"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!



CHAPTER VI. FAMILY PRIDE

I

I am afraid that too great a part of this book is about old maids, but it is hard for anyone who knows only the thriving bustling world of today to realise how largely we children were hemmed in and surrounded by a proper phalanx of elderly single ladies and clergymen. I don't believe that we were any the worse for that, and to such heroines as Miss Jane Maple, Miss Mary Trefusis and old Miss Jessamin Trenchard, I here publicly acknowledge deep and lasting debt-but it did make our life a little monotonous, a little unadventurous, a little circumscribed -and because T am determined to give the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the year of Jeremy's life that I am describing, this book will also, I am afraid, be a little circumscribed, a little unadventurous.

The elderly lady who most thoroughly circumscribed Jeremy was, of course—putting Miss Jones, who was a governess and therefore did not count, aside—Aunt Amy.

Now Aunt Amy was probably the most conceited woman in Polchester. There is of course ordinary human conceit, of which every living being has his or her share. I am not speaking of that; Miss Amy Trefusis might be said to be fanatically conceited.

Although she was now a really plain elderly woman it is possible that when she was a little girl she was pretty. In any case, it is certain that she was spoiled when she was a little girl, and because she was delicate and selfish she received a good deal more attention and obedience from weak and vacillating elders than she deserved.

After her growing up she had a year or two of moderate looks and she received, during this period, several proposals; these she refused because they were not good enough and something better must be coming very shortly, but what really came very shortly was middle-age, and it came of course entirely unperceived by the lady. She dressed and behaved as though she were still twenty, although her brother Samuel tried to laugh her out of such absurdities. But no sister ever pays attention to a brother on such matters, and Aunt Amy wore coloured ribbons and went to balls and made eyes behind her fan for season after season. Then as time passed she was compelled by her mirror to realise that she was not quite so young as she had once been, so she hurriedly invented a thrilling past history for herself, alluding to affair after affair that had come to nothing only because she herself had ruthlessly slain them, and dressing herself more reasonably, but with little signs and hints, in the shape of chains and coloured bows and rings, that she could still be young if she so pleased, and that she was open to offers, although she could not promise them much encouragement. She liked the society of Canons, and was to be seen a great deal with old Canon Borlase, who was as great a flirt as he was an egotist, so that it did not matter to him in the least with whom he flirted, and sat at the feet of old Canon Morpheu, who was so crazy about the discoveries that he had made in the life of Ezekiel that it was quite immaterial to him to whom he explained them.

She descended from these clerical flights into the bosom of family life with some natural discontent. Her brother Samuel she had always disliked because he laughed at her; her sister she did not care for because she was very innocently, poor lady, flaunting her superior married state; and her brother-in-law she did not like because he always behaved as though she were one of a vast public of elderly ladies who were useful for helping in clerical displays, but were otherwise non-existent. Then she hated children, so that she really often wondered why she continued to live with her brother-in-law, but it was cheap, comfortable and safe, and although she assured herself and everyone else that there were countless homes wildly eager to receive her, it was perhaps just as well not to put their eagerness too abruptly to the test.

There had been war between her and Jeremy since Jeremy's birth, but it had been war of a rather mild and inoffensive character, consisting largely in Jeremy on his side putting out his tongue at her when she could not see him, and she on her side sending him to wash his ears when they really did not require to be washed. She had felt always in Jeremy an obstinate dislike of her, and as he had seemed to her neither a very clever nor intelligent child she had consoled herself very easily with the thought that he did not like her simply because he was stupid. So it had been until this year, and then suddenly they had been flung into sharper opposition. It was hard to say what had brought this about, but it was perhaps that Jeremy had sprung suddenly from the unconscious indifference of a young child into the active participation of a growing boy. Whatever the truth might have been, the coming of Hamlet had drawn their attitudes into positive conflict.

Aunt Amy had felt from the first that Hamlet laughed at her. Had you asked her to state, as a part of her general experience, that she really believed that dogs could laugh at human beings she would indignantly have repudiated any idea so fantastic, nevertheless, unanalysed and unconfronted, that was her conviction. The dog laughed at her, he insulted her by walking into her bedroom with his muddy feet and then pretending that he hadn't known that it was her bedroom, regarding her through his hair with an ironical and malicious glance, barking suddenly when she made some statement as though he enjoyed immensely an excellent joke, but, above all, despising her, she felt, so that the wall of illusion that she had built around herself had been pulled down by at least one creature, more human, she knew, in spite of herself, than many human beings. Therefore, she hated Hamlet, and scarcely a day passed that she did not try to have him flung from the house, or at least kept in the kitchen offices.

Hamlet had, however, won the hearts of the family; it was, indeed, Aunt Amy alone to whom he had not thought it worth while to pay court. To her alone he would not come when she called, by her alone he would not be cajoled, even though she offered him sugary tea, his deadliest temptation. No, he sat and looked at her through his hair, his fiery eye glinting, his peaked beard ironically humorous, his leg stuck out from his body, a pointing signal of derision.

She resolved to wait for an opportunity when she might conquer Hamlet and Jeremy together, but her power in the house was slight, so long as Mr. and Mrs. Cole were there. "If I only had the children to myself," she would say, "I would improve their manners in many ways. Poor Alice—!" Then suddenly she did have them. At the beginning of May Mr. Cole was summoned to take a mission to the seamen of Drymouth, and Mrs. Cole, who had relations in Drymouth, accompanied him. They would be absent from Pelchester a whole week.

"Oh, won't Aunt Amy be a nuisance," said Jeremy, realising the situation. Then turning to Mary he added: "We'll pretend to do what she tells us and not do it really. That's much the easiest."

A week is a short time, especially at the beginning of a shining and burning May, but Aunt Amy did her best not only with the children but with the servants, and even old Jordan, the gardener, who had been with the Cole family for twenty years. During that short week the cook, the parlourmaid, Rose, the housemaid, and the bootboy all gave notice, and Mrs. Cole was only able to keep them (on her return) by raising the wages of all of them. Jordan, who was an old man with a long white beard, said to her when she advised him to plant pinks where he had planted tulips and tulips where he had planted pinks, and further inquired why the cauliflower that he sent in was so poor and the cabbages so small: "Leave things alone, Miss, Nature's wiser than we be, not but what you mayn't mean well, but fussin's never done any good where Nature's concerned, nor never will"; and when she said that he was very rude to her, he shook his head and answered:

"Maybe yes, and maybe no. What's rude to one ain't rude to another"—out of which answer she could make nothing at all.

In the schoolroom she sustained complete defeat. At the very outset she was baffled by Miss Jones. She had always despised Miss Jones as a poor unfortunate female who was forced to teach children in her old age because she must earn her living—a stupid, sentimental, cowed, old woman at whom the children laughed. She found now that the children instead of laughing at her laughed with her, formed a phalanx of protection around her and refused to be disobedient. Miss Jones herself was discovered to have a dry, rather caustic, sense of humour that Aunt Amy felt to be impertinence, but could not penetrate.

"And is that really how you teach them history, Miss Jones? Not quite the simplest way, surely... I remember an excellent governess whom we once had—"

"Perhaps," said Miss Jones, gently, "you would give them a history lesson yourself, Miss Trefusis. I would be so glad to pick up any little hints—"

"I have, of course, no time," said Aunt Amy hurriedly, "but, speaking generally, I am afraid I can't approve altogether of your system."

"It isn't very good, I'm afraid," said Miss Jones weakly. "The children would be glad, I know, to have a few hints from you if you could spare a moment—"

Jeremy, who was listening, giggled, tried to turn the giggle into a sneeze and choked.

"Jeremy!" said Aunt Amy severely.

"Oh, do look, Aunt Amy!" cried Mary, always Jeremy's faithful ally, "all your hairpins are dropping out!"

She devoted herself then to Jeremy and worried him in every possible way, and after two days of this he hated her with a deep and bitter hatred, very different from that earlier teasing of Miss Jones. That had sprung from a sudden delicious discovery of power, and had been directed against no one. This was a real personal hatred that children of a less solid and tenacious temperament than Jeremy would have been incapable of feeling.

