 CHAPTER X The town was ringed with fire, and out of that magic circle like Siegfried Uncle Percy came. The sunset flamed up the hill and wrapped the top of the monument in crocus shadows. The garden of the coals was rose and amber. Mary and Jeremy were hanging over the banisters watching for the arrival. The windows behind them burnt with the sun, and their bodies also burnt, and their hair was in flames. In the hall there was green dusk until, at the rumble of the cab, Emily suddenly lit the gas, and the umbrellas and lancers, dignity and impudence, were magnificently revealed. The door opened, and out of the evening sun into the hissing gas stepped Uncle Percy. The children heard him say, Mrs. Cole at home, and his voice was roaring, laughing, vibrating, resounding, tumultuous. He seemed, in his rough gray overcoat, too huge to be human, and when this was taken from him by the smiling Emily, she always smiled, as Jeremy had long since observed, at gentlemen more than at ladies. In his bright brown tweeds he was still huge, and with his brown hair and red face, like a solid chunk of sunset, thrown into the dark house to cheer it up. He went bursting up the staircase, and the children fled, only just in time. From the school room they heard him erupt into the drawing room, and then the bumping of his box up the stairs, and the swearing of the cabman. This was their Uncle Percy from California, South America, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and anywhere else you like. The brother of their father, the only prosperous one of that family, prosperous according to Aunt Amy, because for twenty years he had kept away from England, according to father because he had always had wonderful health, even as a very small boy, and to Uncle Samuel because he had never married, although that was a strange reason for Uncle Samuel to give, because he also had never married, and he could not, with the best wish in the world, be said to be prosperous. It had been sprung upon them all with the utmost suddenness that he was coming to pay them a visit. They had just returned from Carlyan and the sea, in another ten days Jeremy would be off to school again, when the telegram arrived that threw them all into such perturbation. Arrived eleventh, hope you can put me up for a day or two, Percy? Percy! Fortunately there was for them in the whole world only one Percy, or they might have been, and sad confusion because their Percy was they imagined safe in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand. A letter followed confirming the telegram. Mr. Cole had not seen his brother for twenty years. They had received one photograph of a large fat, staring man on a large, fat, staring horse. Such thighs, such a back, both a man and a horse, feed their animals well in New Zealand, was Uncle Samuel's only comment, and he, back only that minute from painting the moors, departed at a moment's notice for London. Don't you want to see Uncle Percy? asked Jeremy. I shall see him better if I study him from a distance, said Uncle Samuel. He's too large to see properly close to. And he went, boated selfish by all because he would not help in the entertaining. Of course I'm selfish, said Uncle Samuel. No one else cares tuppence about me, so where would I be if I didn't look after myself? In any case, their Uncle Percy actually was shut into the drawing room, and five minutes later the children were sent for. It had not been intended that Hamlet should enter with them, but he had a way of suddenly appearing from nowhere and joining, unobtrusively, any company that he thought pleasant and amusing. Today, however, he was anything but unobtrusive. At the sudden shock of that red flaming figure with legs spread wide across the centre of the carpet, he drew himself together and barked like a mad thing. Nothing would quiet him, and when Jeremy dragged him into the passage and left him there, he still barked and barked and barked, quivering all over in a perfect frenzy of indignation and horror. He had then to be taken to Jeremy's bedroom on the top floor and shut in, and there too he barked, stopping only once and again for a howl. All this disturbed Uncle Percy's greeting of the children, but he did not seem to mind. It was obvious at once that nothing could upset him. Jeremy simply could not take his eyes off him, off his brown, almost carot-y hair that stood on end, almost like an aureole, off his purple cheeks and flat red nose and thick red neck, off his flaming purple tie, his waistcoat of red and brown squares, his bulging thighs, his tartan socks, this his father's brother, the brother of his father, who sat now at the dim shadow of a shade, pale and apprehensive upon the sofa. The brother of his father. Impossible! How could it be possible? Well, kid, what are you therein at, came suddenly to him? Know your old uncle again? Think you'll recognise him if you meet him in the Strand? Know him anywhere, won't you, huh? I'll likely kid that of yours, Herbert. Come and talk to your uncle, boy. Come and talk to your uncle. Jeremy moved across the carpet slowly. He was deeply embarrassed, conscious of the solemn gaze of Aunt Amy, of Helen and Mary. A great red hand fell upon his shoulder. He felt himself suddenly caught up by the slack of his pants, held in midair, then dropped. Cascades of laughter billowing meanwhile around him. That's a fine boy, huh? That's what we do to boys in New Zealand to make him grow. Want to grow, huh? Be a bigger man than your father? Well, that won't be difficult, anyway. Never were much of a size were you, Herbert. Well, boy, go to school? Yes, said Jeremy. Like it? Yes, said Jeremy. Bully the boy smaller than yourself? No, said Jeremy. Bet you do. I always did when I was at school. Any good at games? No, said Jeremy, suddenly to his own surprise, determining that he would tell his uncle nothing. That's like your father. Never any good at games, were you, Herbert? Remember when we tossed you in a blanket and your head bumped on the ceiling? Mr. Cole gave a sickly smile. That was a lark. I can see it as oh, yesterday, with your legs sticking out of your night-dress. Luckily, at this point, tea arrived, and everyone was very busy. Uncle Percy sat down and then was suddenly aware of Helen. She was looking her prettiest in her blue silk. She knew better than to push herself forward. She had waited patiently through all the examination of Jeremy, certain that her time would come. And it did. Well, there's a pretty one. He jerked his great body upwards. Why, I hardly saw you just now. And you're Helen. Yes, Uncle. She smiled at that smile so beautifully designed for worthwhile relations. He stared at her with all his eyes. Why, you're a beauty, Bon Moth. So you are. Come and sit here beside your old uncle and tell him how all the boys went after you. I'm sure they do if boys are still the same as when I was young. Come along now and tell me all about it. Helen demurely came forward, sat beside her uncle, and answered his questions with exactly the right mixture of deference and humor. She brought him his tea and his cake, and was the perfect hostess, a much better hostess, as Jeremy noticed, than her mother. And noticing it hated her for it. 2. Before twenty-four hours had passed, Uncle Percy had made his mark not only upon his own family, but upon pollchester. One walk up the high street and everyone was asking, who was that big, red-faced man? But it was not only that he was big and red-faced, he moved with such complete assurance. He was more like our Archdeacon Brandon, though of course not nearly so handsome than anyone who had been to our town for years. He had just the Archdeacon's confidence it would have been interesting to watch the two men together. He took charge of the Cole family in simply no time at all. For one thing he smoked all over the house. Uncle Samuel had been hitherto the only smoker in the family household, and it was understood that he smoked only in his studio. But Uncle Percy smoked everywhere, and cigars, and big, black, terribly smelling cigars, too. He appeared on the very first morning, just as the bell rang for breakfast, clad only in a dressing-gown with a great deal of red chest exposed, and thus confronted Amy on the way to dining-room prayer. He arrived for breakfast an hour late and ordered fresh tea. He sat in his brother's study most of the morning, talking and smoking. He forced his way into Uncle Samuel's studio and laughed at his pictures. Of course, Uncle Samuel was in London. Called them pictures? He cried all through lunch and those dobs of paint. Why, I could do better myself if I shut my eyes and splashed color ink on the canvas. And I know something about painting, mind you. Wasn't the bad hen myself had at once. Gave it up, because I hadn't time to waste. Called them pictures? For this, Amy almost forgave him his naked chest. It's what I've always said, she remarked, only no one would listen to me. Samuel's pictures are folly. Folly! During the first day, both Hamlet and Jeremy were fascinated. Hamlet recovered from his first fit of horror, smelt something in the stockings and niggerbockers in which Uncle Percy now appeared that fascinated him. He followed those stockings all around the house, his nose just a little ahead of his body, and he had to move quickly because Uncle Percy was never still for a moment. Uncle Percy, of course, laughed at Hamlet. Call that a dog, he cried. I call it a dog fight. And laughed immoderately. But Hamlet bore him no grudge, with his beard projecting and his eyes intent on the pursuit, he followed the stockings. Such a smell! And such calves! Both smell and calves were new in his experience, to lick the one and bite the other. What a glorious ambition! Jeremy, on his part, was at the beginning dazzled. He had never before seen such superb despotism. For those twenty-four hours he admired it all immensely. The unceasing flow of words, the knowledge of every imaginable quarter of the globe, the confident unfaltering answer to every possible question, the definite assumption of universal superiority, the absence of every doubt, hesitation, or shyness. Jeremy was, as yet, no analyzer of human nature, but young as he was, he knew his own shyness, awkwardness, and reddest senses. And for twenty-four hours he did wish he were like his uncle Percy. He even envied his calves and looked at his own in his bedroom-looking glass to see how they were getting along. It cannot, however, be denied that every member of the Coal family went that night to bed, feeling desperately weary. It was as though they had spent a day with a thunderstorm, or sat for twelve hours in the very middle of Niagara Falls, or lodged for an hour or two in the west tower of the Cathedral amongst the bells. They were tired. Their bedrooms seemed to them strangely, almost ominously, silent. It was as though they had passed quite suddenly into a deaf and mute world. On the second day it might have been noticed, had there been anyone here or there, especially observant, that uncle Percy was beginning to be bored. He looked around him for some fitting entertainment and discovered his brother Herbert. Although it was twenty years since he had seen his brother, it was remarkable with what swiftness he had slipped back into his childhood attitude towards him. He had laughed at him then, and he laughed at him now, with twice his original hardiness, because Herbert was a clergyman, and clergyman seemed to uncle Percy very laughable things. Our colonies promote a director form of contact between individuals than is our custom at home. It is a true word that there are no