I
Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will
understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives thirty
years ago in Polchester.
It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a
considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on the
highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would not be
able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true, although I
myself can never be completely assured, possessing so vividly as I do a
memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the edge of Merazion Woods
and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet of ships full-sail upon the
bluest of seas, and would not be persuaded that it was merely wrack of
clouds. That may be or no; the fact remains that Polchester sniffed
the sea from afar, was caught with sea breezes and bathed in reflected
sea-lights; again and again of an evening the Cathedral sailed on dust
and shadow towards the horizon, a great white ghost of a galleon, and
the young citizens of the town with wondering eyes, watched it go. But
there were more positive influences than mere cloud and light. We had,
in the lower part of our town, sailors, quite a number of them. There
were the old white-bearded ones who would sit upon tubs and tell
smuggling tales; these haunted the River Pol, fished in it, ferried
people across it, and let out boats for hire. There were younger sailors
who, tired of the still life of their little villages and dreading the
real hard work of a life at sea, lurched and slouched by the Pol's river
bed, fishing a little, sleeping, eating and drinking a great deal.
And there were the true sailors, passing through perhaps on their way
to Drymouth to join their ships, staying in the town for a day or two
to visit their relations, or simply stopping for an hour or so to gaze
open-mouthed at the Cathedral and the market-place and the Canons and
the old women. These men had sometimes gold rings in their ears, and
their faces were often coloured a dark rich brown, and they carried
bundles across their backs all in the traditional style.
Then there were influences more subtle than either clouds or men. There
were the influences of the places that we had ourselves seen in our
summer holidays--Rafiel and St. Lowe, Marion Bay or Borhaze--and, on
the other coast, Newbock with its vast stretch of yellow sand, St. Borse
with its wild seas and giant Borse Head, or St. Nails-in-Cove with its
coloured rocks and sparkling shells. Every child had his own place; my
place was, like Jeremy's, Rafiel, and a better, more beautiful place, in
the whole world you will not find. And each place has its own legend:
at Rafiel the Gold lured Pirates, and the Turnip-Field; at Polwint the
Giant Excise Man; at Borhaze the Smugglers of Trezent Rock; at St. Borse
the wreck of “The Golden Galleon” in the year 1563, with its wonderful
treasure; and at St. Maitsin Cove the famous Witch of St. Maitsin Church
Town who turned men's bones into water and filled St. Maitsin Church
with snakes. Back from one summer holiday, treasuring these stories
together with our collections of shells and seaweed and dried flowers,
we came, and so the tales settled in Polchester streets and crept into
the heart of the Polchester cobbles and haunted the Polchester corners
by the fire, and even invaded with their romantic, peering, mischievous
faces the solemn aisles of the Cathedral itself.
The sea was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze
blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or
dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses
and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore,
or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the
Smugglers of Trezent or the Gold-laced Pirates of Rafiel.
But I think that none of us adored the sea as Jeremy did. From that
first moment when, as a small baby, he had been held up in Rafiel Cove
to see the tops of the waves catch the morning light as they rolled over
to shore, he had adored it. He had never felt any fear of it; he had
been able to swim since he could remember, and he simply lived for those
days at the end of July when they would all, in a frantic hurry and
confusion, take the train for Rafiel and arrive at Cow Farm in the
evening, with the roar of the sea coming across the quiet fields to
mingle with the lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep. He had
in his bedroom a wonderful collection of dusty and sticky sea-shells,
and these he would turn over and over, letting them run through his
fingers as a miner counts his gold.
Let him catch the faintest glimpse of a shadow of a sailor in the street
and he was after it, and he had once, when he was only four or five,
been caught by the terrified Jampot, only just in time, walking away
confidently down the market-place, his hand in the huge grasp of a
villainous looking mariner. He was exceedingly happy in his home, but he
did often wonder whether he would not run away to sea; of course, he
was going to be a sailor, but it seemed so long to wait until he was
thirteen or fourteen, and there was the sea all the time rolling in and
out and inviting him to come.
Mrs. Cole warned Miss Jones of this taste of Jeremy's: “Never let him
speak to a sailor, Miss Jones. There are some horrible men in the town,
and Jeremy simply is not to be trusted when sailors are concerned.”
Miss Jones, however, could not be always on her guard, and Fate is
stronger than any governess...