He did not laugh at her, he did not tease her, he no longer put out his tongue at her. He was older than that now—he was simply reserved and silent, watching her with his large eyes, his square body set, and resolved as though he knew that his moment would come.

Her experience with him was baffling. She punished him, petted him, she ignored him, she stormed at him; it seemed that she would do anything could she only win from him an acknowledgment of her power, her capability. But she could not. He only said: "Yes, Aunt Amy." "No, Aunt Amy."

She burst out: "You're a sullen, wicked little boy, Jeremy. Do you know what happens to little boys who sulk?"

"No, Aunt Amy."

"They grow into cross, bad-tempered men whom nobody likes and nobody trusts. Do you want to be like that when you're a man?"

"I don't care."

"You know what happened to 'Don't Care.' I shall have to punish you if you're rude to me."

"What have I done that's rude?"

"You mustn't speak to me like that. Is that the way you speak to your mother?"

"No, Aunt Amy."

"Well, then, if you don't speak to your mother like that, you mustn't speak to me like that, either."

"No, Aunt Amy."

"Well, then..."

This hatred was quite new to him. He had once, years ago, hated a black-faced doll that had been given to him. He had not known why he hated it, but there it had been. He had thrown it out of the window, and the gardener had found it and brought it into the house again, battered and bruised, but still alive, with its horrid red smile, and this had terrified him... He had begun to burn it, and the nurse had caught him and slapped him. He had begun to cut it with scissors, and when the sawdust flowed he was more terrified than ever. But that doll was quite different from Aunt Amy. He was not terrified of her at all. He hated her. Hated the fringe of her black hair, the heavy eyelashes, the thin down on her upper lip, the way that the gold cross fell up and down on her breast, her thin, blue-veined hands, her black shoes. She was his first enemy, and he waited, as an ambush hides and watches, for his opportunity...



II

One of our nicest old maids, Miss Maddison, gave every year what she called her "early summer party." This was different from all our other parties, because it occurred neither in the summer nor in the winter, but always during those wonderful days when the spring first began to fade into the high bright colours, the dry warmth, the deep green shadows of the heat of the year. It was early in May that Miss Maddison had her party, and we played games on her little sloping green lawn, and peered over her pink-brick wall down on to the brown roofs of the houses below the Close, and had a tremendous tea of every kind of cake and every kind of jam in her wainscoted dining-room that looked out through its tall open windows on to the garden. Those old houses that run in a half-moon round the Close, and face the green sward and the great western door of the Cathedral, are the very heart of Polchester. Walking down the cobbled street, one may still to-day look through the open door, down the dusky line of the little hall, out into the swimming colour of the garden beyond. In these little gardens, what did not grow? Hollyhocks, pinks, tulips, nasturtiums, pansies, lilies of the valley, roses, honeysuckle, sweet-williams, stocks—I remember them all at their different seasons in that muddled, absurd profusion. I can smell them now, can see them in their fluttering colours, the great grey wall of the Cathedral, with its high carved door and watching saints behind me, the sun beating on to the cobbles, the muffled beat of the summer day, the sleepy noises of the town, the pigeons cutting the thin, papery blue into arcs and curves and circles, the little lattice-windowed houses, with crooked chimneys and shining doors, smiling down upon me. I can smell, too, that especial smell that belonged to those summer hours, a smell of dried blotting-paper, of corn and poppies from the fields, of cobble-stones and new-baked bread and lemonade; and behind the warmth and colour the cool note of the Cathedral bell echoed through the town, down the High Street, over the meads, across the river, out into the heart of the dark woods and the long spaces of the summer fields. I can see myself, too, toiling up the High Street, my cap on the back of my head, little beads of perspiration on my forehead, and my eyes always gazing into the air, so that I stumbled over the cobbles and knocked against doorsteps. All these things had to do with Miss Maddison's parly, and it was always her party that marked the beginning of them for us; she waited for the fine weather, and so soon as it came the invitations were sent out, the flower-beds were trimmed, the little green wooden seats under the mulberry tree were cleaned, and Poupee, the black poodle, was clipped.

It happened this year that Miss Maddison gave her party during the very week that Mr. and Mrs. Cole went to Drymouth. She sent out her invitations only three days before the great event, because the summer had come with so fine a rush. "Master Jeremy and the Misses Cole... Would they give Miss Maddison the pleasure...?" Yes, of course they would. Aunt Amy would take them.

On the morning of the great day Jeremy poured the contents of his watering-can upon Aunt Amy's head. It was a most unfortunate accident, arranged obviously by a malignant fate. Jeremy had been presented with a pot of pinks, and these, every morning, he most faithfully watered. He had a bright-red watering-can, bought with his own money, and, because it held more water than the pinks needed, he was in the daily habit of emptying the remnant in a glittering shower out of the pantry window on to the bed nearest the garden wall. Upon this morning someone called him; he turned his head; the water still flowed, and Aunt Amy, hatless and defenceless, received it as it tumbled with that sudden rush which always seizes a watering-can at its last gasp. Jeremy was banished into his bedroom, where he employed the sunny morning in drawing pictures of Aunt Amy as a witch upon the wallpaper. For doing this he was caned by Aunt Amy herself with a ruler, and at the end of the operation he laughed and said she hadn't hurt him at all. In return for this impertinence he was robbed, at luncheon, of his pudding—which was, of course, on that very day, marmalade pudding—and then, Mary being discovered putting some of hers into a piece of paper, to be delivered to him in due course, they were both stood in different corners of the room "until you say you're sorry."

When the jingle arrived at three o'clock they had still not made this acknowledgment, and Jeremy said he never would, "not if he lived till he was ninety-nine." At quarter past three Jeremy might have been seen sitting up very straight in the jingle, his face crimson from washing and temper. He was wearing his new sailor suit, which tickled him and was hot and sticky; he sat there devoting the whole of his energies to the business of hating Aunt Amy.

As I have said, he had never hated anyone before, and he was surprised at the glow of virtuous triumph that this new emotion spread over his body. He positively loved to hate Aunt Amy, and as Parkes, the pony, slowly toiled up the hill to the Cathedral, he sat stiff and proud with an almost humorous anger. Then, as they turned over the hot shining cobbles into the Close and saw the green trees swimming in the sun, he turned his mind to the party. What games would they play? Who would be there? What would there be for tea? He felt creeping over him the stiff shyness that always comes when one is approaching a party, and he wished that the first handshaking and the first plunge into the stares of the critical guests might be over. But he did not really care. His hatred of Aunt Amy braced him up; when one was capable of so fine and manly an emotion as this hatred, one need not bother about fellow-guests. Then the jingle stopped outside a house immediately opposite the great west-end door of the Cathedral; in the little hall Miss Maddison was standing, and from the glittering garden behind her the sun struck through the house into the shadowed street.

Jeremy's public manners were, when he pleased, quite beautiful—"the true, old-fashioned courtesy," gushing friends of the Cole family used to say. He was preparing to be very polite now, when suddenly the voice of the Dean's Ernest ordering people about in the garden struck upon his ear. He had not seen the Dean's Ernest for nearly three months, for the very good reason that that gentleman had been experiencing his first term at his private school. Last year young Ernest and Jeremy had been, on the whole, friendly, although Ernest, who was nine, and strong for his age, had always patronised. And now? Jeremy longed to inform his friend that he also shortly would proceed to school, that in another six months' time there would be practically no difference between them. Nevertheless, at the present moment there was a difference... Ernest had a whole term to his credit.

New arrivals gently insinuated the Cole family into the garden. Helen, proud and cold, Mary, blinking and nervous, stood pressed close together whilst other little girls stared and giggled, moved forward and then backward again, until suddenly Canon Lasker's Emily, who was fifteen and had such long legs that she was known as "the Giraffe," came up and said: "Isn't it hot! Do you play croquet? Please-do! I'll have—the—blue ball..." And the Coles were initiated.

Meanwhile, Aunt Amy had said: "Now, Jeremy, dear, run about and make friends." Which so deeply infuriated him that he choked. Oh! supposing the Dean's Ernest had heard her!...