frills in the colonies. You let a man know what you think of him for good or ill, without any disguise. Uncle Percy let his brother know what he thought of him at once, and he let everyone else know too, and this was for his brother a very painful experience. The Reverend Herbert Cole had been brought up in seclusion. People had taken from the first trouble that his feelings should not be heard, and when it was understood that he was destined for the ministry, a mysterious veil had been drawn in order that for the rest of his days he never should see things as they were. No one for twenty long years had been rude to him. If he wanted to be angry, he was angry. If things were wrong, he said so. If he felt ill, he said so. If he had a headache, he said so. And if he felt well, he didn't say so quite as often as he might have done. He believed himself to be a good, honest, God-fearing man, and on the whole he was so. But he did not know what he would be where anyone rude to him. He did not know until Percy came to stay with him. He had, of course, disliked Percy when they were small boys together, but that was so long ago that he had forgotten all about it. And during the first twenty-four hours he put everything down to Percy's high animal spirits and delight at being home again and to pleasure at being with his relations. It was not until luncheon on the second day that he began to realize what was happening over the chops. He said something in his well-known definite authoritative manner about the church not standing it, and the sooner those infidels on Africa realized it the better. Bosh! said Uncle Percy. Bosh! My dear Percy! began Mr. Cole. Don't dear Percy me! came from the other end of the table. I say it's Bosh. What do you know of Africa or of the church, for the matter of that? You've never been outside this pithling little town for twenty years, and wouldn't have noticed anything if you had. That's the worst of you miserable Parsons, never seeing anything of life or the world, and then laying down the laws though you were God Almighty. It fair makes me sick. But you were always like that, Herbert. Even as a boy you'd hide behind some woman's skirts, and then lay claim to someone else's actions. Don't you talk about Africa, Herbert? You know nothing about it, whatever. Dear Helen, my girl, pass up the potatoes. Had a large iron thunderbolt crashed through the ceiling and broken the room to pieces, consternation could not have been more general. Mr. Cole, at first, simply did not believe the evidence of his ears. Then, as it slowly dawned upon him that his brother had really said these things, and before a mixed company, Emily was at that moment handing around the cabbage, a dull pink flush stole slowly over his cheeks, and ended in fiery crimson at the tips of his ears. Mrs. Cole and Amy were, of course, devastated, but dreadful was the effect upon the children. Three pairs of eyes turned instantly towards Mr. Cole, and then hurriedly withdrew. Mary attacked, once again, the bone of her chop, already sufficiently cleaned. Helen gazed at her uncle, her eyes full of a lovely investigating interest. Jeremy stared at the tablecloth. He could not at once realize what had occurred. He had been a custom for so long now to hear his father speak with authority upon every conceivable topic, and remain uncontradicted. Even when visitors came, and they were so often curates, his opinions were generally confirmed with a quite so, or is that so indeed, or a yes yes quite. His first interest now was to see how his father would reply to this attack. They all waited. Mr. Cole's feebly smiled. No TT, violent as ever, Percy. I dare say you're correct. Of course I never was in Africa. Capitulation. Complete capitulation. Jeremy's cheeks burnt hot with family shame. Was nobody going to stand up to the attack? Were they to allow it to pass like that? They were, apparently. The subject was changed. Bread and butter pudding arrived. The world went on. Uncle Percy himself had no conception that anything unusual had occurred. He had been shouting people down and bullying them for years. Something subconsciously told him that his brother was going to be easy game. Perhaps deep down in that mighty chest of his, something chuckled. And that was all. But for Jeremy that was not all. He went up to his room and considered the matter. Readers of this chronicle, and the one that preceded it, will be aware that his relations with his father had not been altogether happy ones. He had not quite understood his father, and his father had not quite understood him. But he had always felt awe of his father, and had cherished the belief that he must be infinitely wise. Uncle Samuel was wise too, but in quite another way. Uncle Samuel was closer, far closer, and he could talk intimately to him about every sort of thing. But people laughed at Uncle Samuel quite openly, and said he was no good, and Uncle Samuel himself confessed this. His father had been a remote, august, Olympian. It was true that last Christmas he had hit his father, and tried to bite him, but that had been in a fit of rage that was madness, neither more nor less. When you were mad, you might do anything. His father had been august. But now? Jeremy dared not look back over the luncheon scene, dared not face once again the nervous flush, the silly laugh, the feeble retort. His father was a coward, and the honor of the family was at stake. After that luncheon outburst, however, the situation moved so swiftly that it went far beyond poor Jeremy. I don't suppose that Uncle Percy was aware of anything very much, save his own happiness and comfort, but to any outsider it would have seemed that he now gave up the whole of his time and energy to baiting his brother. He was not a bad man, nor deliberately unkind, but he loved to have someone to tease, as the few women for whom in his life he had cared, had discovered in time to save themselves from marrying him. I say that he was unconscious of what he was doing, and so in a fashion was the Cole family unconscious. That is, Mrs. Cole and Amy and the children realized that Uncle Percy was being rude, but they did not realize that the work of years was, in a few days, being completely undone. So used to custom and tradition are we that in our daily life we will accept almost any figure in the condition in which we receive it, and then proceed to add our own little story to the structure already presented to us. Mrs. Cole did not wish Aunt Amy even did not wish to see their Herbert a fool. Very much better for their daily life and happiness, that he should not be one, and yet in a short two days that was what he was, so that Aunt Amy, without realizing it, spoke sharply to him, and Mrs. Cole disagreed with him about the weather prospects. Of course the women did their best to stand up for him and defend him in his weak attempts at resistance, but after all Percy was a visitor and wouldn't be here for long, and hadn't been home for such a time, then naturally his way of looking at things couldn't be quite ours. And then at Sunday supper they were forced to laugh against their will, but one was glad of anything by Sunday evening to make things a little bright, at Percy's account of Herbert when he was a boy tumbling out of the wagon-net on a picnic, and nobody missing him until they got home that night. It was funny, as Percy told it. Poor Herbert, running after the wagon-net and shouting and nobody noticing, and then losing himself and not getting home until midnight. Aunt Amy was forced to laugh until she cried, and even Mrs. Cole, regarding her husband with tender affection, said, So like you, Herbert dear, not to ask somebody the way. The only member of the family who did not see something funny in all of this was Jeremy. He was conscious only of his father. He was aware exactly of how he was feeling. He so thoroughly himself detested being laughed at, especially when it was two to one, and now it was about five to one. As he watched his father's white face with the slow flushes rising and falling, the pale nervous eyes wandering in their gaze from place to place, the expression of bewilderment as Uncle Percy's loud tones surged up to him, submerged him, and then slowly withdrew, Jeremy was reminded of his own first evening at Thompson's, when in the dormitory he had been suddenly delivered up to a wild group of savages who knew neither law nor courtesy. As it had been with him then, so was it with his father now. Uncle Percy had all the monotony of the unimaginative. One idea was enough for him, and his idea just now was to take it out of old Herbert. I can only repeat that he did not mean it unkindly. He thought that he was being vastly amusing for the benefit of those poor, dull women who never had any fun from one year's end to the other. His verdict, after he had left him and gone on somewhere else, would be, well, I gave those poor mugs a merry week, hard work, but one must do one's best. Meanwhile Jeremy watched his father. Three. Soon he saw his father hurrying off, book under his arm, umbrella in hand. Where are you going, father? To the gray bank schools. I'll walk up with you. Well, hurry then, I haven't much time. He did not reveal his surprise. It was the first time in all their lives together that Jeremy had suggested going with him anywhere. They set off together. It was a fine day of early autumn, red mist and faint blue sky, leaves thick upon the ground, the air peppermint in the mouth. Jeremy had to walk fast to keep pace with his father's long strides. Mr. Cole suddenly said, I've got a headache, a bad headache. It's better out of the house than in. In every way it was better, as Jeremy knew. During luncheon, it just concluded, Uncle Percy had roared with laughter over his memories of what Herbert was like when, as a small boy, in the middle of the night he thought he heard a burglar. When does Uncle Percy go, father? Well, I thought he was going the day after tomorrow, but now he thinks he'll stay another week. I don't like Uncle Percy, father. Jeremy panted a little with his efforts to keep up. Oh, you mustn't say that, my boy. It doesn't matter if I say it to you. Was he like he is now when he was young? Yes, very much, but you must remember that it was a long time ago. I don't quite clearly recollect my childhood, nor I think it does he his, Mr. Cole, coughed. We never had very much in common as boys, he said suddenly. He doesn't know much about England, does he, father? He says the most awfully silly things. You mustn't say that about your Uncle, my boy. No, but he does, why he hasn't been anywhere in England, not even to Drymouth. No, my boy, he hasn't. You see, when people have lived in the colonies all their lives, they get a little, um, um, out of touch. Yes, father. Delightful to think of Uncle Percy being out of touch. Quite a savage, a barbarian. Father and son laughed a little together. I bet the boys at Thompson's would laugh at him, said Jeremy, like anything. One has to be polite, said Mr. Cole. After all, he is our guest. Don't forget that, my boy. No, father, I bet he was frightened at the burglar, father, more than you were. Well, as a matter of fact, Jeremy, he was. I remember the incident perfectly. Percy hid in a cupboard. He's forgotten that, I'm no doubt. Father and son laughed. It would have to be a very large cupboard. Father, said Jeremy, and then they laughed again. Here they were at the schools where Mr. Cole was going to teach the little girls their catechism. They parted, and Jeremy ran all the way down the hill home. Four. Uncle Percy loved the world and desired that in natural return