Books: Jeremy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

This etext was produced by Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

JEREMY
BY
HUGH WALPOLE

TO
BRUCE
FROM
HIS LOVING UNCLE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I THE BIRTHDAY

II THE FAMILY DOG

III CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME

IV MISS JONES

V THE SEA-CAPTAIN

VI FAMILY PRIDE

VII RELIGION

VIII TO COW FARM

IX THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE

X MARY

XI THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

XII HAMLET WAITS

"It is due to him to say that he was
an obedient boy and a boy whose word
could be depended on . . ."

Jackanapes

CHAPTER I

THE BIRTHDAY

I

About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side
of Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say "was";
the shell of it is still there, and the people who now live in it
are quite unaware, I suppose, that anything has happened to the
inside of it, except that they are certainly assured that their
furniture is vastly superior to the furniture of their predecessors.
They have a gramophone, a pianola, and a lift to bring the plates
from the kitchen into the dining-room, and a small motor garage at
the back where the old pump used to be, and a very modern rock
garden where once was the pond with the fountain that never worked.
Let them cherish their satisfaction. No one grudges it to them. The
Coles were, by modern standards, old-fashioned people, and the Stone
House was an old-fashioned house.

Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the
morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the
morning of December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo
clock had just struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this
very moment, for the first time in his life, eight years old. He had
gone to bed at eight o'clock on the preceding evening with the
choking consciousness that he would awake in the morning a different
creature. Although he had slept, there had permeated the texture of
his dreams that same choking excitement, and now, wide awake, as
though he had asked the cuckoo to call him in order that he might
not be late for the great occasion, he stared into the black
distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a beating heart, upon
the great event. He was eight years old, and he had as much right
now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen had.

That was his first definite realisation of approaching triumph.
Throughout the whole of his seventh year he had fought with Helen,
who was most unjustly a year older than he and persistently proud of
that injustice, as to his right to use the wicker arm-chair
whensoever it pleased him. So destructive of the general peace of
the house had these incessant battles been, so unavailing the
suggestions of elderly relations that gentlemen always yielded to
ladies, that a compromise had been arrived at. When Jeremy was eight
he should have equal rights with Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had
yielded to that. It was the only decent chair in the nursery. Into
the place where the wicker, yielding to rude and impulsive pressure,
had fallen away, one's body might be most happily fitted. It was of
exactly the right height; it made the handsomest creaking noises
when one rocked in it--and, in any case, Helen was only a girl.

But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him.
As he sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his
back and his throat very dry; he was disappointingly aware that he
was still the same Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was
exactly that he had expected, but he did not feel at present that
confident proud glory for which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was
too early.

He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half-
muttered, half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once
again asleep.

II

He awoke to the customary sound of the bath water running into the
bath. His room was flooded with sunshine, and old Jampot, the nurse
(her name was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot), was saying as
usual: "Now, Master Jeremy, eight o'clock; no lying in bed--out--you
get--bath--ready."

He stared at her, blinking.

"You should say 'Many Happy Returns of the Day, Master Jeremy,'" he
remarked. Then suddenly, with a leap, he was out of bed, had crossed
the floor, pushed back the nursery door, and was sitting in the
wicker arm-chair, his naked feet kicking a triumphant dance.

"Helen! Helen!" he called. "I'm in the chair."

No sound.

"I'm eight," he shouted, "and I'm in the chair."

Mrs. Preston, breathless and exclaiming, hurried across to him.

"Oh, you naughty boy . . . death of cold . . . in your nightshirt."

"I'm eight," he said, looking at her scornfully, "and I can sit here
as long as I please."

Helen, her pigtails flapping on either shoulder, her nose red, as it
always was early in the morning, appeared at the opposite end of the
nursery.

"Nurse, he mustn't, must he? Tell him not to. I don't care how old
you are. It's my chair. Mother said--"

"No, she didn't. Mother said--"

"Yes, she did. Mother said--"

"Mother said that when--"

"Oh, you story. You know that Mother said--" Then suddenly a new,
stiffening, trusting dignity filled him, as though he had with a
turn of the head discovered himself in golden armour.

