Jeremy

III

It had, at first, been thought advisable that Jeremy should not go to Mr. Somerset's during Fair Week. Perhaps Mr. Somerset could come to the Coles'. No, he was very sorry. He must be in his rooms at that particular hour in case parishioners should need his advice or assistance.

“Pity for him to miss all this week, especially as there will be only four days left after that. I am really anxious for him to have a little grounding in Latin.”

Mrs. Cole smiled confidently. “I think Jeremy is to be trusted. He would never do anything that you wouldn't like.”

Mr. Cole was not so sure. “He's not quite so obedient as I should wish. He shows an independence—”

However, after some hesitation it was decided that Jeremy might be trusted.

But even after that he was never put upon his honour. “If I don't promise, I needn't mind,” he said to himself, and waited breathlessly; but nothing came. Only Aunt Amy said:

“I hope you don't speak to little boys in the street, Jeremy.” To which he replied scornfully: “Of course not.”

He investigated his money-box, removing the top with a tin-opener. He found that he had there 3s. 3 1/2d.; a large sum, and enough to give him a royal time.

Mary caught him.

“Oh, Jeremy, what are you doing?”

“Just counting my money,” he said, with would-be carelessness.

“You're going to the Fair?” she whispered breathlessly.

He frowned. How could she know? She always knew everything.

“Perhaps,” he whispered back; “but if you tell anyone I'll—”

“Of course I wouldn't tell,” she replied, deeply offended.

This little conversation strengthened his purpose. He had not admitted to himself that he was really going. Now he knew.

Wednesday would be the night. On Wednesday evenings his father had a service which prevented him from returning home until half-past eight. He would go to Somerset's at half-past four, and would be expected home at half-past six; there would be no real alarm about him until his father's return from church, and he could, therefore, be sure of two hours' bliss. For the consequences he did not care at all. He was going to do no harm to anyone or anything. They would be angry, perhaps, but that would not hurt him, and, in any case, he was going to school next week. No one at school would mind whether he had been to the Fair or no.

He felt aloof and apart, as though no one could touch him. He would not have minded simply going into them all and saying: “I'm off to the Fair.” The obvious drawback to that would have been that he would have been shut up in his room, and then they might make him give his word... He would not break any promises.

When Wednesday came it was a lovely day. Out in the field just behind the Coles' house they were burning a huge bonfire of dead leaves. At first only a heavy column of grey smoke rose, then flames broke through; little, thin golden flames like paper; then a sudden fierce red tongue shot out and went licking up into the air until it faded like tumbling water against the sunlight. On the outer edge of the bonfire there was thin grey smoke through which you could see as through glass. The smell was heavenly, and even through closed windows the crackling of the burnt leaves could be heard. The sight of the bonfire excited Jeremy. It seemed to him a signal of encouragement, a spur to perseverance. All the morning the flames crackled, and men came with wheelbarrows full of leaves and emptied them in thick heaps upon the fire. At each emptying the fire would be for a moment beaten, and only the white, thick, malicious smoke would come through; then a little spit of flame, another, another; then a thrust like a golden hand stretching out; then a fine, towering, quivering splendour.

Under the full noonday sun the fire was pale and so unreal, weak, and sickly, that one was almost ashamed to look at it. But as the afternoon passed, it again gathered strength, and with the faint, dusky evening it was a giant once more.

“You come along,” it said to Jeremy. “Come along! Come along!”

“I'm going to Mr. Somerset's, Mother,” he said, putting two exercise books and a very new and shining blue Latin book together.

“Are you, dear? I suppose you're safe?” Mrs. Cole asked, looking through the drawing-room window.

“Oh, it's all right,” said Jeremy

“Well, I think it is,” said Mrs. Cole. “The street seems quite empty. Don't speak to any odd-looking men, will you?”

“Oh, that's all right,” he said again.

He walked down Orange Street, his books under his arm, the 3s. 3 1/2d. in his pocket. The street was quite deserted, swimming in a cold, pale light; the trees, the houses, the church, the garden-walls, sharp and black; the street, dim and precipitous, tumbling forward into the blue, whence lights, one, two, three, now a little bunch together, came pricking out.

The old woman opened the door when he rang Mr. Somerset's bell.

“Master's been called away,” she said in her croaking voice. “A burial. 'E 'adn't time to let you know. 'Tell the little gen'l'man,' 'e said, 'I'm sorry.'”

“All right,” said Jeremy; “thank you.”

He descended the steps, then stood where he was, in the street, looking up and down. Who could deny that it was all being arranged for him? He felt more than ever like God as he looked proudly about him. Everything served his purpose.

The jingling of the money in his pocket reminded him that he must waste no more time. He started off.

