity,” because it
+destroyed the Le Page tempers when the day was scarcely begun. Mr. Le
+Page was, it was quickly descried, not intended for walking. Strong and
+fierce though he seemed, heat instantly crumpled him up. The perfect
+crease of his white trousers vanished, his collar was no longer
+spotless, little beads of perspiration appeared almost at once on his
+forehead, and his black beard dripped moisture. Mrs. Le Page, with her
+skirts raised, walked as though she were passing through the Valley of
+Destruction; every step was a risk and a danger, and the difficulty of
+holding her skirts and her sunshade at the same time, and of seeing that
+her shoes were not soiled and her hat not caught by an offending bough
+gave her face an expression of desperate despair.
+
+There was, unfortunately, one spot very deep down in the lane where the
+ground was never dry even in the height of the hottest summer.
+
+A little stream ran here across the path, and the ground on either side
+was soft and sodden. Mrs. Le Page, struggling to avoid an overhanging
+branch, stepped into the mud; one foot stuck there, and it needed Mr.
+Cole's strong arm to pull her out of it.
+
+“Charlotte! Charlotte!” she cried. “Don't let Charlotte step into that!
+Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! I charge you--my child!” Charlotte was conveyed
+across, but the damage was done. One of Mrs. Le Page's beautiful shoes
+was thick with mud.
+
+When, therefore, the party, climbing out of the Lane, came suddenly upon
+the path leading down to the Cove, with the sea, like a blue cloud in
+front of them, no one exclaimed at the view. It was a very beautiful
+view--one of the finest of its kind in the United Kingdom, the high
+rocks closing in the Cove and the green hills closing in the rocks. On
+the hill to the right was the Rafiel Old Church, with its graveyard that
+ran to the very edge of the cliff, and behind the Cove was a stream and
+a green orchard and a little wood. The sand of the Cove was bright gold,
+and the low rocks to either side of it were a dark red--the handsomest
+place in the world, with the water so clear that you could see down, far
+down, into green caverns laced with silver sand. Unfortunately, at the
+moment when the Coles and their friends beheld it, it was blazing in the
+sun; soon the sun would pass and, during the whole afternoon, half of it
+at least would lie in shadow, but the Le Pages could not be expected to
+think of that.
+
+The basket was unloaded from the jingle and carried down to the beach
+by Mr. Cole and Jim. Jeremy, finding himself at the side of the lovely
+Charlotte, was convulsed with shyness, the more that he knew that the
+unhappy Mary was listening with jealous ears. Charlotte, walking like
+Agag, “delicately,” had a piteous expression in her eyes as though she
+were being led to the torture.
+
+Jeremy coughed and began: “We always come here every year. Don't you
+like it?”
+
+“Yes,” she said miserably.
+
+“And we paddle and bathe. Do you like bathing?”
+
+“Going into the sea?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, no! Mother says I mustn't, because it'll hurt my hair. Do you like
+my hair?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing at so direct an invitation to compliment.
+
+“Mother says I've got to be very careful of my hair because it's my
+chief beauty.”
+
+“Yes,” said Jeremy.
+
+“I have a maid, Alice, and she brushes a whole hour every morning and a
+whole hour every evening.”
+
+“Don't you get very tired?” asked Jeremy. “I know I should.”
+
+“Mother says if you have such beautiful hair you must take trouble with
+it,” Charlotte gravely replied.
+
+Her voice was so like the voice of a parrot that Jeremy's grandmother
+had once possessed that it didn't seem as though a human being was
+speaking at all. They were near the beach now and could see the blue
+slipping in, turning into white bubbles, then slipping out again.
+
+“Do you like my frock?” said Charlotte.
+
+“Yes,” said Jeremy.
+
+“It was bought in London. All my clothes are bought in London.”
+
+“Mary's and Helen's aren't,” said Jeremy with some faint idea of
+protecting his sisters. “They're bought in Polchester.”
+
+“Mother says,” said Charlotte, “that if you're not pretty it doesn't
+matter where you buy your clothes.”
+
+They arrived on the beach and stared about them. It became at once a
+great question as to where Mrs. Le Page would sit. She could not sit on
+the sand which looked damp, nor equally, of course, on a rock that was
+spiky and hard. What to do with her? She stood in the middle of the
+beach, still holding up her skirts, gazing desperately about her,
+looking first at one spot and then at another.
+
+“Oh, dear, the heat!” she exclaimed. “Is there no shade anywhere?
+Perhaps in that farm-house over there...” It was probable enough that no
+member of the Cole family would have minded banishing Mrs. Le Page
+into the farmhouse, but it would have meant that the whole party must
+accompany her. That was impossible. They had come for a picnic and a
+picnic they would have.
+
+Mrs. Cole watched, with growing agitation, the whole situation. She saw
+from her husband's face that he was rapidly losing his temper, and she
+had learnt, after many experiences, that when he lost his temper he was
+capable of anything. That does not mean, of course, that he ever was
+angry to the extent of swearing or striking out with his fists--no, he
+simply grew sadder, and sadder, and sadder, and this melancholy had a
+way of reducing to despair all the people with whom he happened to be at
+the time.
+
+“What does everyone say to our having lunch now?” cried Mrs. Cole
+cheerfully. “It's after one, and I'm sure everyone's hungry.”
+
+No one said anything, so preparations were begun. A minute piece of
+shade was found for Mrs. Le Page, and here she sat on a flat piece of
+rock with her skirts drawn close about her as though she were afraid
+of rats or crabs. A tablecloth was laid on the sand and the provisions
+spread out--pasties for everybody, egg-sandwiches, seed-cake, and
+jam-puffs--and ginger beer. It looked a fine feast when it was all
+there, and Mrs. Cole, as she gave the final touch to it by placing a
+drinking glass containing two red rose-buds in the middle, felt proud of
+her efforts and hoped that after all the affair might pass off bravely.
+But alas, how easily the proudest plans fall to the ground.
+
+“I hope, Alice, you haven't forgotten the salt!”
+
+Instantly Mrs. Cole knew that she had forgotten it. She could see
+herself standing there in Mrs. Monk's kitchen forgetting it. How could
+she? And Mrs. Monk, how could SHE? It had never been forgotten before.
+
+“Oh, no,” she said wildly. “Oh, no! I'm sure I can't have forgotten it.”
+
+She plunged about, her red face all creased with anxiety, her hat on
+one side, her hands searching everywhere, under the tablecloth, in the
+basket, amongst the knives and forks.
+
+“Jim, you haven't dropped anything?”
+
+“No, mum. Beggin' your pardon, mum, the basket was closed, so to
+speak--closed it was.”
+
+No, she knew that she had forgotten it.
+
+“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Le Page, I'm afraid--”
+
+“My dear Mrs. Cole! What does it matter? Not in the least, I assure you.
+In this heat it's impossible to feel hungry, isn't it? I assure you I
+don't feel as though I could touch a thing. A little fruit, perhaps--an
+apple or a peach--”
+
+Fruit? Why hadn't Mrs. Cole brought fruit? She might so easily have
+done so, and she had never thought about it. They themselves were rather
+tired of fruit, and so--
+
+“I'm afraid we've no fruit, but an egg-sandwich--”
+
+“Eggs need salt, don't you think? Not that it matters in the very least,
+but so that you shouldn't think me fussy. Really, dear Mrs. Cole, I
+never felt less hungry in my life. Just a drop of milk and I'm perfectly
+satisfied.”
+
+“Jeremy shall run up to the farm for the milk. You don't mind, Jeremy
+dear, do you? It's only a step. Just take this sixpence, dear, and say
+we'll send the jug back this afternoon if they'll spare one.”
+
+Jeremy did mind. He was enjoying his luncheon, and he was gazing at
+Charlotte, and he was teasing Hamlet with scraps--he was very happy.
+Nevertheless, he started off.
+
+So soon as he left the sands the noise of the sea was shut off from him,
+and he was climbing the little green path up which the Scarlet Admiral
+had once stalked.
+
+Suddenly he remembered--in his excitement about Charlotte he had
+forgotten the Admiral. He stood for a moment, listening. The green
+hedge shut off the noise of the sea--only above his head some birds were
+twittering. He fancied that he heard footsteps, then that beyond the
+hedge something was moving. It seemed to him that the birds were also
+listening for something. “Well, it's the middle of the afternoon,
+anyway.” He thought to himself, “He never comes there--only in the
+morning or evening,” but he hurried forward after that, wishing that he
+had called to Hamlet to accompany him. It was a pleasant climb to
+the farm through the green orchard, and he found at the farm door an
+agreeable woman who smiled at him when she gave him the milk. He had to
+come down the hill carefully, lest the milk should be spilt. He walked
+along very happily, humming to himself and thinking in a confused summer
+afternoon kind of manner of Charlotte, Hamlet, Mrs. Le Page and himself.
+“Shall I give her the thimble or shan't I? I could take her to the pools
+where the little crabs are. She'd like them. I wonder whether we're
+going to bathe. Mrs. Le Page will look funny bathing...” Then he was in
+the green lane again, and at once his discomfort returned to him, and
+he looked around his shoulder and into the hedges, and stopped once
+and again to listen. There was no sound. The birds, it seemed, had all
+fallen to sleep. The hedges, he thought, were closer about him. It was
+very hot here, with no breeze and no comforting sound of the sea. “I
+wonder whether he really does come,” he thought. “It must be horrid
+to see him--coming quite close.” And the thought of the Fool also
+frightened him. The Fool with his tongue out and his shaking legs, like
+the idiot who lived near the Cathedral at home. At the thought of this
+Jeremy suddenly took to his legs and ran, covering the top of his jug
+with his hand; then, when he came out on to the strip of grass that
+crossed the top of the beach, he stopped, suddenly ashamed of himself.
+Scarlet Admirals! Scarlet Admirals! How could there be Scarlet Admirals
+in a world that also contained so blazing a sun, so blue a sea, and the
+gorgeous realities of the Le Page family. He arrived at the luncheon
+party hot and proud and smiling, so cheerful and stolid and agreeable
+that even Mrs. Le Page was compelled to say, “Really, Mrs. Cole, that's
+a very nice little boy of yours. Come here, little Jeremy, and talk
+to me!” How deeply he hated being called “little Jeremy” only Mary and
+Helen knew. Their eyes flew to his face to see how he would take it. He
+took it very well. He sat down beside Mrs. Le Page, who very gracefully
+and languidly sipped at her glass of milk.
+
+“How old are you, Jeremy dear?” she asked him.
+
+“Eight,” he answered, wriggling.
+
+“What a nice age! And one day you'll go to school?”
+
+“In September.”
+
+“And what will you be when you're a man?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know. I'll be a soldier, perhaps.”
+
+“Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't like to be a soldier and kill people.”
+
+“Yes, I would. There's lots of people I'd like to kill.”
+
+Mrs. Le Page drew her skirts back a little.
+
+“How horrible! I'm sure your mother wouldn't like to hear that.”
+
+But Mr. Cole had caught the last words of the dialogue and interrupted
+with:
+
+“But what could be finer, Mrs. Le Page, than the defence of one's
+country? Would you have our young lads grow up faint-hearted and fail
+their Motherland when she calls? What can be finer, I say, than to die
+for Queen and country? Would not every mother have her son shed his
+blood for liberty and freedom?... No, Jeremy, not another. You've had
+quite enough. It would indeed be a disheartening sight if we elders
+were to watch our sons and grandchildren turning their swords into
+ploughshares--”
+
+He was interrupted by a shrill cry from Mrs. Le Page:
+
+“Charlotte, darling, do hold your sunshade up. All the left side of your
+face is exposed. That's better, dear. I beg your pardon, Mr. Cole.”
+
+But Mr. Cole was offended.
+
+“I hope no son of mine will ever show himself a faint heart,” he
+concluded severely.
+
+The luncheon, in fact, had been a most dismal failure. The Coles could
+fling their minds back to luncheons on this same beach that had been
+simply riotous successes. What fun they had had! What games! What
+bathes? Now the very sight of Mr. Le Page's black beard was enough. Even
+Jeremy felt that things were wrong. Then he looked at Charlotte and was
+satisfied. There she sat, straight and stiff, her hands on her lap, her
+hair falling in lovely golden ripples down her back, her gaze fixed on
+distance. Oh! she was beautiful! He would do whatever she told him; he
+would give her Miss Noah and the apple tree; he would--A sound disturbed
+his devotions. He turned. Both Mr. and Mrs. Le Page were fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+“Children,” whispered Mrs. Cole, “very quietly now, so that you don't
+disturb anyone, run off to the farther beach and play. Helen, you'll see
+that everything is all right, won't you?”
+
+It was only just in time that Jeremy succeeded in strangling Hamlet's
+bark into a snort, and even then they all looked round for a moment
+at the sleepers in the greatest anxiety. But no, they had not been
+disturbed. If only Mr. Le Page could have known what he resembled
+lying there with his mouth open! But he did not know. He was doubtless
+dreaming of his property.
+
+The children crept away. Charlotte and Jeremy together. Jeremy's heart
+beat thickly. At last he had the lovely creature in his charge. It was
+true that he did not quite know what he was going to do with her, and
+that even now, in the height of his admiration, he did wish that she
+would not walk as though she were treading on red-hot ploughshares,
+and that she could talk a little instead of giving little shivers of
+apprehension at every step.
+
+“I must say,” he thought to himself, “she's rather silly in some ways.
+Perhaps it wouldn't be fun to see her always.”
+
+They turned the corner round a projecting finger of rock, and a new
+little beach, white and gleaming, lay in front of them.
+
+“Well,” said Jeremy, “here we are. What shall we play?”
+
+There was dead silence.
+
+“We might play pirates,” he continued. “I'll be the pirate, and Mary can
+sit on that rock until the water comes round her, and Charlotte shall
+hide in that cave--”
+
+There was still silence. Looking about him, he discovered from his
+sisters' countenances that they were resolved to lend no kind of
+assistance, and he then from that deduced the simple fact that his
+sisters hated Charlotte and were not going to make it pleasant for her
+in any way if they could help it. Oh! it was a miserable picnic! The
+worst that he'd ever had.
+
+“It's too hot to play,” said Helen loftily. “I'm going to sit down over
+there.”
+
+“So am I,” said Mary.
+
+They moved away, their heads in the air and their legs ridiculously
+stiff.
+
+Jeremy gazed at Charlotte in distress. It was very wicked of his sisters
+to go off like that, but it was also very silly of Charlotte to stand
+there so helplessly. He was beginning to think that perhaps he would
+give the thimble to Miss Jones after all.
+
+“Would you like to go and see the pool where the little crabs are?” he
+asked.
+
+“I don't know,” she answered, her upper lip trembling as though she were
+going to cry. “I want to go home with Mother.”
+
+“You can't go home,” he said firmly, “and you can't see your mother,
+because she's asleep.”
+
+“I've made my shoes dirty,” she said, looking down at her feet, “and I'm
+so tired of holding my sunshade.”
+
+“I should shut it up,” Jeremy said without any hesitation. “I think it's
+a silly thing. I'm glad I'm not a girl. Do you have to take it with you
+everywhere?”
+
+“Not if it's raining. Then I have an umbrella.”
+
+“I think you'd better come and see the crabs,” he settled. “They're only
+just over there.”
+
+She moved along with him reluctantly, looking back continually to where
+her mother ought to be.
+
+“Are you enjoying yourself?” Jeremy asked politely.
