THE PICTURE-BOOK
I
September 1 was Mary’s birthday, and it had always something of a
melancholy air about it because it meant that the holidays were drawing
to a close. Soon there would be the last bathe, the last picnic, the
last plunge across the moor, the last waking to the sharp, poignant cry
of the flying, swerving gulls.
Then in strange, sudden fashion, like the unclicking of a door that
opens into another room, the summer had suddenly slipped aside, giving
place to autumn; not full autumn yet, only a few leaves turning, a few
fires burning in the fields, the sea only a little colder in colour, the
sky at evening a chillier green; but the change was there, and with it
Polchester, and close behind Polchester old Thompson stepped towards
them.
Yes, Mary’s birthday marked the beginning of the end, and, in addition
to that, there was the desperate, urgent question of present-giving.
Mary took her present-giving (or rather present-getting) with the utmost
seriousness. No one in the whole world minded quite so desperately as
she what she got, who gave it her, and how it was given. Not that she
was greedy; indeed, no. She was not like Helen, who guessed the price of
everything that she received, and had what Uncle Samuel called “a
regular shop mind.”
It was all sentiment with Mary. What she wanted was that someone
(anyone) should love her and therefore give her something. She knew that
Uncle Samuel did not love her, and she suffered not, therefore, the
slightest unhappiness did he forget her natal day; but she would have
cried for a week had Jeremy forgotten it. She did not mind did Jeremy
only spend sixpence on his gift (but he was a generous boy and always
spent everything that, at the moment, he had) so that she might be sure
that he had taken a little trouble in the buying of it.
Jeremy knew all this well enough and, in earlier years, the question of
buying had been simple, because Cow Farm was miles from anywhere, the
nearest village being the fishing cove of Rafiel, and Rafiel had only
one “shop general,” and the things in this shop general were all visible
in the window from year’s end to year’s end. Mary, therefore, received
on her birthday something with which, by sight at least, she was
thoroughly familiar.
Now this year there were new conditions. The nearest village with shops
was St. Mary’s Moor, some six miles away. It was there that the purchase
must be made, and in any case it would be on this occasion a real
novelty. Jeremy tried to discover, by those circumlocutory but
self-revealing methods peculiar to intending present-givers, what Mary
would like. Supposing, just supposing, that someone one day were to die
and, most unexpectedly, leave a lot of money to Mary, what would she
buy? This was the kind of game that Mary adored, and she entered into it
thoroughly. She would buy an enormous library, thousands and thousands
of books, she would buy a town and fill it with sweet shops and then put
hundreds of poor children into it to eat as much as they liked; she
would buy Polchester Cathedral and make father bishop. This was flying
rather too high, and so Jeremy, somewhat precipitately, asked her what
she would do were she given fifteen shillings and sixpence. She
considered, and being that morning in a very Christian frame of mind,
decided that she would give it to Miss Jones to buy a new hat with.
Mentally cursing girls and their tiresome ways, Jeremy, outwardly
polite, altered his demand to: “No; but suppose you were given five
shillings and threepence halfpenny” (the exact sum saved at that moment
by him), “and had to spend it for yourself, Mary, what would you get
with it?”
She would get a book.
Yes, but what book? She clasped her hands and looked to heaven. Oh!
there were so many that she wanted. She wanted “The Young Stepmother”
and “Dynevor Terrace” and “The Scottish Chiefs” and “Queechy” and
“Sylvie and Bruno” and “The Queen’s Maries” and—and—hundreds and
hundreds.
Well, she couldn’t buy hundreds with five and threepence halfpenny, that
was certain, and if she thought that he was going to she was very much
mistaken; but at least he had got his answer. It was a book that she
wanted.
The next thing was to go into St. Mary’s Moor. He found the opportunity
ready to his hand because Miss Jones had to go to buy some things that
were needed for the family the very next afternoon. He would go with
her. Mary thought that she would go too, and when Jeremy told her, with
an air of great mystery, that that was impossible, she looked so
self-conscious that he could have smacked her.