Even his progress through the town seemed wonderful, quite unattended at last, as he had always all his life longed to be. So soon as he left Orange Street and entered the market he was caught into a great crowd. It was all stirring and humming with a noise such as the bonfire had all day been making. It was his first introduction to the world—he had never been in a large crowd before—and it is not to be denied but that his heart beat thick and his knees trembled a little. But he pulled himself together. Who was he to be afraid? But the books under his arm were a nuisance. He suddenly dropped them in amongst the legs and boots of the people.

There were many interesting sights to be seen in the market-place, but he could not stay, and he found himself soon, to his own surprise, slipping through the people as quietly and easily as though he had done it all his days, only always he kept his hand on his money lest that should be stolen and his adventure suddenly come to nothing.

He knew his way very well, and soon he was at the end of Finch Street which in those days opened straight into fields and hedges.

Even now, so little has Polchester grown in thirty years, the fields and hedges are not very far away. Here there was a stile with a large wooden fence on either side of it, and a red-faced man saying: “Pay your sixpences now! Come along... pay your sixpences now.” Crowds of people were passing through the stile, jostling one another, pressing and pushing, but all apparently in good temper, for there was a great deal of laughter and merriment. From the other side of the fence came a torrent of sound, so discordant and so tumultuous that it was impossible to separate the elements of it one from another—screams, shrieks, the bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything lost together in the general babel; and to the right of him Jeremy could see not very far away quiet fields with cows grazing, and the dark grave wood on the horizon.

Would he venture? For a moment his heart failed him—a wave of something threatening and terribly powerful seemed to come out to him through the stile, and the people who were passing in looked large and fierce. Then he saw two small boys, their whole bearing one of audacious boldness, push through. He was not going to be beaten. He followed a man with a back like a wall. “One, please,” he said.

“'Come along now... pay your sixpences... pay your sixpences,” cried the man. He was through. He stepped at once into something that had for him all the elements of the most terrifying and enchanting of fairy tales. He was planted, it seemed, in a giant world. At first he could see nothing but the high and thick bodies of the people who moved on every side of him; he peered under shoulders, he was lost amongst legs and arms, he walked suddenly into waistcoat buttons and was flung thence on to walking sticks.

But it was, if he had known it, the most magical hour of all for him to have chosen. It was the moment when the sun, sinking behind the woods and hills, leaves a faint white crystal sky and a world transformed in an instant from sharp outlines and material form into coloured mist and rising vapour. The Fair also was transformed, putting forward all its lights and becoming, after the glaring tawdiness of the day, a place of shadow and sudden circles of flame and dim obscurity.

Lights, even as Jeremy watched, sprang into the air, wavered, faltered, hesitated, then rocked into a steady glow, only shifting a little with the haze. On either side of him were rough, wooden stalls, and these were illuminated with gas, which sizzled and hissed like angry snakes. The stalls were covered with everything invented by man; here a sweet stall, with thick, sticky lumps of white and green and red, glass bottles of bulls' eyes and peppermints, thick slabs of almond toffee and pink cocoanut icing, boxes of round chocolate creams and sticks of liquorice, lumps of gingerbread, with coloured pictures stuck upon them, saffron buns, plum cakes in glass jars, and chains of little sugary biscuits hanging on long red strings. There was the old-clothes' stall with trousers and coats and waistcoats, all shabby and lanky, swinging beneath the gas, and piles of clothes on the boards, all nondescript and unhappy and faded; there was the stall with the farm implements, and the medicine stall, and the flower stall, and the vegetable stall, and many, many another. Each place had his or her guardian, vociferous, red-faced, screaming out the wares, lowering the voice to cajole, raising it again to draw back a retreating customer, carrying on suddenly an intimate conversation with the next-door shopkeeper, laughing, quarrelling, arguing.

To Jeremy it was a world of giant heights and depths. Behind the stalls, beyond the lane down which he moved, was an uncertain glory, a threatening peril. He fancied that strange animals moved there; he thought he heard a lion roar and an elephant bellow. The din of the sellers all about him made it impossible to tell what was happening beyond there; only the lights and bells, shouts and cries, confusing smells, and a great roar of distant voices.

He almost wished that he had not come, he felt so very small and helpless; he wondered whether he could find his way out again, and looking back, he was for a moment terrified to see that the stream of people behind him shut him in so that he could not see the stile, nor the wooden barrier, nor the red-faced man. Pushed forward, he found himself at the end of the lane and standing in a semi-circular space surrounded by strange-looking booths with painted pictures upon them, and in front of them platforms with wooden steps running up to them. Then, so unexpectedly that he gave a little scream, a sudden roar burst out behind him. He turned and, indeed, the world seemed to have gone mad. A moment ago there had been darkness and dim shadow. Now, suddenly, there was a huge whistling, tossing circle of light and flame, and from the centre of this a banging, brazen, cymbal-clashing scream issued-a scream that, through its strident shrillness, he recognised as a tune that he knew—a tune often whistled by Jim at Cow Farm. “And her golden hair was hanging down her back.” Whence the tune came he could not tell; from the very belly of the flaming monster, it seemed; but, as he watched, he saw that the huge circle whirled ever faster and faster, and that up and down on the flame of it coloured horses rose and fell, vanishing from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and seeming of their own free will and motion to dance to the thundering music.