+
+“No,” she said, without any hesitation, “I want to go home.”
+
+“She's as selfish as anything,” he thought to himself. “We're giving the
+party, and she ought to have said 'Yes' even if she wasn't.”
+
+“Do you like my dog?” he asked, with another effort at light
+conversation.
+
+“No,” she answered, with a little shiver. “He's ugly.”
+
+“He isn't ugly,” Jeremy returned indignantly. “He isn't perhaps the
+very best breed, but Uncle Samuel says that that doesn't matter if he's
+clever. He's better than any other dog. I love him more than anybody. He
+isn't ugly!”
+
+“He is,” cried Charlotte with a kind of wail. “Oh! I want to go home.”
+
+“Well, you can't go home,” he answered her fiercely. “So you needn't
+think about it.”
+
+They came to the little pools, three of them, now clear as crystal, blue
+on their surface, with green depths and red shelving rock.
+
+“Now you sit there,” he said cheerfully. “No one will touch you. The
+crabs won't get at you.”
+
+He looked about him and noticed with surprise where he was. He was
+sitting on the farther corner of the very beach where the Scarlet
+Admiral had landed with his men. It was out there beyond that bend
+of rock that the wonderful ship had rode, with its gold and silk, its
+jewelled masts and its glittering board. Directly opposite to him
+was the little green path that led up the hill, and above it the very
+field--Farmer Ede's field!
+
+For a long, long time they sat there in silence. He forgot Charlotte
+in his interest over his discovery, staring about him and watching how
+quickly the August afternoon was losing its heat and colour, so that
+already a little cold autumnal wind was playing about the sand, the
+colours were being drawn from the sky, and a grey web was slowly pulled
+across the sea.
+
+“Now,” he said cheerfully at last, to Charlotte, “I'll look for the
+crabs.”
+
+“I hate crabs,” she said. “I want to go home.”
+
+“You can't go home,” he answered furiously. “What's the good of saying
+that over and over again? You aren't going yet, so it's no use saying
+you are.”
+
+“You're a horrid little boy,” she brought out with a kind of inanimate
+sob.
+
+He did not reply to that; he was still trying to behave like a
+gentleman. How could he ever have liked her? Why, her hair was not so
+much after all. What was hair when you come to think of it? Mary got
+on quite well with hers, ugly though it was. She was stupid, stupid,
+stupid! She was like someone dead. As he searched for the crabs that
+weren't there he felt his temper growing. Soon he would lead her back to
+her mother and leave her there and never see her again.
+
+But this was not the climax of the afternoon.
+
+When he looked up from gazing into the pool the whole world seemed to
+have changed. He was still dazzled perhaps by the reflection of the
+water in his eyes, and yet it was not altogether that. It was not
+altogether because the day was slipping from afternoon into evening.
+
+The lazy ripple of the water as it slutched up the sand and then broke,
+the shadows that were creeping farther and farther from rock to rock,
+the green light that pushed up from the horizon into the faint blue, the
+grey web of the sea, the thick gathering of the hills as they crept
+more closely about the little darkening beach... it was none of these
+things.
+
+He began hurriedly to tell Charlotte about the Scarlet Admiral. Even as
+he told her he was himself caught into the excitement of the narration.
+He forgot her; he did not see her white cheeks, her mouth open with
+terror, an expression new to her, that her face had never known before,
+stealing into her eyes. He told her how the Fool had seen the ship,
+how the Admiral had landed, then left his men on the beach, how he had
+climbed the little green path, how the young man had followed him, how
+they had fought, how the young man had fallen. What was that? Jeremy
+jumped from his rock. “I say, did you hear anything?”
+
+And that was enough for Charlotte. With one scream, a scream such as she
+had never uttered in her life before, sue turned, and then, running
+as indeed she had never run before, she stumbled, half fell, stumbled,
+finally ran as though the whole world of her ghosts was behind her. Her
+screams were so piercing that they may well have startled, the villagers
+of Rafiel.
+
+Jeremy followed her, but his mind was not with her. Was he going to see
+something? What was it? Who was it?
+
+Then the awful catastrophe that finished the afternoon occurred. Turning
+the corner of the rock, Charlotte missed her footing and fell straight
+into a pool. Jeremy, Mary and Helen were upon her almost as she fell.
+They dragged her out, but alas! what a sight was there! Instead of the
+beautiful and magnificent Charlotte there was a bedraggled and dirty
+little girl.
+
+But also, instead of an inanimate and lifeless doll, there was at last a
+human being, a terrified soul.
+
+The scene that followed passes all power of description. Mrs. Le Page
+wailed like a lost spirit; Mr. Le Page was so rude to Mr. Cole that it
+might confidently be said that those two gentlemen would never speak
+to one another again. Mrs. Cole, dismayed though she was, had some
+fatalistic consolation that she had known from the first that the picnic
+would be a most dreadful failure and that the worst had occurred; there
+was no more to come.
+
+Everyone was too deeply occupied to scold Jeremy. They all moved up to
+the farm, Charlotte behaving most strangely, even striking her mother
+and crying: “Let me go! Let me go! I don't want to be clean! I'm
+frightened! I'm frightened!”
+
+Jeremy hung behind the others. At the bottom of the little lane he stood
+and waited. Was there a figure coming up through the dusk? Did someone
+pass him? Why did he suddenly feel no longer afraid, but only reassured
+and with the strangest certainty that the lane, the beach, the field
+belonged to him now? He would come there and live when he grew up. He
+would come often. Had the Scarlet Admiral passed him? If not the Scarlet
+Admiral, then the other.
+
+The sea picnic had, after all, been not quite a misfortune.
+
+Jeremy had been made free of the land.
+
+And Charlotte? Charlotte had been woken up, and never would go to sleep
+again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. MARY
+
+
+I
+
+
+Mary Cole had been, all her life, that thing beloved of the sentimental
+novelist, a misunderstood child. She was the only misunderstood member
+of the Cole family, and she was misunderstood, as is very often
+the case, in a large measure because she was so plain. Had she been
+good-looking as Helen, or independent as Jeremy, she would have either
+attracted the world in general, or have been indifferent as to whether
+she attracted it or not. As it was, she longed to attract everyone, and,
+in truth, attracted nobody. She might have found consolation in books
+or her own highly-coloured imaginations had it not been for the burning
+passions which she formed, at a very early age, for living people. For
+some years now her life had centred round her brother Jeremy. Had the
+Coles been an observant family they might, perhaps, have found some
+pathos in the way in which Mary, with her pale sallow complexion, her
+pear-shaped face with its dull, grey eyes, her enormous glasses, her
+lanky colourless hair, and her thin, bony figure, gazed at her masculine
+and independent brother.
+
+Uncle Samuel might have noticed, but he was occupied with his painting.
+For the rest they were not observant. Mary was only seven years of age,
+but she had the capacity for being hurt of a person of thirty. She was
+hurt by everything and everybody. When somebody said: “Now, Mary, hurry
+up. You're always so slow,” she was hurt. If Helen told her that she was
+selfish, she was hurt, and would sit wondering whether she was selfish
+or no. If Mrs. Cole said that she must brush her hair more carefully she
+was hurt, and when Jeremy said anything sharp to her she was in agony.
+She discovered very quickly that no one cared for her agonies. The Coles
+were a plain, matter-of-fact race, and had the day's work to finish.
+They had no intention of thinking too much of their children's feelings.
+Thirty years ago that was not so popular as it is now. Meanwhile, her
+devotion to her brother grew with every month of her life. She thought
+him, in all honesty, the most miraculous of all human beings. There
+was more in her worship than mere dog-like fidelity. She adored him for
+reasons that were real and true; for his independence, his obstinacy,
+his sense of fun, his sudden, unexpected kindnesses, his sudden
+helplessness, and above all, for his bravery. He seemed to her the
+bravest hero in all history, and she felt it the more because she was
+herself compact of every fear and terror known to man. It was not enough
+for her, the ordinary panic that belongs to all human life at every
+stage of its progress. She feared everything and everybody, and only
+hid her fear by a persistent cover of almost obstinate stupidity,
+which deceived, to some extent, her relations, but never in any degree
+herself. She knew that she was plain, awkward and hesitating, but she
+knew also that she was clever. She knew that she could do everything
+twice as fast as Jeremy and Helen, that she was often so impatient
+of their slow progress at lessons that she would beat her foot on the
+ground in a kind of agonised impatience. She knew that she was clever,
+and she wondered sometimes why her cleverness did not give her more
+advantage. Why, for instance, should Helen's good looks be noticed at
+once by every visitor and her own cleverness be unnoticed? Certainly,
+on occasions, her mother would say: “And Mary? I don't think you've met
+Mary. Come and say, how do you do, Mary. Mary is the clever one of the
+family!” but it was always said in a deprecating, apologetic tone, which
+made Mary hang her head and hate both herself and her mother.
+
+She told herself stories of the times when Jeremy would have to depend
+entirely upon the splendour of her brains for his delivery from some
+horror--death, torture or disgrace. At present those times were, she was
+bound to confess to herself, very distant. He depended upon no one
+for anything; he could not be said to need Mary's assistance in any
+particular. And with this burning desire of hers came, of course,
+jealousy. There are some happy, easy natures to whom jealousy is,
+through life, unknown. They are to be envied. Jealousy in a grown-up
+human being is bad; in a child it is terrible. Had you told Mrs.
+Cole--good mother though she was--that her daughter Mary, aged seven,
+suffered tortures through jealousy, she would have assured you that it
+was not, in reality, jealousy, but rather indigestion, and that a little
+medicine would put it right.
+
+Mary was quite helpless. What is a child to do if she is jealous? Other
+children do not understand her, her elders laugh at her. Mary, with a
+wisdom greatly beyond her years, realised very quickly that this was
+some sort of horrible disease, with which she must wrestle alone. Above
+all, she must never allow Jeremy to know anything about it. He was, of
+course, sublimely unaware of the matter; he knew that Mary was silly
+sometimes, but he attributed that to her sex; he went on his way,
+happily indifferent whether anyone cared for him or no...
+
+Mary suffered agonies when, as sometimes happened, Jeremy sat with his
+arm round Helen's neck and his cheek up against hers. She suffered when,
+in a mood of tempestuous affection to the whole world, he kissed Miss
+Jones. She even suffered when he sat at his mother's feet whilst she
+read “The Dove in the Eagle's Nest,” or “Engel the Fearless.”
+
+Most of all, however, she suffered over Hamlet. She knew that at this
+present time Hamlet was the one creature for whom Jeremy passionately
+cared. He loved his mother, but with the love that custom and habit
+has tamed and modified, although since Mrs. Cole's illness in the early
+summer he had cared for her in a manner more demonstrative and openly
+affectionate. Nevertheless, it was Hamlet who commanded Jeremy's heart,
+and Mary knew it. Matters were made worse by the undoubted truth that
+Hamlet did not care very much for Mary--that is, he never gave any signs
+of caring, and very often walked out of the room when she came into it.
+Mary could have cared for the dog as enthusiastically as Jeremy--she was
+always sentimental about animals--but now she was shut out from their
+alliance, and she knew that when she came up to them and began to pat or
+stroke Hamlet, Jeremy was annoyed and Hamlet's skin wriggled in a kind
+of retreating fashion under her fingers. Wise people will say that it
+is impossible for this to be a serious trouble to a child. It was
+increasingly serious to Mary.
+
+Jeremy was not, perhaps, so tactful as he might have been. “Oh bother,
+Mary!” he would say. “You've gone and waked Hamlet up!” or “Don't stroke
+Hamlet that way, Mary; he hates it!” or “No, I'm going for a walk with
+Hamlet; we don't want anyone!” Or Hamlet himself would suddenly bark at
+her as though he hated her, or would bare his teeth and grin at her in a
+mocking, sarcastic way that he had. At first, as an answer to this, she
+had the ridiculous idea of herself adopting an animal, and she selected,
+for this purpose, the kitchen cat, a dull, somnolent beast, whose sleek
+black hair was furtive, and green, crooked eyes malignant. The cat
+showed no signs of affection for Mary, nor could she herself honestly
+care for it. When she brought it with her into the schoolroom, Hamlet
+treated it in a scornful, sarcastic fashion that was worse than
+outrageous attack. The cat was uncleanly, and was speedily banished back
+into the kitchen. Mary's jealousy of Hamlet then grew apace, and with
+that jealousy, unfortunately, her secret appreciation of his splendours.
+She could not help admitting to herself that he was the most attractive
+dog in the world. She would look at him from under her spectacles when
+she was supposed to be reading and watch him as he rolled, kicking his
+legs in the air, or lay stretched out, his black wet nose against his
+paws, his eyes gleaming, his gaze fixed like the point of a dagger
+raised to strike, upon some trophy, or enemy, or spoil, or sat, solemn
+and pompous, like the Lord Mayor holding a meeting, as Jeremy said, up
+against his master's leg, square and solid as though he were cut out
+of wood, his peaked beard supercilious, his very ears at a patronising
+angle; or, as Mary loved best of all to see him, when he was simply
+childish, playing, as though he was still a new-found puppy, with
+pieces of paper or balls of string, rolling and choking, growling,
+purring, staggering and tumbling. At such times, again and again, her
+impulse would be to go forward and applaud him, and then, the instinct
+that she would be checked by Jeremy stayed her.
+
+She knew very well that Jeremy realised nothing of this. Jeremy was
+not given to the consideration of other people's motives--his own
+independence saved him from anxiety about others. He had the English
+characteristic of fancying that others must like and dislike as he
+himself liked and disliked. Of sentiment he had no knowledge whatever.
+
+As this year grew towards summer Mary had the feeling that Jeremy was
+slipping away from her. She did not know what had happened to him. In
+the old days he had asked her opinion about many things; he had scorned
+to enjoy the long stories that she had told him--at any rate, he had
+listened to them very politely--and he had asked her to suggest games or
+to play with his toys. Now as the summer drew near, he did none of
+these things. He was frankly impatient with her stories, never asked her
+advice about anything, and never played with her. Was he growing very
+conceited? Was it because he was going to school, and thought himself
+too old for his sisters? No, he did not seem to be conceited--he had
+always been proud, but never conceited. It was rather as though he had
+lately had thoughts of his own, almost against his will, and that these
+had shut him off from the people round him.
+
+Then, when their mother was so ill and Barbara made her startling
+appearance Jeremy kept more to himself. He never talked about his
+mother's illness, as did the others, and yet Mary knew that he had
+been more deeply concerned than any of them. She had been miserable, of
+course, but to Jeremy it had been as though he had been led into a new
+world altogether; Helen and she were still in their old places, and
+Jeremy had left them.
+
+At last just before they all moved to Cow Farm Mary made a silly scene.
+She had not intended to make a scene. Scenes seemed to come upon her,
+like evil birds, straight out of the air, to seize her before she knew
+where she was, to envelop and carry her up with them; at last, when all
+the mischief was done, to set her on her feet again, battered, torn and
+bitterly ashamed. One evening she was sitting deep in “Charlotte Mary,”
+ and Hamlet, bunched up against his master's leg, stared at her. She had
+long ago told herself that it was ridiculous to mind what Hamlet
+did, that he was not looking at her, and, in any case, he was only a
+dog--and so on.
