Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  Aunt Amy was deeply moved. Her conceit, her abnormal all-embracing conceit was wounded — yes, even by so insignificant a creature as the Dean’s Ernest; but she was also unexpectedly touched. She would have greatly preferred not to be touched, but there it was, she could not help herself. She did not know that, in all her life before, anyone had ever fought for her, and that now of all champions in the world fate should have chosen Jeremy, who was, she had supposed, her enemy — never her defender!

  And that horrid child of the Dean — she had always disliked him, with his long yellow neck and watery eyes! How dared he say such things about her! He had always been rude to her. She remembered once —

  Jeremy arrived, washed, brushed, and obstinate. He would, of course, be scolded to within an inch of his life, and he did not care. He had seen the Dean’s Ernest howling and kicking on the ground; he had soiled his straw hat for him, dirtied his stiff white collar for him, and made his nose bleed. He glared at his aunt (one eye was rapidly disappearing beneath a blue bruise), and he was proud, triumphant, and very tired.

  Farewells were made — again many apologies— “Nothing, I assure you, nothing. Boys will be boys, I know,” from Miss Maddison.

  Then they were seated in the jingle, Jeremy next to Aunt Amy, awaiting his scolding. It did not come. Aunt Amy tried; she knew what she should say. She should be very angry, disgusted, ashamed. She could not be any of these things. That horrid boy had insulted her. She was touched and proud as she had never been touched and proud in her life before.

  Jeremy waited, and then as nothing came his weariness grew upon him. As the old fat pony jogged along, as the evening colours of street and sky danced before him, sleep came nearer and nearer.

  He nodded, recovered, nodded and nodded again. His body pressed closer to Aunt Amy’s, leaned against her. His head rested upon her shoulder.

  After a moment’s pause she put her arm round him — so, holding him, she stared, defiantly and crossly, upon the world.

  CHAPTER VII. RELIGION

  I

  Always in after years Jeremy remembered that party of Miss Maddison’s, not because it had been there that he had won his first fight, but for the deeper reason that from that day his life received a new colour, woven into the texture of it; even now when he thinks of those hours that followed Miss Maddison’s party he catches his breath and glances around him to see whether everything is safe. The children, on arriving home that evening, found that their father and mother had already returned from Drymouth. Jeremy, sleepy though he was, rushed to his mother, held her hand, explained his black eye, and then suddenly, in a way that he had, fell asleep, there as he was, and had to be carried up to bed.

  When he awoke next morning his first thought was of his mother. He did not know why; she was so definitely part of the background of his daily life that he felt too sure of her continual and abiding presence to need deliberate thought of her. But this morning he wanted to get up quickly and find her. Perhaps her absence had made him feel more insecure, but there had also been something that night, something in her face, something in the touch of her hand.

  And the other thing that he realised was that summer had truly come. He knew at once that hot smell that pressed even through the closed window-panes of his room; the bars and squares of light on the floor when he jumped out of bed and stood upon them seemed to burn the soles of his feet, and the rays of light on the ceiling quivered as only summer sunlight can quiver. The two windows of his bedroom looked back behind Polchester over fields and hedges to a dim purple line of wood. A tiny stream ran through the first two fields, and this little river was shining now with a white hot light that had yet the breeze of the morning ruffling it. He ran to his window and opened it. Beyond the wall that bordered their house was a little brown path, and down this path, even as he watched, a company of cows were slowly wandering along. Already they were flapping their ears lazily in anticipation of the flies, and the boy who was driving them was whistling as one only whistles on a summer morning. He could see the buttercups, too, in the nearest field; they seemed to have sprung to life in the space of a night. Someone was pulling the rope of a well somewhere and someone else was pouring water out upon some stone court. Even as he watched, a bee came blundering up to his window, hesitated for a moment, and then went whirring off again, and through all the sun and glitter and the sparkle of the little river there was a scent of pinks, and mignonette, and even, although it could not really be so, of the gorse. The sky was a pale white blue, so pale that it was scarcely any colour at all and a few puffs of clouds, dead white like the purest smoke, hovered in dancing procession, above the purple wood. The sun burnt upon his bare feet and his head and his hands.

