I
The last day! Jeremy, suddenly waking, realised this with a confusion of
feeling as though he were sentenced to the dentist's, but, oddly enough,
looked forward to his visit. Going to school, one had, of course, long
ago perceived, was a mixed business; but the balance was now greatly
to the good. It was a step in the right direction towards liberty and
freedom. Thank Heaven!
No one in the family was likely to make a fuss about his departure,
unless it were possibly Mary, and she had, of late, kept very much to
herself and worried him scarcely at all. Indeed, he felt guilty about
Mary. He was fond of her, really... Funny kid... If only she didn't make
fusses!
Yes, it was unlike his family to make fusses. He realised that very
plainly to-day. Everyone went about his or her daily business with no
implication whatever that something extraordinary was going to happen
tomorrow. Perhaps they were all secretly relieved that he was off. He
had been, he knew, something of a failure during these last months; one
trouble after another; the scandal of his visit to the Fair as the grand
finale. He felt that there was, in some way, some injustice in all this.
He had no desire to be bad or rebellious--on the contrary he wished to
do all that his elders ordered him--but he could not prevent the rising
of his own individuality, which showed him quite clearly whether he
should do a thing or no. It was as though something inside him pushed
him... whereas they, all of them, only checked him.
He loved his mother best, and he was secretly disappointed to find
how ordinary an affair his departure was to her. He realised, with a
perception that was beyond his years, that the infant Barbara was now
rapidly occupying the position, as centre of the family, that he
had held. Barbara, everyone declared, was a charming baby--the house
revolved, to some extent, round Barbara. But, then again, this isolation
was entirely his own fault. During the summer holidays he had gone his
own way, and had wanted no one but Hamlet as his companion. He had no
right to complain.
After breakfast he did not know quite what to do, and it was obvious,
also, that no one knew quite what to do with him.
Mrs. Cole said: “Jeremy, dear, Ponting has never sent that letter paper
and envelopes that he promised, and Father must have them to-day. Would
you go down and bring them back with you? Father will write a note.”
No one seemed to realise what an abysmal change from earlier conditions
this casual sentence marked. That he should go to Footing's, which was
on the farther side of the town, alone and unattended, seemed to no one
peculiar; and yet, only six months ago, a walk without Miss Jones was
undreamt of; and, before her, no more than nine months back, there was
the Jampot! He was delighted to go; but, of course, he did not show his
delight.
All he said was: “Yes, Mother.”
He was in his new clothes: stiff black jacket, black knickerbockers,
black stockings, black boots. No more navy suits with white braid and
whistles! Perhaps he would see the Dean's Ernest. It was his most urgent
desire!
He started off, accompanied by a barking, bounding Hamlet, who showed
no perception of the calamity that threatened to tumble upon him. For
Jeremy, leaving Hamlet was a dreadful affair. In three months a dog
can change more swiftly than a human being, and Hamlet, although not a
supremely greedy dog, had shown of late increasing signs of a love of
good food, and a regrettable tendency to fawn upon the giver of the
same, even when it was Aunt Amy. Jeremy had checked this tendency, and
had issued punishments when necessary, and Hamlet had accepted the same
without a murmur. So long as Jeremy was there Hamlet's character was
secure; but now, during this long absence, anything might happen. There
was no one to whom Jeremy might leave him; no one who had the slightest
idea what a dog should do and what he should not.
These melancholy thoughts filled Jeremy's mind when he started upon his
walk, but soon he was absorbed by his surroundings. He realised even
more drastically than the facts warranted that he was making his
farewell to the town.
He was not making his final farewell; he would not make that until his
death, and, perhaps, not then; but he was making farewell to some of his
sense of his wonder in it, only not, thank God, to the sense of wonder
itself!
As he went he met the daily figures of all his walks, and he could not
help but speculate on their realisation of the great change that
was coming to him. It was absurd to suppose that they were saying to
themselves: “Ah, there's young Jeremy Cole! He's off to school tomorrow.
I wonder what he feels about it!...” No, that was incredible, and yet
they must realise something of the adventure.
He, on his part, stared at them with a new interest. They had before
shared in the inevitable background without individuality. But now
that he was leaving them, and they would grow, as it were, without his
permission, he was forced to grant them independence. At the bottom
of Orange Street he met Mr. Dawson, the Cathedral Organist; he was a
little, plump man, in a very neat grey suit, a shiny top hat, and very
small spats. He was always dressed in the same fashion, and carried a
black music-case under his arm. He had an eternal interest for Jeremy
because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: “Poor little Mr.
Dawson!” Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce
and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but
“poor” was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a
little shudder of drama run down his spine.