Early in February there came one of those hints of spring that in
Glebeshire more than in any other place in the world thrill and stir the
heart. Generally they give very little in actual reward and are followed
by weeks of hail and sleet and wind, but for that reason alone their
burning promise is beyond all other promises beguiling. Jeremy got up
one morning to feel that somewhere behind the thick wet mists of the
early hours there was a blazing sun. After breakfast, opening the window
and leaning out, he could see the leaves of the garden still shining
with their early glitter and the earth channelled into fissures and
breaks, dark and hard under the silver-threaded frost; beneath the rind
of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer
the call of the sun above it. Far down the road towards the Orchards a
dim veil of gold was spreading behind the walls of mist; the sparrows
on the almond tree near his window chattered like the girls of the High
School, and blue shadows stole into the dim grey sky, just as light
breaks upon an early morning sea; the air was warm behind the outer wall
of the frosty morning, and the faint gold of the first crocus beneath
the garden wall near the pantry door, where always the first crocuses
came, caught his eye. Even as he watched the sun burst the mist, the
trees changed from dim grey to sharp black, the blue flooded the sky,
and the Cathedral beyond the trees shone like a house of crystal.
All this meant spring, and spring meant hunting for snowdrops in the
Meads. Jeremy informed Miss Jones, and Miss Jones was, of course,
agreeable. They would walk that way after luncheon.
The Meads fall in a broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement
down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered
with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally
bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank.
Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils first, and the
primroses afterwards, are so thick that, from the Cathedral walls, the
Rope Walk looks as though it wandered between pools and lakes of gold.
In the Orchards on the hill also they run like rivers.
Upon this afternoon there were only the trees, faintly pink, along the
river and the wide unbroken carpet of green. Miss Jones walked up and
down the Rope Walk, whilst Mary told her an endless and exceedingly
confused story that had begun more than a week ago and had reached by
now such a state of “To be continued in our next” that Miss Jones had
only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore
wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary's audiences, and Mary
never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her
enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses,
white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile
thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she
had seen in Thornley's windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by
Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.
Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about
rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and
it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of
the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but
never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded
that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that
certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could,
his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him
at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting
the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts
haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt
Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he
saw them scale the air and swim the stream--now, he was close on their
trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole...
sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them;
always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy
tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.
Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to
breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked
and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously
motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed
at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful
afternoon...
Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for
snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas
that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and
what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's
youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.
He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the
little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep
rich voice say:
“I suppose you 'aven't such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young
gentleman?”
He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to
possess, but, of course, he hadn't one, owing to the stupidity of
elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: “No, I'm afraid
I haven't.” Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There,
standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking
down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of
the world would have most certainly described as “seedy.”
Jeremy did not see his “seediness.” He saw first his face, which was of
a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple;
ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling
mouth. He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and
the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle.
He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many
stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the
elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at
bursting point. He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down
the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their
owner's chest heaved.
And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could
be so thick and so broad. The back, spreading to the farthest limits of
the shiny seams of the coat, was like a wall. The thighs were pillows,
the arms bolsters and yet not fat, mind you, simply muscle, all of
it. One could see in a minute that it was all muscle, the chest thrust
forward, the legs spread wide, the bull-neck bursting the handkerchief,
everything that Jeremy himself most wished to be. A sailor, a monument
of strength, with the scent of his “shag” strong enough to smell a mile
away, and--yes, most marvellous of all, gold rings in his ears! His
chest would be tatooed probably, and perhaps his legs also!
There, on the back of his hand, was a blue anchor.... Jeremy looked
up and trembled lest the vision should fade, then flung a hurried look
around him to see whether Miss Jones were near. No one was about. He was
alone with the desire of his life.
“I'm so so sorry I haven't a match,” he said. “I'm not allowed to have
them, you know.”
“No, I suppose not,” said the vision. “Just my blamed luck. There I am
with 'undreds of pounds lying around my room at 'ome careless as you
please, and then held up for a bloomin' match. What's gold to a man like
me? But a match... there you are... that's life.”
He looked at Jeremy with great interest; he took in, as Jeremy realised,
every detail of his personal appearance.
“I like boys,” he said. “'Ad two myself--'ealthy little nippers they
was. Both dead-'ere to-day and gone to-morrer, as you might say. Got
your nurse 'anging around anywhere?”
“Nurse?” said Jeremy indignantly. “I don't have a nurse. I'm much too
old! There is a governess, but she's over there talking to Mary. She's
my sister--but they won't bother yet--not till the Cathedral bell
begins.”