  This coming of summer meant so much more to him than merely the immediate joy of it — it meant Rafiel and Cow Farm and the Cove and green pools with crabs in them, and shrimping and paddling and riding home in the evening on haycarts, and drinking milk out of tin cans, and cows and small pigs, and peeling sticks and apples, and collecting shells, and fishermen’s nets, and sandwiches, and saffron buns mixed with sand, and hot ginger beer, and one’s ears peeling with the sun, and church on Sunday with the Rafiel sheep cropping the grass just outside the church door, and Dick Marriott, the fisherman, and slipping along over the green water, trailing one’s fingers in the water, in his boat, and fishy smells by the sea-wall, and red masses of dog-fish on the pier, and the still cool feel of the farmhouse sheets just after getting into bed — all these things and a thousand more the coming of summer meant to Jeremy.

  But this morning he did not feel his customary joy. Closing his window and dressing slowly, he wondered what was the matter. What could it be? It was not his eye — certainly it was a funny colour this morning and it hurt when you touched it, but he was proud of that. No, it was not his eye. And it was not the dog, who came into his room, after scratching on the door, and made his usual morning pretence of having come for any other purpose than to see his friend and master, first looking under the bed, then going up to the window pretending to gaze out of it (which he could not do), barking, then rolling on a square of sunlit carpet, and, after that, lying on his back, his legs out stiff, his ridiculous “Imperial” pointed and ironical, then suddenly turning, with a twist on his legs, rushing at last up to Jeremy, barking at him, laughing at him, licking him, and even biting his stockings — last of all seizing a bedroom slipper and rushing wildly into the schoolroom with it.

  No, there was nothing the matter with Hamlet. Nor was there anything the matter with Miss Jones, free, happily, from her customary neuralgia, and delighted with the new number of the Church Times. Nor was it the breakfast, which to-day included bacon and strawberry jam. Nor, finally, was it Mary or Helen, who, pleased with the summer weather (and Mary additionally pleased with the virtues of Lance as minutely recorded in the second volume of “The Pillars of the House”), were both in the most amiable of tempers. No, it must be something inside Jeremy himself.

  He waited until the end of breakfast to ask his question:

  “Can I go and see Mother, Miss Jones?”

  Mary and Helen looked across at him inquisitively.

  “What do you want to see your mother for now, Jeremy? You always see her at twelve o’clock.” Miss Jones pushed her spectacles lower upon her nose and continued her reading.

  “I want to.”

  “Well, you can’t now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I say not — that’s enough.”

  But Jeremy was gentle to-day. He got off his chair, went round to Miss Jones’s chair, and, looking up at her out of his bruised eye, said in the most touching voice:

  “But, please, Miss Jones, I want to. I really do.”

  Then she said what he had known all the time was coming:

  “I’m afraid you won’t see your mother to-day, dear. She’s not well. She’s in bed.”

  “Why? Is she ill?”

  “She’s tired after her journey yest
erday, I expect.”

  He said no more.

  He tried during the whole of that day not to think of his mother, and he found that, for the first time in his life, he could do nothing else but think of her. During the morning he sat very silently over his lessons, did all that he was told, did not once kick Mary under the table, nor ask Miss Jones to sharpen his pencil, nor make faces at Hamlet. Once or twice, in a way that he had, he leaned his head on his hand as though he were an ancient professor with a whole library of great works behind him, and when Miss Jones asked him whether he had a headache he said: “No, thank you,” instead of seizing on the wonderful opportunity of release that such a question offered him. When they all went for a walk in the afternoon, he sprang for a moment into something of his natural vivacity. They came upon a thin, ill-shaven tramp dressed as a sailor, with a patch over one eye, producing terrible discordance from a fiddle. This individual held in one hand a black tin cup, and at his side crouched a mongrel terrier, whose beaten and dishevelled appearance created at once hopes in the breast of the flamboyant Hamlet. This couple were posted just outside Mr. Poole’s second-hand bookshop, close to the “2d.” box, and for a moment Jeremy was enthralled. He wanted to give the hero his week’s penny, and upon finding that his week’s penny was not, owing to sweet purchases on the previous day, he began elaborate bargainings with Miss Jones as to the forestalling of future pennies. Meanwhile, Hamlet leapt, with every sign of joyful expectation, upon the pauper dog; the blind sailor began to hit wildly about with his stick, Mr. Poole’s “2d.” box was upset, and the sailor’s black patch fell off, revealing him as the possessor of two beautiful eyes, just like any other gentleman, and a fine, vigorous stock of the best Glebeshire profanities. Mr. Poole, an irascible old man, himself came out, a policeman approached, two old ladies from the Close, well known to Jeremy, were shocked by the tramp, and the Cathedral bell, as though it had just awoken up to its real responsibilities, suddenly began to ring.

