Jeremy

II

During the first weeks at Cow Farm Mary was happy. She had then many especial private joys, such as climbing into one of the old apple trees behind the house and reading there, safe from the world, or inventing for herself wonderful adventures out of the dark glooms and sunlit spaces of the orchard, or creeping about the lofts and barns as though they were full of the most desperate dangers and hazards that she alone had the pluck and intelligence to overcome. Then Mrs. Monk was kind to her, and listened to her imaginative chatter with a most marvellous patience. Mary did not know that, after these narrations, she would shake her head and say to her husband: “Not long for this world, I'm thinking, poor worm...not long for this world.”

Then, at first Jeremy was kind and considerate. He was so happy that he did not mind what anyone did, and he would listen to Mary's stories quite in the old way, whistling to himself, not thinking about her at all perhaps, really, but very patient. After the first fortnight he slipped away from her again—and now more than ever before. He went off for long walks with Hamlet, refusing to take her with them; he answered her questions so vaguely that she could see that he paid her no attention at all; he turned upon her and rent her if she complained. And it was all, she was sure, that horrible dog. Jeremy was always with Hamlet now. The free life that the farm gave them, no lessons, no set hours, no care for appearances, left them to choose their own ways, and so developed their individualities. Helen was now more and more with her elders, was becoming that invaluable thing, “a great help to her mother,” and even, to her own inexhaustible pride, paid two calls with Mrs. Cole on the wives of neighbouring farmers. Then, Barbara absorbed more than ever of Helen's attention, and Mary was not allowed to share in these rites and services because “she always made Barbara cry.”

She was, therefore, very much alone, and felt all her injuries twice as deeply as she had felt them before. Hamlet began to be an obsession with her. She had always had a habit of talking to herself, and now she could be heard telling herself that if it were not for the dog, Jeremy would always be with her, would play with her, walk with her, laugh with her as he used to do. She acquired now an awkward habit of gazing at him with passionate intensity. He would raise his eyes and find the great moon-faced spectacles fixed upon him with a beseeching, reproachful glare in the light of them. This would irritate him intensely. He would say:

“You'll know me next time, Mary.”

She would blush crimson and then, with trembling mouth, answer:

“I wasn't looking.”

“Yes, you were.”

“No, I wasn't.”

“Of course, you were—staring as though I were an Indian or Chinaman. If my face is dirty, say so.”

“It isn't dirty.”

“Well, then—”

“You're always so cross.”

“I'm not cross—only you're so silly—”

“You usen't always to say I was silly. Now you always do—every minute.”

“So you are.” Then as he saw the tears coming he would get up and go away. He didn't mean to be unkind to her; he was fond of her—but he hated scenes.

“Mary's always howling about something now,” he confided to Helen.

“Is she?” Helen answered with indifference. “Mary's such a baby.”

So Mary began to attribute everything to the dog. It seemed to her then that she met the animal everywhere. Cow Farm was a rambling building, with dark, uneven stairs, low-ceilinged rooms, queer, odd corners, and sudden unexpected doors. It seemed to Mary as though in this place there were two Hamlets. When, in the evening she went to her room, hurrying through the passages for fear of what she might see, stumbling over the uneven boards, sniffling the mice and straw under the smell of her tallow candle, suddenly out of nowhere at all Hamlet would appear scurrying along, like the White Rabbit, intent on serious business.

He came so softly and with so sudden a flurry and scatter when she did hear him that her heart would beat for minutes afterwards, and she would not dare that night to search, as she usually did, for burglars under her bed, but would lie, quaking, hot and staring, unable to sleep. When at last dreams came they would be haunted by a monstrous dog, all hair and eyes, who, with padding feet, would track her round and round a room from which there was no escape. Hamlet, being one of the wisest of dogs, very quickly discovered that Mary hated him. He was not a sentimental dog, and he did not devote his time to inventing ways in which he might placate his enemy, he simply avoided her. But he could not hinder a certain cynical and ironic pleasure that he had of, so to speak, flaunting his master in her face. He clung to Jeremy more resolutely than ever, would jump up at him, lick his hands and tumble about in front of him whenever Mary was there, and then suddenly, very straight and very grave, would stare at her as though he were the most devout and obedient dog in the place. Indeed, he bore her no malice; he could afford to disregard the Marys of this world, and of women in general he had a poor opinion. But he loved to tease, and Mary was an easy prey. He had his fun with her.

After the affair of the sea-picnic, Jeremy was for some time under a cloud. It was felt that he was getting too big for anyone to manage. It was not that he was wicked, not that he kept bad company with the boys on the farm, or was dishonest, or told lies, or stole things—no, he gave no one that kind of anxiety—but that he was developing quite unmistakably a will of his own, and had a remarkable way of doing what he wanted without being actually disobedient, which was very puzzling to his elders. Being a little in disgrace he went off more than ever by himself, always appearing again at the appointed time, but telling no one where he had been or what he had been doing. His father had no influence over him at all, whilst Uncle Samuel could make him do whatever he wanted—and this, as Aunt Amy said, “was really a pity.”