“No intention of 'urting your feelings, young fellow my lad. Didn't
think you'd want a nurse of course--big chap like you. Thought you might
'ave a baby brother or such. No offence--I suppose you 'aven't begun to
smoke yet. Can't offer you some tobacco.”
Jeremy coloured. The man was laughing at him.
“I'm eight if you want to know,” he said, “and I'm going to school in
September.”
“School!” said the mariner, sniffing contemptuously. “I don't think much
of school if you ask me. Now I never went to school, and I can't see
that I'm much the worse for not 'aving been there. Contrariwise--I've
seen many a fine promising lad spoiled by too much schoolin'. Be a man
of the world, I say; that's the direction you want to sail in.”
“Did you really never go to school?” asked Jeremy.
“Not I!” relied the sailor. “Flung out at the age of six, I was, turned
into a boat sailing to the West Indies and left to shift for myself--and
'ere I am to-day a Captain of as fine a craft as you're ever likely to
see, with gold in 'er lockers and peacocks in the 'old--all in a manner
of speaking, you know.”
Jeremy's eyes glittered; his face was flushed a brilliant red. Hamlet
had returned from his rabbit hunting and sat with his tongue out and a
wild adventurous eye glittering up at his master from behind his hair,
yet he was not noticed.
“You were very lucky,” he said devoutly, then he went on hurriedly:
“Would you mind--you see, Miss Jones may come at any moment--would you
mind--” he choked.
“Would I mind what?” asked the Captain.
“Would you mind telling me? Are you tatooed on your body, snakes and
ships and things, like a gardener once we had? He had a sea-serpent all
down his back. He showed me one day.”
The Captain smiled proudly.
“Tatooed! Talk of tatooing! I'll show yer--and it isn't everybody I'd do
it for neither. But I've taken a fancy to you, like my own young nipper
what died.”
With an air of vast ceremony, as though he were throwing open the door
to all the universe, he slowly unwound from about his neck the dark blue
handkerchief, unbuttoned his coat, then a grimy shirt and displayed a
wall of deep brown chest. This fine expanse had no hair upon it, but
was illuminated with a superb picture of a ship in full sail against
a setting sun, all worked in the most handsome of blue tatoo. Jeremy
gasped. He had never dreamed that such things could be. He ventured to
touch the ship with his finger, and he could feel the Captain's manly
heart thumping like a muffled hammer beneath the skin.
“There's Queen Victoria on my right thigh and Nelson on my left, and the
battle of Trafalgar on the middle of my back. P'raps I'll show 'em you
one day. It wouldn't be decent exactly 'ere--too public. But one day you
come to my little place and I'll show 'em you.”
“Will you really?” said Jeremy. “Didn't it hurt terribly?”
“Hurt!” said the Captain. “I should just think it did. I 'ad to put
cotton wool behind my teeth to prevent myself from screaming. But that's
nothing. What do you say to being tortured by the Caribbees natives
every day after breakfast for three 'ole months. A tooth out a day--”
“But your teeth are all there,” said Jeremy.
“False,” said the Captain. “Every one of 'em. And the things they'll do
to your toenails--it 'ud make your 'air creep on your 'ead to listen to
the things I could tell you--”
“Oh, it's awful!” said Jeremy. “And where is your ship now?”
“Ah, my ship!” the Captain replied, winking in the most mysterious
fashion; “it would be telling to say where that is. I can trust you,
I know; I'm a great judge o' character, I am, but not even with my
own mother, gone to glory now twenty years and as holy a soul as ever
breathed, I wouldn't trust even 'er with the secret.”
“Why is it a secret?” asked Jeremy breathlessly.
“Treasure,” said the Captain, dropping his voice.
“Treasure, nothing less nor more. Between you and me there's enough gold
on that there ship to satisfy the Prime Minister 'imself, to say nothing
of the jewels--rubies, pearls, diamonds. My word, if you could see them
diamonds. I'm looking about me now for an extra man or two, and then I'm
off again--silent come, silent go's my motto--”
“I suppose you don't happen to want a cabin-boy?” gasped Jeremy, his
voice choked in his throat.
“Well, now, that's a funny thing,” said the Captain. “It's one of the
very things. But I'm afraid you're a bit young. Yet I don't know. We
might--”
He broke off, suddenly lifted his finger to his lip, whispered:
“Keep your eyes open. I'll be round again,” and had vanished.
