Jeremy

II

I pass swiftly over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after, although I should like to linger upon these sumptuous dates. Jeremy had a sumptuous time; Hamlet had a sumptuous time (a whole sugar rat, plates and plates of bones, and a shoe of Aunt Amy's); Mary and Helen had sumptuous times in their own feminine fashion.

Upon the evening of Christmas Eve, when the earth was snow-lit, and the street-lamps sparkled with crystals, and the rime on the doorsteps crackled beneath one's feet, Jeremy accompanied his mother on a present-leaving expedition. The excitement of that! The wonderful shapes and sizes of the parcels, the mysterious streets, the door-handles and the door-bells, the glittering stars, the maidservants, the sense of the lighted house, as though you opened a box full of excitements and then hurriedly shut the lid down again. Jeremy trembled and shook, not with cold, but with exalting, completely satisfying happiness.

There followed the Stocking, the Waits, the Carols, the Turkey, the Christmas Cake, the Tree, the Presents, Snapdragon, Bed... There followed Headache, Ill-temper, Smacking of Mary, Afternoon Walk, Good Temper again, Complete Weariness, Hamlet sick on the Golden Cockatoos, Hamlet Beaten, Five minutes with Mother downstairs, Bed. .. Christmas was over.

From that moment of the passing of Boxing Day it was simply the counting of the minutes to “Dick Whittington.” Six days from Boxing Day. Say you slept from eight to seven—eleven hours; that left thirteen hours; six thirteen hours was, so Helen said, seventy-eight. Seventy-eight hours, and Sunday twice as long as the other days, and that made thirteen more; ninety-one, said Helen, her nose in the air.

The week dragged along, very difficult work for everybody, and even Hamlet felt the excitement and watched his corner with the Jampot's sewing machine in it with more quivering intensity than ever. The Day Before The Day arrived, the evening before The Day, the last supper before The Day, the last bed before The Day... Suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-Box, The Day itself.

Then the awful thing happened.

Jeremy awoke to the consciousness that something terrific was about to occur. He lay for a minute thinking—then he was up, running about the nursery floor as though he were a young man in Mr. Rossetti's poetry shouting: “Helen! Mary! Mary! Helen!... It's Dick Whittington! Dick Whittington!”

On such occasions he lost entirely his natural reserve and caution. He dressed with immense speed, as though that would hasten the coming of the evening. He ran into the nursery, carrying the black tie that went under his sailor-collar.

He held it out to the Jampot, who eyed him with disfavour. She was leaving them all in a week and was a strange confusion of sentiment and bad temper, love and hatred, wounded pride and injured dignity.

“Nurse. Please. Fasten it,” he said impatiently.

“And that's not the way to speak, Master Jeremy, and well you know it,” she said. “'Ave you cleaned your teeth?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. It was not until the word was spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed him with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a very bad hand at a lie...

He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back—but something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over his mouth. His face flamed.

“You've truly cleaned them?” she said.

“Yes, truly,” he answered, his eyes on the ground. Never was there a more obvious liar in all the world.

She said no more; he moved to the fireplace. His joy was gone. There was a cold clammy sensation about his heart. Slowly, very slowly, the consciousness stole upon him that he was a liar. He had not thought it a lie when he had first spoken, now he knew.

Still there was time. Had he turned round and spoken, all might still have been well. But now obstinacy held him. He was not going to give the Jampot an opportunity for triumphing over him. After all, he would clean them so soon as she went to brush Helen's hair. In a moment what he had said would be true.

But he was miserable. Hamlet came up from the nether regions where he had spent the night, showing his teeth, wagging his tail, and even rolling on the cockatoos. Jeremy paid no attention. The weight in his heart grew heavier and heavier. He watched, from under his eyelids, the Jampot. In a moment she must go into Helen's room. But she did not. She stayed for a little arranging the things on the breakfast-table—then suddenly, without a word, she turned into Jeremy's bedchamber. His heart began to hammer. There was an awful pause; he heard from miles away Mary's voice: “Do do that button, Helen, I can't get it!” and Helen's “Oh, bother!”

Then, like Judgment, the Jampot appeared again. She stood in the doorway, looking across at him.

“You 'ave not cleaned your teeth, Master Jeremy,” she said. “The glass isn't touched, nor your toothbrush... You wicked, wicked boy. So it's a liar you've become, added on to all your other wickedness.”

“I forgot,” he muttered sullenly. “I thought I had.”

She smiled the smile of approaching triumph.

“No, you did not,” she said. “You knew you'd told a lie. It was in your face. All of a piece—all of a piece.”

