by Hugh Walpole
The whole world seemed deserted. No colour, no movement, no sound. He sighed once more— “I’d like to eat jam and jam — lots of it,” he thought. “It would be fun to be sick.”
Mary arrived and swung herself up on to the window-seat.
“It’s the ‘Looking Glass’ one. I hope you don’t mind,” she said apprehensively.
“Oh, it’s all right,” he allowed. He flung a glance back to the lighted nursery. It seemed by contrast with that grey world outside to blaze with colour; the red-painted ships on the wallpaper, the bright lights and shadows of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the salmon fronts of the doll’s house, the green and red of the village on the floor with the flowery trees, the blue tablecloth, the shining brass coal-scuttle all alive and sparkling in the flames and shadows of the fire, caught and held by the fine gold of the higher fender. Beyond that dead white — soon it would be dark, the curtains would be drawn, and still there would be nothing to do. He sighed again.
“It’s a nice bit about the shop,” said Mary. Jeremy said nothing, so she began. She started at a run:
“She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have ‘“ — sniff, sniff—”,’ sud-den-ly suddenly wra-wra-w-r-a-p-p-e-d wrapped—’”
“Wrapped?” asked Jeremy.
“I don’t know,” said Mary, rubbing her nose, “what it means, but perhaps we’ll see presently, herself up in w-o-o-l wool. ‘Alice rubbed her eyes and looked again she couldn’t—’”
“‘Looked again she couldn’t’?” asked Jeremy. “It should be, ‘she couldn’t look again.’”
“Oh, there’s a stop,” said Mary. “I didn’t see. After ‘again’ there’s a stop. ‘She couldn’t make out what had happened at all—’”
“I can’t either,” said Jeremy crossly. “It would be better perhaps if I read it myself.”
“It will be all right in a minute,” said Mary confidently. “‘Was she in a shop? And was that really — was it really a ship that was sitting on the counter?’” she finished with a run.
“A what?” asked Jeremy.
“A ship—”
“A ship! How could it sit on a counter?” he asked.
“Oh no, it’s a sheep. How silly I am!” Mary exclaimed.
“You do read badly,” he agreed frankly. “I never can understand nothing.” And it was at that very moment that he saw the Dog.
II
He had been staring down into the garden with a gaze half abstracted, half speculative, listening with one ear to Mary, with the other to the stir of the fire, the heavy beat of the clock and the rustlings of Martha the canary.
He watched the snowy expanse of garden, the black gate, the road beyond. A vast wave of pale grey light, the herald of approaching dusk, swept the horizon, the snowy roofs, the streets, and Jeremy felt some contact with the strange air, the mysterious omens that the first snows of the winter spread about the land. He watched as though he were waiting for something to happen.
The creature came up very slowly over the crest of Orange Street. No one else was in sight, no cart, no horse, no weather-beaten wayfarer. At first the dog was only a little black smudge against the snow; then, as he arrived at the Coles’ garden-gate, Jeremy could see him very distinctly. He was, it appeared, quite alone; he had been, it was evident, badly beaten by the storm. Intended by nature to be a rough and hairy dog, he now appeared before God and men a shivering battered creature, dripping and wind-tossed, bedraggled and bewildered. And yet, even in that first distant glimpse, Jeremy discerned a fine independence. He was a short stumpy dog, in no way designed for dignified attitudes and patronising superiority; nevertheless, as he now wandered slowly up the street, his nose was in the air and he said to the whole world: “The storm may have done its best to defeat me — it has failed. I am as I was. I ask charity of no man. I know what is due to me.”
It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot, and the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions had been resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation for sulkiness had been soundly established with all his circle.
Mary was reading...! “‘an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!’”
He touched her arm and whispered:
“I say, Mary, stop a minute — look at that dog down there.”
They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the gate; it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very slowly but with real dignity continued its way up the road.
“Poor thing,” said Jeremy. “It IS in a mess.” Then to their astonishment the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again as though it had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as though it were not wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the gate.
“Oh,” said Mary and Jeremy together.
“It’s like Mother,” said Jeremy, “when she’s going to see someone and isn’t sure whether it’s the right house.”
Then, most marvellous of unexpected climaxes, the dog suddenly began to squeeze itself between the bottom bar of the gate and the ground. The interval was fortunately a large one; a moment later the animal was in the Coles’ garden.
The motives that led Jeremy to behave as he did are uncertain. It may have been something to do with the general boredom of the afternoon, it may have been that he felt pity for the bedraggled aspect of the animal — most probable reason of all, was that devil-may-care independence flung up from the road, as it were, expressly at himself.
The dog obviously did not feel any great respect for the Cole household. He wandered about the garden, sniffing and smelling exactly as though the whole place belonged to him, and a ridiculous stump of tail, unsubdued by the weather, gave him the ludicrous dignity of a Malvolio.
