by Hugh Walpole
Today there were three farmers in brown leggings, with pipes, and thick knotted walking-sticks, two or three women with baskets, and a child or so, and an amiable, absent-minded clergyman in a black cloth so faded that it was now green, reading The Times, and shaking his head over it as he stumbled up and down the platform. One of the farmers had a large, woolly sheep-dog, who, of course, excited Hamlet to a frenzy. Jeremy, therefore, had his time fully occupied in checking this; but he had, nevertheless, the opportunity to observe how one of the farmers puffed the smoke out of his cheeks as though he were an engine; how one of the women, with a back as broad as a wall, had red stockings; and how the clergyman nearly fell on to the railway-line every time he turned round, and only saved himself from disaster by a miracle. The train arriving at last, they all climbed into it, and then had to wait for a hot, grilling half-hour whilst the engine made up its mind that it was worth its while to take all the trouble to start off again.
“An hour late, upon my word,” said Mr. Cole angrily, when at last, with a snore and a heave, and a grunt and a scream, they started. “It’s really too bad. I shall have to complain,” which, as everyone present knew, he had not the slightest intention of doing. In Jeremy’s carriage there were his father, his mother, Uncle Samuel, himself, Mary, and, of course, Hamlet. Hamlet had never been, in a train before, and his terror at the way that the ground quivered under him was pitiful to see. He lay first under the seat, trying to hold himself tightly together, then, when that failed, he made startled frenzied leaps on to laps (the lead had been removed for the time), finally he cowered up into the corner behind Uncle Samuel, who seemed to understand his case and sympathised with it. Whenever the train stopped (which, being a Glebeshire train, it did continually), he recovered at once his savoir-faire, asserted his dignity, gazed through the windows at the fields and cows as though he owned them all, and barked with the friendly greeting of comrade to comrade whenever he saw another dog.
The next thing that occupied Jeremy’s attention was lunch. Many people despise sandwiches and milk out of beer-bottles and bananas and seed-cake. Jeremy, of course, did not. He loved anything eaten out of paper, from the ice-cream sold by the Barney man in Polchester Square (only once did he secure some) down to the frills that there are round the tail of any self-respecting ham. But the paper on this journey to Rafield! There was nothing in the world to touch it. In the first place you spread newspaper on your knees, then there was paper under the sandwiches (chicken), and more paper under the sandwiches (beef), and still more under the sandwiches (egg); there was paper round the seed-cake, and, most wonderful of all, paper round the jam-puffs. Jam-puffs with strawberry jam eaten in the odour of ginger-beer and eggshells! Is it possible for life at its very best to hold more? He kept his jam-puff so long as he could, until at last Mr. Cole said: “Now, my boy! Finish it up — finish it up. Paper out of the window-all neat and tidy; that’s right!” speaking in that voice which Jeremy hated, because it was used, so especially, when cod-liver oil had to be taken. He swallowed his puff in a gulp, and then gazed out of the window lamenting its disappearance.
“Did you like it?” whispered Mary hoarsely.
“You’ve got some jam on the side of your nose,” said Jeremy.
He was sitting next to his father, who had the corner seat, and he now devoted all his energies to prevent himself from falling asleep against his father’s leg. But the ginger-beer, the glazed and shining fields beyond the window, the little blobs of sunlight that danced upon the floor of the carriage, the scents of food and flowers, and the hot breeze, the hum of the train, and the dancing of the telegraph wires — all these things were against him. His head began to nod and then to jump back with a sudden terrible spring as though an evil demon pulled it with a rope from behind, the carriage swelled like a balloon, then dwindled into a thin, straight line. The strangest things happened to his friends and relations. His mother, who was reading The Church Family Newspaper, developed two faces and a nose like a post, and Uncle Samuel, who had, in harsh reality, two chins, seemed to be all folds and creases like a balloon when it is shivering down into collapse. Jeremy fought with these fantasies; the lines on the newspaper doubled and redoubled, vanished and sprang to life again. He said: “I will not,” and, instantly, his head on the soft part of his father’s thigh, was asleep.