The way she said this, like a pirate counting over his captured treasure, was enraging. Jeremy could feel the wild fury at himself, at her, at the stupid blunder of the whole business rising to his throat.

“If you think I'm going to let this pass you're making a mighty mistake,” she continued, “which I wouldn't do not if you paid me all the gold in the kingdom. I mayn't be good enough to keep my place and look after such as you, but anyways I'm able to stop your lying for another week or two. I know my duty even though there's them as thinks I don't.”

She positively snorted, and the excitement of her own vindication and the just condemnation of Jeremy was such that her hands trembled.

“I don't care what you do,” Jeremy shouted. “You can tell anyone you like. I don't care what you do. You're a beastly woman.”

She turned upon him, her face purple. “That's enough, Master Jeremy,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “I'm not here to be called names by such as you. You'll be sorry for this before you're much older.... You see.”

There was then an awful and sickly pause. Jeremy seemed to himself to be sinking lower and lower into a damp clammy depth of degradation. What must this world be that it could change itself so instantly from a place of gay and happy pleasure into a dim groping room of punishment and dismay?

His feelings were utterly confused. He supposed that he was terribly wicked. But he did not feel wicked. He only felt miserable, sick and defiant. Mary and Helen came in, their eyes open to a crisis, their bodies tuned sympathetically to the atmosphere of sin and crime that they discerned around them.

Then Mr. Cole came in as was his daily habit—for a moment before his breakfast.

“Well, here are you all,” he cried. “Ready for to-night? No breakfast yet? Why, now...?”

Then perceiving, as all practised fathers instantly must, that the atmosphere was sinful, he changed his voice to that of the Children's Sunday Afternoon Service—a voice well known in his family.

“Please, sir,” began the Jampot, “I'm sorry to 'ave to tell you, sir, that Master Jeremy's not been at all good this morning.”

“Well, Jeremy,” he said, turning to his son, “what is it?”

Jeremy's face, raised to his father's, was hard and set and sullen.

“I've told a lie,” he said; “I said I'd cleaned my teeth when I hadn't. Nurse went and looked, and then I called her a beastly woman.”

The Jampot's face expressed a grieved and at the same time triumphant confirmation of this.

“You told a lie?” Mr. Cole's voice was full of a lingering sorrow.

“Yes,” said Jeremy.

“Are you sorry?”

“I'm sorry that I told a lie, but I'm not sorry I called Nurse a beastly woman.”

“Jeremy!”

“No, I'm not. She is a beastly woman.”

Mr. Cole was always at a loss when anyone defied him, even though it were only a small boy of eight. He took refuge now in his ecclesiastical and parental authority.

“I'm very distressed—very distressed indeed. I hope that punishment, Jeremy, will show you how wrong you have been. I'm afraid you cannot come with us to the Pantomime to-night.”

At that judgement a quiver for an instant held Jeremy's face, turning it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign. He simply stood there waiting.

Mr. Cole was baffled, as he always was by Jeremy's moods, so he continued:

“And until you've apologised to Nurse for your rudeness you must remain by yourself. I shall forbid your sisters to speak to you. Mary and Helen, you are not to speak to your brother until he has apologised to Nurse.”

“Yes, Father,” said Helen

“Oh, Father, mayn't he come to-night?” said Mary.

“No, Mary, I'm afraid not.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “It won't be any fun without Jeremy,” she said. She wished to make the further sacrifice of saying that she would not go unless Jeremy did, but some natural caution restrained her.

Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery of Jeremy's face the Jampot's hear—in reality a kind and even sentimental heart—repented her.

“There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say your father will take you, after all; and we won't think no more about what you said to me in the 'eat of the moment.”

But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of bacon, nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that poured into the room from the frosty world outside.

A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this thing with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not dreamt of it for days and nights and nights and days, as he had done. Their whole future existence did not depend upon their witnessing this, as did his.

During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something caged and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that children are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise something of the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole world had gone.

He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie... And he would not meet Dick Whittington.

The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron chain. Childhood's tragedies are terrible tragedies, because a child has no sense of time; a moment's dismay is eternal; a careless word from an elder is a lasting judgment; an instant's folly is a lifetime's mistake.

The day dragged its weary length along, and he scarcely moved from his corner by the fire. He did not attempt conversation with anyone. Once or twice the Jampot tried to penetrate behind that little mask of anger and dismay.

“Come, now, things aren't so bad as all that. You be a good boy, and go and tell your father you're sorry...” or “Well, then, Master Jeremy, there'll be another time, I dare say, you can go to the the-ayter...”