  All this was, of course, delightful to Jeremy, and offered so many possible veins of interest that he could have stayed there for hours. He wanted very badly to ask the sailor why he covered up a perfectly wholesome eye with a black patch, and he would have liked to see what Hamlet could do in the direction of eating up the scattered remnants of Mr. Poole’s “2d.” box; but he was dragged away by the agitated hand of Miss Jones, having to console himself finally with a wink from the august policeman, who, known throughout Polchester as Tom Noddy, was a kindly soul and liked gentlemanly little boys, but persecuted the street sort.

  For a moment this exciting adventure carried him away, and he even listened for a minute or two to Mary, who, seizing her opportunity, began hurriedly: “Once upon a time there lived a sailor, very thin, and he never washed, and he had a dog and a violin—” But soon he remembered, and sighed and said: “Oh, bother, Mary!” and then walked on by himself. And still, all through that hot afternoon, when even the Rope Walk did not offer any shade, and when the Pol was of so clear a colour that you could see trout and emerald stones and golden sand as under glass, and when Hamlet was compelled to run ahead and find a piece of shade and lie there stretched, panting, with his tongue out, until they came up to him — even all these signs of a true and marvellous summer did not relieve Jeremy of his burden. Something horrible was going to happen. He knew it with such certainty that he wondered how Mary and Helen could be so gaily light-hearted, and despised them for their carelessness. This was connected in some way with the hot weather; he felt as though, were a cold breeze suddenly to come, and rain to fall, he would be happy again. There had been once a boy, older than he, called Jimmy Bain, a fat, plump boy, who had lived next door to the Coles. Whenever he had the opportunity he bullied Jeremy, pinching his arms, putting pins into his legs, and shouting suddenly into his ears. Jeremy, who had feared Johnny Bain, had always “felt” the stout youth’s arrival before he appeared. The sky had seemed to darken, the air to thicken, the birds to gather in the “rooky” wood.

  He had trembled and shaken, his teeth had chattered and his throat grown dry for no reason at all. As he had once felt about Johnny Bain so now he felt about life in general. Something horrible was going to happen.... Something to do with Mother.... As he came up the road to their house his heart beat so that he could not hear his own steps.

  II

  They entered the house, and at once even Mary, preoccupied as she was with her story about the sailor, noticed that something was wrong.

  “Rose! Rose!” she called out loudly.

  “Hush!” said Miss Jones. “You must be quiet, dear.”

  “Why?” said Mary. “I want Rose to—”

  “Your mother isn’t at all well, dear. I—”

  And she was interrupted by Rose, who, coming suddenly downstairs, with a face very different from her usual cheerful one, said something to Miss Jones in a low voice.

  Miss Jones gave a little cry: “So soon?... A girl....” And then added: “How is she?”

  Then Rose said something more, which the children could not catch, and vanished.

  “Very quietly, children,” said Miss Jones, in a voice that trembled; “and you mustn’t leave the schoolroom till I tell you. Your mother—” She broke off as though she were afraid of showing emotion.

  “What is it?” said Jeremy in a voice that seemed new to them all — older, more resolute, strangely challenging for so small a boy.

  “Your mother’s very ill, Jeremy, dear. You must be a very good boy, and help your sisters.”

