THE RUFFIANS
I
Jeremy sat on a high cliff overlooking the sea. He had never, since he
was a tiny baby, had any fear of heights, and now his short, thick legs
dangled over a fearful abyss in a way that would have caused his
mother’s heart to go faint with terror had she seen it.
The sight before him was superb, not to be exceeded perhaps in the whole
world for strength and even ferocity of outline combined with luxuriance
and Southern softness of colour.
Here the two worlds met, the worlds of the north and the south; even in
the early morning breeze there seemed to mingle the harsh irony of the
high Glebeshire uplands and the gentle, caressing warmth of the
sheltered coves and shell-scattered shores.
The sea was a vast curtain of silk, pale blue beyond the cove, a deep
and shining green in the depths immediately below Jeremy’s feet. That
pale curtain was woven both of sea and sky, and seemed to quiver under
the fingers of the morning breeze. It was suspended between two walls of
sharp black rock, Jagged, ferocious, ruthless. Sharp to Jeremy’s right,
inside the black curve of stone, was a little beach of the palest
yellow, and nestling on to it, standing almost within it, was a little
old church with a crooked grey tower and a wandering graveyard.
Behind the church stretched a lovely champaign of the gentlest, most
English countryside: hills, green as brightly coloured glass, rising
smoothly into the blue, little valleys thickly patched with trees,
cottages from whose stumpy chimneys smoke was already rising, cows and
sheep, and in the distance the joyful barking of a dog, the only sound
in all that early scene save the curling whisper of the tide.
Jeremy had arrived with his family at Caerlyon Rectory the night before
in a state of rebellious discontent. He had been disgusted when he heard
that this summer they were to break the habit of years and to abandon
his beloved cow farm in favour of a new camping ground.
And a rectory too! When they always lived so close to churches and had
so eternally to do with them! No farm any more! No Mrs. Monk, Mr. Monk
and the little Monks, no animals, no cows and pigs, no sheep and no
horses; above all no Tim. No Tim with the red face and the strong legs;
Tim, perhaps the best friend he had in the world, after, of course,
Riley and Hamlet. He had felt it bitterly, and during that journey from
Polchester to the sea, always hitherto so wonderful a journey, he had
sulked and sulked, refusing to notice any of the new scenery, the novel
excitements and fresh incidents (like the driving all the way, for
instance, from St. Mary Moor in a big wagonette with farmers and their
wives), lest he should be betrayed into any sort of disloyalty to his
old friends.
The arrival at the Rectory, with its old walled garden, the flowers all
glimmering in the dusk, the vast oak in the middle of the lawn, was, in
spite of himself, an interesting experience, but he allowed no
expression of amusement to escape from him and went to bed the moment
after supper.
He awoke, of course, at a desperately early hour, and was compelled then
to jump out of bed and look out of the window. He discovered to his
excited amazement that the sea was right under his nose. This was
marvellous to him.
At Cow Farm you could watch only a little cup of it between a dip in the
trees, and that miles away. Here the garden seemed actually to border
it, and you could watch it stretch with the black cliffs to the left of
it, miles, miles, miles into the sky. The world was lovely at that hour;
blackbirds and thrushes were on the dew-drenched lawn. Somewhere in the
house a cuckoo-clock announced that it was just six o’clock. Before he
knew what he was about he had slipped on his clothes, was down the dark
stairs and out in the garden. . . .
As he sat dangling his feet above space and looked out to sea he argued
with himself about Cow Farm. Of course Cow Farm would always be first,
but that did not mean that other places could not be nice as well. He
would never find anyone in Caerlyon as delightful as Tim, and if only
Tim were here, everything would be perfect; but Tim could not, of
course, be in two places at once, and he had to do his duty by the
Monks.
As he sat there swinging his legs and looking down into that perfect
green water, so clear that you could see gold and purple lights shifting
beneath it and black lines of rock-like liquorice sticks twisting as the
shadows moved, he was forced to admit to himself that he was terribly
happy.
