I
Towards the end of the first fortnight's stay at Cow Farm it was
announced that very shortly there would be a picnic at Rafiel Cove.
Jeremy had been waiting for this proclamation; once or twice he had
asked whether they were going to the Cove and had been told “not to
bother,” “all in good time,” and other ridiculous elderly finalities,
but he knew that the day must come, as it had always come every year.
The picnic at Rafield was always the central event of the summer. And
he had this year another reason for excited anticipation--the wonderful
Charlotte Le Page was to be present. Until now Jeremy had never taken
the slightest interest in girls. Mary and Helen, being his sisters, were
necessities and inevitabilities, but that did not mean that he could not
get along very easily without them, and indeed Mary with her jealousies,
her strange sulky temper and sudden sentimental repentances was
certainly a burden and restraint. As to the little girls in Polchester,
he had frankly found them tiresome and stupid, thinking of themselves,
terrified of the most natural phenomena and untruthful in their
statements. He had been always independent and reserved with everyone,
and bud never, in all his life, had a close friend, but there had been,
especially of late, boys with whom it had been amusing to spend an hour
or two, and since his fight with the Dean's Ernest he had thought that
it would be rather interesting to make a further trial of strength with
whomsoever...
Girls were stupid, uninteresting, conceited and slow. He never, in all
his life, wanted to have anything to do with girls. But Charlotte Le
Page was another matter. She had, in the first place, become quite
a tradition in the Cole family. She was the daughter of a wealthy
landowner, who always spent his holidays in Rafiel. She and her very
beautiful, very superior mother had been seen on many occasions by the
Coles driving about the Glebeshire roads in a fine and languid manner,
a manner to which the Coles knew, very well, they themselves could never
attain. Then Mrs. Cole had called, and Mrs. Le Page and Charlotte had
come to tea at Cow Farm. This had been a year ago, when Jeremy had been
only seven; nevertheless, he had been present during the first part of
the ceremony, and Charlotte had struck him as entirely amazing.
He had simply gazed at her with his mouth open, forgetting all his good
manners. She was at this time nine or ten years of age but very small
and, as they say of the most modern kind of doll, “perfect in every
particular.” She had wonderful hair of a bright rippling gold; her
cheeks were pink and her eyes were blue, and she was so beautifully
dressed that you could not take in details but must simply surrender
yourself to a cloudy film of white or blue, with everything so perfectly
in its place that it seemed to the rough and ready Jeremy quite
unearthly. Of course she had to be very careful how she walked, when she
sat down, in what way she moved her hands and feet, and how she blew
her nose. It was wonderful to see her do these things, she did them so
naturally and yet always with a sense of an effort overcome for the
good of humanity. Her mother never ceased to empty praises at her feet,
appealing to visitors with: “Isn't Charlotte too lovely to-day?” or
“Really, Mrs. Cole, did you ever see anything like Charlotte's hair?”
or “Just a moment, Mrs. Cole, I'm sure you've never seen such hands and
feet on any human being before!”--and it was impossible to tell whether
or no Charlotte was moved by these praises, because she never said
anything at all. She was almost completely silent, and once, at the
tea-gathering in Cow Farm, when she suddenly said: “I'm tired, Mama,”
Jeremy nearly jumped from his chair, so astonished he was.
Jeremy had, during the year that intervened between that visit and this,
sometimes thought of Charlotte, and he had looked back upon her, not as
a little girl but as something strange, fantastic, wonderfully coloured,
whom it would be interesting to see again. He wondered why Mary and
Helen could not be like that, instead of running about and screaming and
becoming red in the face. He said once to Mary that she should imitate
Charlotte, and the scene that followed was terrible. Mary, from that
moment, hated Charlotte with an overpowering hatred.
Here this year they were again. Mrs. Le Page with her long neck,
her beautiful pearl ear-rings, her pale watery eyes and her tapering
fingers; Charlotte just as before, silent, beautiful and precious. There
was again a tea-party at Cow Farm, and on this occasion Jeremy was
asked to show Hamlet. But Hamlet behaved badly, trying to jump upon
Charlotte's white frock and soil her blue ribbons. Charlotte screamed
exactly as a doll screams when you press it in the stomach, and Hamlet
was so deeply astonished at the unexpected noise that he stopped his
bad behaviour, sat on his hind legs, and gazed up at her with an anxious
wondering expression. In spite of this unfortunate incident, the visit
went off well, and Mrs. Cole said that she had never seen anything so
lovely as Charlotte, and Mrs. Le Page said, “No, had anyone ever?” and
Charlotte never turned a hair. The final arrangement was that there
should be a picnic and soon, because “Mr. Le Page has to return to
Warwickshire to look after the Estate--so tiresome, but I've no doubt
it's all going to wrack and ruin without him.”