Directly after Jeremy heard Miss Jones's unwelcome voice: “Why, Jeremy,
we couldn't find you anywhere. It's turning cold--tea-time--”
With a thump and a thud and a bang he fell back into the homely world.
III
Jeremy was a perfectly normal little boy, and I defy anyone to
have discovered in him at this stage in his progress, those strange
morbidities and irregular instincts that were to be found in such
unhappy human beings as Dostoieffsky's young hero in “Podrostok,” or the
unpleasant son and heir of Jude and Sue. Nevertheless, eight years
old is not too early for stranger impulses and wilder dreams than most
parents ever conceive of, and the fortnight that followed Jeremy's
meeting with the Sea-Captain was as peculiar and fantastic a fortnight
as he was ever, in all his later life, to know.
For he was haunted--really haunted in the good old solid practical
meaning of the term--haunted with the haunting that pursued Sintram
and many another famous hero. And he was haunted not only by the
Sea-Captain, but by a thousand things that attended in that hero's
company. He was haunted by a picture--whence it had come to him he did
not know--of a dead-white high road, dropping over the hill into shadow,
the light fading around it, black, heavy hedges on every side of it.
From below the hill came the pounding of the sea, exactly as he had
heard it so many many times on the hill above Rafiel, and he knew,
although his eyes could not catch it, that in the valley round the head
of the road was the fishing village with the lights just coming in the
windows, and beyond the village the sloping shingly Cove. But he could
see only the dead-white road, and upon this his eyes were always fixed
as though he were expecting someone. And he could smell the sea-pinks
and the grass damp with evening dew, and the cold dust of the road, and
the sea-smell in the wind. And he waited, knowing that the time would
come when he would be told to descend the hill, pass through the
village, and step out, under the heavy grey clouds, upon the little
shingly beach. He was aware then that out at sea a dark, black ship was
riding, slipping a little with the tide, one light gleaming and swinging
against the pale glow of the dusky horizon. The church clock struck
four below the hill; he was still on the high road waiting, his eyes
straining for figures... He was prepared for some journey, because he
had at his feet a bundle. And he knew that he ought not to be there.
He knew that something awful was about to happen and that, when it had
occurred, he would be committed always to something or someone... A
little cold breeze then would rise in the hedges and against the silence
that followed the chiming of the clock he could hear first the bleating
of a sheep, then a sudden pounding of the sea as though the breakers
responded to the sudden rising of the wind, then the hoofs of a horse,
clear and hard, upon the road... At that moment the picture clouded
and was dim. Had this been a dream? Was it simply a confusion of summer
visits to Rafiel, stories told him by Mary, pictures in books (a fine
illustrated edition of “Redgauntlet” had been a treasure to him since
he was a baby), the exciting figure of the Captain, and the beginning of
spring? And yet the vision was so vividly detailed that it was precisely
like a remembered event. He had always seen things in pictures;
punishment meant standing in the corner counting the ships on the
wallpaper; summer holidays meant the deep green meadows of Cow Farm,
or a purple pool under an afternoon sun; religion meant walking up
the great wide aisle of the Cathedral in creaking boots and clean
underclothes, and so on. It was nothing new for him to make a picture,
and to let that picture stand for a whole complex phase of life. But
this? What had it to do with the Sea-Captain, and why was it, as he knew
in his heart that it was, wicked and wrong and furtive? For this had
begun as a high adventurous romance. There had been nothing wrong
in that first talk in the Meads, when the Captain had shown him the
tatooes. The wickedness of it had developed partly with his growing
longing to see the Captain again, partly with the meeting that actually
followed, and partly with the sense that grew and grew as the days
passed that the Captain was always watching him.
The Captain, during these weeks, seemed to be everywhere. Never was
there an afternoon that Jeremy walked out with Miss Jones and his
sisters that he did not appear. It was not very difficult to snatch
a conversation with him. Because the beauty of the spring weather
continued, the children went every day for a walk in the Meads, and on
at least three separate occasions Jeremy and the Captain enjoyed quite
long conversations together. These were, none of them, so good as that
first one had been. The Captain was not so genial, nor so light-hearted;
it seemed that he had something on his mind. Sometimes he put his hand
on Jeremy's shoulder, and the heavy pressure of his great fingers made
Jeremy tremble, partly with terror, partly with pleasure. His face,
also, was scarcely so agreeable as it had seemed at first sight. His
tremendous nose seemed to burn down upon Jeremy like a malignant fire.