“I’m going down,” whispered Jeremy, flinging a cautious glance at Helen who was absorbed in her sewing.
Mary’s eyes grew wide with horror and admiration. “You’re not going out,” she whispered. “In the snow. Oh, Jeremy. They WILL be angry.”
“I don’t care,” whispered Jeremy back again. “They can be.”
Indeed, before Mary’s frightened whisper he had not intended to do more than creep down into the pantry and watch the dog at close range; now it was as though Mary had challenged him. He knew that it was the most wicked thing that he could do — to go out into the snow without a coat and in his slippers. He might even, according to Aunt Amy, die of it, but as death at present meant no more to him than a position of importance and a quantity of red-currant jelly and chicken, THAT prospect did not deter him. He left the room so quietly that Helen did not even lift her eyes.
Then upon the landing he waited and listened. The house had all the lighted trembling dusk of the snowy afternoon; there was no sound save the ticking of the clocks. He might come upon the Jampot at any moment, but this was just the hour when she liked to drink her cup of tea in the kitchen; he knew from deep and constant study every movement of her day. Fortune favoured him. He reached without trouble the little dark corkscrew servants’ staircase. Down this he crept, and found himself beside the little gardener’s door. Although here there was only snow-lit dusk, he felt for the handle of the lock, found it, turned it, and was, at once, over the steps, into the garden.
Here, with a vengeance, he felt the full romance and danger of his enterprise. It was horribly cold; he had been in the nursery for two whole days, wrapped up and warm, and now the snowy world seemed to leap up at him and drag him down as though into an icy well. Mysterious shadows hovered over the garden; the fountain pointed darkly against the sky, and he could feel from the feathery touches upon his face that the snow had begun to fall again.
He moved forward a few steps; the house was so dark behind him, the world so dim and uncertain in front of him, that for a moment his heart failed him. He migh
t have to search the whole garden for the dog.
Then he heard a sniff, felt something wet against his leg — he had almost stepped upon the animal. He bent down and stroked its wet coat. The dog stood quite still, then moved forward towards the house, sniffed at the steps, at last walked calmly through the open door as though the house belonged to him. Jeremy followed, closed the door behind him; then there they were in the little dark passage with the boy’s heart beating like a drum, his teeth chattering, and a terrible temptation to sneeze hovering around him. Let him reach the nursery and establish the animal there and all might be well, but let them be discovered, cold and shivering, in the passage, and out the dog would be flung. He knew so exactly what would happen. He could hear the voices in the kitchen. He knew that they were sitting warm there by the fire, but that at any moment Jampot might think good to climb the stairs and see “what mischief they children were up to.” Everything depended upon the dog. Did he bark or whine, out into the night he must go again, probably to die in the cold. But Jeremy, the least sentimental of that most sentimental race the English, was too intent upon his threatened sneeze to pay much attention to these awful possibilities.
He took off his slippers and began to climb the stairs, the dog close behind him, very grave and dignified, in spite of the little trail of snow and water that he left in his track. The nursery door was reached, pushed softly open, and the startled gaze of Mary and Helen fell wide-eyed upon the adventurer and his prize.
III
The dog went directly to the fire; there, sitting in the very middle of the golden cockatoos on the Turkey rug, he began to lick himself. He did this by sitting very square on three legs and spreading out the fourth stiff and erect, as though it had been not a leg at all but something of wood or iron. The melted snow poured off him, making a fine little pool about the golden cockatoos. He must have been a strange-looking animal at any time, being built quite square like a toy dog, with a great deal of hair, very short legs, and a thick stubborn neck; his eyes were brown, and now could be seen very clearly because the hair that usually covered them was plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs, a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his great-great-great-grandson “Jacob,” described in the Chronicles of the Beaminster Family.
The children meanwhile gazed, and for a long time no one said a word. Then Helen said: “Father WILL be angry.”
But she did not mean it. The three were, by the entrance of the dog, instantly united into an offensive and defensive alliance. They knew well that shortly an attack from the Outside World must be delivered, and without a word spoken or a look exchanged they were agreed to defend both themselves and the dog with all the strength in their power. They had always wanted a dog; they had been prevented by the stupid and selfish arguments of uncomprehending elders.
Now this dog was here; they would keep him.
“Oh, he’s perfectly sweet,” suddenly said Helen.
The dog paused for a moment from his ablutions, raised his eyes, and regarded her with a look of cold contempt, then returned to his task.
“Don’t be so silly,” said Jeremy. “You know you always hate it when Aunt Amy says things like that about you.”
“Did Nurse see?” asked Mary.
“No, she didn’t,” said Jeremy; “but she’ll be up in a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Mary her mouth wide open.
“Do? Keep him, of course,” said Jeremy stoutly; at the same time his heart a little failed him as he saw the pool of the water slowly spreading and embracing one cockatoo after another in its ruinous flood.
