I
That winter of Jeremy's eighth birthday was famous for its snow.
Glebeshire has never yielded to the wishes of its children in the matter
of snowy Christmases, and Polchester has the reputation of muggy warmth
and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions were fulfilled
in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies were treated to a
present of snow on so fine a scale that certainly for the rest of their
days they will go about saying: “Ah, you should see the winters we used
to have when we were children...”
The snow began on the very day after Jeremy's birthday, coming down
doubtfully, slowly, little grey flakes against a grey sky, then
sparkling white, then vanishing flashes of moisture on a wet,
unsympathetic soil. That day the snow did not lie; and for a week it did
not come again; then with a whirl it seized the land, and for two
days and nights did not loosen its grip. From the nursery windows the
children watched it, their noses making little rings on the window-pane,
their delighted eyes snatching fascinating glimpses of figures tossed
through the storm, cabs beating their way, the rabbit-skin man, the
milkman, the postman, brave adventurers all, fighting, as it seemed, for
their very lives.
For two days the children did not leave the house, and the natural
result of that was that on the second afternoon tempers were, like so
many dogs, straining, tugging, pulling at their chains.
It could not be denied that Jeremy had been tiresome to everyone since
the afternoon when he had heard the news of his going to school next
September. It had seemed to him a tremendous event, the Beginning of the
End. To the others, who lived in the immediate present, it was a crisis
so remote as scarcely to count at all. Mary would have liked to be
sentimental about it, but from this she was sternly prevented. There was
then nothing more to be said...
Jeremy was suddenly isolated from them all. His destiny was peculiar.
They were girls, he was a boy. They understood neither his fears nor his
ambitions; he needed terribly a companion. The snow, shutting them in,
laughed at their struggles against monotony. The nursery clock struck
three and they realised that two whole hours must pass before the next
meal. Mary, her nose red from pressing on the window-pane, her eyes
gazing through her huge spectacles wistfully at Jeremy, longed to
suggest that she should read aloud to him. She knew that he hated it;
she pretended to herself that she did not know.
Jeremy stared desperately at Helen who was sitting, dignified and
collected, in the wicker chair hemming a minute handkerchief.
“We might play Pirates,” Jeremy said with a little cough, the better to
secure her attention. There was no answer.
“Or there's the hut in the wood--if anyone likes it better,” he added
politely. He did not know what was the matter. Had the Jampot not told
him about school he would at this very moment be playing most happily
with his village. It spread out there before him on the nursery floor,
the Noah family engaged upon tea in the orchard, the butcher staring
with fixed gaze from the door of his shop, three cows and a sheep
absorbed in the architecture of the church.
He sighed, then said again: “Perhaps Pirates would be better.”
Still Helen did not reply. He abandoned the attempted control of his
passions.
“It's very rude,” he said, “not to answer when gentlemen speak to you.”
“I don't see any gentlemen,” answered Helen quietly, without raising her
eyes, which was, as she knew, a provoking habit.
“Yes, you do,” almost screamed Jeremy. “I'm one.”
“You're not,” continued Helen; “you're only eight. Gentlemen must be
over twenty like Father or Mr. Jellybrand.”
“I hate Mr. Jellybrand and I hate you,” replied Jeremy.
“I don't care,” said Helen.
“Yes, you do,” said Jeremy, then suddenly, as though even a good quarrel
were not worth while on this heavily burdened afternoon, he said gently:
“You might play Pirates, Helen. You can be Sir Roger.”
“I've got this to finish.”
“It's a dirty old thing,” continued Jeremy, pursuing an argument, “and
it'll be dirtier soon, and the Jampot says you do all the stitches
wrong. I wish I was at school.”
“I wish you were,” said Helen.
There was a pause after this. Jeremy went sadly back to his window-seat.
Mary felt that her moment had arrived. Sniffing, as was her habit when
she wanted something very badly, she said in a voice that was little
more than a whisper:
“It would be fun, wouldn't it, perhaps if I read something, Jeremy?”
Jeremy was a gentleman, although he was only eight. He looked at her and
saw behind the spectacles eyes beseeching his permission.