the world should love him. It seemed to him that the world did so. Once and again the net of his jollity and fun seemed to miss some straggling fish who gaped and then swam away, but he was of that happy temperament thus described by one of the most lovable of our modern poets. Who bears in mind misfortunes gone must live in fear of more. The happy man, whose heart is light, gives no such shadows power. He bears in mind no haunting past to start his week on Monday. No graves are written on his mind to visit on a Sunday. He lives his life by days, not years, each days a life complete, which every morning finds renewed with temper, calm, and sweet. How could the world help but love him? Jolly, amiable, sensible man that he was. But once and again, once and again, and so now it was, and the fish that was alluding him was young Jeremy Cole. On the seventh or eighth day he was aware of it. At breakfast he looked across the table and saw the small, square-shaped boy gravely winking at Mary. Why was he winking at his sister? It could not be, surely it could not be, because of anything that he himself had said. And yet, looking behind him so to speak, he could not remember that anyone else had been talking. This was enough to make him think, and thinking it occurred to him that that small boy had from the very first been aloof and reserved. Not natural for small boys to be reserved with Jolly uncles. And it was not as though the boy were in generally reserved child. No, he had heard him laughing and jumping about the house enough to bring the roof down. Playing around with that dog of his, quite a normal sporting boy. Come to think of it, the best of the family. By far the best of the family. You'd never think to look at him that he was Herbert's son. Therefore, after breakfast in the hall he cried in his jolly, hearty tones. I'd say, Jeremy, what do you say to taking your old uncle round the town this morning, huh? Showing him the shops and things, what? Might be something we'd like to buy. Jeremy was halfway up the stairs. He came slowly down again. On the bottom step, looking very gravely at his uncle, he said, I'm very sorry, Uncle Percy, but I'm going to school tomorrow morning and I promised mother. But Mrs. Cole was at this moment coming out of the dining room. Looking up and smiling, she said, Oh, never mind, Jeremy, go with Uncle Percy this morning, dear. I can manage about the shirts. Jeremy appeared not to have heard his mother. I'm sorry I can't go out this morning, Uncle Percy. There's my holiday task too. I've got to swatted it, and then turned and slowly disappeared round the corner of the staircase. Uncle Percy was chagrined. Really he was. He stood with his large body balanced on his large legs, hesitating in the all. It is his last morning, Percy, said Mrs. Cole, looking a little distressed. He's a funny child. He's always making his own plans. Obstinate, that's what I call it, said Uncle Percy, banned obstinate. He went out that morning alone. He thought that he would buy something for the kid, something really rich and impressive. It could not be that the boy disliked him, and yet, all that morning he was haunted by the boy's presence. Going to school tomorrow, was he? Not much time left for making an impression. He could not find anything that morning that would precisely do. Rotten shops the pollchester ones. He would tip the boy handsomely tomorrow morning. No boy could resist that. Really handsomely, as he had never been tipped before. Nothing further occurred to him, and that evening he was especially funny about his brother. That story of Herbert, when he was round fifteen, and quite a grown boy, being afraid of a dog chained up in a yard, and how he, Percy, made Herbert go and stroke it. How Herbert trembled, and how his knees shook. Oh, it was funny, it was indeed. You'd have roared, had you seen it? Percy roared, roared until the table shook beneath him. But, tonight, for some reason or another, Herbert did not seem to mind. He laughed gently and admitted that he was still afraid of dogs, bulldogs especially. Uncle Percy had Jeremy in his mind all that evening. He caught him once again by the slack of his britches, and swung him in the air, just to show what a jolly pleasant uncle he was. When Mrs. Cole explained that always on Jeremy's last evening she read to him in the school room after supper, he said that he would come too, and sat there in an easy chair, watching benevolently the children grouped in the firelight round their mother, while the chaplet of pearls unfolded its dramatic course. A charming picture, and the boy really looked delightful, gazing into the fire, his head against his mother's knee. Uncle Percy almost wished that he himself had married. Nice to have children, a home, somewhere to come to. And so fell asleep, and soon was snoring so loudly that Mrs. Cole had to raise her voice. Next morning there was all the bustle of Jeremy's departure. This was not so dramatic, as other departures had been, because Jeremy was now so thoroughly accustomed to school going, and, indeed, could not altogether conceal from the world at large, that this was football time, the time of his delight, and pride, and happiness. He went as usual into his father's study to say goodbye. But on this occasion, for some strange reason, there was no stiffness nor awkwardness. Both were at their ease as they had never been together before. Mr. Cole put his hand on the boy's shoulder. Mind you get into the football team, he said. If I don't, you won't mind, Father, will you? said Jeremy, looking very fine indeed in a new, light gray overcoat. I know you'll do your best, my boy, said Mr. Cole, and kissed him. Outside, in the hall, with the others, was Uncle Percy. He motioned to him mysteriously. I say, kid, come here. Jeremy followed him into the dining-room, where they were alone. Uncle Percy shut the door. Here's something for you, my boy, to take back to school, or buy something you want with it, and remember your uncle isn't such a bad sort, after all. Jeremy crimsoned up to the tips of his ears. On the red palm of his uncle's big hand there were lying three golden sovereigns. No, thank you, Uncle. What? No, thank you, Uncle. I've got. Father gave me. I don't want. You won't take it? You won't? No, thank you, Uncle. But what the devil? Jeremy turned away. His uncle caught him by the shoulder. Now, what's this all about? A boy of your age refused a tip? Now, what does this mean? Jeremy wriggled himself free. Suddenly he said hotly, Father's as good as you. Every bit is good, even though you have been everywhere, and he hasn't. People like Father awfully in pollchester, and they say his sermons are better than anybody's. Father's just as good as you are. I—and then suddenly burst from the room. Uncle Percy stood there. This may be said to have been the greatest shock of his life. The boy's father? What was he talking about? The boy's father? As good as he was? The boy hated him so much that he wouldn't even take the money. Three pounds, and he wouldn't take it. Wouldn't take money from him because he hated him so? But hang it. Lord, how that dog was howling. What a horrible noise. What was he howling for? Wouldn't take the money? But had anybody ever heard the like? But hang it. Three pounds? End of chapter 10. Chapter 11 of Jeremy and Hamlet by Hugh Walpole This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11 The Runaways 1 Jeremy, on his return to Thompson's that term, found that he had been changed to what was known as the baby dorm. Hitherto he had been in a perfect barrack of a dormitory that contained at least twenty beds. The baby dorm was a little room with three beds, and it was a distinction to be there, a true sign that you were rising in the world. This was fully appreciated by Jeremy, and when he also discovered that his two companions were Pug Rakes and Stokelsley Mage, the cup of his joy was full. Rakes and Stokelsley were just the companions he would have chosen, short, of course, of Riley. But Riley was away in the other wing of the house protecting to his infinite boredom some new kids. There was no hope of his company. Rakes and Stokelsley were both older than Jeremy. They had been at Thompson's a year longer than he. Pug Rakes was a fat, round boy, rather like Tommy Winchester at home. It was said that he could eat more at one go than any three boys at Thompson's put together. But with all his fat he was no mean sportsman. He was the best fives player in the school and quite a good bat. He had an invaluable character for games. Nothing disturbed him. He was imperturbable through every crisis. He had been bitten once in the hand by a ferret and had not uttered a sound. Stokelsley was opposite from Rakes in every way, except that he was a good cricketer, and perhaps it was this very attraction of their opposites that brought them together. They had been quite inseparable ever since their first suffering from tossing in the same blanket on the first night of their arrival at Thompson's two and a half years ago. Stokelsley was a very good-looking boy, thin and tall, straight and strong, with black eyes, black hair, and thick eyebrows. He was known as Eyebrows among his friends. He was as excitable as Rakes was apparently flagmatic. He was always up to some new plot or fantasy, always in hot water, always extricating himself from the same with the heirs of a Spanish grandee. It was rumored that Thompson was afraid of his father, who was a baronet. Thirty years ago a baronet counted. Jeremy would never have been admitted into their friendship had it not been for his football. They considered him a plucky little devil, and prophesied that he would go far. They were a little condescending, of course, and the first night Stokelsley addressed him thus. Look here, young stocky. It's a jolly lucky for you being in with us. None of your cheek, and if you snore, you know what you'll get. You don't walk in your sleep, do you? No, I don't, said Jeremy. Well, if you do, you'll have the surprise of your life, won't he, Pug? Rather, said Rakes. And remember, you're playing footer this term for the honor of this dorm. If you play badly, you'll get it like anything in here afterwards. However, in a night or two there was very little to choose between them. Boys are extraordinarily susceptible to atmosphere. During the cricket term, young Cole had been of no account at all. Quite a decent kid, but no use at cricket. But before the autumn term was a week old, he was spoken of as the probable scrum half that year. Kid, though he was. Stokelsley was in the first fifteen as a forward, but his place was a little uncertain, and Pug Rakes was nowhere near the first fifteen at all, and cared nothing for football. It happened therefore that Jeremy was soon taken into the competences of the two older boys, and at very exciting competences they were. Stokelsley was never happy unless he had some new scheme on foot. Some of them were merely silly and commonplace, like dressing up as ghosts and frightening the boys in the lower dorm, or putting white mice in the French master's desk. But he had at times impulses of real genius, like the pirate society, of which there is no space here to tell, or the Criber's Kitchen, a rollicking affair that gave Thompson the fist for a whole week. Jeremy managed to keep himself out of most of these adventures. He had the gift of concentrating utterly on the matter at hand, and the matter in hand this term was getting into the first fifteen. He went in most conscientiously for training, running round Big Field, before First Hour, refusing various foods that he longed