He was above this vulgar wrangling now. That was for girls. He was
superior to them all. He got down from the chair and stood, his head
up, on the old Turkey rug (red with yellow cockatoos) in front of
the roaring fire.

"You may have your old chair," he said to Helen. "I'm eight now, and
I don't want it any more . . . although if I do want it I shall have
it," he added.

He was a small, square boy with a pug-nosed face. His hair was light
brown, thin and stiff, so that it was difficult to brush, and
although you watered it, stood up in unexpected places and stared at
you. His eyes were good, dark brown and large, but he was in no way
handsome; his neck, his nose ridiculous. His mouth was too large,
and his chin stuck out like a hammer.

He was, plainly, obstinate and possibly sulky, although when he
smiled his whole face was lighted with humour. Helen was the only
beautiful Cole child, and she was abundantly aware of that fact. The
Coles had never been a good-looking family.

He stood in front of the fireplace now as he had seen his father do,
his short legs apart, his head up, and his hands behind his back.

"Now, Master Jeremy," the Jampot continued, "you may be eight years
old, but it isn't a reason for disobedience the very first minute,
and, of course, your bath is ready and you catching your death with
naked feet, which you've always been told to put your slippers on
and not to keep the bath waiting, when there's Miss Helen and Miss
Mary, as you very well know, and breakfast coming in five minutes,
which there's sausages this morning, because it's your birthday, and
them all getting cold--"

"Sausages!"

He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt
and was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of
excitement and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always
even on birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling
fire and marmalade, perhaps--and then all the presents.

Oh, he was happy. As he rubbed his back with the towel a wonderful
glowing Christian charity spread from his head to his toes and
tingled through every inch of him. Helen should sit in the chair
when she pleased; Mary should be allowed to dress and undress the
large woollen dog, known as "Sulks," his own especial and beloved
property, so often as she wished; Jampot should poke the twisted end
of the towel in his ears and brush his hair with the hard brushes,
and he would not say a word. Aunt Mary should kiss him (as, of
course, she would want to do), and he would not shiver; he would
(bravest deed of all) allow Mary to read "Alice in Wonderland" in
her sing-sing voice so long as ever she wanted. . . Sausages!
Sausages!

In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging
at his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted:

"Helen, there are sausages--because it's my birthday. Aren't you
glad?”

And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's
voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: "Oh, you do pull so; you're
hurting!"--his charity was not checked.

Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front
of the fire a shyness stole over him. He knew that the moment for
Presents was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to
kiss and be kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to
say again and again, "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!" that he
would have his usual consciousness of his inability to thank anybody
at all in the way that they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary
never worried about such things. They delighted in kissing and
hugging and multitudes of words. If only he might have had his
presents by himself and then stolen out and said "Thank you" to the
lot of them and have done with it.

He watched the breakfast-table with increasing satisfaction--the
large teapot with the red roses, the dark blue porridge plates, the
glass jar with the marmalade a rich yellow inside it, the huge loaf
with the soft pieces bursting out between the crusty pieces, the
solid square of butter, so beautiful a colour and marked with a
large cow and a tree on the top (he had seen once in the kitchen the
wooden shape with which the cook made this handsome thing). There
were also his own silver mug, given him at his christening by Canon
Trenchard, his godfather, and his silver spoon, given him on the
same occasion by Uncle Samuel.

All these things glittered and glowed in the firelight, and a kettle
was singing on the hob and Martha the canary was singing in her cage
in the window. (No one really knew whether the canary were a lady or
a gentleman, but the name had been Martha after a beloved housemaid,
now married to the gardener, and the sex had followed the name.)

There were also all the other familiar nursery things. The hole in
the Turkey carpet near the bookcase, the rocking-horse, very shiny
where you sit and very Christmas- tree-like as to its tail; the
doll's house, now deserted, because Helen was too old and Mary too
clever; the pictures of "Church on Christmas Morning" (everyone with
their mouths very wide open, singing a Christmas hymn, with holly),
"Dignity and Impudence," after Landseer, "The Shepherds and the
Angels," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade." So packed was the
nursery with history for Jeremy that it would have taken quite a
week to relate it all. There was the spot where he had bitten the
Jampot's fingers, for which deed he had afterwards been slippered by
his father; there the corner where they stood for punishment (he
knew exactly how many ships with sails, how many ridges of waves,
and how many setting suns there were on that especial piece of
corner wallpaper--three ships, twelve ridges, two and a half suns);
there was the place where he had broken the ink bottle over his
shoes and the carpet, there by the window, where Mary had read to
him once when he had toothache, and he had not known whether her
reading or the toothache agonised him the more; and so on, an
endless sequence of sensational history.

His reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of Gladys with
the porridge. Gladys, who was only the between-maid, but was
nevertheless stout, breathless from her climb and the sentiment of
the occasion, produced from a deep pocket a dirty envelope, which
she laid upon the table.

"Many 'appy returns, Master Jeremy." Giggle . . . giggle. . . "Lord
save us if I 'aven't gone and forgotten they spunes," and she
vanished. The present-giving had begun.

He had an instant's struggle as to whether it were better to wait
until all the presents had accumulated, or whether he would take
them separately as they arrived. The dirty envelope lured him. He
advanced towards it and seized it. He could not read very easily the
sprawling writing on the cover, but he guessed that it said "From
Gladys to Master Jeremy." Within was a marvellous card, tied
together with glistening cord and shining with all the colours of
the rainbow. It was apparently a survival from last Christmas, as
there was a church in snow and a peal of bells; he was,
nevertheless, very happy to have it.

After his introduction events moved swiftly. First Helen and Mary
appeared, their faces shining and solemn and mysterious--Helen self-
conscious and Mary staring through her spectacles like a profound
owl.

Because Jeremy had known Mary ever since he could remember, he was
unaware that there was anything very peculiar about her. But in
truth she was a strange looking child. Very thin, she had a large
head, with big outstanding ears, spectacles, and yellow hair pulled
back and "stringy." Her large hands were always red, and her
forehead was freckled. She was as plain a child as you were ever
likely to see, but there was character in her mouth and eyes, and
although she was only seven years old, she could read quite
difficult books (she was engaged at this particular time upon
"Ivanhoe"), and she was a genius at sums.

The passion of her life, as the family were all aware, was Jeremy,
but it was an unfortunate and uncomfortable passion. She bothered
and worried him, she was insanely jealous; she would sulk for days
did he ever seem to prefer Helen to herself. No one understood her;
she was considered a "difficult child," quite unlike any other
member of the family, except possibly Samuel, Mr. Cole's brother-
in-law, who was an unsuccessful painter and therefore "odd."

As Mary was at present only seven years of age it would be too much
to say that the family was afraid of her. Aunt Amy's attitude was:
"Well, after all, she's sure to be clever when she grows up, poor
child;" and although the parishioners of Mary's father always
alluded to her as "the ludicrous Cole child," they told awed little
stories about the infant's mental capacities, and concluded
comfortably, "I'm glad Alice (or Jane or Matilda or Anabel) isn't
clever like that. They overwork when they are young, and then when
they grow up--"

Meanwhile Mary led her private life. She attached herself to no one
but Jeremy; she was delicate and suffered from perpetual colds; she
therefore spent much of her time in the nursery reading, her huge
spectacles close to the page, her thin legs like black sticks stuck
up on the fender in front of the fire or curled up under her on the
window-seat.

Very different was Helen. Helen had a mass of dark black hair, big
black eyes with thick eye-lashes, a thin white neck, little feet,
and already an eye to "effects" in dress. She was charming to
strangers, to the queer curates who haunted the family hall, to poor
people and rich people, to old people and young people. She was
warm-hearted but not impulsive, intelligent but not clever,
sympathetic but not sentimental, impatient but never uncontrolled.
She liked almost everyone and almost everything, but no one and
nothing mattered to her very deeply; she liked going to church,
always learnt her Collect first on Sunday, and gave half her pocket-
money to the morning collection. She was generous but never
extravagant, enjoyed food but was not greedy. She was quite aware
that she was pretty and might one day be beautiful, and she was glad
of that, but she was never silly about her looks.