“Well, it wouldn't be much fun,” he said, “but it's all beastly this
afternoon, anyway.”
“Can I sit on the window too?” asked Mary.
“Not too close, because it tickles my ear, but you can if you like.”
She hurried across to the bookshelf. “There's 'Stumps' and 'Rags and
Tatters,' and 'Engel the Fearless,' and 'Herr Baby' and 'Alice' and--”
“'Alice' is best,” said Jeremy, sighing. “You know it better than the
others.” He curled himself into a corner of the window-seat. From his
position there he had a fine view. Immediately below him was the garden,
white and grey under the grey sky, the broken fountain standing up like
a snow man in the middle of it. The snow had ceased to fall and a great
stillness held the world.
Beyond the little iron gate of the garden that always sneezed “Tishoo”
when you closed it, was the top of Orange Street; then down the hill
on the right was the tower of his father's church; exactly opposite the
gate was the road that led to the Orchards, and on the right of that was
the Polchester High School for Young Ladies, held in great contempt by
Jeremy, the more that Helen would shortly be a day-boarder there, would
scream with the other girls, and, worst of all, would soon be seen
walking with her arm round another girl's neck, chattering and eating
sweets...
The whole world seemed deserted. No colour, no movement, no sound. He
sighed once more--“I'd like to eat jam and jam--lots of it,” he thought.
“It would be fun to be sick.”
Mary arrived and swung herself up on to the window-seat.
“It's the 'Looking Glass' one. I hope you don't mind,” she said
apprehensively.
“Oh, it's all right,” he allowed. He flung a glance back to the lighted
nursery. It seemed by contrast with that grey world outside to blaze
with colour; the red-painted ships on the wallpaper, the bright lights
and shadows of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the salmon fronts of
the doll's house, the green and red of the village on the floor with the
flowery trees, the blue tablecloth, the shining brass coal-scuttle all
alive and sparkling in the flames and shadows of the fire, caught and
held by the fine gold of the higher fender. Beyond that dead white--soon
it would be dark, the curtains would be drawn, and still there would be
nothing to do. He sighed again.
“It's a nice bit about the shop,” said Mary. Jeremy said nothing, so she
began. She started at a run:
“She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have '“--sniff, sniff--“,'
sud-den-ly suddenly wra-wra-w-r-a-p-p-e-d wrapped--'”
“Wrapped?” asked Jeremy.
“I don't know,” said Mary, rubbing her nose, “what it means, but perhaps
we'll see presently, herself up in w-o-o-l wool. 'Alice rubbed her eyes
and looked again she couldn't--'”
“'Looked again she couldn't'?” asked Jeremy. “It should be, 'she
couldn't look again.'”
“Oh, there's a stop,” said Mary. “I didn't see. After 'again' there's a
stop. 'She couldn't make out what had happened at all--'”
“I can't either,” said Jeremy crossly. “It would be better perhaps if I
read it myself.”
“It will be all right in a minute,” said Mary confidently. “'Was she in
a shop? And was that really--was it really a ship that was sitting on
the counter?'” she finished with a run.
“A what?” asked Jeremy.
“A ship--”
“A ship! How could it sit on a counter?” he asked.
“Oh no, it's a sheep. How silly I am!” Mary exclaimed.
“You do read badly,” he agreed frankly. “I never can understand
nothing.” And it was at that very moment that he saw the Dog.
II
He had been staring down into the garden with a gaze half abstracted,
half speculative, listening with one ear to Mary, with the other to
the stir of the fire, the heavy beat of the clock and the rustlings of
Martha the canary.
He watched the snowy expanse of garden, the black gate, the road beyond.
A vast wave of pale grey light, the herald of approaching dusk, swept
the horizon, the snowy roofs, the streets, and Jeremy felt some contact
with the strange air, the mysterious omens that the first snows of the
winter spread about the land. He watched as though he were waiting for
something to happen.
