by Hugh Walpole
“Three o’clock?” I muttered, trying to pull myself together.
“Three in the afternoon… I have some tea for you.”
When I realised the time I had the sensation of the wildest panic. I jumped from my bed, pushing the old woman out of the room. I had betrayed my trust! I had betrayed my trust! I felt assured ‘that some awful catastrophe had occurred, something that I might have prevented. When I was dressed, disregarding my housekeeper’s cries, I rushed out into the street. At my end of the Ekaterinsgofsky Canal I was stopped by great throngs of men and women returning homewards from the procession. They were marching, most of them, in ordered lines across the street, arm in arm, singing the “Marseillaise.”
Very different from the procession a few weeks before. That had been dumb, cowed, bewildered. This was the movement of a people conscious of their freedom, sure of themselves, disdaining the world. Everywhere bands were playing, banners were glittering, and from the very heart of the soil, as it seemed, the “Marseillaise” was rising.
Although the sun only shone at brief intervals, there was a sense of spring warmth in the air. For some time I could not cross the street, then I broke through and almost ran down the deserted stretch of the Canal. I arrived almost breathless at the door in the English Prospect. There I found Sacha watching the people and listening to the distant bands.
“Sacha!” I cried, “is Alexei Petrovitch at home?”
“No, Barin,” she answered, looking at me in some surprise. “He went out about a quarter of an hour ago.”
“And Nicholas Markovitch?”
“He went out just now.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“No, Barin, but I heard Alexei Petrovitch tell him, an hour back, that he was going to Katerinhof.”
I did not listen to more. I turned and went. Katerinhof was a park, ten minutes distant from my island; it was so called because there was there the wooden palace of Katherine the Great. She had once made it her place of summer residence, but it was now given over to the people and was, during the spring and summer, used by them as a kind of fair and pleasure-garden. The place had always been to me romantic and melancholy, with the old faded wooden palace, the deserted ponds, and the desolate trees. I had never been there in the summer. I don’t know with what idea I hurried there. I can only say that I had no choice but to go, and that I went as though I were still continuing my dream of the morning.
Great numbers of people were hurrying there also. The road was thronged, and many of them sang as they went.
Looking back now it has entirely a dream-like colour. I stepped from the road under the trees, and was at once in a world of incredible fantasy. So far as the eye could see there were peasants; the air was filled with an indescribable din. As I stepped deeper into the shelter of the leafless trees the colour seemed, like fluttering banners, to mingle and spread and sway before my eyes. Near to me were the tub-thumpers now so common to us all in Petrograd — men of the Grogoff kind stamping and shouting on their platforms, surrounded by open-mouthed soldiers and peasants.
Here, too, were the quacks such as you might see at any fair in Europe — quack dentists, quack medicine-men, men with ointments for healing sores, men with pills, and little bottles of bright liquid, and tricks for ruptures and broken legs and arms. A little way beyond them were the pedlars. Here were the wildest men in the world. Tartars and Letts and Indians, Asiatics with long yellow faces, and strange fellows from Northern Russia. They had everything to sell, bright beads and looking-glasses and little lacquered trays, coloured boxes, red and green and yellow, lace and silk and cloths of every colour, purple and crimson and gold. From all these men there rose a deafening gabble.
I pressed farther, although the crowd now around me was immense, and so I reached the heart of the fair. Here were enormous merry-go-rounds, and I had never seen such glittering things. They were from China, Japan, where you will. They were hung in shining, gleaming colours, covered with tinsel and silver, and, as they went tossing round, emitting from their hearts a wild barbaric wail that may have been, in some far Eastern city, the great song of all the lovers of the world for all I know, the colours flashed and wheeled and dazzled, and the light glittered from stem to stem of the brown silent trees. Here was the very soul of the East. Near me a Chinaman, squatting on his haunches, was showing before a gaping crowd the exploits of his trained mice, who walked up and down little crimson ladders, poked their trembling noses through holes of purple silk, and ran shivering down precipices of golden embroidery. Near to him two Japanese were catching swords in their mouths, and beyond them again a great number of Chinese were tumbling and wrestling, and near to them again some Japanese children did little tricks, catching coloured balls in wooden cups and turning somersaults.
Around all these a vast mass of peasants pushed and struggled. Like children they watched and smiled and laughed, and always, like the flood of the dream, their numbers seemed to increase and increase….
The noise was deafening, but always above the merry-go-rounds and the cheap-jacks and the shrill screams of the Japanese and the cries of the pedlars I heard the chant of the “Marseillaise” carried on high through the brown leafless park. I was bewildered and dazzled by the noise and the light. I turned desperately, pushing with my hands as one does in a dream.
Then I saw Markovitch and Semyonov.
