UNCLE PERCY
I
The town was ringed with fire, and out of that magic circle, like
Siegfried, Uncle Percy came. The sunset flamed up the hill and wrapped
the top of the monument in crocus shadows, the garden of the Coles was
rose and amber.
Mary and Jeremy were hanging over the banisters watching for the
arrival. The windows behind them burnt with the sun, and their bodies
also burnt and their hair was in flames. In the hall there was green
dusk until, at the rumble of the cab, Emily suddenly lit the gas, and
the umbrellas and Landseer’s “Dignity and Impudence” were magnificently
revealed.
The door opened, and out of the evening sun into the hissing gas stepped
Uncle Percy. The children heard him say:
“Mrs. Cole at home?” and his voice was roaring, laughing, vibrating,
resounding tumultuous. He seemed in his rough grey overcoat too huge to
be human, and when this was taken from him by the smiling Emily—she
always smiled, as Jeremy had long since observed, at gentlemen more than
at ladies—in his bright brown tweeds he was still huge, and, with his
brown hair and red face, like a solid chunk of sunset thrown into the
dark house to cheer it up. He went bursting up the staircase, and the
children fled—only just in time.
From the schoolroom they heard him erupt into the drawing-room, and then
the bumping of his box up the stairs and the swearing of the cabman.
This was their Uncle Percy from California, South America, New Zealand,
Hong Kong, and anywhere else you like; the brother of their father, the
only prosperous one of that family, prosperous, according to Aunt Amy,
because for twenty years he had kept away from England; according to
father, because he had always had wonderful health, even as a very small
boy; and to Uncle Samuel because he had never married—although that was
a strange reason for Uncle Samuel to give, because he also had never
married, and he could not, with the best wish in the world, be said to
be prosperous.
It had been sprung upon them all with the utmost suddenness that he was
coming to pay them a visit. They had but just returned from Caerlyon and
the sea—in another ten days Jeremy would be off to school again—when
the telegram arrived that threw them all into such perturbation. “Arrive
eleventh. Hope you can put me up for day or two—Percy.” Percy!
Fortunately there was for them in the whole world only one Percy or they
might have been in sad confusion, because their Percy was, they
imagined, safe in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand. A letter
followed confirming the telegram. Mr. Cole had not seen his brother for
twenty years. They had received one photograph of a large fat staring
man on a large fat staring horse. Such thighs, such a back, both of man
and of horse! “Feed their animals well in New Zealand” was Uncle
Samuel’s only comment, and he, back only that minute from painting the
moors, departed at a moment’s notice for London.
“Don’t you want to see Uncle Percy?” asked Jeremy.
“I shall see him better if I study him from a distance,” said Uncle
Samuel. “He’s too large to see properly close to,” and he went—voted
selfish by all because he would not help in the entertaining. “Of course
I’m selfish,” said Uncle Samuel. “No one else cares tuppence about me,
so where should I be if I didn’t look after myself?”
In any case their Uncle Percy actually was shut into the drawing-room,
and five minutes later the children were sent for.
It had not been intended that Hamlet should enter with them, but he had
a way of suddenly appearing from nowhere and joining, unobtrusively, any
company that he thought pleasant and amusing. To-day, however, he was
anything but unobtrusive; at the sudden shock of that red flaming figure
with legs spread wide across the centre of the carpet he drew himself
together and barked like a mad thing. Nothing would quiet him, and when
Jeremy dragged him into the passage and left him there he still barked
and barked and barked, quivering all over, in a perfect frenzy of
indignation and horror. He had then to be taken to Jeremy’s bedroom on
the top floor and shut in, and there, too, he barked, stopping only once
and again for a howl. All this disturbed Uncle Percy’s greeting of the
children, but he did not seem to mind. It was obvious at once that
nothing could upset him. Jeremy simply could not take his eyes off him,
off his brown, almost carroty, hair that stood on end almost like an
aureole, off his purple cheeks and flat red nose and thick red neck, off
his flaming purple tie, his waistcoat of red and brown squares, his
bulging thighs, his tartan socks. This his father’s brother, the brother
of his father who sat now, the dim shadow of a shade, pale and
apprehensive upon the sofa. The brother of his father! Impossible! How
could it be possible?
