by Hugh Ealpole
‘And so ought you to be.’ It must have been about now that he came very close to me, peering into my face. ‘You haven’t seen a little dog anywhere?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s a small brown dog, and answers to the name of Napoleon. He’s disappeared. He’s always disappearing. But then so’s everything else.’
I remember quite clearly that he asked me then: ‘Do you know what’s the secret of a happy life?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Never to be astonished at anything. Take it all as it comes. It’s no use your being astonished, because IT doesn’t care if you are. IT doesn’t care what you feel.’
He said IT with terrific emphasis.
‘Dear, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s very cold talking here. Have you had your tea?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, come and have it with me.’
We started along together, he walking at a great pace, sometimes muttering to himself, sometimes dropping his umbrella, which I picked up for him, and, once and again, calling out in a high, shrill treble: ‘Napoleon! Napoleon!’
Then, when we were very near to the village, a little brown dog appeared from nowhere. Really from nowhere at all. It was most uncanny. There it was, in the middle of the road, a very nice little dog, with curly brown hair, wagging its tail and looking most friendly.
‘Where have you been?’ Mr Claribel said severely. But the little dog didn’t mind, only chased a leaf that the wind was playing with, and ran in front of us as though it hadn’t a care in the world.
I remember that I wondered whether it was right to go to tea with a complete stranger. I had always been warned that I must never speak to strangers or take anything from them, but I didn’t see what harm this gentleman could do me, and I fancy that I was pleased at the thought of disobeying my family for once. Little they cared, I thought, what I did!
We arrived at the little house, with a bare little garden in front of it. This garden was remarkable to me for a large, round silver ball (like a witch-ball) that was posed on a stone pedestal in the very middle of the garden bed. There was also what should have been a small fountain (although no water was playing) and a child’s railway train lying dejectedly on its side in the gravel path. I remember all the details of this house as though I were walking in at the front door this very minute.
Mr Claribel and Napoleon led the way. He helped me off with my coat and muffler, patting me on the shoulder as he did so. Then I followed him into the very queerest room I had ever seen. It was a small room, with a bright, prattling little fire, a pot of Christmas roses in the window, and a small table laid for tea. The queer thing about it was that it was crammed with the most incongruous things. There were, I remember, two sets of chessmen, a sailing ship modelled in silver with a glass bowl covering it, a large, speckled fish stretched out against the wall, a doll’s house with very bright-looking miniature furniture, one of those large glass balls containing a house painted blue which you turn upside-down and it snows (I know because I tried), a crimson drum with the gilt arms of some regiment on the crimson, an ivory elephant, a musical box painted with little country scenes (I know it was a musical box because afterwards I played it), and many, many things more, although these are the only ones that I definitely remember. I never saw a room so crowded, and yet, in some quite happy way, we fitted in exactly, I sitting on one side of the fire, and he on the other, with Napoleon stretched out at his feet.
Soon an old lady arrived with the tea, and we turned to the table.
‘I always sit up to the table at tea,’ he remarked (and I observed that he took his napkin and tucked it in under his sharp, little brown chin). ‘One eats so much more. Don’t you think so?’
We certainly ate a great deal that evening! We had thick, rich blackberry jam; thick, rich gingerbread cake, black as thunder, sweet as heaven, damp in the middle; scones and buns and sandwiches and hot buttered toast; tea out of a magnificent old teapot with patterns of leaves and roses in silver as thick as your thumb. I remember that, while I gorged, I asked myself the question: Does he have tea all by himself to this extent every day? Could he have been expecting someone? But how could he have known that he would meet me?
And then, as he so often did, he read my thoughts.
‘I knew you were coming to tea,’ he said. ‘There were tealeaves in my cup at breakfast this morning.’ But he didn’t mean that. He had had some way of knowing. I was sure of it. But how could he . . . when I wasn’t sure of it myself!