III
In his dreams he was riding on a cloud all pink and gold, and behind came a row of shining, white clouds fluffy like bales of wool wrapped round lighted lanterns. His cloud rose and fell, rose and fell, and a voice said in his ear: “All is well! All is well! You can go on like this for ever. There will be jam-puffs soon, and ice-cream, and fish-cakes, and you can go to China this way whenever you like.”
And he said: “Can’t I take Hamlet with me?”
And the voice answered: “Hamlet is with you already,” and there, behold, was Hamlet sitting on the pink cloud with a stiff gold collar round his neck, wagging his tail. And then the voice shouted so loudly that Jeremy jumped off the pink cloud in his astonishment: “Liskane! Liskane! Liskane!” and Jeremy jumped and fell and fell — right into his father’s lap, with someone crying in his ear: “Wake up, Jeremy! We’re there! We’re there!”
His first thought was for his green box, which was, he found, safely and securely in his hand. Then for Hamlet, who was, he saw with horror, already upon the platform, the lead trailing behind him like a neglected conscience, his burning eyes piercing his hair in search of another dog, whom he smelt but could not see.
Jeremy, rushing out of the train, seized the lead, scolded his recovered property, who wore an expression of injured and abandoned innocence, and looked about him. Yes, this was Liskane — wonderful, marvellous, magical Liskane! To the bored and cynical adult Liskane may easily appear to be one of the ugliest, most deserted stations in the whole of Europe, having nothing on either side of it save barren grey fields that never grow grass but only stones and bottles, with its single decoration — a heavy iron bridge that crosses the rails and leads up to the higher road and the town of Liskane. Ugly enough, but to Jeremy, on this summer afternoon, the gate to a sure and certain Paradise.
Although his family were fussing around him, Barbara crying, Mr. Cole saying: “Four, Five, Six... But where’s the black box? Your black box, Amy... Six, Seven... But there should be Eight... Seven...” and Mrs. Cole saying: “And there’s my brown bag. The little one with the black handle,” and Helen saying. “OO, was it adidums, then Nandy-Pandy, Nandy-Pandy...” and Miss Jones: “Now, Mary! Now, Jeremy! Now, Helen!”; although this was going on just as it always had gone on, his eyes were searching for the wagonette. Ah, there it was! He could just see the top of it beyond the iron bridge, and Jim, the man from the Farm, would be coming down to help with the boxes; yes, there he was crossing the bridge now, with his red face and broad shoulders, and the cap on the side of his head, just as he always wore it. Jeremy recognised him with a strange, little choking sensation. It was “coming home” to him, all this was — the great event of his life, and as he looked at the others he realised, young as he was, that none of them felt it as he did, and the realisation gave him a strange feeling, half of gratification, half of loneliness. He stood there, a little apart from the rest of them, clutching his box, and holding on to Hamlet’s lead, feeling so deeply excited that his heart was like a hard, cold stone jumping up and down, bump, bump, behind his waistcoat.
“That’s Jim! That’s Jim!” he whispered in a hoarse gasp to Miss Jones.
“Now mind, dear,” she answered in her kindly, groping voice. “You’ll be falling on to the rail if you aren’t careful.”
It strangely annoyed him that his father should greet Jim just as though he were some quite ordinary man in Polchester. He himself waited in a strange agitation until Jim should notice him. The man turned at last, bending down to pick up a box, saw him, touched his cap, smiling a long, crooked smile, and Jeremy blushed with happiness. It was the first recognition that he had had from
the farm, and it pleased him.
They all moved up to the higher road. Uncle Samuel, coming on at the last, in a dreamy, moody way, stopping on the bridge to look down at the railway-line, and then suddenly saying aloud:
“Their minds are full of the number of boxes, and whether they’ll get tea, and who’s to pay what, and ‘How badly I want a wash!’ and already to-morrow they’ll be wondering whether they oughn’t to be getting home to Polchester. All sham! All sham!”
He wasn’t speaking to Jeremy, but to himself. However, Jeremy said: “Did you see Jim, Uncle?”
“No, I did not.”
“He’s fatter and redder than last year.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Are you going to paint, Uncle?”
“I am.”
“What?”
“Oh, just lines and circles.”
