by Hugh Walpole
Her enemy had discovered that in one corner of the nursery there were signs and symbols that witnessed to something in the nature of a mouse or a rat. That nursery corner became the centre of all his more adventurous instincts. It happened to be just the corner where the Jampot kept her sewing machine, and you would think, if you came to the nursery as a stranger, and saw him sitting, his eyes fixed beamingly upon the machine, his tail erect, and his body here and there quivering a little, that from duties of manly devotion he was protecting the Jampot’s property. She knew better; she regarded, in some undefined way, this continued contemplation by him of her possessions as an ironical insult. She did everything possible to drive him from the corner; he inevitably returned, and as he always delicately stepped aside when she approached, it could not be said that he was in her way. Once she struck him; he looked at her in such a fashion that “her flesh crept.”... She never struck him again.
For Jeremy he became more and more of a delight. He understood so much. He sympathised, he congratulated, he sported, always at the right moment. He would sit gravely at Jeremy’s feet, his body pressed against Jeremy’s leg, one leg stuck out square, his eyes fixed inquisitively upon the nursery scene. He would be motionless; then suddenly some thought would electrify him — his ears would cock, his eyes shine, his nose quiver, his tail tumble. The crisis would pass; he would be composed once more. He would slide down to the floor, his whole body collapsing; his head would rest upon Jeremy’s foot; he would dream of cats, of rats, of birds, of the Jampot, of beef and gravy, of sugar, of being washed, of the dogs’ Valhalla, of fire and warmth, of Jeremy, of walks when every piece of flying paper was a challenge, of dogs, dogs that he had known of when he was a puppy, of doing things he shouldn’t, of punishment and wisdom, pride and anger, of love-affairs of his youth, of battle, of settling-down, of love-affairs in the future, again of cats and beef, and smells — smells — smells, again of Jeremy, whom he loved. And Jeremy, watching him now, thus sleeping, and thinking of Dick Whittington, wondered why it was that a dog would understand so easily, without explanations, the thoughts and desires he had, and that all grown-up people would not understand, and would demand so many explanations, and would laugh at one, and pity one, and despise one. Why was it? he asked himself.
“I know,” he suddenly cried, turning upon Helen; “it can be your birthday treat!”
“What can?” she asked.
“Why, going to Dick Whittington — all of us.”
Helen had, most unfortunately for herself, a birthday only a week after Christmas, the result being that, in her own opinion at any rate, she never received “proper presents” on either of those two great present-giving occasions. She was always allowed, however, a “treat”; her requests were generally in the nature of food; once of a ride in the train; once even a visit to the Polchester Museum... It was difficult in those days to find “treats” in Polchester.
“Oh, do you think they’d let us?” she said, her eyes wide.
“We can try,” said Jeremy. “I heard Aunt Amy say the other day that she didn’t think it was right for children to see acting, and Mother always does the opposite to what Aunt Amy says, so p’r’aps it will be all right. I wish Hamlet could go,” he added.
“Don’t be silly!” said Helen.
“It isn’t silly,” Jeremy said indignantly. “It’s all about a cat, anyway, and he’d love to see all the rats and things. He wouldn’t bark if we told him not to, and I held his collar.”
“If Aunt Amy sat next him he would,” said Mary.
“Oh, bother Aunt Amy,” said Jeremy.
After this Helen needed a great deal of urging; but she heard that Lucy and Angela, the aforesaid daughters of the Dean, were going, and the spirit of rivalry drove her forward.
It happened that the Dean himself one day said something to Mr. Cole about “supporting a very praiseworthy effort. They are presenting, I understand, the proceeds of the first performance to the Cathedral Orphanage.”
Helen was surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.
“We’ll all go,” said Mr. Cole, in his genial, pastoral fashion. “Good for us... good for us... to see the little ones laugh. .. good for us all.”
Only Uncle Samuel said “that nothing would induce him—”
II
I pass swiftly over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after, although I should like to linger upon these sumptuous dates. Jeremy had a sumptuous time; Hamlet had a sumptuous time (a whole sugar rat, plates and plates of bones, and a shoe of Aunt Amy’s); Mary and Helen had sumptuous times in their own feminine fashion.
Upon the evening of Christmas Eve, when the earth was snow-lit, and the street-lamps sparkled with crystals, and the rime on the doorsteps crackled beneath one’s feet, Jeremy accompanied his mother on a present-leaving expedition. The excitement of that! The wonderful shapes and sizes of the parcels, the mysterious streets, the door-handles and the door-bells, the glittering stars, the maidservants, the sense of the lighted house, as though you opened a box full of excitements and then hurriedly shut the lid down again. Jeremy trembled and shook, not with cold, but with exalting, completely satisfying happiness.
There followed the Stocking, the Waits, the Carols, the Turkey, the Christmas Cake, the Tree, the Presents, Snapdragon, Bed... There followed Headache, Ill-temper, Smacking of Mary, Afternoon Walk, Good Temper again, Complete Weariness, Hamlet sick on the Golden Cockatoos, Hamlet Beaten, Five minutes with Mother downstairs, Bed. .. Christmas was over.