When Aunt Amy, who was always silly about everything, said in her
presence to visitors, "Isn't Helen the loveliest thing you ever
saw?" she managed by her shy self- confidence to suggest that she
was pretty, that Aunt Amy was a fool, and life was altogether very
agreeable, but that none of these things was of any great
importance. She was very good friends with Jeremy, but she played no
part in his life at all. At the same time she often fought with him,
simply from her real deep consciousness of her superiority to him.
She valued her authority and asserted it incessantly. That authority
had until last year been unchallenged, but Jeremy now was growing.
She had, although she did not as yet realise it, a difficult time
before her.

Helen and Mary advanced with their presents, laid them on the
breakfast-table, and then retreated to watch the effect of it all.

"Shall I now?" asked Jeremy.

"Yes, now," said Helen and Mary.

There were three parcels, one large and "shoppy," two small and
bound with family paper, tied by family hands with family string. He
grasped immediately the situation. The shoppy parcel was bought with
mother's money and only "pretended" to be from his sisters; the two
small parcels were the very handiwork of the ladies themselves, the
same having been seen by all eyes at work for the last six months,
sometimes, indeed, under the cloak of attempted secrecy, but more
often--because weariness or ill-temper made them careless--in the
full light of day.

His interest was centred almost entirely in the "shoppy" parcel,
which by its shape might be "soldiers"; but he knew the rules of the
game, and disregarding the large, ostentatious brown-papered thing,
he went magnificently for the two small incoherent bundles.

He opened them. A flat green table-centre with a red pattern of
roses, a thick table-napkin ring worked in yellow worsted, these
were revealed.

"Oh!" he cried, "just what I wanted." (Father always said that on
his birthday.)

"Is it?" said Mary and Helen.

"Mine's the ring," said Mary. "It's dirty rather, but it would have
got dirty, anyway, afterwards." She watched anxiously to see whether
he preferred Helen's.

He watched them nervously, lest he should be expected to kiss them.
He wiped his mouth with his hand instead, and began rapidly to talk:

"Jampot will know now which mine is. She's always giving me the
wrong one. I'll have it always, and the green thing too."

"It's for the middle of a table," Helen interrupted.

"Yes, I know," said Jeremy hurriedly. "I'll always have it too--like
Mary's--when I'm grown up and all. . . . I say, shall I open the
other one now?"

"Yes, you can," said Helen and Mary, ceasing to take the central
place in the ceremony, spectators now and eagerly excited.

But Mary had a last word.

"You do like mine, don't you?"

"Of course, like anything."

She wanted to say "Better than Helen's?" but restrained herself.

"I was ever so long doing it; I thought I wouldn't finish it in
time."

He saw with terror that she meditated a descent upon him; a kiss was
in the air. She moved forward; then, to his extreme relief, the door
opened and the elders arriving saved him.

There were Father and Mother, Uncle Samuel and Aunt Amy, all with
presents, faces of birthday tolerance and "do-as-you-please-to-day,
dear" expressions.

The Rev. Herbert Cole was forty years of age, rector of St. James's,
Polchester, during the last ten years, and marked out for greater
preferment in the near future. To be a rector at thirty is unusual,
but he had great religious gifts, preached an admirable "as-man-to-
man" sermon, and did not believe in thinking about more than he
could see. He was an excellent father in the abstract sense, but the
parish absorbed too much of his time to allow of intimacies with
anyone.

Mrs. Cole was the most placid lady in Europe. She had a comfortable
figure, but was not stout, here a dimple and there a dimple. Nothing
could disturb her. Children, servants, her husband's sermons,
district visiting, her Tuesday "at homes," the butcher, the dean's
wife, the wives of the canons, the Polchester climate, bills,
clothes, other women's clothes--over all these rocks of peril in the
sea of daily life her barque happily floated. Some ill-natured
people thought her stupid, but in her younger days she had liked
Trollope's novels in the Cornhill, disapproved placidly of "Jane
Eyre," and admired Tennyson, so that she could not be considered
unliterary.