Before I left him that afternoon he asked me every sort of question, and some of them very unusual. I may, in fact, be inventing here. Isn’t it incredible, for instance, that he should have asked me whether I collected acorns? I said, of course, that I did not. He shook his head and said that was a pity. He asked me whether the big toe of my left foot ever ached, and I said that, as a matter of fact, it sometimes did. He smiled, and said that that was an excellent sign, and that he was glad to hear it. He asked me whether I liked to read, and I said I did. What books did I like best? I said Stevenson, Rider Haggard and Stanley Weyman.
He said that he had a book to give me, and out of a drawer near the fireplace he produced a thin, flat book with faded red covers. Inside there were coloured pictures, pictures of remark-able animals, animals with two heads and long swords coming out of their foreheads. There were also maps of the planetary system, and there were ladies with crowns on their heads, and one picture of a large green tree crowded with birds. There were many pages covered entirely with numbers and letters of the alphabet.
‘Now, if you could learn what all that means, Humphrey,’ he said, ‘you could turn yourself into anything you liked any time you liked.’
‘Could I really?’ I asked, quite fascinated.
‘Indeed you could.’
‘And can you turn yourself into anything you like?’ I enquired.
‘Ah,’ he answered, smiling. ‘That’s asking. But Napoleon can.’
After that I went home, swollen with food and clutching the red book under my arm. I was greatly excited. I had made a friend. I knew someone that my family didn’t know. After this, in the next few weeks, I saw him frequently. I had tea with him on several occasions. Very soon I loved him dearly, for I was a sentimental little boy, longing for affection. No one had ever been so kind to me. He made me, too, begin to have some belief in myself. I brushed my hair and put on a clean collar, and really began to have some opinions of my own and assert them.
Then, of course, my new friendship was discovered. I was seen walking down the street with Mr Claribel. It was not directly disapproved of, but I was terribly teased about it. I found that Mr Claribel was considered in the village as someone altogether off his head. No one could charge him with any crime; on the contrary, he was a kind, crazy, old man who gave sweets to the children, visited old Mrs Mumble when she was in bed with a bad leg, and helped Mr Somerthwaite when his cow died. But he was queer, and that is enough in this world to divide a man from his fellows. As though we are not, all of us, queer as queer! If we are not queer in one way, we are certainly queer in another!
The Adderley children were especially amused at my friendship.
‘Let’s do Mr Claribel asking Humphrey to tea!’ Ambrose would cry, and he would present an absurd imitation of Mr Claribel with his coat tails and badly-folded umbrella. More than that, this new interest of mine seemed to separate me from the others more than ever. Mr Claribel was mad, and I liked him, so I must be mad too. And then I had something that they hadn’t got. Children are cruel not because they want to be, but because they are not yet civilised. I was like a sick or injured member of the herd, and the healthy ones must make a protest.
A strange thing was that Mr Claribel knew exactly what they were doing. I didn’t have to tell him a thing. ‘If they don’t look out,’ he said one day, ‘I’ll give those children the fright of their lives,’ and for a moment, as he said it, he appeared quite dangerous! But no one could have been kin
der to me than he was. The stories he told me, the presents he made me (I have the round ball with the snow inside it to this day!), the affection he showed me!
So we moved on towards Christmas. A week before Christmas the snow came. It snowed steadily for three days—real hard snow that covered the ground and stayed there. This is unusual for Cumberland, for snow rarely lies on the lower ground. After the snowfall we had one brilliant blue sky after another. We woke to glittering, sparkling mornings and looked out of the window to a lawn so thick with diamonds that it hurt the eye to gaze on it, and its virgin whiteness was unbroken save for the tiny imprints of the birds. Over everything there was a marvellous hush. You could hear voices calling or dogs barking from great distances, and the shadows cast on the snow by the fir-trees were a deep and tender purple. The oak-tree on the lawn was so heavy with snow that it seemed that, strong though it was, it must bend with its burden.