And he had! A mocking voice behind him said: "Now, Jeremy, dear—"

Jeremy turned round and beheld the Dean's Ernest mockingly waiting his retort. And he could not retort. No words would come, and he could only stand there, his cheeks flushed, aware that Ernest had grown and grown during those three months, that he wore a straw hat with a black-and-red ribbon upon it, that round his long ugly neck was a stiff white collar, and across his waistcoat a thick silver watch-chain.

"Hallo!" said Jeremy.

"Hallo!" said the new Ernest scornfully.

A long pause.

Then Ernest, turning on his heel, said to someone behind him: "Let's get away from all these girls!" The tears burnt in Jeremy's eyes, hot and salt. He clenched his fists and gazed upon a garden that swam in a mist of tears and sunlight. He felt a sudden strange impulse of family affection. He would like to have gathered behind him his father and mother, Mary, Helen, Hamlet, Uncle Samuel—yes, and even Aunt Amy, and to have advanced not only upon Ernest, but upon the whole Dean's family. It would have given him great pleasure to have set his teeth into the fat legs of the Dean himself; he would gladly have torn the hat from the head of Mrs. Dean... Upon Ernest there was no torture he would not employ.

He would get even; he resolved that before he left that house he would have his revenge.

Kind Miss Maddison, tripping along and seeing him as a pathetic little boy in a sailor suit without guile or malice, swept him into an "I spy" party composed for the most part of small girls who fell down and cried and said they would go home.

Jeremy, hiding behind a tree, watched the thin back of Ernest as it lifted itself autocratically above two small boys who looked up to him with saucer-eyes. Ernest was obviously talking about his school. Jeremy, lost in the contemplation of his vengeance, forgot his game, and was taken prisoner with the greatest of ease. He did not care. The afternoon was spoilt for him. He was not even hungry. Why could he not go to school to-morrow, and then challenge Ernest to combat? But he might challenge Ernest without going to school... He had never fought a real fight, but the sight of his enemy's thin, peaky body was encouraging.

"Now, Jeremy, dear," said Miss Maddison, "it's your turn to hide..."

Soon they all went in to tea. Everyone was thoroughly at home by this time, and screamed and shouted quite in the most natural manner in the world. The long table stretched down the whole room, almost from wall to wall; the sunlight played in pools and splashes upon the carpet and the flowers and the pictures. There was every sort of thing to eat—thin bread-and-butter rolled up into little curly sandwiches, little cakes and big cakes, seed cakes and sugar cakes, and, of course, saffron buns, jam in little shining dishes, and hot buttered toast so buttery that, it dripped on to your fingers.

Jeremy sat next to Mary, and behind him hovered Aunt Amy. Only half an hour ago how this would have angered him! To have her interfering with him, saying: "Not two at a time, Jeremy," or "Pass the little girl the sugar, Jeremy—remember your manners." or "Not so big a piece, Jeremy." But now—he did not know... She was one of the family, and he felt as though the Dean's Ernest had scorned her as well as himself. Also Mary. He felt kind to Mary, and when she whispered "Are you enjoying it, Jeremy?" he answered "Yes; are you?" Not because he was really enjoying it, but because he knew that she wanted him to say that.

He could see Ernest from where he sat, and he knew that Ernest was laughing at him. He remembered that he had given Ernest three splendid marbles, just before his departure to school, as a keepsake. How he wished that he had kept them! He would never give Ernest anything again except blows. Mary might be tiresome sometimes, but she was his sister, and he greatly preferred her as a girl to Ernest's sisters. He could see them now, greedy, ugly things...

"Now, Jeremy, wipe your mouth," said Aunt Amy.

He obeyed at once.



III

Tea over, they all trooped out into the garden again. The evening light now painted upon the little green lawn strange trembling shadows of purple and grey; the old red garden wall seemed to have crept forwards, as though it would protect the house and the garden from the night; and a sky of the faintest blue seemed, with gentle approval, to bless the quiet town fading into dusk beneath it. Over the centre of the lawn the sun was still shining, and there it was warm and light. But from every side the shadows stealthily crept forward. A group of children played against the golden colour, their white dresses patterns that formed figures and broke and formed again. The Cathedral bell was ringing for evensong, and its notes stole about the garden, and in and out amongst the children, as though some guardian spirit watching over their safety counted their numbers.

Jeremy, feeling rather neglected and miserable, stood in the shadow near the oak on the farther side of the lawn. He did not want to play with those little girls, and yet he was hurt because he had not been asked. The party had been a most miserable failure, and a year ago it would have been such a success. He did not know that he was standing now, in the middle of his eighth year, at the parting of the ways; that only yesterday he had been a baby, and that he would never be a baby again. He did not feel his independence—he felt only inclined to tears and a longing, that he would never, never confess, even to himself, that someone should come and comfort him! Nevertheless, even at this very moment, although he did not know it, he, a free, independent man, was facing the world for the first time on his own legs. His mother might have realised it had she been there—but she was not. Mary, however, was there, and in the very middle of her game, searching for him, as she was always doing, she found him desolate under the shadow of the oak. She slipped away, and, coming up to him with the shyness and fear that she always had when she approached him, because she loved him so much and he could so easily hurt her, said:

"Aren't you coming to play, Jeremy?"

"I don't care," he answered gruffly.

"It isn't any fun without you." She paused, and added: "Would you mind if I stayed here too?"

"I'd rather you played," he said; and yet he was comforted by her, determined, as he was, that she should never know it!

"I'd rather stay," she said, and then gazed, with that melancholy stare through her large spectacles that always irritated Jeremy, out across the garden.

"I'm all right," he said again; "only my stocking tickles, and I can't get at it—it's the back of my leg. I say, Mary, don't you hate the Dean's Ernest?"

"Yes, I do," she answered fervently, although she had not thought about him at all—enough for her that Jeremy should hate him! Then she gasped: "Here he comes—"

He was walking towards them with a swagger of his long yellow neck and his thin leggy body that Jeremy found especially offensive. Jeremy "bristled," and Mary was conscious of that bristling.

"Hallo!" said Ernest.

"Hallo!" said Jeremy.

"What rot these silly games are!" said Ernest. "Why can't they have something decent, like cricket?"

Jeremy had never played cricket, so he said nothing. "At our school," said Ernest, "we're very good at cricket. We win all our matches always—"

"I don't care about your school," said Jeremy, breathing through his nose.

The Dean's Ernest was obviously surprised by this; he had not expected it. His pale neck began to flush.

"Look here, young Cole," he said, "none of your cheek."

This was a new dialect to Jeremy, who had no friends who went to school. All he said, however, breathing more fiercely than before, was: "I don't care—"

"Oh, don't you?" said Ernest. "Now, look here—" Then he paused, apparently uncertain, for a moment, of his courage. The sight of Mary's timorous anxiety, however, reassured him, and he continued: "It's all right for you, this sort of thing. You ought to be in the nursery with your old podge-faced nurse. Kids like you oughtn't to be allowed out of their prams."

"I don't care," said Jeremy again, seeing in front of him the whole family of the Reverend Dean. "Your school isn't much anyway, I expect, and I'm going to school in September, and I'll wear just the same things as you do and—"

He wanted to comment upon the plain features of Ernest's sisters, but his gentlemanly courtesy restrained him. He paused for breath, and Ernest seized his advantage.

"You have to have an old aunt to look after you anyway—an ugly old aunt. I wouldn't have an old aunt always hanging over me—'Now, Jeremy dear—' 'Blow your nose, Jeremy dear—' 'Wipe your feet, Jeremy dear.' Look at the things she wears and the way she walks. If I did have to have an aunt always I'd have a decent one, not an old clothes bag."

What happened to Jeremy at the moment? Did he recollect that only a few hours before he had been hating Aunt Amy with a fine frenzy of hatred? For nearly a week he had been chafing under her restraint, combating her commands, defying her orders. He had been seeing her as everything that the Dean's Ernest had but now been calling her. Now he only saw her as someone to be defended, someone who was his, someone even who depended on him for support. He would have challenged a whole world of Deans in her defence.

He said something, but no one could hear his words; then he sprang upon the startled Ernest.