She was economical, warm-hearted, loved her children, talked only
the gentlest scandal, and was a completely happy woman--all this in
the placidest way in the world. Miss Amy Trefusis, her sister, was
very different, being thin both in her figure and her emotions. She
skirted tempestuously over the surface of things, was the most
sentimental of human beings, was often in tears over reminiscences
of books or the weather, was deeply religious in a superficial way,
and really--although she would have been entirely astonished had you
told her so--cared for no one in the world but herself. She was
dressed always in dark colours, with the high shoulders of the day,
elegant bonnets and little chains that jingled as she moved. In her
soul she feared and distrusted children, but she did not know this.
She did know, however, that she feared and distrusted her brother
Samuel.

Her brother Samuel was all that the Trefusis family, as a
conservative body who believed in tradition, had least reason for
understanding. He had been a failure from the first moment of his
entry into the Grammar School in Polchester thirty-five years before
this story. He had continued a failure at Winchester and at Christ
Church, Oxford. He had desired to be a painter; he had broken from
the family and gone to study Art in Paris. He had starved and
starved, was at death's door, was dragged home, and there suddenly
had relapsed into Polchester, lived first on his father, then on his
brother-in-law, painted about the town, painted, made cynical
remarks about the Polcastrians, painted, made blasphemous remarks
about the bishop, the dean and all the canons, painted, and refused
to leave his brother-in-law's house. He was a scandal, of course; he
was fat, untidy, wore a blue tam-o'-shanter when he was "out," and
sometimes went down Orange Street in carpet slippers.

He was a scandal, but what are you to do if a relative is obstinate
and refuses to go? At least make him shave, say the wives of the
canons. But no one had ever made Samuel Trefusis do anything that he
did not want to do. He was sometimes not shaved for three whole days
and nights. At any rate, there he is. It is of no use saying that he
does not exist, as many of the Close ladies try to do. And at least
he does not paint strange women; he prefers flowers and cows and the
Polchester woods, although anything less like cows, flowers and
woods, Mrs. Sampson, wife of the Dean, who once had a water-colour
in the Academy, says she has never seen. Samuel Trefusis is a
failure, and, what is truly awful, he does not mind; nobody buys his
pictures and he does not care; and, worst taste of all, he laughs at
his relations, although he lives on them. Nothing further need be
said.

To Helen, Mary and Jeremy he had always been a fascinating object,
although they realised, with that sharp worldly wisdom to be found
in all infants of tender years, that he was a failure, a dirty man,
and disliked children. He very rarely spoke to them; was once quite
wildly enraged when Mary was discovered licking his paints. (It was
the paints he seemed anxious about, not in the least the poor little
thing's health, as his sister Amy said), and had publicly been heard
to say that his brother-in-law had only got the children he
deserved.

Nevertheless Jeremy had always been interested in him. He liked his
fat round shape, his rough, untidy grey hair, his scarlet slippers,
his blue tam-o'-shanter, the smudges of paint sometimes to be
discovered on his cheeks, and the jingling noises he made in his
pocket with his money. He was certainly more fun than Aunt Amy.

There, then, they all were with their presents and their birthday
faces.

"Shall I undo them for you, darling?" of course said Aunt Amy.
Jeremy shook his head (he did not say what he thought of her) and
continued to tug at the string. He was given a large pair of
scissors. He received (from Father) a silver watch, (from Mother) a
paint-box, a dark blue and gold prayer book with a thick squashy
leather cover (from Aunt Amy).

He was in an ecstasy. How he had longed for a watch, just such a
turnip-shaped one, and a paint-box. What colours he could make! Even
Aunt Amy's prayer book was something, with its squashy cover and
silk marker (only why did Aunt Amy never give him anything
sensible?). He stood there, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling,
the watch in one hand and the paint-box in the other. Remarks were
heard like: "You mustn't poke it with, your finger, Jerry darling,
or you'll break the hands off"; and "I thought he'd, better have the
square sort, and not the tubes. They're so squashy"; and "You'll be
able to learn your Collect so easily with that big print, Jerry
dear. Very kind of you, Amy."

Meanwhile he was aware that Uncle Samuel had given him nothing.
There was a little thick catch of disappointment in his throat, not
because he wanted a present, but because he liked Uncle Samuel.
Suddenly, from somewhere behind him his uncle said: "Shut your eyes,
Jerry. Don't open them until I tell you"--then rather crossly, "No,
Amy, leave me alone. I know what I'm about, thank you."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19