From that moment of the passing of Boxing Day it was simply the counting of the minutes to “Dick Whittington.” Six days from Boxing Day. Say you slept from eight to seven — eleven hours; that left thirteen hours; six thirteen hours was, so Helen said, seventy-eight. Seventy-eight hours, and Sunday twice as long as the other days, and that made thirteen more; ninety-one, said Helen, her nose in the air.
The week dragged along, very difficult work for everybody, and even Hamlet felt the excitement and watched his corner with the Jampot’s sewing machine in it with more quivering intensity than ever. The Day Before The Day arrived, the evening before The Day, the last supper before The Day, the last bed before The Day... Suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-Box, The Day itself.
Then the awful thing happened.
Jeremy awoke to the consciousness that something terrific was about to occur. He lay for a minute thinking — then he was up, running about the nursery floor as though he were a young man in Mr. Rossetti’s poetry shouting: “Helen! Mary! Mary! Helen!... It’s Dick Whittington! Dick Whittington!”
On such occasions he lost entirely his natural reserve and caution. He dressed with immense speed, as though that would hasten the coming of the evening. He ran into the nursery, carrying the black tie that went under his sailor-collar.
He held it out to the Jampot, who eyed him with disfavour. She was leaving them all in a week and was a strange confusion of sentiment and bad temper, love and hatred, wounded pride and injured dignity.
“Nurse. Please. Fasten it,” he said impatiently.
“And that’s not the way to speak, Master Jeremy, and well you know it,” she said. “‘Ave you cleaned your teeth?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. It was not until the word was spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed him with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a very bad hand at a lie...
He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back — but something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over his mouth. His face flamed.
“You’ve truly cleaned them?” she said.
“Yes, truly,” he answered, his eyes on the ground. Never was there a more obvious liar in all the world.
She said no more; he moved to the fireplace. His joy was gone. There was a cold clammy sensation about his heart. Slowly, very slowly, the consciousness stole upon him that he was a liar. He had not thought it a lie when he had firs
t spoken, now he knew.
Still there was time. Had he turned round and spoken, all might still have been well. But now obstinacy held him. He was not going to give the Jampot an opportunity for triumphing over him. After all, he would clean them so soon as she went to brush Helen’s hair. In a moment what he had said would be true.
But he was miserable. Hamlet came up from the nether regions where he had spent the night, showing his teeth, wagging his tail, and even rolling on the cockatoos. Jeremy paid no attention. The weight in his heart grew heavier and heavier. He watched, from under his eyelids, the Jampot. In a moment she must go into Helen’s room. But she did not. She stayed for a little arranging the things on the breakfast-table — then suddenly, without a word, she turned into Jeremy’s bedchamber. His heart began to hammer. There was an awful pause; he heard from miles away Mary’s voice: “Do do that button, Helen, I can’t get it!” and Helen’s “Oh, bother!”
Then, like Judgment, the Jampot appeared again. She stood in the doorway, looking across at him.
“You ‘ave not cleaned your teeth, Master Jeremy,” she said. “The glass isn’t touched, nor your toothbrush... You wicked, wicked boy. So it’s a liar you’ve become, added on to all your other wickedness.”
“I forgot,” he muttered sullenly. “I thought I had.”
She smiled the smile of approaching triumph.
“No, you did not,” she said. “You knew you’d told a lie. It was in your face. All of a piece — all of a piece.”
The way she said this, like a pirate counting over his captured treasure, was enraging. Jeremy could feel the wild fury at himself, at her, at the stupid blunder of the whole business rising to his throat.
“If you think I’m going to let this pass you’re making a mighty mistake,” she continued, “which I wouldn’t do not if you paid me all the gold in the kingdom. I mayn’t be good enough to keep my place and look after such as you, but anyways I’m able to stop your lying for another week or two. I know my duty even though there’s them as thinks I don’t.”
She positively snorted, and the excitement of her own vindication and the just condemnation of Jeremy was such that her hands trembled.
“I don’t care what you do,” Jeremy shouted. “You can tell anyone you like. I don’t care what you do. You’re a beastly woman.”
She turned upon him, her face purple. “That’s enough, Master Jeremy,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “I’m not here to be called names by such as you. You’ll be sorry for this before you’re much older.... You see.”
There was then an awful and sickly pause. Jeremy seemed to himself to be sinking lower and lower into a damp clammy depth of degradation. What must this world be that it could change itself so instantly from a place of gay and happy pleasure into a dim groping room of punishment and dismay?
His feelings were utterly confused. He supposed that he was terribly wicked. But he did not feel wicked. He only felt miserable, sick and defiant. Mary and Helen came in, their eyes open to a crisis, their bodies tuned sympathetically to the atmosphere of sin and crime that they discerned around them.
Then Mr. Cole came in as was his daily habit — for a moment before his breakfast.
“Well, here are you all,” he cried. “Ready for to-night? No breakfast yet? Why, now...?”