“Well, kid, what are you staring at?” came suddenly to him. “Know your
old uncle again, hey? Think you’ll recognize him if you meet him in the
Strand, ho? Know him anywhere, won’t you, ha? A likely kid that of
yours, Herbert. Come and talk to your uncle, boy—come and talk to your
uncle.”
Jeremy moved across the carpet slowly; he was deeply embarrassed,
conscious of the solemn gaze of Aunt Amy, of Helen and Mary. A great red
hand fell upon his shoulder. He felt himself suddenly caught up by the
slack of his pants, held in mid-air, then dropped, cascades of laughter
billowing meanwhile around him.
“That’s a fine boy, hey? That’s what we do to boys in New Zealand to
make ’em grow. Want to grow, hey? Be a bigger man than your father, ho?
Well, that won’t be difficult, anyway. Never were much of a size, were
you, Herbert? Well, boy, go to school?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Like it?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Bully the boys smaller than yourself?”
“No,” said Jeremy.
“Bet you do. I always did when I was at school. Any good at games?”
“No,” said Jeremy, suddenly to his own surprise determining that he
would tell his uncle nothing.
“That’s like your father. Never any good at games, were you, Herbert?
Remember when we tossed you in a blanket and your head bumped on the
ceiling?”
Mr. Cole gave a sickly smile.
“That was a lark. I can see it as though it were yesterday. With your
legs sticking out of your nightdress——”
Luckily at this point tea arrived, and everyone was very busy. Uncle
Percy sat down and then was suddenly aware of Helen. She was looking her
prettiest in her blue silk; she knew better than to push herself
forward. She had waited patiently through all the examination of Jeremy,
certain that her time would come. And it did.
“Why, there’s a pretty one!” he jerked his great body upwards. “Why, I
hardly saw you just now! And you’re Helen!”
“Yes, uncle.” She smiled that smile so beautifully designed for
worth-while relations.
He stared at her with all his eyes. “Why, you’re a beauty, ’pon my soul,
you are! Come and sit here beside your old uncle and tell him how all
the boys run after you. I’m sure they do if boys are still the same as
when I was young. Come along, now, and tell me all about it.”
Helen demurely “came along,” sat beside her uncle and answered his
questions with exactly the right mixture of deference and humour. She
brought him his tea and his cake, and was the perfect hostess—a much
better hostess, as Jeremy noticed, than her mother; and noticing it,
hated her for it.
II
Before twenty-four hours had passed Uncle Percy had made his mark not
only upon his own family, but upon Polchester. One walk up the High
Street and everyone was asking who was that “big, red-faced man”? But it
was not only that he was big and red-faced; he moved with such complete
assurance. He was more like our Archdeacon Brandon (although, of course,
not nearly so handsome) than anyone who had been to our town for years.
He had just the archdeacon’s confidence; it would have been interesting
to watch the two men together.
He took charge of the Cole family in simply no time at all. For one
thing he smoked all over the house. Uncle Samuel had been hitherto the
only smoker in the family household, and it was understood that he
smoked only in his studio. But Uncle Percy smoked everywhere—and
cigars—and big black terribly-smelling cigars too! He appeared on the
very first morning, just as the bell rang for breakfast, clad only in a
dressing-gown with a great deal of red chest exposed, and thus
confronted Aunt Amy on the way to dining-room prayer. He arrived for
breakfast an hour late and ordered fresh tea. He sat in his brother’s
study most of the morning, talking and smoking. He forced his way into
Uncle Samuel’s studio and laughed at his pictures. (Of course, Uncle
Samuel was in London.)