“It's a good thing he's going to school in September,” sighed his mother. “He's getting out of women's hands.”

Mary longed with feverish longing to share in his adventures. If only he would tell her what he did on these walks of his. But no, only Hamlet knew. Perhaps, if he did not go with the dog he would go with her. When this idea crept into her brain she seized it and clutched it. That was all he wanted—a companion! Were Hamlet not there he would take her. Were Hamlet not there... She began to brood over this. She wandered... She considered. She shuddered at her own wickedness; she tried to drive the thoughts from her head, but they kept coming.

After all, no one need know. For a day or two Jeremy would be sorry and then he would forget. She knew the man who went round selling dogs—selling dogs and buying them.

She shuddered at her wickedness.

III

The last days of August came, and with them the last week of the holiday. Already there was a scent of autumn in the air, leaves were turning gold and red, and the evenings came cool and sudden, upon the hot summer afternoons. Mary was not very well; she had caught a cold somewhere, and existed in the irritating condition of going out one day and being held indoors the next. This upset her temper, and at night she had nightmares, in which she saw clouds of smoke crawling in at her window, snakes on the floor, and crimson flames darting at her from the ceiling. It was because she was in an abnormal condition of health that the idea of doing something with Hamlet had gained such a hold upon her. She considered the matter from every point of view. She did not want to be cruel to the dog; she supposed that after a week or two he would be quite happy with his new master, and, in any case, he had strolled in so casually upon the Cole family that he was accustomed to a wandering life.

She did not intend that anyone should know. It was to be a deep secret all of her own.

Jeremy was going to school in September, and before then she must make him friendly to her again. She saw stretching in front of her all the lonely autumn without him and her own memories of the miserable summer to make her wretched. She was an extremely sentimental little girl.

As always happens when one is meditating with a placated conscience a wicked deed, the opportunity was suddenly offered to Mary of achieving her purpose. One morning Jeremy, after refusing to listen to one of Mary's long romances, lost his temper.

“I can't stop,” he said. “You bother and bother and bother. Aunt Amy says you nearly make her mad.”

“I don't care what Aunt Amy says,” Mary on the edge of tears replied.

“Hamlet and I are going out. And I'm sick of your silly old stories.” Then he suddenly stopped and gazed at Mary, who was beginning, as usual, to weep.

“Look here, Mary, what's been the matter with you lately? You're always crying now or something. And you look at me as though I'd done something dreadful. I haven't done anything.”

“I—never—said you—had,” Mary gulped out. He rubbed his nose in a way that he had when he was puzzled.

“If it's anything I do, tell me. It's so silly always crying. The holidays will be over soon, and you've done nothing but cry.”

“You're—never—with me—now,” Mary sobbed.

“Well, I've been busy.”

“You haven't. You can't be busy all—by yourself.”

“Oh, yes, you can.” He was getting impatient. “Anyway, you might let Hamlet and me alone. You're always bothering one of us.”

“No, I'm not.” She choked an enormous sob and burst out with: “It's always Hamlet now. I wish he'd never—come. It was much nicer before.”

Then he lost his temper. “Oh, you're a baby! I'm sick of you and your nonsense,” he cried, and stamped off.

In Mary's red-rimmed eyes, as she watched him go, determination grew.

It happened that upon the afternoon of that same day Miss Jones announced that she would take Mary for a walk; then, just as they passed through the farm gates, Hamlet, rushing out, joined them. He did not often honour them with his company, despising women most especially when they walked, but to-day his master was busy digging for worms in the vegetable garden, and, after a quarter of an hour's contemplation of this fascinating occupation, he had wandered off in search of a livelier game. He decided to join Miss Jones; he could do what he pleased, he could amuse himself with her ineffectual attempts to keep him in order, and he could irritate Mary; so he danced along, with his tail in the air, barking at imaginary rats and poking his nose into hedges.

Mary, with a sudden tightened clutching of the heart, realised that her hour was upon her. She felt so wicked as she realised this that she wondered that the ground didn't open up and swallow her, as it had done with those unfortunate people in the Bible. But no, the world was calm. Little white milky clouds raced in lines and circles across the sky, and once and again a leaf floated from a tree, hung for a moment suspended, and then turned slowly to the ground. The hedges were a dark black-green, high and thick above the dusty road; there had been no rain for weeks. Truly a stable world. Mary, glaring at Fate, wondered how it could be so.

Miss Jones, who was happy and optimistic to-day, talked in a tenderly reminiscent tone of her youth. This vein of reminiscence Mary, on her normal day, loved. To-day she did not hear a word that Miss Jones said.