He had never lived close, cheek-by-jowl, with the sea, as he was doing
now. The thought of five whole weeks spent thus on the very edge of the
water made him wriggle his legs so that there was very real danger of
his falling over. The juxtaposition of Hamlet who had, of course,
followed him, saved him from further danger. He knew that he himself was
safe and would never fall, but Hamlet was another matter and must be
protected. The dog was perilously near the edge, balancing on his
fore-feet and sniffing down; so the boy got up and dragged the dog back,
and then lay down among the sea-pinks and the heather and looked up into
the cloudless sky.
Hamlet rested his head on the fatty part of his master’s thigh and
breathed deep content. He had come into some place where there wandered
a new company of smells, appetizing, tempting. Soon he would investigate
them. For the present it was enough to lie warm with his master and
dream.
Suddenly he was conscious of something. He raised his head, and Jeremy,
feeling his withdrawal, half sat up and looked about him. Facing them
both were a group of giant boulders, scattered there in the heather, and
looking like some Druid circle of ancient stones. Hamlet was now on all
fours, his tail up, his hair bristling.
“It’s all right,” said Jeremy lazily. “There’s nobody there——” But
even as he looked an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. There rose from
behind the boulder a tangled head of hair, and beneath the hair a round,
hostile face and two fierce interrogative eyes. Then, as though this
were not enough, there arose in line with the first head a second, and
with the second a third, and then with the third a fourth. Four round,
bullet heads, four fierce, hostile pairs of eyes staring at Hamlet and
Jeremy.
Jeremy stared back, feeling that here was some trick played upon him, as
when the conjurer at Thompson’s had produced a pigeon out of a
handkerchief. The trick effect was heightened by the fact that the four
heads and the sturdy bodies connected with them were graduated in height
to a nicety, as you might see four clowns at a circus, as were the four
bears, a symmetry almost divine and quite unnatural.
The eldest, the fiercest and most hostile, had a face and shoulders that
might belong to a boy of sixteen, the youngest and smallest might have
been Jeremy’s age. Jeremy did not notice any of this. Very plain to him
the fact that the four faces, to whomsoever they might belong, did not
care either for him or his dog. One to four; he was in a situation of
some danger. He was suddenly aware that he had never seen boys quite so
ferocious in appearance; the street boys of Polchester were milk and
water to them. Hamlet also felt this. He was sitting up, his head
raised, his body stiff, intent, and you could feel within him the bark
strangled by the melodrama of the situation.
Jeremy said rather feebly:
“Hullo!”
The reply was a terrific ear-shattering bellow from four lusty throats;
then more distinctly:
“Get out of this!”
Fear was in his heart; he was compelled afterwards to admit it. He could
only reply very feebly:
“Why?”
The eldest of the party, glaring, replied:
“If you don’t, we’ll make you.” Then: “This is ours here.”
Hamlet was now quivering all over, and Jeremy was afraid lest he should
make a dash for the boulders. He therefore climbed on to his feet,
holding Hamlet’s collar with his hand, and, smiling, answered:
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve only just come.”
“Well, get out, then,” was the only reply.
What fascinated him like a dream was the way that the faces did not move
nor more body reveal itself. Painted against the blue sky, they might
have been, ferocious stares and all. There was nothing more to be done.
He beat an inglorious retreat, not, indeed, running, but walking with
what dignity he could summon, Hamlet at his side uttering noises like a
kettle on the boil.
II
He had not to wait long for some explanation of the vision. At breakfast
(and it was a wonderful breakfast, with more eggs and bacon, cream and
strawberry jam than he had ever known) his father said:
“Now, children, there’s one thing here that you must remember. Jeremy,
are you listening?”
“Yes, father.”
“Don’t speak with your mouth full. There’s a farm near the church on the
sand. You can’t mistake it.”
“Is the farm on the sand, father?” asked Mary, her eyes wide open.