“Call them pictures?” he cried all through luncheon. “Those daubs of
paint? Why, I could do better myself if I shut my eyes and splashed
coloured ink on the canvas. And I know something about painting, mind
you. Wasn’t a bad hand myself at it once. Gave it up because I hadn’t
time to waste! Call _them_ pictures!”
For this Aunt Amy almost forgave him his naked chest.
“It’s what I’ve always said,” she remarked, “only no one would listen to
me. Samuel’s pictures are folly, folly!”
During the first day both Hamlet and Jeremy were fascinated. Hamlet
recovered from his first fit of horror, smelt something in the stockings
and knickerbockers in which Uncle Percy now appeared that fascinated
him. He followed those stockings all round the house, his nose just a
little ahead of his body, and he had to move quickly because Uncle Percy
was never still for a moment. Uncle Percy, of course, laughed at Hamlet.
“Call that a dog!” he cried. “I call it a dog-fight!” and laughed
immoderately.
But Hamlet bore him no grudge; with his beard projecting and his eyes
intent on the pursuit, he followed the stockings. Such a smell! and such
calves! Both smell and calves were new in his experience—to lick the
one and bite the other! What a glorious ambition!
Jeremy, on his part, was at the beginning dazzled. He had never before
seen such superb despotism! For those twenty-four hours he admired it
all immensely—the unceasing flow of words, the knowledge of every
imaginable quarter of the globe, the confident, unfaltering answer to
every possible question, the definite assumption of universal
superiority, the absence of every doubt, hesitation or shyness.
Jeremy was as yet no analyser of human nature, but, young as he was, he
knew his own shynesses, awkwardnesses and reticences, and for
twenty-four hours he did wish he were like his Uncle Percy. He even
envied his calves and looked at his own in his bedroom looking-glass to
see how they were getting along.
It cannot, however, be denied that every member of the Cole family went
that night to bed feeling desperately weary; it was as though they had
spent a day with a thunder-storm or sat for twelve hours in the very
middle of Niagara Falls, or lodged for an hour or two in the west tower
of the cathedral amongst the bells. They were tired. Their bedrooms
seemed to them strangely, almost ominously silent.
It was as though they had passed quite suddenly into a deaf and mute
world.
On the second day it might have been noticed, had there been anyone here
or there especially observant, that Uncle Percy was beginning to be
bored. He looked around him for some fitting entertainment and
discovered his brother Herbert.
Although it was twenty years since he had seen his brother, it was
remarkable with what swiftness he had slipped back into his childhood’s
attitude towards him. He had laughed at him then; he laughed at him now
with twice his original heartiness because Herbert was a clergyman, and
clergymen seemed to Uncle Percy very laughable things. Our colonies
promote a directer form of contact between individuals than is our
custom at home; it is a true word that there are no “frills” in the
colonies. You let a man know what you think of him for good or ill
without any disguise. Uncle Percy let his brother know what he thought
of him at once, and he let everyone else know too—and this was, for his
brother, a very painful experience.
The Rev. Herbert Cole had been brought up in seclusion. People had taken
from the first trouble that his feelings should not be hurt, and when it
was understood that he was “destined for the ministry,” a mysterious
veil had been drawn in order that for the rest of his days he never
should see things as they were. No one, for twenty long years, had been
rude to him. If he wanted to be angry he was angry; if things were wrong
he said so; if he felt ill he said so; if he had a headache he said so;
and if he felt well he didn’t say so quite as often as he might have
done. He believed himself to be a good honest God-fearing man, and on
the whole he was so. But he did not know what he would be were anyone
rude to him; he did not know until Percy came to stay with him. He had,
of course, disliked Percy when they were small boys together, but that
was so long ago that he had forgotten all about it; and during the first
twenty-four hours he put everything down to Percy’s high animal spirits
and delight at being home again and pleasure at being with his
relations.
It was not until luncheon on the second day that he began to realize
what was happening. Over the chops he said something in his well-known
definite authoritative manner about “the Church not standing it, and the
sooner those infidels in Africa realized it the better.”
“Bosh!” said Uncle Percy. “Bosh!”