It was the most terrific thing that he had ever seen. The most terrific thing... he stood there, his cap on the back of his head, his legs apart, his mouth open; forgetting utterly the crowd, thinking nothing of time or danger or punishment—he gazed with his whole body.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the glare of the hissing gas, he saw that in the centre figures were painted standing on the edge of a pillar that revolved without pause. There was a woman with flaming red cheeks, a gold dress and dead white dusty arms, a man with a golden crown and a purple robe, but a broken nose, and a minstrel with a harp. The woman and the king moved stiffly their arms up and down, that they might strike instruments, one a cymbal and the other a drum. But it was finally the horses that caught Jeremy's heart. Half of them at least were without riders, and the empty ones went round pathetically, envying the more successful ones and dancing to the music as though with an effort. One especially moved Jeremy's sympathy. He was a fine horse, rather fresher than the others, with a coal-black mane and great black bulging eyes; his saddle was of gold and his trappings of red. As he went round he seemed to catch Jeremy's eye and to beg him to come to him. He rode more securely than the rest, rising nobly like a horse of fine breeding, falling again with an implication of restrained force as though he would say: “I have only to let myself go and there, my word, you would see where I'd get to.” His bold black eyes turned beseechingly to Jeremy—surely it was not only a trick of the waving gas; the boy drew closer and closer, never moving his gaze from the horses who had hitherto been whirling at a bacchanalian pace, but now, as at some sudden secret command, suddenly slackened, hesitated, fell into a gentle jog-trot, then scarcely rose, scarcely fell, were suddenly still. Jeremy saw what it was that you did if you wanted to ride. A stout dirty man came out amongst the horses and, resting his hands on their backs as though they were less than nothing to him, shouted: “Now's your chance, lidies and gents! Now, lidies and gents! Come along hup! Come along hup! The ride of your life now! A 'alfpenny a time! A 'alfpenny a time, and the finest ride of your life!”

People began to mount the steps that led on to the platform where the horses stood. A woman, then a man and a boy, then two men, then two girls giggling together, then a man and a girl.

And the stout fellow shouted: “Come along hup! Come along hup! Now, lidies and gents! A 'alfpenny a ride! Come along hup!”

Jeremy noticed then that the fine horse with the black mane had stopped close beside him. Impossible to say whether the horse had intended it or no! He was staring now in front of him with the innocent stupid gaze that animals can assume when they do not wish to give themselves away. But Jeremy could see that he was taking it for granted that Jeremy understood the affair. “If you're such a fool as not to understand,” he seemed to say, “well, then, I don't want you.” Jeremy gazed, and the reproach in those eyes was more than he could endure. And at any moment someone else might settle himself on that beautiful back! There, that stupid fat giggling girl! No—she had moved elsewhere... He could endure it no longer and, with a thumping heart, clutching a scalding penny in a red-hot hand, he mounted the steps. “One ride—little gen'elman. 'Ere you are! 'Old on now! Oh, you wants that one, do yer? Eight yer are—yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.” He lifted Jeremy up. “Put yer arms round 'is neck now—'e won't bite yer!”

Bite him indeed! Jeremy felt, as he clutched the cool head and let his hand slide over the stiff black mane, that he knew more about that horse than his owner did. He seemed to feel beneath him the horse's response to his clutching knees, the head seemed to rise for a moment and nod to him and the eyes to say: “It's all right. I'll look after you. I'll give you the best ride of your life!” He felt, indeed, that the gaze of the whole world was upon him, but he responded to it proudly, staring boldly around him as though he had been seated on merry-go-rounds all his days. Perhaps some in the gaping crowd knew him and were saying: “Why, there's the Rev. Cole's kid—” Never mind; he was above scandal. From where he was he could see the Fair lifted up and translated into a fantastic splendour. Nothing was certain, nothing defined—above him a canopy of evening sky, with circles and chains of stars mixed with the rosy haze of the flame of the Fair; opposite him was the Palace of “The Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus,” a huge man as portrayed in the picture hanging on his outer walls, a giant naked, save for a bearskin, with one head black and one yellow, and white protruding teeth in both mouths. Next to him was the Fortune Teller's, and outside this a little man with a hump beat a drum. Then there was “The Theatre of Tragedy and Mirth,” with a poster on one side of the door portraying a lady drowning in the swiftest of rivers, but with the prospect of being saved by a stout gentleman who leaned over from the bank and grasped her hair. Then there was the “Chamber of the Fat Lady and the Six Little Dwarfs,” and the entry to this was guarded by a dirty sour-looking female who gnashed her teeth at a hesitating public, before whom, with a splendid indifference to appearance, she consumed, out of a piece of newspaper, her evening meal.