It was not a very distinguished combat; it was Jeremy's first battle, and he knew at that time nothing of the science of fighting. The Dean's Ernest, in spite of his term at school, also knew nothing—and the Dean's Ernest was a coward...

It lasted but a short while, for Mary, after the first pause of horrified amazement (aware only that Ernest was twice as big as her Jeremy), ran to appeal to authority. Jeremy himself was aware neither of time nor prudence. He realised immediately that Ernest was a coward, and this realisation filled him with joy and happiness. He had seized Ernest by his long yellow neck, and, with his other hand, he struck at eyes and cheeks and nose. He did not secure much purchase for his blows because their bodies were very close against one another, but he felt the soft flesh yield and suddenly something wet against his hand which must, he knew, be blood. And all the time he was thinking to himself: "I'll teach him to say things about Aunt Amy! Aunt Amy's mine! I'll teach him! He shan't touch Aunt Amy! He shan't touch Aunt Amy!..."

Ernest meanwhile kicked and kicked hard; he also tried to bite Jeremy's hand and also to pull his hair. But his own terror handicapped him; every inch of his body was alarmed, and that alarm prevented the freedom of his limbs. Then when he felt the blood from his nose trickle on to his cheek his resistance was at an end; panic flooded over him like water. He broke away and flung himself howling on to the ground, kicking his legs and screaming:

"It isn't fair! He's bitten me! Take him away! Take him away!"

Jeremy himself was no beautiful sight. His hair was wild, his white navy collar crumpled and soiled, the buttons of his tunic torn, his stocking down, and his legs already displaying purple bruises. But he did not care; he was well now; he was no longer unhappy.

He had beaten Ernest and he was a man; he had risen victorious from his first fight, and Authority might storm as it pleased. Authority soon arrived, and there were, of course, many cries and exclamations. Ernest was led away still howling; Jeremy, stubborn, obstinate, and silent, was also led away.... A disgraceful incident.

Aunt Amy, of course, was disgusted. Couldn't leave the boy alone one minute but he must misbehave himself, upset the party, be the little ruffian that he always was. She had always said that his mother spoiled him, and here were the fruits of that foolishness. How could she ever say enough to Miss Maddison? Her delightful party completely ruined!... Shocking!... Shocking!... Too terrible!. .. And Ernest, such a quiet, well-behaved little boy as a rule. It must have been Jeremy who...

While they were waiting in the decent dusk of Miss Maddison's sitting-room for a cleaned and chastened Jeremy, Mary touched her aunt's arm and whispered in her nervous voice:

"Aunt Amy—Jeremy hit Ernest because he said rude things about you."

"About me! Nonsense, child."

"No, but it was, really. Ernest said horrid things about you, and then Jeremy hit him."

"About me? What things?"

"That you were ugly," eagerly continued Mary—never a tactful child, and intent now only upon Jeremy's reputation—"and wore ugly clothes and horrid things. He did really. I heard it all."

Aunt Amy was deeply moved. Her conceit, her abnormal all-embracing conceit was wounded—yes, even by so insignificant a creature as the Dean's Ernest; but she was also unexpectedly touched. She would have greatly preferred not to be touched, but there it was, she could not help herself. She did not know that, in all her life before, anyone had ever fought for her, and that now of all champions in the world fate should have chosen Jeremy, who was, she had supposed, her enemy—never her defender!

And that horrid child of the Dean—she had always disliked him, with his long yellow neck and watery eyes! How dared he say such things about her! He had always been rude to her. She remembered once—

Jeremy arrived, washed, brushed, and obstinate. He would, of course, be scolded to within an inch of his life, and he did not care. He had seen the Dean's Ernest howling and kicking on the ground; he had soiled his straw hat for him, dirtied his stiff white collar for him, and made his nose bleed. He glared at his aunt (one eye was rapidly disappearing beneath a blue bruise), and he was proud, triumphant, and very tired.

Farewells were made—again many apologies—"Nothing, I assure you, nothing. Boys will be boys, I know," from Miss Maddison.

Then they were seated in the jingle, Jeremy next to Aunt Amy, awaiting his scolding. It did not come. Aunt Amy tried; she knew what she should say. She should be very angry, disgusted, ashamed. She could not be any of these things. That horrid boy had insulted her. She was touched and proud as she had never been touched and proud in her life before.

Jeremy waited, and then as nothing came his weariness grew upon him. As the old fat pony jogged along, as the evening colours of street and sky danced before him, sleep came nearer and nearer.

He nodded, recovered, nodded and nodded again. His body pressed closer to Aunt Amy's, leaned against her. His head rested upon her shoulder.

After a moment's pause she put her arm round him—so, holding him, she stared, defiantly and crossly, upon the world.



CHAPTER VII. RELIGION

I

Always in after years Jeremy remembered that party of Miss Maddison's, not because it had been there that he had won his first fight, but for the deeper reason that from that day his life received a new colour, woven into the texture of it; even now when he thinks of those hours that followed Miss Maddison's party he catches his breath and glances around him to see whether everything is safe. The children, on arriving home that evening, found that their father and mother had already returned from Drymouth. Jeremy, sleepy though he was, rushed to his mother, held her hand, explained his black eye, and then suddenly, in a way that he had, fell asleep, there as he was, and had to be carried up to bed.

When he awoke next morning his first thought was of his mother. He did not know why; she was so definitely part of the background of his daily life that he felt too sure of her continual and abiding presence to need deliberate thought of her. But this morning he wanted to get up quickly and find her. Perhaps her absence had made him feel more insecure, but there had also been something that night, something in her face, something in the touch of her hand.

And the other thing that he realised was that summer had truly come. He knew at once that hot smell that pressed even through the closed window-panes of his room; the bars and squares of light on the floor when he jumped out of bed and stood upon them seemed to burn the soles of his feet, and the rays of light on the ceiling quivered as only summer sunlight can quiver. The two windows of his bedroom looked back behind Polchester over fields and hedges to a dim purple line of wood. A tiny stream ran through the first two fields, and this little river was shining now with a white hot light that had yet the breeze of the morning ruffling it. He ran to his window and opened it. Beyond the wall that bordered their house was a little brown path, and down this path, even as he watched, a company of cows were slowly wandering along. Already they were flapping their ears lazily in anticipation of the flies, and the boy who was driving them was whistling as one only whistles on a summer morning. He could see the buttercups, too, in the nearest field; they seemed to have sprung to life in the space of a night. Someone was pulling the rope of a well somewhere and someone else was pouring water out upon some stone court. Even as he watched, a bee came blundering up to his window, hesitated for a moment, and then went whirring off again, and through all the sun and glitter and the sparkle of the little river there was a scent of pinks, and mignonette, and even, although it could not really be so, of the gorse. The sky was a pale white blue, so pale that it was scarcely any colour at all and a few puffs of clouds, dead white like the purest smoke, hovered in dancing procession, above the purple wood. The sun burnt upon his bare feet and his head and his hands.

This coming of summer meant so much more to him than merely the immediate joy of it—it meant Rafiel and Cow Farm and the Cove and green pools with crabs in them, and shrimping and paddling and riding home in the evening on haycarts, and drinking milk out of tin cans, and cows and small pigs, and peeling sticks and apples, and collecting shells, and fishermen's nets, and sandwiches, and saffron buns mixed with sand, and hot ginger beer, and one's ears peeling with the sun, and church on Sunday with the Rafiel sheep cropping the grass just outside the church door, and Dick Marriott, the fisherman, and slipping along over the green water, trailing one's fingers in the water, in his boat, and fishy smells by the sea-wall, and red masses of dog-fish on the pier, and the still cool feel of the farmhouse sheets just after getting into bed—all these things and a thousand more the coming of summer meant to Jeremy.