“No, of course not. How could a farm be on the sand? The farm-house
stands back at the end of the path that runs by the church. It’s a grey
farm with a high stone wall. You can’t mistake it. Well, none of you
children are to go near that farm—on no account whatever, _on no
account whatever_, to go near it.”
“Why not, father?” asked Jeremy. “Is there scarlet fever there?”
“Because I say so is quite enough,” said Mr. Cole. “There’s a family
staying there you must have _nothing at all_ to do with. Perhaps you
will see them in the distance. You must avoid them and _never_ speak to
them.”
“Are they _very_ wicked?” asked Mary, her voice vibrating low with the
drama of the situation.
“Never mind what they are. They are not fit companions for you children.
It is most unfortunate that they are here so close to us. Had I known it
I would not, I think, have come here.”
Jeremy said nothing; these were, of course, his friends of the morning.
He could see now straight across the breakfast-table those eight
burning, staring eyes.
Later, from the slope of the green hill above the rectory, he looked
across the gleaming beach at the church, the road, and then, in the
distance, the forbidden farm. Strange how the forbidding of anything
made one from the very bottom of one’s soul long for it! Yesterday,
staring across the green slopes and hollows, the farm would have been
but a grey patch sewn into the purple hill that hung behind it.
Now it was mysterious, crammed with hidden life of its own, the most
dramatic point in the whole landscape. What had they done, that family
that was so terrible? What was there about those four boys that he had
never seen in any boys before? He longed to know them with a burning,
desperate longing. Nevertheless a whole week passed without any contact.
Once Jeremy saw, against the sky-line on the hill behind the church, a
trail of four, single file, silhouetted black. They passed steadily,
secretly, bent on their own mysterious purposes. The sky, when their
figures had left it, was painted with drama.
Once Mary reported that, wandering along the beach, a wild figure,
almost naked, had started from behind a rock and shouted at her. She
ran, of course, and behind her there echoed a dreadful laugh. But the
best story of all was from Helen, who, passing the graveyard, had seen
go down the road a most beautiful lady, most beautifully dressed.
According to Helen, she was the most lovely lady ever seen, with jewels
hanging from her ears, pearls round her neck, and her clothes a bright
orange. She had walked up the road and gone through the gate into the
farm.
The mystery would have excited them all even more than, in fact, it did
had Caerlyon itself been less entrancing. But what Caerlyon turned out
to be no words can describe! Those were the days, of course, before
golf-links in Glebeshire, and although no one who has ever played on the
Caerlyon links will ever wish them away (they, the handsomest, kindest,
most fantastic sea links in all England), yet I will not pretend that
those same green slopes, sliding so softly down to the sea-shore,
bending back so gently to the wild mysteries of the Poonderry Moor, had
not then a virgin charm that now they have lost! Who can decide?
But, for children thirty years ago, what a kingdom! Glittering with
colour, they had the softness of a loving mother, the sudden, tumbled
romance of an adventurous elder brother; they caught all the colours of
the floating sky in their laps and the shadows flew like birds from
shoulder to shoulder, and then suddenly the hills would shake their
sides, and all those shadows would slide down to the yellow beach and
lie there like purple carpets. You could race and race and never grow
tired, lie on your back and stare into the fathomless sky, roll over for
ever and come to no harm, wander and never be lost. The first gate of
the kingdom and the last—the little golden square underneath the tower
where the green witch has her stall of treasures that she never
sells. . . .
III
Then the great adventure occurred. One afternoon the sun shone so
gloriously that Jeremy was blinded by it, blinded and dream-smitten so
that he sat, perched on the garden wall of the rectory, staring before
him at the glitter and the sparkle, seeing nothing but, perhaps, a
little boat of dark wood with a ruby sail floating out to the horizon,
having on its boards sacks of gold and pearls and diamonds—gold in fat
slabs, pearls in white, shaking heaps, diamonds that put out the eyes,
so bright they were—going . . . going . . . whither? He does not know,
but shades his eyes against the sun and the boat has gone, and there is
nothing there but an unbroken blue of sea with the black rocks fringing
it.