All these things were in Jeremy's immediate vision, and beyond them was a haze that his eyes could not penetrate. It held, he knew, wild beasts, because he could hear quite clearly from time to time the lion and the elephant and the tiger; it held music, because from somewhere through all the noise and confusion the tune of a band penetrated; it held buyers and sellers and treasures and riches, and all the inhabitants of the world—surely all the world must be here to-night. And then, beyond the haze, there were the silent and mysterious gipsy caravans. Dark with their little square windows, and their coloured walls, and their round wheels, and the smell of wood fires, and the noise of hissing kettles and horses cropping the grass, and around them the still night world with the thick woods and the dark river.

He did not see it all as he sat on his horse—he was, as yet, too young; but he did feel the contrast between the din and glare around him and the silence and dark beyond, and, afterwards, looking back, he knew that he had found in that same contrast the very heart of romance. As it was, he simply clutched his horse's beautiful head and waited for the ride to begin...

They were off! He felt his horse quiver under him, he saw the mansions of the Two-Headed Giant and the Fat Lady slip to the right, the light seemed to swing like the skirt of someone's dress, upwards across the floor, and from the heart of the golden woman and the king and the minstrel a scream burst forth as though they were announcing the end of the world. After that he had no clear idea as to what occurred. He was swung into space, and all the life that had been so stationary, the booths, the lights, the men and women, the very stars went swinging with him as though to cheer him on; the horse under him galloped before, and the faster he galloped the wilder was the music and the dizzier the world. He was exultant, omnipotent, supreme. He had long known that this glory was somewhere if it could only be found, all his days he seemed to have been searching for it; he beat his horse's neck, he drove his legs against his sides. “Go on! Go on! Go on!” he cried. “Faster! Faster! Faster!”

The strangest things seemed to rise to his notice and then fall again—a peaked policeman's hat, flowers, a sudden flame of gas, the staring eyes and dead white arms of the golden woman, the flying forms of the horses in front of him. All the world was on horseback, all the world was racing higher and higher, faster and faster. He saw someone near him rise on to his horse's back and stand on it, waving his arms. He would like to have done that, but he found that he was part of his horse, as though he had been glued to it. He shouted, he cried aloud, he was so happy that he thought of no one and nothing... The flame danced about him in a circle, he seemed to rise so high that there was a sudden stillness, he was in the very heart of the stars; then came the supreme moment when, as he had always known, that one day he would be, he was master of the world... Then, like Lucifer, he fell. Slowly the stars receded, the music slackened, people rocked on to their feet again... The Two-Headed Giant slipped hack once more into his place, he saw the sinister lady still devouring her supper, women looking up at him gaped. His horse gave a last little leap and died.

This marvellous experience he repeated four times, and every time with an ecstasy more complete than the last. He rushed to a height, he fell, he rushed again, he fell, and at every return to a sober life his one intention was instantly to be off on his steed once more. He was about to start on his fifth journey, he had paid his halfpenny, he was sitting forward with his hands on the black mane, his eyes, staring, were filled already with the glory that he knew was coming to him, his cheeks were crimson, his hat on the back of his head, his hair flying. He heard a voice, quiet and cool, a little below him, but very near:

“Jeremy... Jeremy. Come off that. You've got to go home.”

He looked down and saw his Uncle Samuel.

IV

It was all over; he knew at once that it was all over.

As he slipped down from his dear horse he gave the glossy dark mane one last pat; then, with a little sigh, he found his feet, stumbled over the wooden steps and was at his uncle's side.

Uncle Samuel looked queer enough with a squashy black hat, a black cloak flung over his shoulders, and a large cherry-wood pipe in his mouth. Jeremy looked up at him defiantly.

“Well,” said Uncle Samuel sarcastically. “It's nothing to you, I suppose, that the town-crier is at this moment ringing his bell for you up and down the Market Place?”

“Does father know?” Jeremy asked quickly.

“He does,” answered Uncle Samuel.

Jeremy cast one last look around the place; the merry-go-round was engaged once more upon its wild course, the horses rising and falling, the golden woman clashing the cymbals, the minstrel striking, with his dead eyes fixed upon space, his harp. All about men were shouting; the noise of the coconut stores, of the circus, of the band, of the hucksters and the charlatans, the crying of children, the laughter of women—all the noise of the Fair bathed Jeremy up to his forehead.

He swam in it for the last time. He tried to catch one last glimpse of his coal-black charger, then, with a sigh, he said, turning to his uncle: “I suppose we'd better be going.”