+
+But to-night she was tired, and had read so long that her head
+ached--Hamlet was laughing at her, his eyes stared through his hair at
+her, cynically, superciliously, contemptuously. His lip curled and
+his beard bristled. Moved by a sudden wild impulse she picked up “The
+Chaplet of Pearls” and threw it at him. It hit him (not very severely),
+and he gave the sharp, melodramatic howl that he always used when it was
+his dignity rather than his body that was hurt. Jeremy looked up,
+saw what had happened, and a fine scene followed. Mary had hysterics,
+stamped and screamed and howled. Jeremy, his face white, stood and said
+nothing, but looked as though he hated her, which at that moment he
+undoubtedly did. It was that look which more than anything else in the
+world she dreaded.
+
+She made herself sick with crying; then apologised with an abjection
+that only irritated him the more; finally remembered the smallest
+details of the affair long after he had forgotten all about it.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+During the first weeks at Cow Farm Mary was happy. She had then many
+especial private joys, such as climbing into one of the old apple trees
+behind the house and reading there, safe from the world, or inventing
+for herself wonderful adventures out of the dark glooms and sunlit
+spaces of the orchard, or creeping about the lofts and barns as though
+they were full of the most desperate dangers and hazards that she alone
+had the pluck and intelligence to overcome. Then Mrs. Monk was kind
+to her, and listened to her imaginative chatter with a most marvellous
+patience. Mary did not know that, after these narrations, she would
+shake her head and say to her husband: “Not long for this world, I'm
+thinking, poor worm...not long for this world.”
+
+Then, at first Jeremy was kind and considerate. He was so happy that
+he did not mind what anyone did, and he would listen to Mary's stories
+quite in the old way, whistling to himself, not thinking about her at
+all perhaps, really, but very patient. After the first fortnight he
+slipped away from her again--and now more than ever before. He went off
+for long walks with Hamlet, refusing to take her with them; he answered
+her questions so vaguely that she could see that he paid her no
+attention at all; he turned upon her and rent her if she complained.
+And it was all, she was sure, that horrible dog. Jeremy was always with
+Hamlet now. The free life that the farm gave them, no lessons, no set
+hours, no care for appearances, left them to choose their own ways, and
+so developed their individualities. Helen was now more and more with
+her elders, was becoming that invaluable thing, “a great help to her
+mother,” and even, to her own inexhaustible pride, paid two calls with
+Mrs. Cole on the wives of neighbouring farmers. Then, Barbara absorbed
+more than ever of Helen's attention, and Mary was not allowed to share
+in these rites and services because “she always made Barbara cry.”
+
+She was, therefore, very much alone, and felt all her injuries twice as
+deeply as she had felt them before. Hamlet began to be an obsession with
+her. She had always had a habit of talking to herself, and now she could
+be heard telling herself that if it were not for the dog, Jeremy would
+always be with her, would play with her, walk with her, laugh with her
+as he used to do. She acquired now an awkward habit of gazing at him
+with passionate intensity. He would raise his eyes and find the great
+moon-faced spectacles fixed upon him with a beseeching, reproachful
+glare in the light of them. This would irritate him intensely. He would
+say:
+
+“You'll know me next time, Mary.”
+
+She would blush crimson and then, with trembling mouth, answer:
+
+“I wasn't looking.”
+
+“Yes, you were.”
+
+“No, I wasn't.”
+
+“Of course, you were--staring as though I were an Indian or Chinaman. If
+my face is dirty, say so.”
+
+“It isn't dirty.”
+
+“Well, then--”
+
+“You're always so cross.”
+
+“I'm not cross--only you're so silly--”
+
+“You usen't always to say I was silly. Now you always do--every minute.”
+
+“So you are.” Then as he saw the tears coming he would get up and go
+away. He didn't mean to be unkind to her; he was fond of her--but he
+hated scenes.
+
+“Mary's always howling about something now,” he confided to Helen.
+
+“Is she?” Helen answered with indifference. “Mary's such a baby.”
+
+So Mary began to attribute everything to the dog. It seemed to her then
+that she met the animal everywhere. Cow Farm was a rambling building,
+with dark, uneven stairs, low-ceilinged rooms, queer, odd corners, and
+sudden unexpected doors. It seemed to Mary as though in this place there
+were two Hamlets. When, in the evening she went to her room, hurrying
+through the passages for fear of what she might see, stumbling over
+the uneven boards, sniffling the mice and straw under the smell of
+her tallow candle, suddenly out of nowhere at all Hamlet would appear
+scurrying along, like the White Rabbit, intent on serious business.
+
+He came so softly and with so sudden a flurry and scatter when she did
+hear him that her heart would beat for minutes afterwards, and she would
+not dare that night to search, as she usually did, for burglars under
+her bed, but would lie, quaking, hot and staring, unable to sleep. When
+at last dreams came they would be haunted by a monstrous dog, all hair
+and eyes, who, with padding feet, would track her round and round a room
+from which there was no escape. Hamlet, being one of the wisest of dogs,
+very quickly discovered that Mary hated him. He was not a sentimental
+dog, and he did not devote his time to inventing ways in which he might
+placate his enemy, he simply avoided her. But he could not hinder
+a certain cynical and ironic pleasure that he had of, so to speak,
+flaunting his master in her face. He clung to Jeremy more resolutely
+than ever, would jump up at him, lick his hands and tumble about in
+front of him whenever Mary was there, and then suddenly, very straight
+and very grave, would stare at her as though he were the most devout
+and obedient dog in the place. Indeed, he bore her no malice; he could
+afford to disregard the Marys of this world, and of women in general he
+had a poor opinion. But he loved to tease, and Mary was an easy prey. He
+had his fun with her.
+
+After the affair of the sea-picnic, Jeremy was for some time under a
+cloud. It was felt that he was getting too big for anyone to manage. It
+was not that he was wicked, not that he kept bad company with the boys
+on the farm, or was dishonest, or told lies, or stole things--no, he
+gave no one that kind of anxiety--but that he was developing quite
+unmistakably a will of his own, and had a remarkable way of doing what
+he wanted without being actually disobedient, which was very puzzling
+to his elders. Being a little in disgrace he went off more than ever by
+himself, always appearing again at the appointed time, but telling
+no one where he had been or what he had been doing. His father had
+no influence over him at all, whilst Uncle Samuel could make him do
+whatever he wanted--and this, as Aunt Amy said, “was really a pity.”
+
+“It's a good thing he's going to school in September,” sighed his
+mother. “He's getting out of women's hands.”
+
+Mary longed with feverish longing to share in his adventures. If only
+he would tell her what he did on these walks of his. But no, only Hamlet
+knew. Perhaps, if he did not go with the dog he would go with her. When
+this idea crept into her brain she seized it and clutched it. That was
+all he wanted--a companion! Were Hamlet not there he would take her.
+Were Hamlet not there... She began to brood over this. She wandered...
+She considered. She shuddered at her own wickedness; she tried to drive
+the thoughts from her head, but they kept coming.
+
+After all, no one need know. For a day or two Jeremy would be sorry
+and then he would forget. She knew the man who went round selling
+dogs--selling dogs and buying them.
+
+She shuddered at her wickedness.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The last days of August came, and with them the last week of the
+holiday. Already there was a scent of autumn in the air, leaves were
+turning gold and red, and the evenings came cool and sudden, upon the
+hot summer afternoons. Mary was not very well; she had caught a cold
+somewhere, and existed in the irritating condition of going out one day
+and being held indoors the next. This upset her temper, and at night
+she had nightmares, in which she saw clouds of smoke crawling in at her
+window, snakes on the floor, and crimson flames darting at her from the
+ceiling. It was because she was in an abnormal condition of health that
+the idea of doing something with Hamlet had gained such a hold upon her.
+She considered the matter from every point of view. She did not want to
+be cruel to the dog; she supposed that after a week or two he would be
+quite happy with his new master, and, in any case, he had strolled in
+so casually upon the Cole family that he was accustomed to a wandering
+life.
+
+She did not intend that anyone should know. It was to be a deep secret
+all of her own.
+
+Jeremy was going to school in September, and before then she must make
+him friendly to her again. She saw stretching in front of her all the
+lonely autumn without him and her own memories of the miserable summer
+to make her wretched. She was an extremely sentimental little girl.
+
+As always happens when one is meditating with a placated conscience a
+wicked deed, the opportunity was suddenly offered to Mary of achieving
+her purpose. One morning Jeremy, after refusing to listen to one of
+Mary's long romances, lost his temper.
+
+“I can't stop,” he said. “You bother and bother and bother. Aunt Amy
+says you nearly make her mad.”
+
+“I don't care what Aunt Amy says,” Mary on the edge of tears replied.
+
+“Hamlet and I are going out. And I'm sick of your silly old stories.”
+ Then he suddenly stopped and gazed at Mary, who was beginning, as usual,
+to weep.
+
+“Look here, Mary, what's been the matter with you lately? You're always
+crying now or something. And you look at me as though I'd done something
+dreadful. I haven't done anything.”
+
+“I--never--said you--had,” Mary gulped out. He rubbed his nose in a way
+that he had when he was puzzled.
+
+“If it's anything I do, tell me. It's so silly always crying. The
+holidays will be over soon, and you've done nothing but cry.”
+
+“You're--never--with me--now,” Mary sobbed.
+
+“Well, I've been busy.”
+
+“You haven't. You can't be busy all--by yourself.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you can.” He was getting impatient. “Anyway, you might let
+Hamlet and me alone. You're always bothering one of us.”
+
+“No, I'm not.” She choked an enormous sob and burst out with: “It's
+always Hamlet now. I wish he'd never--come. It was much nicer before.”
+
+Then he lost his temper. “Oh, you're a baby! I'm sick of you and your
+nonsense,” he cried, and stamped off.
+
+In Mary's red-rimmed eyes, as she watched him go, determination grew.
+
+It happened that upon the afternoon of that same day Miss Jones
+announced that she would take Mary for a walk; then, just as they passed
+through the farm gates, Hamlet, rushing out, joined them. He did not
+often honour them with his company, despising women most especially when
+they walked, but to-day his master was busy digging for worms in the
+vegetable garden, and, after a quarter of an hour's contemplation of
+this fascinating occupation, he had wandered off in search of a livelier
+game. He decided to join Miss Jones; he could do what he pleased, he
+could amuse himself with her ineffectual attempts to keep him in order,
+and he could irritate Mary; so he danced along, with his tail in the
+air, barking at imaginary rats and poking his nose into hedges.
+
+Mary, with a sudden tightened clutching of the heart, realised that
+her hour was upon her. She felt so wicked as she realised this that she
+wondered that the ground didn't open up and swallow her, as it had done
+with those unfortunate people in the Bible. But no, the world was calm.
+Little white milky clouds raced in lines and circles across the sky, and
+once and again a leaf floated from a tree, hung for a moment
+suspended, and then turned slowly to the ground. The hedges were a dark
+black-green, high and thick above the dusty road; there had been no rain
+for weeks. Truly a stable world. Mary, glaring at Fate, wondered how it
+could be so.
+
+Miss Jones, who was happy and optimistic to-day, talked in a tenderly
+reminiscent tone of her youth. This vein of reminiscence Mary, on her
+normal day, loved. To-day she did not hear a word that Miss Jones said.
+
+“I remember my mother saying so well to my dear brother: 'Do what you
+like, my boy. I trust you.' And indeed Alfred was to be trusted if ever
+a boy was. It is a remarkable thing, but I cannot remember a single
+occasion of dishonesty on Alfred's part. 'A white lie,' he would often
+say, 'is a lie, and a lie is a sin--white or black, always a sin'; and
+I remember that he would often put mother to a serious inconvenience by
+his telling callers that she was in when she had wished it to be said
+that she was not at home. He felt it his serious duty, and so he told
+Mother. 'Don't ask me to tell a lie, Mother,' I remember his saying. 'I
+cannot do it.'”
+
+“Like George Washington,” said Mary, suddenly catching the last words of
+Miss Jones's sentence.
+
+“He was like many famous characters in history, I used to think. Once
+I remember reading about Oliver Cromwell... 'Where is that dog? Hamlet!
+Hamlet! Perhaps he's gone after the sheep. Ah! there he is! Hamlet, you
+naughty dog!'”
+
+They were approaching one of their favourite pieces of country--Mellot
+Wood. Here, on the wood's edge, the ground broke away, running down in a
+field of corn to a little green valley with clustered trees that showed
+only their heads, so thickly embedded were they, and beyond the valley
+the sea. The sea looked quite close here, although it was in reality
+four miles distant. Never was such a place as this view for light and
+shadow. The clouds raced like the black wings of enormous birds across
+the light green valley, and the red-gold of the cornfield was tossed
+into the haze and swept like a golden shadow across the earth, bending
+back again when the breeze had died. Behind Mellot Wood was Mellot Farm,
+an old eighteenth-century house about which there was a fine tragic
+story with a murder and a ghost in it, and this, of course, gave Mellot
+Wood an additional charm. When they arrived at the outskirts of Mellot
+Wood Mary looked about her. It was here, on the edge of the Rafiel Road
+that skirted the wood, that she had once seen the dog-man eating his
+luncheon out of a red pocket-handkerchief. There was no sign of him
+to-day. All was silent and still. Only the little wood uttered little
+sighs of content beneath the flying clouds. Hamlet, tired with his
+racing after imaginary rabbits, walked quietly along by Mary's side.
+What was she to do? She had once again the desperate feeling that
+something stronger than she had swept down upon her and was forcing
+her to do this thing. She seemed to have no will of her own, but to be
+watching some other commit an act whose dangerous wickedness froze her
+heart. How could she? But she must. Someone was doing it for her.
+
+And in very truth it seemed so. Miss Jones said that now they were
+here she might as well call upon Miss Andrews, the sister of the Mellot
+farmer. Miss Andrews had promised her some ducks' eggs. They pushed open
+the farm gate, passed across the yard and knocked on the house door.
+Near Mary was a large barn with a heavy door, now ajar. Hamlet
+sat gazing pensively at a flock of geese, his tongue out, panting
+contentedly.
+
+“Wait here one minute, Mary,” said Miss Jones. “I won't stay.”
+
+Miss Jones disappeared. Mary, still under the strange sense that it
+was not she, but another, who did these things, moved back to the barn,
+calling softly to Hamlet. He followed her, sniffing a rat somewhere.
+Very quickly she pulled back the door; he, still investigating his rat,
+followed into the dark excitements of the barn. With a quick movement
+she bent down, slipped off his collar, which she hid in her dress,
+then shut him in. She knew that for a moment or two he would still be
+pursuing his rat, and she saw, with guilty relief, Miss Jones come out
+to her just as she had finished her evil deed.
+
+“Miss Andrews is out,” said Miss Jones. “They are all away at Liskane
+Fair.”
+
+They left the farm and walked down the road. Hamlet had not begun his
+cry.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Miss Jones was pleased. “Such a nice servant,” she said. “One of the
+old kind. She had been with the family fifty years, she told me, and
+had nursed Mr. Andrews on her knee. Fancy! Such a large fat man as he
+is now. Too much beer, I suppose. I suppose they get so thirsty with
+all the straw and hay about. Yes, a really nice woman. She told me that
+there was no place in Glebeshire to touch them for cream. I dare say
+they're right. After all, you never can tell. I remember at home...”
+
+She broke off then and cried: “Where's Hamlet?”
+
+Mary, wickeder than ever, stared through her spectacles down the road.
+“I don't know, Miss Jones,” she said. They had left the wood and the
+farm, and there was nothing to be seen but the long white ribbon of road
+hemmed in by the high hedges.