The journey in the old ramshackle omnibus was a delightful adventure. It
happened on this particular afternoon that all the Caerlyon farmers and
their wives were going too, and there was a “fine old crush.” Hamlet,
fixed tightly on his lead, sat between his master’s legs, his tongue
out, his hair on end, and his bright eyes wicked, darting from place to
place. He saw so many things that he would like to do, parcels that he
would like to worry, legs that he would like to smell, laps that he
would like to investigate.
He gave sudden jerks at the lead, suited himself to the rolling and
jolting of the bus so that he should be flung as near as possible to the
leg, parcel or lap that he most wished to investigate. Jeremy then was
very busy. Miss Jones, who was a good woman and by now thoroughly
appreciated by all the members of the Cole family, including Jeremy
himself, who always took her under his especial protection when they
went out anywhere, had in all her years never learnt that first of all
social laws, “Never try to talk in a noisy vehicle,” and had a long
story about one Edmund Spencer, from whose mother she had that morning
received a letter. She treated Jeremy as a friend and contemporary (one
of the reasons for his liking of her), and he was always deeply
interested in her histories; but to-day, owing to the terrific
rumblings, rattlings and screaming of the bus and to the shrieking and
shouting of the farmers and their ladies, he could only catch occasional
words, and was not sure at the end of it all whether Edmund Spencer were
animal, vegetable or mineral. His confusion was complete when, just as
they were rattling into St. Mary’s one and only street, Miss Jones
screamed into his ear, “And so they had to give her boiled milk four
times a day and nothing else except an occasional potato.”
The omnibus drew up in front of the Dog and Rabbit, and everyone
departed on their various affairs. St. Mary’s was like a little wayside
station on the edge of a vast brindled, crinkled moorland, brown and
grey and green rucking away to the smooth, pale, egg-shell blue of the
afternoon sky. The sea-wind came ruffling up to them where they stood.
What storms of wind and rain there must be in the winter! All the houses
of the long straggling street seemed to be blown a bit askew.
Jeremy and Miss Jones looked around them, and at once the inevitable
“general” sprang to view. Miss Jones had to go into the hotel about some
business for the rectory, and telling Jeremy to stay just where he was,
and that she wouldn’t be more than “just five minutes,” vanished. Having
been told to stay where he was, it was natural of him to wander down the
street, inspect a greasy pond with some ducks, three children playing
marbles and two mongrel dogs, and then flatten his nose against the
window of the “general.”
Inspection proved very disappointing. There seemed to be nothing here
that he could possibly offer to Mary: bootlaces, cards of buttons,
mysterious articles of underwear, foggy bottles containing bulls’ eyes,
sticks of liquorice, cakes of soap, copies of _Home Chat_ and _The
Woman’s Journal_, some pairs of very dilapidated looking slippers, some
walking-sticks, portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales,
highly coloured. . . .
None of these. Unless, possibly, the Royal Family. But no. Even to
Jeremy’s untrained eye the colour was a _little_ bright; and old
Victoria. . . . No, Mary wanted a _book_. He stared up and down the
street in great agitation. He must buy _something_ before Miss Jones
came out of the inn. He did not want her to see what it was that he
bought. The moments were slipping by. There was _nothing_ here. The two
half-crowns and the threepenny piece in his tightly clenched palm were
hot and sticky. He looked again. There really was _nothing_! Then,
staring down the street towards the open moor and the eventual sea, he
saw a little bulging bottle-glass window that seemed to have coloured
things in it. He turned and almost ran.
It was the last shop in the street, and a funny, dumpty, white-washed
cottage with a pretty garden on its farther seaward side. The
bottle-glass window protected the strangest things. (In another place
and at another time it might not be uninteresting to tell the story of
Mr. Redpath, of how he opened a curiosity shop in St. Mary’s, of all
places! and of the adventures, happy and otherwise, that he encountered
there.)
In the shop window there were glasses of blue with tapering stems, and
squat old men smoking pipes, painted in the gayest colours, and pottery
(jugs to drink out of), and there were old chains of beaten and figured
silver, and golden boxes, and the model of a ship with full sails and a
gorgeous figure-head of red and gold, and there were old pictures in dim
frames, and a piece of a coloured rug, and lots and lots of other things
as well.