to enjoy, and refusing to smoke blotting paper on Sunday afternoon in Parker's Wood. People jeered at him for all this seriousness, and had he made a public business of his sporting conscience, he might have earned a good deal of unpopularity, but he said very little about it, and behaved in every way like an ordinary mortal. Luckily for him, his schoolwork that term was easy. He had been for two terms in the lower fourth, and now was near the top of it, and inevitably at the end of this term would be moved out of it. Malcolm, his former master, liked him, being himself a footballer of no mean size. It was not, therefore, until the end of the first fortnight that Jeremy discovered that something very serious was going forward between his two dormitory companions, something in which he was not asked to share. They whispered together continually, and the whispering took the form of stokes-lapers waiting, Pug, over and over again. Oh, come on, Pug, don't spoil sport. You're afraid, yes you are, you're a funk. I can't do it without you, of course I can't. We'll never have a chance again. At last Jeremy, who had more than his natural share of curiosity, could endure it no longer. He sat on the edge of his bed, kicking his naked toes, and cried, I'd say you two, what's all this about? You might let me in. It's nothing to do with you, Stocky, you go to sleep. You'd much better tell me, you know, I never sneak. This is too important to let a kid like you know about it. I'm not such a kid. If it comes to that, perhaps I can help. No, you can't. You shut your mouth and go to sleep. Two nights later than this, however, Jeremy was told. I'm going to tell Stocky, said Rakes, and see what he says. Oh, all right, said Stokesley in the salts. I don't care what you do. Jeremy sat up in his bed and listened. The whispering voices stole on and on, one voice supplementing the other. Soon Stokesley overbored the other and was dominant. Jeremy distrusted his ears. Beyond the window the night was lovely, a clean sweep of dark, velvety sky with two treetops and a single star. So quiet, not a sound anywhere. And this adventure was the most audacious conceived of by men, neither more nor less than to run away to sea, to anywhere. But before finally vanishing, to have a week, a fortnight, a month in London at the very finest hotels, with heaps to eat and drink in theaters every night. You see, explained Stokesley eagerly, warmed up now by the narration of his idea, we're sick of this place. It's so dull. You must feel that yourself Stocky, even with your beastly football. Nothing ever happens and it's ages before we go to rugby. You'd much better come too. Of course you're a bit young, but they'll probably want a cabin boy on the ship, and then we'll be in the South Seas, where you bathe all the time, and can shy at coconuts, and there are heaps and heaps of monkeys, and you shoot tigers, and he paused for breath. A cabin boy had it not been one of his earliest dreams. His mind flew back to that day, now so long ago, when he had begged the sea captain to take him. The sea captain, his heart beat thickly, then came the practical side of him. But won't you want an awful lot of money? he asked. Oh, we've thought of that, of course, said Stokesley. My father gave me five pounds to come back with, and Pug's uncle gave him two, and his aunt gave him another, and his cousin gave him ten and six, and I've got my gold watch and chain, which will mean a tenner at least, and Pug's got his gold pin that his dad and uncle gave him. Altogether it will be about fifteen pounds anyway, and it will cost us about a pound a day in London, and then we'll go to Southampton and go to a boat and say we want to work our way, and of course they'll let us. Pug and I are awfully strong, and you, you carry the plates and things. London. It was the first time in all his life that that place had been brought within his reach. Of course he had heard the grown-ups mention it, but always as something mysterious, far away, magical. London. He had never conceived that he himself would one day set foot in it. How his world was extending. First simply the house, then pollchester, then Raphael and Carlion, then Thompson's, then Craxton, and now London. Nevertheless he was still practical. How will you get to the station? He asked. Oh, we thought all about it. It will be a Sunday, probably next Sunday. We're allowed off all the afternoon, and there's a train at Surrey Junction that goes to London at four o'clock. We'll be in London by seven. If they catch you, said Jeremy slowly, they'll be the most awful row. Of course, said Stokely contemptuously, but they won't. How can they? We'll be in London by call over and we'll move to different hotels and as soon as we think they're on to us, we'll be off to Southampton. There our boats go every day. It was plain that rakes was caught more and more deeply as Stokely developed the plan. Jeremy himself felt to the full the wonderful adventure of it. The trouble was that now, at once, as soon as you had heard of it, the school looked dull and stupid. It had been all right as it came up to bed. He had been contented and happy, but now a longing for freedom surged through him and for a moment he would like to climb through that window and run and run and run. But the football saved him. If he went on this adventure, he would never be half-backed for the school. He would never be half-backed for any school. He would, in all probability, never play football again. They did not play football in the South Seas. It was too hot. What was bathing compared with football? I don't think I'll come, he said slowly. I'd only be in your way. Of course, if you funk it, said Stokely hotly. I don't funk it, but there was a knock on the door and one of the junior masters walked in. That's enough talking you kids, he said. If there's another word, you'll hear of it. They lay then, like images. Two. We all know how adventures, aspirations, longings that seem quite reasonable and attainable in the evening light are absurdly impossible in the morning cold. Jeremy, next morning, as he ran round the football ground, felt that he could not have heard Stokely right. It was the kind of story that the dormitory tail-teller retailed before people dropped off to sleep. Stokely was just inventing. He could not have meant a word of it. Nevertheless, later in the day, Rakes took him into a corner of the playground and whispered dramatically, we're going to do it, it's all settled. Oh, Gaps Jeremy, it'll be next Sunday. You're right about not coming, you're too young. Rakes sounded very old indeed, as he said this. You swear you won't tell a living soul? Of course I won't. You'll swear by God Almighty? I swear by God Almighty. Never to breathe a word to any boy, master, or animal? Never to breathe a word to any boy, master, or animal? You're a good sort, Stokely. Somehow one can trust you and one cannot, most of them. They'll be on to you after we've gone, you know? I don't care. They'll try to get it out of you. I don't care. They shan't. In any way they can. Perhaps they'll stop your football. Jeremy drew a deep breath. I don't care. He repeated slowly. We'll have a great time, Rakes said, as though addressing his reluctant half. We'll come back ever so rich in a year or two, and then won't you wish you'd come with us? What Jeremy did wish was that they had told him nothing about it. Oh, how he wished it! Why had they dragged him in? Suppose they did stop his football? Oh, but they couldn't. It wasn't his fault that he'd heard about it. Look here, Rakes. He said, don't you tell me any more. I don't want to know anything about it. Then they can't come on me afterwards. Well, that sound, said Rakes. All right, if we won't. The day then that intervened before Sunday could have only one motive. It seemed incredible to Jeremy that the two conspirators should appear now so ordinary. They should have had, in some way, a flaring mark, scarlet letter to set them aside from the rest of mankind. Not at all. They followed their accustomed duties, ate their meals, did their impositions, played their games, just as they had always done. Even at night, when they were left alone in the dormitory, they spoke very little about it. Jeremy was outside it now, and although they trusted him, one never knew, and they were not going to give anything away. The great Sunday came, a day of blazing autumnal gold, enough breeze to stir the leaves and send them like ragged scraps of brown paper, lazily through the air. The Sunday bells came like challenges to guilty consciences upon the misty sky. Jeremy did not see the two of them after breakfast. Indeed, in a strange way that these terrific events have of suddenly slipping for half an hour from one's consciousness, during the morning chapel he forgot about the whole affair, and stared half asleep through the long chapel window out into the purple field, wondering about a thousand little things, some lines he had to write, a pot of jam that he was going to open that night at tea for the first time, and how Hamlet was impolchester, and what just then he would be doing. He went his accustomed Sunday walk with Riley, and it was only when they were hurrying back over the leaf-thicken fads towards a sun like a red-orange that he suddenly remembered, why at this very moment they would be making for the station. He stopped in the path. By gum, he said, what is it, asked Riley, been stung by a bee? No, just thought of something. You do look queer, but it's nothing. He moved on. It seemed impossible that the woods should stay just as they were, unmoved by this great event, hanging like an old-colored tapestry about their thin dead leaves between the black poles of trees, unmoved. No one knew, no one but himself. The great moment came. When in chapel, looking across to the other side, he saw that their places were empty. Nothing much in that, for the ordinary world, fellows are often late for chapel, but for him it meant everything. The deed was positively accomplished. They must be actually at this moment in the train, and he was the only creature in the whole school who knew where they were. Call over, follow chapel. He heard the names Stokesley, and then more impatiently, after a little pause, Stokesley again. Then rakes, and after a moment, rakes again. Nothing after that happened for an hour. Then call over once more at supper. Rakes and Stokesley again called, and again absent. Five minutes after supper the school sergeant came for him. Mr. Thompson to see you in his study at once. Jeremy went. Thompson was walking about and very worried he looked. He had been talking to the matron and wheeled round when Jeremy came in. Ah, Cole, leave us for a moment, matron, please. They were alone. Jeremy felt terribly small, dribbled to nothing at all. He shuffled his feet and looked anywhere but at Thompson's anxious eyes. He liked Thompson and was aware, with a sudden flash, that this was more than a mere game, that it might be desperately serious for someone. Come here, Cole. I want you to keep this to yourself, not to say a word to anyone. Do you understand? Yes, sir. Good. It seems that Stokesley and Rakes have run away. They were neither at chapel nor at supper. Some of the things are missing. Now, you're the only other boy in their dormitory. Do you know anything at all about this? No, sir. Nothing? No, sir. They said nothing at all to you about this going? No, sir. Gave you no idea that they were thinking of it? No, sir. Thompson paused, looked out of the window, walked up and down the room a little, and then said, I make it a rule, always to believe