“My dear Percy . . .” began Mr. Cole.
“Don’t ‘dear Percy’ me,” came from the other end of the table. “I say
it’s bosh! What do you know of Africa or of the Church for the matter of
that? You’ve never been outside this piffling little town for twenty
years and wouldn’t have noticed anything if you had. That’s the worst of
you miserable parsons—never seeing anything of life or the world, and
then laying down the law as though you were God Almighty. It fair makes
me sick! But you were always like that, Herbert. Even as a boy you’d
hide behind some woman’s skirts and then lay claim to someone else’s
actions. Don’t you talk about Africa, Herbert. You know nothing about it
whatever. Here, Helen, my girl, pass up the potatoes!”
Had a large iron thunderbolt crashed through the ceiling and broken the
room to pieces consternation could not have been more general. Mr. Cole
at first simply did not believe the evidence of his ears, then as it
slowly dawned upon him that his brother had really said these things,
and before a mixed company (Emily was at that moment handing round the
cabbage), a dull pink flush stole slowly over his cheeks and ended in
fiery crimson at the tips of his ears.
Mrs. Cole and Amy were, of course, devastated, but dreadful was the
effect upon the children. Three pairs of eyes turned instantly towards
Mr. Cole and then hurriedly withdrew. Mary attacked once again the bone
of her chop, already sufficiently cleaned. Helen gazed at her uncle, her
eyes full of a lovely investigating interest. Jeremy stared at the
tablecloth. He himself could not at once realize what had occurred. He
had been accustomed for so long now to hear his father speak with
authority upon every conceivable topic and remain uncontradicted. Even
when visitors came—and they were so often curates—his opinions were
generally confirmed with a “Quite so,” or “Is that so indeed?” or “Yes,
yes; quite.” His first interest now was to see how his father would
reply to this attack. They all waited.
Mr. Cole feebly smiled.
“Tee. Tee. Violent as ever, Percy. I dare say you’re correct. Of course,
I never was in Africa.”
Capitulation! Complete capitulation! Jeremy’s cheeks burnt hot with
family shame. Was nobody going to stand up to the attack? Were they to
allow it to pass like that? They were apparently. The subject was
changed. Bread-and-butter pudding arrived. The world went on.
Uncle Percy himself had no conception that anything unusual had
occurred. He had been shouting people down and bullying them for years.
Something subconsciously told him that his brother was going to be easy
game; perhaps deep down in that mighty chest of his something chuckled;
and that was all.
But for Jeremy that was not all. He went up to his room and considered
the matter. Readers of this chronicle and the one that preceded it will
be aware that his relations with his father had not been altogether
happy ones. He had not quite understood his father, and his father had
not quite understood him, but he had always felt awe of his father and
had cherished the belief that he must be infinitely wise. Uncle Samuel
was wise too, but in quite another way. Uncle Samuel was closer, far
closer, and he could talk intimately to him about every sort of thing,
but people laughed at Uncle Samuel quite openly and said he was no good,
and Uncle Samuel himself confessed this.
His father had been remote, august, Olympian. It was true that last
Christmas he had hit his father and tried to bite him; but that had been
in a fit of rage that was madness, neither more nor less. When you were
mad you might do anything. His father had been august—but now?
Jeremy dared not look back over the luncheon scene, dared not face once
again the nervous flush, the silly laugh, the feeble retort. His father
was a coward and the honour of the family was at stake.
After that luncheon outburst, however, the situation moved so swiftly
that it went far beyond poor Jeremy. I don’t suppose that Uncle Percy
was aware of anything very much save his own happiness and comfort, but
to any outsider it would have seemed that he now gave up the whole of
his time and energy to baiting his brother. He was not a bad man nor
deliberately unkind, but he loved to have someone to tease, as the few
women for whom in his life he had cared had discovered in time to save
themselves from marrying him.