After the picnic had been arranged the Coles were, frankly, a little
uneasy. The family of Le Page was not the easiest in the world to
entertain, and the thought of a whole day with Mr. Le Page, who was a
very black, very silent gentleman and looked as though he were always
counting sums over in his head, was truly alarming. Moreover, in the
ordinary way, a picnic, which depended so entirely for its success on
the weather, was no great risk, because the Coles were indifferent
to rain, as all true Glebeshire people must be. But that the Le Pages
should be wet was quite another affair; the thought of a dripping Mrs.
Le Page was intolerable, but of a dripping Charlotte quite impossible;
moreover, the plain but excellent food--pasties, saffron cake, apples
and ginger beer--enjoyed by the Coles seemed quite too terrestrial for
the Le Pages. Mrs. Le Page and ginger beer! Charlotte and pasties!...
nevertheless, the invitation had been given and accepted. The Coles
could but anxiously inspect the sky...
II
There was another reason why Jeremy looked forward to the picnic with
impatience. A funny old lady, named Miss Henhouse, who lived near Cow
Farm in a little cottage all by herself, called sometimes upon the Coles
and told them stories about the people and the place, which made them
“sit up in their chairs.” She was an old lady with sharp eyes, a black
moustache and a double chin, wore an old shabby bonnet, grey mittens and
large shoes which banged after her as she walked. She leant on a cane
with a silver knob to it, and she wore a huge cameo brooch on her breast
with a miniature of herself inside it. She was what is called in novels
“a character.” There was no one who knew so much about Rafiel and its
neighbourhood; she had lived here for ever, her father had been a
friend of Wellington's and had known members of the local Press Gang
intimately. It was from her that Jeremy heard, in detail, the famous
story of the Scarlet Admiral. It was, of course, in any case, a
well-known story, and Jeremy had often heard it before, but Miss
Henhouse made it a new, a most vivid and realistic thing. She sat
forward in her chair, leaning on her silver-headed cane, her eyes
staring in front of her, her two chins bobbing, gazing, gazing as though
it all had happened before her very nose.
How one night outside Rafiel Cove there was a terrible storm, and on the
morning afterwards a wonderful, smiling calm, and how the village idiot,
out for his early morning stroll, saw a splendid ship riding beyond
the Cove, a ship of gold with sails of silk and jewelled masts. As he
watched, from the ship a boat pushed out, and then landed on the sand of
the Cove a wonderful company in cocked hats of gold lace, plush breeches
of red, and shoes with diamond buckles. The leader of them was a little
man with a vast cocked hat and a splendid sword all studded with jewels.
The fool, peering over the hedge, saw him give orders to his men, and
then walk, alone, up the little winding path, to the cliff-top. Straight
up the path he came, then right past the fool himself, standing at last
upon the turnip field of Farmer Ede, one of the greatest of the farmers
of those parts. And here he waited, staring out to sea, his arms
crossed, his eyes very fierce and very, very sad. Then a second time
from the golden ship a boat pushed out, cutting its way through the
glassy sea--and there landed on the beach a young man, very beautiful,
in a suit of blue and gold, and he, without a glance at the waiting
sailors, also slowly climbed the sea-path, and at last he too reached
Farmer Ede's turnip field. Then he and the Scarlet Admiral bowed to one
another, very beautifully, very sadly, and very, very fiercely. As the
sun rose high in the sky, as the cows passed clumsily down the lane
behind the field so the fool, with eyes staring and heart thumping, saw
these two fight a duel to the death. There could be no question, from
the first, how it would end. The beautiful young man in his fine blue
suit and his white cambric shirt had despair upon his face. He knew that
his hour had come. And the eyes of the Scarlet Admiral were ever sadder
and ever fiercer. Then, with a sudden move, a little turn of his agile
body, the Scarlet Admiral had the young man through the breast. The
young man threw up his arms and cried; and as the Scarlet Admiral
withdrew his sword, dripping with blood from his body, the young man
fell backwards over the cliff into the sea. Then the Scarlet Admiral
wiped his sword on the grass and, slowly and sadly, walked down the
cliff-path even as he had walked up. He joined his men, they found their
boat, pushed out to their ship, and even as they landed upon her she
had disappeared. A moment later the fool saw the parson of Rafiel
Church coming round the corner for his morning bathe, and two minutes
afterwards nothing human was to be seen save the naked limbs of the
parson and his little bundle of black clothes lying neatly upon a stone.
Then the fool ran all the way home to his mother who was a widow, and
sat and cried and cried for the beautiful young man who had been slain,
nor would he eat, nor taste the excellent Rafiel beer, and he pined
away, and at last he died, first telling this history to his mother,
who, like all widows, was a garulous woman and loved a good story...