The creature came up very slowly over the crest of Orange Street. No
one else was in sight, no cart, no horse, no weather-beaten wayfarer. At
first the dog was only a little black smudge against the snow; then,
as he arrived at the Coles' garden-gate, Jeremy could see him very
distinctly. He was, it appeared, quite alone; he had been, it was
evident, badly beaten by the storm. Intended by nature to be a rough
and hairy dog, he now appeared before God and men a shivering battered
creature, dripping and wind-tossed, bedraggled and bewildered. And
yet, even in that first distant glimpse, Jeremy discerned a fine
independence. He was a short stumpy dog, in no way designed for
dignified attitudes and patronising superiority; nevertheless, as he now
wandered slowly up the street, his nose was in the air and he said to
the whole world: “The storm may have done its best to defeat me--it has
failed. I am as I was. I ask charity of no man. I know what is due to
me.”
It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a
slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot, and
the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions had been
resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation for sulkiness
had been soundly established with all his circle.
Mary was reading...! “'an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting,
and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair
of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!'”
He touched her arm and whispered:
“I say, Mary, stop a minute--look at that dog down there.”
They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the gate;
it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very slowly but
with real dignity continued its way up the road.
“Poor thing,” said Jeremy. “It IS in a mess.” Then to their astonishment
the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again as though it
had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as though it were not
wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the gate.
“Oh,” said Mary and Jeremy together.
“It's like Mother,” said Jeremy, “when she's going to see someone and
isn't sure whether it's the right house.”
Then, most marvellous of unexpected climaxes, the dog suddenly began to
squeeze itself between the bottom bar of the gate and the ground. The
interval was fortunately a large one; a moment later the animal was in
the Coles' garden.
The motives that led Jeremy to behave as he did are uncertain. It may
have been something to do with the general boredom of the afternoon,
it may have been that he felt pity for the bedraggled aspect of
the animal--most probable reason of all, was that devil-may-care
independence flung up from the road, as it were, expressly at himself.
The dog obviously did not feel any great respect for the Cole household.
He wandered about the garden, sniffing and smelling exactly as though
the whole place belonged to him, and a ridiculous stump of tail,
unsubdued by the weather, gave him the ludicrous dignity of a Malvolio.
“I'm going down,” whispered Jeremy, flinging a cautious glance at Helen
who was absorbed in her sewing.
Mary's eyes grew wide with horror and admiration. “You're not going
out,” she whispered. “In the snow. Oh, Jeremy. They WILL be angry.”
“I don't care,” whispered Jeremy back again. “They can be.”
Indeed, before Mary's frightened whisper he had not intended to do more
than creep down into the pantry and watch the dog at close range; now
it was as though Mary had challenged him. He knew that it was the most
wicked thing that he could do--to go out into the snow without a coat
and in his slippers. He might even, according to Aunt Amy, die of
it, but as death at present meant no more to him than a position of
importance and a quantity of red-currant jelly and chicken, THAT
prospect did not deter him. He left the room so quietly that Helen did
not even lift her eyes.
Then upon the landing he waited and listened. The house had all the
lighted trembling dusk of the snowy afternoon; there was no sound save
the ticking of the clocks. He might come upon the Jampot at any moment,
but this was just the hour when she liked to drink her cup of tea in the
kitchen; he knew from deep and constant study every movement of her
day. Fortune favoured him. He reached without trouble the little dark
corkscrew servants' staircase. Down this he crept, and found himself
beside the little gardener's door. Although here there was only snow-lit
dusk, he felt for the handle of the lock, found it, turned it, and was,
at once, over the steps, into the garden.
Here, with a vengeance, he felt the full romance and danger of his
enterprise. It was horribly cold; he had been in the nursery for two
whole days, wrapped up and warm, and now the snowy world seemed to
leap up at him and drag him down as though into an icy well. Mysterious
shadows hovered over the garden; the fountain pointed darkly against the
sky, and he could feel from the feathery touches upon his face that the
snow had begun to fall again.
He moved forward a few steps; the house was so dark behind him, the
world so dim and uncertain in front of him, that for a moment his heart
failed him. He might have to search the whole garden for the dog.