“I remember my mother saying so well to my dear brother: 'Do what you like, my boy. I trust you.' And indeed Alfred was to be trusted if ever a boy was. It is a remarkable thing, but I cannot remember a single occasion of dishonesty on Alfred's part. 'A white lie,' he would often say, 'is a lie, and a lie is a sin—white or black, always a sin'; and I remember that he would often put mother to a serious inconvenience by his telling callers that she was in when she had wished it to be said that she was not at home. He felt it his serious duty, and so he told Mother. 'Don't ask me to tell a lie, Mother,' I remember his saying. 'I cannot do it.'”

“Like George Washington,” said Mary, suddenly catching the last words of Miss Jones's sentence.

“He was like many famous characters in history, I used to think. Once I remember reading about Oliver Cromwell... 'Where is that dog? Hamlet! Hamlet! Perhaps he's gone after the sheep. Ah! there he is! Hamlet, you naughty dog!'”

They were approaching one of their favourite pieces of country—Mellot Wood. Here, on the wood's edge, the ground broke away, running down in a field of corn to a little green valley with clustered trees that showed only their heads, so thickly embedded were they, and beyond the valley the sea. The sea looked quite close here, although it was in reality four miles distant. Never was such a place as this view for light and shadow. The clouds raced like the black wings of enormous birds across the light green valley, and the red-gold of the cornfield was tossed into the haze and swept like a golden shadow across the earth, bending back again when the breeze had died. Behind Mellot Wood was Mellot Farm, an old eighteenth-century house about which there was a fine tragic story with a murder and a ghost in it, and this, of course, gave Mellot Wood an additional charm. When they arrived at the outskirts of Mellot Wood Mary looked about her. It was here, on the edge of the Rafiel Road that skirted the wood, that she had once seen the dog-man eating his luncheon out of a red pocket-handkerchief. There was no sign of him to-day. All was silent and still. Only the little wood uttered little sighs of content beneath the flying clouds. Hamlet, tired with his racing after imaginary rabbits, walked quietly along by Mary's side. What was she to do? She had once again the desperate feeling that something stronger than she had swept down upon her and was forcing her to do this thing. She seemed to have no will of her own, but to be watching some other commit an act whose dangerous wickedness froze her heart. How could she? But she must. Someone was doing it for her.

And in very truth it seemed so. Miss Jones said that now they were here she might as well call upon Miss Andrews, the sister of the Mellot farmer. Miss Andrews had promised her some ducks' eggs. They pushed open the farm gate, passed across the yard and knocked on the house door. Near Mary was a large barn with a heavy door, now ajar. Hamlet sat gazing pensively at a flock of geese, his tongue out, panting contentedly.

“Wait here one minute, Mary,” said Miss Jones. “I won't stay.”

Miss Jones disappeared. Mary, still under the strange sense that it was not she, but another, who did these things, moved back to the barn, calling softly to Hamlet. He followed her, sniffing a rat somewhere. Very quickly she pulled back the door; he, still investigating his rat, followed into the dark excitements of the barn. With a quick movement she bent down, slipped off his collar, which she hid in her dress, then shut him in. She knew that for a moment or two he would still be pursuing his rat, and she saw, with guilty relief, Miss Jones come out to her just as she had finished her evil deed.

“Miss Andrews is out,” said Miss Jones. “They are all away at Liskane Fair.”

They left the farm and walked down the road. Hamlet had not begun his cry.

IV

Miss Jones was pleased. “Such a nice servant,” she said. “One of the old kind. She had been with the family fifty years, she told me, and had nursed Mr. Andrews on her knee. Fancy! Such a large fat man as he is now. Too much beer, I suppose. I suppose they get so thirsty with all the straw and hay about. Yes, a really nice woman. She told me that there was no place in Glebeshire to touch them for cream. I dare say they're right. After all, you never can tell. I remember at home...”

She broke off then and cried: “Where's Hamlet?”

Mary, wickeder than ever, stared through her spectacles down the road. “I don't know, Miss Jones,” she said. They had left the wood and the farm, and there was nothing to be seen but the long white ribbon of road hemmed in by the high hedges.

“Perhaps he stayed behind at the farm,” said Miss Jones.

Then Mary told her worst lie.

“Oh, no, Miss Jones. He ran past us just now. Didn't you see him?”

“No, I didn't. He's gone on ahead, I suppose. He runs home sometimes. Naughty dog! We shall catch him up.”

But of course they did not. They passed through the gates of Cow Farm and still nothing of Hamlet was to be seen.

“Oh dear! Oh dear!” said Miss Jones. “I do hope that he's arrived. Whatever will Jeremy say if anything has gone wrong?”

Mary was breathing hard now, as though she had been running a desperate race. She would at this moment have given all that she possessed, or all that she was ever likely to possess, to recall her deed. If she could have seen Hamlet rushing down the road towards her she would have cried with relief; there seemed now to be suddenly removed from her that outside agency that had forced her to do this thing; now, having compelled her, it had withdrawn and left her to carry the consequences. Strangely confused in her sentimental soul was her terror of Jeremy's wrath and her own picture of the wretched Hamlet barking his heart out, frightened, thirsty, and lonely. Her teeth began to chatter; she clenched her hands together.