“We ought to wipe him with a towel,” said Jeremy; “if we could get him dry before Nurse comes up she mightn’t say so much.”
But alas, it was too late for any towel; the door opened, and the Jampot entered, humming a hymn, very cheerful and rosy from the kitchen fire and an abundant series of chronicles of human failings and misfortunes. The hymn ceased abruptly. She stayed there where she was, “frozen into an image,” as she afterwards described it. She also said: “You could ‘ave knocked me down with a feather.”
The dog did not look at her, but crocked under him the leg that had been stiff like a ramrod and spread out another. The children did not speak.
“Well!” For a moment words failed her; then she began, her hands spread out as though she was addressing a Suffragette meeting in Trafalgar Square. (She knew, happy woman, nothing of Suffragettes.) “Of all the things, and it’s you, Master Jeremy, that ‘as done it, as anyone might have guessed by the way you’ve been be’aving this last fortnight, and what’s come over you is more nor I nor anyone else can tell, which I was saying only yesterday to your mother that it’s more than one body and pair of hands is up to the managing of now you’ve got so wild and wicked; and wherever from did you get the dirty animal dropping water all over the nursery carpet and smelling awful, I’ll be bound, which anyone can see that’s got eyes, and you’d know what your father will do to you when he knows of it, and so he shall, as sure as my name is Lizzie Preston.... Go on out, you ugly, dirty animal-ough, you ‘orrible creature you. I’ll—”
But her advance was stopped. Jeremy stopped it. Standing in front of the dog, his short thick legs spread defiantly apart, his fists clenched, he almost shouted:
“You shan’t touch him.... No, you shan’t. I don’t care. He shan’t go out again and die. You’re a cruel, wicked woman.”
The Jampot gasped. Never, no, never in all her long nursing experience had she been so defied, so insulted.
Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show.
She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked. She began: “The moment your mother comes I give her notice. To think that all these years I’ve slaved and slaved only to be told such things by a boy as—”
Then a very dramatic thing occurred. The door opened, just as it might in the third act of a play by M. Sardou, and revealed the smiling faces of Mrs. Cole, Miss Amy Trefusis and the Rev. William Jellybrand, Senior Curate of St. James’s, Orange Street.
Mr. Jellybrand had arrived, as he very often did, to tea. He had expressed a desire, as he very often did, to see the “dear children.” Mrs. Cole, liking to show her children to visitors, even to such regular and ordinary ones as Mr. Jellybrand, at once was eager to gratify his desire.
“We’ll catch them just before their tea,” she said happily.
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of our Press and stage to caricature our curates; this tendency I would willingly avoid. It should be easy enough to do, as I am writing about Polchester, a town that simply abounds — and also abounded thirty years ago — in curates of the most splendid and manly type. But, unfortunately, Mr. Jellybrand was not one of these. I, myself, remember him very well, and can see him now flinging his thin, black, and — as it seemed to me then — gigantic figure up Orange Street, his coat flapping behind him, his enormous boots flapping in front of him, and his huge hands flapping on each side of him like a huge gesticulating crow.
He had, the Polchester people who liked him said, “a rich voice.” The others who did not like him called him “an affected ass.” He ran up and down the scale like this:
Mrs.
dear
My
Cole.
and his blue cheeks looked colder than any iceberg. But then I must confess that I am prejudiced. I did not like him; no children did.
The Cole children hated him. Jeremy because he had damp hands, Helen because he never looked at her, Mary because he once said to her, “Little girls must play as
well as work, you know.” He always talked down to us as though we were beings of another and inferior planet. He called it, “Getting on with the little ones.” No, he was not popular with us.
He stood on this particular and dramatic occasion in front of the group in the doorway and stared — as well he might. Unfortunately the situation, already bad enough, was aggravated by this dark prominence of Mr. Jellybrand. It cannot be found in any chronicles that Mr. Jellybrand and the dog had met before; it is simply a fact that the dog, raising his eyes at the opening of the door and catching sight of the black-coated figure, forgot instantly his toilet, rose dripping from his rug, and advanced growling, his lips back, his ears out, his tail erect, towards the door. Then everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed placidity, said: “Nurse... Nurse...” Jeremy cried: “It’s all right, he wouldn’t touch anything, he’s only friendly.” Mary and Helen together moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be heard in a confused wail: “Not me, Mum... Wickedest boy... better give notice... as never listens... dog... dog...”
The animal, however, showed himself now, as at that first earlier view of him, indifferent to his surroundings. He continued his advance and then, being only a fraction of an inch from Mr. Jellybrand’s tempting gleaming black trousers, he stopped, crouched like a tiger, and with teeth still bared continued his kettle-like reverberations. Aunt Amy, who hated dogs, loved Mr. Jellybrand, and was not in the least sentimental when her personal safety was in danger, cried in a shrill voice: “But take it away. Take it away. Alice, tell him. It’s going to bite Mr. Jellybrand.”