But this morning he did not feel his customary joy. Closing his window and dressing slowly, he wondered what was the matter. What could it be? It was not his eye—certainly it was a funny colour this morning and it hurt when you touched it, but he was proud of that. No, it was not his eye. And it was not the dog, who came into his room, after scratching on the door, and made his usual morning pretence of having come for any other purpose than to see his friend and master, first looking under the bed, then going up to the window pretending to gaze out of it (which he could not do), barking, then rolling on a square of sunlit carpet, and, after that, lying on his back, his legs out stiff, his ridiculous "Imperial" pointed and ironical, then suddenly turning, with a twist on his legs, rushing at last up to Jeremy, barking at him, laughing at him, licking him, and even biting his stockings—last of all seizing a bedroom slipper and rushing wildly into the schoolroom with it.

No, there was nothing the matter with Hamlet. Nor was there anything the matter with Miss Jones, free, happily, from her customary neuralgia, and delighted with the new number of the Church Times. Nor was it the breakfast, which to-day included bacon and strawberry jam. Nor, finally, was it Mary or Helen, who, pleased with the summer weather (and Mary additionally pleased with the virtues of Lance as minutely recorded in the second volume of "The Pillars of the House"), were both in the most amiable of tempers. No, it must be something inside Jeremy himself.

He waited until the end of breakfast to ask his question:

"Can I go and see Mother, Miss Jones?"

Mary and Helen looked across at him inquisitively.

"What do you want to see your mother for now, Jeremy? You always see her at twelve o'clock." Miss Jones pushed her spectacles lower upon her nose and continued her reading.

"I want to."

"Well, you can't now."

"Why not?"

"Because I say not—that's enough."

But Jeremy was gentle to-day. He got off his chair, went round to Miss Jones's chair, and, looking up at her out of his bruised eye, said in the most touching voice:

"But, please, Miss Jones, I want to. I really do."

Then she said what he had known all the time was coming:

"I'm afraid you won't see your mother to-day, dear. She's not well. She's in bed."

"Why? Is she ill?"

"She's tired after her journey yesterday, I expect."

He said no more.

He tried during the whole of that day not to think of his mother, and he found that, for the first time in his life, he could do nothing else but think of her. During the morning he sat very silently over his lessons, did all that he was told, did not once kick Mary under the table, nor ask Miss Jones to sharpen his pencil, nor make faces at Hamlet. Once or twice, in a way that he had, he leaned his head on his hand as though he were an ancient professor with a whole library of great works behind him, and when Miss Jones asked him whether he had a headache he said: "No, thank you," instead of seizing on the wonderful opportunity of release that such a question offered him. When they all went for a walk in the afternoon, he sprang for a moment into something of his natural vivacity. They came upon a thin, ill-shaven tramp dressed as a sailor, with a patch over one eye, producing terrible discordance from a fiddle. This individual held in one hand a black tin cup, and at his side crouched a mongrel terrier, whose beaten and dishevelled appearance created at once hopes in the breast of the flamboyant Hamlet. This couple were posted just outside Mr. Poole's second-hand bookshop, close to the "2d." box, and for a moment Jeremy was enthralled. He wanted to give the hero his week's penny, and upon finding that his week's penny was not, owing to sweet purchases on the previous day, he began elaborate bargainings with Miss Jones as to the forestalling of future pennies. Meanwhile, Hamlet leapt, with every sign of joyful expectation, upon the pauper dog; the blind sailor began to hit wildly about with his stick, Mr. Poole's "2d." box was upset, and the sailor's black patch fell off, revealing him as the possessor of two beautiful eyes, just like any other gentleman, and a fine, vigorous stock of the best Glebeshire profanities. Mr. Poole, an irascible old man, himself came out, a policeman approached, two old ladies from the Close, well known to Jeremy, were shocked by the tramp, and the Cathedral bell, as though it had just awoken up to its real responsibilities, suddenly began to ring.

All this was, of course, delightful to Jeremy, and offered so many possible veins of interest that he could have stayed there for hours. He wanted very badly to ask the sailor why he covered up a perfectly wholesome eye with a black patch, and he would have liked to see what Hamlet could do in the direction of eating up the scattered remnants of Mr. Poole's "2d." box; but he was dragged away by the agitated hand of Miss Jones, having to console himself finally with a wink from the august policeman, who, known throughout Polchester as Tom Noddy, was a kindly soul and liked gentlemanly little boys, but persecuted the street sort.

For a moment this exciting adventure carried him away, and he even listened for a minute or two to Mary, who, seizing her opportunity, began hurriedly: "Once upon a time there lived a sailor, very thin, and he never washed, and he had a dog and a violin—" But soon he remembered, and sighed and said: "Oh, bother, Mary!" and then walked on by himself. And still, all through that hot afternoon, when even the Rope Walk did not offer any shade, and when the Pol was of so clear a colour that you could see trout and emerald stones and golden sand as under glass, and when Hamlet was compelled to run ahead and find a piece of shade and lie there stretched, panting, with his tongue out, until they came up to him—even all these signs of a true and marvellous summer did not relieve Jeremy of his burden. Something horrible was going to happen. He knew it with such certainty that he wondered how Mary and Helen could be so gaily light-hearted, and despised them for their carelessness. This was connected in some way with the hot weather; he felt as though, were a cold breeze suddenly to come, and rain to fall, he would be happy again. There had been once a boy, older than he, called Jimmy Bain, a fat, plump boy, who had lived next door to the Coles. Whenever he had the opportunity he bullied Jeremy, pinching his arms, putting pins into his legs, and shouting suddenly into his ears. Jeremy, who had feared Johnny Bain, had always "felt" the stout youth's arrival before he appeared. The sky had seemed to darken, the air to thicken, the birds to gather in the "rooky" wood.

He had trembled and shaken, his teeth had chattered and his throat grown dry for no reason at all. As he had once felt about Johnny Bain so now he felt about life in general. Something horrible was going to happen.... Something to do with Mother.... As he came up the road to their house his heart beat so that he could not hear his own steps.



II

They entered the house, and at once even Mary, preoccupied as she was with her story about the sailor, noticed that something was wrong.

"Rose! Rose!" she called out loudly.

"Hush!" said Miss Jones. "You must be quiet, dear."

"Why?" said Mary. "I want Rose to—"

"Your mother isn't at all well, dear. I—"

And she was interrupted by Rose, who, coming suddenly downstairs, with a face very different from her usual cheerful one, said something to Miss Jones in a low voice.

Miss Jones gave a little cry: "So soon?... A girl...." And then added: "How is she?"

Then Rose said something more, which the children could not catch, and vanished.

"Very quietly, children," said Miss Jones, in a voice that trembled; "and you mustn't leave the schoolroom till I tell you. Your mother—" She broke off as though she were afraid of showing emotion.

"What is it?" said Jeremy in a voice that seemed new to them all—older, more resolute, strangely challenging for so small a boy.

"Your mother's very ill, Jeremy, dear. You must be a very good boy, and help your sisters."

"Mightn't I go for just a minute?"

"No, certainly not."

They all went upstairs. Then, in the schoolroom, Miss Jones said an amazing thing. She said:

"I must tell you all, children, that you've got a new little sister."

"A new sister!" screamed Mary.

Helen said: "Oh, Miss Jones!"

Jeremy said: "What did she come for just now, when Mother is ill?"

"God wanted her to come, dear," said Miss Jones. "You must all be very kind to her, and do all you can—"

She was interrupted by a torrent of questions from the two girls. What was she like? What was her name? Could she walk? Where did she come from? Did Father and Mother find her in Drymouth? And so on. Jeremy was silent. At last he said: "We don't want any more girls here."

"Better than having another boy," said Helen.

But he would not take up the challenge. He sat on his favourite seat on the window-ledge, dragged up a reluctant Hamlet to sit with him, and gazed out down into the garden that was misty now in the evening golden light, the trees and the soil black beneath the gold, the rooks slowly swinging across the sty above the farther side of the road. Hamlet wriggled. He always detested that he should be cuddled, and he would press first with one leg, then with another, against Jeremy's coat; then he would lie dead for a moment, suddenly springing, with his head up, in the hope that the surprise would free him; then he would turn into a snake, twisting his body under Jeremy's arm, and dropping with a flop on to the floor. All these manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections against the imbecile tyrannies of man, fell, to his own surprise, asleep.