“Yes, I suppose we had,” said Uncle Samuel.

They threaded their way through the Fair, passed the wooden stile, and were once again in the streets, dark and ancient under the moon, with all the noise and glare behind them. Jeremy was thinking to himself: “It doesn't matter what Father does, or how angry he is, that was worth it.” It was strange how little afraid he was. Only a year ago to be punished by his father had been a terrible thing. Now, since his mother's illness in the summer, his father had seemed to have no influence over him.

“Did they bend you, or did you just come yourself, Uncle?” asked Jeremy.

“I happened to be taking the air in that direction,” said Uncle Samuel.

“I hope you didn't come away before you wanted to,” said Jeremy politely.

“I did not,” said his uncle.

“Is Father very angry?” asked Jeremy.

“It's more than likely he may be. The Town Crier's expensive.”

“I didn't think they'd know,” explained Jeremy. “I meant to get back in time.”

“Your father didn't go to church,” said Uncle Samuel. “So your sins were quickly discovered.”

Jeremy said nothing.

Just as they were climbing Orange Street he said:

“Uncle Samuel, I think I'll be a horse-trainer.”

“Oh, will you?... Well, before you train horses you've got to train yourself. Think of others beside yourself. A fine state you've put your mother into to-night.”

Jeremy looked distressed. “She'd know if I was dead, someone would come and tell her,” he said. “But I'll tell Mother I'm sorry... But I won't tell Father,” he added.

“Why not?” asked Uncle Samuel.

“Because he'll make such a fuss. And I'm not sorry. He never told me not to.”

“No, but you knew you hadn't to.”

“I'm very good at obeying,” explained Jeremy, “if someone says something; but if someone doesn't, there isn't anyone to obey.”

Uncle Samuel shook his head. “You'll be a bit of a prig, my son, if you aren't careful,” he said.

“I think it will be splendid to be a horse-trainer,” said Jeremy. “It was a lovely horse to-night... And I only spent a shilling. I had three and threepence halfpenny.”

At the door of their house Uncle Samuel stopped and said:

“Look here, young man, they say it's time you went to school, and I don't think they're far wrong. There are things wiser heads than yours can understand, and you'd better take their word for it. In the future, if you want to go running off somewhere, you'd better content yourself with my studio and make a mess there.”

“Oh, may I?” cried Jeremy delighted.

That studio had been always a forbidden place to them, and had, therefore, its air of enchanting mystery.

“Won't you really mind my coming?” he asked.

“I shall probably hate it,” answered his uncle; “but there's nothing I wouldn't do for the family.”

The boy walked to his father's study and knocked on the door. He did have then, at the sound of that knock, a moment of panic. The house was so silent, and he knew so well what would follow the opening of the door. And the worst of it was that he was not sorry in the least. He seemed to be indifferent and superior, as though no punishment could touch him.

“Come in!” said his father.

He pushed open the door and entered. The scene that followed was grave and sad, and yet, in the end, strangely unimpressive. His father talked too much. As he talked Jeremy's thoughts would fly back to the coal-black horse and to that moment when he had seemed to fly into the very heart of the stars.

“Ah, Jeremy, how could you?” said his father. “Is obedience nothing to you? Do you know how God punishes disobedience? Think what a terrible thing is a disobedient man!” Then on a lower scale: “I really don't know what to do with you. You knew that you were not to go near that wicked place.”

“You never said—” interrupted Jeremy.

“Nonsense! You knew well enough. You will break your mother's heart.”

“I'll tell her I'm sorry,” he interrupted quickly.

“If you are really sorry—” said his father.

“I'm not sorry I went,” said Jeremy, “but I'm sorry I hurt Mother.”

The end of it was that Jeremy received six strokes on the hand with a ruler. Mr. Cole was not good at this kind of thing, and twice he missed Jeremy's hand altogether, and looked very foolish. It was not an edifying scene. Jeremy left the room, his head high, his spirit obstinate; and his father remained, puzzled, distressed, at a loss, anxious to do what was right, but unable to touch his son at all.

Jeremy went up to his room. He opened his window and looked out. He could smell the burnt leaves of the bonfire. There was no flame now, but he fancied that he could see a white shadow where it had been. Then, on the wind, came the music of the Fair.

“Tum—te—Tum... Tum—te—Tum... Whirr—Whirr—Whirr—Bang—Bang.”

Somewhere an owl cried, and then another owl answered.

He rubbed his sore hand against his trousers; then, thinking of his black horse, he smiled.

He was a free man. In a week he would go to school; then he would go to College; then he would be a horsetrainer.

He was in bed; faintly into the dark room, stole the scent of the bonfire and the noise of the Fair.

“Tum—te-Tum... Tum—te—Tum...”