Jeremy pushed the door back, heard a little bell tinkle above his head,
and at once was in a shop so crowded that it was impossible to see
t’other from which. A young man with a pale face and carroty hair was
behind the very high counter, so high that Jeremy’s nose just tipped the
level of it.
“Have you got such a thing as a book?” he asked very politely.
The young man smiled.
“What sort of a book?”
“Well, she _said_ she wanted ‘Queechy’ or ‘Sylvie and Bruno’ or—I’ve
forgotten the names of the others. You haven’t got those two, I
suppose?”
“No, I haven’t,” said the young man, quite grave now.
“Have you got _any_ books?” said Jeremy breathlessly, because time was
slipping by and he had to stand on his toes.
“I’ve got this old Bible,” said the young man, producing a thick, heavy
volume with brass clasps. “You see it’s got rather fine pictures. I
think you’d better sit on this,” he added, producing a high stool;
“you’ll be able to see better.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Jeremy, fascinated by Moses twisting a
serpent around his very muscular arm as though it were a piece of
string. “How much is this?”
“Eight pounds and ten,” said the young man, as though he’d said a
halfpenny.
“I think I’d better tell you at once,” said Jeremy, leaning his elbows
confidentially on the counter, “that I’ve only got five shillings and
threepence halfpenny.”
The young man scratched his head. “I doubt if we’ve got any book,” he
began; then suddenly, “Perhaps this will be the very thing—if you like
pictures.”
He burrowed deep down in the back somewhere, and then produced two or
three long, flat-looking books, dusty and a faded yellow. He wiped them
with a cloth and presented them to Jeremy. At the first sight of them he
knew that they were what he wanted. He read the titles: one was
“Robinson Crusoe,” another “The Swiss Family Robinson,” the third
“Masterman Ready.” He looked at “Crusoe,” and gave a delighted squeal of
ecstasy as he turned over the pages. The print was funny and blacker
than he had ever seen print before; the pictures were coloured, and
_richly_ coloured, the reds and greens and purples sinking deep into the
page. Oh! it was a lovely book! a perfect book! the very, very thing for
Mary.
“How much is it?” he asked, trembling before the answer.
“Exactly five shillings and threepence halfpenny,” said the young man
gravely.
“That _is_ strange,” said Jeremy, almost crowing with delight and
keeping his hand on the book unless it should suddenly melt away.
“That’s just what I’ve got. Isn’t that lucky?”
“Very fortunate indeed,” said the young man. “Shall I wrap it up for
you?”
“Oh, yes, please do—and very carefully, please, so nobody can guess
what it is.”
The young man was very clever about this, and when he emerged from the
back of the shop he had with him a parcel that might easily have been a
ship or a railway train. Jeremy paid his money, climbed down from his
stool, then held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll come again one day and look at the
other things in your shop.”
“Please do,” said the young man, bowing.
He went out, the little bell tinkling gaily behind him, and there,
coming at that very moment out of the hotel, was Miss Jones.
II
We all know the truth of the familiar proverb that “Distance lends
enchantment to the view,” and it was never more true of anything in the
world than of parcels.
All the way back in the ’bus the book grew and grew in magnificence
simply because Jeremy could not see it. He clutched the parcel tightly
on his knees and resisted all Miss Jones’s attempts to discover its
contents. Back in the rectory, he rushed up to his bedroom, locked the
door, and then, with trembling fingers, undid the paper.
The first glimpse of “Robinson Crusoe and the Footmark on the Sand”
thrilled him so that the white-washed walls of his room faded away and
the thin pale evening glow passed into a sky of burning blue, and a
scarlet cockatoo flew screaming above his head and the sand lay hot and
sugar-brown at his feet. Mystery was there—the footprint in the sand,
and Crusoe with his shaggy beard and peaked hat, staring. . . .
Feverishly his fingers turned the pages, and picture after picture
opened for his delight. He had never before seen a book with so many
pictures, pictures so bright and yet so true, pictures so real that you
could almost touch the trees and the figures and Crusoe’s hatchet. He
knelt then on the floor, the book spread out upon the bed, so deeply
absorbed that it was with a terrific jolt that he heard the banging on
the door and Mary’s voice:
“Aren’t you coming, Jeremy? We’re half through supper. The bell went
hours ago.”