Outside Poole's bookshop there was, of course, Mr. Mockridge. Mr.
Mockridge was the poorest of the Canons; so poor, that it had become
a proverb in the place: “As poor as Mr. Mockridge”; and also another
proverb, I am afraid, from the same source: “As dirty as Mr. Mockridge.”
He was a very long, thin man, with a big, pointing nose, coloured red,
not from indigestion, and most certainly not from drink, but simply,
I think, because the wind caught it. His passion was for books, and he
might be seen every afternoon, between three and four o'clock, bending
over Poole's 2d. box, a dirty handkerchief flying out of the tail of
his long, black coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards,
under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so
commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded
by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange.
“He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same,
and I shall be--”
Then, on the outskirts of the Market Place, Jeremy paused and looked
about him. There was all the usual business of the place--the wooden
trestles with the flowerpots, the apple-woman under her umbrella, the
empty cattle-pens, where the cows and sheep stood on market days, and
behind them the dark, vaulted arches of the actual market, now empty and
deserted. Bathed in sunlight it lay very quiet and still; some pigeons
pecking at grain, a dog or two, and children playing round the empty
cattle-stalls. From the hill above the square the Cathedral boomed the
hour, and all the pigeons rose in a flight, hovered, then slowly settled
again.
Jeremy sighed, and, with a strange pain at his heart that he could not
analyse, moved up the hill. The High Street is, of course, the West End
of Polchester, and in the morning, between ten and one, every lady in
the town may be seen at her shopping. It had always been the ambition
of the Cole children to be taken for their walk up High Street in the
morning; but it was an ambition very rarely gratified, because they
stopped so often and were always in everyone's way. And here was Jeremy,
at this gay hour, a trolling up the High Street all by himself he lifted
his head, pushed out his chest, and looked the world in the face. He
might meet the Dean's Ernest at any moment. The first people whom he saw
were the Misses Cragg--always known, of course, as “The Cragg girls.”
They were, perhaps, Polchester's most constant and obvious feature.
There were four of them, all as yet unmarried, all with brown-red faces
and hard straw hats, short skirts, and tremendous voices; forerunners,
in fact, of a type now almost universal. They played croquet and
lawn-tennis, were prominent members of the Archery Club, and hunted when
their fathers would let them. They were terrible Dianas to Jeremy. He
had met one of them once at a Children's Dance, and she had whirled him
around until, with a terrified scream, he broke, howling, from her arms,
and hid himself in the large bosom of the Jampot. He was always ashamed
of this memory, and he could never see them without blushing; but,
to-day, he seemed less afraid of them, and actually, when he passed
them, touched his hat and looked them in the face. They all smiled and
nodded to him, and when they had gone he was so deeply astonished at
this adventure that he had to stop and consider himself. If the Craggs
were nothing to him, what might he not face?
“Come here, Hamlet. How dare you?” he ordered in so sharp and military
a voice that Hamlet, who had merely cast a most innocent glance at a
disdainful and conceited white poodle, looked up at his master with
surprise.
Nevertheless, his new-found hardihood received, in the very midst of his
self-congratulation, its severest test. He stumbled into the very path
of the Dean's wife.
Mrs. Dean could never have seemed to anyone a large woman, but to Jeremy
she had always been a terror. She was thick and hard, like a wall, and
wore the kind of silken clothes, that rustled--like the whispering of a
whole meeting of frightened clergymen's wives--as she moved. She had a
hard, condemnatory voice, and she spoke as though she were addressing an
assembly; but, worst of all, she had black, beetling eyebrows, and these
frightened Jeremy into fits. He did not, of course, know that the poor
lady suffered continually from nervous headaches. He suddenly heard that
voice in his ear: “Good morning, Jeremy, and where are you off to so
early?” Mrs. Dean was never so awful as when she was jolly, and Jeremy,
caught up by the eyebrows as though they had been hooks and hung thus in
mid-air for all the street to laugh at, nearly lost his command of his
natural tongue. He found his voice just in time:
“To Ponting's,” he said.
“All alone? Ah, no, I see you have your little dog. Nice little dog. And
how's your mother?”
“She's quite well, thank you.”
“That's right--that's right. We haven't seen you lately. You must come
up to tea with your sisters. I'm afraid you won't find Ernest, he's gone
back to school--but I dare say you're not too big to play with little
girls.”
Jeremy felt some triumph at his heart.
“I'm going to school to-morrow,” he said. But if he expected Mrs. Dean
to be pitiful at this statement he was greatly mistaken.