what any boy tells me. I've never found you untruthful, Cole. I don't say that you're not telling the truth now, but I know what your boy's code is. You mustn't sneak about another boy, whatever happens. That's a code that has something to be said for it. It happens to have nothing to be said for it just now. You're young and I don't expect you to realize what this means. It involves many people beside themselves, their fathers and mothers and everyone in this school. You may be doing a very serious thing that will affect many people's lives if you don't tell me what you know. Do you realize that? Yes, sir. Well then, did they say anything at all about going away? No, sir. Nothing at all to you? No, sir. Very well. You may go. Jeremy went. Outside he found the school in a ferment. Everybody knew Stokesley and Rakes had run away. He was surrounded by a mob. They pressed in upon him from every side. Big boys, little boys, old boys, young boys, everyone. Stockey, where have they gone to? What did Thompson say to you? Did he whack you? Is he going to? Is it true that they'd stolen a lot of the matron's money? What did they tell you? Oh, Rod, of course you know. Where have they gone to, Stockey? We'll give you the most awful hiding, if you don't. Come on, Stockey, out with it. When did they go? Just before chapel? Is Thompson awfully sick? But Jeremy stood his ground. He knew nothing at all. Nothing at all. They had said nothing to him. Three. During the four days that followed, the characters, bodies, and souls of the fugitives swelled into epic proportions. Four days in such circumstances can, at a small school, resemble centuries of time. No one thought or discussed anything but this, and there was not a boy in the place, from the eldest to the youngest, but envied those two passionately and would have given a year of holiday to be with them. On Monday Mr. Thompson went up to London. The rumours that sprang to life were marvellous. Stokesley had been seen at a theatre in London and had been chased all the way down the strand by an enormous crowd. Rakes had struck a policeman and been put in a cell. They had been to Buckingham Palace and interviewed Her Majesty. They had started on a slaver for the South Seas. They had taken up jobs as waiters in a London restaurant. To Jeremy these days were torture. In the first place he was dazzled by their splendour. Why had he been such a fool as to refuse to go with them? One might die to-morrow. Here was his great adventure offered to him and he had rejected it. As the tale circulated round him the atmosphere became more and more romantic. He forgot the real Stokesley and saw no longer the genuine Rakes. It no longer occurred to him that Stokesley had warts. He refused to see that so familiar picture of Rakes washing himself in the morning, trickling the cold water over his head, his two large ears projecting crimson. Clothes in gold and silver they swung dazzling through the air. Rosy clouds supporting them to the Haven where they would be. The Haven of the South Seas with gleaming glittering sands, blue waters, monkeys in thousands, and pearls and diamonds for the asking. Under these alluring visions even the football faded into grey monotony. In a practice game on Monday he played so badly that he expected to lose all chance of playing in the match at the end of the week. But fortunately for him everyone else played badly too. The mind of the school was in London following the flight that chased the final escape. No time now for football or anything else. The heroes that Stokesley and Rakes now were. Anyone who had an anecdote, however trivial, was listened to by admiring crowds. It was recalled how Stokesley, when a new boy, had endured the first tossing in the blanket with marvelous flim and indifference. How Rakes, when receiving a hamper from an affectionate aunt, had instantly distributed it round all his table so that almost at once there was none of it remaining. How Stokesley had once conducted a money lending establishment with extraordinary force and daring for more than a fortnut. How Rakes had fought Bates Major, a boy almost twice his size, and had lasted into the sixth round, and so on and so on. Jeremy, of course, was affected by all this reminiscence and himself recalled how in the dormitory Stokesley had said this clever thing and Rakes had been on that occasion strangely daring. But behind this romance there was something more. He was strangely, and as the hours advanced, quite desperately bothered by the question of his lie. In the first immediate instance of it he had not been bothered by it at all. When he had stood in Thompson's study it had not seemed to him a lie at all. So thickly clothed was he by his school convention that it had seemed the natural, the absolutely inevitable thing to do. His duty was not to give Stokesley and Rakes away. That was all. But afterwards, Thompson's troubled face came back to him and that serious warning that perhaps if he kept his knowledge back the lives of hundreds of people might be affected. It was true that by the following morning everything that he knew was known by everyone else. The station master from the junction came up after breakfast and gave information about the boys. He had thought it strange that they should be going up to London by themselves but they had seemed so completely self-possessed that he had not liked simply on his own authority to stop them. But had Jeremy told all that he knew on that first Sunday evening many precious hours might have been gained and the fugitives caught at once. Alone in that little dormitory at night the two empty beds staring at him he had fallen into dreams distressing, accusing nightmares. By Tuesday morning he was not at all sure that he was not a desperate criminal worthy of prison and perhaps even of hanging. He longed how desperately he longed to discuss the matter with Riley. Riley was so full of wisdom and common sense and knew so much more than did Jeremy about life in general. But having gone so far he would not turn back but he moved about on that Tuesday like Christian with his pack. Then on Tuesday evening came the great news. They had been caught. They had given themselves up. They had spent all their money. Thompson was bringing them back with him on Wednesday morning. The school waited breathlessly for the arrival. No one saw anything. Only by midday it was whispered by everyone that they were there. By the afternoon it was known that they were shut away in the infirmary. No one was to see them or speak to them. During that morning how swiftly the atmosphere had changed. Only yesterday those two had been sailing for the South Seas. Now ostracized waiting in horrible confinement for some terrible doom. They were only glorious like one of Byron's heroes in their damned prospects and fatal overthrow. All that day Jeremy thought of them feeling in some unanalyzed way as though he himself were responsible for their failure. Had he not done this had he thought of that and what would Thompson do? At the end of breakfast next morning it was known he made them a speech speaking with a new gravity that even the smallest boy in the school young Phipps Jr. only about two feet high could feel. He said that as was by this time known to all of them two of their number had run away had spent several days in London had been found and brought back to the school. They would all understand how serious a crime this was the unhappiness that it must have brought on the boy's parents the harm that it might have done to the school itself. The boys were young they had apparently no special grievance with their school life and they had done what they had from a silly fault sense of adventure rather than from any impulse of wickedness or desire for evil. Nevertheless they had willfully made many people unhappy and broken laws upon whose preservation the very life of their school that they all loved depended. He was not sure that they had not done even more than that. He could not tell of course whether there were any boys in that room who had known of this before it occurred. He hoped from the bottom of his heart that no boy had told him an untruth. He knew that they had a code of their own that whatever happened they were never to tell about another boy. That code had its uses but it could be carried too far. All the misery of these four days might have been spared had some boy given information at once. He would say no more about that. The boys had been given a choice between expulsion and a public flogging. They had both without hesitation chosen the flogging. The whole school was to be present that evening in big hall before first preparation. Four. Every seat in big hall was filled. The boys sat in classes motionless, silent, not even an occasional whisper. The hissing of a furious gas jet near the door was the only sound. Jeremy would never forget that horrible half hour. He was the criminal. He sat there scarcely breathing his eyes hot and dry. Staring, although he did not know that he was staring at the platform, empty, say for a table and a chair, pressing his hands upon his knees, wishing that this awful thing might pass. Thinking not especially a stokes layer of rakes, but of something that was himself and yet not himself, something that was pressed down into a dark hole and every tick of the school clock pressed him further. He saw the rows and rows of heads as though they had been the pattern of a carpet and he was ashamed, desperately ashamed as though he were standing up in front of them all naked. The door behind the platform opened and Thompson came in. He was quite and black and flat like a drawing upon a sheet of paper. The gas gave a hysterical giggle at sight of him. Behind him came rakes and stokesly looking as they had always looked and yet quite different actors playing a part. Behind them was the school sergeant Crockett, a burly ex-sailorman, a friend of everyone when in a good temper. He looked sheepish now shuffling on his feet. He looked terrible too because his coat was off and his sleeves rolled up showing the ship and anchor tattoo that he showed as a favor to boys who had done their drill well. Thompson came forward. He said, I don't want to prolong this but you are all here because I wish you to remember this all your lives. I wish you to remember it not because it is the punishment of two of your friends. Indeed it is my special wish that as soon as it is over you shall receive stokesly and rakes among you again as though nothing had occurred. But I want you all from the youngest to the eldest to remember that there must be government. There must be rules if men are to live in any sort of society together. We owe something to ourselves. We owe something to those who love us. We owe something to our country and we owe something to our school. We cannot lead completely selfish lives. God does not mean us to do so. Our school is our friend. We belong to it and we must be proud of it. He stepped back. The school sergeant came forward and whispered something to stokesly. Stokesly himself undid his braces. His trousers fell down over his ankles. He bent forward over the table hiding his face with his hands. Jeremy could not look. He felt sick. He wanted to cry. He heard the sound of the descending birch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Would it never end? Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. He heard the whole school draw a breath. Still he did not look. Stokesly had not made a sound. There was a pause. Still he did not look. Now Rakes was there. The birch again. One, two, three, four. Then as though someone were tearing the wall and two, a shrill cry. Oh, oh, horrible beastly. He was trembling from head to foot. He was low down in that hole now and someone was pushing the earth in over his head. And now with the switch of the birch there was a low monotonous sobbing and then the sharp cry again that at the second time seemed to come from within Jeremy himself. Everything was dark. A longer pause and the shuffling of feet. It was all over and the boys were filing out. He raised his eyes to a world of crimson and flashing lights. Five. That night they were restored to their fellow citizens. They were sitting on their beds in the baby dorm, examining their wounds. Rakes could think of nothing but that he had cried. Stokesly consoled him. As a last word he said to Jeremy, very decent of you stalking, not to give us away. We won't forget it, will we, Pug? No, we won't, said Pug, a naked, writhing figure because he was trying to see his stripes. All the same said Stokesly, it was smart of you not to come. It was rotten, all of it. They were beastly to us at the hotel and just took our money. We went to a rotten theater and it rained all the time, didn't it, Pug? Beastly, said Rakes. The room was silent, so that was the end of the adventure. Jeremy, slipping off to sleep, suddenly loved the school, didn't want to leave it. No, never. Saw the rooms one by one, the classroom, the dining room, big hall, Thompson, the matron, Crockett, all warm and safe and cozy. And London, swimming in rain, chasing you, hating you, catching you up at the last with a birch. Good old school. The end of that adventure. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of Jeremy and Hamlet by Hugh Walpole this LibriVock recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12 A Fine Day 1 It was a fine day. Jeremy, waking and turning over in his bed, could see beyond and above stokesly slumbering form a thin strip of pale blue sky gleaming like a sudden revelation of water behind folds of amber mist. It would be a real thumping autumn day, and he was to play half for the first fifteen against the rest that afternoon. He also had the three hundred lines to do for the French master that he had not even begun, and it must be handed up completed at exactly eleven thirty that same morning. He had also every chance of swapping a silver frame containing a photograph of his Aunt Amy with Phipps Minor for a silver pencil, and he was to have half-phrasedly sausage for breakfast that morning in return for mathematical favors done for him on the preceding day. As he thought of all these various things, he rolled round like a kitten in his bed, curling up as it was his pleasantest habit into a ball, so that his toes nearly met his forehead, and he was one exquisite lump of warmth. Rending through this came the harsh sound of the first bell, murmurs from other rooms, patterings down the passage, and then suddenly both stokesly and rakes sitting up in bed simultaneously, yawning and looking like bewildered owls. In precisely five minutes the three boys were washed, dressed, and down, herding like the rest in the long, cold classroom waiting for call over. When they had answered their names, they slipped across the misty playground into chapel, and sat there like all their companions in a confused state of half-sleep, half-wakefulness, responding as it were in a dream, screaming out the hymn, and then all shuffling off to breakfast again, like shadows in a Japanese pageant. It was not, in fact, until the first five minutes at breakfast, when Rageley strongly resisted the appeal for half his sausage, that Jeremy woke to the full labours of the day. Rageley was sitting almost opposite to him, and he had a very nice sausage, large and fat and properly cracked in the middle. Jeremy's sausage was a very small one, so that whereas on other days he might have passed over the whole episode, being of a very generous nature, today he was compelled to insist on his rights. I didn't, protested Rageley. I said you could have half a sausage if you did the sums, and you only did two and a half. I did them all, said Jeremy stoutly. It wasn't my fault that that beastly fraction one was wrong. I only said I'd do them. I never said I'd do them right. Well, you can jolly welcome and fetch it, said Rageley, pursuing in the circumstances the wisest plan, which was to eat his sausage as fast as he could. All right, said Jeremy indifferently. You know what you'll get afterwards if you don't do what you said. And this was bold of Jeremy, because he was smaller than Rageley, but he was learning already whom he might threaten and whom he might not, and he knew that Rageley was as terrified of physical pain as our aim he was of a cow in a field. With very bad grace, Rageley pushed the smaller half of the sausage across, and Jeremy felt that his day was well begun. He did not know why, but he was sure that this would be a splendid day. There were days when you feel that you are under a special care of the gods, and that they are arranging everything for you, background, incident, crisis, and sleep at the end in a most delightful, generous fashion. Nothing would go wrong today. On the whole, human beings are divided into the two classes of those who realize when they may step out and challenge life, and those to whom one occasion is very much the same as another. Jeremy, even when he was eight years old and had sat in his sister Helen's chair on his birthday morning, had always realized when to step out. He was going to step out now. The insufferable Baltimore, who was a wonderful cricketer, and therefore rose to great glories in the summer term, but was no footballer at all, and equally therefore, was less than the dust in the autumn, came with his watery eyes and froggy complexion to ask Jeremy to lend him tuppence. Jeremy had, at that moment, threatens, but there were a number of things that he intended to do with it. Because he detested Baltimore, he lent him his tuppence with the air of Queen Elizabeth accepting Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak and got exquisite pleasure from doing so. All these little things, therefore, combined to put him in the best of spirits when, at half past eleven, M. Clemenceau, not then a name known the wide world over, requested M. Cole to be kind enough to allow him to peruse the three hundred lines which should have been done several days before so admirably provided by him. Jeremy wore the cloak of innocence sitting in the back row of the French class with several of his dearest friends and all the class ready to support him in any direction that he might follow. I beg your pardon, sir, Jeremy said. Did you say three hundred lines? That is the exact amount, said M. Clemenceau, that I require from you immediately. I beg your pardon, said Jeremy politely. I need not repeat, said M. Clemenceau, three hundred lines by you at once for impertinence three days previous. Why, sir, surely, said Jeremy. You told me that I need not do them this term because no because interrupted M. Clemenceau at the top of a rather squeaky voice. There is no because. But, sir, began Jeremy and from all sides of the class that broke out. Why, certainly, sir, don't you remember? And Cole is quite right, sir. You said, and I think you've forgotten, sir, that and it really wouldn't be fair, sir, if a babble arose as the boys very well knew M. Clemenceau had a horror of too much noise because Thompson was holding a class in the next room, and on two occasions, that very term, had sent a boy in to request that if it were possible, M. Clemenceau might conduct his work a little more softly. And this had been agony for M. Clemenceau's proud French spirit. I will have silence, he shrieked. This is no one's business about mine and the young Cole. Let no one speak until I tell them to do so. Now Cole, where are the three hundred lines? There was a complete and absolute silence. Will you speak or will you not speak, M. Clemenceau cried. Do you mean me, sir? asked Jeremy very innocently. Of course I mean you. You said, sir, no one was to speak until you told them to. Well, I tell you now. Jeremy looked very injured. I didn't understand, he said. If I could explain to you quietly. Well, you shall explain afterwards, said M. Clemenceau, and Jeremy knew that he was saved because he could deal adieu with M. Clemenceau by appealing to his French heart, his sense of honor, and a number of other things, and might even, with good fortune, extract an invitation to tea when M. Clemenceau, in his very cozy room, had a large supply of muffins and played on the flute. Yes, he thought to himself, as they pursued up and down the classroom, sometimes ten at a time, and sometimes only three or four, the intricacies of that French grammar that has to do with the pen of my aunt and the cat of my sister-in-law, and this is going to be a splendid day. 2. Coming out of school at half-past twelve, he found to his exquisite delight that there was a letter for him. He was, of course, far from that grown-up attitude of terror and misgiving at the side of the daily post. Not for him yet were bills and unwelcome reminiscence, broken promises, and half-veiled threats. He received from his mother one letter a week, from his father, perhaps three a term, and from his sister Mary an occasional confused scribbling that, like her stories, introduced so many characters, one after another, that the most you obtained from them was a sense of life and of people passing and of Mary's warm and emotional heart. Once and again he had a letter from Uncle Samuel, and these were the real glories. It was natural that on this day of days there should be such a letter. The very sight of his uncle's handwriting, a thin spidery one, that was in some mysterious way charged with beauty and color, cockled his heart and made him warm all over. He sat in a corner of the playground, where he was least likely to be disturbed and read it. It was as follows. It began abruptly, as did all Uncle Samuel's letters. Your mother has just taken your aimy to drymouth on a shopping expedition. The house is so quiet you wouldn't know it. I am painting a very nice picture of two cows in a blue field. The cows are red. If you were here I would put you into the picture as a dog asleep under a tree. Because you aren't here I have to take that wretched animal of yours and use him instead. He is not nearly as like a dog as you are. I had two sausages for breakfast because your aunt Amy is going to be away for two whole days. I generally have only one sausage, and now just about five o'clock this evening I shall have indigestion, which will be one more thing I shall owe your aunt Amy. The woman came in yesterday and washed the floor of the studio. It looks beastly but I shall soon make it dirty again and if only you were here it would get dirty quicker. There's a rumor that your Uncle Percy is coming back to stay with us again. I am training your dog to bite the sort of trousers that your Uncle Percy wears. I have a pair very like his and I draw them across the floor very slowly and make noises to your dog like a cat. The plan is very successful but tomorrow there won't be any trousers and I shall have to think of something else. Mrs. Samson asked your mother whether she thought that I would like to paint a portrait of her little girl. I asked your mother how much money Mrs. Samson would give me for doing so and your mother asked Mrs. Samson. Mrs. Samson said that if she liked it when it was done she'd hang it up in her drawing room where everybody could see and that that would be such a good advertisement for me that there wouldn't