Impossible to imagine with what life and fire old Miss Henhouse gave
this history. You could see with your own eyes the golden ship, the
diamond buckles of the Scarlet Admiral, the young man's sad eyes, the
parson's black clothes. When she had finished it seemed to Jeremy that
it must have been just so. She told him that now on a summer morning
or evening the Scarlet Admiral might still be seen, climbing the
cliff-path, wiping his sword upon the grass, gazing out with sad eyes to
sea. Jeremy swore to himself that on the next occasion of visiting the
Cove he would watch... he would watch-but to no single human being would
he speak anything of this.
This was the second reason why he had looked forward so eagerly to the
sea-picnic.
III
The day arrived, and it was marvellously fine--one of those days in
August when heat possesses the world and holds it tranced and still, but
has in the very strength of its possession some scent of the decay and
chill of autumn that is to follow so close upon its heels. There was
no breeze, no wind from the sea, only a sky utterly without cloud and a
world without sound.
Punctually at eleven of the morning the splendid Le Page equipage
arrived at Cow Farm. Splendid it was! A large wagonette, with a stout
supercilious fellow on the box who sniffed at the healthy odours of the
farm and stared haughtily at Mrs. Monk as though she should be ashamed
to be alive. The Coles had provided a small plump “jingle” with a small
plump pony, their regular conveyance; the pony was Bob, and he would not
go up hills unless persuaded with sugar, but Jeremy loved him and
would not have ridden behind any other steed in the whole world. How
contemptuously the big black horses of the wagonette gazed down their
nostrils at Bob, and how superbly Mrs. Le Page, sitting very upright
under her white sunshade, greeted Mrs. Cole!
“Dear Mrs. Cole. Such a hot morning, isn't it? Lovely, of course, but so
hot.”
“I'm afraid,” Jeremy heard his mother say, “that your carriage will
never get down the Rafiel Lane, Mrs. Le Page. We hoped you'd come in the
dog-cart. Plenty of room...”
Superb to witness the fashion in which Mrs. Le Page gazed at the
dog-cart.
“For all of us?... Dear Mrs. Cole, I scarcely think--And Charlotte's
frock...”
Then Jeremy turned his eyes to Charlotte. She sat under a miniature
sunshade of white silk and lace, a vision of loveliness. She was a
shimmer of white, a little white cloud that had settled for a moment
upon the seat of the carriage to allow the sun to dance upon it, to
caress it with fingers of fire, so to separate it from the rest of the
world for ever as something too precious to be touched. Jeremy had never
seen anything so lovely.
He blushed and scraped his boots the one against the other.
“And this is Jeremy?” said Mrs. Le Page as though she said: “And this is
where you keep your little pigs, Mr. Monk?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing.
“Charlotte, you know Jeremy. You must be friends.”
“Yes,” said Charlotte, without moving. Then Jeremy tumbled into the
stern gaze of Mr. Le Page who, arrayed as he was in a very smart suit
of the whitest flannels, looked with his black beard and fierce black
eyebrows like a pirate king disguised.
“How are you?” said Mr. Le Page in a deep bass voice.
“Very well, thank you,” said Jeremy.
To tell the truth, Mrs. Cole's heart sadly misgave her when she saw
the Le Page family all sitting up so new and so bright in their new and
bright carriage. She thought of the simple preparations that had been
made--the pasties, the saffron buns and the ginger beer; she looked
around her at the very plain but useful garments worn by her family, her
husband in faded grey flannel trousers and a cricketing shirt, Helen and
Mary in the simplest blue cotton, and Jeremy in his two-year-old sailor
suit. She had intended to bring their bathing things in a bundle,
but now she put them aside. It was obvious that the Le Pages had no
intention of bathing. She sighed and foresaw a difficult day ahead of
her.
It was evident that the Le Pages did not intend to come one step farther
into Cow Farm than was necessary.
“Dear Mrs. Cole, on a hot day--how can you endure the smells of a
farm... such a charming farm, too, with all its cows and pigs, but in
this weather... Charlotte darling, you don't feel the heat? No? Hold
your sun-shade a little more to the right, love. That's right. She
was not quite the thing last night, Mrs. Cole. I had some doubts about
bringing her, but I knew you'd all be so disappointed. She's looking
rather lovely to-day, don't you think? You must forgive a mother's
partiality... Oh, you're not bringing that little dog, are you?
Surely--”
Jeremy, who had from the first hated Mrs. Le Page, forgot his shyness
and brought out fiercely:
“Of course he's coming. Hamlet always goes everywhere with us.”
“Hamlet!” said Mr. Le Page in his deep bass voice.