“Are you, indeed? Such a pity you couldn't have gone with Ernest--but
he'd be senior to you, of course... Good-bye. Good-bye. Give my love to
your mother,” and she pounded her way along.
“She's a beastly woman anyway” thought Jeremy. “I wish I'd found
something to say to her. I wonder whether she knows I knocked Ernest
down in the summer and trod on him?”
But the sight of the High Street soon restored his equanimity. On other
occasions he had been pushed through it, either by the Jampot or
Miss Jones, so rapidly that he could gather only the most fleeting
impressions. To-day he could linger and linger; he did. The two nicest
shops were Mannings' the hairdressers and Ponting's the book-shop, but
Rose the grocer's, and Coulter's the confectioner's were very good. Mr.
Manning was an artist. He did not simply put a simpering bust with
an elaborate head of hair in his window and leave it at that--he did,
indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a
radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world
of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and
powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in
the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the
Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the
best established, most sacred and serious bookseller in the county. In
the days when the new “Waverley” was the sensation of the moment Mr.
Ponting, grandfather of the present Mr. Ponting, had been in quite
constant correspondence with Mr. Southey, and Mr. Coleridge, and had
once, when on a visit to London, spoken to the great Lord Byron himself.
This tradition of aristocracy remained, and the present Mr. Pouting
always advised the Bishop what to read and was consulted by Mrs. Lamb,
our only authoress, on questions of publishers and editions and such
technical points. For all this Jeremy, at his present stage of interest,
would have cared nothing even had he known it, but what he did care for
were the rows of calf-bound books with little ridges of gold, that made
a fine wall across the window with an old print of the Cathedral and the
Close in the middle of them. Inside Pontings there was a hush as of the
study and the church combined. It was a rather dark shop with rows
and rows of books disappearing into the ceiling, and one grave and
unnaturally old young man behind the counter. Jeremy did not know what
he should do about Hamlet, so he brought him inside, only to discover
to his horror that the fiercest of all the Canons, Canon Waterbury, held
the floor of the shop. Canon Waterbury had a black beard and a biting
tongue. He had once warned Jeremy off the Cathedral grass in a voice of
thunder, and Jeremy had never forgotten it. He glared now and pulled
his beard, but Hamlet fortunately behaved well, and the old young man
discovered Jeremy's notepaper within a very short period.
Then suddenly the Canon spoke.
“Dogs should not be inside shops,” He said, as though he were condemning
someone to death.
“I know,” said Jeremy frankly. “I wanted to tie him up to something and
there was nothing to tie him up to.”
“What did you bring him out for at all?” said the Canon.
“Because he's got to have exercise,” said Jeremy, discovering, to his
own delighted surprise, that he was not frightened in the least.
“Oh, has he? I don't know what people keep dogs for.”
And then he stamped out of the shop.
Jeremy regarded this in the light of a victory and marched away, his
head more in the air than ever. He should now have hurried home. The
midday chimes had rung out and Jeremy's duties were performed. But he
lingered, listening to the last notes of the chimes, hearing the cries
of the Cathedral choir-boys as they moved across the green to the
choir-school, watching all the people hurry up and down the street. Ah,
there was the Castle carriage! Perhaps the old Countess was inside it.
He had only seen her once, at some service in the Cathedral to which his
mother had taken him, but she had made a great impression on him with
her snow-white hair. He had heard people speak of her as “a wicked
old woman.” Perhaps she was inside the carriage... but he only saw
the Castle coachman and footman and the coronet on the door. It rolled
slowly up the hill with its fine air of commanding the whole world--then
it disappeared around the corner of the Close.
Jeremy decided then that he would go home across the green and down
Orchard Lane. He had a wish to enter the Cathedral for a moment; such
a visit would, after all, complete the round of his experiences. He had
never entered the Cathedral alone, and now, as he saw it facing him, so
vast and majestic and quiet, across the sun-drenched green, he felt
a sudden fear and awe. He found a ring in a stone near the west end
through which he might fasten Hamlet's lead, then, slowly pushing back
the heavy door, he passed inside. The Cathedral was utterly quiet. The
vast nave, stained with reflections of purple and green and ruby, was
vague and unsubstantial, all the little wooden chairs huddled together
to the right and left, leaving a great path that swept up to the
High Altar under shafts of light that fell like searchlights from the
windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the
great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw
the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and
silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far
distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed
him, wiping the little chairs with a duster.