Jeremy sat there whilst the dusk fell and all the beautiful lights were drawn from the sky and the rooks went to bed. Rose came to draw the curtains, and then he left his window-seat, dragged out his toy village and pretended to play with it. He looked at his sisters. They seemed quite tranquil. Helen was sewing, and Mary deep in "The Pillars of the House." The clock ticked. Hamlet, lost in sleep, snored and sputtered; the whole world pursued its ordinary way. Only in himself something was changed; he was unhappy, and he could not account for his unhappiness. It should have been because his mother was ill, and yet she had been ill before, and he had been only disturbed for a moment. After all, grown-up people always got well. There had been Aunt Amy, who had had measles, and the wife of the Dean, who had had something, and even the Bishop once... But now he was frightened. There was some perception, coming to him now for the first time in his life, that this world was not absolutely stable—that people left it, people came into it, that there was change and danger and something stronger.... Gradually this perception was approaching him as though it had been some dark figure who had entered the house, and now, with muffled step and veiled face, was slowly climbing the stairs towards him. He only knew that his mother could not go; she could not go. She was part of his life, and she would always be so. Why, now, when he thought of it, he could do nothing without his mother; every day he must tell her what he had done and what he was going to do, must show her what he had acquired and must explain to her what he had lost, must go to her when he was hurt and when he was frightened and when he was glad... And of all these things he had never even thought until now.

As he sat there the house seemed to grow ever quieter and quieter about him. He felt as though he would have liked to have gone to the schoolroom door and listened. It was terrible imagining the house behind the door—quite silent—so that the clocks had stopped, and no one walked upon the stairs and no one laughed down in the pantry. He wished that they would make more noise in the schoolroom. He upset the church and the orchard and Mrs. Noah.

But the silence after the noise was worse than ever.

Soon Miss Jones took the two girls away to her room to fit on some clothes, an operation which Helen adored and Mary hated. Jeremy was left alone, and he was, at once, terribly frightened. He knew that it was of no use to be frightened, and he tried to go on with his game, putting the church with the apple trees around it and the Noah family all sleeping under the trees, but at every moment something compelled him to raise his head and see that no one was there, and he felt so small and so lonely that he would like to have hidden under something.

Then when he thought of his mother all alone and the house so quiet around her and no one able to go to her he felt so miserable that he turned round from his village and stared desolately into the fireplace. The thought of his new sister came to him, but was dismissed impatiently. He did not want a new sister—Mary and Helen were trouble enough as it was—and he felt, with an old weary air, that it was time, indeed, that he was off to school. Nothing was the same. Always new people. Never any peace.

He was startled by the sound of the opening door, and, turning, saw his father. His father and he were never very easy together. Mr. Cole had very little time for the individual, being engaged in saving souls in the mass, and his cheery, good-tempered Christianity had a strange, startling fashion of proving unavailing before some single human case.

He did not understand children except when they were placed in masses before him. His own children, having been named, on their arrival, "Gifts from God," had kept much of that incorporeal atmosphere throughout their growing years.

But to-night he was a different man. As he looked at his small son across the schoolroom floor there was terror in his eyes. Nothing could have been easier or more simple than his lifelong assumption that, because God was in His heaven all was right with the world. He had given thanks every evening for the blessings that he had received and every morning for the blessings that he was going to receive, and he had had no reason to complain. He had the wife, the children, the work that he deserved, and his life had been so hemmed in with security that he had had no difficulty in assuring his congregation on every possible occasion that God was good and far-seeing, and that "not one sparrow..."

And now lie was threatened—threatened most desperately. Mrs. Cole was so ill that it was doubtful whether she would live through the night. He was completely helpless. He had turned from one side to another, simply demanding an assurance from someone or something that she could not be taken from him. No one could give him that assurance. Life without her would be impossible; he would not know what to do about the simplest matter. Life without her...oh! but it was incredible!

Like a blind man he had groped his way up to the schoolroom. He did not want to see the children, nor Miss Jones, but he must be moving, must be doing something that would break in upon that terrible ominous pause that the whole world seemed to him, at this moment, to be making.

Then he saw Jeremy. He said:

"Oh! Where's Miss Jones?"

"She's in the next room," said Jeremy, looking at his father.

"Oh!" He began to walk up and down the schoolroom. Jeremy left his toy village and stood up.

"Is Mother better, Father?"

He stopped in his walk and looked at the boy as though he were trying to recollect who he was.

"No... No—that is—No, my boy, I'm afraid not."

"Is she very bad, Father—like the Dean's wife when she had fever?"

His father didn't answer. He walked to the end of the room, then turned suddenly as though he had seen something there that terrified him, and hurried from the room.

Jeremy, suddenly left alone, had a desperate impulse to scream that someone must come, that he was frightened, that something horrible was in the house. He stood up, staring at the closed door, his face white, his eyes large and full of fear. Then he flung himself down by Hamlet and, taking him by the neck, whispered:

"I'm frightened! I'm frightened! Bark or something!... There's someone here!"



III

Next morning Mrs. Cole was still alive. There had been no change during the night; to-day, the doctor said, would be the critical day. To-day was Sunday, and Mr. Cole took his morning service at his church as usual. He had been up all night; he looked haggard and pale, still wearing that expression as of a man lost in a world that he had always trusted. But he would not fail in his duty. "When two or three are gathered together in my name...." Perhaps God would hear him.

It was a day of wonderful heat for May. No one had ever remembered so hot a day at so early a time of year. The windows of the church were open, but no breeze blew through the aisles. The relentless blazing blue of the sky penetrated into the cool shadows of the church, and it was as though the congregation sat there under shimmering glass. The waves of light shifted, rose and fell above the bonnets and hats and bare heads, and all the little choir boys fell asleep during the sermon.

The Cole family did not fall asleep. They sat with pale faces and stiff backs staring at their father and thinking about their mother. Mary and Helen were frightened; the house was so strange, everyone spoke in whispers, and, on the way into church, many ladies had asked them how their mother was.

They felt important as well as sad. But Jeremy did not feel important. He had not heard the ladies and their questions—he would not have cared if he had. People had always called him "a queer little boy," simply because he was independent and thought more than he spoke. Nevertheless, he had always in reality been normal enough until now. To-day he was really "queer," was conscious for the first time of the existence of a world whose adjacence to the real world was, in after days, to trouble him so often and to complicate life for him so grievously. The terror that had come down upon him when his father had left him seemed to-day utterly to soak through into the very heart of him. His mother was going to die unless something or somebody saved her. What was dying? Going away, he had always been told, with a golden harp, to sing hymns in a foreign country. But to-day the picture would not form so easily. There was silence and darkness and confusion about this Death. His mother was going, against her will, and no one could tell him whither she was going. If he could only stop her dying, force God to leave her alone, to leave her with them all as she had been before...

He fixed his eyes upon his father, who climbed slowly into his pulpit and gave out the text of his sermon. To-day he would talk about the sacrifice of Isaac. "Abraham, as his hearers would remember..." and so on.

Jeremy listened, and gradually there grew before his eyes the figure of a strange and terrible God. This was no new figure. He had never thought directly about God, but for a very long time now he had had Him in the background of his life as Polchester Town Hall was in the background. But now he definitely and actively figured to himself this God, this God Who was taking his mother away and was intending apparently to put her into some dark place where she would know nobody. It must be some horrible place, because his father looked so frightened, which he would not look if his mother was simply going, with a golden harp, to sing hymns. Jeremy had always heard that this God was loving and kind and tender, but the figure whom his father was now drawing for the benefit of the congregation was none of these things.

Mr. Cole spoke of a God just and terrible, but a God Who apparently for the merest fancy put His faithful servant to terrible anguish and distress, and then for another fancy, as light as the first, spared him his sorrow. Mr. Cole emphasised the necessity for obedience, the need for a willing surrender of anything that may be dear to us, "because the love of God must be greater than anything that holds us here on earth." But Jeremy did not listen to these remarks; his mind was filled with this picture of a vast shadowy figure, seated in the sky, his white beard flowing beneath eyes that frowned from dark rocky eyebrows out upon people like Jeremy who, although doing their best, were nevertheless at the mercy of any whim that He might have. This terrible figure was the author of the hot day, author of the silent house and the shimmering darkened church, author of the decision to take his mother away from all that she loved and put her somewhere where she would be alone and cold and silent—"simply because He wishes..."