Miss Jones went across the courtyard, calling:

“Hamlet! Hamlet!”

The family was collected, having just sat down to tea, so that the announcement received its full measure of excitement.

“Has Hamlet come back? We thought he was ahead of us.”

A chair had tumbled over. Jeremy had run round the table to Miss Jones.

“What's that? Hamlet? Where is he?”

“We thought he must be ahead of us. He ran past us down the road, and we thought—”

They thought! Silly women! Jeremy, as though he were challenging a god, stood up against Miss Jones, hurling questions at her. Where had they been? What road had they taken? Had they gone into the wood? Whereabouts had he run past them?

“I don't know,” said Miss Jones to this last. “I didn't see him. Mary did.”

Jeremy turned upon Mary. “Where was it you saw him?”

She couldn't speak. Her tongue wouldn't move, her lips wouldn't open; she could but waggle her head like an idiot. She saw nothing but his face. It was a desperate face. She knew so much better than all the others what the thought of losing Hamlet was to him. It was part of the harshness of her fate that she should understand him so much better than the others did.

But she herself had not realised how hardly he would take it.

“I didn't—I couldn't—”

“There's the dog-man,” he stammered. “He'll have stolen him.” Then he was off out of the room in an instant.

And that was more than Mary could hear. She realised, even as she followed him, that she was giving her whole case away, that she was now, as always, weak when she should be strong, soft when she should be hard, good when she should be wicked, wicked when she should be good. She could not help herself. With trembling limbs and a heart that seemed to be hammering her body into pieces she followed him out. She found him in the hall, tugging at his coat.

“Where are you going?” she said weakly.

“Going?” he answered fiercely. “Where do you think?” He glared at her. “Just like you.” He broke off, suddenly appealing to her. “Mary, CAN'T you remember? It will be getting dark soon, and if we have to wait until to-morrow the dog-man will have got him. At any rate, he had his collar—”

Then Mary broke out. She burst into sobs, pushed her hand into her dress, and held out the collar to him.

“There it is! There it is!” she said hysterically.

“You've got it?” He stared at her, suspicion slowly coming to him. “But how—? What have you done?”

She looked up at him wild-eyed, the tears making dirty lines on her face, her hand out towards him.

“I took it off. I shut Hamlet into the barn at Mellot Farm. I wanted him to be lost. I didn't want you to have him. I hated him—always being with you, and me never.”

Jeremy moved back, and at the sudden look in his eyes her sobbing ceased, she caught her breath and stared at him with a silly fixed stare as a rabbit quivers before a snake.

Jeremy said in his ordinary voice:

“You shut Hamlet up? You didn't want him to be found?”

She nodded her head several times as though now she must convince him quickly of this—

“Yes, yes, yes. I did... I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it—”

He clutched her arm, and then shook her with a sudden wave of fierce physical anger that was utterly unlike him, and, therefore, the more terrifying.

“You wicked, wicked—You beast, Mary!”

She could only sob, her head hanging down. He let her go.

“What barn was it?”

She described the place.

He gave her another look of contempt and then rushed off, running across the courtyard.

There was still no one in the hall; she could go up to her room without the fear of being disturbed. She found the room, all white and black now with the gathering dusk. Beyond the window the evening breeze was rustling in the dark trees of the garden and the boom of the sea could be heard faintly. Mary sat, where she always sat when she was unhappy, inside the wardrobe with her head amongst the clothes. They in some way comforted her; she was not so lonely with them, nor did she feel so strongly the empty distances of the long room, the white light of the window-frames, nor the mysterious secrecy of the high elms knocking their heads together in the garden outside.

She had a fit of hysterical crying, biting the hanging clothes between her teeth, feeling suddenly sick and tired and exhausted, with flaming eyes and a dry, parched throat. Why had she ever done such a thing, she loving Jeremy as she did? Would he ever forgive her? No, never; she saw that in his face. Perhaps he would—if he found Hamlet quickly and came back. Perhaps Hamlet never would be found. Then Jeremy's heart would be broken.

She slept from utter exhaustion, and was so found, when the room was quite dark and only shadows moved in it, by her mother.

“Why, Mary!” said Mrs. Cole. “What are you doing here? We couldn't think where you were. And where's Jeremy?”

“Jeremy!” She started up, remembering everything.

“Hasn't he come back? Oh, he's lost and he'll be killed, and it will be all my fault!” She burst into another fit of wild hysterical crying.

Her mother took her arm. “Mary, explain—What have you done?”

Mary explained, her teeth chattering, her head aching so that she could not see.

“And you shut him up like that? Whatever—Oh, Mary, you wicked girl! And Jeremy—He's been away two hours now—”

She turned off, leaving Mary alone in the black room.