Jeremy paused, standing for a moment, and looked puzzled. Then he said:
“Do you like babies, Uncle Samuel?”
“No, I do not.”
“Not even Barbara?”
“No — certainly not.”
“I don’t, too... Why don’t you paint cows and houses like other people, Uncle Samuel? I heard Father say once that he never knew what your pictures meant.”
“That’s why I paint them.”
“Why?”
“So that your father shan’t know what they mean.”
Although he did not understand this any more than he understood his uncle, Jeremy was pleased with this conversation. It had been, somehow, in tone with the place and the hour; it had conveyed to him in some strange fashion that his uncle cared for all of this rather as he himself cared. Oh! he liked Uncle Samuel!
He had hoped that he might have sat on the box next to Jim, but that place was now piled up with luggage, so he was squeezed in between his mother and Mrs. Patcham, with Hamlet, very uncomfortable, between his knees. They drove off down the high road, the hot smell of the grass came to his nostrils, the sun blazed down upon them, turning the path before them into gleaming steel, and the high Glebeshire hedges, covered with thin powder, rose on both sides above them, breaking once and again to show the folding valleys, and the faint blue hills, and the heavy, dark trees with their thick, black shadows staining the grass.
The cows were clustered sleeping wherever they could find shadow; faintly sheep-bells tinkled in the distance, and now and then a stream, like broken glass, floated, cried, and was gone. They drove into a dark wood, and the sun scattered through the trees in pieces of gold and shadowy streams of arrowed light. The birds were singing, and whenever the hoofs of the horses and the wheels turned onto soft moss or lines of grass, in the sudden silence the air was filled with birds’ voices. That proved that it must now be turning to the evening of the day; the sun was not very high above the wood, and the sea of blue was invaded by a high galleon of cloud that hovered with spreading sail, catching gold into its heart as it moved. They left the wood, crossed the River Garth, and came out on to moorland. Here, for the first time, Jeremy smelt the sea; the lanes had been hot, but here the wind blew across the moor, with the smell of sea-pinks and sea-gulls in it. The grass was short and rough; the soil was sand. On the horizon was the grey, melancholy tower of a deserted mine. Some bird flew with swiftly driving wings, crying as it went. The smell of the moor was as fresh as though the foot of man had never crossed it — deserted, but not alone; bare, but not empty; uninhabited, but peopled; silent, but full of voices.
Jeremy’s excitement grew. He knew now how every line of the road would be. They left the moor and were on the road leading to Rafield. These were the days before they built the road from Liskane wide enough for motor-cars and other horrible inventions. Thirty years ago the way was so narrow that the briars and ferns brushed your face as you passed, and you could reach out your hand and pluck snap-dragons and dandelions and fox-gloves. Many roads twisted in and out upon one another; the corners were so sharp that sometimes the wagonette seemed to hang upon one wheel as it turned. Still no sight of the sea, but the smell of it now was everywhere, and sometimes at a sudden bend there would come a faint beat, beat upon the ear with something rhyming and measured in it, like the murmur of a sleeping giant.
They came to the bend where the hill suddenly dips at a fearful angle down into Rafield. Here they turned to the right, deep between edges again, then through a little copse, and then, as though with a whisk of the finger, right on to Cow Farm itself.
It was an old square house, deep red brick, with crooked chimneys, and a stone court in front of it. To either side of the court there were barns. Behind the house thick trees, clouded with green, showed. In the middle of the court was a pump, and all about the flagged stones pigeons were delicately walking. As they drove up, the pigeons rose in a wheeling flight against the sky now staining faintly with amber; dogs rushed barking from the barns; a haycart turned the comer, its wheels creaking, and four little children perched high on the top of the hay. Then the hall-door opened, and behold Mrs. Monk, Mr. Monk, and, clustering shyly behind, the little Monks.