Mary! He had forgotten all about her. Of course, this book was for her.
Just the book for her. She would love the pictures. He had forgotten all
about . . .
He went down to supper and was bewildered and absent-minded throughout
the meal. That night his dreams were all of Crusoe, of burning sands and
flaming skies, of the crimson cockatoo and Man Friday. When he woke he
jumped at once out of bed and ran on naked feet to the book. As a rule
the next morning is the testing time, and too often we find that the
treasure that we bought the day before has already lost some of its
glitter and shine. Now it was not so; the pictures had grown better and
better, richer and ever more rich. The loveliest pictures . . .
Just the book for Mary. It was then, standing half stripped before his
basin, pausing as he always did ere he made the icy attack with the
sponge, that he realized his temptation. He did not want to give the
book to Mary. He wanted to keep it for himself.
While he dressed the temptation did not approach him very closely. It
was so horrible a temptation that he did not look it in the eyes. He was
a generous little boy, had never done a mean thing in all his life. He
was always eager to give anything away although he had a strong and
persistent sense of possessions so that he loved to have his things near
him, and they seemed to him, his books and his toys and his football, as
alive as the people around him. He had never felt anything so alive as
this book was.
When he came down to breakfast he was surprised to find that the sight
of Mary made him feel rather cross. She always had, in excess of others,
the capacity for irritating him, as she herself well knew. This morning
she irritated him very much. Her birthday would be four days from now;
he would be glad when it arrived; he could give her the book and the
temptation would be over. Indeed, he would like to give her the book now
and have done with it.
By the middle of the day he was considering whether he could not give
her something else “just as good” and keep the book for himself. He
wrapped the book in all its paper, but ran up continually to look at it.
She would like something else just as much; she would like something
else more. After all, “Robinson Crusoe” was a book for boys. But the
trouble was that he had now no money. He would receive threepence on
Saturday, the last Saturday before Mary’s birthday, but what could you
get with threepence? Five shillings of the sum with which he had bought
Mary’s present had been given him by Uncle Samuel—and Uncle Samuel’s
next present would be the tip before he went to school.
That afternoon he quarrelled with Mary—for no reason at all. He was
sitting under the oak tree on the lawn reading “Redgauntlet.” Mary came
and asked him whether she could take Hamlet for a run. Hamlet, as though
he were a toy-dog made of springs, was leaping up and down. He did not
like Mary, but he adored a run.
“No, you can’t,” said Jeremy.
“Oh! Jeremy, why can’t I? I’ll take the greatest care of him and those
horrid little boys are gone away now and——”
“You can’t because I say you can’t.”
“Oh, Jeremy, do let——”
He started up from his chair, all rage and indignation.
“Look here, Mary, if you go on talking——”
She walked away down the garden, her head hanging in that tiresome way
it had when she was unhappy. Hamlet tried to follow her, so he called
him back. He came, but was quite definitely in the sulks, sitting, his
head raised, very proud, wrath in his eyes, snapping angrily at an
occasional fly.
“Redgauntlet” was spoilt for Jeremy. He put the book down and tried to
placate Hamlet who knew his power and refused to be placated. Why didn’t
he let Mary take Hamlet? What a pig he was! He would be nice to Mary
when she came back. But when she did return that face of hers, with its
beseeching look, irritated him so deeply that he snapped at her more
than before.
After all, “Robinson Crusoe” _was_ a book for boys. . . .
Two days later he had decided, quite definitely, that he could not part
with it. He must find something else for her, something very fine
indeed, the best thing that he had. He thought of every possible way of
making money, but time was so short and ways of making money quickly
were so few. He thought of asking his father for the pocket-money of
many weeks in advance, but it would have to be so very many weeks in
advance to be worth anything at all, and his father would want to know
what he needed the money for; and after the episode of last Christmas he
did not wish to say anything about presents. He thought of selling
something; but there was no place to sell things in, and he had not
anything that anyone else wanted. He thought of asking his mother; but
she would send him to his father who always managed the family finances.