+
+“Perhaps he stayed behind at the farm,” said Miss Jones.
+
+Then Mary told her worst lie.
+
+“Oh, no, Miss Jones. He ran past us just now. Didn't you see him?”
+
+“No, I didn't. He's gone on ahead, I suppose. He runs home sometimes.
+Naughty dog! We shall catch him up.”
+
+But of course they did not. They passed through the gates of Cow Farm
+and still nothing of Hamlet was to be seen.
+
+“Oh dear! Oh dear!” said Miss Jones. “I do hope that he's arrived.
+Whatever will Jeremy say if anything has gone wrong?”
+
+Mary was breathing hard now, as though she had been running a desperate
+race. She would at this moment have given all that she possessed, or all
+that she was ever likely to possess, to recall her deed. If she could
+have seen Hamlet rushing down the road towards her she would have cried
+with relief; there seemed now to be suddenly removed from her that
+outside agency that had forced her to do this thing; now, having
+compelled her, it had withdrawn and left her to carry the consequences.
+Strangely confused in her sentimental soul was her terror of Jeremy's
+wrath and her own picture of the wretched Hamlet barking his heart
+out, frightened, thirsty, and lonely. Her teeth began to chatter; she
+clenched her hands together.
+
+Miss Jones went across the courtyard, calling:
+
+“Hamlet! Hamlet!”
+
+The family was collected, having just sat down to tea, so that the
+announcement received its full measure of excitement.
+
+“Has Hamlet come back? We thought he was ahead of us.”
+
+A chair had tumbled over. Jeremy had run round the table to Miss Jones.
+
+“What's that? Hamlet? Where is he?”
+
+“We thought he must be ahead of us. He ran past us down the road, and we
+thought--”
+
+They thought! Silly women! Jeremy, as though he were challenging a god,
+stood up against Miss Jones, hurling questions at her. Where had they
+been? What road had they taken? Had they gone into the wood? Whereabouts
+had he run past them?
+
+“I don't know,” said Miss Jones to this last. “I didn't see him. Mary
+did.”
+
+Jeremy turned upon Mary. “Where was it you saw him?”
+
+She couldn't speak. Her tongue wouldn't move, her lips wouldn't open;
+she could but waggle her head like an idiot. She saw nothing but his
+face. It was a desperate face. She knew so much better than all the
+others what the thought of losing Hamlet was to him. It was part of the
+harshness of her fate that she should understand him so much better than
+the others did.
+
+But she herself had not realised how hardly he would take it.
+
+“I didn't--I couldn't--”
+
+“There's the dog-man,” he stammered. “He'll have stolen him.” Then he
+was off out of the room in an instant.
+
+And that was more than Mary could hear. She realised, even as she
+followed him, that she was giving her whole case away, that she was now,
+as always, weak when she should be strong, soft when she should be hard,
+good when she should be wicked, wicked when she should be good. She
+could not help herself. With trembling limbs and a heart that seemed to
+be hammering her body into pieces she followed him out. She found him in
+the hall, tugging at his coat.
+
+“Where are you going?” she said weakly.
+
+“Going?” he answered fiercely. “Where do you think?” He glared at her.
+“Just like you.” He broke off, suddenly appealing to her. “Mary, CAN'T
+you remember? It will be getting dark soon, and if we have to wait
+until to-morrow the dog-man will have got him. At any rate, he had his
+collar--”
+
+Then Mary broke out. She burst into sobs, pushed her hand into her
+dress, and held out the collar to him.
+
+“There it is! There it is!” she said hysterically.
+
+“You've got it?” He stared at her, suspicion slowly coming to him. “But
+how--? What have you done?”
+
+She looked up at him wild-eyed, the tears making dirty lines on her
+face, her hand out towards him.
+
+“I took it off. I shut Hamlet into the barn at Mellot Farm. I wanted
+him to be lost. I didn't want you to have him. I hated him--always being
+with you, and me never.”
+
+Jeremy moved back, and at the sudden look in his eyes her sobbing
+ceased, she caught her breath and stared at him with a silly fixed stare
+as a rabbit quivers before a snake.
+
+Jeremy said in his ordinary voice:
+
+“You shut Hamlet up? You didn't want him to be found?”
+
+She nodded her head several times as though now she must convince him
+quickly of this--
+
+“Yes, yes, yes. I did... I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it--”
+
+He clutched her arm, and then shook her with a sudden wave of fierce
+physical anger that was utterly unlike him, and, therefore, the more
+terrifying.
+
+“You wicked, wicked--You beast, Mary!”
+
+She could only sob, her head hanging down. He let her go.
+
+“What barn was it?”
+
+She described the place.
+
+He gave her another look of contempt and then rushed off, running across
+the courtyard.
+
+There was still no one in the hall; she could go up to her room without
+the fear of being disturbed. She found the room, all white and black
+now with the gathering dusk. Beyond the window the evening breeze was
+rustling in the dark trees of the garden and the boom of the sea could
+be heard faintly. Mary sat, where she always sat when she was unhappy,
+inside the wardrobe with her head amongst the clothes. They in some
+way comforted her; she was not so lonely with them, nor did she feel so
+strongly the empty distances of the long room, the white light of the
+window-frames, nor the mysterious secrecy of the high elms knocking
+their heads together in the garden outside.
+
+She had a fit of hysterical crying, biting the hanging clothes between
+her teeth, feeling suddenly sick and tired and exhausted, with flaming
+eyes and a dry, parched throat. Why had she ever done such a thing, she
+loving Jeremy as she did? Would he ever forgive her? No, never; she saw
+that in his face. Perhaps he would--if he found Hamlet quickly and came
+back. Perhaps Hamlet never would be found. Then Jeremy's heart would be
+broken.
+
+She slept from utter exhaustion, and was so found, when the room was
+quite dark and only shadows moved in it, by her mother.
+
+“Why, Mary!” said Mrs. Cole. “What are you doing here? We couldn't think
+where you were. And where's Jeremy?”
+
+“Jeremy!” She started up, remembering everything.
+
+“Hasn't he come back? Oh, he's lost and he'll be killed, and it will be
+all my fault!” She burst into another fit of wild hysterical crying.
+
+Her mother took her arm. “Mary, explain--What have you done?”
+
+Mary explained, her teeth chattering, her head aching so that she could
+not see.
+
+“And you shut him up like that? Whatever--Oh, Mary, you wicked girl! And
+Jeremy--He's been away two hours now--”
+
+She turned off, leaving Mary alone in the black room.
+
+Mary was left to every terror that can beset a lonely, hysterical
+child--terror of Jeremy's fate, terror of Hamlet's loss, terror of her
+own crimes, above all, terror of the lonely room, the waving elms and
+the gathering dark. She could not move; she could not even close the
+door of the wardrobe, into whose shelter she had again crept. She stared
+at the white sheet of the window, with its black bars like railings and
+its ghostly hinting of a moon that would soon be up above the trees.
+Every noise frightened her, the working of the “separator” in a distant
+part of the farm, the whistling of some farm-hand out in the yard,
+the voice of some boy, “coo-ee”-ing faintly, the lingering echo of the
+vanished day--all these seemed to accuse her, to point fingers at her,
+to warn her of some awful impending punishment. “Ah! you're the little
+girl,” they seemed to say, “who lost Jeremy's dog and broke Jeremy's
+heart.” She was sure that someone was beneath her bed. That old terror
+haunted her with an almost humorous persistency every night before she
+went to sleep, but to-night there was a ghastly certainty and imminence
+about it that froze her blood. She crouched up against the hanging
+skirts, gazing at the black line between the floor and the white sheets,
+expecting at every second to see a protruding black mask, bloodshot
+eyes, a coarse hand. The memory of the burglary that they had had in the
+spring came upon her with redoubled force. Ah! surely, surely someone
+was there! She heard a movement, a scraping of a boot upon the floor,
+the thick hurried breathing of some desperate villain...
+
+Then these fears gave way to something worse than them all, the
+certainty that Jeremy was dead. Ridiculous pictures passed before her,
+of Jeremy hanging from a tree, Jeremy lying frozen in the wood,
+the faithful Hamlet dead at his side, Jeremy stung by an adder and
+succumbing to his horrible tortures, Jeremy surrounded by violent men,
+who snatched Hamlet from him, beat him on the head and left him for dead
+on the ground.
+
+She passed what seemed to her hours of torture under these horrible
+imaginings, tired out, almost out of her mind with the hysteria of her
+loneliness, her imagination and her conscience; she passed into a kind
+of apathy of unhappiness, thinking now only of Jeremy, longing for him,
+beseeching him to come back, telling the empty moonlit room that she
+never meant it; that she would do everything he wanted if only he came
+back to her; that she was a wicked girl; that she would never be wicked
+again.... And she took her punishment alone.
+
+After endless ages of darkness and terror and misery she heard
+voices--then HIS voice! She jumped out of the wardrobe and listened.
+Yes; it WAS his voice. She pushed back the door, crept down the passage,
+and came suddenly upon a little group, with Jeremy in its midst, crowded
+together at the top of the stairs. Jeremy was wrapped up in his father's
+heavy coat, and looked very small and impish as he peered from out of
+it. He was greatly excited, his eyes shining, his mouth smiling, his
+cheeks flushed.
+
+His audience consisted of Helen, Mrs. Cole, Miss Jones, and Aunt Amy. He
+described to them how he had run along the road “for miles and miles
+and miles,” how at last he had found the farm, had rung the bell,
+and inquired, and discovered Hamlet licking up sugary tea in the farm
+kitchen; there had then been a rapturous meeting, and he had boldly
+declared that he could find his way home again without aid. “They wanted
+me to be driven home in their trap, but I wasn't going to have that.
+They'd been at the fair all day, and didn't want to go out again. I
+could see that.” So he and Hamlet started gaily on their walk home, and
+then, in some way or another, he took the wrong turn, and suddenly they
+were in Mellot Wood. “It was dark as anything, you know, although there
+was going to be a moon. We couldn't see a thing, and then I got loster
+and loster. At last we just sat under a tree. There was nothing more to
+do!” Then, apparently, Jeremy had slept, and had, finally, been found in
+the proper romantic manner by Jim and his father.
+
+“Well, all's well that ends well,” said Aunt Amy, with a sniff. In spite
+of that momentary softness over the defeat of the Dean's Ernest she
+liked her young nephew no better than of old. She had desired that he
+should be punished for this, but as she looked at the melting eyes of
+Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones she had very little hope.
+
+Mary was forgotten; no one noticed her.
+
+“Bed,” said Mrs. Cole.
+
+“Really, what a terrible affair,” said Miss Jones. “And I can't help
+feeling that it was my fault.”
+
+“What Mary--” began Mrs. Cole. And then she stopped. She had perhaps
+some sense that Mary had already received sufficient punishment.
+
+Mary waited, standing against the passage wall. Jeremy, who had not
+seen her, vanished into his room. She waited, then plucking up all
+her courage with the desperate suffocating sense of a prisoner laying
+himself beneath the guillotine, she knocked timidly on his door.
+
+He said: “Come in,” and entering, she saw him, in his braces, standing
+on a chair trying to put the picture entitled “Daddy's Christmas”
+ straight upon its nail. The sight of this familiar task--the picture
+would never hang straight, although every day Jeremy, who, strangely
+enough, had an eye to such matters, tried to correct it--cheered her a
+little.
+
+“Won't it go straight?” she said feebly.
+
+“No, it won't,” he began, and then, suddenly realising the whole
+position, stopped.
+
+“I'm sorry, Jeremy,” she muttered, hanging her head down.
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” he answered, turning away from her and pulling
+at the string. “It was a beastly thing to do all the same,” he added.
+
+“Will you forgive me?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, there isn't any forgiveness about it. Girls are queer, I suppose.
+I don't understand them myself. There, that's better... I say, it was
+simply beastly under that tree--”
+
+“Was it?”
+
+“Beastly! There was something howling somewhere--a cat or something.”
+
+“You do forgive me, don't you?”
+
+“Yes, yes... I say, is that right now? Oh, it won't stay there. It's the
+wall or something.”
+
+He came down from the chair yawning.
+
+“Jim's nice,” he confided to her. “He's going to take me ratting one
+day!”
+
+“I'm going,” Mary said again, and waited.
+
+Jeremy coloured, looked as though he would say something, then, in
+silence, presented a very grimy cheek. “Good-night,” he said, with an
+air of intense relief.
+
+“Good-night,” she said, kissing him.
+
+She closed the door behind her. She knew that the worst had happened. He
+had passed away, utterly beyond her company, her world, her interests.
+She crept along to her room, and there, with a determination and a
+strength rare in a child so young and so undisciplined, faced her
+loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
+
+
+I
+
+
+The holidays were over. The Coles were once more back in Polchester, and
+the most exciting period of Jeremy's life had begun. So at any rate he
+felt it. It might be that in later years there would be new exciting
+events, lion-hunting, for instance, or a war, or the tracking of niggers
+in the heart of Africa--he would be ready for them when they came--but
+these last weeks before his first departure for school offered him the
+prospect of the first real independence of his life. There could never
+be anything quite like that again. Nevertheless, school seemed still a
+long way distant. It was only his manliness that he was realising and
+a certain impatience and restlessness that underlay everything that he
+did.
+
+September and October are often very lovely months in Polchester; autumn
+seems to come there with a greater warmth and richness than it does
+elsewhere. Along all the reaches of the Pol, right down to the sea, the
+leaves of the woods hung with a riotous magnificence that is glorious
+in its recklessness. The waters of that silent river are so still, so
+glassy, that the banks of gold and flaming red are reflected in all
+their richest colour down into the very heart of the stream, and it is
+only when a fish jumps or a twig falls from the overhanging trees that
+the mirror is broken and the colours flash into ripples and shadows of
+white and grey. The utter silence of all this world makes the Cathedral
+town sleepy, sluggish, forgotten of all men. As the autumn comes it
+seems to drowse away into winter to the tune of its Cathedral bells,
+to the scent of its burning leaves and the soft steps of its Canons
+and clergy. There is every autumn here a clerical conference, and
+long before the appointed week begins, and long after it is lawfully
+concluded, clergymen, strange clergymen with soft black hats, take the
+town for their own, gaze into Martin the pastry-cook's, sit in the dusk
+of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their
+arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they
+were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and
+give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d.
+box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at
+the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed
+thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some
+ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and anxious mien into the palace
+of the Bishop himself.
+
+All these things belong to autumn in Polchester, as Jeremy very well
+knew, but the event that marks the true beginning of the season, the
+only way by which you may surely know that summer is over and autumn is
+come is Pauper's Fair.
+
+This famous fair has been, from time immemorial, a noted event in
+Glebeshire life. Even now, when fairs have yielded to cinematographs as
+attractions for the people, Pauper's Fair gives its annual excitement.
+Thirty years ago it was the greatest event of the year in Polchester.
+All our fine people, of course, disliked it extremely. It disturbed the
+town for days, the town rocked in the arms of crowds of drunken sailors,
+the town gave shelter to gipsies and rogues and scoundrels, the town,
+the decent, amiable, happy town actually for a week or so seemed to
+invite the world of the blazing fire and the dancing clown. No wonder
+that our fine people shuddered. Only the other day--I speak now of these
+modern times--the Bishop tried to stop the whole business. He wrote to
+the Glebeshire Morning News, urging that Pauper's Fair, in these days of
+enlightenment and culture, cannot but be regretted by all those who have
+the healthy progress of our dear country at heart. Well, you would be
+amazed at the storm that his protest raised. People wrote from all over
+the County, and there were ultimately letters from patriotic Glebeshire
+citizens in New Zealand and South Africa. And in Polchester
+itself! Everyone--even those who had shuddered most at the fair's
+iniquities--was indignant. Give up the fair! One of the few signs left
+of that jolly Old England whose sentiment is cherished by us, whose
+fragments nevertheless we so readily stamp upon. No, the fair must
+remain and will remain, I have no doubt, until the very end of our
+national chapter.