In the scene that followed Jeremy was forgotten. He did not know what it was that made him hang behind the others, but he stood beside the wagonette, bent down and released Hamlet, and then waited, hiding under the shadow of the cart. His happiness was almost intolerable; he could not speak, he could not move, and in the heart of his happiness there was a strange unhappiness that he had never known before. The loneliness that he had felt at Liskane Station was intensified, so that he felt like a stranger who was seeing his father, or his mother, or aunt, or sisters for the first time. Everything about him emphasised the loneliness: the slow evening light that was stealing into the sky, the sound of some machine in the farm-house turning with a melancholy rhythmic whine, a voice calling in the fields, the rumble of the sea, the twittering of birds in the garden trees, the bark of a dog far, far away, and, through them all, the sense that the world was sinking down into silence, and that all the sounds were slipping away, like visitors hurrying from the park before the gates are shut; he stood there, listening, caught into a life that was utterly his own and had no share with any other. He looked around and saw that they were all going into the house, that Jim and Mr. Monk were busy with the boxes, and that no one was aware of him. He knew what he wanted.
He slipped across the court, and dropped into the black cavernous hole of the farther barn. At first the darkness stopped him; but he knew his way, found the steps that led up to the loft, and was soon perched high behind a little square window that was now blue and gold against the velvety blackness behind him. This was his favourite spot in all the farm. Here, all the year, they stored the apples, and the smell of the fruit was thick in the air, sweet and strong, clinging about every fibre of the place, so that you could not disturb a strand nor a stone without sending some new drift of the scent up against your nostrils. All the year after his first visit, Jeremy had been longing to smell that smell again, and now he knelt up against the window, drinking it in. With his eyes he searched the horizon. From here you could see the garden with the sun-dial, the fields beyond, the sudden dip with the trees at the edge of it bent crossways by the wind, and there, in such a cup as one’s hands might form, just beyond, was the sea...
He stared as though his eyes would start from his head. Behind him was the cloudy smoke of the apple-scent; in front of him the sun was sinking towards the dark elms. Soon the trees would catch the sun and hide it; the galleon cloud that had been over them as they drove was new banked in red and gold across the horizon; birds slowly, lazily fled to their homes.
He heard someone call, “Jeremy! Jeremy!” With a last gaze he saw the blue cup turn to gold, the sun reached the tops of the elms; the fields were lit with the glitter of shining glass, then, even as he watched, they were purple, then grey, then dim like smoke.
Again the voice called “Jeremy!” He slipped from the window, found the little stair, ran across the dusky court and entered the house.
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br /> CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE
I
Towards the end of the first fortnight’s stay at Cow Farm it was announced that very shortly there would be a picnic at Rafiel Cove.
Jeremy had been waiting for this proclamation; once or twice he had asked whether they were going to the Cove and had been told “not to bother,” “all in good time,” and other ridiculous elderly finalities, but he knew that the day must come, as it had always come every year. The picnic at Rafield was always the central event of the summer. And he had this year another reason for excited anticipation — the wonderful Charlotte Le Page was to be present. Until now Jeremy had never taken the slightest interest in girls. Mary and Helen, being his sisters, were necessities and inevitabilities, but that did not mean that he could not get along very easily without them, and indeed Mary with her jealousies, her strange sulky temper and sudden sentimental repentances was certainly a burden and restraint. As to the little girls in Polchester, he had frankly found them tiresome and stupid, thinking of themselves, terrified of the most natural phenomena and untruthful in their statements. He had been always independent and reserved with everyone, and bud never, in all his life, had a close friend, but there had been, especially of late, boys with whom it had been amusing to spend an hour or two, and since his fight with the Dean’s Ernest he had thought that it would be rather interesting to make a further trial of strength with whomsoever...
Girls were stupid, uninteresting, conceited and slow. He never, in all his life, wanted to have anything to do with girls. But Charlotte Le Page was another matter. She had, in the first place, become quite a tradition in the Cole family. She was the daughter of a wealthy landowner, who always spent his holidays in Rafiel. She and her very beautiful, very superior mother had been seen on many occasions by the Coles driving about the Glebeshire roads in a fine and languid manner, a manner to which the Coles knew, very well, they themselves could never attain. Then Mrs. Cole had called, and Mrs. Le Page and Charlotte had come to tea at Cow Farm. This had been a year ago, when Jeremy had been only seven; nevertheless, he had been present during the first part of the ceremony, and Charlotte had struck him as entirely amazing.