"From this beautiful passage," concluded Mr. Cole, "we learn that God is just and merciful, but that He demands our obedience. We must be ready at any instant to give up what we love most and best...."

Afterwards they all trooped out into the splendid sunshine.



IV

There was a horrible Sunday dinner when—the silence and the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the dining-room quivering with heat, emphasised every minute of the solemn ticking clock—Mary suddenly burst into tears, choked over a glass of water, and was led from the room. Jeremy ate his beef and rice pudding in silence, except that once or twice in a low, hoarse voice whispered: "Pass the mustard, please," or "Pass the salt, please." Miss Jones, watching his white face and the tremble of his upper lip, longed to say something to comfort him, but wisely held her peace.

After dinner Jeremy collected Hamlet and went to the conservatory. This, like so many other English conservatories, was a desolate and desperate little place, where boxes of sand, dry corded-looking bulbs, and an unhappy plant or two languished, forgotten and forlorn. It had been inherited with the house many years ago, and, at first, the Coles had had the ambition to make it blaze with colour, to grow there the most marvellous grapes, the richest tomatoes, and even—although it was a little out of place in the house of a clergyman of the Church of England—the most sinister of orchids. Very quickly the little conservatory had been abandoned; the heating apparatus had failed, the plants had refused to grow, the tomatoes never appeared, the bulbs would not burst into colour.

For Jeremy the place had had always an indescribable fascination. When he was very young there had been absolute trust that things would grow; that every kind of wonder might spring before one's eyes at any moment of the day. Then, when no wonder came, there had been the thrill of the empty boxes of earth; the probing with one's fingers to see what the funny-looking bulbs would be, and watching the fronds of the pale vine. Afterwards, there was another fascination—the fascination of some strange and sinister atmosphere that he was much too young to define. The place, he knew, was different from the rest of the house. It projected, conventionally enough, from the drawing-room; but the heavy door with thick windows of red glass shut it off from the whole world. Its rather dirty and obscure windows looked over the same country that Jeremy's bedroom window commanded. It also caught all the sun, so that in the summer it was terribly hot. But Jeremy loved the heat. He was discovered once by the scandalised Jampot quite naked dancing on the wooden boards, his face and hands black with grime. No one could ever understand "what he saw in the dirty place," and at one time he had been forbidden to go there. Then he had cried and stamped and shouted, so that he had been allowed to return. Amongst the things that he saw there were the reflections that the outside world made upon the glass; it would be stained, sometimes, with a strange, green reflection of the fields beyond the wall; sometimes it would catch the blue of the sky, or the red and gold of the setting sun; sometimes it would be grey with waving shadows across its surface, as though one were under water. Through the dirty windows the country, on fine days, shone like distant tapestry, and in the glass that covered the farther side of the place strange reflections were caught: of cows, horses, walls, and trees—as though in a kind of magic mirror.

Another thing that Jeremy felt there, was that he was in a glass cage swinging over the whole world. If one shut one's eyes one could easily fancy that one was swinging out—swinging—swinging, and that, suddenly perhaps, the cage would be detached from the house and go sailing, like a magic carpet, to Arabia and Persia, and anywhere you pleased to command.

To-day the glass burnt like fire, and the green fields came floating up to be transfigured there like running water. The house was utterly still; the red glass door shut off the world. Jeremy sat, his arms tightly round Hamlet's neck, on the dirty floor, a strange mixture of misery, weariness, fright, and anger. There was already in him a strain of impatience, so that he could not bear simply to sit down and bewail something as, for instance, both his sisters were doing at this moment. He must act. They could not bo happy without their mother; he himself wanted her so badly that even now, there in the flaming conservatory, if he had allowed himself to do such a thing, he would have sat and cried and cried and cried. But he was not going to cry. Mary and Helen could cry—they were girls; he was going to do something.

As he sat there, getting hotter and hotter, there grew, larger and larger before his eyes, the figure of Terrible God. That image of Someone of a vast size sitting in the red-hot sky, his white beard flowing, his eyes frowning, grew ever more and more awful. Jeremy stared up into the glass, his eyes blinking, the sweat beginning to pour down his nose, and yet his body shivering with terror. But he had strung himself up to meet Him. Somehow he was going to save his mother and hinder her departure. At an instant, inside him, he was crying: "I want my mother! I want my mother!" like a little boy who had been left in the street, and at the other, "You shan't have her! You shan't have her!" as though someone were trying to steal his Toy-Village or Hamlet away from him. His sleepy, bemused, heated brain wandered, in dazed fashion, back to his father's sermon of that morning. Abraham and Isaac! Abraham and Isaac!

Abraham and Isaac! Suddenly, as though through the flaming glass something had been flung to him, an idea came. Perhaps God, that huge, ugly God was teasing the Coles just as once He had teased Abraham. Perhaps He wished to see whether they were truly obedient as the Jampot had sometimes wished in the old days. He was only, it might be, pretending. Perhaps He was demanding that one of them should give up something—something of great value. Even Jeremy, himself!...

If he had to sacrifice something to save his mother, what would be the hardest sacrifice? Would it be his Toy-Village, or Mary or Helen, or his soldiers, or his paint-box, or his gold fish that he had in a bowl, or—No, of course, he had known from the first what would be hardest—it would, of course, be Hamlet.

At this stage in his thinking he removed his arm from Hamlet's neck and looked at the animal. At the same moment the light that had filled the glass-house with a fiery radiance that burnt to the very heart of the place was clouded. Above, in the sky, black, smoky clouds, rolling in fold after fold, as though some demon were flinging them out across the sky as one flings a carpet, piled up and up, each one darker than the last. The light vanished; the conservatory was filled with a thick, murky glow, and far across the fields, from the heart of the black wood, came the low rumble of thunder. But Jeremy did not hear that; he was busy with his thoughts. He stared at the dog, who was lying stretched out on the dirty floor, his nose between his toes. It cannot truthfully be said that the resolve that was forming in Jeremy's head had its birth in any fine, noble idealisms. It was as though some bully, seizing his best marbles, had said: "I'll give you these back if you hand over this week's pocket-money!" His attitude to the bully could not truthfully be described as one of homage or reverence; rather was it one of anger and impotent rebellion.

He loved Hamlet, and he loved his mother more than Hamlet; but he was not moved by sentiment. Grimly, his legs apart, his eyes shut tight, as they were when he said his prayers, he made his challenge.

"I'll give you Hamlet if you don't take Mother—" A pause. "Only I can't cut Hamlet's throat. But I could lose him, if that would do.. . Only you must take him now—I couldn't do it to-morrow." His voice began to tremble. He was frightened. He could feel behind his closed eyes that the darkness had gathered. The place seemed to be filled with rolling smoke, and the house was so terribly still!

He said again: "You can take Hamlet. He's my best thing. You can—You can—"

There followed then, with the promptitude of a most admirably managed theatrical climax, a peal of thunder that seemed to strike the house with the iron hand of a giant. Two more came, and then, for a second, a silence, more deadly than all the earlier havoc.

Jeremy felt that God had leapt upon him. He opened his eyes, turned as though to run, and then saw, with a freezing check upon the very beat of his heart, that Hamlet was gone.



V

There was no Hamlet!

In that second of frantic unreasoning terror he received a conviction of God that no rationalistic training in later years was able to remove.

There was no Hamlet!—only the dusky dirty place with a black torrent-driven world beyond it. With a rush as of a thousand whips slashing the air, the rain came down upon the glass. Jeremy turned, crying "Mother! Mother! I want Mother!" and flung himself at the red glass doors; fumbling in his terror for the handle, he felt as though the end of the world had come; such a panic had seized him as only belongs to the most desperate of nightmares. God had answered him. Hamlet was gone and in a moment Jeremy himself might be seized...

He felt frantically for the door; he beat upon the glass.

He cried "Mother! Mother! Mother!"

He had found the door, but just as he turned the handle he was aware of a new sound, heard distantly, through the rain. Looking back he saw, from behind a rampart of dusty flower-pots, first a head, then a rough tousled body, then a tail that might be recognised amongst all the tails of Christendom.