“What a strange name for a dog!” said Mrs. Le Page in tones of vague
distrust.
At last it was settled that one member of the Cole party should ride
with the Le Pages, and Mary was selected. Poor Mary! inevitably chosen
when something unpleasant must be done. To-day it was especially hard
for her, because she entertained so implacable a hatred for the lovely
Charlotte and looked, it must be confessed, so plain and shabby by the
side of her. Indeed, to any observer with a heart it must have been
touching to see Mary driven away in that magnificent black carriage,
staring with agonised hostility in front of her through her large
spectacles, compelled to balance herself exactly between the magnificent
sunshade of Mrs. Le Page and the smaller but also magnificent sunshade
of the lovely Charlotte. Mrs. Cole, glancing in that direction, may
have felt with a pang that she would never be able to make her children
handsome and gay as she would like to do--but it was certainly a pang of
only a moment's duration.
She would not have exchanged her Mary for a wagon-load of Charlottes.
And Jeremy, bumping along in the jingle, also felt the contrast. Why
could not Mary wear her straw hat straight, and why must she have
elastic under her chin? Why did she look so cross and so stupid? Why did
she bother him so with her worries? Charlotte would never worry him. She
would just sit there, looking beautiful, with her golden hair, and blue
eyes and pink cheeks. Next week was to be Miss Jones's birthday, and
in preparation for this he had bought for her in Polchester a silver
thimble. He wondered whether he would not give Charlotte this thimble
instead of Miss Jones. He could give Miss Jones some old thing he would
find somewhere, or he would go out and pick for her some flowers. She
would be pleased with anything. He wondered what Charlotte would say
when he gave her the thimble. She would like it, of course. She would
smile. She would open her eyes and look at him. Fortunately he had the
thimble even now in his pocket. He had bought it when he was wearing
this same suit. Yes, he would give it to her. As he decided this he
looked at Miss Jones guiltily, but she was making such odd faces as she
squinted to escape from the sun that he did not feel ashamed.
They came to that steep hill just beyond Garth woods, and Bob, of
course, refused to move. The superb Le Page affair dashed past them,
shouted something at them, and disappeared over the brow of the hill.
The last thing to be seen of them were the fierce despairing eyes of the
imprisoned Mary. A strange sensation of relief instantly settled upon
the Coles. For a moment they were alone; they began slowly to walk up
the hill, dragging with them the reluctant Bob. About them was peace,
absolute and unstained. The hard glitter of the day shone upon the white
road, but behind them the wood was dark and cool, a green cloud against
the sky. Behind the steep hedges the harvesters were moving. In the air
a lark was singing, and along the ditch at the road side a tiny stream
tumbled. And beyond these sounds there was a vast tranquil silence.
The Coles moved up the hill very slowly, only Hamlet racing ahead to
find spots of shadow where he might lie down and pant. They would not
confess to themselves that this promised to be the happiest moment of
their day. They went bravely forward.
On the bend of the hill the Le Pages were waiting for them. What Mrs.
Cole had foreseen had in truth occurred. The Le Page carriage would not
go down the Rafiel Lane. No, it would, not... Nothing would induce it
to.
“James,” said Mrs. Le Page to her stout and disdainful attendant.
“Nothing, ma'am,” said James.
“Dear me, dear me,” said Mrs. Le Page. “Well then, we must walk,” said
the deep despairing voice of the Pirate King.
And walk they did.
That walk was, as Mrs. Cole afterwards said, “a pity,” because it
destroyed the Le Page tempers when the day was scarcely begun. Mr. Le
Page was, it was quickly descried, not intended for walking. Strong and
fierce though he seemed, heat instantly crumpled him up. The perfect
crease of his white trousers vanished, his collar was no longer
spotless, little beads of perspiration appeared almost at once on his
forehead, and his black beard dripped moisture. Mrs. Le Page, with her
skirts raised, walked as though she were passing through the Valley of
Destruction; every step was a risk and a danger, and the difficulty of
holding her skirts and her sunshade at the same time, and of seeing that
her shoes were not soiled and her hat not caught by an offending bough
gave her face an expression of desperate despair.
There was, unfortunately, one spot very deep down in the lane where the
ground was never dry even in the height of the hottest summer.
A little stream ran here across the path, and the ground on either side
was soft and sodden. Mrs. Le Page, struggling to avoid an overhanging
branch, stepped into the mud; one foot stuck there, and it needed Mr.
Cole's strong arm to pull her out of it.
“Charlotte! Charlotte!” she cried. “Don't let Charlotte step into that!
Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! I charge you--my child!” Charlotte was conveyed
across, but the damage was done. One of Mrs. Le Page's beautiful shoes
was thick with mud.