I say that he was unconscious of what he was doing; and so in a fashion
was the Cole family unconscious. That is, Mrs. Cole and Aunt Amy and the
children realized that Uncle Percy was being rude, but they did _not_
realize that the work of years was, in a few days, being completely
undone. So used to custom and tradition are we that in our daily life we
will accept almost any figure in the condition in which we receive it
and then proceed to add our own little “story” to the structure already
presented to us.
Mrs. Cole did not wish, Aunt Amy even did not wish, to see their Herbert
“a fool”; very much better for their daily life and happiness that he
should not be one, and yet in a short two days that was what he was, so
that Aunt Amy, without realizing it, spoke sharply to him and Mrs. Cole
disagreed with him about the weather prospects. Of course the women did
their best to stand up for him and defend him in his weak attempts at
resistance, but, after all, Percy was a visitor and wouldn’t be here for
long, and “hadn’t been home for such a time that naturally his way of
looking at things couldn’t be quite ours,” and then at Sunday supper
they were forced to laugh against their will, but “one was glad of
_anything_ by Sunday evening to make things a little bright,” at Percy’s
account of Herbert when he was a boy tumbling out of the wagonette on a
picnic and nobody missing him until they got home that night. It _was_
funny as Percy told it. Poor Herbert! running after the wagonette and
shouting and nobody noticing, and then losing himself and not getting
home until midnight. Aunt Amy was forced to laugh until she cried, and
even Mrs. Cole, regarding her husband with tender affection, said: “So
like you, Herbert, dear, not to _ask_ somebody the way!”
The only member of the family who did not see something funny in all of
this was Jeremy. He was conscious only of his father. He was aware
exactly of how he was feeling. He so thoroughly himself detested being
laughed at, especially when it was two to one—and now it was about five
to one! As he watched his father’s white face with the slow flushes
rising and falling, the pale nervous eyes wandering in their gaze from
place to place, the expression of bewilderment as Uncle Percy’s loud
tones surged up to him, submerged him and then slowly withdrew, Jeremy
was reminded of his own first evening at Thompson’s, when in the
dormitory he had been suddenly delivered up to a wild troop of savages
who knew neither law nor courtesy. As it had been with him then, so was
it with his father now.
Uncle Percy had all the monotony of the unimaginative. One idea was
enough for him, and his idea just now was to take it out of “old
Herbert.” I can only repeat that he did not mean it unkindly; he thought
that he was being vastly amusing for the benefit of those poor dull
women who never had any fun from one year’s end to the other. His
verdict, after he had left him and gone on somewhere else, would be:
“Well, I gave those poor mugs a merry week. Hard work, but one must do
one’s best.”
Meanwhile Jeremy watched his father.
III
Soon he saw his father hurrying off, book under his arm, umbrella in
hand.
“Where are you going, father?”
“To the Greybank Schools.”
“I’ll walk up with you.”
“Well, hurry, then. I haven’t much time.”
He did not reveal his surprise. It was the first time in all their lives
together that Jeremy had suggested going with him anywhere. They set off
together. It was a fine day of early autumn, red mist and faint blue
sky, leaves thick upon the ground, the air peppermint in the mouth.
Jeremy had to walk fast to keep pace with his father’s long strides.
Mr. Cole suddenly said:
“I’ve got a headache—a bad headache. It’s better out of the house than
in.”
In every way it was better, as Jeremy knew. During luncheon, just
concluded, Uncle Percy had roared with laughter over his memories of
what Herbert was like when, as a small boy, in the middle of the night
he thought he heard a burglar.
“When does Uncle Percy go, father?”
“Well—I thought he was going the day after to-morrow—but now he thinks
he’ll stay another week.”
“I don’t like Uncle Percy, father,” Jeremy panted a little with his
efforts to keep up.
“You mustn’t say that, my boy.”
“It doesn’t matter if I say it to you. Was he like he is now when he was
young?”
“Yes; very much. But you must remember that it was a long time ago. I
don’t quite clearly recollect my childhood. Nor, I think—does he his.”
Mr. Cole coughed.
“We never had very much in common as boys,” he said suddenly.
