by Hugh Walpole
“Awful,” said Mary.
But Helen said: “She wouldn’t go there. She’d take a little house, like Miss Dobell, and have tea-parties on Thursdays — somewhere near the Cathedral.”
“No, she wouldn’t!” said Jeremy excitedly. “How could she take a little house if she hadn’t any money? She told me she hadn’t, and no friends, nor nobody, and she cried like anything—” He paused for breath, then concluded: “So we’ve got to be good now, and learn sums, and not make her jump. Really and truly, we must.”
“I always thought you were very silly to make so much noise,” said Helen in a superior fashion. “You and Mary — babies!”
“We’re not babies,” shouted Jeremy.
“Yes, you are.”
“No, we’re not.”
Miss Jones was no longer the subject of the conversation.
That same day it happened that rumours were brought to Mrs. Cole through Rose, the housemaid, or some other medium for the first time, of Miss Jones’s incapacity.
That evening Jeremy was spending his last half-hour before bedtime in his mother’s room happily in a corner with his toy village. He suddenly heard his mother say to Aunt Amy:
“I’m afraid Miss Jones won’t do. I thought she was managing the children, but now I hear that she can’t keep order at all. I’m sorry — it’s so difficult to get anyone.”
Jeremy sprang up from the floor, startling the ladies, who had forgotten that he was there.
“She’s all right,” he cried. “Really she is, Mother. We’re going to be as good as anything, really we are. You won’t send her away, will you?”
“My dear Jeremy,” his mother said, “I’d forgotten you were there. Rose says you don’t do anything Miss Jones tells you.”
“Rose is silly,” he answered. “She doesn’t know anything about it. But you will keep her, won’t you, Mother?”
“I don’t know — if she can’t manage you—”
“But she can manage us. We’ll be good as anything, I promise. You will keep her, won’t you, Mother?”
“Really, Jeremy,” said Aunt Amy, “to bother your mother so! And it’s nearly time you went to bed.”
He brushed her aside. “You will keep her, Mother, won’t you?”
“It depends, dear,” said Mrs. Cole, laughing. “You see—”
“No — we’ll be bad with everyone else,” he cried. “We will, really — everyone else. And we’ll be good with Miss Jones.”
“Well, so long as you’re good, dear,” she said. “I’d no idea you liked her so much.”
“Oh, she’s all right,” he said. “But it isn’t that—” Then he stopped; he couldn’t explain — especially with that idiot Aunt Amy there, who’d only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else horrible.
Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in the dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him, only the clocks whispering.
What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were dead! And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At the same time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most strangely moved him — her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack of relations. Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps she also cried!
The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging figures, all with businesses of their own.
It was very odd.
He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.
CHAPTER V. THE SEA-CAPTAIN
I
Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives thirty years ago in Polchester.
It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on the highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would not be able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true, although I myself can never be completely assured, possessing so vividly as I do a memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the edge of Merazion Woods and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet of ships full-sail upon the bluest of seas, and would not be persuaded that it was merely wrack of clouds. That may be or no; the fact remains that Polchester sniffed the sea from afar, was caught with sea breezes and bathed in reflected sea-lights; again and again of an evening the Cathedral sailed on dust and shadow towards the horizon, a great white ghost of a galleon, and the young citizens of the town with wondering eyes, watched it go. But there were more positive influences than mere cloud and light. We had, in the lower part of our town, sailors, quite a number of them. There were the old white-bearded ones who would sit upon tubs and tell smuggling tales; these haunted the River Pol, fished in it, ferried people across it, and let out boats for hire. There were younger sailors who, tired of the still life of their little villages and dreading the real hard work of a life at sea, lurched and slouched by the Pol’s river bed, fishing a little, sleeping, eating and drinking a great deal.
And there were the true sailors, passing through perhaps on their way to Drymouth to join their ships, staying in the town for a day or two to visit their relations, or simply stopping for an hour or so to gaze open-mouthed at the Cathedral and the market-place and the Canons and the old women. These men had sometimes gold rings in their ears, and their faces were often coloured a dark rich brown, and they carried bundles across their backs all in the traditional style.