Mary called up to him from the garden and suggested that they should go
out and pick flowers, and, still in a dream, he climbed down from the
wall and stood there nodding his head like a mandarin. He suffered
himself to be led by Mary into the high-road, only stopping for a moment
to whistle for Hamlet, who came running across the lawn as though he had
just been shot out of a cannon.
It can have been only because he was sunk so deep in his dream that he
wandered, without knowing it, down over the beach, jumping the
hill-stream that intersected it, up the sand, past the church, out along
the road that led straight to the forbidden farm. Nor was Mary thinking
of their direction. She was having one of her happy days, her straw hat
on the back of her head, her glasses full of sunlight, her stockings
wrinkled about her legs, walking, her head in the air, singing one of
her strange tuneless chants that came to her when she was happy.
There was a field on their right, and a break in the hedge. Through the
break she saw buttercups—thousands of them—and loose-strife and
snapdragons. She climbed the gate and vanished into the field. Jeremy
walked on, scarcely realizing her absence. Suddenly he heard a scream.
He stopped and Hamlet stopped, pricking up his ears. Another scream,
then a succession, piercing and terrible.
Then over the field gate Mary appeared, tumbling over regardless of all
audiences and proprieties, then running, crying, “Jeremy! Jeremy!
Jeremy!” buttercups scattering from her hand as she ran. Her face was
one question-mark of terror; her hat was gone, her hair-ribbon dangling,
her stockings about her ankles. All she could do was to cling to Jeremy
crying, “Oh, oh, oh! . . . Ah, ah, ah!”
“What is it?” he asked roughly, his fear for her making him impatient.
“Was it a bull?”
“No—no. . . . Oh, Jeremy! . . . Oh, dear, oh, dear! . . . The boys!
. . . They hit me—pulled my hair!”
“What boys?” But already he knew.
Recovering a little, she told him. She had not been in the field a
moment, and was bending down picking her first buttercups, when she felt
herself violently seized from behind, her arms held; and, looking up,
there were three boys standing there, all around her. Terrible, fierce
boys, looking ever so wicked. They tore her hat off her head, pulled her
hair, and told her to leave the field at once, never to come into it
again, that it was _their_ field, and she’d better not forget it, and to
tell all her beastly family that they’d better not forget it either, and
that they’d be shot if they came in there.
“Then they took me to the gate and pushed me over. They were very rough.
I’ve got bruises.” She began to cry as the full horror of the event
broke upon her.
Jeremy’s anger was terrible to witness. He took her by the arm.
“Come with me,” he said.
He led her to the end of the road beyond the church.
“Now you go home,” he said. “Don’t breathe a word to anyone till I get
back.”
“Very well,” she sobbed; “but I’ve lost my hat.”
“I’ll get your hat,” he answered. “And take Hamlet with you.”
He watched her set off. No harm could come to her there, in the open.
She had only to cross the beach and climb the hill. He watched her until
she had jumped the stream, Hamlet running in front of her, then he
turned back.
He climbed the gate into the field. There was no one; only the golden
sea of buttercups, and near the gate a straw hat. He picked it up and,
back in the road again, stood hesitating. There was only one thing he
could do, and he knew it. But he hesitated. He had been forbidden to
enter the place. And, besides, there were four of them. And such a four!
Then he shrugged his shoulders, a very characteristic action of his, and
marched ahead.
The gate of the farm swung easily open, and then at once he was upon
them, all four of them sitting in a row upon a stone wall at the far
corner of the yard and staring at him.
It was a dirty, messy place, and a fitting background for that company.
The farm itself looked fierce with its blind grey wall and its sullen
windows, and the yard was in fearful confusion, oozing between the
stones with shiny yellow streams and dank, coagulating pools, piled high
with heaps of stinking manure, pigs wandering in the middle distance,
hens and chickens, and a ruffian dog chained to his kennel.
The four looked at Jeremy without moving.