But she found no response. If there was one thing that she hated, it was sulks. Here they were, sulks of the worst—and so, like many wiser than herself, she covered up with a word a situation that she did not understand, and left it at that.

The evening came on; the curtains were drawn. Tea arrived; still Jeremy sat there, not speaking, not raising his eyes, a condemned creature. Mary and Helen and Hamlet had had a wretched day. They all sympathised with him.

The girls went to dress. Seven o'clock struck. They were taken downstairs by Nurse, who had her evening out. Rose, the housemaid, would sit with Master Jeremy.

Doors closed, doors opened, voices echoed, carriage-wheels were heard.

Jeremy and Hamlet were left to themselves...

III

The last door had closed, and the sudden sense that everyone had gone and that he might behave now as he pleased, removed the armour in which all day he had encased himself.

He raised his head, looked about the deserted nursery, and then, with the sudden consciousness of that other lighted and busied place where Whittington was pursuing his adventures, he burst into tears. He sobbed, his head down upon his arms, and his body squeezed together so that his knees were close to his nose and his hair in his boots. Hamlet restored him to himself. Instead of assisting his master's grief, as a sentimental dog would have done, by sighing or sniffing or howling, he yawned, stretched himself, and rolled on the carpet. He did not believe in giving way to feelings, and he was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, at Jeremy's lack of restraint.

Jeremy felt this, and in a little while sobs came very slowly, and at last were only little shudders, rather pleasant and healthy. He looked about him, rubbed his red nose with a hideously dirty handkerchief, and felt immensely sleepy.

No, he would not cry any more. Rose would shortly appear, and he did not intend to cry before housemaids. Nevertheless, his desolation was supreme. He was a liar. He had told lies before, but they had not been discovered, and so they were scarcely lies... Now, in some strange way, the publication of his lie had shown him what truly impossible things lies were. He had witnessed this effect upon the general public; he had not believed that he was so wicked. He did not even now feel really wicked, but he saw quite clearly that there was one world for liars and one for truthful men. He wanted, terribly badly, someone to tell him that he was still in the right world...

And then, on the other side, the thought that Mary and Helen were at this very moment witnessing the coloured history of Dick Whittinglon, the history that he had pursued ceaselessly during all these days and nights—that picture of them all in the lighted theatre—once more nearly overcame him. But he pulled himself together.

He sniffed, left his dirty handkerchief, and went slowly and sorrowfully to drag out his toy village from its corner and see whether anything could be done with it.... After all, he was going to school in September. His punishment could not be quite limitless. Hamlet had just shown his approval of this manly conduct by strolling up and sniffing at the Noah family, who were, as usual, on their way to church, when the door suddenly opened, and in came Uncle Samuel.

Jeremy had forgotten his uncle, and now blinked up at him from the floor, where he was squatting, rather ashamed of his swollen eyes and red nose.

Uncle Samuel, however, had no time for details; he was apparently in a hurry. He did not wear his blue painting-smock, but was in a comparatively clean black suit, and on the back of his head was a squashy brown hat.

“Come on,” he said, “or we shall be too late.”

Jeremy choked. “Too late?” he repeated.

“You're coming, aren't you—to the Pantomime? They sent me back for you.”

The room suddenly got on to its legs, like the food and the families during Alice's feast in the “Looking Glass,” and swung round, lurching from side to side, and causing the fire to run into the gas and the gas to fly out of the window.

“I—don't—understand,” Jeremy stammered.

“Well, if you don't understand in half a shake,” said Uncle Samuel, “you won't see any of the show at all. Go on. Wash your face. There are streaks of dirt all down it as though you were a painted Indian; stick on your cap and coat and boots and come along.”

Exactly as one moves in sleep so Jeremy now moved. He had once had a wonderful dream, in which he had been at a meal that included every thing that he had most loved—fish-cakes, sausages, ices, strawberry jam, sponge-cake, chocolates, and scrambled eggs—and he had been able to eat, and eat, and had never been satisfied, and had never felt sick—a lovely dream.

He often thought of it. And now in the same bewildering fashion he found his boots and cap and coat and then, deliberately keeping from him the thought of the Pantomime lest he should suddenly wake up, he said:

“I'm ready, Uncle.”

Samuel Trefusia looked at him.

“You're a strange kid,” he said; “you take everything so quietly—but, thank God, I don't understand children.”

“There's Hamlet,” said Jeremy, wondering whether perhaps the dream would extend to his friend. “I suppose he can't come too.”

“No, he certainly can't,” said Uncle Samuel grimly.

“And there's Rose. She'll wonder where I've gone.”