Mary was left to every terror that can beset a lonely, hysterical child—terror of Jeremy's fate, terror of Hamlet's loss, terror of her own crimes, above all, terror of the lonely room, the waving elms and the gathering dark. She could not move; she could not even close the door of the wardrobe, into whose shelter she had again crept. She stared at the white sheet of the window, with its black bars like railings and its ghostly hinting of a moon that would soon be up above the trees. Every noise frightened her, the working of the “separator” in a distant part of the farm, the whistling of some farm-hand out in the yard, the voice of some boy, “coo-ee”-ing faintly, the lingering echo of the vanished day—all these seemed to accuse her, to point fingers at her, to warn her of some awful impending punishment. “Ah! you're the little girl,” they seemed to say, “who lost Jeremy's dog and broke Jeremy's heart.” She was sure that someone was beneath her bed. That old terror haunted her with an almost humorous persistency every night before she went to sleep, but to-night there was a ghastly certainty and imminence about it that froze her blood. She crouched up against the hanging skirts, gazing at the black line between the floor and the white sheets, expecting at every second to see a protruding black mask, bloodshot eyes, a coarse hand. The memory of the burglary that they had had in the spring came upon her with redoubled force. Ah! surely, surely someone was there! She heard a movement, a scraping of a boot upon the floor, the thick hurried breathing of some desperate villain...

Then these fears gave way to something worse than them all, the certainty that Jeremy was dead. Ridiculous pictures passed before her, of Jeremy hanging from a tree, Jeremy lying frozen in the wood, the faithful Hamlet dead at his side, Jeremy stung by an adder and succumbing to his horrible tortures, Jeremy surrounded by violent men, who snatched Hamlet from him, beat him on the head and left him for dead on the ground.

She passed what seemed to her hours of torture under these horrible imaginings, tired out, almost out of her mind with the hysteria of her loneliness, her imagination and her conscience; she passed into a kind of apathy of unhappiness, thinking now only of Jeremy, longing for him, beseeching him to come back, telling the empty moonlit room that she never meant it; that she would do everything he wanted if only he came back to her; that she was a wicked girl; that she would never be wicked again.... And she took her punishment alone.

After endless ages of darkness and terror and misery she heard voices—then HIS voice! She jumped out of the wardrobe and listened. Yes; it WAS his voice. She pushed back the door, crept down the passage, and came suddenly upon a little group, with Jeremy in its midst, crowded together at the top of the stairs. Jeremy was wrapped up in his father's heavy coat, and looked very small and impish as he peered from out of it. He was greatly excited, his eyes shining, his mouth smiling, his cheeks flushed.

His audience consisted of Helen, Mrs. Cole, Miss Jones, and Aunt Amy. He described to them how he had run along the road “for miles and miles and miles,” how at last he had found the farm, had rung the bell, and inquired, and discovered Hamlet licking up sugary tea in the farm kitchen; there had then been a rapturous meeting, and he had boldly declared that he could find his way home again without aid. “They wanted me to be driven home in their trap, but I wasn't going to have that. They'd been at the fair all day, and didn't want to go out again. I could see that.” So he and Hamlet started gaily on their walk home, and then, in some way or another, he took the wrong turn, and suddenly they were in Mellot Wood. “It was dark as anything, you know, although there was going to be a moon. We couldn't see a thing, and then I got loster and loster. At last we just sat under a tree. There was nothing more to do!” Then, apparently, Jeremy had slept, and had, finally, been found in the proper romantic manner by Jim and his father.

“Well, all's well that ends well,” said Aunt Amy, with a sniff. In spite of that momentary softness over the defeat of the Dean's Ernest she liked her young nephew no better than of old. She had desired that he should be punished for this, but as she looked at the melting eyes of Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones she had very little hope.

Mary was forgotten; no one noticed her.

“Bed,” said Mrs. Cole.

“Really, what a terrible affair,” said Miss Jones. “And I can't help feeling that it was my fault.”

“What Mary—” began Mrs. Cole. And then she stopped. She had perhaps some sense that Mary had already received sufficient punishment.

Mary waited, standing against the passage wall. Jeremy, who had not seen her, vanished into his room. She waited, then plucking up all her courage with the desperate suffocating sense of a prisoner laying himself beneath the guillotine, she knocked timidly on his door.

He said: “Come in,” and entering, she saw him, in his braces, standing on a chair trying to put the picture entitled “Daddy's Christmas” straight upon its nail. The sight of this familiar task—the picture would never hang straight, although every day Jeremy, who, strangely enough, had an eye to such matters, tried to correct it—cheered her a little.

“Won't it go straight?” she said feebly.

“No, it won't,” he began, and then, suddenly realising the whole position, stopped.

“I'm sorry, Jeremy,” she muttered, hanging her head down.

“Oh, that's all right,” he answered, turning away from her and pulling at the string. “It was a beastly thing to do all the same,” he added.