When, therefore, the party, climbing out of the Lane, came suddenly upon
the path leading down to the Cove, with the sea, like a blue cloud in
front of them, no one exclaimed at the view. It was a very beautiful
view--one of the finest of its kind in the United Kingdom, the high
rocks closing in the Cove and the green hills closing in the rocks. On
the hill to the right was the Rafiel Old Church, with its graveyard that
ran to the very edge of the cliff, and behind the Cove was a stream and
a green orchard and a little wood. The sand of the Cove was bright gold,
and the low rocks to either side of it were a dark red--the handsomest
place in the world, with the water so clear that you could see down, far
down, into green caverns laced with silver sand. Unfortunately, at the
moment when the Coles and their friends beheld it, it was blazing in the
sun; soon the sun would pass and, during the whole afternoon, half of it
at least would lie in shadow, but the Le Pages could not be expected to
think of that.
The basket was unloaded from the jingle and carried down to the beach
by Mr. Cole and Jim. Jeremy, finding himself at the side of the lovely
Charlotte, was convulsed with shyness, the more that he knew that the
unhappy Mary was listening with jealous ears. Charlotte, walking like
Agag, “delicately,” had a piteous expression in her eyes as though she
were being led to the torture.
Jeremy coughed and began: “We always come here every year. Don't you
like it?”
“Yes,” she said miserably.
“And we paddle and bathe. Do you like bathing?”
“Going into the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no! Mother says I mustn't, because it'll hurt my hair. Do you like
my hair?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing at so direct an invitation to compliment.
“Mother says I've got to be very careful of my hair because it's my
chief beauty.”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“I have a maid, Alice, and she brushes a whole hour every morning and a
whole hour every evening.”
“Don't you get very tired?” asked Jeremy. “I know I should.”
“Mother says if you have such beautiful hair you must take trouble with
it,” Charlotte gravely replied.
Her voice was so like the voice of a parrot that Jeremy's grandmother
had once possessed that it didn't seem as though a human being was
speaking at all. They were near the beach now and could see the blue
slipping in, turning into white bubbles, then slipping out again.
“Do you like my frock?” said Charlotte.
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“It was bought in London. All my clothes are bought in London.”
“Mary's and Helen's aren't,” said Jeremy with some faint idea of
protecting his sisters. “They're bought in Polchester.”
“Mother says,” said Charlotte, “that if you're not pretty it doesn't
matter where you buy your clothes.”
They arrived on the beach and stared about them. It became at once a
great question as to where Mrs. Le Page would sit. She could not sit on
the sand which looked damp, nor equally, of course, on a rock that was
spiky and hard. What to do with her? She stood in the middle of the
beach, still holding up her skirts, gazing desperately about her,
looking first at one spot and then at another.
“Oh, dear, the heat!” she exclaimed. “Is there no shade anywhere?
Perhaps in that farm-house over there...” It was probable enough that no
member of the Cole family would have minded banishing Mrs. Le Page
into the farmhouse, but it would have meant that the whole party must
accompany her. That was impossible. They had come for a picnic and a
picnic they would have.
Mrs. Cole watched, with growing agitation, the whole situation. She saw
from her husband's face that he was rapidly losing his temper, and she
had learnt, after many experiences, that when he lost his temper he was
capable of anything. That does not mean, of course, that he ever was
angry to the extent of swearing or striking out with his fists--no, he
simply grew sadder, and sadder, and sadder, and this melancholy had a
way of reducing to despair all the people with whom he happened to be at
the time.
“What does everyone say to our having lunch now?” cried Mrs. Cole
cheerfully. “It's after one, and I'm sure everyone's hungry.”
No one said anything, so preparations were begun. A minute piece of
shade was found for Mrs. Le Page, and here she sat on a flat piece of
rock with her skirts drawn close about her as though she were afraid
of rats or crabs. A tablecloth was laid on the sand and the provisions
spread out--pasties for everybody, egg-sandwiches, seed-cake, and
jam-puffs--and ginger beer. It looked a fine feast when it was all
there, and Mrs. Cole, as she gave the final touch to it by placing a
drinking glass containing two red rose-buds in the middle, felt proud of
her efforts and hoped that after all the affair might pass off bravely.
But alas, how easily the proudest plans fall to the ground.
“I hope, Alice, you haven't forgotten the salt!”
Instantly Mrs. Cole knew that she had forgotten it. She could see
herself standing there in Mrs. Monk's kitchen forgetting it. How could
she? And Mrs. Monk, how could SHE? It had never been forgotten before.
“Oh, no,” she said wildly. “Oh, no! I'm sure I can't have forgotten it.”