Hamlet (who had trained himself to meet with a fine natural show of bravery every possible violence save only thunder) crept ashamed, dirty and smiling towards his master. God had only played His trick—Abraham and Isaac after all.

Then with a fine sense of victory and defiance Jeremy turned back, looked up at the slashing rain, gazed out upon the black country, at last seized Hamlet and dragging him out by his hind-legs, knelt there in the dust and suffered himself to be licked until his face was as though a snail had crossed over it.

The thunder passed. Blue pushed up into the grey. A cool air blew through the world.

Nevertheless, deep in his heart, the terror remained. In that moment he had met God face to face; he had delivered his first challenge.

P.S.—To the incredulous and cynical of heart authoritative evidence can be shown to prove that it was on the evening of that Sunday that Mrs. Cole turned the corner towards recovery.



CHAPTER VIII. TO COW FARM!

I

This next episode in Jeremy's year has, be it thoroughly understood, no plot nor climax to it—it is simply the chronicle of an Odyssey. Nor can it be said to have been anything but a very ordinary Odyssey to the outside observer who, if he be a parent, will tell you that going to the seaside with the family is the most bothering thing in the world, and if he is a bachelor or old maid will tell you that being in the same carriage with other people's children who are going to the sea is an abominable business and the Law ought to have something to say to it.

All through May, June and July Mrs. Cole slowly pulled back to something like her natural health. The new infant, Barbara by name, was as strong as a pony, and kicked and screamed and roared so that the house was quite a new place. Her arrival had done a great deal for Helen, whose gaze had hitherto been concentrated entirely upon herself; now she suddenly discovered a new element in life, and it was found that she was "ideal with a baby" and "a great help to nurse." This made her more human, and Barbara, realising as babies always do who understands and who does not, would behave with Helen when she would behave with no one else. Mary could not be expected to transfer her allegiance from Jeremy, and then Barbara was frightened at her spectacles; Jeremy, having Hamlet, did not need a baby!

There came a fine hot morning towards the end of July when Miss Jones said, suddenly, in the middle of the history lesson: "Saturday week we go to Rafiel." Jeremy choked, kicked Mary under the table, and was generally impossible during the rest of the morning. It was Miss Jones's fault; she should have chosen her occasion more carefully. Before the evening Jeremy was standing in the corner for drawing on his bedroom wall-paper enormous figures in the blackest of black lead. These were to mark the days that remained before Saturday week, and it was, Jeremy maintained, a perfectly natural thing to do and didn't hurt the old wall-paper which was dirty enough anyway, and Mother had said, long ago, he should have a new one.

Meanwhile, impossible to describe what Jeremy felt about it. Each year Cow Farm and Rafiel had grown more wonderful; this was now the fifth that would welcome them there. At first the horizon had been limited by physical incapacity, then the third year had been rainy, and the fourth—ah, the fourth! There had been very little the matter with that! But this would be better yet. For one thing, there had never been such a summer as this year was providing—a little rain at night, a little breeze at the hottest hour of the day—everything arranged on purpose for Jeremy's comfort. And then, although he did not know it, this was to be truly the wonderful summer for him, because after this he would be a schoolboy and, as is well known, schoolboys believe in nothing save what they can see with their own eyes and are told by other boys physically stronger than themselves.

Five or six days before the great departure he began to worry himself about his box. Two years ago he had been given a little imitation green canvas luggage box exactly like his father's, except that this one was light enough to carry in one's hand. Jeremy adored this box and would have taken it out with him, had he been permitted, on all his walks, but he had a way of filling it with heavy stones and then asking Miss Jones to carry it for him; it had therefore been forbidden.

But he would, of course, take it with him to Cow Farm, and it should contain all the things that he loved best. At first "all the things that he loved best" had not seemed so very numerous. There would, first of all, of course, be the Hottentot, a black and battered clown for whom he had long ceased to feel any affection, but he was compelled by an irritating sense of loyalty to include it in the party just as his mother might include some tiresome old maid "because she had nowhere to go to, poor thing." After the Hottentot there would be his paint-box, after the paint-box a blue writing-case, after the writing-case the family photographs (Father, Mother, Mary and Helen), after the photographs a toy pistol, after the pistol Hamlet's ball (a worsted affair rendered by now shapeless and incoherent), after the ball "Alice in Wonderland" (Mary's copy, but she didn't know), after "Alice," "Herr Baby," after "Herr Baby" the Prayer Book that Aunt Amy gave him last birthday, after the Prayer Book some dried flowers which were to be presented to Mrs. Monk, the lady of Cow Farm (this might be called carrying coals to Newcastle), after the flowers a Bible, after the Bible four walnuts (very dry and hard ones), after the walnuts some transfer papers, after the transfer papers six marbles—the box was full and more than full, and he had not included the hammer and nails that Uncle Samuel had once given him, nor the cigarette-case (innocent now of cigarettes, and transformed first into a home for walking snails, second a grave for dead butterflies, third a mouse-trap), nor the butterfly net, nor "Struuwelpeter," nor the picture of Queen Victoria cut from the chocolate-box, nor—most impossible omission of all—the toy-village. The toy-village! What must he do about that? Obviously impossible to take it all—and yet some of it he must have. Mr. and Mrs. Noah and the church, perhaps—or no, Mrs. Monk would want to see the garden—it would never do not to show her the orchard with the apple-trees, and then the youngest Miss Noah! She had always seemed to Jeremy so attractive with her straight blue gown and hard red cheeks. He must show her to Mrs. Monk. And the butcher's shop, and then the sheep, and the dogs and the cows!

He was truly in despair. He sat on the schoolroom floor with his possessions all around him. Only Helen was in the room, and he knew that it would be no use to appeal to her—she had become so much more conceited since Barbara's arrival—and yet he must appeal to somebody, so he said to her very politely:

"Please, Helen, I've got my box and so many things to put into it and it's nearly Saturday already—and I want to show the Noahs to Mrs. Monk."

This would have been a difficult sentence for the most clear-headed person to unravel, and Helen was, at that moment, trying to write a letter to an aunt whom she had never seen and for whom she had no sort of affection, so she answered him rather roughly:

"Oh, don't bother with your box, Jeremy. Can't you see I'm busy?"

"You may be busy," said Jeremy, rising indignantly to his feet, "but I'm busy too, and my business is just as good as yours with your silly old letter."

"Oh, don't bother!" said Helen, whereupon Jeremy crept behind her and pinched her stocking. A battle followed, too commonplace in its details to demand description here. It need only be said that Hamlet joined in it and ran away with Helen's letter which had blown to the ground during the struggle, and that he ate it, in his corner, with great satisfaction. Then, when they were at their angriest, Helen suddenly began to laugh which she did sometimes, to her own intense annoyance, when she terribly wanted to be enraged, then Jeremy laughed too, and Hamlet yielded up fragments of the letter—so that all was well.

But the problem of the box was not solved—and, in the end, the only part of the toy village that Mrs. Monk ever saw was the youngest Miss Noah and one apple-tree for her to sit under.



II

The ritual of the journey to Cow Farm was, by this time, of course, firmly established, and the first part of the ritual was that one should wake up at three in the morning. This year, however, for some strange mysterious reason Jeremy overslept himself and did not wake up until eight o'clock, to find then that everyone was already busy packing and brushing and rushing about, and that all his own most sacred preparations must be squeezed into no time at all if he were to be ready. Old Tom Collins's bus came along at twelve o'clock to catch the one o'clock train, so that Jeremy might be considered to have the whole morning for his labours, but that was not going to be enough for him unless he was very careful. Grown-up people had such a way of suddenly catching on to you and washing your ears, or making you brush your teeth, or sitting you down in a corner with a book, that circumnavigating them and outplotting them needed as much nerve and enterprise as tracking Red Indians. When things were fined down to the most naked accuracy he had apparently only two "jobs": one to accustom Hamlet to walking with a "lead," the other to close the green box; but of course Mary would want advice, and there would, in all probability, be a dispute or two about property that would take up the time.