He went over all his private possessions. The trouble with them was that
Mary knew them all so well.
Impossible to pretend that there was anything there that she could want!
He collected the most hopeful of them and laid them out on the bed—a
pocket-knife, three books, a photograph frame (rubbed at the edges), a
watch chain that had seemed at first to be silver but now most certainly
wasn’t, a leather pocket-book, a red blotting pad—not a very brilliant
collection.
He did not now dare to look at the book at all. He put it away in the
bottom of the chest of drawers. He thought that perhaps if he did not
see it nor take it out of its brown paper until the actual day that it
would be easier to give. But he had imagination as, in later years, he
was to find to his cost, and the book grew and grew in his mind, the
pictures flaming like suns, the spirit of the book smiling at him,
saying to him with confidential friendship: “We belong to one another,
you and I. No one shall part us.”
Then Helen said to him:
“What are you going to give Mary on her birthday?”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“I only wanted to know. I’ve got mine. Everyone knows you went into St.
Mary’s and bought something. Mary herself knows.”
That was the worst of being part of a family. Everyone knew everything!
“Perhaps it wasn’t for Mary,” he said.
Helen sniffed. “Of course, if you don’t want to tell me,” she said, “I
don’t care to know.”
Then he discovered the little glass bottle with the silver stopper. It
had been given him two years ago on his birthday by a distant cousin who
happened to be staying with them at the time. What anybody wanted to
give a _boy_ a glass bottle with a stopper for Jeremy couldn’t conceive.
Mary had always liked it, had picked it up and looked at it with
longing. Of course she knew that it had been his for two years. He
looked at it, and even as Adam, years ago, with the apple, he fell.
III
Mary’s birthday came, and with it a day of burning, glowing colour. The
first early autumn mists were hanging like veils of thinly-sheeted
bronze before the grass wet with heavy dew, the sky of azure, the sea
crystal pale. In the mist the rectory was a giant box of pearl. The air
smelt of distant fires.
On such a day who would not be happy? And Mary was perhaps the happiest
little girl in the kingdom. Happy as she was she lost much of her
plainness, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, her mouth smiling.
Something tender and poignant in her, some distant prophecy of her
maturity, one day beautifully to be fulfilled, coming forth in her,
because she felt that she was beloved even though it were only for an
hour. She was lucky in her presents; her mother gave her a silver watch,
a little darling, quite small, with the hours marked in blue on the
face, and her father gave her a silver watch chain so thin that you
thought that it would break if you looked at it, and in reality so
strong that not the strongest man in the world could break it. Aunt Amy
gave her a muff, soft and furry, and Helen gave her a red leather
blotter, and Uncle Samuel sent her a book, the very “Dynevon Terrace”
that she wanted—how _did_ he know? And Miss Jones gave her a work
basket with the prettiest silk lining inside you ever saw, and a pair of
gloves from Barbara and—a glass bottle with a silver stopper from
Jeremy!
It seemed that she liked this last present best of all. She rushed up to
Jeremy and kissed him in the wettest possible way.
“Oh, Jeremy! I _am_ so glad. That’s _just_ what I wanted! I’ve never
seen such a darling. I’ve never had any silver things to stand on my
table and Gladys Sampson has such a lot, and this is prettier than any
that Gladys has. Oh! mother, _do_ look! See what Jeremy’s given me!
Father, see what Jeremy’s given me! Isn’t it pretty, Miss Jones? You are
a _dear_, Jeremy, and I’ll have it all my life!”
Jeremy stood there, his heart like lead. It may be said with truth of
him that never in his whole existence had he felt such shame as he did
now. Mean, mean, mean! Suddenly, now that it was too late, he hated that
book upstairs lying safely in his bottom drawer. He didn’t want ever to
look at it again.
And Mary. She must _know_ that this was his old glass bottle that he had
had so long. She had seen it a hundred times. It is true that he had
rubbed it up and got the woman in the kitchen to polish the silver, but
still she must _know_. He looked at her with new interest. Was it all
acting, this enthusiasm? No, it was not. She was genuinely moved and
delighted. Was she pretending to herself that she had never seen it
before, forcing herself to believe that it was new? He would keep the
book and give it to her at Christmas. But that would not be the same
thing. The deed was done now. The shabby, miserable deed.