Then there were influences more subtle than either clouds or men. There were the influences of the places that we had ourselves seen in our summer holidays — Rafiel and St. Lowe, Marion Bay or Borhaze — and, on the other coast, Newbock with its vast stretch of yellow sand, St. Borse with its wild seas and giant Borse Head, or St. Nails-in-Cove with its coloured rocks and sparkling shells. Every child had his own place; my place was, like Jeremy’s, Rafiel, and a better, more beautiful place, in the whole world you will not find. And each place has its own legend: at Rafiel the Gold lured Pirates, and the Turnip-Field; at Polwint the Giant Excise Man; at Borhaze the Smugglers of Trezent Rock; at St. Borse the wreck of “The Golden Galleon” in the year 1563, with its wonderful treasure; and at St. Maitsin Cove the famous Witch of St. Maitsin Church Town who turned men’s bones into water and filled St. Maitsin Church with snakes. Back from one summer holiday, treasuring these stories together with our collections of shells and seaweed and dried flowers, we came, and so the tales settled in Polchester streets and crept into the heart of the Polchester cobbles and haunted the Polchester corners by the fire, and even invaded with their romantic, peering, mischievous faces the solemn aisles of the Cathedral itself.
The sea was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore, or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the Smugglers of Trezent or the Gold-laced Pirates of Rafiel.
But I think that none of us adored the sea as Jeremy did. From that first moment when, as a small baby, he had been held up in Rafiel Cove to see the tops of the waves catch the morning light as they rolled over to shore, he had adored it. He had never felt any fear of it; he had been able to swim since he could remember, and he simply lived for those days at the end of July when they would all, in a frantic hurry and confusion, take the train for Rafiel and arrive at Cow Farm in the evening, with the roar of the sea coming across the quiet fields to mingle with the lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep. He had in his bedroom a wonderful collection of dusty and sticky sea-shells, and these he would turn over and over, letting them run through his fingers as a miner counts his gold.
Let him catch the faintest glimpse of a shadow of a sailor in the street and he was after it, and he had once, when he was only four or five, been caught by the terrified Jampot, only just in time, walkin
g away confidently down the market-place, his hand in the huge grasp of a villainous looking mariner. He was exceedingly happy in his home, but he did often wonder whether he would not run away to sea; of course, he was going to be a sailor, but it seemed so long to wait until he was thirteen or fourteen, and there was the sea all the time rolling in and out and inviting him to come.
Mrs. Cole warned Miss Jones of this taste of Jeremy’s: “Never let him speak to a sailor, Miss Jones. There are some horrible men in the town, and Jeremy simply is not to be trusted when sailors are concerned.”
Miss Jones, however, could not be always on her guard, and Fate is stronger than any governess...
Early in February there came one of those hints of spring that in Glebeshire more than in any other place in the world thrill and stir the heart. Generally they give very little in actual reward and are followed by weeks of hail and sleet and wind, but for that reason alone their burning promise is beyond all other promises beguiling. Jeremy got up one morning to feel that somewhere behind the thick wet mists of the early hours there was a blazing sun. After breakfast, opening the window and leaning out, he could see the leaves of the garden still shining with their early glitter and the earth channelled into fissures and breaks, dark and hard under the silver-threaded frost; beneath the rind of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer the call of the sun above it. Far down the road towards the Orchards a dim veil of gold was spreading behind the walls of mist; the sparrows on the almond tree near his window chattered like the girls of the High School, and blue shadows stole into the dim grey sky, just as light breaks upon an early morning sea; the air was warm behind the outer wall of the frosty morning, and the faint gold of the first crocus beneath the garden wall near the pantry door, where always the first crocuses came, caught his eye. Even as he watched the sun burst the mist, the trees changed from dim grey to sharp black, the blue flooded the sky, and the Cathedral beyond the trees shone like a house of crystal.
All this meant spring, and spring meant hunting for snowdrops in the Meads. Jeremy informed Miss Jones, and Miss Jones was, of course, agreeable. They would walk that way after luncheon.