He was asleep, riding on a giant charger across boundless plains.

CHAPTER XII. HAMLET WAITS

I

The last day! Jeremy, suddenly waking, realised this with a confusion of feeling as though he were sentenced to the dentist's, but, oddly enough, looked forward to his visit. Going to school, one had, of course, long ago perceived, was a mixed business; but the balance was now greatly to the good. It was a step in the right direction towards liberty and freedom. Thank Heaven!

No one in the family was likely to make a fuss about his departure, unless it were possibly Mary, and she had, of late, kept very much to herself and worried him scarcely at all. Indeed, he felt guilty about Mary. He was fond of her, really... Funny kid... If only she didn't make fusses!

Yes, it was unlike his family to make fusses. He realised that very plainly to-day. Everyone went about his or her daily business with no implication whatever that something extraordinary was going to happen tomorrow. Perhaps they were all secretly relieved that he was off. He had been, he knew, something of a failure during these last months; one trouble after another; the scandal of his visit to the Fair as the grand finale. He felt that there was, in some way, some injustice in all this. He had no desire to be bad or rebellious—on the contrary he wished to do all that his elders ordered him—but he could not prevent the rising of his own individuality, which showed him quite clearly whether he should do a thing or no. It was as though something inside him pushed him... whereas they, all of them, only checked him.

He loved his mother best, and he was secretly disappointed to find how ordinary an affair his departure was to her. He realised, with a perception that was beyond his years, that the infant Barbara was now rapidly occupying the position, as centre of the family, that he had held. Barbara, everyone declared, was a charming baby—the house revolved, to some extent, round Barbara. But, then again, this isolation was entirely his own fault. During the summer holidays he had gone his own way, and had wanted no one but Hamlet as his companion. He had no right to complain.

After breakfast he did not know quite what to do, and it was obvious, also, that no one knew quite what to do with him.

Mrs. Cole said: “Jeremy, dear, Ponting has never sent that letter paper and envelopes that he promised, and Father must have them to-day. Would you go down and bring them back with you? Father will write a note.”

No one seemed to realise what an abysmal change from earlier conditions this casual sentence marked. That he should go to Footing's, which was on the farther side of the town, alone and unattended, seemed to no one peculiar; and yet, only six months ago, a walk without Miss Jones was undreamt of; and, before her, no more than nine months back, there was the Jampot! He was delighted to go; but, of course, he did not show his delight.

All he said was: “Yes, Mother.”

He was in his new clothes: stiff black jacket, black knickerbockers, black stockings, black boots. No more navy suits with white braid and whistles! Perhaps he would see the Dean's Ernest. It was his most urgent desire!

He started off, accompanied by a barking, bounding Hamlet, who showed no perception of the calamity that threatened to tumble upon him. For Jeremy, leaving Hamlet was a dreadful affair. In three months a dog can change more swiftly than a human being, and Hamlet, although not a supremely greedy dog, had shown of late increasing signs of a love of good food, and a regrettable tendency to fawn upon the giver of the same, even when it was Aunt Amy. Jeremy had checked this tendency, and had issued punishments when necessary, and Hamlet had accepted the same without a murmur. So long as Jeremy was there Hamlet's character was secure; but now, during this long absence, anything might happen. There was no one to whom Jeremy might leave him; no one who had the slightest idea what a dog should do and what he should not.

These melancholy thoughts filled Jeremy's mind when he started upon his walk, but soon he was absorbed by his surroundings. He realised even more drastically than the facts warranted that he was making his farewell to the town.

He was not making his final farewell; he would not make that until his death, and, perhaps, not then; but he was making farewell to some of his sense of his wonder in it, only not, thank God, to the sense of wonder itself!

As he went he met the daily figures of all his walks, and he could not help but speculate on their realisation of the great change that was coming to him. It was absurd to suppose that they were saying to themselves: “Ah, there's young Jeremy Cole! He's off to school tomorrow. I wonder what he feels about it!...” No, that was incredible, and yet they must realise something of the adventure.

He, on his part, stared at them with a new interest. They had before shared in the inevitable background without individuality. But now that he was leaving them, and they would grow, as it were, without his permission, he was forced to grant them independence. At the bottom of Orange Street he met Mr. Dawson, the Cathedral Organist; he was a little, plump man, in a very neat grey suit, a shiny top hat, and very small spats. He was always dressed in the same fashion, and carried a black music-case under his arm. He had an eternal interest for Jeremy because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: “Poor little Mr. Dawson!” Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but “poor” was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a little shudder of drama run down his spine.