  “Mightn’t I go for just a minute?”

  “No, certainly not.”

  They all went upstairs. Then, in the schoolroom, Miss Jones said an amazing thing. She said:

  “I must tell you all, children, that you’ve got a new little sister.”

  “A new sister!” screamed Mary.

  Helen said: “Oh, Miss Jones!”

  Jeremy said: “What did she come for just now, when Mother is ill?”

  “God wanted her to come, dear,” said Miss Jones. “You must all be very kind to her, and do all you can—”

  She was interrupted by a torrent of questions from the two girls. What was she like? What was her name? Could she walk? Where did she come from? Did Father and Mother find her in Drymouth? And so on. Jeremy was silent. At last he said: “We don’t want any more girls here.”

  “Better than having another boy,” said Helen.

  But he would not take up the challenge. He sat on his favourite seat on the window-ledge, dragged up a reluctant Hamlet to sit with him, and gazed out down into the garden that was misty now in the evening golden light, the trees and the soil black beneath the gold, the rooks slowly swinging across the sty above the farther side of the road. Hamlet wriggled. He always detested that he should be cuddled, and he would press first with one leg, then with another, against Jeremy’s coat; then he would lie dead for a moment, suddenly springing, with his head up, in the hope that the surprise would free him; then he would turn into a snake, twisting his body under Jeremy’s arm, and dropping with a flop on to the floor. All these manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections against the imbecile tyrannies of man, fell, to his own surprise, asleep.

  Jeremy sat there whilst the dusk fell and all the beautiful lights were drawn from the sky and the rooks went to bed. Rose came to draw the curtains, and then he left his window-seat, dragged out his toy village and pretended to play with it. He looked at his sisters. They seemed quite tranquil. Helen was sewing, and Mary deep in “The Pillars of the House.” The clock ticked. Hamlet, lost in sleep, snored and sputtered; the whole world pursued its ordinary way. Only in himself something was changed; he was unhappy, and he could not account for his unhappiness. It should have been because his mother was ill, and yet she had been ill before, and he had been only disturbed for a moment. After all, grown-up people always got well. There ha
d been Aunt Amy, who had had measles, and the wife of the Dean, who had had something, and even the Bishop once... But now he was frightened. There was some perception, coming to him now for the first time in his life, that this world was not absolutely stable — that people left it, people came into it, that there was change and danger and something stronger.... Gradually this perception was approaching him as though it had been some dark figure who had entered the house, and now, with muffled step and veiled face, was slowly climbing the stairs towards him. He only knew that his mother could not go; she could not go. She was part of his life, and she would always be so. Why, now, when he thought of it, he could do nothing without his mother; every day he must tell her what he had done and what he was going to do, must show her what he had acquired and must explain to her what he had lost, must go to her when he was hurt and when he was frightened and when he was glad... And of all these things he had never even thought until now.

  As he sat there the house seemed to grow ever quieter and quieter about him. He felt as though he would have liked to have gone to the schoolroom door and listened. It was terrible imagining the house behind the door — quite silent — so that the clocks had stopped, and no one walked upon the stairs and no one laughed down in the pantry. He wished that they would make more noise in the schoolroom. He upset the church and the orchard and Mrs. Noah.

  But the silence after the noise was worse than ever.

  Soon Miss Jones took the two girls away to her room to fit on some clothes, an operation which Helen adored and Mary hated. Jeremy was left alone, and he was, at once, terribly frightened. He knew that it was of no use to be frightened, and he tried to go on with his game, putting the church with the apple trees around it and the Noah family all sleeping under the trees, but at every moment something compelled him to raise his head and see that no one was there, and he felt so small and so lonely that he would like to have hidden under something.

  Then when he thought of his mother all alone and the house so quiet around her and no one able to go to her he felt so miserable that he turned round from his village and stared desolately into the fireplace. The thought of his new sister came to him, but was dismissed impatiently. He did not want a new sister — Mary and Helen were trouble enough as it was — and he felt, with an old weary air, that it was time, indeed, that he was off to school. Nothing was the same. Always new people. Never any peace.