+
+Nowadays it has shed, very largely, I am afraid, the character that it
+gloriously maintained thirty years ago. Then it was really an invasion
+by the seafaring element of the County. All the little country ports
+and harbours poured out their fishermen and sailors, who came walking,
+driving, singing, laughing, swearing; they filled the streets, and went
+peering, like the wildest of ancient Picts, into the mysterious beauties
+of the Cathedral, and late at night, when the town should have slept,
+arm in arm they went roaring past the dark windows, singing their songs,
+stamping their feet, and every once and again ringing a decent door-bell
+for their amusement. It was very seldom that any harm was done. Once a
+serious fire broke out amongst the old wooden houses down on the river,
+and some of them were burnt to the ground, a fate that no one deplored;
+once a sailor was murdered in a drunken squabble at “The Dog and
+Pilchard,” the wildest of the riverside hostelries; and once a Canon
+was caught and stripped and ducked in the waters of the Pol by a mob who
+resented his gentle appeals that they should try to prefer lemonade to
+gin; but these were the only three catastrophes in all the history of
+the fair.
+
+During the fair week the town sniffed of the sea--of lobster and seaweed
+and tar and brine--and all the tales of the sea that have ever been told
+by man were told during these days in Polchester.
+
+The decent people kept their doors locked, their children at home, and
+their valuables in the family safe. No upper class child in Polchester
+so much as saw the outside of a gipsy van. The Dean's Ernest was
+accustomed to boast that he had once been given a ride by a gipsy on a
+donkey, when his nurse was not looking, but no one credited the story,
+and the details with which he supported it were feeble and unconvincing.
+The Polchester children in general were told that “they would be stolen
+by the gipsies if they weren't careful,” and, although some of them
+in extreme moments of rebellion and depression felt that the life of
+adventure thus offered to them, might, after all, be more agreeable than
+the dreary realism of their natural days, the warning may be said to
+have been effective.
+
+No family in Polchester was guarded more carefully in this matter of the
+Pauper's Fair than the Cole family. Mr. Cole had an absolute horror of
+the fair. Sailors and gipsies were to him the sign and seal of utter
+damnation, and although he tried, as a Christian clergyman, to believe
+that they deserved pity because of the disadvantages under which they
+had from the first laboured, he confessed to his intimate friends that
+he saw very little hope for them either in this world or the next.
+Jeremy, Helen and Mary were, during Fair Week, kept severely within
+doors; their exercise had to be taken in the Cole garden, and the
+farthest that they poked their noses into the town was their visit to
+St. John's on Sunday morning. Except on one famous occasion. The Fair
+Week of Jeremy's fifth year saw him writhing under a terrible attack of
+toothache, which became, after two agonised nights, such a torment and
+distress to the whole household that he had to be conveyed to the house
+of Mr. Pilter, who had his torture-chamber at No. 3 Market Square. It
+is true that Jeremy was conveyed thither in a cab, and that his pain
+and his darkened windows prevented him from seeing very much of the
+gay world; nevertheless, in spite of the Jampot, who guarded him like a
+dragon, he caught a glimpse of flags, a gleaming brass band and a Punch
+and Judy show, and he heard the trumpets and the drum, and the shouts of
+excited little boys, and the blowing of the Punch and Judy pipes, and
+he smelt roasting chestnuts, bad tobacco, and beer and gin. He returned,
+young as he was, and reduced to a corpse-like condition by the rough
+but kindly intentioned services of Mr. Pilter, with the picture of a
+hysterical, abandoned world clearly imprinted upon his brain.
+
+“I want to go,” he said to the Jampot.
+
+“You can't,” said she.
+
+“I will when I'm six,” said he.
+
+“You won't,” said she.
+
+“I will when I'm seven,” said he.
+
+“You won't,” said she.
+
+“I will when I'm eight,” he answered.
+
+“Oh, give over, do, Master Jeremy,” said she. And now he was eight, very
+nearly nine, and going to school in a fortnight. There seemed to be a
+touch of destiny about his prophecy.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He had no intention of disobedience. Had he been once definitely told by
+someone in authority that he was not to go to the fair he would not
+have dreamt of going. He had no intention of disobedience--but he had
+returned from the Cow Farm holiday in a strange condition of mind.
+
+He had found there this summer more freedom than he had been ever
+allowed in his life before, and it had been freedom that had come, not
+so much from any change of rules, but rather from his own attitude to
+the family--simply he had wanted to do certain things, and he had done
+them and the family had stood aside. He began to be aware that he had
+only to push and things gave way--a dangerous knowledge, and its coming
+marks a period in one's life.
+
+He seemed, too, during this summer, to have left his sisters definitely
+behind him and to stand much more alone than he had done before. The
+only person in his world whom he felt that he would like to know better
+was Uncle Samuel, and that argued, on his part, a certain tendency
+towards rebellion and individuality. He was no longer rude to Aunt 'Amy,
+although he hated her just as he had always done. She did not seem any
+longer a question that mattered. His attitude to his whole family now
+was independent.
+
+Indeed, he was, in reality, now beginning to live his independent life.
+He was perhaps very young to be sent off to school by himself, although
+in those days for a boy of eight to be plunged without any help but a
+friendly word of warning into the stormy seas of private school life was
+common enough--nevertheless, his father, conscious that the child's
+life had been hitherto spent almost entirely among women, sent him
+every morning during these last weeks at home down to the Curate of St.
+Martin's-in-the-Market to learn a few words of Latin, an easy sum or
+two, and the rudiments of spelling. This young curate, the Rev. Wilfred
+Somerset, recently of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had but two ideas
+in his head--the noble game of cricket and the jolly qualities of Mr.
+Surtees's novels. He was stout and strong, red-faced, and thick in the
+leg, always smoking a largo black-looking pipe, and wearing trousers
+very short and tight. He did not strike Jeremy with fear, but he was,
+nevertheless, an influence. Jeremy, apparently, amused him intensely. He
+would roar with laughter at nothing at all, smack his thigh and shout,
+“Good for you, young 'un,” whatever that might mean, and Jeremy,
+gazing at him, at his pipe and his trousers, liking him rather, but not
+sufficiently in awe to be really impressed, would ask him questions
+that seemed to him perfectly simple and natural, but that, nevertheless,
+amused the Rev. Wilfred so fundamentally that he was unable to give them
+an intelligible answer.
+
+Undoubtedly this encouraged Jeremy's independence.
+
+He walked to and fro the curate's lodging by himself, and was able
+to observe many interesting things on the way. Sometimes, late in the
+afternoon, he would have some lesson that he must take to his master
+who, as he lodged at the bottom of Orange Street, was a very safe and
+steady distance from the Coles.
+
+Of course Aunt Amy objected.
+
+“You allow Jeremy, all by himself, into the street at night, and he's
+only eight. Really, you're too strange!”
+
+“Well, in the first place,” said Mrs. Cole, mildly, “it isn't
+night--it's afternoon; in the second place, it is only just down the
+street, and Jeremy's most obedient always, as you know, Amy.”
+
+“I'm sure that Mr. Somerset is wild,” said Aunt Amy.
+
+“My dear Amy, why'?”
+
+“You've only got to look at his face. It's 'flashy.' That's what I call
+it.”
+
+“Oh, that isn't the sort of man who'll do Jeremy harm,” said Mrs. Cole,
+with a mother's wisdom.
+
+Certainly, he did Jeremy no harm at all; he taught him nothing, not even
+“mensa,” and how to spell “receive” and “apple.” The only thing he did
+was to encourage Jeremy's independence, and this was done, in the first
+place, by the walks to and fro.
+
+He had only been going to Mr. Somerset's a day or two when the
+announcements of the Fair appeared on the walls of the town. He could
+not help but see them; there was a large cue on the boarding half-way
+down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured
+picture of “Wombwell's Circus,” a fine affair, with spangled ladies
+jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a
+clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious
+face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude
+on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that
+there would be a “Cattle Market, Races, Roundabout, Swings, Wrestling,
+Boxing, Fat Women, Dwarfs, and the Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus.”
+ During a whole week, once a day, Jeremy read this bill from the top to
+the bottom; at the end of the week he could repeat it all by heart.
+
+He asked Mr. Somerset whether he was going.
+
+“Oh, I shall slip along one evening, I've no doubt,” replied that
+gentleman. “But it's a bore--a whole week of it--upsets one's work.”
+
+“It needn't,” said Jeremy, “if you stay indoors.”
+
+This amused Mr. Somerset immensely. He laughed a great deal.
+
+“We always have to,” said Jeremy, rather hurt. “We're not allowed
+farther than the garden.”
+
+“Ah, but I'm older than you are,” said Mr. Somerset. “It was the same
+with me once.”
+
+“And what did you do? Did you go all the same?”
+
+“You bet, I did,” said the red-faced hero, more intent on his
+reminiscences than on the effect that this might have on the morals of
+his pupil.
+
+Jeremy waited then for the parental command that was always issued. It
+was: “Now, children, you must promise me never to go outside the house
+this week unless you have asked permission first.” And then: “And on
+no account to speak to any stranger about anything whatever.” And then:
+“Don't look out of the back windows, mind.” (From the extreme corners
+of the bedroom windows you could see a patch of the meadow whereon the
+gipsy-vans settled.) These commands had been as regular as the Fair, and
+always, of course, the children had promised obedience. Jeremy told his
+conscience that if, this year, he gave his promise, he would certainly
+keep it. He wondered, at the same time, whether he might not possibly
+manage to be out of the house when the commands were issued. He formed
+a habit of suddenly slipping out of the room when he saw his father's
+mouth assuming the shape of a “command.” He took the utmost care not to
+be alone with his father.
+
+But he need not have been alarmed. This year no command appeared.
+Perhaps Mr. Cole thought that it was no longer necessary; it was obvious
+that the children were not to go, and they were, after all, old enough
+now to think for themselves. Or, perhaps, it was that Mr. Cole had other
+things on his mind; he was changing curates just then, and a succession
+of white-faced, soft-voiced, and loud-booted young men were appearing at
+the Coles' hospitable table.
+
+“Here's this tiresome Fair come round again,” said Mrs. Cole.
+
+“Wicked!” said Aunt Amy, with an envious shudder. “Satan finds work,
+indeed, in this town.”
+
+“I don't suppose it's worse than anywhere else,” said Mrs. Cole.
+
+On the late afternoon of the day before the opening, Jeremy, on his way
+to Mr. Somerset's, caught the tailend of Wombwell's Circus Procession
+moving, in misty splendour, across the market.
+
+He could see but little, although he stood on the pedestal of a
+lamp-post; but Britannia, rocking high in the air, flashing her silver
+sceptre in the evening air, and followed by two enormous and melancholy
+elephants, caught his gaze. Strains of a band lingered about him. He
+entered Mr. Somerset's in a frenzy of excitement, but he said nothing.
+He felt that Mr. Somerset would laugh at him.
+
+He returned to his home that night haunted by Britannia. He ate
+Britannia for his supper; he had Britannia for his dreams; and he
+greeted Rose as Britannia the next morning when she called him. Early
+upon that day there were borne into the heart of the house strains of
+the Fair. It was no use whatever to close the windows, lock the doors,
+and read Divinity. The strains persisted, a heavenly murmur, rising at
+moments into a muffled shriek or a jumbling shout, hanging about the
+walls as a romantic echo, dying upon the air a chastened wail. “No use
+for Mr. Cole to say:
+
+“We must behave as though the Fair was not.”
+
+For a whole week it would be there, and everyone knew it.
+
+Jeremy did not mean to be disobedient, but after that glimpse of
+Britannia he knew that he would go.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+It had, at first, been thought advisable that Jeremy should not go to
+Mr. Somerset's during Fair Week. Perhaps Mr. Somerset could come to
+the Coles'. No, he was very sorry. He must be in his rooms at that
+particular hour in case parishioners should need his advice or
+assistance.
+
+“Pity for him to miss all this week, especially as there will be only
+four days left after that. I am really anxious for him to have a little
+grounding in Latin.”
+
+Mrs. Cole smiled confidently. “I think Jeremy is to be trusted. He would
+never do anything that you wouldn't like.”
+
+Mr. Cole was not so sure. “He's not quite so obedient as I should wish.
+He shows an independence--”
+
+However, after some hesitation it was decided that Jeremy might be
+trusted.
+
+But even after that he was never put upon his honour. “If I don't
+promise, I needn't mind,” he said to himself, and waited breathlessly;
+but nothing came. Only Aunt Amy said:
+
+“I hope you don't speak to little boys in the street, Jeremy.” To which
+he replied scornfully: “Of course not.”
+
+He investigated his money-box, removing the top with a tin-opener. He
+found that he had there 3s. 3 1/2d.; a large sum, and enough to give him
+a royal time.
+
+Mary caught him.
+
+“Oh, Jeremy, what are you doing?”
+
+“Just counting my money,” he said, with would-be carelessness.
+
+“You're going to the Fair?” she whispered breathlessly.
+
+He frowned. How could she know? She always knew everything.
+
+“Perhaps,” he whispered back; “but if you tell anyone I'll--”
+
+“Of course I wouldn't tell,” she replied, deeply offended.
+
+This little conversation strengthened his purpose. He had not admitted
+to himself that he was really going. Now he knew.
+
+Wednesday would be the night. On Wednesday evenings his father had a
+service which prevented him from returning home until half-past eight.
+He would go to Somerset's at half-past four, and would be expected
+home at half-past six; there would be no real alarm about him until his
+father's return from church, and he could, therefore, be sure of two
+hours' bliss. For the consequences he did not care at all. He was going
+to do no harm to anyone or anything. They would be angry, perhaps, but
+that would not hurt him, and, in any case, he was going to school next
+week. No one at school would mind whether he had been to the Fair or no.
+
+He felt aloof and apart, as though no one could touch him. He would
+not have minded simply going into them all and saying: “I'm off to the
+Fair.” The obvious drawback to that would have been that he would have
+been shut up in his room, and then they might make him give his word...
+He would not break any promises.
+
+When Wednesday came it was a lovely day. Out in the field just behind
+the Coles' house they were burning a huge bonfire of dead leaves. At
+first only a heavy column of grey smoke rose, then flames broke through;
+little, thin golden flames like paper; then a sudden fierce red tongue
+shot out and went licking up into the air until it faded like tumbling
+water against the sunlight. On the outer edge of the bonfire there was
+thin grey smoke through which you could see as through glass. The smell
+was heavenly, and even through closed windows the crackling of the
+burnt leaves could be heard. The sight of the bonfire excited Jeremy. It
+seemed to him a signal of encouragement, a spur to perseverance. All
+the morning the flames crackled, and men came with wheelbarrows full of
+leaves and emptied them in thick heaps upon the fire. At each emptying
+the fire would be for a moment beaten, and only the white, thick,
+malicious smoke would come through; then a little spit of flame,
+another, another; then a thrust like a golden hand stretching out; then
+a fine, towering, quivering splendour.