“I've told her. Don't you worry. What a conscientious infant you are. Just like your father. Anything else?”

“No,” said Jeremy breathlessly, and nearly murdered himself going downstairs because he shut his eyes in order to continue the dream so long as it was possible. Then in the cold night air, grasping his uncle's hand with a feverish hold, he stammered:

“Is it really true? Are we going—really?”

“Of course we're going. Come on—step out or you'll miss the Giant.”

“But—but—oh!” he drew a deep breath. “Then they don't think me a liar any more?”

“They—who?”

“Father and Mother and everyone.”

“Don't you think about them. You'd better enjoy yourself.”

“But you said you wouldn't go to the Pantomime—not for anything?”

“Well, I've changed my mind. Don't talk so much. You know I hate you children chattering. Always got something to say.”

So Jeremy was silent. They raced down Orange Street, Jeremy being almost carried off his feet. This was exactly like a dream. This rushing movement and the way that the lamp-posts ran up to you as though they were going to knock you down, and the way that the stars crackled and sputtered and trembled overhead. But Uncle Samuel's hand was flesh and blood, and the heel of Jeremy's right shoe hurt him and he felt the tickle of his sailor-collar at the back of his neck, just as he did when he was awake.

Then there they were at the Assembly Rooms door, Jeremy having become so breathless that Uncle Samuel had to hold him up for a moment or he'd have fallen.

“Bit too fast for you, was it? Well, you shouldn't be so fat. You eat too much. Now we're not going to sit with your father and mother—there isn't room for you there. So don't you go calling out to them or anything. We're sitting in the back and you'd better be quiet or they'll turn you out.”

“I'll be quiet,” gasped Jeremy.

Uncle Samuel paused at a lighted hole in the wall and spoke to a large lady in black silk who was drinking a cup of tea. Jeremy caught the jingle of money. Then they moved forward, stumbling in the dark up a number of stone steps, pushing at a heavy black curtain, then suddenly bathed in a bewildering glow of light and scent and colour.

Jeremy's first impression, as he fell into this new world, was of an ugly, harsh, but funny voice crying out very loudly indeed: “Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!” A roar of laughter rose about him, almost lifting him off his feet, and close to his car a Glebeshire voice sobbed: “Eh, my dear. Poor worm! Poor worm!”

He was aware then of a strong smell of oranges, of Uncle Samuel pushing him forward, of stumbling over boots, knees, and large hands that were clapping in his very nose, of falling into a seat and then clinging to it as though it was his only hope in this strange puzzling world. The high funny voice rose again: “Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!” And again it was followed by the rough roar of delighted laughter.

He was aware then that about him on every side gas was sizzling, and then, as he recovered slowly his breath, his gaze was drawn to the great blaze of light in the distance, against which figures were dimly moving, and from the heart of which the strange voice came. He heard a woman's voice, then several voices together; then suddenly the whole scene shifted into focus, his eyes were tied to the light; the oranges and the gas and the smell of clothes and heated bodies slipped back into distance—he was caught into the world where he had longed to be.

He saw that it was a shop—and he loved shops. His heart beat thickly as his eyes travelled up and up and up over the rows and rows of shelves; here were bales of cloth, red and green and blue; carpets from the East, table-covers, sheets and blankets. Behind the long yellow counters young men in strange clothes were standing. In the middle of the scene was a funny old woman, her hat tumbling off her head, her shabby skirt dragging, large boots, and a red nose. It was from this strange creature that the deep ugly voice proceeded. She had, this old woman, a number of bales of cloth under her arms, and she tried to carry them all, but one slipped, and then another, and then another; she bent to pick them up and her hat fell off; she turned for her hat and all the bales tumbled together. Jeremy began to laugh—everyone laughed; the strange voice came again and again, lamenting, bewailing, she had secured one bale, a smile of cautious triumph began to spread over her ugly face, then the bales all fell again, and once more she was on her knees. It was then that her voice or some movement brought to Jeremy's eyes so vividly the figure of their old gardener, Jordan, that he turned round to Uncle Samuel, and suddenly grasping that gentleman's fat thigh, exclaimed convulsively: “Why, she's a man!”

What a strange topsy-turvy world this was in which women were men, and shops turned (as with a sudden creaking and darkness and clattering did this one) into gardens by the sea. Jeremy drew his breath deeply and held on. His mouth was open and his hair on end.. .

It is impossible to define exactly Jeremy's ultimate impression as the entertainment proceeded. Perhaps he had no ultimate impression. It cannot in reality have been a very wonderful Pantomime. Even at Drury Lane thirty years back there were many things that they did not know, and it is not likely that a touring company fitted into so inadequate an old building as our Assembly Rooms would have provided anything very fine. But Jeremy will never again discover so complete a realisation for his illusions. Whatever failures in the presentation there were, he himself made good.