need to be any payment. So I told your mother to tell Mrs. Samson that I was so busy sweeping a crossing just now that I was afraid I wouldn't have time to paint her daughter. When I have done these cows, if they turn out really well, perhaps I'll send the best of them to Mrs. Samson and tell her that that's the best portrait of her daughter I was capable of doing. Some people in Paris like my pictures very much and two of them have been hanging in an exhibition and people have to pay to go in and see them. I sold one of them for fifty pounds and therefore I enclose a little bit of paper which if you take it to the right person will help you buy enough sweets to make yourself sick for a whole week. Don't tell your mother I've done this. Your sister Mary is breaking out into spots. She has five on her forehead. I think it's because she sucks her pencil so hard. Your sister Barbara tumbled all the way down the stairs yesterday but didn't seem to mind. She is the best of the family and shortly I intend to invite her into the studio and let her lick my paint box. Outside my window at this moment there is an apple tree and the hills are red the same color as the apples. Someone is burning leaves and the smoke turns red as it gets high enough and then comes white again when it gets near the moon which is a new one and exactly like one of your aunt Amy's eyelashes. I am getting so fat that I think of living in a barrel as a very famous man about whom I'll tell you one day used to do. I think I'll have a barrel with a lid on the top of it so that when people come into the studio whom I don't want to see I shall just shut the lid and they won't know I'm there. I think I'll have the barrel painted bright blue. Your dog thinks there's a rat just behind my bookcase. He lies there for hours at a time purring like a kettle. There may be a rat but knowing life as well as I do there never is a rat where you most expect one. That's one of the things your father hasn't learned yet. He is writing his sermon in his study. If he knew there weren't any rats he wouldn't write so many sermons. I've been reading a very funny book by a man called France and the funny thing is that he's also a Frenchman. Isn't that a funny thing? You shall read it one day when you're older and then you'll understand your uncle Samuel better than you do now. Well, goodbye. I hope you're enjoying yourself and haven't entirely forgotten your uncle. P.S. I promise you that the lid shall never be on the barrel when you're there and if you don't get too fat there's room for two inside. He read the letter through three times before finishing with it then sitting forward on the old wooden bench scarred with a thousand pen knives. He went over the delicious details of it. How exactly uncle Samuel realized the things he would want to know. No one else in the family wrote about anything that was exciting or intriguing. Uncle Samuel managed in some way to make you see things. The studio, the sky with the little moon, the red apples, Hamlet flat on the floor, his head rigid, his eyes fixed, Amy shopping in Drymouth, Barbara tumbling downstairs. That whole world came towards him and filled the playground and blotted out the school so that for a moment school life was unreal, shadowy, and did not matter. He sighed with happy contentment. Young though he was, he realized that great truth that one person in the world is quieting up. One human being who understands your strange mixture equalizes five million who think you are simply black, white, or purple. All you want is to be reassured about your own suspicions of yourself. A devoted dog is almost enough and one friend, ample. Jeremy went into dinner with his head in the air, trailing after him like Peter Pan, one shadow of the world immediately around him, the world in which the school sergeant was carving the mutton at the end of the table so ferociously that it might have been the corpse of his dearest enemy and the masters at the high table were getting fried potatoes and the boys only boiled, and Jeremy was not having even those because he got to play football in an hour's time, and the other world where there was Amy's eyelash high in the air and the cathedral bells ringing and Uncle Samuel's painting cows. Jeremy would have liked to consider the strange way in which these two worlds refused to mingle to have developed the idea of Uncle Samuel carving the mutton instead of the sergeant and the sergeant watching the evening sky instead of Uncle Samuel and why it was that these two things were so impossible. His attention was occupied by the fact that Plummy Smith, who was a fat boy, was sitting in his wrong place and making a squash on Jeremy's side of the table, which led quite naturally to the game of trying to squeeze Plummy from both ends of the table into a purple mass and to do it without Thompson noticing. Little pathetic squeals came from Plummy, who loved his food and saw his mutton mysteriously whisk away on to some other plate and knew that he would be hungry all the afternoon in consequence. He was one of those boys who had on the first day of his arrival a year earlier, unfortunately confided to those whom he thought his friends that he lived with two aunts, Maria and Alice. His fate was sealed from the moment of that unfortunate confidence. He did not know it and he had been in puzzle bewilderment ever since as to why the way of life was made so hard for him. He meant no one any harm and could not understand why the lower half of his person should be a constant receptacle for pins of the sharpest kind. The point in this matter about Jeremy was that, as with Miss Jones years before, he could not resist pleasant fun at the expense of the foolish. He had enough of the wild animal in him to enjoy sticking pins into Plummy, to enjoy squeezing the breath out of his fat body, to enjoy seeing him without any mutton, and yet had it been really brought home to him that Plummy was a miserable boy, sick for his aunts, dazed and puzzled, spending his days in an orgy of ink, impositions and physical pain, he would have been horrified that himself could be such a cad. He was not a cad. It was a fine day. He was in splendid health and spirits. He had a letter from Uncle Samuel, and so he stuck pins into Plummy. When the meal was over he walked down to the football ground with Riley and told him about Uncle Samuel. He told Riley everything, and Riley told him everything. He never considered Riley as an individual human being, but rather as part of himself, so that if he were kicked in the leg, it must hurt Riley too. And there was something in Riley's funny freckled forehead, his large mouth and his funny clumsy ways of walking, as though he were a baby elephant, that was as necessary to Jeremy and his daily life as putting on his clothes and going to sleep. He showed Riley the piece of paper that Uncle Samuel had sent to him. By gosh, said Riley, that's a pound. It's an awful pity, said Jeremy, that you are not in little dorm. Perhaps you could come in tonight. I'm sure Stokesley and Pug wouldn't mind. We're going to have sardines and marmalade and donuts. If I get a chance, I will, said Riley, but I don't want to be caught out just now, because I've been in two rows already this week. Perhaps you could keep two sardines for me, and I'll have them at breakfast tomorrow. All right, I'll try, said Jeremy. He looked about and sniffed the air. It was an ideal day for football. It was cold and not too cold. The hills above the football field were veiled and missed. The ground was soft, but not too soft. It ought to be a good game. Do you feel all right, asked Riley? They proceeded in the accustomed manner to test this. Jeremy hurled himself at Riley, got him round the middle, tried to twine his legs around Riley's, and they both fell to the ground. They rolled there like two puppies. Jeremy exerted all his strength to bring off what he had never yet succeeded in doing, namely to turn Riley over and pin his elbows to the ground. Riley wriggled like a fish. Jeremy was very strong today and managed to get one elbow down and was in a very good way towards the other when they heard an awful voice above them. And what may this be? They scrambled to their feet, flushed and breathless, and there was old Thompson staring at them very gravely in that way that he had, so that you could not tell whether he were displeased or no. We were only wrestling, sir, said Jeremy panting. Excellent thing for your clothes, said Thompson. What do you suppose the gym is for? Well, it was only a minute, sir, said Riley. Cole wanted to see whether he was all right. And he is, asked Thompson. Jeremy perceived that Olympus was smiling. I'm a little out of breath, he said, but of course it's just after dinner. The ground isn't muddy yet. You'd better wait until you're in football things, at Thompson said. Then you can roll about as much as you like. He walked away, rolling a little as he went. The two boys looked after him and suddenly adored him. Their feelings about him were always undergoing lightning changes. At one moment they adored, had another, they detested, at another, they admired from a distance, and at another, they wondered. Wasn't that decent of him, said Riley? That's because he's just had his dinner, said Jeremy. It's his glass of beer, my uncle's just the same. Oh, you and your uncle, said Riley, I'll raise you to the end of the playground. They ran like hairs, and Jeremy led by a second. Three. He was in the changing room when suddenly the atmosphere of the coming game was close upon him. He had that strange mixture of fear and excitement, terror and pleasure. He suddenly felt cold in his jersey and shorts, and shivered a little. At the other end of the room was Turnbull, one of the three-quarters playing for the rest, a large bony boy with projecting knees. The mere thought that he would have in all probability to call her Turnbull, and to bring him to the ground, made Jeremy feel sick. His competence suddenly deserted him. He knew that he was going to play badly, worse than ever in his life before. He wished that he could suddenly develop scarlet fever and be carried off to the infirmary. He even searched his bare legs for spots. He had rather a headache, and his throat felt queer, and he was not at all sure that he could see straight. One of those silly fools who always comes and talks to you at the wrong moment, sniggered and said he felt awfully fit. It was all right for him. He was one of the forwards playing for the rest. It would be perfectly easy for him to hide himself in the scrum and pretend to be pushing when he was not. No one ever noticed, but the isolation of a half was an awful thing to consider, and that desperate moment when you had to go down to the ball with at least 500 enormous boots all coming at your head at the same moment was horrible to contemplate. Millet, the scrum half playing for the rest and Jeremy's bitterest rival for the place in the 15, was looking supremely self-confident and assured. Certainly he was not as good as Jeremy on Jeremy's day, but was this Jeremy's day. No, most certainly it was not. They went out to the field, and everything was not improved by the fact that a large crowd was gathered behind the ropes to watch them. This was an important game. The big school match was a fortnet from today, and Millet might get his colors on today's game quite easily, and then suddenly the feel of the turf under his feet the long sweeping distance of the good gray sky above his head, the tang of autumn in the air, brought him confidence again. He was not aware that a lady visitor who had come