She plunged about, her red face all creased with anxiety, her hat on
one side, her hands searching everywhere, under the tablecloth, in the
basket, amongst the knives and forks.
“Jim, you haven't dropped anything?”
“No, mum. Beggin' your pardon, mum, the basket was closed, so to
speak--closed it was.”
No, she knew that she had forgotten it.
“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Le Page, I'm afraid--”
“My dear Mrs. Cole! What does it matter? Not in the least, I assure you.
In this heat it's impossible to feel hungry, isn't it? I assure you I
don't feel as though I could touch a thing. A little fruit, perhaps--an
apple or a peach--”
Fruit? Why hadn't Mrs. Cole brought fruit? She might so easily have
done so, and she had never thought about it. They themselves were rather
tired of fruit, and so--
“I'm afraid we've no fruit, but an egg-sandwich--”
“Eggs need salt, don't you think? Not that it matters in the very least,
but so that you shouldn't think me fussy. Really, dear Mrs. Cole, I
never felt less hungry in my life. Just a drop of milk and I'm perfectly
satisfied.”
“Jeremy shall run up to the farm for the milk. You don't mind, Jeremy
dear, do you? It's only a step. Just take this sixpence, dear, and say
we'll send the jug back this afternoon if they'll spare one.”
Jeremy did mind. He was enjoying his luncheon, and he was gazing at
Charlotte, and he was teasing Hamlet with scraps--he was very happy.
Nevertheless, he started off.
So soon as he left the sands the noise of the sea was shut off from him,
and he was climbing the little green path up which the Scarlet Admiral
had once stalked.
Suddenly he remembered--in his excitement about Charlotte he had
forgotten the Admiral. He stood for a moment, listening. The green
hedge shut off the noise of the sea--only above his head some birds were
twittering. He fancied that he heard footsteps, then that beyond the
hedge something was moving. It seemed to him that the birds were also
listening for something. “Well, it's the middle of the afternoon,
anyway.” He thought to himself, “He never comes there--only in the
morning or evening,” but he hurried forward after that, wishing that he
had called to Hamlet to accompany him. It was a pleasant climb to
the farm through the green orchard, and he found at the farm door an
agreeable woman who smiled at him when she gave him the milk. He had to
come down the hill carefully, lest the milk should be spilt. He walked
along very happily, humming to himself and thinking in a confused summer
afternoon kind of manner of Charlotte, Hamlet, Mrs. Le Page and himself.
“Shall I give her the thimble or shan't I? I could take her to the pools
where the little crabs are. She'd like them. I wonder whether we're
going to bathe. Mrs. Le Page will look funny bathing...” Then he was in
the green lane again, and at once his discomfort returned to him, and
he looked around his shoulder and into the hedges, and stopped once
and again to listen. There was no sound. The birds, it seemed, had all
fallen to sleep. The hedges, he thought, were closer about him. It was
very hot here, with no breeze and no comforting sound of the sea. “I
wonder whether he really does come,” he thought. “It must be horrid
to see him--coming quite close.” And the thought of the Fool also
frightened him. The Fool with his tongue out and his shaking legs, like
the idiot who lived near the Cathedral at home. At the thought of this
Jeremy suddenly took to his legs and ran, covering the top of his jug
with his hand; then, when he came out on to the strip of grass that
crossed the top of the beach, he stopped, suddenly ashamed of himself.
Scarlet Admirals! Scarlet Admirals! How could there be Scarlet Admirals
in a world that also contained so blazing a sun, so blue a sea, and the
gorgeous realities of the Le Page family. He arrived at the luncheon
party hot and proud and smiling, so cheerful and stolid and agreeable
that even Mrs. Le Page was compelled to say, “Really, Mrs. Cole, that's
a very nice little boy of yours. Come here, little Jeremy, and talk
to me!” How deeply he hated being called “little Jeremy” only Mary and
Helen knew. Their eyes flew to his face to see how he would take it. He
took it very well. He sat down beside Mrs. Le Page, who very gracefully
and languidly sipped at her glass of milk.
“How old are you, Jeremy dear?” she asked him.
“Eight,” he answered, wriggling.
“What a nice age! And one day you'll go to school?”
“In September.”
“And what will you be when you're a man?”
“Oh, I don't know. I'll be a soldier, perhaps.”
“Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't like to be a soldier and kill people.”
“Yes, I would. There's lots of people I'd like to kill.”
Mrs. Le Page drew her skirts back a little.
“How horrible! I'm sure your mother wouldn't like to hear that.”