+
+Under the full noonday sun the fire was pale and so unreal, weak, and
+sickly, that one was almost ashamed to look at it. But as the afternoon
+passed, it again gathered strength, and with the faint, dusky evening it
+was a giant once more.
+
+“You come along,” it said to Jeremy. “Come along! Come along!”
+
+“I'm going to Mr. Somerset's, Mother,” he said, putting two exercise
+books and a very new and shining blue Latin book together.
+
+“Are you, dear? I suppose you're safe?” Mrs. Cole asked, looking through
+the drawing-room window.
+
+“Oh, it's all right,” said Jeremy
+
+“Well, I think it is,” said Mrs. Cole. “The street seems quite empty.
+Don't speak to any odd-looking men, will you?”
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” he said again.
+
+He walked down Orange Street, his books under his arm, the 3s. 3 1/2d.
+in his pocket. The street was quite deserted, swimming in a cold, pale
+light; the trees, the houses, the church, the garden-walls, sharp and
+black; the street, dim and precipitous, tumbling forward into the
+blue, whence lights, one, two, three, now a little bunch together, came
+pricking out.
+
+The old woman opened the door when he rang Mr. Somerset's bell.
+
+“Master's been called away,” she said in her croaking voice. “A burial.
+'E 'adn't time to let you know. 'Tell the little gen'l'man,' 'e said,
+'I'm sorry.'”
+
+“All right,” said Jeremy; “thank you.”
+
+He descended the steps, then stood where he was, in the street, looking
+up and down. Who could deny that it was all being arranged for him? He
+felt more than ever like God as he looked proudly about him. Everything
+served his purpose.
+
+The jingling of the money in his pocket reminded him that he must waste
+no more time. He started off.
+
+Even his progress through the town seemed wonderful, quite unattended
+at last, as he had always all his life longed to be. So soon as he left
+Orange Street and entered the market he was caught into a great crowd.
+It was all stirring and humming with a noise such as the bonfire had
+all day been making. It was his first introduction to the world--he had
+never been in a large crowd before--and it is not to be denied but that
+his heart beat thick and his knees trembled a little. But he pulled
+himself together. Who was he to be afraid? But the books under his arm
+were a nuisance. He suddenly dropped them in amongst the legs and boots
+of the people.
+
+There were many interesting sights to be seen in the market-place,
+but he could not stay, and he found himself soon, to his own surprise,
+slipping through the people as quietly and easily as though he had done
+it all his days, only always he kept his hand on his money lest that
+should be stolen and his adventure suddenly come to nothing.
+
+He knew his way very well, and soon he was at the end of Finch Street
+which in those days opened straight into fields and hedges.
+
+Even now, so little has Polchester grown in thirty years, the fields and
+hedges are not very far away. Here there was a stile with a large
+wooden fence on either side of it, and a red-faced man saying: “Pay your
+sixpences now! Come along... pay your sixpences now.” Crowds of people
+were passing through the stile, jostling one another, pressing and
+pushing, but all apparently in good temper, for there was a great deal
+of laughter and merriment. From the other side of the fence came a
+torrent of sound, so discordant and so tumultuous that it was impossible
+to separate the elements of it one from another--screams, shrieks, the
+bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of
+tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything
+lost together in the general babel; and to the right of him Jeremy could
+see not very far away quiet fields with cows grazing, and the dark grave
+wood on the horizon.
+
+Would he venture? For a moment his heart failed him--a wave of something
+threatening and terribly powerful seemed to come out to him through the
+stile, and the people who were passing in looked large and fierce. Then
+he saw two small boys, their whole bearing one of audacious boldness,
+push through. He was not going to be beaten. He followed a man with a
+back like a wall. “One, please,” he said.
+
+“'Come along now... pay your sixpences... pay your sixpences,” cried the
+man. He was through. He stepped at once into something that had for him
+all the elements of the most terrifying and enchanting of fairy tales.
+He was planted, it seemed, in a giant world. At first he could see
+nothing but the high and thick bodies of the people who moved on every
+side of him; he peered under shoulders, he was lost amongst legs and
+arms, he walked suddenly into waistcoat buttons and was flung thence on
+to walking sticks.
+
+But it was, if he had known it, the most magical hour of all for him to
+have chosen. It was the moment when the sun, sinking behind the woods
+and hills, leaves a faint white crystal sky and a world transformed in
+an instant from sharp outlines and material form into coloured mist and
+rising vapour. The Fair also was transformed, putting forward all its
+lights and becoming, after the glaring tawdiness of the day, a place of
+shadow and sudden circles of flame and dim obscurity.
+
+Lights, even as Jeremy watched, sprang into the air, wavered, faltered,
+hesitated, then rocked into a steady glow, only shifting a little with
+the haze. On either side of him were rough, wooden stalls, and these
+were illuminated with gas, which sizzled and hissed like angry snakes.
+The stalls were covered with everything invented by man; here a sweet
+stall, with thick, sticky lumps of white and green and red, glass
+bottles of bulls' eyes and peppermints, thick slabs of almond toffee
+and pink cocoanut icing, boxes of round chocolate creams and sticks of
+liquorice, lumps of gingerbread, with coloured pictures stuck upon them,
+saffron buns, plum cakes in glass jars, and chains of little sugary
+biscuits hanging on long red strings. There was the old-clothes' stall
+with trousers and coats and waistcoats, all shabby and lanky, swinging
+beneath the gas, and piles of clothes on the boards, all nondescript and
+unhappy and faded; there was the stall with the farm implements, and the
+medicine stall, and the flower stall, and the vegetable stall, and many,
+many another. Each place had his or her guardian, vociferous, red-faced,
+screaming out the wares, lowering the voice to cajole, raising it again
+to draw back a retreating customer, carrying on suddenly an intimate
+conversation with the next-door shopkeeper, laughing, quarrelling,
+arguing.
+
+To Jeremy it was a world of giant heights and depths. Behind the
+stalls, beyond the lane down which he moved, was an uncertain glory,
+a threatening peril. He fancied that strange animals moved there; he
+thought he heard a lion roar and an elephant bellow. The din of the
+sellers all about him made it impossible to tell what was happening
+beyond there; only the lights and bells, shouts and cries, confusing
+smells, and a great roar of distant voices.
+
+He almost wished that he had not come, he felt so very small and
+helpless; he wondered whether he could find his way out again, and
+looking back, he was for a moment terrified to see that the stream of
+people behind him shut him in so that he could not see the stile, nor
+the wooden barrier, nor the red-faced man. Pushed forward, he found
+himself at the end of the lane and standing in a semi-circular space
+surrounded by strange-looking booths with painted pictures upon them,
+and in front of them platforms with wooden steps running up to them.
+Then, so unexpectedly that he gave a little scream, a sudden roar burst
+out behind him. He turned and, indeed, the world seemed to have gone
+mad. A moment ago there had been darkness and dim shadow. Now, suddenly,
+there was a huge whistling, tossing circle of light and flame, and from
+the centre of this a banging, brazen, cymbal-clashing scream issued-a
+scream that, through its strident shrillness, he recognised as a tune
+that he knew--a tune often whistled by Jim at Cow Farm. “And her golden
+hair was hanging down her back.” Whence the tune came he could not
+tell; from the very belly of the flaming monster, it seemed; but, as he
+watched, he saw that the huge circle whirled ever faster and faster,
+and that up and down on the flame of it coloured horses rose and fell,
+vanishing from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and seeming of
+their own free will and motion to dance to the thundering music.
+
+It was the most terrific thing that he had ever seen. The most terrific
+thing... he stood there, his cap on the back of his head, his legs
+apart, his mouth open; forgetting utterly the crowd, thinking nothing of
+time or danger or punishment--he gazed with his whole body.
+
+As his eyes grew more accustomed to the glare of the hissing gas, he saw
+that in the centre figures were painted standing on the edge of a pillar
+that revolved without pause. There was a woman with flaming red cheeks,
+a gold dress and dead white dusty arms, a man with a golden crown and
+a purple robe, but a broken nose, and a minstrel with a harp. The woman
+and the king moved stiffly their arms up and down, that they might
+strike instruments, one a cymbal and the other a drum. But it was
+finally the horses that caught Jeremy's heart. Half of them at least
+were without riders, and the empty ones went round pathetically, envying
+the more successful ones and dancing to the music as though with an
+effort. One especially moved Jeremy's sympathy. He was a fine horse,
+rather fresher than the others, with a coal-black mane and great black
+bulging eyes; his saddle was of gold and his trappings of red. As he
+went round he seemed to catch Jeremy's eye and to beg him to come to
+him. He rode more securely than the rest, rising nobly like a horse of
+fine breeding, falling again with an implication of restrained force as
+though he would say: “I have only to let myself go and there, my word,
+you would see where I'd get to.” His bold black eyes turned beseechingly
+to Jeremy--surely it was not only a trick of the waving gas; the boy
+drew closer and closer, never moving his gaze from the horses who had
+hitherto been whirling at a bacchanalian pace, but now, as at some
+sudden secret command, suddenly slackened, hesitated, fell into a gentle
+jog-trot, then scarcely rose, scarcely fell, were suddenly still. Jeremy
+saw what it was that you did if you wanted to ride. A stout dirty man
+came out amongst the horses and, resting his hands on their backs as
+though they were less than nothing to him, shouted: “Now's your chance,
+lidies and gents! Now, lidies and gents! Come along hup! Come along hup!
+The ride of your life now! A 'alfpenny a time! A 'alfpenny a time, and
+the finest ride of your life!”
+
+People began to mount the steps that led on to the platform where the
+horses stood. A woman, then a man and a boy, then two men, then two
+girls giggling together, then a man and a girl.
+
+And the stout fellow shouted: “Come along hup! Come along hup! Now,
+lidies and gents! A 'alfpenny a ride! Come along hup!”
+
+Jeremy noticed then that the fine horse with the black mane had stopped
+close beside him. Impossible to say whether the horse had intended it
+or no! He was staring now in front of him with the innocent stupid gaze
+that animals can assume when they do not wish to give themselves away.
+But Jeremy could see that he was taking it for granted that Jeremy
+understood the affair. “If you're such a fool as not to understand,”
+ he seemed to say, “well, then, I don't want you.” Jeremy gazed, and the
+reproach in those eyes was more than he could endure. And at any moment
+someone else might settle himself on that beautiful back! There, that
+stupid fat giggling girl! No--she had moved elsewhere... He could endure
+it no longer and, with a thumping heart, clutching a scalding penny in
+a red-hot hand, he mounted the steps. “One ride--little gen'elman. 'Ere
+you are! 'Old on now! Oh, you wants that one, do yer? Eight yer are--yer
+pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.” He lifted Jeremy up. “Put yer
+arms round 'is neck now--'e won't bite yer!”
+
+Bite him indeed! Jeremy felt, as he clutched the cool head and let his
+hand slide over the stiff black mane, that he knew more about that horse
+than his owner did. He seemed to feel beneath him the horse's response
+to his clutching knees, the head seemed to rise for a moment and nod to
+him and the eyes to say: “It's all right. I'll look after you. I'll give
+you the best ride of your life!” He felt, indeed, that the gaze of the
+whole world was upon him, but he responded to it proudly, staring boldly
+around him as though he had been seated on merry-go-rounds all his
+days. Perhaps some in the gaping crowd knew him and were saying: “Why,
+there's the Rev. Cole's kid--” Never mind; he was above scandal. From
+where he was he could see the Fair lifted up and translated into a
+fantastic splendour. Nothing was certain, nothing defined--above him a
+canopy of evening sky, with circles and chains of stars mixed with the
+rosy haze of the flame of the Fair; opposite him was the Palace of “The
+Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus,” a huge man as portrayed in the
+picture hanging on his outer walls, a giant naked, save for a bearskin,
+with one head black and one yellow, and white protruding teeth in both
+mouths. Next to him was the Fortune Teller's, and outside this a little
+man with a hump beat a drum. Then there was “The Theatre of Tragedy and
+Mirth,” with a poster on one side of the door portraying a lady drowning
+in the swiftest of rivers, but with the prospect of being saved by a
+stout gentleman who leaned over from the bank and grasped her hair. Then
+there was the “Chamber of the Fat Lady and the Six Little Dwarfs,” and
+the entry to this was guarded by a dirty sour-looking female who
+gnashed her teeth at a hesitating public, before whom, with a splendid
+indifference to appearance, she consumed, out of a piece of newspaper,
+her evening meal.
+
+All these things were in Jeremy's immediate vision, and beyond them was
+a haze that his eyes could not penetrate. It held, he knew, wild beasts,
+because he could hear quite clearly from time to time the lion and the
+elephant and the tiger; it held music, because from somewhere through
+all the noise and confusion the tune of a band penetrated; it held
+buyers and sellers and treasures and riches, and all the inhabitants of
+the world--surely all the world must be here to-night. And then, beyond
+the haze, there were the silent and mysterious gipsy caravans. Dark with
+their little square windows, and their coloured walls, and their round
+wheels, and the smell of wood fires, and the noise of hissing kettles
+and horses cropping the grass, and around them the still night world
+with the thick woods and the dark river.
+
+He did not see it all as he sat on his horse--he was, as yet, too young;
+but he did feel the contrast between the din and glare around him and
+the silence and dark beyond, and, afterwards, looking back, he knew that
+he had found in that same contrast the very heart of romance. As it was,
+he simply clutched his horse's beautiful head and waited for the ride to
+begin...
+
+They were off! He felt his horse quiver under him, he saw the mansions
+of the Two-Headed Giant and the Fat Lady slip to the right, the light
+seemed to swing like the skirt of someone's dress, upwards across the
+floor, and from the heart of the golden woman and the king and the
+minstrel a scream burst forth as though they were announcing the end of
+the world. After that he had no clear idea as to what occurred. He was
+swung into space, and all the life that had been so stationary, the
+booths, the lights, the men and women, the very stars went swinging with
+him as though to cheer him on; the horse under him galloped before,
+and the faster he galloped the wilder was the music and the dizzier the
+world. He was exultant, omnipotent, supreme. He had long known that this
+glory was somewhere if it could only be found, all his days he seemed to
+have been searching for it; he beat his horse's neck, he drove his legs
+against his sides. “Go on! Go on! Go on!” he cried. “Faster! Faster!
+Faster!”
+
+The strangest things seemed to rise to his notice and then fall again--a
+peaked policeman's hat, flowers, a sudden flame of gas, the staring eyes
+and dead white arms of the golden woman, the flying forms of the horses
+in front of him. All the world was on horseback, all the world was
+racing higher and higher, faster and faster. He saw someone near him
+rise on to his horse's back and stand on it, waving his arms. He would
+like to have done that, but he found that he was part of his horse, as
+though he had been glued to it. He shouted, he cried aloud, he was so
+happy that he thought of no one and nothing... The flame danced about
+him in a circle, he seemed to rise so high that there was a sudden
+stillness, he was in the very heart of the stars; then came the supreme
+moment when, as he had always known, that one day he would be, he was
+master of the world... Then, like Lucifer, he fell. Slowly the stars
+receded, the music slackened, people rocked on to their feet again...
+The Two-Headed Giant slipped hack once more into his place, he saw the
+sinister lady still devouring her supper, women looking up at him gaped.
+His horse gave a last little leap and died.