“Will you forgive me?” she asked.

“Oh, there isn't any forgiveness about it. Girls are queer, I suppose. I don't understand them myself. There, that's better... I say, it was simply beastly under that tree—”

“Was it?”

“Beastly! There was something howling somewhere—a cat or something.”

“You do forgive me, don't you?”

“Yes, yes... I say, is that right now? Oh, it won't stay there. It's the wall or something.”

He came down from the chair yawning.

“Jim's nice,” he confided to her. “He's going to take me ratting one day!”

“I'm going,” Mary said again, and waited.

Jeremy coloured, looked as though he would say something, then, in silence, presented a very grimy cheek. “Good-night,” he said, with an air of intense relief.

“Good-night,” she said, kissing him.

She closed the door behind her. She knew that the worst had happened. He had passed away, utterly beyond her company, her world, her interests. She crept along to her room, and there, with a determination and a strength rare in a child so young and so undisciplined, faced her loneliness.

CHAPTER XI. THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

I

The holidays were over. The Coles were once more back in Polchester, and the most exciting period of Jeremy's life had begun. So at any rate he felt it. It might be that in later years there would be new exciting events, lion-hunting, for instance, or a war, or the tracking of niggers in the heart of Africa—he would be ready for them when they came—but these last weeks before his first departure for school offered him the prospect of the first real independence of his life. There could never be anything quite like that again. Nevertheless, school seemed still a long way distant. It was only his manliness that he was realising and a certain impatience and restlessness that underlay everything that he did.

September and October are often very lovely months in Polchester; autumn seems to come there with a greater warmth and richness than it does elsewhere. Along all the reaches of the Pol, right down to the sea, the leaves of the woods hung with a riotous magnificence that is glorious in its recklessness. The waters of that silent river are so still, so glassy, that the banks of gold and flaming red are reflected in all their richest colour down into the very heart of the stream, and it is only when a fish jumps or a twig falls from the overhanging trees that the mirror is broken and the colours flash into ripples and shadows of white and grey. The utter silence of all this world makes the Cathedral town sleepy, sluggish, forgotten of all men. As the autumn comes it seems to drowse away into winter to the tune of its Cathedral bells, to the scent of its burning leaves and the soft steps of its Canons and clergy. There is every autumn here a clerical conference, and long before the appointed week begins, and long after it is lawfully concluded, clergymen, strange clergymen with soft black hats, take the town for their own, gaze into Martin the pastry-cook's, sit in the dusk of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and anxious mien into the palace of the Bishop himself.

All these things belong to autumn in Polchester, as Jeremy very well knew, but the event that marks the true beginning of the season, the only way by which you may surely know that summer is over and autumn is come is Pauper's Fair.

This famous fair has been, from time immemorial, a noted event in Glebeshire life. Even now, when fairs have yielded to cinematographs as attractions for the people, Pauper's Fair gives its annual excitement. Thirty years ago it was the greatest event of the year in Polchester. All our fine people, of course, disliked it extremely. It disturbed the town for days, the town rocked in the arms of crowds of drunken sailors, the town gave shelter to gipsies and rogues and scoundrels, the town, the decent, amiable, happy town actually for a week or so seemed to invite the world of the blazing fire and the dancing clown. No wonder that our fine people shuddered. Only the other day—I speak now of these modern times—the Bishop tried to stop the whole business. He wrote to the Glebeshire Morning News, urging that Pauper's Fair, in these days of enlightenment and culture, cannot but be regretted by all those who have the healthy progress of our dear country at heart. Well, you would be amazed at the storm that his protest raised. People wrote from all over the County, and there were ultimately letters from patriotic Glebeshire citizens in New Zealand and South Africa. And in Polchester itself! Everyone—even those who had shuddered most at the fair's iniquities—was indignant. Give up the fair! One of the few signs left of that jolly Old England whose sentiment is cherished by us, whose fragments nevertheless we so readily stamp upon. No, the fair must remain and will remain, I have no doubt, until the very end of our national chapter.

Nowadays it has shed, very largely, I am afraid, the character that it gloriously maintained thirty years ago. Then it was really an invasion by the seafaring element of the County. All the little country ports and harbours poured out their fishermen and sailors, who came walking, driving, singing, laughing, swearing; they filled the streets, and went peering, like the wildest of ancient Picts, into the mysterious beauties of the Cathedral, and late at night, when the town should have slept, arm in arm they went roaring past the dark windows, singing their songs, stamping their feet, and every once and again ringing a decent door-bell for their amusement. It was very seldom that any harm was done. Once a serious fire broke out amongst the old wooden houses down on the river, and some of them were burnt to the ground, a fate that no one deplored; once a sailor was murdered in a drunken squabble at “The Dog and Pilchard,” the wildest of the riverside hostelries; and once a Canon was caught and stripped and ducked in the waters of the Pol by a mob who resented his gentle appeals that they should try to prefer lemonade to gin; but these were the only three catastrophes in all the history of the fair.