It seemed to Jeremy that he had never been in the Cathedral before; he
stood there, breathless, as though in a moment something must inevitably
happen. Although he did not think of it, the moment was one of a
sequence that had come to him during the year--his entry into the
theatre with his uncle, his first conversation with the sea-captain,
the hour when his mother had been so ill, the evening on the beach when
Charlotte had been frightened, the time when Hamlet had been lost and
he had slept with him under a tree. All these moments had been something
more than merely themselves, had had something behind them or inside
them for which simply they stood as words stand for pictures. He
analysed, of course, nothing, being a perfectly healthy small boy, but
if afterwards he looked back these were the moments that he saw as one
sees stations on a journey. One day he would know for what they stood.
He simply now waited there as though he expected something to happen.
Thoughts slipped through his mind quite casually, whether Hamlet were
behaving well outside, what the old lady did when she was tired of
dusting, who the stone figure lying near him might be, a figure very
fine with his ruff and his peaked beard, his arms folded, his toes
pointing upwards, whether the body were inside the stone like a mummy,
or underneath the ground some-where; how strangely different the nave
looked now from its Sunday show, and what fun it would be to run races
all the way down and see who could reach the golden angels over the
reredos first; he felt no reverence, and yet a deep reverence, no fear,
but, nevertheless, awe; he was warm and happy and comfortable, and yet
suddenly, giving a little shudder, he slipped out into the sunlight,
released Hamlet and started for home.
II
Back again in the bosom of his family he felt that they were beginning
to be aware of his departure.
“What shall we do this evening, Jeremy--your last evening?” said his
mother.
Everyone looked at him.
“Oh, I don't know,” he said uncomfortably. “Just as usual, I suppose.”
“You're making him feel uncomfortable,” said Aunt Amy, who loved to
explain quite obvious things. “You want it to be just an ordinary
evening, dear, don't you?”
“Oh, I don't know,” he said again, hating his aunt.
“I don't think that quite the way to speak to your aunt, my son,” said
his father. “We only inquire out of kindness, thinking to please you.
No, Mary, no more. Friday--one helping--”
“Jeremy might have another as it's his last day, I suggest,” said Aunt
Amy, who was determined to be pleasant.
“I don't want any, thank you,” said Jeremy, although it was treacle
pudding, which he loved.
“Well, I think,” said Mrs. Cole, “that we'll have high tea at half-past
seven, and the children shall stay up afterwards and we'll have
'Midshipman Easy.'”
Jeremy loved his mother intensely at that moment. How did she know so
exactly what was right? She made so little disturbance, was so quiet
and was never angry, and yet she was always right when the others were
always wrong. She knew that above all things he loved high tea--fish pie
and boiled eggs and tea and jam and cake--a horrible meal that his later
judgment would utterly condemn, but nevertheless something so cosy and
so comfortable that no later meal would ever be able to rival it in
those qualities.
“Oh, that will be lovely!” he said, his face shining all over.
Nevertheless, as the afternoon advanced a strange new sense of
insecurity, unhappiness and forlornness crept increasingly upon him. He
realised that he had that morning said good-bye to the town, and now he
felt as though he had, in some way, hurt or insulted it. And, all the
afternoon, he was saying farewell to the house. He did not wander from
room to room, but rather sat up in the schoolroom pretending to mend a
fishing rod which Mr. Monk had given him that summer. He did not really
care about the rod--he was not even thinking of it. He heard all the
sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that
one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there
was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs,
there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the
schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch
which she had put out on the table to mark the time of Mary's sewing by.
There were all the regular sounds of the house. The distant closing of
doors, deep down in the heart of the house someone was using a sewing
machine somewhere, voices came up out of the void and faded again,
someone whistled, someone sang. His gloom increased. He was exchanging a
world he knew for a world that he did not know, and he could not escape
the feeling that he was, in some way, insulting this world that he was
leaving. He bothered himself all the afternoon with unnecessary stupid
affairs to cover his deep discomfort. He whistled carelessly and out of
tune, he poked the fire and walked about. He was increasingly aware
of Hamlet and Mary. Mary was determined so hard that she would show no
emotion at all that she was a painful sight to witness. She scarcely
spoke to him, and only answered in monosyllables if he asked her
something.
And Hamlet had suddenly discovered that the atmosphere of the house was
unusual. He had expected, in the first place, to be taken for a walk
that afternoon; then his master was very busy doing nothing, which was
most unusual. Then at tea time his worst suspicions were confirmed.
Jeremy suddenly made a fuss of him, pouring his tea into his saucer,
giving him a piece of bread and jam and an extra lump of sugar. Hamlet
drank his tea and ate his bread and jam thoughtfully. They were very
nice, but what was the matter?