Then perceiving, as all practised fathers instantly must, that the atmosphere was sinful, he changed his voice to that of the Children’s Sunday Afternoon Service — a voice well known in his family.
“Please, sir,” began the Jampot, “I’m sorry to ‘ave to tell you, sir, that Master Jeremy’s not been at all good this morning.”
“Well, Jeremy,” he said, turning to his son, “what is it?”
Jeremy’s face, raised to his father’s, was hard and set and sullen.
“I’ve told a lie,” he said; “I said I’d cleaned my teeth when I hadn’t. Nurse went and looked, and then I called her a beastly woman.”
The Jampot’s face expressed a grieved and at the same time triumphant confirmation of this.
“You told a lie?” Mr. Cole’s voice was full of a lingering sorrow.
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry that I told a lie, but I’m not sorry I called Nurse a beastly woman.”
“Jeremy!”
“No, I’m not. She is a beastly woman.”
Mr. Cole was always at a loss when anyone defied him, even though it were only a small boy of eight. He took refuge now in his ecclesiastical and parental authority.
“I’m very distressed — very distressed indeed. I hope that punishment, Jeremy, will show you how wrong you have been. I’m afraid you cannot come with us to the Pantomime to-night.”
At that judgement a quiver for an instant held Jeremy’s face, turning it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign. He simply stood there waiting.
Mr. Cole was baffled, as he always was by Jeremy’s moods, so he continued:
“And until you’ve apologised to Nurse for your rudeness you must remain by yourself. I shall forbid your sisters to speak to you. Mary and Helen, you are not to speak to your brother until he has apologised to Nurse.”
“Yes, Father,” said Helen
“Oh, Father, mayn’t he come to-night?” said Mary.
“No, Mary, I’m afraid not.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “It won’t be any fun without Jeremy,” she said. She wished to make the further sacrifice of saying that she would not go unless Jeremy did, but some natural caution restrained her.
Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery of Jeremy’s face the Jampot’s hear — in reality a kind and even sentimental heart — repented her.
“There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say your father will take you, after all; and we won’t think no more about what you said to me in the ‘eat of the moment.”
But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of bacon, nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that poured into the room from the frosty world outside.
A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this thing with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not dreamt of it for days and nights and nights and days, as he had done. Their whole future existence did not depend upon their witnessing this, as did his.
During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something caged and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that children are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise something of the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole world had gone.
He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie... And he would not meet Dick Whittington.
The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron chain. Childhood’s tragedies are terrible tragedies, because a child has no sense of time; a moment’s dismay is eternal; a careless word from an elder is a lasting judgment; an instant’s folly is a lifetime’s mistake.
The day dragged its weary length along, and he scarcely moved from his corner by the fire. He did not attempt conversation with anyone. Once or twice the Jampot tried to penetrate behind that little mask of anger and dismay.
“Come, now, things aren’t so bad as all that. You be a good boy, and go and tell your father you’re sorry...” or “Well, then, Master Jeremy, there’ll be another time, I dare say, you can go to the the-ayter...”
But she found no response. If there was one thing that she hated, it was sulks. Here they were, sulks of the worst — and so, like many wiser than herself, she covered up with a word a situation that she did not understand, and left it at that.
The evening came on; the curtains were drawn. Tea arrived; still Jeremy sat there, not speaking, not raising his eyes, a condemned creature. Mary and Helen and Hamlet had had a wretc
hed day. They all sympathised with him.
The girls went to dress. Seven o’clock struck. They were taken downstairs by Nurse, who had her evening out. Rose, the housemaid, would sit with Master Jeremy.
Doors closed, doors opened, voices echoed, carriage-wheels were heard.
Jeremy and Hamlet were left to themselves...
III
The last door had closed, and the sudden sense that everyone had gone and that he might behave now as he pleased, removed the armour in which all day he had encased himself.
He raised his head, looked about the deserted nursery, and then, with the sudden consciousness of that other lighted and busied place where Whittington was pursuing his adventures, he burst into tears. He sobbed, his head down upon his arms, and his body squeezed together so that his knees were close to his nose and his hair in his boots. Hamlet restored him to himself. Instead of assisting his master’s grief, as a sentimental dog would have done, by sighing or sniffing or howling, he yawned, stretched himself, and rolled on the carpet. He did not believe in giving way to feelings, and he was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, at Jeremy’s lack of restraint.
Jeremy felt this, and in a little while sobs came very slowly, and at last were only little shudders, rather pleasant and healthy. He looked about him, rubbed his red nose with a hideously dirty handkerchief, and felt immensely sleepy.
No, he would not cry any more. Rose would shortly appear, and he did not intend to cry before housemaids. Nevertheless, his desolation was supreme. He was a liar. He had told lies before, but they had not been discovered, and so they were scarcely lies... Now, in some strange way, the publication of his lie had shown him what truly impossible things lies were. He had witnessed this effect upon the general public; he had not believed that he was so wicked. He did not even now feel really wicked, but he saw quite clearly that there was one world for liars and one for truthful men. He wanted, terribly badly, someone to tell him that he was still in the right world...