Jeremy came close to them and said, “You’re a lot of dirty cads.”
They made neither answer nor movement.
“Dirty cads to touch my sister, a girl who couldn’t touch you.”
Still no answer. Only one, the smallest, jumped off the wall and ran to
the gate behind Jeremy.
“I’m not afraid of you,” said Jeremy (he was—terribly afraid). “I
wouldn’t be afraid of a lot of dirty sneaks like you are—to hit a
girl!”
Still no answer. So he ended:
“And we’ll go wherever we like. It isn’t your field, and we’ve just as
much right to it as you have!”
He turned to go, and faced the boy at the gate. The other three had now
climbed off the wall, and he was surrounded. He had never, since the
night with the sea-captain, been in so perilous a situation. He thought
that they would murder him, and then hide his body under the
manure—they looked quite capable of it. And in some strange way this
farm was so completely shut off from the outside world, the house
watched so silently, the wall was so high. And he was very small indeed
compared with the biggest of the four. No, he did not feel very happy.
Nothing could be more terrifying than their silence; but, if they were
silent, he could be silent too, so he just stood there and said nothing.
“What are you going to do about it?” suddenly asked the biggest of the
four.
“Do about what?” he replied, his voice trembling in spite of himself;
simply, as it seemed to him, from the noisy beating of his heart.
“Our cheeking your sister.”
“I can’t do much,” Jeremy said, “when there are four of you, but I’ll
fight the one my own size.”
That hero, grinning, moved forward to Jeremy, but the one who had
already spoken broke out:
“Let him out. We don’t want him. . . . And don’t you come back again!”
he suddenly shouted.
“I will,” Jeremy shouted in return, “if I want to!” And then, I regret
to say, took to his heels and ran pell-mell down the road.
IV
Now this was an open declaration of war and not lightly to be
disregarded. Jeremy said not a word of it to anyone, not even to the
wide-eyed Mary who had been waiting in a panic of terror under the oak
tree, like the lady in Carpaccio’s picture of St. George and the Dragon,
longing for her true knight to return, all “bloody and tumbled,” to
quote Miss Jane Porter’s “Thaddeus.” He was not bloody nor was he
tumbled, but he was serious-minded and preoccupied.
This was all very nice, but it was pretty well going to spoil the
holidays: these fellows hanging round and turning up just whenever they
pleased, frightening everybody and perhaps—this sudden thought made,
for a moment, his heart stand still—doing something really horrible to
Hamlet!
He felt as though he had the whole burden of it on his shoulders, as
though he were on guard for all the family. There was no one to whom he
could speak. No one at all.
For several days he moved about as though in enemy country, looking
closely at hedges, scanning hill horizons, keeping Hamlet as close to
his side as possible. No sign of the ruffians, no word of them at home;
they had faded into smoke and gone down with the wind.
Suddenly, one morning when he was in a hollow of the downs throwing
pebbles at a tree, he heard a voice:
“Hands up, or I fire!”
He turned round and saw the eldest of the quartette quite close to him.
Although he had spoken so fiercely, he was not looking fierce, but,
rather, was smiling in a curious crooked kind of way. Jeremy could see
him more clearly than before, and a strange enough object he was.
He was wearing a dirty old pair of flannel cricketing trousers and a
grubby shirt open at the neck. One of his eyes was bruised and he had a
cut across his nose, but the thing in the main that struck Jeremy now
was his appearance of immense physical strength. His muscles seemed
simply to bulge under his shirt, he had the neck of a prize-fighter. He
was a great deal older than Jeremy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years
of age. His eyes, which were grey and clear, were his best feature, but
he was no beauty, and in his dirty clothes and with his bruises he
looked a most dangerous character.
Jeremy called Hamlet to him and held him by the collar.
“All right,” the ruffian said; “I’m not going to touch your dog.”
“I didn’t think you were,” said Jeremy, lying.
“Oh, yes, you did. I suppose you think we eat dog-flesh and murder
babies. Lots of people do.”