He did everything that he could to make her birthday a happy one. He was
with her all the day. He allowed her to read to him a long piece of the
story that she was then writing, a very tiresome business because she
could not read her own script, and because there were so many characters
that he could never keep track of any of them. He went blackberrying
with her in the afternoon and gave her all the best blackberries. But
nothing could raise his spirits. The beautiful day said nothing to him.
He felt sick in the evening from eating too many blackberries and went
to bed directly after supper.
IV
The days that followed could hardly help but be jolly because the
weather was so lovely—still, breathless days, when the world seemed to
be painted in purple and blue on a wall of ivory, when the sea came over
the sand with a ripple of utter content, when the moon appeared early in
the evening, a silver bow, and mounted gently into a sky thick with
stars, when every sound, the rattle of carts, the barks of dogs, the
cries of men, struck the air sharply like blows upon iron. Yet, though
the world was so lovely and everyone—even Aunt Amy—was in the best and
most contented tempers, something hung over him like a black, heavy
cloth. His pride in himself was gone. He had done something shabbier
than even the Dean’s Ernest would do.
He continued to see Mary with new eyes. She was a decent kid. He looked
back over the past months and saw how much more decent she had been to
him than he had been to her. She had been irritating, of course, but
then that was because she was a girl. All girls were irritating. Just
look at Helen, for instance! Meanwhile he never glanced at the book
again. It lay there neglected in its paper.
One day Mary received in a letter a postal order for ten shillings. This
was a present from a distant aunt in America who had suddenly remembered
Mary’s birthday. Filled with glee and self-importance, she went in to
St. Mary’s with Miss Jones to spend it.
That evening when Jeremy was washing his hands there was a knock on his
door and Mary’s voice: “May I come in?”
“Yes,” he said.
She came in, her face coloured with mysterious purpose. In her hands she
held a paper parcel.
“Oh, are you washing your hands, Jeremy?” she said, her favourite
opening in conversation being always a question of the obvious. The red
evening sunlight flooded the room.
“What is it?” Jeremy asked rather crossly.
She looked at him pleadingly, as though begging him to save her from the
difficulties of emotion and explanation that crowded in upon her.
“Oh, Jeremy, St. Mary’s was lovely, and there was a man with an organ
and a monkey, and I gave the monkey a penny and it took it in its hand
and took off its cap. . . . Miss Jones has got a cold,” she added, “and
sneezed all the way home.”
“She always has a cold,” he said, “or something.”
“And it goes straight to her face when she has a cold and makes all her
teeth ache—not only one of them, but all. She isn’t coming down to
supper. She’s gone to bed.”
Still he waited, striving for politeness.
“I’ve got something for you,” Mary suddenly said, dropping her voice in
the sentimental manner that he hated. Then, as though she were ashamed
of what she had done, she took the parcel to the bed and undid the paper
with clumsy fingers.
“There,” she said, “I got it for you because I thought you’d like it.”
He looked at it; it was a book: it was “Swiss Family Robinson”: it was a
companion to his “Robinson Crusoe.” He stared at it: he could say
nothing.
“You do like it, don’t you?” she asked, gazing at him anxiously. “It’s
got lots and lots of pictures. There was a funny shop at the end of the
street and I went in with Miss Jones and the man was very nice. And I
thought it was just what you’d like. You do like it, don’t you?” she
asked again.
But he could only stare at it, not coming forward to touch it. He was
buried deep, deep in shame. There came a rattle then on the door and
Helen’s voice:
“Mary, if you’re in there with Jeremy, mother says you’re to come at
once and have your hair brushed because it’s five minutes to supper.”
“Oh, dear, I’d forgotten.” And with one last glance of anxiety towards
Jeremy she went.
Still he did not move. Could anything possibly have happened to prove to
him what a pig he was, what a skunk and a cur? Mary had bought it with
her own money, five and threepence halfpenny out of ten shillings.