But Mr. Cole had caught the last words of the dialogue and interrupted
with:
“But what could be finer, Mrs. Le Page, than the defence of one's
country? Would you have our young lads grow up faint-hearted and fail
their Motherland when she calls? What can be finer, I say, than to die
for Queen and country? Would not every mother have her son shed his
blood for liberty and freedom?... No, Jeremy, not another. You've had
quite enough. It would indeed be a disheartening sight if we elders
were to watch our sons and grandchildren turning their swords into
ploughshares--”
He was interrupted by a shrill cry from Mrs. Le Page:
“Charlotte, darling, do hold your sunshade up. All the left side of your
face is exposed. That's better, dear. I beg your pardon, Mr. Cole.”
But Mr. Cole was offended.
“I hope no son of mine will ever show himself a faint heart,” he
concluded severely.
The luncheon, in fact, had been a most dismal failure. The Coles could
fling their minds back to luncheons on this same beach that had been
simply riotous successes. What fun they had had! What games! What
bathes? Now the very sight of Mr. Le Page's black beard was enough. Even
Jeremy felt that things were wrong. Then he looked at Charlotte and was
satisfied. There she sat, straight and stiff, her hands on her lap, her
hair falling in lovely golden ripples down her back, her gaze fixed on
distance. Oh! she was beautiful! He would do whatever she told him; he
would give her Miss Noah and the apple tree; he would--A sound disturbed
his devotions. He turned. Both Mr. and Mrs. Le Page were fast asleep.
IV
“Children,” whispered Mrs. Cole, “very quietly now, so that you don't
disturb anyone, run off to the farther beach and play. Helen, you'll see
that everything is all right, won't you?”
It was only just in time that Jeremy succeeded in strangling Hamlet's
bark into a snort, and even then they all looked round for a moment
at the sleepers in the greatest anxiety. But no, they had not been
disturbed. If only Mr. Le Page could have known what he resembled
lying there with his mouth open! But he did not know. He was doubtless
dreaming of his property.
The children crept away. Charlotte and Jeremy together. Jeremy's heart
beat thickly. At last he had the lovely creature in his charge. It was
true that he did not quite know what he was going to do with her, and
that even now, in the height of his admiration, he did wish that she
would not walk as though she were treading on red-hot ploughshares,
and that she could talk a little instead of giving little shivers of
apprehension at every step.
“I must say,” he thought to himself, “she's rather silly in some ways.
Perhaps it wouldn't be fun to see her always.”
They turned the corner round a projecting finger of rock, and a new
little beach, white and gleaming, lay in front of them.
“Well,” said Jeremy, “here we are. What shall we play?”
There was dead silence.
“We might play pirates,” he continued. “I'll be the pirate, and Mary can
sit on that rock until the water comes round her, and Charlotte shall
hide in that cave--”
There was still silence. Looking about him, he discovered from his
sisters' countenances that they were resolved to lend no kind of
assistance, and he then from that deduced the simple fact that his
sisters hated Charlotte and were not going to make it pleasant for her
in any way if they could help it. Oh! it was a miserable picnic! The
worst that he'd ever had.
“It's too hot to play,” said Helen loftily. “I'm going to sit down over
there.”
“So am I,” said Mary.
They moved away, their heads in the air and their legs ridiculously
stiff.
Jeremy gazed at Charlotte in distress. It was very wicked of his sisters
to go off like that, but it was also very silly of Charlotte to stand
there so helplessly. He was beginning to think that perhaps he would
give the thimble to Miss Jones after all.
“Would you like to go and see the pool where the little crabs are?” he
asked.
“I don't know,” she answered, her upper lip trembling as though she were
going to cry. “I want to go home with Mother.”
“You can't go home,” he said firmly, “and you can't see your mother,
because she's asleep.”
“I've made my shoes dirty,” she said, looking down at her feet, “and I'm
so tired of holding my sunshade.”
“I should shut it up,” Jeremy said without any hesitation. “I think it's
a silly thing. I'm glad I'm not a girl. Do you have to take it with you
everywhere?”
“Not if it's raining. Then I have an umbrella.”
“I think you'd better come and see the crabs,” he settled. “They're only
just over there.”
She moved along with him reluctantly, looking back continually to where
her mother ought to be.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Jeremy asked politely.
“No,” she said, without any hesitation, “I want to go home.”
“She's as selfish as anything,” he thought to himself. “We're giving the
party, and she ought to have said 'Yes' even if she wasn't.”
“Do you like my dog?” he asked, with another effort at light
conversation.
“No,” she answered, with a little shiver. “He's ugly.”
“He isn't ugly,” Jeremy returned indignantly. “He isn't perhaps the
very best breed, but Uncle Samuel says that that doesn't matter if he's
clever. He's better than any other dog. I love him more than anybody. He
isn't ugly!”
“He is,” cried Charlotte with a kind of wail. “Oh! I want to go home.”