I had no doubt at all that the moment had at last arrived. It was as though I had seen it all somewhere before. Semyonov was standing a little apart leaning against a tree, watching with his sarcastic smile the movements of the crowd. Markovitch was a little way off. I could see his eyes fixed absolutely on Semyonov. He did not move nor notice the people who jostled him. Semyonov made a movement with his hand as though he had suddenly come to some decision. He walked slowly away in the direction of the palace. Markovitch, keeping a considerable distance from him, followed. For a moment I was held by the crowd around me, and when at last I got free Semyonov had disappeared, and I could just see Markovitch turning the corner of the palace.
I ran across the grass, trying to call out, but I could not hear my own voice. I turned the corner, and instantly I was in a strange place of peace. The old building with its wooden lattices and pillars stood melancholy guard over the dead pond on whose surface some fragments of ice still lay. There was no sun, only a heavy, oppressive air. All the noise was muffled as though a heavy door had swung to.
They were standing quite close to me. Semyonov had turned and faced us both. I saw him smile, and his lips moved. A moment later I saw Markovitch fling his hand forward, and in the air the light on the revolver twinkled. I heard no sound, but I saw Semyonov raise his arm, as though in self-defence. His face, lifted strangely to the bare branches, was triumphant, and I heard quite clearly the words, like a cry of joy and welcome:
“At last!… At last!”
He tumbled forward on his face.
I saw Markovitch turn the revolver on himself, and then heard a report, sharp and deafening, as though we had been in a small room. I saw Markovitch put his hand to his side, and his mouth, open as though in astonishment, was suddenly filled with blood. I ran to him, caught him in my arms; he turned on me a face full of puzzled wonder, I caught the word “Vera,” and he crumpled up against my heart.
Even as I held him, I heard coming closer and closer the rough triumphant notes of the “Marseillaise.”
THE END
JEREMY
Jeremy was published in 1919 in New York by George H. Doran Company. It is the first in the Jeremy trilogy, which also includes Jeremy and Hamlet (1923) and Jeremy at Crale (1927). The books proved to be a huge commercial success in Britain and America, due to which Walpole experienced considerable fame during the 1920’s. It was in 1919 that he embarked upon his first lecture tour of America, where he received a rapturous reception and was financially rewarded for his work. He was affable and approachable, as well as being an enthusiastic and eloquent speaker and he e
xcelled in delivering lectures. Walpole was also a highly prolific writer, who was able to produce new material in between his speaking tours. He rarely made any revisions to his work, nor did he attempt to correct any grammatical errors or inconsistencies in the narrative.
The novel takes place in the late nineteenth century and is set in the fictional, cathedral town of Polchester, which is a location featured in other novels by the author. Jeremy begins on the morning the eponymous young boy turns eight and follows his adventures over the course of a year before he leaves to attend a boarding school. He is a content and imaginative little boy, who lives a happy existence with his sisters and new dog. Walpole manages to craft a charming, amusing and appealing work, which displays a great affection for his subject.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE BIRTHDAY
CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY DOG
CHAPTER III. CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME
CHAPTER IV. MISS JONES
CHAPTER V. THE SEA-CAPTAIN
CHAPTER VI. FAMILY PRIDE
CHAPTER VII. RELIGION
CHAPTER VIII. TO COW FARM!
CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE
CHAPTER X. MARY
CHAPTER XI. THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
CHAPTER XII. HAMLET WAITS
Hugh was related to the eighteenth century British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole
“It is due to him to say that he was
an obedient boy and a boy whose word
could be depended on...”
Jackanapes
CHAPTER I. THE BIRTHDAY
I
About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side of Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say “was”; the shell of it is still there, and the people who now live in it are quite unaware, I suppose, that anything has happened to the inside of it, except that they are certainly assured that their furniture is vastly superior to the furniture of their predecessors. They have a gramophone, a pianola, and a lift to bring the plates from the kitchen into the dining-room, and a small motor garage at the back where the old pump used to be, and a very modern rock garden where once was the pond with the fountain that never worked. Let them cherish their satisfaction. No one grudges it to them. The Coles were, by modern standards, old-fashioned people, and the Stone House was an old-fashioned house.
Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the morning of December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo clock had just struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this very moment, for the first time in his life, eight years old. He had gone to bed at eight o’clock on the preceding evening with the choking consciousness that he would awake in the morning a different creature. Although he had slept, there had permeated the texture of his dreams that same choking excitement, and now, wide awake, as though he had asked the cuckoo to call him in order that he might not be late for the great occasion, he stared into the black distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a beating heart, upon the great event. He was eight years old, and he had as much right now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen had.
That was his first definite realisation of approaching triumph. Throughout the whole of his seventh year he had fought with Helen, who was most unjustly a year older than he and persistently proud of that injustice, as to his right to use the wicker arm-chair whensoever it pleased him. So destructive of the general peace of the house had these incessant battles been, so unavailing the suggestions of elderly relations that gentlemen always yielded to ladies, that a compromise had been arrived at. When Jeremy was eight he should have equal rights with Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had yielded to that. It was the only decent chair in the nursery. Into the place where the wicker, yielding to rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one’s body might be most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the handsomest creaking noises when one rocked in it — and, in any case, Helen was only a girl.