As a finale to the first half of the entertainment there was given Dick's dream at the Cross-Roads. He lay on the hard ground, his head upon his bundle, the cat as large as he watching sympathetically beside him. In the distance were the lights of London, and then, out of the half dusk, fairies glittering with stars and silver danced up and down the dusky road whilst all the London bells rang out “Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.”

Had Jeremy been of the age and wisdom of Uncle Samuel he would have discovered that Dick was a stout lady and probably the mother of a growing family; that the fairies knew as much about dancing as the Glebeshire wives sitting on the bench behind; that the London bells were two hand instruments worked by a youth in shirt sleeves behind the scenes so energetically that the High Road and the painted London blew backwards and forwards in sympathy with his movements. Jeremy, happily, was not so worldly wise as his uncle. This scene created for him then a tradition of imperishable beauty that would never fade again. The world after that night would be a more magical place than it had ever been before. “Turn again, Whittington” continued the education that the Toy Village and Hamlet had already advanced.

When the gas rose once again, sizzling like crackling bacon, he was white with excitement. The only remark that he made was: “It's much better than the pictures outside Martin's, isn't it, Uncle Samuel?” to which Uncle Samuel, who had been railing for weeks at the deflowering of Polchester by those abominable posters, could truthfully reply, “Much better.” Little by little he withdrew himself from the other world and realised his own. He could see that he and his uncle were certainly not amongst the Quality. Large ladies, their dresses tucked up over their knees, sucked oranges. Country farmers with huge knobbly looking sticks were there, and even some sailors, on their way probably to Drymouth. He recognised the lady who kept charge of the small Orange Street post-office, and waved to her with delighted excitement. The atmosphere was thick with gas and oranges, and I'm afraid that Uncle Samuel must have suffered a great deal. I can only put it on record that he, the most selfish of human beings, never breathed a word of complaint.

They were all packed very closely together up there in the gallery, where seventy years before an orchestra straight from Jane Austen's novels had played to the dancing of the contemporaries of Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse, and the dear lady of “Persuasion.” Another thirty-two years and that same gallery would be listening to recruiting appeals and echoing the drums and fifes of a martial band. The best times are always the old times. The huge lady in the seat next to Jeremy almost swallowed him up, so that he peered out from under her thick arm, and heard every crunch and crackle of the peppermints that she was enjoying. He grew hotter and hotter, so that at last he seemed, as once he had read in some warning tract about a greedy boy that Aunt Amy had given him, “to swim in his own fat.” But he did not mind. Discomfort only emphasised his happiness. Then, peering forward beneath that stout black arm, he suddenly perceived, far below in the swimming distance, the back of his mother, the tops of the heads of Mary and Helen, the stiff white collar of his father, and the well-known coral necklace of Aunt Amy. For a moment dismay seized him, the morning's lie which he had entirely forgotten suddenly jumping up and facing him. But they had forgiven him.

“Shall I wave to them?” he asked excitedly of Uncle Samuel.

“No, no,” said his uncle very hurriedly. “Nonsense. They wouldn't see you if you did. Leave them alone.”

He felt immensely superior to them up where he was, and he wouldn't have changed places with them for anything. He gave a little sigh of satisfaction. “I could drop an orange on to Aunt Amy's head,” he said. “Wouldn't she jump!”

“You must keep quiet,” said Uncle Samuel. “You're good enough as you are.”

“I'd rather be here,” said Jeremy. “It's beautifully hot here and there's a lovely smell.”

“There is,” said Uncle Samuel.

Then the gas went down, and the curtain went up, and Dick, now in a suit of red silk with golden buttons, continued his adventures. I have not space here to describe in detail the further events of his life—how, receiving a telegram from the King of the Zanzibars about the plague of rats, he took ship with his cat and Alderman Fitzwarren and his wife, how they were all swallowed by a whale, cast up by a most lucky chance on the Zanzibars, nearly cooked by the natives, and rescued by the King of the Zanzibars' beautiful daughter, killed all the rats, were given a huge feast, with dance and song, and finally Dick, although tempted by the dusky Princess, refused a large fortune and returned to Alice of Eastcheap, the true lady of his heart. There were, of course, many other things, such as the aspirations and misadventures of Mrs. Fitzwarren, the deep-voiced lady who had already so greatly amused Jeremy. And then there was a Transformation Scene, in which roses turned into tulips and tulips into the Hall of Gold, down whose blazing steps marched stout representatives of all the nations.