Outside Poole's bookshop there was, of course, Mr. Mockridge. Mr. Mockridge was the poorest of the Canons; so poor, that it had become a proverb in the place: “As poor as Mr. Mockridge”; and also another proverb, I am afraid, from the same source: “As dirty as Mr. Mockridge.” He was a very long, thin man, with a big, pointing nose, coloured red, not from indigestion, and most certainly not from drink, but simply, I think, because the wind caught it. His passion was for books, and he might be seen every afternoon, between three and four o'clock, bending over Poole's 2d. box, a dirty handkerchief flying out of the tail of his long, black coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards, under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange. “He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same, and I shall be—”

Then, on the outskirts of the Market Place, Jeremy paused and looked about him. There was all the usual business of the place—the wooden trestles with the flowerpots, the apple-woman under her umbrella, the empty cattle-pens, where the cows and sheep stood on market days, and behind them the dark, vaulted arches of the actual market, now empty and deserted. Bathed in sunlight it lay very quiet and still; some pigeons pecking at grain, a dog or two, and children playing round the empty cattle-stalls. From the hill above the square the Cathedral boomed the hour, and all the pigeons rose in a flight, hovered, then slowly settled again.

Jeremy sighed, and, with a strange pain at his heart that he could not analyse, moved up the hill. The High Street is, of course, the West End of Polchester, and in the morning, between ten and one, every lady in the town may be seen at her shopping. It had always been the ambition of the Cole children to be taken for their walk up High Street in the morning; but it was an ambition very rarely gratified, because they stopped so often and were always in everyone's way. And here was Jeremy, at this gay hour, a trolling up the High Street all by himself he lifted his head, pushed out his chest, and looked the world in the face. He might meet the Dean's Ernest at any moment. The first people whom he saw were the Misses Cragg—always known, of course, as “The Cragg girls.” They were, perhaps, Polchester's most constant and obvious feature. There were four of them, all as yet unmarried, all with brown-red faces and hard straw hats, short skirts, and tremendous voices; forerunners, in fact, of a type now almost universal. They played croquet and lawn-tennis, were prominent members of the Archery Club, and hunted when their fathers would let them. They were terrible Dianas to Jeremy. He had met one of them once at a Children's Dance, and she had whirled him around until, with a terrified scream, he broke, howling, from her arms, and hid himself in the large bosom of the Jampot. He was always ashamed of this memory, and he could never see them without blushing; but, to-day, he seemed less afraid of them, and actually, when he passed them, touched his hat and looked them in the face. They all smiled and nodded to him, and when they had gone he was so deeply astonished at this adventure that he had to stop and consider himself. If the Craggs were nothing to him, what might he not face?

“Come here, Hamlet. How dare you?” he ordered in so sharp and military a voice that Hamlet, who had merely cast a most innocent glance at a disdainful and conceited white poodle, looked up at his master with surprise.

Nevertheless, his new-found hardihood received, in the very midst of his self-congratulation, its severest test. He stumbled into the very path of the Dean's wife.

Mrs. Dean could never have seemed to anyone a large woman, but to Jeremy she had always been a terror. She was thick and hard, like a wall, and wore the kind of silken clothes, that rustled—like the whispering of a whole meeting of frightened clergymen's wives—as she moved. She had a hard, condemnatory voice, and she spoke as though she were addressing an assembly; but, worst of all, she had black, beetling eyebrows, and these frightened Jeremy into fits. He did not, of course, know that the poor lady suffered continually from nervous headaches. He suddenly heard that voice in his ear: “Good morning, Jeremy, and where are you off to so early?” Mrs. Dean was never so awful as when she was jolly, and Jeremy, caught up by the eyebrows as though they had been hooks and hung thus in mid-air for all the street to laugh at, nearly lost his command of his natural tongue. He found his voice just in time:

“To Ponting's,” he said.

“All alone? Ah, no, I see you have your little dog. Nice little dog. And how's your mother?”

“She's quite well, thank you.”

“That's right—that's right. We haven't seen you lately. You must come up to tea with your sisters. I'm afraid you won't find Ernest, he's gone back to school—but I dare say you're not too big to play with little girls.”

Jeremy felt some triumph at his heart.

“I'm going to school to-morrow,” he said. But if he expected Mrs. Dean to be pitiful at this statement he was greatly mistaken.

“Are you, indeed? Such a pity you couldn't have gone with Ernest—but he'd be senior to you, of course... Good-bye. Good-bye. Give my love to your mother,” and she pounded her way along.

“She's a beastly woman anyway” thought Jeremy. “I wish I'd found something to say to her. I wonder whether she knows I knocked Ernest down in the summer and trod on him?”