Then he heard a sniff, felt something wet against his leg--he had almost
stepped upon the animal. He bent down and stroked its wet coat. The dog
stood quite still, then moved forward towards the house, sniffed at the
steps, at last walked calmly through the open door as though the house
belonged to him. Jeremy followed, closed the door behind him; then there
they were in the little dark passage with the boy's heart beating like a
drum, his teeth chattering, and a terrible temptation to sneeze hovering
around him. Let him reach the nursery and establish the animal there and
all might be well, but let them be discovered, cold and shivering, in
the passage, and out the dog would be flung. He knew so exactly what
would happen. He could hear the voices in the kitchen. He knew that they
were sitting warm there by the fire, but that at any moment Jampot might
think good to climb the stairs and see “what mischief they children were
up to.” Everything depended upon the dog. Did he bark or whine, out into
the night he must go again, probably to die in the cold. But Jeremy,
the least sentimental of that most sentimental race the English, was too
intent upon his threatened sneeze to pay much attention to these awful
possibilities.
He took off his slippers and began to climb the stairs, the dog close
behind him, very grave and dignified, in spite of the little trail of
snow and water that he left in his track. The nursery door was reached,
pushed softly open, and the startled gaze of Mary and Helen fell
wide-eyed upon the adventurer and his prize.
III
The dog went directly to the fire; there, sitting in the very middle of
the golden cockatoos on the Turkey rug, he began to lick himself. He did
this by sitting very square on three legs and spreading out the fourth
stiff and erect, as though it had been not a leg at all but something of
wood or iron. The melted snow poured off him, making a fine little pool
about the golden cockatoos. He must have been a strange-looking animal
at any time, being built quite square like a toy dog, with a great
deal of hair, very short legs, and a thick stubborn neck; his eyes were
brown, and now could be seen very clearly because the hair that usually
covered them was plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day
his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore
a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in
one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs,
a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want
to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his
great-great-great-grandson “Jacob,” described in the Chronicles of the
Beaminster Family.
The children meanwhile gazed, and for a long time no one said a word.
Then Helen said: “Father WILL be angry.”
But she did not mean it. The three were, by the entrance of the dog,
instantly united into an offensive and defensive alliance. They knew
well that shortly an attack from the Outside World must be delivered,
and without a word spoken or a look exchanged they were agreed to defend
both themselves and the dog with all the strength in their power. They
had always wanted a dog; they had been prevented by the stupid and
selfish arguments of uncomprehending elders.
Now this dog was here; they would keep him.
“Oh, he's perfectly sweet,” suddenly said Helen.
The dog paused for a moment from his ablutions, raised his eyes, and
regarded her with a look of cold contempt, then returned to his task.
“Don't be so silly,” said Jeremy. “You know you always hate it when Aunt
Amy says things like that about you.”
“Did Nurse see?” asked Mary.
“No, she didn't,” said Jeremy; “but she'll be up in a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Mary her mouth wide open.
“Do? Keep him, of course,” said Jeremy stoutly; at the same time
his heart a little failed him as he saw the pool of the water slowly
spreading and embracing one cockatoo after another in its ruinous flood.
“We ought to wipe him with a towel,” said Jeremy; “if we could get him
dry before Nurse comes up she mightn't say so much.”
But alas, it was too late for any towel; the door opened, and the Jampot
entered, humming a hymn, very cheerful and rosy from the kitchen fire
and an abundant series of chronicles of human failings and misfortunes.
The hymn ceased abruptly. She stayed there where she was, “frozen into
an image,” as she afterwards described it. She also said: “You could
'ave knocked me down with a feather.”
The dog did not look at her, but crocked under him the leg that had been
stiff like a ramrod and spread out another. The children did not speak.