The sudden sense that other folk in the world also thought the quartette
outlaws was new to Jeremy. He had envisaged the affair as a struggle in
which the Cole family only were engaged.
“Eat babies!” Jeremy cried. “No! Do you?”
“Of course not,” said the boy. “That’s the sort of damned rot people
talk. They think we’d do anything.”
He suddenly sat down on the turf, and Jeremy sat down too, dramatically
picturing to himself the kind of thing that would happen did his father
turn the corner and find him there amicably in league with his enemy.
There followed a queer in-and-out little conversation, bewildering in
some strange way, so that they seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the
thick velvet pile of the green downs, lost to all the world that was
humming like a top beyond the barrier.
“I liked your coming into the yard about your sister. That was damned
plucky of you.”
For some reason hidden deep in the green down Jeremy had never before
known praise that pleased him so deeply. He flushed, kicking the turf
with the heels of his boots.
“You were cads to hit my sister,” he said. He let Hamlet’s collar go,
and the dog went over and smelt the dirty trousers and sniffed at the
rough, reddened hand.
“How old are you?”
“Ten and a half.”
“I know. You’re called Cole. You’re the son of the parson at the
rectory.”
Jeremy nodded his head. The boy was now sprawling his length, his head
resting on his arms, his thick legs stretched out.
“You’re awfully strong,” Jeremy suddenly said.
The boy nodded his head.
“I am that. I can throw a cricket ball from here to the church. I can
wrestle anyone. Box, too.”
He didn’t say this boastfully, but quite calmly, stating well-known
facts. Jeremy opened his eyes wide.
“What are _you_ called?” he asked.
“Humphrey Charles Ruthven.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“I don’t go. I was kicked out of Harrow. But it didn’t matter anyway,
because my governor couldn’t pay the school bills.”
Expelled! This was exciting indeed.
Jeremy inquired, but his friend would give no reasons—only looked at
him curiously and smiled. Then he suddenly went on in another tone: “You
know everyone hates us, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know that,” said Jeremy. “Why is it?”
“Because we’re bad,” Humphrey said solemnly. “Our hand is against
everyone, and everyone’s hand is against us.”
“But why?” asked Jeremy again.
“Well, for one thing, they don’t like father. He’s got, if you were
speaking very politely, what you’d call a damned bad temper. By Jove,
you should see him lose it! He’s broken three chairs in the farm
already! I don’t suppose we shall be here very long. We’re always moving
about. Then another reason is that we never have any money. Father makes
a bit racing sometimes, and then we’re flush for a week or two, but it
never lasts long.
“Why,” he went on, drawing himself up with an air of pride, “we owe
money all over the country. That’s why we came down to this rotten dull
hole—because we hadn’t been down here before. And another reason they
don’t like us is because that woman who lives with us isn’t father’s
wife and she isn’t our mother either. I should rather think not! She’s a
beast. I hate her,” he added reflectively.
There was a great deal of all this that Jeremy didn’t understand, but he
got from it an immense impression of romance and adventure.
And then, as he looked across at the boy opposite to him, a new feeling
came to him, a feeling that he had never known before. It was an
exciting, strange emotion, something that was suddenly almost adoration.
He was aware, all in a second, that he would do anything in the world
for this strange boy. He would like to be ordered by him to run down the
shoulder of the down and race across the sands and plunge into the sea,
and he would do it, or to be commanded by him all the way to St. Mary’s,
ever so many miles, to fetch something for him. It was so new an
experience that he felt exceedingly shy about it, and could only sit
there kicking at the turf and saying nothing.
Humphrey’s brow was suddenly as black as thunder. He got up.
“I see what it is,” he said. “You’re like the rest. Now I’ve told you
what we are, you don’t want to have anything more to do with us. Well,
you needn’t. Nobody asked you. You can just go back to your old parson
and say to him, ‘Oh, father, I met such a _wicked_ boy to-day. He _was_
naughty, and I’m never going to talk to him again.’ All right, then. Go
along.”