out with Mr. Thompson to watch the game was saying at that moment, Why, what a tiny boy! You don't mean to say, Mr. Thompson, that he's going to play with all those big fellows? And Thompson said, He's the most promising footballer we have in the school. The half-back has to be small, you know. Oh, I do hope he won't get hurt, said the lady visitor. Won't do him any harm if he is, said Mr. Thompson. The whistle went, and the game began. Almost at once Jeremy was in trouble. Within the first minute the school fifteen were lining out in their own half of the field, and a moment later some of the rest forwards had broken through, dribbled, tried to pass, thrown forward, and there was a scrum within Jeremy's twenty-five. This is the kind of thing to make you show your medal. To be attacked before you have found your atmosphere, realize the conditions of the day, got your feel of yourself as part of the picture, gained your first win to have to fight for your team's life with your own goal looming like the gallows just behind you, and to know that the loss of three or five points in the first few minutes of the game is very often a decisive factor in the issue of the battle. All these tests, anybody's greatness. Jeremy, in that first five minutes, was anything but great. He had a consciousness of his own miserable inadequacy, a state not common to him at all. He seemed to be one large cranium spread out balloon-wise for the onrush of his enemies. As he darted about at the back of the scrum, waiting for the ball to be thrown in, he felt as though he could not go down to it, and then, of course, the worst possible thing happened. The rest forwards broke through the scrum. He tried to fling himself on the ball and missed it, and there they were sliding away past him, making straight for the goal line. Fortunately, the man with the ball was flung to touch just in time, and there was a breathing space. Jeremy, nevertheless, was tingling with his mistake, as acutely as though a try had been scored. He knew what they were saying on the other side of the rope. He knew that Baltimore, for instance, was winkling his bleary eyes with pleasure, that all the friends of his rival half were saying in chorus, well, young Cole's no good, I always said so, and that Riley was glaring fiercely about him, and challenging anyone to say a word. He knew all this, and unfortunately, for more than a minute, had time to think of it, because one of the cool three-quarters got away with the ball and then kicked it to touch, and there was a line out and a good deal of scrambling before the inevitable scrum. This time it was for him to throw in the ball, crying in his funny voice, now hoarse, now squeaky, coming on the right school, shove. They did shove and carried it on with them, and then the rest half got it through it to one of his three-quarters, who started raising down the field with only Jeremy in his way before he got to the back. It was that very creature with the bony knees whom Jeremy had watched in the changing room. The legs wobbled towards him as though with the life of their own. He ran across, threw himself at the knees, and missed them. He went sprawling onto the ground, was conscious that he had banged his nose, that someone near him was calling out butters, and that his career as a football half was finally, and forever, concluded. After that he could do nothing right. The ball seemed devilishly to slip away from him whenever he approached it. He was filled with a demon of anger, but that did not serve him. He again went, now here, now there, and always he seemed to be doing the wrong thing. For once that strange, sure knowledge innate in him, part of his blood and his bones, of the right, inevitable thing to do, had left him, and he could only act on impulse and hope that it would turn out well, which it never did. The captain, who was a forward, pausing beside him for a moment, said, Go on, Cole, you can play better than that. He knew that his worst forebodings were fulfilled. Then, just before the whistle went for half time, just when he was at his busiest, he had a curious, distinct picture of Uncle Samuel, the red apple tree, and Hamlet lying on the floor of the studio, waiting for his rat. People talk about concentration and its importance, and nobody who has ever played a game well, but will agree that to let your mind wander at a very critical moment is fatal. But this was not so much the actual wandering of a mind as of a curious insistence from without of this other picture that went with the scene in which he was figuring. It was like the pouring of cold, clear water upon his hot and muddled brain. It was as though Uncle Samuel and his thick, good-natured voice had said to him, Now look here, I know nothing about this silly game that you're trying to play, but I'm here to see you through it, and the two of us together, it's impossible to beat. The whistle went before he had time to realize the effects of this little intrusion. He stood about during the interval, talking to no one, wishing he were dead, but armored in a cold resolve. After all, he would not write to Uncle Samuel and tell him that he had been left out of the school fifteen, because he had not played well enough. No one as yet had scored. The teams seemed to be very evenly matched, which was a bad thing for the school. Everyone in the school team was depressed, and the men and the rest were equally elated. If the whole truth were known, the play in the first half had been very ragged indeed. But as Mr. Thompson explained to the lady visitor, you mustn't expect anything else early in the term. She made the fatuous remark that after all, they were such little boys, which made Mr. Thompson reply, with more heat than true politeness required, that his boys, even though they were all under fourteen, could on their day show as good a game as any public school, to which the lady visitor replied that she was sure that they could. She thought they played wonderfully for such little boys. The whistle sounded and the game tumbled about, up and down, in and out. Jeremy knew now that all was well. His game sense had suddenly come back to him, and the ball seemed to know its master, to tumble to him, just when he wanted it, to stick in his hands when he touched it, and even to smile at him when it was quite a long way away. As though it were saying to him, I'm yours now and you can do what you like with me. He brought off a neat piece of collaring, then a little later passed the ball back to his three-quarters, who got, for the first time that day, a clear run leading to a try in the far corner of the field. Then there came a moment when all the rest forwards were dribbling the ball, the school forwards at their heels, but not passed enough to stop their opponents, and he was down on the ball, had it packed tight under his arm, lying flat upon it, and the whole world of boots, legs, knees, and bodies seemed to charge over him. A queer sensation that was, everything falling upon him, as though the ceiling of the world had suddenly collapsed. Then the sensation of being buried deep in the ground, bodies wriggling and ebbing on top of him, his nose, chin, eyes deep in earth, some huge leg with a gigantic boot at the end of it, hovering like a wild animal just above his head, and then the whistle and the sudden clearing of the ground away from him. His impulse to move and his discovery that his right leg hurt like a piercing sword, he tried to rise and could not. He was quite alone now, the sky and the wind, the field, and the distant hills encircling him with nobody else in the world. The game stopped, people came back to him, they felt his leg, and it hurt desperately, but not he knew at once so desperately that he never would be able to use it again. They rubbed his calf and jerked his knee. He heard someone say, only a kick, no bones broken, and he said his teeth and stumbled to his feet and stood for a moment, feeling exquisite pain. Then like an old man of ninety, tottering along. At this there was universal applause from behind the ropes. There were cries of well-stopped stocky, good old stocky, and he would not have exchanged that moment for all the prizes in the bookshop or all the tuck shops in Europe. Are you all right? His captain shouted across to him. He nodded his head because he certainly would have burst into tears if he had spoken, and he was biting his lower lip until his teeth seemed to go through to his gums. But in that marvelous fashion that all footballers know, his leg became with every movement easier, and although there was a dull grinding pain there, he found he could move about quite easily, and soon was in the thick of it once more. He was only a limper to the end of that game, but he did one or two things quite nicely, and had the happiness of seeing the school score and other tube tries, which put the issue of the game beyond doubt. At the end, after cheers had been given and returned, the pain in his leg reasserted itself once more, and he could only limp very feebly off the field, but he had the delirious happiness of the captain, who was going to rugby next year and was therefore very nearly a man, putting his hand on his shoulder and saying, that was a plucky game of yours, Cole. Hope your leg isn't bad. Oh, it isn't bad at all. Thank you. He said very politely, I almost don't feel it, which was a terrific lie. He had done well. He knew that from the comments on every side of him. The crowd had forgotten his earlier failure, which, if he had only known it, should have taught him that word of wisdom invaluable to artists and sportsmen alike. Don't be discouraged by a bad beginning. It's the last five minutes that count. Finally, there was Riley. You didn't play badly, you said. You were better than Millet. Four. Later, he was sitting with Riley, swashed into a corner of mags, eating donuts. The crowd in there was terrific and the atmosphere like a slab of chocolate. Riley and he were pressed close together with boys on every side of them. The noise was deafening. It was the last ten minutes before mags is closed. It was Saturday evening and everyone had pocket money. The two boys did not speak to one another. Jeremy's leg was hurting him horribly, but he was as happy as five kings and a policeman, which was one of Uncle Samuel's ridiculous, meaningless phrases. His arm was round Riley's neck, more for support than for sentiment, but he did like Riley and he did like mags. He was perhaps at that moment as completely alive as he was ever to be. He was so small that he was almost entirely hidden, but somebody caught sight of his hair, which would never lie down flat, and cried across the room, three cheers for stocky the football hero. The cheers were hearty, if a little absent-minded, the main business of the moment being food and not football. Jeremy, of course, was pleased and, in his pleasure, overbalanced from the edge of the table, where he was sitting, slipped forward and disappeared from men. His leg hurt him too much, and he was too comfortable on the floor and too generally sleepy to bother to get up again, so he stayed there. His arm round Riley's leg, swallowing his last donut as slowly as possible, feeling that he would like to give donuts in general to all the world. Yes, it had been a fine day, a splendid day, and there would be days and days and days. Mags's was closing. He limped to his feet, and with their arms round one another's necks, Riley and he vanished into the dark. End of Chapter 12 End of Jeremy and Hamlet, a chronicle of certain incidents in the lives of a boy, a dog, and a country town by Hugh Walpole.