His eyes were so small that sometimes they disappeared under his fat
cheeks altogether, or only gleamed like little sharp points of light
from under his heavy, shaggy eyebrows. Then, although he tried to make
his voice pleasant, Jeremy felt that that complaisant friendliness was
not his natural tone. Sometimes there would be a sharp, barking note
that made Jeremy jump and his cheek pale. The Captain told him no more
fascinating stories, and when Jeremy wanted to know about the ship with
the diamonds and rubies and the little sea village where she lay hid and
the Caribbees natives, and the chances of becoming a cabin boy, and
the further exploitation of the tatooes--all these things the Captain
brushed aside as though they no longer interested him in the least. He,
on the other hand, wanted now to know exactly where Jeremy lived, what
the house was like, where the back doors were, how the windows opened,
where Jeremy slept, and so on. Jeremy, pleased at this interest in
his daily life, told him as many things as he could, hoping to pass
on afterwards to more exciting topics; how, for instance, the kitchen
windows were fastened always last thing at night, but you could undo
them from the garden if you liked with your knife, and Jeremy knew this
because Uncle Samuel had done it once on a Sunday afternoon when the
maids were all out and he'd forgotten his door key. He would have told
the Captain all about the schoolroom and the toy village and the
Jampot and the fun they had had teasing Miss Jones had not, the Captain
fiercely told him that these things did not interest him, and that he
had better just answer the questions that were put to him. It was indeed
strange to see how, with every interview, the Captain grew fiercer and
fiercer and sharper and sharper. He made no allusions now to “'is
little nipper,” said nothing about that holy soul his mother, and never
mentioned his liking for Jeremy. There was evidently something on his
mind, and if he had seemed mysterious at their first meeting it was
nothing to the secrecy that he practised now.
And yet, in spite of all this, his hold over Jeremy grew and grew. That
dream of the bending white road was always with Jeremy. He could think
of nothing but the Captain, and while he was certainly afraid and would
jump at the slightest sound, he was also certainly excited beyond all
earlier experience. He longed, as he lay awake at night, to see the
Captain. He seemed to have always in front of his eyes the great wall of
a chest with the blue ship on it, and the bolster legs, and the gigantic
hands. Strangest of all was the sense of evil that came with the
attraction.
He longed to be in the man's company as he longed to do something that
he had been always told not to do, and when he caught sight of him
a sudden, hot, choking hand was pressed upon his heart, and he was
terrified, delighted, frightened, ashamed, all in one. The Captain
always alluded to the things that he would tell him, would show him
one day--“When you come to my little place I'll teach yer a thing or
two”--and Jeremy would wonder for hours what this little place would
be like and what the Captain would teach him. Meanwhile, he saw him
everywhere, even when he was not there--behind lamp-posts, at street
corners, behind the old woman's umbrella in the market-place, peering
round the statues in the Cathedral, jerking up his head from behind
chimney pots, looking through the nursery windows just when dusk was
coming on, in the passages, under stairs, out in the dark garden--and
always behind him that horrid dream of the dead-white road and the
shingly Cove... Yes, poor Jeremy was truly haunted.
IV
That Miss Jones suspected nothing of these meetings must be attributed
partly to that lady's habit of wrapping herself in her own thoughts on
her walks abroad, and partly to her natural short-sightedness. Once
Mary said that she had noticed “a horrid man with a red face” staring
at them; but Miss Jones, although she was not a vain woman, thought
it nevertheless quite natural that men should stare, and fancied more
frequently that they did so than was strictly the truth.
Jeremy, meanwhile, was occupied now with the thought as to what he would
do did the Captain really want him to go away with him. He discussed it
with himself, but he did not doubt what he would do; he would go. And he
would go, he knew, with fear and dread, and with a longing to stay, and
be warm in the schoolroom, and have jam for tea, and half an hour before
bedtime downstairs, and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays. But the Captain
could make him do anything... Yes, the Captain could make him do
anything...
His afternoon walks now were prolonged agonies. He would turn his head
at every moment, would stare into dark corners, would start at the sound
of steps. His sleep now was broken with horrid dreams, and he would jump
up and cry out; and one night he actually dreamt of his dead-white road
and the sounds that came up from below the hill, the bell and the sea,
and the distant rattle of the little carts.