It was in the middle of this last thrilling spectacle, when Jeremy's heart was in his mouth and he was so deeply excited that he did not know whether it were he or the lady next to him who was eating peppermints, that his uncle plucked him by the sleeve and said in his ear: “Come on. It's close on the end. We must go.”

Jeremy very reluctantly got up, and stumbled out over knees and legs and exclamations like:

“There's Japan!” “No, it ain't; it's Chiney!” “You's a fine, hearty young woman!” and so on. He was dragged through the black curtain, down the stone steps, and into the street.

“But it wasn't the end,” he said.

“It will be in one minute,” said his uncle. “And I want us to get home first.”

“Why?” said Jeremy.

“Never you mind. Come on; we'll race it.”

They arrived home breathless, and then, once again in the old familiar hall, Uncle Samuel said:

“Now you nip up to the nursery, and then they'll never know you've been out at all.”

“Never know?” said Jeremy. “But you said they'd sent for me.”

“Well,” said Uncle Samuel, “that wasn't exactly true. As a matter of fact, they don't know you were there.”

“Oh!” said Jeremy, the corner of his mouth turning down. “Then I've told a lie again!”

“Nonsense!” said Uncle Samuel impatiently. “It wasn't you; it was I.”

“And doesn't it matter your telling lies?” asked Jeremy.

The answer to this difficult question was, happily for Uncle Samuel, interrupted by the arrival of the household, who had careened up Orange Street in a cab.

When Mr. and Mrs. Cole saw Jeremy standing in the hall, his great coat still on and his muffler round his neck, there was a fine scene of wonder and amazement.

Uncle Samuel explained. “It was my fault. I told him you'd forgiven him and sent for him to come, after all. He's in an awful state now that you shouldn't forgive him.”

Whatever they thought of Uncle Samuel, this was obviously neither the time nor the place to speak out. Mrs. Cole looked at her son. His body defiant, sleepy, excited. His mouth was obstinate, but his eyes appealed to her on the scene of the common marvellous experience that they had just enjoyed.

She hugged him.

“And you won't tell a lie again, will you, Jeremy, dear?”

“Oh, no!” And then, hurrying on: “And when the old woman tumbled down the steps, Mother, wasn't it lovely? And the fairies in Dick Whittington's sleep, and when the furniture all fell all over the place—”

He went slowly upstairs to the nursery, the happiest boy in the kingdom. But through all his happiness there was this puzzle: Uncle Samuel had told a lie, and no one had thought that it mattered. There were good lies and bad ones then. Or was it that grown-up people could tell lies and children mustn't?...

He tumbled into the warm, lighted nursery half asleep. There was Hamlet watching in front of the Jampot's sewing machine.

He would have things to think about for years and years and years...

There was the Jampot.

“I'm sorry I called you a beastly woman,” he said.

She sniffed.

“Well, I hope you'll be a good boy now,” she said.

“Oh, I'll be good,” he smiled. “But, Nurse, are there some people can tell lies and others mustn't?”

“All them that tell lies goes to Hell,” said the Jampot. “And now, Master Jeremy, come along and take your things off. It's past eleven, and what you'll be like to-morrow—”

CHAPTER IV. MISS JONES

I

The coming of the new year meant the going of the Jampot, and the going of the Jampot meant the breaking of a life-time's traditions. The departure was depressing and unsettling; the weather was—as it always is during January in Glebeshire—at its worst, and the Jampot, feeling it all very deeply, maintained a terrible Spartan composure, which was meant to show indifference and a sense of injustice. She had to the very last believed it incredible that she should really go. She had been in the old Orange Street house for eight years, and had intended to be there until she died. She was forced to admit that Master Jeremy was going beyond her; but in September he would go to school, and then she could help with the sewing and other things about the house. The real truth of the matter was that she had never been a very good servant, having too much of the Glebeshire pride and independence and too little of the Glebeshire fidelity.

Mrs. Cole had been glad of the opportunity that Hamlet's arrival in the family had given her. The Jampot, only a week before the date of her departure, came to her mistress and begged, with floods of tears, to be allowed to continue in her service. But Mrs. Cole, with all her placidity, was firm. The Jampot had to go.

I would like to paint a pleasant picture of the sentiment of the Cole children on this touching occasion; something, perhaps, in the vein of tragi-comedy with which Mr. Kenneth Graham embroiders a similar occasion in his famous masterpiece—but in this case there was very little sentiment and no tragedy at all. They did not think of the event beforehand, and then when it suddenly occurred there was all the excitement of being looked after by Rose, the housemaid, of having a longer time with their mother in the evening, and, best of all, a delightful walk with Aunt Amy, whose virginal peace of mind they attacked from every possible quarter.

