by Hugh Walpole
He was lost in such considerations when the Jampot inquired of him the way that their walk should take — it was his choice because it was his Birthday. He had no choice. There was one walk that far exceeded all others in glory, straight down Orange Street, straight again through the Market, past the Assembly Rooms and the Town Hall, past the flower and fruit stalls, and the old banana woman under the green umbrella and the toy stall with coloured balloons, the china dogs and the nodding donkeys, up the High Street, into the cobble-stones of the Close, whence one could look down, between the houses on to the orchards, round the Cathedral with the meadows, Pol Meads sloping down to the river, so through Orchard Lane into Orange Street once again.
Such a walk combined every magic and delight known to the heart of man, but it was not generally allowed, because Jeremy would drag past the shops, the stalls in the Market Place and the walk behind the Cathedral, whence one might sometimes see boats on the river, sheep and cows in the meads, and, in their proper season, delight of delights — lambs.
They set out...
Thirty years ago the winter weather in Polchester was wonderful. Now, of course, there are no hard winters, no frost, no snow, no waits, no snowmen, and no skating on the Pol. Then there were all those things. To-day was of a hard, glittering frost; the sun, like a round, red lacquer tray, fell heavily, slowly through a faint pale sky that was not strong enough to sustain it. The air had the cold, sweet twang of peppermints in the throat. Polchester was a painted town upon a blue screen, the Cathedral towers purple against the sky; the air was scented with burning leaves, and cries from the town rose up clear and hard, lingering and falling like notes of music. Somewhere they were playing football, and the shouting was distant and regular like the tramp of armed men. “Three” struck the Cathedral clock, as though it were calling “Open Sesame.” Other lesser clocks repeated the challenge cry through the town. “Woppley — Woppley — Why!” sung the man who was selling skins down Orange Street. The sky, turning slowly from blue to gold, shone mysteriously through the glass of the street lamps, and the sun began to wrap itself in tints of purple and crocus and iris.
“Woppley — Woppley — Why!” screamed the skin-man suddenly appearing at the top of the street.
“Now ‘urry, Master Jeremy,” said the Jampot, “or we shall never get ‘ome this night, and I might have known you’d choose the longest walk possible. Come along, Miss Mary, now — none of that dawdling.”
Jeremy, in his H.M.S. Adventure’s cap and rough blue navy coat, felt himself superior to the Jampot, so he only said, “Oh, don’t bother, Nurse,” and then in the same breath, “I’ll run you down the hill, Mary,” and before anyone could say a word there they were at the bottom of Orange Street, as though they had fallen into a well. The sun was gone, the golden horizon was gone — only the purple lights began to gather about their feet and climb slowly the high black houses.
Mary liked this, because she now had Jeremy to herself. She began hurriedly, so that she should lose no time:
“Shall I tell you a story, Jeremy? I’ve got a new one. Once upon a time there were three little boys, and they lived in a wood, and an old witch ate them, and the Princess who had heaps of jewellery and a white horse and a lovely gold dress came, and it was snowing and the witch—”
This was always Mary’s way. She loved to tell Jeremy interesting stories, and he did not mind because he did not listen and could meanwhile think his own thoughts.
His chief decision arrived at as he marched along was that he would keep the village to himself; no one else should put their fingers into it, arrange the orchard with the coloured trees, decide upon the names of the Noah family, settle the village street in its final order, ring the bell of the church, or milk the cows. He alone would do all these things. And, so considering, he seemed to himself very like God. God, he supposed, could pull Polchester about, root out a house here, another there, knock the Assembly Rooms down and send a thunderbolt on to the apple woman’s umbrella. Well, then — so could he with his village. He walked swollen with pride. He arrived at the first Island of Circe, namely, the window of Mr. Thompson, the jeweller in Market Street, pressed his nose to the pane, and refused to listen when the Jampot suggested that he should move forward.
He could see the diamonds like drops of water in the sun, and the pearls like drops of milk, and the rubies like drops of blood, but it was not of diamonds, pearls or rubies that he was thinking — he thought only of his village. He would ring the church bell, and then all the Noah family should start out of the door, down the garden, up the village street... It did not matter if one of the younger Noahs should be lazy and wish to stay at home beneath the flowering trees of the orchard. She would not be allowed... He was as God.. . He was as God... The butcher should go (if he was not stuck to his shop), and even some of his cows might go.... He was as God...
He heard Mary’s voice in his ear.
“And after that they all ate chocolates with white cream and red cream, and they sucked it off pins, and there were hard bits and soft bits, and the Princess (she was a frog now. You remember, don’t you, Jeremy? The witch turned her) hotted the oven like cook has, with black doors, and hotted it and hotted it, but suddenly there was a noise—”
And, on the other side, the Jampot’s voice: “You naughty boy, stoppin’ ’ere for everyone to see, just because it’s your birthday, which I wish there wasn’t no birthdays, nor there wouldn’t be if I had my way.”
Jeremy turned from Mr. Thompson’s window, a scornful smile on his face:
“I’m bigger’n you, Nurse,” he said. “If I said out loud, ‘I won’t go,’ I wouldn’t go, and no one could make me.”