During the fair week the town sniffed of the sea—of lobster and seaweed and tar and brine—and all the tales of the sea that have ever been told by man were told during these days in Polchester.

The decent people kept their doors locked, their children at home, and their valuables in the family safe. No upper class child in Polchester so much as saw the outside of a gipsy van. The Dean's Ernest was accustomed to boast that he had once been given a ride by a gipsy on a donkey, when his nurse was not looking, but no one credited the story, and the details with which he supported it were feeble and unconvincing. The Polchester children in general were told that “they would be stolen by the gipsies if they weren't careful,” and, although some of them in extreme moments of rebellion and depression felt that the life of adventure thus offered to them, might, after all, be more agreeable than the dreary realism of their natural days, the warning may be said to have been effective.

No family in Polchester was guarded more carefully in this matter of the Pauper's Fair than the Cole family. Mr. Cole had an absolute horror of the fair. Sailors and gipsies were to him the sign and seal of utter damnation, and although he tried, as a Christian clergyman, to believe that they deserved pity because of the disadvantages under which they had from the first laboured, he confessed to his intimate friends that he saw very little hope for them either in this world or the next. Jeremy, Helen and Mary were, during Fair Week, kept severely within doors; their exercise had to be taken in the Cole garden, and the farthest that they poked their noses into the town was their visit to St. John's on Sunday morning. Except on one famous occasion. The Fair Week of Jeremy's fifth year saw him writhing under a terrible attack of toothache, which became, after two agonised nights, such a torment and distress to the whole household that he had to be conveyed to the house of Mr. Pilter, who had his torture-chamber at No. 3 Market Square. It is true that Jeremy was conveyed thither in a cab, and that his pain and his darkened windows prevented him from seeing very much of the gay world; nevertheless, in spite of the Jampot, who guarded him like a dragon, he caught a glimpse of flags, a gleaming brass band and a Punch and Judy show, and he heard the trumpets and the drum, and the shouts of excited little boys, and the blowing of the Punch and Judy pipes, and he smelt roasting chestnuts, bad tobacco, and beer and gin. He returned, young as he was, and reduced to a corpse-like condition by the rough but kindly intentioned services of Mr. Pilter, with the picture of a hysterical, abandoned world clearly imprinted upon his brain.

“I want to go,” he said to the Jampot.

“You can't,” said she.

“I will when I'm six,” said he.

“You won't,” said she.

“I will when I'm seven,” said he.

“You won't,” said she.

“I will when I'm eight,” he answered.

“Oh, give over, do, Master Jeremy,” said she. And now he was eight, very nearly nine, and going to school in a fortnight. There seemed to be a touch of destiny about his prophecy.

II

He had no intention of disobedience. Had he been once definitely told by someone in authority that he was not to go to the fair he would not have dreamt of going. He had no intention of disobedience—but he had returned from the Cow Farm holiday in a strange condition of mind.

He had found there this summer more freedom than he had been ever allowed in his life before, and it had been freedom that had come, not so much from any change of rules, but rather from his own attitude to the family—simply he had wanted to do certain things, and he had done them and the family had stood aside. He began to be aware that he had only to push and things gave way—a dangerous knowledge, and its coming marks a period in one's life.

He seemed, too, during this summer, to have left his sisters definitely behind him and to stand much more alone than he had done before. The only person in his world whom he felt that he would like to know better was Uncle Samuel, and that argued, on his part, a certain tendency towards rebellion and individuality. He was no longer rude to Aunt 'Amy, although he hated her just as he had always done. She did not seem any longer a question that mattered. His attitude to his whole family now was independent.

Indeed, he was, in reality, now beginning to live his independent life. He was perhaps very young to be sent off to school by himself, although in those days for a boy of eight to be plunged without any help but a friendly word of warning into the stormy seas of private school life was common enough—nevertheless, his father, conscious that the child's life had been hitherto spent almost entirely among women, sent him every morning during these last weeks at home down to the Curate of St. Martin's-in-the-Market to learn a few words of Latin, an easy sum or two, and the rudiments of spelling. This young curate, the Rev. Wilfred Somerset, recently of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had but two ideas in his head—the noble game of cricket and the jolly qualities of Mr. Surtees's novels. He was stout and strong, red-faced, and thick in the leg, always smoking a largo black-looking pipe, and wearing trousers very short and tight. He did not strike Jeremy with fear, but he was, nevertheless, an influence. Jeremy, apparently, amused him intensely. He would roar with laughter at nothing at all, smack his thigh and shout, “Good for you, young 'un,” whatever that might mean, and Jeremy, gazing at him, at his pipe and his trousers, liking him rather, but not sufficiently in awe to be really impressed, would ask him questions that seemed to him perfectly simple and natural, but that, nevertheless, amused the Rev. Wilfred so fundamentally that he was unable to give them an intelligible answer.