+
+This marvellous experience he repeated four times, and every time with
+an ecstasy more complete than the last. He rushed to a height, he fell,
+he rushed again, he fell, and at every return to a sober life his one
+intention was instantly to be off on his steed once more. He was about
+to start on his fifth journey, he had paid his halfpenny, he was sitting
+forward with his hands on the black mane, his eyes, staring, were filled
+already with the glory that he knew was coming to him, his cheeks were
+crimson, his hat on the back of his head, his hair flying. He heard a
+voice, quiet and cool, a little below him, but very near:
+
+“Jeremy... Jeremy. Come off that. You've got to go home.”
+
+He looked down and saw his Uncle Samuel.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was all over; he knew at once that it was all over.
+
+As he slipped down from his dear horse he gave the glossy dark mane one
+last pat; then, with a little sigh, he found his feet, stumbled over the
+wooden steps and was at his uncle's side.
+
+Uncle Samuel looked queer enough with a squashy black hat, a black cloak
+flung over his shoulders, and a large cherry-wood pipe in his mouth.
+Jeremy looked up at him defiantly.
+
+“Well,” said Uncle Samuel sarcastically. “It's nothing to you, I
+suppose, that the town-crier is at this moment ringing his bell for you
+up and down the Market Place?”
+
+“Does father know?” Jeremy asked quickly.
+
+“He does,” answered Uncle Samuel.
+
+Jeremy cast one last look around the place; the merry-go-round was
+engaged once more upon its wild course, the horses rising and falling,
+the golden woman clashing the cymbals, the minstrel striking, with his
+dead eyes fixed upon space, his harp. All about men were shouting;
+the noise of the coconut stores, of the circus, of the band, of the
+hucksters and the charlatans, the crying of children, the laughter of
+women--all the noise of the Fair bathed Jeremy up to his forehead.
+
+He swam in it for the last time. He tried to catch one last glimpse
+of his coal-black charger, then, with a sigh, he said, turning to his
+uncle: “I suppose we'd better be going.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose we had,” said Uncle Samuel.
+
+They threaded their way through the Fair, passed the wooden stile, and
+were once again in the streets, dark and ancient under the moon, with
+all the noise and glare behind them. Jeremy was thinking to himself: “It
+doesn't matter what Father does, or how angry he is, that was worth it.”
+ It was strange how little afraid he was. Only a year ago to be punished
+by his father had been a terrible thing. Now, since his mother's illness
+in the summer, his father had seemed to have no influence over him.
+
+“Did they bend you, or did you just come yourself, Uncle?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“I happened to be taking the air in that direction,” said Uncle Samuel.
+
+“I hope you didn't come away before you wanted to,” said Jeremy
+politely.
+
+“I did not,” said his uncle.
+
+“Is Father very angry?” asked Jeremy.
+
+“It's more than likely he may be. The Town Crier's expensive.”
+
+“I didn't think they'd know,” explained Jeremy. “I meant to get back in
+time.”
+
+“Your father didn't go to church,” said Uncle Samuel. “So your sins were
+quickly discovered.”
+
+Jeremy said nothing.
+
+Just as they were climbing Orange Street he said:
+
+“Uncle Samuel, I think I'll be a horse-trainer.”
+
+“Oh, will you?... Well, before you train horses you've got to train
+yourself. Think of others beside yourself. A fine state you've put your
+mother into to-night.”
+
+Jeremy looked distressed. “She'd know if I was dead, someone would come
+and tell her,” he said. “But I'll tell Mother I'm sorry... But I won't
+tell Father,” he added.
+
+“Why not?” asked Uncle Samuel.
+
+“Because he'll make such a fuss. And I'm not sorry. He never told me not
+to.”
+
+“No, but you knew you hadn't to.”
+
+“I'm very good at obeying,” explained Jeremy, “if someone says
+something; but if someone doesn't, there isn't anyone to obey.”
+
+Uncle Samuel shook his head. “You'll be a bit of a prig, my son, if you
+aren't careful,” he said.
+
+“I think it will be splendid to be a horse-trainer,” said Jeremy. “It
+was a lovely horse to-night... And I only spent a shilling. I had three
+and threepence halfpenny.”
+
+At the door of their house Uncle Samuel stopped and said:
+
+“Look here, young man, they say it's time you went to school, and I
+don't think they're far wrong. There are things wiser heads than yours
+can understand, and you'd better take their word for it. In the future,
+if you want to go running off somewhere, you'd better content yourself
+with my studio and make a mess there.”
+
+“Oh, may I?” cried Jeremy delighted.
+
+That studio had been always a forbidden place to them, and had,
+therefore, its air of enchanting mystery.
+
+“Won't you really mind my coming?” he asked.
+
+“I shall probably hate it,” answered his uncle; “but there's nothing I
+wouldn't do for the family.”
+
+The boy walked to his father's study and knocked on the door. He did
+have then, at the sound of that knock, a moment of panic. The house
+was so silent, and he knew so well what would follow the opening of the
+door. And the worst of it was that he was not sorry in the least. He
+seemed to be indifferent and superior, as though no punishment could
+touch him.
+
+“Come in!” said his father.
+
+He pushed open the door and entered. The scene that followed was grave
+and sad, and yet, in the end, strangely unimpressive. His father
+talked too much. As he talked Jeremy's thoughts would fly back to the
+coal-black horse and to that moment when he had seemed to fly into the
+very heart of the stars.
+
+“Ah, Jeremy, how could you?” said his father. “Is obedience nothing to
+you? Do you know how God punishes disobedience? Think what a terrible
+thing is a disobedient man!” Then on a lower scale: “I really don't know
+what to do with you. You knew that you were not to go near that wicked
+place.”
+
+“You never said--” interrupted Jeremy.
+
+“Nonsense! You knew well enough. You will break your mother's heart.”
+
+“I'll tell her I'm sorry,” he interrupted quickly.
+
+“If you are really sorry--” said his father.
+
+“I'm not sorry I went,” said Jeremy, “but I'm sorry I hurt Mother.”
+
+The end of it was that Jeremy received six strokes on the hand with a
+ruler. Mr. Cole was not good at this kind of thing, and twice he
+missed Jeremy's hand altogether, and looked very foolish. It was not
+an edifying scene. Jeremy left the room, his head high, his spirit
+obstinate; and his father remained, puzzled, distressed, at a loss,
+anxious to do what was right, but unable to touch his son at all.
+
+Jeremy went up to his room. He opened his window and looked out. He
+could smell the burnt leaves of the bonfire. There was no flame now, but
+he fancied that he could see a white shadow where it had been. Then, on
+the wind, came the music of the Fair.
+
+“Tum--te--Tum... Tum--te--Tum... Whirr--Whirr--Whirr--Bang--Bang.”
+
+Somewhere an owl cried, and then another owl answered.
+
+He rubbed his sore hand against his trousers; then, thinking of his
+black horse, he smiled.
+
+He was a free man. In a week he would go to school; then he would go to
+College; then he would be a horsetrainer.
+
+He was in bed; faintly into the dark room, stole the scent of the
+bonfire and the noise of the Fair.
+
+“Tum--te-Tum... Tum--te--Tum...”
+
+He was asleep, riding on a giant charger across boundless plains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. HAMLET WAITS
+
+
+I
+
+
+The last day! Jeremy, suddenly waking, realised this with a confusion of
+feeling as though he were sentenced to the dentist's, but, oddly enough,
+looked forward to his visit. Going to school, one had, of course, long
+ago perceived, was a mixed business; but the balance was now greatly
+to the good. It was a step in the right direction towards liberty and
+freedom. Thank Heaven!
+
+No one in the family was likely to make a fuss about his departure,
+unless it were possibly Mary, and she had, of late, kept very much to
+herself and worried him scarcely at all. Indeed, he felt guilty about
+Mary. He was fond of her, really... Funny kid... If only she didn't make
+fusses!
+
+Yes, it was unlike his family to make fusses. He realised that very
+plainly to-day. Everyone went about his or her daily business with no
+implication whatever that something extraordinary was going to happen
+tomorrow. Perhaps they were all secretly relieved that he was off. He
+had been, he knew, something of a failure during these last months; one
+trouble after another; the scandal of his visit to the Fair as the grand
+finale. He felt that there was, in some way, some injustice in all this.
+He had no desire to be bad or rebellious--on the contrary he wished to
+do all that his elders ordered him--but he could not prevent the rising
+of his own individuality, which showed him quite clearly whether he
+should do a thing or no. It was as though something inside him pushed
+him... whereas they, all of them, only checked him.
+
+He loved his mother best, and he was secretly disappointed to find
+how ordinary an affair his departure was to her. He realised, with a
+perception that was beyond his years, that the infant Barbara was now
+rapidly occupying the position, as centre of the family, that he
+had held. Barbara, everyone declared, was a charming baby--the house
+revolved, to some extent, round Barbara. But, then again, this isolation
+was entirely his own fault. During the summer holidays he had gone his
+own way, and had wanted no one but Hamlet as his companion. He had no
+right to complain.
+
+After breakfast he did not know quite what to do, and it was obvious,
+also, that no one knew quite what to do with him.
+
+Mrs. Cole said: “Jeremy, dear, Ponting has never sent that letter paper
+and envelopes that he promised, and Father must have them to-day. Would
+you go down and bring them back with you? Father will write a note.”
+
+No one seemed to realise what an abysmal change from earlier conditions
+this casual sentence marked. That he should go to Footing's, which was
+on the farther side of the town, alone and unattended, seemed to no one
+peculiar; and yet, only six months ago, a walk without Miss Jones was
+undreamt of; and, before her, no more than nine months back, there was
+the Jampot! He was delighted to go; but, of course, he did not show his
+delight.
+
+All he said was: “Yes, Mother.”
+
+He was in his new clothes: stiff black jacket, black knickerbockers,
+black stockings, black boots. No more navy suits with white braid and
+whistles! Perhaps he would see the Dean's Ernest. It was his most urgent
+desire!
+
+He started off, accompanied by a barking, bounding Hamlet, who showed
+no perception of the calamity that threatened to tumble upon him. For
+Jeremy, leaving Hamlet was a dreadful affair. In three months a dog
+can change more swiftly than a human being, and Hamlet, although not a
+supremely greedy dog, had shown of late increasing signs of a love of
+good food, and a regrettable tendency to fawn upon the giver of the
+same, even when it was Aunt Amy. Jeremy had checked this tendency, and
+had issued punishments when necessary, and Hamlet had accepted the same
+without a murmur. So long as Jeremy was there Hamlet's character was
+secure; but now, during this long absence, anything might happen. There
+was no one to whom Jeremy might leave him; no one who had the slightest
+idea what a dog should do and what he should not.
+
+These melancholy thoughts filled Jeremy's mind when he started upon his
+walk, but soon he was absorbed by his surroundings. He realised even
+more drastically than the facts warranted that he was making his
+farewell to the town.
+
+He was not making his final farewell; he would not make that until his
+death, and, perhaps, not then; but he was making farewell to some of his
+sense of his wonder in it, only not, thank God, to the sense of wonder
+itself!
+
+As he went he met the daily figures of all his walks, and he could not
+help but speculate on their realisation of the great change that
+was coming to him. It was absurd to suppose that they were saying to
+themselves: “Ah, there's young Jeremy Cole! He's off to school tomorrow.
+I wonder what he feels about it!...” No, that was incredible, and yet
+they must realise something of the adventure.
+
+He, on his part, stared at them with a new interest. They had before
+shared in the inevitable background without individuality. But now
+that he was leaving them, and they would grow, as it were, without his
+permission, he was forced to grant them independence. At the bottom
+of Orange Street he met Mr. Dawson, the Cathedral Organist; he was a
+little, plump man, in a very neat grey suit, a shiny top hat, and very
+small spats. He was always dressed in the same fashion, and carried a
+black music-case under his arm. He had an eternal interest for Jeremy
+because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: “Poor little Mr.
+Dawson!” Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce
+and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but
+“poor” was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a
+little shudder of drama run down his spine.
+
+Outside Poole's bookshop there was, of course, Mr. Mockridge. Mr.
+Mockridge was the poorest of the Canons; so poor, that it had become
+a proverb in the place: “As poor as Mr. Mockridge”; and also another
+proverb, I am afraid, from the same source: “As dirty as Mr. Mockridge.”
+ He was a very long, thin man, with a big, pointing nose, coloured red,
+not from indigestion, and most certainly not from drink, but simply,
+I think, because the wind caught it. His passion was for books, and he
+might be seen every afternoon, between three and four o'clock, bending
+over Poole's 2d. box, a dirty handkerchief flying out of the tail of
+his long, black coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards,
+under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so
+commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded
+by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange.
+“He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same,
+and I shall be--”
+
+Then, on the outskirts of the Market Place, Jeremy paused and looked
+about him. There was all the usual business of the place--the wooden
+trestles with the flowerpots, the apple-woman under her umbrella, the
+empty cattle-pens, where the cows and sheep stood on market days, and
+behind them the dark, vaulted arches of the actual market, now empty and
+deserted. Bathed in sunlight it lay very quiet and still; some pigeons
+pecking at grain, a dog or two, and children playing round the empty
+cattle-stalls. From the hill above the square the Cathedral boomed the
+hour, and all the pigeons rose in a flight, hovered, then slowly settled
+again.
+
+Jeremy sighed, and, with a strange pain at his heart that he could not
+analyse, moved up the hill. The High Street is, of course, the West End
+of Polchester, and in the morning, between ten and one, every lady in
+the town may be seen at her shopping. It had always been the ambition
+of the Cole children to be taken for their walk up High Street in the
+morning; but it was an ambition very rarely gratified, because they
+stopped so often and were always in everyone's way. And here was Jeremy,
+at this gay hour, a trolling up the High Street all by himself he lifted
+his head, pushed out his chest, and looked the world in the face. He
+might meet the Dean's Ernest at any moment. The first people whom he saw
+were the Misses Cragg--always known, of course, as “The Cragg girls.”
+ They were, perhaps, Polchester's most constant and obvious feature.
+There were four of them, all as yet unmarried, all with brown-red faces
+and hard straw hats, short skirts, and tremendous voices; forerunners,
+in fact, of a type now almost universal. They played croquet and
+lawn-tennis, were prominent members of the Archery Club, and hunted when
+their fathers would let them. They were terrible Dianas to Jeremy. He
+had met one of them once at a Children's Dance, and she had whirled him
+around until, with a terrified scream, he broke, howling, from her arms,
+and hid himself in the large bosom of the Jampot. He was always ashamed
+of this memory, and he could never see them without blushing; but,
+to-day, he seemed less afraid of them, and actually, when he passed
+them, touched his hat and looked them in the face. They all smiled and
+nodded to him, and when they had gone he was so deeply astonished at
+this adventure that he had to stop and consider himself. If the Craggs
+were nothing to him, what might he not face?
+
+“Come here, Hamlet. How dare you?” he ordered in so sharp and military
+a voice that Hamlet, who had merely cast a most innocent glance at a
+disdainful and conceited white poodle, looked up at his master with
+surprise.
+
+Nevertheless, his new-found hardihood received, in the very midst of his
+self-congratulation, its severest test. He stumbled into the very path
+of the Dean's wife.