The attack was so sudden that Jeremy was taken entirely by surprise. He
had been completely absorbed by this new feeling; he had not known that
he had been silent.
“Oh, no. I don’t care what you are or your father or whether you haven’t
any money. I’ve got some money. I’ll give it you if you like. And you
shall have threepence more on Saturday—fourpence, if I know my Collect.
I say”—he stammered over this request—“I wish you’d throw a stone from
here and see how far you can.”
Humphrey was immensely gratified. He bent down and picked up a pebble;
then, straining backwards ever so slightly, slung it. It vanished into
the blue sea. Jeremy sighed with admiration.
“You _can_ throw,” he said. “Would you mind if I felt the muscle on your
arm?” He felt it. He had never imagined such a muscle.
“Do you think I could have more if I worked at it?” he asked, stretching
out his own arm.
Humphrey graciously felt it. “That’s not bad for a kid of your size,” he
said. “You ought to lift weights in the morning. That’s the way to bring
it up.” Then he added: “You’re a sporting kid. I like you. I’ll be here
again same time to-morrow,” and without another word was running off,
with a strange jumping motion, across the down.
Jeremy went home, and could think of nothing at all but his adventure.
How sad it was that always, without his in the least desiring it, he was
running up against authority. He had been forbidden to go near the farm
or to have anything to do with the wild, outlawed tenants of it, and now
here he was making close friends with one of the worst of them.
He could not help it. He did not want to help it. When he looked round
the family supper-table how weak, colourless and uninteresting they all
seemed! No muscles, no outlawry, no running from place to place to
escape the police! He saw Humphrey standing against the sky and slinging
that stone. He could throw! There was no doubt of it. He could throw,
perhaps, better than anyone else in the world.
They met, then, every day, and for a glorious, wonderful week nobody
knew. I am sorry to say that Jeremy was involved at once in a perfect
mist of lies and false excuses. What a business it was being always with
the family! He had felt it now for a long time, the apparent
impossibility of going anywhere or doing anything without everybody all
round you asking multitudes of questions. “Where are you going to,
Jeremy?” “Where have you been?” “What have you been doing?” “I haven’t
seen you for the last two hours, Jeremy. Mother’s been looking for you
everywhere!”
So he lied and lied and lied. Otherwise, he got no harm from this
wonderful week. One must do Humphrey that justice that he completely
respected Jeremy’s innocence. He even, for perhaps the first time in his
young life, tried to restrain his swearing. They found the wild moor at
the back of the downs a splendid hunting-ground. Here, in the miles of
gorse and shrub and pond and heather, they were safe from the world,
their companions birds and rabbits. Humphrey knew more about animals
than anyone in England—he said so himself, so it must be true. The
weather was glorious, hot and gorse-scented. They bathed in the pools
and ran about naked, Humphrey doing exercises, standing on his head,
turning somersaults, lifting Jeremy with his hands as though he weighed
nothing at all. Humphrey’s body was brown all over, like an animal’s.
Humphrey talked and Jeremy listened. He told Jeremy the most marvellous
stories, and Jeremy believed every word of them. They sat on a little
hummock, with a dark wood behind them, and watched the moon rise.
“You’re a decent kid,” said Humphrey. “I like you better than my
brothers. I suppose you’ll forget me as soon as I’m gone.”
“I’ll never forget you,” said Jeremy. “Can’t you leave your family and
be somebody else? Then you can come and stay with us.”
“Stay with a parson? Not much. You’ll see me again one day. I’ll send
you a line from time to time and let you know where I am.”
Finally, they swore friendship. They exchanged gifts. Humphrey gave
Jeremy a broken pocket-knife, and Jeremy gave Humphrey his silver
watch-chain. They shook hands and swore to be friends for ever.
And then the final and terrible tragedy occurred.
V
It came, just as suddenly, as for a romantic climax it should have come.