Then the Captain drew near to the very house itself. He haunted Orange
Street, could be seen lounging against a lamp-post opposite the High
School, looked once into the very garden of the Coles, Jeremy watching
him with beating heart from the schoolroom window. It was incredible
to Jeremy that no one else of the house perceived him; but no one ever
mentioned him, and this made it appear all the more a dream, as though
the Captain were invisible to everyone save himself. He began to hate
him even more than he feared him, and yet with that hatred the pleasure
and excitement remained. I remember how, years ago in Polchester, when
I could not have been more than six years old, I myself was haunted
with exactly that same mixture of pleasure and horror by the figure of
a hunch-backed pedlar who used to come to our town. Many years after I
heard that he had been hung for the murder of some wretched woman who
had accompanied him on some of his journeys. I was not surprised; but
when I heard the story I felt then again the old thrill of mingled
pleasure and fear.
One windy afternoon, near dusk, when they were returning from their
walk, Jeremy suddenly heard the voice in his ear:
“I may be coming to visit yer one o' these nights. Keep yer eyes open
and yer tongue quiet if I do.”
Jeremy saw the figures of Miss Jones and his sisters pass round the
corner of the road.
“What for?” he gasped.
The Captain's figure seemed to swell gigantic against the white light of
the fading sky. The wind whistled about their ears.
“Just to visit yer, that's all. 'Cause I've taken a fancy to yer.” The
Captain chuckled and had vanished...
Jeremy flung one glance at the grey desolate road behind him, then ran
for his life to join the others.
What, after that, did he expect? He did not know. Only the Captain was
drawing closer, and closer, and closer.
He could feel now always his hot breath upon his ear. Two days after the
whispered dialogue in the road, that first promise of spring broke down
into a tempest of wind and rain. The Coles' house in Orange Street,
although it looked, with its stout, white stone, strong enough, was old
and shaky. Now, in the storm, it shook and wheezed and rattled in every
one of its joints. Jeremy, at ordinary times, loved the sound of the
wind about the house, when he himself was safe and warm and cosy; but
this was now another affair. Lying in his bed he could hear the screams
down the chimney, then the tug at his window-pane, the rattling
clutch upon the wood, then the sweep under the bed and the rush up the
wallpaper, until at last, from behind some badly defended spot where the
paper was thin, there would come a wailing, whistling screech as though
someone were being murdered in the next room. On other days Jeremy, when
he heard this screech, shivered with a cosy, creeping thrill; but now he
put his head under the bedclothes, shut his eyes very tight, and tried
not to see the Captain with his ugly nose and tiny gimlet eyes.
He would be half asleep.
“Come,” said the Captain from the window, “the boat is waiting! You
promised, you know. Come just as you are--no time to dress,” and poor
Jeremy would feel the great, heavy hand upon his shoulder and wake
shivering and shaking from head to foot.
On the third day following his last interview with the Captain he went
to bed a little reassured and comforted. Perhaps the Captain had gone
away. For three days he had seen and heard nothing of him at all.
That was a night of rain--rain that slashed and whipped the house as
though it would batter it to the ground. The rain would come with a
wild fury upon the panes, trembling with its excited anger, would crash
against the glass, then fall back and hang waiting for a further attack;
next the results of the first attack would slip and slide like the
crawling of a thousand snakes, then fall and drop slowly and heavily
as though every drop were foretelling some awful peril. Jeremy lay and
listened; but he resolved that to-night he would not be frightened,
would not think of the Captain.
He said the Lord's Prayer five times, then counted sheep jumping over
the gate, a safe solution for sleepless hours. He saw the sheep--first
one a very fat one, then one a very thin one; but the gate stood at
the bottom of a little hill, so that it was very difficult for the poor
creatures, who jumped and slipped back on the incline. Then a lot
of sheep insisted on jumping together, and he could hardly count
them--forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.... He was asleep.
After a long, long time of soundlessness, of lying upon a sea that was
like a bed of down, and looking up, happily into clear blue light, he
was once more conscious of the rain. Yes, there it was with its sweeping
rush, its smash upon the pane, its withdrawal, its trickling patter and
heavy drops as though it were striking time. Yes, that was the rain and
that--What was that?
He was wide awake, lying back against his pillow, but his eyes staring
in front of them till they burnt. The house was absolutely dark,
absolutely silent, but between the attacks of the rain there was a
wound, something that had not to do with the house nor with the weather.
He strained with his ears, sitting up in bed, his hands clutching the
bed clothes. He heard it quite clearly now. Someone was moving in the
nursery.