He looked up through his hair and discovered that his master's eyes were
restless and unhappy, and that he was thinking of things that disturbed
him. He went away to the fire and, sitting on his haunches, gazing in
his metaphysical way at the flames, considered the matter. Jeremy came
over to him and, drawing him back to him, laid his head upon his knee
and so held him. Hamlet did not move, save occasionally to sigh, and,
once or twice, to snap in a sudden way that he had at an imaginary fly.
He thought that in all probability his master had been punished for
something, and in this he was deeply sympathetic, never seeing why his
master need be punished for anything and resenting the stupidity of
human beings with their eternal desire to be, in some way or other,
asserting their authority.
Gradually, in front of the hot fire, both boy and dog fell asleep.
Jeremy's dreams were confused, bewildered, distressing; he was
struggling to find something, was always climbing higher and higher to
discover it, only to be told that, in the end, he was in the place where
he had begun.
Hamlet's dream was of an enormous succulent bone that was pulled away
from him so soon as he snapped at it. They both awoke with a start to
find that it was time for high tea.
III
Throughout the evening Jeremy was more and more lonely. He had never
before felt so deep an affection for the family and never been so
utterly unable to express it. It was as though, during the whole year
he had, by his own will, been slipping away from them, and now they had
gone too far for him to call them back.
He sat on the floor at his mother's feet whilst she read “Midshipman
Easy.” It was all so cosy, the room was so comfortable with all
the familiar pictures and photographs and books, and Helen and Mary
diligently sewing, and Hamlet stretched out in front of the fire, his
nose on his paws--six months ago Jeremy would have felt utterly and
absolutely part of it. Now he was outside it and, at the same time, was
inside nothing else. It might be that in a week's time he would be so
familiar with his new world that he would be as happy as a cricket--he
did not know. He only knew that at this moment he would have given all
that he had to fling his arms round his mother's neck, to be hugged and
kissed and nursed by her, and that, at the same time, he would have died
rather than do such a thing.
The evening came to an end. The girls got up and said good-night. His
mother kissed him, holding him perhaps for a moment longer than usual,
but at that same instant she said:
“Oh, I must remind Ella about the half-past seven breakfast again, she
always has to be told everything twice.”
The girls went on ahead, Jeremy and Hamlet following close behind.
Jeremy found himself alone in the schoolroom, where the fire was very
low, giving only little spurts and flashes that ran like golden snakes
suddenly through the darkness.
Moved by an impulse, he went to the toy-cupboard and, opening it, put
his hand quite by chance on the toy village. The toy village! He laid
it out and spread it on the floor. He could not see, but he knew every
piece by heart, and he laid it all out, the church and the flower
garden, and the Noah's house and the village street, the animals and
the Noahs. What centuries ago that birthday was, what worlds away! How
excited he had been, and now--!
With a sudden impatient gesture he tumbled the pieces over on to their
sides, then quickly, as though he were afraid of the dark, went into his
bedroom and began to undress.
IV
In the morning events moved too quickly for thought. He had still the
same lonely pain at his heart, but now he simply was not given time to
consider it.
His father called him into the study. He gave him ten shillings and a
new prayer-book. Jeremy knew that he was trying to come close to him and
be a friend of a new kind to him.
He heard in a distance such words as: “... a new world, full of trial
and temptation. God sees us... Work at your Latin... cricket and
football... prayers every night...” But he could feel no emotion nothing
but terror lest some sudden stupid emotional scene should occur. Nothing
occurred. He kissed his father and went.
Then, quite suddenly, just as he came down in his hat and coat and heard
that the cab was there, his restraint melted; he was free and impulsive
and natural. He kissed Mary, telling her:
“You may have my toy village. I'd like you to--Yes, rather. I mean it.”
He kissed Helen and Barbara, and then held to his mother, not caring
whether all the world was there to see. The old life was going with him!
He was not leaving it after all. The town and the house, and all the
things to which he had thought that he had said good-bye, were going
with him.
Hamlet! He found the dog struggling to get into the cab. That was more
than he could stand. He was not going to make a fool of himself, but the
only way to be secure was to get into the cab and hide there. He caught
Hamlet's head, gave it a kiss, then jumped in, catching a last glimpse
of the family grouped at the door, the servants at the window, the old
garden with the dead leaves gathered upon it, Hamlet held, struggling,
in Mary's arms.
He choked down his sobs, felt the ten shillings in his pocket, then with
a mighty resolve, to which it seemed that the labours of Hercules were
as nothing, leaned out and waved his hand.
The cab rolled off.
Hamlet lay down upon the mat just inside the hall-door. Someone tried to
pull him away. He growled, showing his teeth. His master had gone out.
He would wait for his return--and no one should move him.