Undoubtedly this encouraged Jeremy's independence.

He walked to and fro the curate's lodging by himself, and was able to observe many interesting things on the way. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, he would have some lesson that he must take to his master who, as he lodged at the bottom of Orange Street, was a very safe and steady distance from the Coles.

Of course Aunt Amy objected.

“You allow Jeremy, all by himself, into the street at night, and he's only eight. Really, you're too strange!”

“Well, in the first place,” said Mrs. Cole, mildly, “it isn't night—it's afternoon; in the second place, it is only just down the street, and Jeremy's most obedient always, as you know, Amy.”

“I'm sure that Mr. Somerset is wild,” said Aunt Amy.

“My dear Amy, why'?”

“You've only got to look at his face. It's 'flashy.' That's what I call it.”

“Oh, that isn't the sort of man who'll do Jeremy harm,” said Mrs. Cole, with a mother's wisdom.

Certainly, he did Jeremy no harm at all; he taught him nothing, not even “mensa,” and how to spell “receive” and “apple.” The only thing he did was to encourage Jeremy's independence, and this was done, in the first place, by the walks to and fro.

He had only been going to Mr. Somerset's a day or two when the announcements of the Fair appeared on the walls of the town. He could not help but see them; there was a large cue on the boarding half-way down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured picture of “Wombwell's Circus,” a fine affair, with spangled ladies jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that there would be a “Cattle Market, Races, Roundabout, Swings, Wrestling, Boxing, Fat Women, Dwarfs, and the Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus.” During a whole week, once a day, Jeremy read this bill from the top to the bottom; at the end of the week he could repeat it all by heart.

He asked Mr. Somerset whether he was going.

“Oh, I shall slip along one evening, I've no doubt,” replied that gentleman. “But it's a bore—a whole week of it—upsets one's work.”

“It needn't,” said Jeremy, “if you stay indoors.”

This amused Mr. Somerset immensely. He laughed a great deal.

“We always have to,” said Jeremy, rather hurt. “We're not allowed farther than the garden.”

“Ah, but I'm older than you are,” said Mr. Somerset. “It was the same with me once.”

“And what did you do? Did you go all the same?”

“You bet, I did,” said the red-faced hero, more intent on his reminiscences than on the effect that this might have on the morals of his pupil.

Jeremy waited then for the parental command that was always issued. It was: “Now, children, you must promise me never to go outside the house this week unless you have asked permission first.” And then: “And on no account to speak to any stranger about anything whatever.” And then: “Don't look out of the back windows, mind.” (From the extreme corners of the bedroom windows you could see a patch of the meadow whereon the gipsy-vans settled.) These commands had been as regular as the Fair, and always, of course, the children had promised obedience. Jeremy told his conscience that if, this year, he gave his promise, he would certainly keep it. He wondered, at the same time, whether he might not possibly manage to be out of the house when the commands were issued. He formed a habit of suddenly slipping out of the room when he saw his father's mouth assuming the shape of a “command.” He took the utmost care not to be alone with his father.

But he need not have been alarmed. This year no command appeared. Perhaps Mr. Cole thought that it was no longer necessary; it was obvious that the children were not to go, and they were, after all, old enough now to think for themselves. Or, perhaps, it was that Mr. Cole had other things on his mind; he was changing curates just then, and a succession of white-faced, soft-voiced, and loud-booted young men were appearing at the Coles' hospitable table.

“Here's this tiresome Fair come round again,” said Mrs. Cole.

“Wicked!” said Aunt Amy, with an envious shudder. “Satan finds work, indeed, in this town.”

“I don't suppose it's worse than anywhere else,” said Mrs. Cole.

On the late afternoon of the day before the opening, Jeremy, on his way to Mr. Somerset's, caught the tailend of Wombwell's Circus Procession moving, in misty splendour, across the market.

He could see but little, although he stood on the pedestal of a lamp-post; but Britannia, rocking high in the air, flashing her silver sceptre in the evening air, and followed by two enormous and melancholy elephants, caught his gaze. Strains of a band lingered about him. He entered Mr. Somerset's in a frenzy of excitement, but he said nothing. He felt that Mr. Somerset would laugh at him.

He returned to his home that night haunted by Britannia. He ate Britannia for his supper; he had Britannia for his dreams; and he greeted Rose as Britannia the next morning when she called him. Early upon that day there were borne into the heart of the house strains of the Fair. It was no use whatever to close the windows, lock the doors, and read Divinity. The strains persisted, a heavenly murmur, rising at moments into a muffled shriek or a jumbling shout, hanging about the walls as a romantic echo, dying upon the air a chastened wail. “No use for Mr. Cole to say:

“We must behave as though the Fair was not.”

For a whole week it would be there, and everyone knew it.

Jeremy did not mean to be disobedient, but after that glimpse of Britannia he knew that he would go.