by Hugh Walpole
“Say tree, not twee.”
“Tree.”
“Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down.... Now.... That’s right. Now tell me what you’ve been doing this morning.”
“We had bweakfast — nurse said I — (long pause for breath) — was dood girl; Auntie Vi’let came; I dwew with my pencil.”
“Say ‘drew,’ not ‘dwew.’”
“Drew.”
All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the child’s heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their life — this is only true of some old maids; there are very delightful ones — to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid’s life loomed the figure of Rose, the rag doll.
“If it weren’t for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some sense out of the child.”
“I think it’s a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll so much.”
“Well, mum, it’d be difficult to take it from her now. She’s that wrapped in it.” ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so much more than Rose.
“Oh, Wosie, when will he come again.... P’r’aps never. And I’m forgetting. I can’t remember at all about the funny water and the twee with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, you ‘member — Whisper.” And Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.
And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a lady of voracious appetite for life with, at the moment, but slender opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive hand — Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of fancy — the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina’s hand; her eyes (they had a “peering” effect, as though they were always searching for something beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went, Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a little faster than she conveniently could.
Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even the statues of “Sir Benjamin Bundle” and “General Sir Robinson Cleaver” seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina’s eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing, intimate invitation. “I shall get back — I shall get back.... He’ll come and take me; I’ll remember all the old things,” she thought. She and Rose — what a time they might have if only —— She glanced up at her aunt.
“Look at that nice little boy, Angelina,” Aunt Emily said. “See how good — —” But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily’s black hat at one corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.
Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop.... She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all its scents and sounds, passed on above her head. She was conscious that a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more completely than she had ever been before.
“Oh, you naughty little girl — you naughty girl,” she heard her aunt say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her face.
She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child’s silence; Aunt Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call “a pretty figure of fun” with her hat askew, her hair blown “anyway,” and a small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.
Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet’s voice was heard calling, “Is that you, Emily? Tea’s been waiting some time.”
It was nurse’s afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square. Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. “Now say you’re sorry, you wicked child!” she exclaimed breathlessly.
“Sowwy,” came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.
“Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry.”
“I’m velly sowwy.”
“What made you run away like that?” Angelina said nothing. “Come, now! Didn’t you know it was very wicked?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why did you do it, then?”
“Don’t know.”
“Don’t say ‘don’t know’ like that. You must have had some reason. Don’t look at the doll like that. Put the doll down.” But this Angelina would not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling rage.
She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina’s arms, crossed the room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance, then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human being to watch.
V
Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now “dreaming” as she so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of t
he room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of “a sensible, hearty” nature; moreover, her “afternoon” had left her with happy reminiscences of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.
She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight, something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.
Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening. Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, “was not cursed with imagination,” but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of St. Matthew’s for evensong, all these things came into the room. Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat back in her chair.
“Heavens! Miss ‘Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!” Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. “Auntie Emily,” she said, “put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie’s saved.... He’s just come and told me.”
“Lord, Miss ‘Lina, how you talk!” The room was right again now just as, a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light, and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child’s eyes of some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.
“’Tis company she’s wanting, poor lamb,” she thought, “all this being alone.... Fair gives one the creeps.”
She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in, hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.
“There, Angelina,” she said. “I oughtn’t to have burnt your doll. I’m sorry. Here’s a beautiful new one.”
Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down into the Square.
The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a white speck far below, and struck the pavement.
Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at her aunt.
CHAPTER IV
Bim Rochester
I
This is the story of Bim Rochester’s first Odyssey. It is a story that has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim) Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.
A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square — the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street — and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs. Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on. Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called her “energy.” “My wife’s splendid,” he would say to his friends, “knows the whole of London, I believe. The people we have in our house!” He would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months. With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children. Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. “Poor mummy,” as she always thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and collected, in the midst of confusion that could have “given old Babel points and won easy.” She was reverenced by all the younger children for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
His nurses called him “deep,” “although for a deep child I must say he’s ‘appy.”
Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy’s complete disposal. The people who saw him in the Square called him “a jolly little boy,” and, indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his sturdy, rather fat body was carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care. And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a “jolly little boy.” His “jolliness” was there in point of view, in the astounding interest he found in anything and everything, in his refusal to be upset by any sort of thing whatever.
But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own, that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own private and personal experiences — experiences which were as real to him as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there. Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending indulgence, “I suppose you mean fairies, dear!” he always shook his head scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real as mother, and, indeed, a great deal “realer,” because Mrs. Rochester was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only “whirlwind” visits to her “dear, darling” children.
When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of th
e Square, Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in some business of his own which he generally described as “waiting for Mr. Jack.”
“Not the sort of child,” said Miss Agg, who had strong views about children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas, “not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from.” It may be quite safely asserted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.
But it was not Miss Agg’s contempt for his experiences that worried Bim. He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. “She bothers so,” he said once to Lucy. “Do you think she’s happy with us, Lucy?”
“P’r’aps. I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”
“I suppose she’d go away if she wasn’t,” he concluded, and thought no more about her.
No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful Lucy, treated his assertions with contempt.
“But, Bim, don’t be such a silly baby. You know you can’t have seen him. Nurse was there and a lot of us, and we didn’t.”
“I did though.”
“But, Bim — —”
“Can’t help it. He used to come lots and lots.”
“You are a silly! You’re getting too old now — —”
“I’m not a silly!”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m not!”
“Oh, well, of course, if you’re going to be a naughty baby.”
Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his existence, and she accepted it with a lofty assumption of indifference; but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her, and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and wonder that she could have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her gravity and assurance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she told him.