The Jampot left in a high state of sulks, declaring to the kitchen that no woman had ever been so unfairly treated; that her married sister Sarah Francis, of Rafiel, with whom she was now to live, should be told all about it, and that the citizens of Rafiel should be compelled to sympathise. The children were not unfeeling, but they hated the Jampot's sulks, and while she waited in the nursery, longing for a word or movement of affection, but wearing a face of stony disapproval, they stood awkwardly beholding her, and aching for her to go. She was the more unapproachable in that she wore her Sunday silks and a heavy black bonnet with shiny rattling globes of some dark metal that nodded and becked and bowed like live things. Hamlet, who had, of course, always hated the Jampot, barked at this bonnet furiously, and would have bitten at it had it been within his reach. She had meant to leave them all with little sentences about life and morals; but the noise of the dog, the indifference of the children, and the general air of impatience for her departure strangled her aphorisms. Poor Jampot! She was departing to a married sister who did not want her, and would often tell her so; her prospects in life were not bright, and it is sad to think that no inhabitant of the Orange Street house felt any sorrow at the sight of the last gesticulating wave of her black bonnet as she stepped into the old mouldy Polchester cab.

“The King is dead—long live the King!” The Jampot as a power in the Cole family has ceased to be.

The day following the Jampot's departure offered up the news that, for the first time in the history of the Coles, there was to be a governess. The word “governess” had an awful sound, and the children trembled with a mixture of delight and terror. Jeremy pretended indifference.

“It's only another woman,” he said. “She'll be like the Jampot—only, a lady, so she won't be able to punish us as the Jampot could.”

I expect that Mr. and Mrs. Cole had great difficulty in finding anyone who would do. Thirty years ago governesses were an incapable race, and belonged too closely either to the Becky Sharp or the Amelia type to be very satisfactory. It was then that the New Woman was bursting upon the scene, but she was not to be found amongst the governesses. No one in Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume, it was several years before the publication of “The Heavenly Twins,” and Mr. Trollope's Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood. Mrs. Cole, therefore, had to choose between idiotic young women and crabbed old maids, and she finally chose an old maid. I don't think that Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made, but time was short. Jeremy, aided by Hamlet, was growing terribly independent, and Mr. Cole had neither the humour nor the courage to deal with him. No, Miss Jones was not ideal, but the Dean had strongly recommended her. It is true that the Dean had never seen her, but her brother, with whom she had lived for many years, had once been the Dean's curate. It was true that he had been a failure as a curate, but that made the Dean the more anxious to be kind now to his memory, he—Mr. Jones—having just died of general bad-temper and selfishness.

Miss Jones, buried during the last twenty years in the green depths of a Glebeshire valley, found herself now, at the age of fifty, without friends, without money, without relations. She thought that she would be a governess.

The Dean recommended her, Mrs. Cole approved of her birth, education and sobriety, Mr. Cole liked the severity of her countenance when she came to call, and she was engaged.

“Jeremy needs a tight hand,” said Mr. Cole. “It's no use having a young girl.”

“Miss Jones easily escapes that charge,” said Uncle Samuel, who had met her in the hall.

The children were prepared to be good. Jeremy felt that it was time to take life seriously. He put away his toy village, scolded Hamlet for eating Mary's pincushion, and dragged out his dirty exercise-book in which he did sums.

“I do hate sums!” he said, with a sigh, regarding the hideous smudges of thumbs and tears that scored the page. “I shall never understand anything about them.”

“I'll help you,” said Mary, who was greatly excited at the thought of a governess. “We'll do them together.”

“No we won't,” said Jeremy, who hated to be dependent.

“I'll learn it myself—if only the paper didn't get dirty so quickly.”

“Mother says,” remarked Helen, “that she's had a very hard life, and no one's ever been kind to her. 'She wants affection,' Mother says.”

“I'll give her my napkin-ring that you gave me last Christmas, Mary,” said Jeremy. “You don't mind, do you? It's all dirty now. I hope Hamlet won't bark at her.”

Hamlet was worrying Mary's pincushion at the moment, holding it between his paws, his body stretched out in quivering excitement, his short, “snappy” tail, as Uncle Samuel called it, standing up straight in air. He stopped for an instant when he heard his name, and shook one ear.

“Mother says,” continued Helen, “that she lived with a brother who never gave her enough to eat.”

Jeremy opened his eyes. This seemed to him a horrible thing.