On the afternoon that followed the friendship-swearing Humphrey did not
appear at the accustomed place. Jeremy waited for several hours and then
went melancholy home. At breakfast next morning there were those
grown-up, mysterious allusions that mean that some catastrophe, too
terrible for tender ears, is occurring.
“I never heard anything so awful,” said Aunt Amy.
“It’s so sad to me,” said Jeremy’s mother, sighing, “that people should
want to do these things.”
“It’s abominable,” said Mr. Cole, “that they were ever allowed to come
here at all. We should have been told before we came.”
“But do you really think——” said Aunt Amy.
“I know, because Mrs.——”
“But just fancy if——”
“It’s quite possible, especially when——”
“What a dreadful thing that——”
Jeremy sat there, feeling as though everyone were looking at him. What
had happened to Humphrey? He must go at once and find out.
He slipped off after breakfast, and before he reached the bottom of the
downs, heard shouts and cries. He ran across the beach and was soon
involved in a crowd of farmers, women, boys and animals all shouting,
crying out and barking together. Being small he was able to worry his
way through without any attention being paid to him; indeed, everyone
was too deeply excited by what was happening in the yard of the farm to
notice small boys. When at last he got to the gate and looked through,
he beheld an extraordinary scene. Among the cobbles and the manure heaps
and the filth many things were scattered—articles of clothing, some
chairs and a table, some pictures, many torn papers. The yard was almost
filled with men and women, all of them apparently shouting and screaming
together. A big red-faced man next to Jeremy was crying over and over
again: “That’ll teach him to meddle with our women.” “That’ll teach him
to meddle with our women. . . .”
On the steps of the farm-house an extraordinary woman was standing,
quite alone, no one near to her, standing there, contempt in her eyes
and a curious smile, almost of pleasure, on her lips. Even to Jeremy’s
young innocence she was over-coloured. Her face was crimson; she wore a
large hat of bright green and a bright green dress with a flowing train.
She did not move; she might have been painted into the stone. But
Jeremy’s gaze (seen dimly and as it were upwards through a pair of high,
widely extended farmer’s legs) was soon withdrawn from this highly
coloured lady to the central figure of the scene. This was a man who
seemed to Jeremy the biggest and blackest human he had ever seen. He had
jet-black hair, a black beard, and struggling now in the middle of the
yard between three rough-looking countrymen, his clothes were almost
torn from the upper part of his body. His face was bleeding, and even as
Jeremy caught sight of him he snatched one arm free and caught one of
his captors a blow that sent him reeling. For one instant he seemed to
rise above the crowd, gathering himself together for a mighty effort; he
seemed, in that second, to look towards Jeremy, his eyes staring out of
his head, his great chest heaving, his legs straining. But at once four
men were upon him and began to drive him towards the gate, the crowd
bending back and driving Jeremy into a confusion of thighs and legs
behind which he could see nothing. Then suddenly once more the scene
cleared, and the boy saw a figure run from the house, crying something,
his hand raised. Someone caught the figure and stayed it; for a second
of time Jeremy saw Humphrey’s face flaming with anger. Then the crowd
closed round.
At the same instant the black man seemed to be whirled towards them,
there was a crushing, a screaming, a boot seemed to rise from the ground
of its own volition and kick him violently in the face and he fell down,
down, down, into a bottomless sea of black pitch.
VI
For three days he was in bed, his head aching, one cheek swollen to
twice its natural size, one eye closed. To his amazement no one scolded
him; no one asked him how he had been caught in that crowd. Everyone was
very kind to him.
Once he asked his mother “What had happened?” She told him that “They
were very wicked people and had gone away.”
When he was up and about again he went to the farm and looked through
the gate. Within there was absolute stillness. A pig was snuffling
amongst the manure.
He went out to the moor. It was a perfect afternoon, only a little
breeze blowing. The pools, slightly ruffled, were like blue lace. A
rabbit sitting in front of his hole did not move. He threw himself, face
downwards on the ground, burying his nose in it, feeling in some strange
way that Humphrey was there.