“He doesn’t know much about England, does he, father? He says the most
awfully silly things.”
“You mustn’t say that about your uncle, my boy.”
“No, but he does. Why, he hasn’t been _anywhere_ in England—not even to
Drymouth.”
“No, my boy, he hasn’t. You see, when people have lived in the colonies
all their lives they get a little—ahem—out of touch.”
“Yes, father.”
Delightful to think of Uncle Percy being out of touch. Quite a savage, a
barbarian. Father and son laughed a little together.
“I bet the boys at Thompson’s would laugh at him,” said Jeremy, “like
anything.”
“One has to be polite,” said Mr. Cole. “After all, he is our guest.
Don’t forget that, my boy.”
“No, father. . . . I bet he was frightened at the burglar, father; more
than you were.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Jeremy, he was. I remember the incident
perfectly. Percy hid in a cupboard. He’s forgotten that, I’ve no doubt.”
Father and son laughed.
“It would have to be a very large cupboard, father,” said Jeremy; and
then they laughed again.
Here they were at the schools, where Mr. Cole was going to teach the
little girls their Catechism. They parted, and Jeremy ran all the way
down the hill home.
IV
Uncle Percy loved the world and desired that, in natural return, the
world should love him. It seemed to him that the world did so. Once and
again the net of his jollity and fun seemed to miss some straggling fish
who gaped and then swam away, but he was of that happy temperament thus
described by one of the most lovable of our modern poets:
“Who bears in mind misfortunes gone,
Must live in fear of more;
The Happy Man, whose heart is light,
Gives no such shadows power;
He bears in mind no haunting past
To start his week on Monday:
No graves are written on his mind
To visit on a Sunday;
He lives his life by days, not years,
Each day’s a life complete,
Which every morning finds renewed
With temper calm and sweet.”
How could the world help but love him, jolly, amiable, sensible man that
he was?
But once and again . . . once and again. . . . And so it was now. And
the fish that was eluding him was young Jeremy Cole.
On the seventh or eighth day he was aware of it. At breakfast he looked
across the table and saw the small square-shaped boy gravely winking at
Mary. Why was he winking at his sister? It could not be, surely it could
not be because of anything that he himself had said? And yet, looking
behind him, so to speak, he could not remember that anyone else had been
talking. This was enough to make him think, and, thinking, it occurred
to him that that small boy had from the very first been aloof and
reserved. Not natural for small boys to be reserved with jolly uncles.
And it was not as though the boy were in general a reserved child. No,
he had heard him laughing and jumping about the house enough to bring
the roof down. Playing around with that dog of his. . . . Quite a
normal, sporting boy. Come to think of it, the best of the family. By
far the best of the family. You’d never think, to look at him, that he
was Herbert’s son.
Therefore after breakfast in the hall he cried in his jolly, hearty
tones:
“I say, Jeremy, what do you say to taking your old uncle round the town
this morning, eh? Showing him the shops and things, what? Might be
something we’d like to buy. . . .”
Jeremy was half-way up the stairs. He came slowly down again. On the
bottom step, looking very gravely at his uncle, he said:
“I’m very sorry, Uncle Percy, but I’m going to school to-morrow morning,
and I promised mother——”
But Mrs. Cole was at this moment coming out of the dining-room. Looking
up and smiling, she said:
“Never mind, Jeremy. Go with Uncle Percy this morning, dear. I can
manage about the shirts. . . .”
Jeremy appeared not to have heard his mother.
“I’m sorry I can’t go out this morning, Uncle Percy. There’s my holiday
task too. I’ve got to swot at it—” and then turned and slowly
disappeared round the corner of the staircase.
Uncle Percy was chagrined. Really he was. He stood with his large body
balanced on his large legs, hesitating, in the hall.
“It is his last morning, Percy,” said Mrs. Cole, looking a little
distressed. “He’s a funny child. He’s always making his own plans.”