With that the whole of his brain was awake and he knew quite clearly,
beyond a shadow of any doubt, what had happened; the Captain had come
to fetch him. With that knowledge an icy despair gripped him. He did
not want to go. Oh, he did not want to go! He was trembling from head
to foot so that the bed shook beneath him, his breath came in little hot
gasping pants, and his eyes were wide with terror. He was helpless. The
Captain would only say “Come,” and go he must, leave his warm house and
his parents whom he loved and Mary and Helen and Hamlet, yes, and even
Miss Jones. He would be dragged down the long white road, through the
lighted village, out on to the shiny beach, in a boat out to the dark
ship--and then he would be alone with the Captain, alone in the dark
ship, with the Captain's heavy hand upon his shoulder, his mouth
smiling, his great legs drawing him in as a spider draws a fly into its
web, and everyone asleep, only the stars and the dark water. He tried
to say the Lord's Prayer again, but the words would not come. The sweat
began to trickle down his nose...
Then he heard in the next room some movement against a piece of
furniture and a voice muttering. That decided him: better to go and face
it than to wait there, so as though he were moving in his sleep, he got
out of bed, crossed the floor and entered the schoolroom.
The first sound that he heard was the ticking of the old nursery clock,
a strange familiar voice in this awful world, then suddenly, although
the room was in black darkness, he himself was staring into blazing
light.
He started back and uttered a little cry, but even as he did so that
well-remembered hand was upon his shoulder and the well-known voice in
his ear:
“Move an inch, utter a sound, and I blow yer brains out, yer--” the
voice, very low, faded into, the dark. He was staring into a lantern,
and above the lantern was the dark body of the Captain. Then as he
looked up he was indeed near his last moment, for had he not been a
brave boy, old for his years, and determined, he would have cried out
with a scream that would have raised the house.
The Captain had no face... The Captain had no face... Only out of a deep
darkness those little eyes glittered like candle-points. Jeremy uttered
no sound. Then catching the Captain's coat because he trembled so, he
said: “I'm coming at once--but don't wake Mary and Helen. They'd be
frightened. May I get a coat, because it raining?”
“Coming!” whispered the Captain, his voice coming from that space in the
air where were his eyes. “You move one inch from 'ere or utter one sound
and I do yer in, yer--I'm watchin' yer, mind!”
The lantern light suddenly vanished. The room was black. There was no
sound but the ticking of the clock, and now the rain, which had seemed
to stop during this terrible dialogue, beat with friendly comfort once
more upon the pane. Jeremy stood there, his body held together as though
in an iron case, scarcely breathing. There was no more sound at all.
Quite clearly now Mary's snores could be heard coming from her room.
Jeremy had only one thought--only one thought in all the world. The
Captain did not want him. The Captain had gone and not taken him with
him. He was safe; he was freed; the terror was over and he was at
liberty.
At last he moved back to his room. He got into bed again. He was
terribly cold, and little spasms of shivers seized him, but he did not
care. The Captain was gone, and he had not taken him with him...
V
He was not aware whether he slept or no, but suddenly sunlight was in
the room, the bath-water was running, the canary was singing and Hamlet
was scratching upon his door. He jumped out of bed and let the dog in.
Then he heard Rose's voice from the next room:
“... and 'e's taken everything, 'e 'as. All the silver candlesticks and
the plate what was give to master by the Temp'rance Society, and Master
Jeremy's mug what he 'ad at 'is christening and all the knives and
forks--'e 'as--and the gold clock out o' the drorin'-room, and the mess!
Why, I says to Cook 'e couldn't 'ave made more mess, I say, not if 'e'd
come to do nothin' else. Grease everywhere, you never see nothin' like
it, and all the drawers open and the papers scattered about. Thank
'Eaven 'e never found Cook's earrings. Real gold they was, ever so many
carat and give to Cook ever so many years ago by 'er John. Poor woman!
She'd 'ave been in a terrible takin' if she'd lost 'em... And so quiet
too--not a sound and everyone sleepin' all round 'im. Wonderful 'ow
they does it! I thank the Lord I didn't 'ear 'im; I'd 'ave died of
fright-shouldn't like! Why, Cook says she knew a 'ouse once...”
But Jeremy did not listen, he did not care. As Hamlet sprang about him
and licked his hand he thought of one thing alone.
The Captain was gone! The Captain was gone! He was free! The Captain had
not taken him, and he was free at last!