Inside the house, what excitement! In those days Christmas was an event of mystery, of almost passionate anticipation, of blissful realisation! We had no outside aids. There were one or two parties, a Christmas tree for the village children, but all the realities we must spin, like silkworms, out of ourselves!
It was a fine year, I remember, for holly—the berries were thick—and soon the house was decorated from kitchen to attic. But the principal enterprise was the inventing of presents. These were secrets evolved behind locked doors, wrapped away in paper and hidden in drawers. We children had little money, and the only place for purchases was the village shop. I had, in all, about six shillings of my own, and four people must have major presents, and by major I meant something of real importance, something original, something startling. Never mind now what my presents were. I have, in fact, altogether forgotten.
But what I do remember is that, as Christmas Day approached, I began to be overwhelmed with a sense of coming failure. I wanted this time to assert myself, to show them all that I did matter! My presents were to be so unusual that they would be compelled to consider me. But, of course, they were not. And, as the others grew ever more busy and important and excited, I, as I always did when the whole family was excited, became less and less of anything. When they needed a messenger or a scapegoat or an ‘odd boy’ they made use of me—and with good-humoured contempt. So at least I thought. I have no doubt that I imagined all this, and that they were too busy, too jolly, too happy to think of me at all, or, if they did, fancied that I was jolly and happy too. But because, perhaps, my new friendship with Mr Claribel had given me new hopes I felt all the more deeply that I was a wretched failure, and of no use to anyone.
And the worst thing of all was the Adderleys’ party. This was to be on Christmas Eve—a grand affair at the Rectory; children from all the neighbourhood, supper and games and a Christmas tree. I never suffered anywhere as I did at the Adderley parties, for it was there that I was most completely disregarded. Nobody’s fault but my own. I was tongue-tied in a large company, or, if I did speak, made a remark at which everyone laughed. I wanted to be gay, but happiness on these occasions seemed to be always just out of my reach.
As the hours passed the thought of the Adderley festivity clouded my eyes. I saw myself, in my sensitive, excited imagination, mocked and derided, the more bitterly a failure in that I could picture to myself so easily how wonderful it would be were I a success. I could see myself applauded, could hear the comments—‘What a remarkable boy! A most unusual child!’ Not that I thought myself remarkable or unusual, but for once how splendid it would be if I appeared so!
My unhappiness reached a climax on the morning of Christmas Eve. I was carrying something for my mother and dropped it; I could not find something for my brother; my father said ‘Come, come, Humphrey—where are your wits?’ In the middle of the morning—a lovely crystal-clear day it was—I slipped away and took Mr Claribel my present. After much thought and balancing of possibilities, I had decided that I would give him a penknife. An absurd present, perhaps, but among all his possessions I had never seen a penknife, and, as it was a thing that I needed at the time very badly myself, it was obvious that other people must need one, too.
The one that I bought at the village shop (with, I am afraid, quite half my available riches) was made of tortoiseshell. (Imitation? I fear so. I didn’t know it then.) It had only one blade, but it looked bright, and it could cut, because I tested it. Indeed, I remember that I liked it so much that I had a moment’s awful temptation to keep it for myself. I didn’t know then what I know now—that when one keeps for oneself a present that one has bought for someone else it turns, inevitably, to dust and ashes. No, I loved Mr Claribel, and by the time that I had reached his house I was delighted at the thought of his pleasure. And he was pleased! He kissed me very ceremoniously on the forehead. I detested to be kissed, but on this occasion it warmed my heart, made me think suddenly of the Adderley party, created in someway a sharp picture of my clumsiness and isolation there—and I burst into tears!
The little man made all sorts of sounds of distress, brought out the black gingerbread cake, sat with his arm on my shoulder while I ate it, then gave me his present, which was none other than the beautiful musical box with the pictures. I was so terribly pleased about this that I threw my arms round his neck and kissed him in my turn.