+
+Mrs. Dean could never have seemed to anyone a large woman, but to Jeremy
+she had always been a terror. She was thick and hard, like a wall, and
+wore the kind of silken clothes, that rustled--like the whispering of a
+whole meeting of frightened clergymen's wives--as she moved. She had a
+hard, condemnatory voice, and she spoke as though she were addressing an
+assembly; but, worst of all, she had black, beetling eyebrows, and these
+frightened Jeremy into fits. He did not, of course, know that the poor
+lady suffered continually from nervous headaches. He suddenly heard that
+voice in his ear: “Good morning, Jeremy, and where are you off to so
+early?” Mrs. Dean was never so awful as when she was jolly, and Jeremy,
+caught up by the eyebrows as though they had been hooks and hung thus in
+mid-air for all the street to laugh at, nearly lost his command of his
+natural tongue. He found his voice just in time:
+
+“To Ponting's,” he said.
+
+“All alone? Ah, no, I see you have your little dog. Nice little dog. And
+how's your mother?”
+
+“She's quite well, thank you.”
+
+“That's right--that's right. We haven't seen you lately. You must come
+up to tea with your sisters. I'm afraid you won't find Ernest, he's gone
+back to school--but I dare say you're not too big to play with little
+girls.”
+
+Jeremy felt some triumph at his heart.
+
+“I'm going to school to-morrow,” he said. But if he expected Mrs. Dean
+to be pitiful at this statement he was greatly mistaken.
+
+“Are you, indeed? Such a pity you couldn't have gone with Ernest--but
+he'd be senior to you, of course... Good-bye. Good-bye. Give my love to
+your mother,” and she pounded her way along.
+
+“She's a beastly woman anyway” thought Jeremy. “I wish I'd found
+something to say to her. I wonder whether she knows I knocked Ernest
+down in the summer and trod on him?”
+
+But the sight of the High Street soon restored his equanimity. On other
+occasions he had been pushed through it, either by the Jampot or
+Miss Jones, so rapidly that he could gather only the most fleeting
+impressions. To-day he could linger and linger; he did. The two nicest
+shops were Mannings' the hairdressers and Ponting's the book-shop, but
+Rose the grocer's, and Coulter's the confectioner's were very good. Mr.
+Manning was an artist. He did not simply put a simpering bust with
+an elaborate head of hair in his window and leave it at that--he did,
+indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a
+radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world
+of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and
+powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in
+the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the
+Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the
+best established, most sacred and serious bookseller in the county. In
+the days when the new “Waverley” was the sensation of the moment Mr.
+Ponting, grandfather of the present Mr. Ponting, had been in quite
+constant correspondence with Mr. Southey, and Mr. Coleridge, and had
+once, when on a visit to London, spoken to the great Lord Byron himself.
+This tradition of aristocracy remained, and the present Mr. Pouting
+always advised the Bishop what to read and was consulted by Mrs. Lamb,
+our only authoress, on questions of publishers and editions and such
+technical points. For all this Jeremy, at his present stage of interest,
+would have cared nothing even had he known it, but what he did care for
+were the rows of calf-bound books with little ridges of gold, that made
+a fine wall across the window with an old print of the Cathedral and the
+Close in the middle of them. Inside Pontings there was a hush as of the
+study and the church combined. It was a rather dark shop with rows
+and rows of books disappearing into the ceiling, and one grave and
+unnaturally old young man behind the counter. Jeremy did not know what
+he should do about Hamlet, so he brought him inside, only to discover
+to his horror that the fiercest of all the Canons, Canon Waterbury, held
+the floor of the shop. Canon Waterbury had a black beard and a biting
+tongue. He had once warned Jeremy off the Cathedral grass in a voice of
+thunder, and Jeremy had never forgotten it. He glared now and pulled
+his beard, but Hamlet fortunately behaved well, and the old young man
+discovered Jeremy's notepaper within a very short period.
+
+Then suddenly the Canon spoke.
+
+“Dogs should not be inside shops,” He said, as though he were condemning
+someone to death.
+
+“I know,” said Jeremy frankly. “I wanted to tie him up to something and
+there was nothing to tie him up to.”
+
+“What did you bring him out for at all?” said the Canon.
+
+“Because he's got to have exercise,” said Jeremy, discovering, to his
+own delighted surprise, that he was not frightened in the least.
+
+“Oh, has he? I don't know what people keep dogs for.”
+
+And then he stamped out of the shop.
+
+Jeremy regarded this in the light of a victory and marched away, his
+head more in the air than ever. He should now have hurried home. The
+midday chimes had rung out and Jeremy's duties were performed. But he
+lingered, listening to the last notes of the chimes, hearing the cries
+of the Cathedral choir-boys as they moved across the green to the
+choir-school, watching all the people hurry up and down the street. Ah,
+there was the Castle carriage! Perhaps the old Countess was inside it.
+He had only seen her once, at some service in the Cathedral to which his
+mother had taken him, but she had made a great impression on him with
+her snow-white hair. He had heard people speak of her as “a wicked
+old woman.” Perhaps she was inside the carriage... but he only saw
+the Castle coachman and footman and the coronet on the door. It rolled
+slowly up the hill with its fine air of commanding the whole world--then
+it disappeared around the corner of the Close.
+
+Jeremy decided then that he would go home across the green and down
+Orchard Lane. He had a wish to enter the Cathedral for a moment; such
+a visit would, after all, complete the round of his experiences. He had
+never entered the Cathedral alone, and now, as he saw it facing him, so
+vast and majestic and quiet, across the sun-drenched green, he felt
+a sudden fear and awe. He found a ring in a stone near the west end
+through which he might fasten Hamlet's lead, then, slowly pushing back
+the heavy door, he passed inside. The Cathedral was utterly quiet. The
+vast nave, stained with reflections of purple and green and ruby, was
+vague and unsubstantial, all the little wooden chairs huddled together
+to the right and left, leaving a great path that swept up to the
+High Altar under shafts of light that fell like searchlights from the
+windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the
+great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw
+the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and
+silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far
+distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed
+him, wiping the little chairs with a duster.
+
+It seemed to Jeremy that he had never been in the Cathedral before; he
+stood there, breathless, as though in a moment something must inevitably
+happen. Although he did not think of it, the moment was one of a
+sequence that had come to him during the year--his entry into the
+theatre with his uncle, his first conversation with the sea-captain,
+the hour when his mother had been so ill, the evening on the beach when
+Charlotte had been frightened, the time when Hamlet had been lost and
+he had slept with him under a tree. All these moments had been something
+more than merely themselves, had had something behind them or inside
+them for which simply they stood as words stand for pictures. He
+analysed, of course, nothing, being a perfectly healthy small boy, but
+if afterwards he looked back these were the moments that he saw as one
+sees stations on a journey. One day he would know for what they stood.
+
+He simply now waited there as though he expected something to happen.
+Thoughts slipped through his mind quite casually, whether Hamlet were
+behaving well outside, what the old lady did when she was tired of
+dusting, who the stone figure lying near him might be, a figure very
+fine with his ruff and his peaked beard, his arms folded, his toes
+pointing upwards, whether the body were inside the stone like a mummy,
+or underneath the ground some-where; how strangely different the nave
+looked now from its Sunday show, and what fun it would be to run races
+all the way down and see who could reach the golden angels over the
+reredos first; he felt no reverence, and yet a deep reverence, no fear,
+but, nevertheless, awe; he was warm and happy and comfortable, and yet
+suddenly, giving a little shudder, he slipped out into the sunlight,
+released Hamlet and started for home.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Back again in the bosom of his family he felt that they were beginning
+to be aware of his departure.
+
+“What shall we do this evening, Jeremy--your last evening?” said his
+mother.
+
+Everyone looked at him.
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” he said uncomfortably. “Just as usual, I suppose.”
+
+“You're making him feel uncomfortable,” said Aunt Amy, who loved to
+explain quite obvious things. “You want it to be just an ordinary
+evening, dear, don't you?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” he said again, hating his aunt.
+
+“I don't think that quite the way to speak to your aunt, my son,” said
+his father. “We only inquire out of kindness, thinking to please you.
+No, Mary, no more. Friday--one helping--”
+
+“Jeremy might have another as it's his last day, I suggest,” said Aunt
+Amy, who was determined to be pleasant.
+
+“I don't want any, thank you,” said Jeremy, although it was treacle
+pudding, which he loved.
+
+“Well, I think,” said Mrs. Cole, “that we'll have high tea at half-past
+seven, and the children shall stay up afterwards and we'll have
+'Midshipman Easy.'”
+
+Jeremy loved his mother intensely at that moment. How did she know so
+exactly what was right? She made so little disturbance, was so quiet
+and was never angry, and yet she was always right when the others were
+always wrong. She knew that above all things he loved high tea--fish pie
+and boiled eggs and tea and jam and cake--a horrible meal that his later
+judgment would utterly condemn, but nevertheless something so cosy and
+so comfortable that no later meal would ever be able to rival it in
+those qualities.
+
+“Oh, that will be lovely!” he said, his face shining all over.
+
+Nevertheless, as the afternoon advanced a strange new sense of
+insecurity, unhappiness and forlornness crept increasingly upon him. He
+realised that he had that morning said good-bye to the town, and now he
+felt as though he had, in some way, hurt or insulted it. And, all the
+afternoon, he was saying farewell to the house. He did not wander from
+room to room, but rather sat up in the schoolroom pretending to mend a
+fishing rod which Mr. Monk had given him that summer. He did not really
+care about the rod--he was not even thinking of it. He heard all the
+sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that
+one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there
+was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs,
+there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the
+schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch
+which she had put out on the table to mark the time of Mary's sewing by.
+There were all the regular sounds of the house. The distant closing of
+doors, deep down in the heart of the house someone was using a sewing
+machine somewhere, voices came up out of the void and faded again,
+someone whistled, someone sang. His gloom increased. He was exchanging a
+world he knew for a world that he did not know, and he could not escape
+the feeling that he was, in some way, insulting this world that he was
+leaving. He bothered himself all the afternoon with unnecessary stupid
+affairs to cover his deep discomfort. He whistled carelessly and out of
+tune, he poked the fire and walked about. He was increasingly aware
+of Hamlet and Mary. Mary was determined so hard that she would show no
+emotion at all that she was a painful sight to witness. She scarcely
+spoke to him, and only answered in monosyllables if he asked her
+something.
+
+And Hamlet had suddenly discovered that the atmosphere of the house was
+unusual. He had expected, in the first place, to be taken for a walk
+that afternoon; then his master was very busy doing nothing, which was
+most unusual. Then at tea time his worst suspicions were confirmed.
+Jeremy suddenly made a fuss of him, pouring his tea into his saucer,
+giving him a piece of bread and jam and an extra lump of sugar. Hamlet
+drank his tea and ate his bread and jam thoughtfully. They were very
+nice, but what was the matter?
+
+He looked up through his hair and discovered that his master's eyes were
+restless and unhappy, and that he was thinking of things that disturbed
+him. He went away to the fire and, sitting on his haunches, gazing in
+his metaphysical way at the flames, considered the matter. Jeremy came
+over to him and, drawing him back to him, laid his head upon his knee
+and so held him. Hamlet did not move, save occasionally to sigh, and,
+once or twice, to snap in a sudden way that he had at an imaginary fly.
+He thought that in all probability his master had been punished for
+something, and in this he was deeply sympathetic, never seeing why his
+master need be punished for anything and resenting the stupidity of
+human beings with their eternal desire to be, in some way or other,
+asserting their authority.
+
+Gradually, in front of the hot fire, both boy and dog fell asleep.
+Jeremy's dreams were confused, bewildered, distressing; he was
+struggling to find something, was always climbing higher and higher to
+discover it, only to be told that, in the end, he was in the place where
+he had begun.
+
+Hamlet's dream was of an enormous succulent bone that was pulled away
+from him so soon as he snapped at it. They both awoke with a start to
+find that it was time for high tea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Throughout the evening Jeremy was more and more lonely. He had never
+before felt so deep an affection for the family and never been so
+utterly unable to express it. It was as though, during the whole year
+he had, by his own will, been slipping away from them, and now they had
+gone too far for him to call them back.
+
+He sat on the floor at his mother's feet whilst she read “Midshipman
+Easy.” It was all so cosy, the room was so comfortable with all
+the familiar pictures and photographs and books, and Helen and Mary
+diligently sewing, and Hamlet stretched out in front of the fire, his
+nose on his paws--six months ago Jeremy would have felt utterly and
+absolutely part of it. Now he was outside it and, at the same time, was
+inside nothing else. It might be that in a week's time he would be so
+familiar with his new world that he would be as happy as a cricket--he
+did not know. He only knew that at this moment he would have given all
+that he had to fling his arms round his mother's neck, to be hugged and
+kissed and nursed by her, and that, at the same time, he would have died
+rather than do such a thing.
+
+The evening came to an end. The girls got up and said good-night. His
+mother kissed him, holding him perhaps for a moment longer than usual,
+but at that same instant she said:
+
+“Oh, I must remind Ella about the half-past seven breakfast again, she
+always has to be told everything twice.”
+
+The girls went on ahead, Jeremy and Hamlet following close behind.
+Jeremy found himself alone in the schoolroom, where the fire was very
+low, giving only little spurts and flashes that ran like golden snakes
+suddenly through the darkness.
+
+Moved by an impulse, he went to the toy-cupboard and, opening it, put
+his hand quite by chance on the toy village. The toy village! He laid
+it out and spread it on the floor. He could not see, but he knew every
+piece by heart, and he laid it all out, the church and the flower
+garden, and the Noah's house and the village street, the animals and
+the Noahs. What centuries ago that birthday was, what worlds away! How
+excited he had been, and now--!
+
+With a sudden impatient gesture he tumbled the pieces over on to their
+sides, then quickly, as though he were afraid of the dark, went into his
+bedroom and began to undress.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+In the morning events moved too quickly for thought. He had still the
+same lonely pain at his heart, but now he simply was not given time to
+consider it.
+
+His father called him into the study. He gave him ten shillings and a
+new prayer-book. Jeremy knew that he was trying to come close to him and
+be a friend of a new kind to him.
+
+He heard in a distance such words as: “... a new world, full of trial
+and temptation. God sees us... Work at your Latin... cricket and
+football... prayers every night...” But he could feel no emotion nothing
+but terror lest some sudden stupid emotional scene should occur. Nothing
+occurred. He kissed his father and went.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, just as he came down in his hat and coat and heard
+that the cab was there, his restraint melted; he was free and impulsive
+and natural. He kissed Mary, telling her:
+
+“You may have my toy village. I'd like you to--Yes, rather. I mean it.”
+
+He kissed Helen and Barbara, and then held to his mother, not caring
+whether all the world was there to see. The old life was going with him!
+He was not leaving it after all. The town and the house, and all the
+things to which he had thought that he had said good-bye, were going
+with him.
+
+Hamlet! He found the dog struggling to get into the cab. That was more
+than he could stand. He was not going to make a fool of himself, but the
+only way to be secure was to get into the cab and hide there. He caught
+Hamlet's head, gave it a kiss, then jumped in, catching a last glimpse
+of the family grouped at the door, the servants at the window, the old
+garden with the dead leaves gathered upon it, Hamlet held, struggling,
+in Mary's arms.
+
+He choked down his sobs, felt the ten shillings in his pocket, then with
+a mighty resolve, to which it seemed that the labours of Hercules were
+as nothing, leaned out and waved his hand.
+
+The cab rolled off.
+
+Hamlet lay down upon the mat just inside the hall-door. Someone tried to
+pull him away. He growled, showing his teeth. His master had gone out.
+He would wait for his return--and no one should move him.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Jeremy, by Hugh Walpole
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