“Obstinate. That’s what I call it,” said Uncle Percy. “Damned
obstinate.” He went out that morning alone. He thought that he would buy
something for the kid, something really rich and impressive. It could
not be that the boy disliked him, and yet . . . All that morning he was
haunted by the boy’s presence. Going to school to-morrow, was he? Not
much time left for making an impression. He could not find anything that
morning that would precisely do. Rotten shops, the Polchester ones. He
would tip the boy handsomely to-morrow morning. No boy could resist
that. Really handsomely—as he had never been tipped before.
Nothing further occurred to him, and that evening he was especially
funny about his brother. That story of Herbert when he was round fifteen
and quite a grown boy being afraid of a dog chained up in a yard, and
how he, Percy, made Herbert go and stroke it. How Herbert trembled and
how his knees shook! Oh! it was funny, it was indeed. You’d have roared
had you seen it. Percy roared; roared until the table shook beneath him.
But to-night, for some reason or another, Herbert did not seem to mind.
He laughed gently and admitted that he was still afraid of
dogs—bulldogs especially. Uncle Percy had Jeremy in his mind all that
evening; he caught him once again by the slack of his breeches and swung
him in the air—just to show what a jolly pleasant uncle he was.
When Mrs. Cole explained that always on Jeremy’s last evening she read
to him in the schoolroom after supper, he said that he would come too,
and sat there in an easy chair, watching benevolently the children
grouped in the firelight round their mother, while “The Chaplet of
Pearls” unfolded its dramatic course. A charming picture! And the boy
really looked delightful, gazing into the fire, his head against his
mother’s knee. Uncle Percy almost wished that he himself had married.
Nice to have children, a home, somewhere to come to; and so fell asleep,
and soon was snoring so loudly that Mrs. Cole had to raise her voice.
Next morning there was all the bustle of Jeremy’s departure. This was
not so dramatic as other departures had been, because Jeremy was now so
thoroughly accustomed to school-going and, indeed, could not altogether
conceal from the world at large that this was football-time, the time of
his delight and pride and happiness.
He went as usual into his father’s study to say good-bye, but on this
occasion, for some strange reason, there was no stiffness nor
awkwardness. Both were at their ease as they had never been together
before. Mr. Cole put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Mind you get into the football team,” he said.
“If I don’t you won’t mind, father, will you?” said Jeremy, looking very
fine indeed in a new light-grey overcoat.
“I know you’ll do your best, my boy,” said Mr. Cole, and kissed him.
Outside in the hall, with the others, was Uncle Percy. He motioned to
him mysteriously. “I say, kid, come here.”
Jeremy followed him into the dining-room, where they were alone. Uncle
Percy shut the door.
“Here’s something for you, my boy, to take back to school. Buy something
you want with it and remember your uncle isn’t such a bad sort after
all.”
Jeremy crimsoned up to the tips of his ears. On the red palm of his
uncle’s big hand there were lying three golden sovereigns.
“No, thank you, uncle.”
“What?”
“No, thank you, uncle. I’ve got——Father gave me——I don’t want——”
“You won’t take it? You won’t——?”
“No, thank you, uncle.”
“But what the devil——”
Jeremy turned away. His uncle caught him by the shoulder.
“Now, what’s all this about? A boy of your age refuse a tip? Now, what’s
this mean?”
Jeremy wriggled himself free. Suddenly he said hotly: “Father’s as good
as you, every bit as good. Even though you have been everywhere and he
hasn’t. People like father awfully in Polchester, and they say his
sermons are better than anybody’s. Father’s just as good as you
are——I——” and then suddenly burst from the room.
Uncle Percy stood there. This may be said to have been the greatest
shock of his life. The boy’s father? What was he talking about? The
boy’s father? As good as he was? The boy hated him so much that he
wouldn’t even take the money. Three pounds, and he wouldn’t take it!
Wouldn’t take money from him because he hated him so! But hang it! Lord,
how that dog was howling! What a horrible noise! What was he howling
for? . . . Wouldn’t take the money? But had anyone ever heard the like?
. . . But, hang it, three pounds!