He asked me then why I was unhappy, and I told him. It was the Adderley party. I didn’t like the Adderleys, and their parties were awful. I knew that I should make a fool of myself, that I should disgrace my father and mother, that I should come home from it so miserable that Christmas would be altogether spoilt. He nodded his head a number of times. Then he said:
‘Now, don’t you worry. I promise that you shall enjoy the party.’
I shook my head dismally.
‘Just you wait. I’ve never promised anything yet that I haven’t brought off. Just you wait.’
In some mysterious way relieved, I ran home, clutching my musical box.
At the appointed hour, muffled up to our noses, our hands in thick woollen gloves, my father carrying a lantern, we set out for the Rectory.
Here it may be that, because of after events, my imagination once more leads me astray, but, looking back, I seem now to recover a kind of magic in the air that night. The sky crackled with stars, our breath drove in front of the lantern in cloudy bursts, illuminated by that fitful gleam. The star-shimmering light was brilliant enough to haze the air with a kind of silver twilight, and within this the trees and hedges seemed to sail in shapes of white marble across the fields. The frost was heavy, and the snow crunched and protested under our boots. There would be a little shiver in the air, and a dust of snow would scatter over our shoulders. There was every witness to Christmas Eve. At old Miss Mark’s house down the road a little group were singing carols, and their lantern seemed to greet ours in a roguish fashion, as much as to say: ‘What are you doing leading those ridiculous mortals along the road? Why not drop them into a pond?’
All in a quite friendly way, of course!
Across the fields came the tumbling, tangled melody of the church bells. They were practising for tomorrow, and I could see Joe Churcher, who was rather a friend of mine and a very fat man, straining at the rope, and little Harry Bone, who was so short and thin, standing on tip-toe. In any case, there they were, those rich, rollicking, impetuous chimes rolling over the white, frosted fields as though they were so wildly excited by good news that they were tumbling over themselves to tell it.
As we approached the Rectory, I was moved, I remember, by two very opposite impulses. One was to run away and hide. I tramped along in the rear of our family procession with all the certainty of being forgotten and neglected that I had all day long been expecting. The family had, up to this evening, the most curious fashion of behaving as though I didn’t exist; after this evening they were never unconscious of me again! I felt miserable, and socially a pariah, but at the same time I was excited with expectation. I was quite certain that Mr Claribel would keep his promise.
How he would do it I did not of course know, but something would happen, something that would astonish everybody!
Inside the house we were borne along on the general stream. Our wraps were taken from us, we patted our hair, straightened our waistcoats, tried to look as grown-up as possible. I remember, that, in a rather miserable, doomed kind of way, watching my sister Sarah, I decided that she looked too silly for anything. She was not a beauty (none of us, I fear, was that), her figure was lumpy, and her stockings would go crooked and her nose shiny! (Dear Sarah! How I learnt to love you afterwards! What I would give to have you sitting beside me now!) I was a caustic little critic in those days, but a critic (like so many critics) who could be changed, by a kind personal word, into an appreciator.
There were, however, for me no kind words during the first part of that evening. Everything went as wrong as it could possibly go! We all tumbled into the drawing-room and stood about, looking, most of us, angry and shy.
Lady Adderley, red in the face and fastened into a too-tight costume of light blue silk, sailed into the midst of us, shouting out cheerful remarks to break the ice. The room was very gay, with its blaze of lights and holly over all the pictures, a thick clump of mistletoe, burdened with berries, hanging from the centre illumination that shivered with a thousand silver pennies as we moved about under it.
The ice must be broken, so we started with musical chairs, and then, at the very beginning of the evening, I disgraced myself. For a long, thin lady with a tiresome train was skirting the chairs just in front of me. She was one of those middle-aged ladies who, at a children’s party, are ‘younger than the youngest’, for she passed along, clutching at the back of every chair, and uttering shrill cries of pleasure and excitement. I was just behind her and trod on her train. There was a rent and a cry. The lady turned, and, for a moment, I thought that she would slap me, she looked so vexed. But she pulled herself together, smiled a bitter smile, said that it didn’t matter in the least, and retired to have something done to it.