But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him. As he sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his back and his throat very dry; he was disappointingly aware that he was still the same Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was exactly that he had expected, but he did not feel at present that confident proud glory for which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was too early.
He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half-muttered, half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once again asleep.
II
He awoke to the customary sound of the bath water running into the bath. His room was flooded with sunshine, and old Jampot, the nurse (her name was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot), was saying as usual: “Now, Master Jeremy, eight o’clock; no lying in bed — out — you get — bath — ready.”
He stared at her, blinking.
“You should say ‘Many Happy Returns of the Day, Master Jeremy,’” he remarked. Then suddenly, with a leap, he was out of bed, had crossed the floor, pushed back the nursery door, and was sitting in the wicker arm-chair, his naked feet kicking a triumphant dance.
“Helen! Helen!” he called. “I’m in the chair.”
No sound.
“I’m eight,” he shouted, “and I’m in the chair.”
Mrs. Preston, breathless and exclaiming, hurried across to him.
“Oh, you naughty boy... death of cold... in your nightshirt.”
“I’m eight,” he said, looking at her scornfully, “and I can sit here as long as I please.”
Helen, her pigtails flapping on either shoulder, her nose red, as it always was early in the morning, appeared at the opposite end of the nursery.
“Nurse, he mustn’t, must he? Tell him not to. I don’t care how old you are. It’s my chair. Mother said—”
“No, she didn’t. Mother said—”
“Yes, she did. Mother said—”
“Mother said that when—”
“Oh, you story. You know that Mother said—” Then suddenly a new, stiffening, trusting dignity filled him, as though he had with a turn of the head discovered himself in golden armour.
He was above this vulgar wrangling now. That was for girls. He was superior to them all. He got down from the chair and stood, his head up, on the old Turkey rug (red with yellow cockatoos) in front of the roaring fire.
“You may have your old chair,” he said to Helen. “I’m eight now, and I don’t want it any more... although if I do want it I shall have it,” he added.
He was a small, square boy with a pug-nosed face. His hair was light brown, thin and stiff, so that it was difficult to brush, and although you watered it, stood up in unexpected places and stared at you. His eyes were good, dark brown and large, but he was in no way handsome; his neck, his nose ridiculous. His mouth was too large, and his chin stuck out like a hammer.
He was, plainly, obstinate and possibly sulky, although when he smiled his whole face was lighted with humour. Helen was the only beautiful Cole child, and she was abundantly aware of that fact. The Coles had never been a good-looking family.
He stood in front of the fireplace now as he had seen his father do, his short legs apart, his head up, and his hands behind his back.
“Now, Master Jeremy,” the Jampot continued, “you may be eight years old, but it isn’t a reason for disobedience the very first minute, and, of course, your bath is ready and you catching your death with naked feet, which you’ve always been told to put your slippers on and not to keep the bath waiting, when there’s Miss Helen and Miss Mary, as you very well know, and breakfast coming in five minutes, which there’s sausages this morning, because it’s your birthday, and them all getting cold—”
“Sausages!”
He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt and was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always ev
en on birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling fire and marmalade, perhaps — and then all the presents.
Oh, he was happy. As he rubbed his back with the towel a wonderful glowing Christian charity spread from his head to his toes and tingled through every inch of him. Helen should sit in the chair when she pleased; Mary should be allowed to dress and undress the large woollen dog, known as “Sulks,” his own especial and beloved property, so often as she wished; Jampot should poke the twisted end of the towel in his ears and brush his hair with the hard brushes, and he would not say a word. Aunt Mary should kiss him (as, of course, she would want to do), and he would not shiver; he would (bravest deed of all) allow Mary to read “Alice in Wonderland” in her sing-sing voice so long as ever she wanted... Sausages! Sausages!
In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted:
“Helen, there are sausages — because it’s my birthday. Aren’t you glad?”
And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen’s voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: “Oh, you do pull so; you’re hurting!” — his charity was not checked.
Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front of the fire a shyness stole over him. He knew that the moment for Presents was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and again, “Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” that he would have his usual consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary never worried about such things. They delighted in kissing and hugging and multitudes of words. If only he might have had his presents by himself and then stolen out and said “Thank you” to the lot of them and have done with it.
He watched the breakfast-table with increasing satisfaction — the large teapot with the red roses, the dark blue porridge plates, the glass jar with the marmalade a rich yellow inside it, the huge loaf with the soft pieces bursting out between the crusty pieces, the solid square of butter, so beautiful a colour and marked with a large cow and a tree on the top (he had seen once in the kitchen the wooden shape with which the cook made this handsome thing). There were also his own silver mug, given him at his christening by Canon Trenchard, his godfather, and his silver spoon, given him on the same occasion by Uncle Samuel.