The Meads fall in a broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank. Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils first, and the primroses afterwards, are so thick that, from the Cathedral walls, the Rope Walk looks as though it wandered between pools and lakes of gold. In the Orchards on the hill also they run like rivers.
Upon this afternoon there were only the trees, faintly pink, along the river and the wide unbroken carpet of green. Miss Jones walked up and down the Rope Walk, whilst Mary told her an endless and exceedingly confused story that had begun more than a week ago and had reached by now such a state of “To be continued in our next” that Miss Jones had only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary’s audiences, and Mary never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses, white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she had seen in Thornley’s windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.
Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could, his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he saw them scale the air and swim the stream — now, he was close on their trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole... sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them; always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.
Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful afternoon...
Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean’s youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.
He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep rich voice say:
“I suppose you ‘aven’t such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young gentleman?”
He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to possess, but, of course, he hadn’t one, owing to the stupidity of elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There, standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of the world would have most certainly described as “seedy.”
Jeremy did not see his “seediness.” He saw first his face, which was of a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple; ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling mouth. He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle. He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at bursting point. He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their owner’s chest heaved.
And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could be so thick and so broad. The back, spreading to the farthest limits of the shiny seams of the coat, was like a wall. The thighs were pillows, the arms bolsters and yet not fat, mind you, simply muscle, all of it. One could see in a minute that it was all muscle, the chest thrust forward, the legs spread wide, the bull-neck bursting the handkerchief, everything that Jeremy himself most wished to be. A sailor, a monument of strength, with the scent of his “shag” strong enough to smell a mile away, and — yes, most marvellous of all, gold rings in his ears! His chest would be tatooed probably, and perhaps his legs also!
There, on the back of his hand, was a blue anchor.... Jeremy looked up and trembled lest the vision should fade, then flung a hurried look around him to see whether Miss Jones were near. No one was about. He was alone with the desire of his life.
“I’m so so sorry I haven’t a match,” he said. “I’m not allowed to have them, you know.”
“No, I suppose not,” said the vision. “Just my blamed luck. There I am with ‘undreds of pounds lying around my room at ‘ome careless as you please, and then held up for a bloomin’ match. What’s gold to a man like me? But a match... there you are... that’s life.”
He looked at Jeremy with great interest; he took in, as Jeremy realised, every detail of his personal appearance.
“I li
ke boys,” he said. “‘Ad two myself— ‘ealthy little nippers they was. Both dead-’ere to-day and gone to-morrer, as you might say. Got your nurse ‘anging around anywhere?”
“Nurse?” said Jeremy indignantly. “I don’t have a nurse. I’m much too old! There is a governess, but she’s over there talking to Mary. She’s my sister — but they won’t bother yet — not till the Cathedral bell begins.”
“No intention of ‘urting your feelings, young fellow my lad. Didn’t think you’d want a nurse of course — big chap like you. Thought you might ‘ave a baby brother or such. No offence — I suppose you ‘aven’t begun to smoke yet. Can’t offer you some tobacco.”
Jeremy coloured. The man was laughing at him.
“I’m eight if you want to know,” he said, “and I’m going to school in September.”
“School!” said the mariner, sniffing contemptuously. “I don’t think much of school if you ask me. Now I never went to school, and I can’t see that I’m much the worse for not ‘aving been there. Contrariwise — I’ve seen many a fine promising lad spoiled by too much schoolin’. Be a man of the world, I say; that’s the direction you want to sail in.”
“Did you really never go to school?” asked Jeremy.
“Not I!” relied the sailor. “Flung out at the age of six, I was, turned into a boat sailing to the West Indies and left to shift for myself — and ’ere I am to-day a Captain of as fine a craft as you’re ever likely to see, with gold in ‘er lockers and peacocks in the ‘old — all in a manner of speaking, you know.”
Jeremy’s eyes glittered; his face was flushed a brilliant red. Hamlet had returned from his rabbit hunting and sat with his tongue out and a wild adventurous eye glittering up at his master from behind his hair, yet he was not noticed.