“Well!” For a moment words failed her; then she began, her hands spread
out as though she was addressing a Suffragette meeting in Trafalgar
Square. (She knew, happy woman, nothing of Suffragettes.) “Of all the
things, and it's you, Master Jeremy, that 'as done it, as anyone might
have guessed by the way you've been be'aving this last fortnight, and
what's come over you is more nor I nor anyone else can tell, which I was
saying only yesterday to your mother that it's more than one body
and pair of hands is up to the managing of now you've got so wild and
wicked; and wherever from did you get the dirty animal dropping water
all over the nursery carpet and smelling awful, I'll be bound, which
anyone can see that's got eyes, and you'd know what your father will
do to you when he knows of it, and so he shall, as sure as my name is
Lizzie Preston.... Go on out, you ugly, dirty animal-ough, you 'orrible
creature you. I'll--”
But her advance was stopped. Jeremy stopped it. Standing in front of the
dog, his short thick legs spread defiantly apart, his fists clenched, he
almost shouted:
“You shan't touch him.... No, you shan't. I don't care. He shan't go out
again and die. You're a cruel, wicked woman.”
The Jampot gasped. Never, no, never in all her long nursing experience
had she been so defied, so insulted.
Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being
that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not
reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show.
She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked. She began:
“The moment your mother comes I give her notice. To think that all these
years I've slaved and slaved only to be told such things by a boy as--”
Then a very dramatic thing occurred. The door opened, just as it might
in the third act of a play by M. Sardou, and revealed the smiling faces
of Mrs. Cole, Miss Amy Trefusis and the Rev. William Jellybrand, Senior
Curate of St. James's, Orange Street.
Mr. Jellybrand had arrived, as he very often did, to tea. He had
expressed a desire, as he very often did, to see the “dear children.”
Mrs. Cole, liking to show her children to visitors, even to such regular
and ordinary ones as Mr. Jellybrand, at once was eager to gratify his
desire.
“We'll catch them just before their tea,” she said happily.
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of our Press and stage to
caricature our curates; this tendency I would willingly avoid. It should
be easy enough to do, as I am writing about Polchester, a town that
simply abounds--and also abounded thirty years ago--in curates of the
most splendid and manly type. But, unfortunately, Mr. Jellybrand was
not one of these. I, myself, remember him very well, and can see him now
flinging his thin, black, and--as it seemed to me then--gigantic figure
up Orange Street, his coat flapping behind him, his enormous boots
flapping in front of him, and his huge hands flapping on each side of
him like a huge gesticulating crow.
He had, the Polchester people who liked him said, “a rich voice.” The
others who did not like him called him “an affected ass.” He ran up and
down the scale like this:
______________________________________________________________
Mrs.
______________________________________________________________
dear
______________________________________________________________
My
______________________________________________________________
Cole.
______________________________________________________________
and his blue cheeks looked colder than any iceberg. But then I must
confess that I am prejudiced. I did not like him; no children did.
The Cole children hated him. Jeremy because he had damp hands, Helen
because he never looked at her, Mary because he once said to her,
“Little girls must play as well as work, you know.” He always talked
down to us as though we were beings of another and inferior planet. He
called it, “Getting on with the little ones.” No, he was not popular
with us.
He stood on this particular and dramatic occasion in front of the
group in the doorway and stared--as well he might. Unfortunately the
situation, already bad enough, was aggravated by this dark prominence of
Mr. Jellybrand. It cannot be found in any chronicles that Mr. Jellybrand
and the dog had met before; it is simply a fact that the dog,
raising his eyes at the opening of the door and catching sight of the
black-coated figure, forgot instantly his toilet, rose dripping from his
rug, and advanced growling, his lips back, his ears out, his tail erect,
towards the door. Then everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who
had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken
for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered
a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed
placidity, said: “Nurse... Nurse...” Jeremy cried: “It's all right, he
wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly.” Mary and Helen together
moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be
heard in a confused wail: “Not me, Mum... Wickedest boy... better give
notice... as never listens... dog... dog...”
The animal, however, showed himself now, as at that first earlier view
of him, indifferent to his surroundings. He continued his advance and
then, being only a fraction of an inch from Mr. Jellybrand's tempting
gleaming black trousers, he stopped, crouched like a tiger, and with
teeth still bared continued his kettle-like reverberations. Aunt
Amy, who hated dogs, loved Mr. Jellybrand, and was not in the least
sentimental when her personal safety was in danger, cried in a shrill
voice: “But take it away. Take it away. Alice, tell him. It's going to
bite Mr. Jellybrand.”