He did not touch the book, but with chin set and eyes resolved, he went
down to supper. When the meal was finished he said to Mary:
“Come upstairs a minute. I want to speak to you.”
She followed him tremulously. He seemed to be clothed in his domineering
manner. How often, especially of late, she had determined that she would
not be afraid of him, but would dig up from within her the common sense,
the easy companionship, the laughter that were all there for him, she
knew, could she only be at her ease! She even sympathized with him in
thinking her so often a fool! She _was_ a fool when she was with him,
simply because she cared for him so much and thought him so wonderful
and so clever!
He didn’t like the book! He was going to thank her for it in the way
that he had when he was trying to be polite, and didn’t find it easy.
She followed him into the bedroom. He carefully closed the door. She saw
at once that the book lay exactly where she had placed it on the
bed—that he had not even opened it. He regarded her sternly.
“Sit down on that chair!” he said. She sat down.
“Look here, you oughtn’t to have given me that book. You know that Aunt
Lucy sent that money for you to spend on yourself.”
“I thought you’d like it,” she said, pushing at her spectacles as she
always did when she was distressed.
“I do like it,” he said. “It’s splendid. But I’ve done something
awful—and I’ve got to tell you now you’ve given me that.”
“Oh, Jeremy! something awful! What is it?”
He set his jaw and, without looking at her, made his confession.
“That day I went in with Miss Jones to St. Mary’s I was going to buy you
a present. And I did buy you one. I went into that same shop you went to
and I bought ‘Robinson Crusoe’ just like the one you bought me. When I
bought it I meant it for you, of course, but when I got home I liked it
so much I kept it for myself and I gave you that old bottle instead—and
then I didn’t like the rotten book after all and I’ve never looked at it
since your birthday.”
Mary’s pleasure at being made his confidante in this way was much
greater than her horror at his crime. Her bosom heaved with gratified
importance.
“I’ve done things like that, Jeremy,” she said. “I got six handkerchiefs
for Miss Jones one Christmas, and I kept three of them because I got a
terrible bad cold just at the time.”
“That’s not so bad,” he said, shaking his head, “because I gave you an
old thing that I’d had for years.”
“No,” she interrupted; “I’ve wanted that bottle ever so long. I used to
go up to your room and look at it sometimes when you were at school.”
He went to the drawer and produced “Robinson Crusoe” and gave it to her.
She accepted it gratefully, but said:
“And now I shall have to give you back the bottle.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.”
“But I can’t have two presents.”
“Yes, you can. I don’t want the old bottle, anyway. I never used it for
anything. And now we’ll each have a book, so it won’t be like a present
exactly.”
She smiled with pleasure. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not angry.”
“Angry?” he repeated after her.
“Yes,” she said, getting up from the bed where she had been sitting. “I
thought you were when you asked me to come up here.”
He looked at her puzzled. She seemed to him a new Mary whom he had never
seen before.
“Am I often angry?” he asked.
“Not angry exactly; but I get frightened that you are going to be cross,
and then I say the silliest things—not because I want to, but because I
want to be clever, and then, of course, I never am.”
He stood staring at her. “Am I as beastly as that?” he asked.
“Oh, you’re not beastly,” she reassured him. “Never—you’re not,”
forgetting her grammar in her eagerness; “but I’m afraid of you, and I’m
fonder of you than anybody—lots fonder—and I always say to myself,
‘Now I’m not going to be silly _this_ time,’ and then I am. I don’t know
why,” she sighed. “But I’m not nearly as silly as I seem,” she ended.
No, she wasn’t. He suddenly saw that, and he also suddenly saw that he
had all this time been making a great mistake. Here was a possible
companion, not only possible, but living, breathing, existing. She was
on her own to-night, neither fearful nor silly, meeting him on his own
level, superior to him, perhaps, knowing more than he did about many
things, understanding his feelings. . . .
“I say, Mary, we’ll do things together. I’m awfully lonely sometimes. I
want someone to tell things to—often. We’ll have a great time next
holidays.”
It was the happiest moment of Mary’s life. Too much for her altogether.
She just nodded and, clutching “Robinson Crusoe” to her, ran.