But the sight of the High Street soon restored his equanimity. On other occasions he had been pushed through it, either by the Jampot or Miss Jones, so rapidly that he could gather only the most fleeting impressions. To-day he could linger and linger; he did. The two nicest shops were Mannings' the hairdressers and Ponting's the book-shop, but Rose the grocer's, and Coulter's the confectioner's were very good. Mr. Manning was an artist. He did not simply put a simpering bust with an elaborate head of hair in his window and leave it at that—he did, indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the best established, most sacred and serious bookseller in the county. In the days when the new “Waverley” was the sensation of the moment Mr. Ponting, grandfather of the present Mr. Ponting, had been in quite constant correspondence with Mr. Southey, and Mr. Coleridge, and had once, when on a visit to London, spoken to the great Lord Byron himself. This tradition of aristocracy remained, and the present Mr. Pouting always advised the Bishop what to read and was consulted by Mrs. Lamb, our only authoress, on questions of publishers and editions and such technical points. For all this Jeremy, at his present stage of interest, would have cared nothing even had he known it, but what he did care for were the rows of calf-bound books with little ridges of gold, that made a fine wall across the window with an old print of the Cathedral and the Close in the middle of them. Inside Pontings there was a hush as of the study and the church combined. It was a rather dark shop with rows and rows of books disappearing into the ceiling, and one grave and unnaturally old young man behind the counter. Jeremy did not know what he should do about Hamlet, so he brought him inside, only to discover to his horror that the fiercest of all the Canons, Canon Waterbury, held the floor of the shop. Canon Waterbury had a black beard and a biting tongue. He had once warned Jeremy off the Cathedral grass in a voice of thunder, and Jeremy had never forgotten it. He glared now and pulled his beard, but Hamlet fortunately behaved well, and the old young man discovered Jeremy's notepaper within a very short period.

Then suddenly the Canon spoke.

“Dogs should not be inside shops,” He said, as though he were condemning someone to death.

“I know,” said Jeremy frankly. “I wanted to tie him up to something and there was nothing to tie him up to.”

“What did you bring him out for at all?” said the Canon.

“Because he's got to have exercise,” said Jeremy, discovering, to his own delighted surprise, that he was not frightened in the least.

“Oh, has he? I don't know what people keep dogs for.”

And then he stamped out of the shop.

Jeremy regarded this in the light of a victory and marched away, his head more in the air than ever. He should now have hurried home. The midday chimes had rung out and Jeremy's duties were performed. But he lingered, listening to the last notes of the chimes, hearing the cries of the Cathedral choir-boys as they moved across the green to the choir-school, watching all the people hurry up and down the street. Ah, there was the Castle carriage! Perhaps the old Countess was inside it. He had only seen her once, at some service in the Cathedral to which his mother had taken him, but she had made a great impression on him with her snow-white hair. He had heard people speak of her as “a wicked old woman.” Perhaps she was inside the carriage... but he only saw the Castle coachman and footman and the coronet on the door. It rolled slowly up the hill with its fine air of commanding the whole world—then it disappeared around the corner of the Close.

Jeremy decided then that he would go home across the green and down Orchard Lane. He had a wish to enter the Cathedral for a moment; such a visit would, after all, complete the round of his experiences. He had never entered the Cathedral alone, and now, as he saw it facing him, so vast and majestic and quiet, across the sun-drenched green, he felt a sudden fear and awe. He found a ring in a stone near the west end through which he might fasten Hamlet's lead, then, slowly pushing back the heavy door, he passed inside. The Cathedral was utterly quiet. The vast nave, stained with reflections of purple and green and ruby, was vague and unsubstantial, all the little wooden chairs huddled together to the right and left, leaving a great path that swept up to the High Altar under shafts of light that fell like searchlights from the windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed him, wiping the little chairs with a duster.

It seemed to Jeremy that he had never been in the Cathedral before; he stood there, breathless, as though in a moment something must inevitably happen. Although he did not think of it, the moment was one of a sequence that had come to him during the year—his entry into the theatre with his uncle, his first conversation with the sea-captain, the hour when his mother had been so ill, the evening on the beach when Charlotte had been frightened, the time when Hamlet had been lost and he had slept with him under a tree. All these moments had been something more than merely themselves, had had something behind them or inside them for which simply they stood as words stand for pictures. He analysed, of course, nothing, being a perfectly healthy small boy, but if afterwards he looked back these were the moments that he saw as one sees stations on a journey. One day he would know for what they stood.

He simply now waited there as though he expected something to happen. Thoughts slipped through his mind quite casually, whether Hamlet were behaving well outside, what the old lady did when she was tired of dusting, who the stone figure lying near him might be, a figure very fine with his ruff and his peaked beard, his arms folded, his toes pointing upwards, whether the body were inside the stone like a mummy, or underneath the ground some-where; how strangely different the nave looked now from its Sunday show, and what fun it would be to run races all the way down and see who could reach the golden angels over the reredos first; he felt no reverence, and yet a deep reverence, no fear, but, nevertheless, awe; he was warm and happy and comfortable, and yet suddenly, giving a little shudder, he slipped out into the sunlight, released Hamlet and started for home.