The dog raised one eye from his dreamy contemplation of the trousers and
glanced at Aunt Amy; from that moment may be dated a feud which death
only concluded. This dog was not a forgetful dog.
Jeremy advanced. “It's all right,” he cried scornfully. “He wouldn't
bite anything.” He bent down, took the animal by the scruff of the neck,
and proceeded to lead it back to the fire. The animal went without a
moment's hesitation; it would be too much to say that it exchanged a
wink with Jeremy, but something certainly passed between them. Back
again on the Turkey rug he became master of the situation. He did the
only thing possible: he disregarded entirely the general company and
addressed himself to the only person of ultimate importance--namely,
Mrs. Cole. He lay down on all fours, looked up directly into her face,
bared his teeth this time in a smile and not in a growl, and wagged his
farcical tail.
Mrs. Cole's psychology was of the simplest: if you were nice to her she
would do anything for you, but in spite of all her placidity she was
sometimes hurt in her most sensitive places. These wounds she never
displayed, and no one ever knew of them, and indeed they passed
very quickly--but there they occasionally were. Now on what slender
circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon
Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed
with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing
meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at
the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the
nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings at the Rectory; she
liked the cheerful chatter, the hospitality, the gentle scandal and her
own position as hostess.
She did not like--she never liked--Miss Maple, who was always pushing
herself forward, criticising and back-biting. Mr. Jellybrand should not
have settled this without consulting her. He had taken it for granted
that she would agree. He had said: “I agreed with Miss Maple that it
would be better to have it at her house. I'm sure you will think as
I do.” Why should he be sure? Was he not forgetting his position a
little?...
Kindest woman in the world, she had seen with a strange un-Christian
pleasure the dog's advance upon the black trousers. Then Mr. Jellybrand
had been obviously afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she too had been
afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she was not mistress in her house,
that she could be browbeaten by her sister and her nurse.
She smiled at him. “There's no reason to be afraid, Mr. Jellybrand. ...
He's such a little dog.”
Then the dog smiled at her.
“Poor little thing,” she said. “He must have nearly died in the snow.”
Thus Miss Maple, bitterest of spinsters, influenced, all unwitting, the
lives not only of a dog and a curate, but of the entire Cole family, and
through them, of endless generations both of dogs and men as yet unborn.
Miss Maple, sitting in her little yellow-curtained parlour drinking,
in jaundiced contentment, her afternoon's cup of tea, was, of course,
unaware of this. A good thing that she was unaware--she was quite
conceited enough already.
IV
After that smiling judgment of Mrs. Cole's, affairs were quickly
settled.
“Of course it can only be for the night, children. Father will arrange
something in the morning. Poor little thing. Where did you find him?”
“We saw him from the window,” said Jeremy quickly, “and he was shivering
like anything, so we called him in to warm him.”
“My dear Alice, you surely don't mean--” began Aunt Amy, and the Jampot
said: “I really think, Mum-,” and Mr. Jellybrand, in his rich voice,
murmured: “Is it quite wise, dear Mrs. Cole, do you think?”
With thoughts of Miss Maple she smiled upon them all.
“Oh, for one night, I think we can manage. He seems a clean little dog,
and really we can't turn him out into the snow at once. It would be
too cruel. But mind, children, it's only for one night. He looks a good
little dog.”
When the “quality” had departed, Jeremy's mind was in a confused
condition of horror and delight. Such a victory as he had won over the
Jampot, a victory that was a further stage in the fight for independence
begun on his birthday, might have very awful qualities. There would
begin now one of the Jampot's sulks--moods well known to the Cole
family, and lasting from a day to a week, according to the gravity of
the offence. Yes, they had already begun. There she sat in her chair by
the fire, sewing, sewing, her fat, roly-poly face carved into a parody
of deep displeasure. Life would be very unpleasant now. No tops of eggs,
no marmalade on toast, no skins of milk, no stories of “when I was a
young girl,” no sitting up five minutes “later,” no stopping in the
market-place for a talk with the banana woman--only stern insistence on
every detail of daily life; swift judgment were anything left undone or
done wrong.