“She shall have my porridge, if she likes,” he said; “I don't like it very much. And I'll give her that chocolate that Mr. Jellybrand sent us. There's still some, although it's rather damp now, I expect.”

“How silly you are!” said Helen scornfully. “Of course, Mother will give her anything she wants.”

“It isn't silly,” said Jeremy. “Perhaps she'll want more than she really wants. I often do.”

“Oh, you!” said Helen.

“And if for ever so long,” said Jeremy, “she hasn't had enough to eat, she'll want twice as big meals now as other people—to make up.”

“Mother says we've got to remember she's a lady,” said Helen.

“What's the difference,” asked Jeremy, “between a lady and not a lady?”

“Oh, you are!” said Helen. “Why, Aunt Amy's a lady, and Rose isn't.”

“Rose is nicer,” said Jeremy.

Miss Jones had, I am sorry to say, lied to Mrs. Cole in one particular. She had told her that “she had had to do with children all her life,” the fact being that on several occasions some little cousins had come to stay with herself and her brother. On these occasions the little cousins had been so paralysed with terror that discipline had not been difficult. It was from these experiences that Miss Jones flattered herself that “she understood children.”

So audacious a self-confidence is doomed to invite the scornful punishment of the gods.

Miss Jones arrived upon a wet January afternoon, one of those Glebeshire days when the town sinks into a bath of mud and mist and all the pipes run water and the eaves drip and horses splash and only ducks are happy. Out of a blurred lamp-lit dusk stumbled Miss Jones's cab, and out of a blurred unlit cab stumbled Miss Jones.

As she stood in the hall trying to look warm and amiable, Mrs. Cole's heart forsook her. On that earlier day of her visit Miss Jones had looked possible, sitting up in Mrs. Cole's drawing-room, smiling her brightest, because she so desperately needed the situation, and wearing her best dress. Now she was all in pieces; she had had to leave her little village early in the morning to catch the village bus; she had waited at wayside stations, as in Glebeshire only one can wait; the world had dripped upon her head and spattered upon her legs. She had neuralgia and a pain in her back; she had worn her older dress because, upon such a day, it would not do to travel in her best; and then, as a climax to everything, she had left her umbrella in the train. How she could do such a thing upon such a day! Her memory was not her strongest point, poor lady, and it was a good umbrella, and she could not afford to buy another. Perhaps they would find it for her, but it was very unlikely.

She had had it for a number of years.

She was a little woman, all skin and bone, with dried withered cheeks, a large brown nose and protruding ears. Her face had formed severe lines in self-defence against her brother, but her eyes were mild, and when she smiled her mouth was rather pleasantly pathetic.

“Oh, she'll never do,” thought Mrs. Cole, as she looked at her dripping in the hall.

“I can't think how I forgot it,” said the poor lady, her mind fixed upon her umbrella. “They said that perhaps they would find it for me, but there was a man in my carriage, I remember, who will most certainly have taken it—and it was a nice one with a silver handle.”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Cole cheerfully, “I'm sure they'll find it. You must come up to the nursery—or the schoolroom I suppose we must call it now; there's a lovely fire there, and we'll both have tea with the children to-day, so as to feel at home, all of us, as quickly as possible.”

What Miss Jones wanted was to lie down on a bed in a dark room and try and conquer her neuralgia. The thought of a lighted nursery filled her with dismay. However, first impressions are so important. She pulled herself together.

The children had heard the arrival; they waited in a bunch by the fire, their eyes partly fixed on the door, partly on the strawberry jam that they were allowed to-day as a treat in the new governess's honour. Hamlet, his eyes and ears also upon the door, expecting perhaps a rat, perhaps Aunt Amy, sat in front of the group, its bodyguard.

“She's in the hall,” said Helen, “and now Mother's saying: 'Do take off your things. You must be wet,' and now she's saying: 'You'll like to see the children, I expect,' and now—”

There they were, standing in the doorway, Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones. There followed a dismal pause. The children had not expected anyone so old and so ugly as Miss Jones. Hamlet did not bark—nothing occurred.

At last Mrs. Cole said: “Now, children, come and say, 'How do you do?' to Miss Jones. This is Helen, our eldest—this Mary—and this Jeremy.”

Miss Jones did a dreadful thing. In her eagerness to be pleasant and friendly she kissed the girls, and then, before anyone could stop her, kissed Jeremy. He took it like a man, never turning his head nor wiping his mouth with his hand afterwards, but she might have seen in his eyes, had she looked, what he felt about it.

She said: “I hope we shall be happy together, dears.”

The children said nothing, and presently they all sat down to tea.