“Well, come along, then,” said Nurse.
“Don’t be so stupid, Jerry,” said Helen calmly. “If a policeman came and said you had to go home you’d have to go.”
“No I wouldn’t,” said Jeremy.
“Then they’d put you in prison.”
“They could.”
“They’d hang you, perhaps.”
“They could,” replied Jeremy.
Farther than this argument cannot go, so Helen shrugged her shoulders and said: “You are silly.”
And they all moved forward.
He found then that this new sense or God-like power detracted a little from the excitements of the Market Place, although the flower-stall was dazzling with flowers; there was a new kind of pig that lifted its tail and lowered it again on the toy stall, and the apple-woman was as fat as ever and had thick clumps of yellow bananas hanging most richly around her head. They ascended the High Street and reached the Close. It was half-past three, and the Cathedral bells had begun to ring for evensong. All the houses in the Close were painted with a pale yellow light; across the long green Cathedral lawn thin black shadows like the fingers of giants pointed to the Cathedral door. All was so silent here that the bells danced against the houses and back again, the echoes lingering in the high elms and mingling with the placid cooing of the rooks.
“There’s Mrs. Sampson,” said Jeremy. “Aunt Amy says she’s a wicked woman. Do you think she’s a wicked woman, Nurse?” He gazed at the stout figure with interest. If he were truly God he would turn her into a rabbit. This thought amused him, and he began to laugh.
“You naughty boy; now come along, do,” said the Jampot, who distrusted laughter in Jerry.
“I’ll ring the bells when I grow up,” he said, “and I’ll ring them in the middle of the night, so that everyone will have to go to church when they don’t want to. I’ll be able to do what I like when I grow up.”
“No, you won’t,” said Helen. “Father and Mother can’t do what they like.”
“Yes they can,” said Jeremy.
“No they can’t,” answered Helen, “or they would.”
“So they do,” said Jeremy— “silly.”
“Silly yourself,” said Helen very calmly, because she knew very well that she was not silly.
“Now, children,
stop it, do,” said the Jampot.
Jeremy’s sense of newly received power reached its climax when they walked round the Close and reached the back of the Cathedral. I know that now, both for Jeremy and me, that prospect has dwindled into its proper grown-up proportions, but how can a man, be he come to threescore and ten and more, ever forget the size, the splendour, the stupendous extravagance of that early vision?
Jeremy saw that day the old fragment of castle wall, the green expanse falling like a sheeted waterfall from the Cathedral heights, the blue line of river flashing in the evening sun between the bare-boughed trees, the long spaces of black shadow spreading slowly over the colour, as though it were all being rolled up and laid away for another day; the brown frosty path of the Rope Walk, the farther bank climbing into fields and hedges, ending in the ridge of wood, black against the golden sky. And all so still! As the children stood there they could catch nestlings’ faint cries, stirrings of dead leaves and twigs, as birds and beasts moved to their homes; the cooing of the rooks about the black branches seemed to promise that this world should be for ever tranquil, for ever cloistered and removed; the sun, red and flaming above the dark wood, flung white mists hither and thither to veil its departure. The silence deepened, the last light flamed on the river and died upon the hill.
“Now, children, come along do,” said the Jampot who had been held in spite of herself, and would pay for it, she knew, in rheumatism to-morrow. It was then that Jeremy’s God-flung sense of power, born from that moment early in the day when he had sat in the wicker chair, reached its climax. He stood there, his legs apart, looking upon the darkening world and felt that he could do anything — anything...
At any rate, there was one thing that he could do, disobey the Jampot.
“I’m not coming,” he said, “till I choose.”
“You wicked boy!” she cried, her temper rising with the evening chills, her desire for a cup of hot tea, and an aching longing for a comfortable chair. “When everyone’s been so good to you to-day and the things you’ve been given and all — why, it’s a wicked shame.”
The Jampot, who was a woman happily without imagination, saw a naughty small boy spoiled and needing the slipper.
A rook, taking a last look at the world before retiring to rest, watching from his leafless bough, saw a mortal spirit defying the universe, and sympathised with it.
“I shall tell your mother,” said the Jampot. “Now come, Master Jeremy, be a good boy.”
“Oh, don’t bother, Nurse,” he answered impatiently. “You’re such a fuss.”
She realised in that moment that he was suddenly beyond her power, that he would never be within it again. She had nursed him for eight years, she had loved him in her own way; she, dull perhaps in the ways of the world, but wise in the ways of nurses, ways that are built up of surrender and surrender, gave him, then and there, to the larger life...
“You may behave as you like, Master Jeremy,” she said. “It won’t be for long that I’ll have the dealing with you, praise be. You’ll be going to school next September, and then we’ll see what’ll happen to your wicked pride.”
“School!” he turned upon her, his eyes wide and staring.
“School!” he stared at them all.
The world tumbled from him. In his soul was a confusion of triumph and dismay, of excitement and loneliness, of the sudden falling from him of all old standards, old horizons, of pride and humility... How little now was the Village to him. He looked at them to see whether they could understand. They could not.
Very quietly he followed them home. His birthday had achieved its climax...
CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY DOG
I
That winter of Jeremy’s eighth birthday was famous for its snow. Glebeshire has never yielded to the wishes of its children in the matter of snowy Christmases, and Polchester has the reputation of muggy warmth and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions were fulfilled in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies were treated to a present of snow on so fine a scale that certainly for the rest of their days they will go about saying: “Ah, you should see the winters we used to have when we were children...”
The snow began on the very day after Jeremy’s birthday, coming down doubtfully, slowly, little grey flakes against a grey sky, then sparkling white, then vanishing flashes of moisture on a wet, unsympathetic soil. That day the snow did not lie; and for a week it did not come again; then with a whirl it seized the land, and for two days and nights did not loosen its grip. From the nursery windows the children watched it, their noses making little rings on the window-pane, their delighted eyes snatching fascinating glimpses of figures tossed through the storm, cabs beating their way, the rabbit-skin man, the milkman, the postman, brave adventurers all, fighting, as it seemed, for their very lives.
For two days the children did not leave the house, and the natural result of that was that on the second afternoon tempers were, like so many dogs, straining, tugging, pulling at their chains.
It could not be denied that Jeremy had been tiresome to everyone since the afternoon when he had heard the news of his going to school next September. It had seemed to him a tremendous event, the Beginning of the End. To the others, who lived in the immediate present, it was a crisis so remote as scarcely to count at all. Mary would have liked to be sentimental about it, but from this she was sternly prevented. There was then nothing more to be said...
Jeremy was suddenly isolated from them all. His destiny was peculiar. They were girls, he was a boy. They understood neither his fears nor his ambitions; he needed terribly a companion. The snow, shutting them in, laughed at their struggles against monotony. The nursery clock struck three and they realised that two whole hours must pass before the next meal. Mary, her nose red from pressing on the window-pane, her eyes gazing through her huge spectacles wistfully at Jeremy, longed to suggest that she should read aloud to him. She knew that he hated it; she pretended to herself that she did not know.
Jeremy stared desperately at Helen who was sitting, dignified and collected, in the wicker chair hemming a minute handkerchief.
“We might play Pirates,” Jeremy said with a little cough, the better to secure her attention. There was no answer.
“Or there’s the hut in the wood — if anyone likes it better,” he added politely. He did not know what was the matter. Had the Jampot not told him about school he would at this very moment be playing most happily with his village. It spread out there before him on the nursery floor, the Noah family engaged upon tea in the orchard, the butcher staring with fixed gaze from the door of his shop, three cows and a sheep absorbed in the architecture of the church.
He sighed, then said again: “Perhaps Pirates would be better.”
Still Helen did not reply. He abandoned the attempted control of his passions.
“It’s very rude,” he said, “not to answer when gentlemen speak to you.”
“I don’t see any gentlemen,” answered Helen quietly, without raising her eyes, which was, as she knew, a provoking habit.
“Yes, you do,” almost screamed Jeremy. “I’m one.”
“You’re not,” continued Helen; “you’re only eight. Gentlemen must be over twenty like Father or Mr. Jellybrand.”
“I hate Mr. Jellybrand and I hate you,” replied Jeremy.
“I don’t care,” said Helen.
“Yes, you do,” said Jeremy, then suddenly, as though even a good quarrel were not worth while on this heavily burdened afternoon, he said gently: “You might play Pirates, Helen. You can be Sir Roger.”
“I’ve got this to finish.”
“It’s a dirty old thing,” continued Jeremy, pursuing an argument, “and it’ll be dirtier soon, and the Jampot says you do all the stitches wrong. I wish I was at school.”
“I wish you were,” said Helen.
There was a pause after this. Jeremy went sadly back to his window-seat. Mary felt that her moment had arrived. Sniffing, as was her habit wh
en she wanted something very badly, she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper:
“It would be fun, wouldn’t it, perhaps if I read something, Jeremy?”
Jeremy was a gentleman, although he was only eight. He looked at her and saw behind the spectacles eyes beseeching his permission.
“Well, it wouldn’t be much fun,” he said, “but it’s all beastly this afternoon, anyway.”
“Can I sit on the window too?” asked Mary.
“Not too close, because it tickles my ear, but you can if you like.”
She hurried across to the bookshelf. “There’s ‘Stumps’ and ‘Rags and Tatters,’ and ‘Engel the Fearless,’ and ‘Herr Baby’ and ‘Alice’ and—”
“‘Alice’ is best,” said Jeremy, sighing. “You know it better than the others.” He curled himself into a corner of the window-seat. From his position there he had a fine view. Immediately below him was the garden, white and grey under the grey sky, the broken fountain standing up like a snow man in the middle of it. The snow had ceased to fall and a great stillness held the world.
Beyond the little iron gate of the garden that always sneezed “Tishoo” when you closed it, was the top of Orange Street; then down the hill on the right was the tower of his father’s church; exactly opposite the gate was the road that led to the Orchards, and on the right of that was the Polchester High School for Young Ladies, held in great contempt by Jeremy, the more that Helen would shortly be a day-boarder there, would scream with the other girls, and, worst of all, would soon be seen walking with her arm round another girl’s neck, chattering and eating sweets...