“Well, you can't go home,” he answered her fiercely. “So you needn't
think about it.”
They came to the little pools, three of them, now clear as crystal, blue
on their surface, with green depths and red shelving rock.
“Now you sit there,” he said cheerfully. “No one will touch you. The
crabs won't get at you.”
He looked about him and noticed with surprise where he was. He was
sitting on the farther corner of the very beach where the Scarlet
Admiral had landed with his men. It was out there beyond that bend
of rock that the wonderful ship had rode, with its gold and silk, its
jewelled masts and its glittering board. Directly opposite to him
was the little green path that led up the hill, and above it the very
field--Farmer Ede's field!
For a long, long time they sat there in silence. He forgot Charlotte
in his interest over his discovery, staring about him and watching how
quickly the August afternoon was losing its heat and colour, so that
already a little cold autumnal wind was playing about the sand, the
colours were being drawn from the sky, and a grey web was slowly pulled
across the sea.
“Now,” he said cheerfully at last, to Charlotte, “I'll look for the
crabs.”
“I hate crabs,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“You can't go home,” he answered furiously. “What's the good of saying
that over and over again? You aren't going yet, so it's no use saying
you are.”
“You're a horrid little boy,” she brought out with a kind of inanimate
sob.
He did not reply to that; he was still trying to behave like a
gentleman. How could he ever have liked her? Why, her hair was not so
much after all. What was hair when you come to think of it? Mary got
on quite well with hers, ugly though it was. She was stupid, stupid,
stupid! She was like someone dead. As he searched for the crabs that
weren't there he felt his temper growing. Soon he would lead her back to
her mother and leave her there and never see her again.
But this was not the climax of the afternoon.
When he looked up from gazing into the pool the whole world seemed to
have changed. He was still dazzled perhaps by the reflection of the
water in his eyes, and yet it was not altogether that. It was not
altogether because the day was slipping from afternoon into evening.
The lazy ripple of the water as it slutched up the sand and then broke,
the shadows that were creeping farther and farther from rock to rock,
the green light that pushed up from the horizon into the faint blue, the
grey web of the sea, the thick gathering of the hills as they crept
more closely about the little darkening beach... it was none of these
things.
He began hurriedly to tell Charlotte about the Scarlet Admiral. Even as
he told her he was himself caught into the excitement of the narration.
He forgot her; he did not see her white cheeks, her mouth open with
terror, an expression new to her, that her face had never known before,
stealing into her eyes. He told her how the Fool had seen the ship,
how the Admiral had landed, then left his men on the beach, how he had
climbed the little green path, how the young man had followed him, how
they had fought, how the young man had fallen. What was that? Jeremy
jumped from his rock. “I say, did you hear anything?”
And that was enough for Charlotte. With one scream, a scream such as she
had never uttered in her life before, sue turned, and then, running
as indeed she had never run before, she stumbled, half fell, stumbled,
finally ran as though the whole world of her ghosts was behind her. Her
screams were so piercing that they may well have startled, the villagers
of Rafiel.
Jeremy followed her, but his mind was not with her. Was he going to see
something? What was it? Who was it?
Then the awful catastrophe that finished the afternoon occurred. Turning
the corner of the rock, Charlotte missed her footing and fell straight
into a pool. Jeremy, Mary and Helen were upon her almost as she fell.
They dragged her out, but alas! what a sight was there! Instead of the
beautiful and magnificent Charlotte there was a bedraggled and dirty
little girl.
But also, instead of an inanimate and lifeless doll, there was at last a
human being, a terrified soul.
The scene that followed passes all power of description. Mrs. Le Page
wailed like a lost spirit; Mr. Le Page was so rude to Mr. Cole that it
might confidently be said that those two gentlemen would never speak
to one another again. Mrs. Cole, dismayed though she was, had some
fatalistic consolation that she had known from the first that the picnic
would be a most dreadful failure and that the worst had occurred; there
was no more to come.
Everyone was too deeply occupied to scold Jeremy. They all moved up to
the farm, Charlotte behaving most strangely, even striking her mother
and crying: “Let me go! Let me go! I don't want to be clean! I'm
frightened! I'm frightened!”
Jeremy hung behind the others. At the bottom of the little lane he stood
and waited. Was there a figure coming up through the dusk? Did someone
pass him? Why did he suddenly feel no longer afraid, but only reassured
and with the strangest certainty that the lane, the beach, the field
belonged to him now? He would come there and live when he grew up. He
would come often. Had the Scarlet Admiral passed him? If not the Scarlet
Admiral, then the other.
The sea picnic had, after all, been not quite a misfortune.
Jeremy had been made free of the land.
And Charlotte? Charlotte had been woken up, and never would go to sleep
again.