Jeremy sighed; yes, it would be horrid and, for the sake of the world in
general, which meant Mary and Helen, he must see what a little diplomacy
would do. Kneeling down by the dog, he looked up into her face with the
gaze of ingenuous innocence.
“You wouldn't have wanted the poor little dog to have died in the snow,
would you, Nurse?... It might, you know. It won't be any trouble, I
expect--”
There was no reply. He could hear Mary and Helen drawing in their
breaths with excited attention.
“Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older--and
we are older now.”
Still no word.
“We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember once
you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you cried
when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how your mother
said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and sent it away,
and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said that p'r'aps we'll
have one one day?--and now we've got one.”
He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at
them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral tones:
“Either it goes, or I go.”
The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go?... They could
hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot go?
“Oh, Nurse, would you really?” whispered Mary. This innocent remark of
Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than was,
perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of colour
rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have said is
uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed
by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle
Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly
fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said; “I hear you have a dog.”
The Jampot rose, as good manners demanded, but said nothing.
“Where is the creature?” he asked.
The new addition to the Cole family had finished his washing; the
blazing fire had almost dried him, and his hair stuck out now from his
body in little stiff prickles, hedgehog fashion, giving him a truly
original appearance. His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador,
and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish
hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed
his dignity.
“There he is,” said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of
delight, at the Jampot. “Isn't he lovely?”
“Lovely. My word!” Uncle Samuel's smile broadened. “He's about the most
hideous mongrel it's ever been my lot to set eyes on. But he has his
points. He despises you all, I'm glad to see.”
Jeremy, as usual with Uncle Samuel, was uncertain as to his sincerity.
“He looks a bit funny just now,” he explained. “He's been drying on the
rug. He'll be all right soon. He wanted to bite Mr. Jellybrand. It was
funny. Mr. Jellybrand was frightened as anything.”
“Yes, that must have been delightful,” agreed Uncle Samuel. “What's his
name?”
“We haven't given him one yet. Wouldn't you think of one, Uncle Samuel?”
The uncle considered the dog. The dog, with grave and scornful eyes,
considered the uncle.
“Well, if you really ask me,” said that gentleman, “if you name him by
his character I should say Hamlet would be as good as anything.”
“What's Hamlet?” asked Jeremy.
“He isn't anything just now. But he was a prince who Was unhappy because
he thought so much about himself.”
“Hamlet'll do,” said Jeremy comfortably. “I've never heard of a dog
called that, but it's easy to say.”
“Well, I must go,” said Uncle Samuel, making one of his usual sudden
departures. “Glad to have seen the animal. Good-bye.”
He vanished.
“Hamlet,” repeated Jeremy thoughtfully. “I wonder whether he'll like
that-”
His attention, however, was caught by the Jampot's sudden outburst.
“All of them,” she cried, “supporting you in your wickedness and
disobedience. I won't 'ave it nor endure it not a minute longer. They
can 'ave my notice this moment, and I won't take it back, not if they
ask me on their bended knees--no, I won't--and that's straight.”
For an instant she frowned upon them all--then she was gone, the door
banging after her.
They gazed at one another.
There was a dreadful silence. Once Mary whispered: “Suppose she really
does.”
Hamlet only was unmoved.
Ten minutes later, Rose, the housemaid, entered with the tea-things. For
a little she was silent. Then the three faces raised to hers compelled
her confidence.
“Nurse has been and given notice,” she said, “and the Missis has
taken it. She's going at the end of the month. She's crying now in the
kitchen.”
They were alone again. Mary and Helen looked at Jeremy as though waiting
to follow his lead. He did not know what to say. There was Tragedy,
there was Victory, there was Remorse, there was Triumph. He was sorry,
he was glad. His eyes fell upon Hamlet, who was now stretched out upon
the rug, his nose between his paws, fast asleep.
Then he looked at his sisters.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it's awfully nice to have a dog--anyway.”
Such is the true and faithful account of Hamlet's entrance into the
train of the Coles.