September 1 was Mary’s birthday, and it had always something of a melancholy air about it because it meant that the holidays were drawing to a close. Soon there would be the last bathe, the last picnic, the last plunge across the moor, the last waking to the sharp, poignant cry of the flying, swerving gulls.
Then in strange, sudden fashion, like the unclicking of a door that opens into another room, the summer had suddenly slipped aside, giving place to autumn; not full autumn yet, only a few leaves turning, a few fires burning in the fields, the sea only a little colder in colour, the sky at evening a chillier green; but the change was there, and with it Polchester, and close behind Polchester old Thompson stepped towards them.
Yes, Mary’s birthday marked the beginning of the end, and, in addition to that, there was the desperate, urgent question of present-giving. Mary took her present-giving (or rather present-getting) with the utmost seriousness. No one in the whole world minded quite so desperately as she what she got, who gave it her, and how it was given. Not that she was greedy; indeed, no. She was not like Helen, who guessed the price of everything that she received, and had what Uncle Samuel called “a regular shop mind.”
It was all sentiment with Mary. What she wanted was that someone (anyone) should love her and therefore give her something. She knew that Uncle Samuel did not love her, and she suffered not, therefore, the slightest unhappiness did he forget her natal day; but she would have cried for a week had Jeremy forgotten it. She did not mind did Jeremy only spend sixpence on his gift (but he was a generous boy and always spent everything that, at the moment, he had) so that she might be sure that he had taken a little trouble in the buying of it.
Jeremy knew all this well enough and, in earlier years, the question of buying had been simple, because Cow Farm was miles from anywhere, the nearest village being the fishing cove of Rafiel, and Rafiel had only one “shop general,” and the things in this shop general were all visible in the window from year’s end to year’s end. Mary, therefore, received on her birthday something with which, by sight at least, she was thoroughly familiar.
Now this year there were new conditions. The nearest village with shops was St. Mary’s Moor, some six miles away. It was there that the purchase must be made, and in any case it would be on this occasion a real novelty. Jeremy tried to discover, by those circumlocutory but self-revealing methods peculiar to intending present-givers, what Mary would like. Supposing, just supposing, that someone one day were to die and, most unexpectedly, leave a lot of money to Mary, what would she buy? This was the kind of game that Mary adored, and she entered into it thoroughly. She would buy an enormous library, thousands and thousands of books, she would buy a town and fill it with sweet shops and then put hundreds of poor children into it to eat as much as they liked; she would buy Polchester Cathedral and make father bishop. This was flying rather too high, and so Jeremy, somewhat precipitately, asked her what she would do were she given fifteen shillings and sixpence. She considered, and being that morning in a very Christian frame of mind, decided that she would give it to Miss Jones to buy a new hat with. Mentally cursing girls and their tiresome ways, Jeremy, outwardly polite, altered his demand to: “No; but suppose you were given five shillings and threepence halfpenny” (the exact sum saved at that moment by him), “and had to spend it for yourself, Mary, what would you get with it?”
She would get a book.
Yes, but what book? She clasped her hands and looked to heaven. Oh! there were so many that she wanted. She wanted “The Young Stepmother” and “Dynevor Terrace” and “The Scottish Chiefs” and “Queechy” and “Sylvie and Bruno” and “The Queen’s Maries” and—and—hundreds and hundreds.
Well, she couldn’t buy hundreds with five and threepence halfpenny, that was certain, and if she thought that he was going to she was very much mistaken; but at least he had got his answer. It was a book that she wanted.
The next thing was to go into St. Mary’s Moor. He found the opportunity ready to his hand because Miss Jones had to go to buy some things that were needed for the family the very next afternoon. He would go with her. Mary thought that she would go too, and when Jeremy told her, with an air of great mystery, that that was impossible, she looked so self-conscious that he could have smacked her.
The journey in the old ramshackle omnibus was a delightful adventure. It happened on this particular afternoon that all the Caerlyon farmers and their wives were going too, and there was a “fine old crush.” Hamlet, fixed tightly on his lead, sat between his master’s legs, his tongue out, his hair on end, and his bright eyes wicked, darting from place to place. He saw so many things that he would like to do, parcels that he would like to worry, legs that he would like to smell, laps that he would like to investigate.
He gave sudden jerks at the lead, suited himself to the rolling and jolting of the bus so that he should be flung as near as possible to the leg, parcel or lap that he most wished to investigate. Jeremy then was very busy. Miss Jones, who was a good woman and by now thoroughly appreciated by all the members of the Cole family, including Jeremy himself, who always took her under his especial protection when they went out anywhere, had in all her years never learnt that first of all social laws, “Never try to talk in a noisy vehicle,” and had a long story about one Edmund Spencer, from whose mother she had that morning received a letter. She treated Jeremy as a friend and contemporary (one of the reasons for his liking of her), and he was always deeply interested in her histories; but to-day, owing to the terrific rumblings, rattlings and screaming of the bus and to the shrieking and shouting of the farmers and their ladies, he could only catch occasional words, and was not sure at the end of it all whether Edmund Spencer were animal, vegetable or mineral. His confusion was complete when, just as they were rattling into St. Mary’s one and only street, Miss Jones screamed into his ear, “And so they had to give her boiled milk four times a day and nothing else except an occasional potato.”
The omnibus drew up in front of the Dog and Rabbit, and everyone departed on their various affairs. St. Mary’s was like a little wayside station on the edge of a vast brindled, crinkled moorland, brown and grey and green rucking away to the smooth, pale, egg-shell blue of the afternoon sky. The sea-wind came ruffling up to them where they stood. What storms of wind and rain there must be in the winter! All the houses of the long straggling street seemed to be blown a bit askew.
Jeremy and Miss Jones looked around them, and at once the inevitable “general” sprang to view. Miss Jones had to go into the hotel about some business for the rectory, and telling Jeremy to stay just where he was, and that she wouldn’t be more than “just five minutes,” vanished. Having been told to stay where he was, it was natural of him to wander down the street, inspect a greasy pond with some ducks, three children playing marbles and two mongrel dogs, and then flatten his nose against the window of the “general.”
Inspection proved very disappointing. There seemed to be nothing here that he could possibly offer to Mary: bootlaces, cards of buttons, mysterious articles of underwear, foggy bottles containing bulls’ eyes, sticks of liquorice, cakes of soap, copies of Home Chat and The Woman’s Journal, some pairs of very dilapidated looking slippers, some walking-sticks, portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, highly coloured. . . .
None of these. Unless, possibly, the Royal Family. But no. Even to Jeremy’s untrained eye the colour was a little bright; and old Victoria. . . . No, Mary wanted a book. He stared up and down the street in great agitation. He must buy something before Miss Jones came out of the inn. He did not want her to see what it was that he bought. The moments were slipping by. There was nothing here. The two half-crowns and the threepenny piece in his tightly clenched palm were hot and sticky. He looked again. There really was nothing! Then, staring down the street towards the open moor and the eventual sea, he saw a little bulging bottle-glass window that seemed to have coloured things in it. He turned and almost ran.
It was the last shop in the street, and a funny, dumpty, white-washed cottage with a pretty garden on its farther seaward side. The bottle-glass window protected the strangest things. (In another place and at another time it might not be uninteresting to tell the story of Mr. Redpath, of how he opened a curiosity shop in St. Mary’s, of all places! and of the adventures, happy and otherwise, that he encountered there.)
In the shop window there were glasses of blue with tapering stems, and squat old men smoking pipes, painted in the gayest colours, and pottery (jugs to drink out of), and there were old chains of beaten and figured silver, and golden boxes, and the model of a ship with full sails and a gorgeous figure-head of red and gold, and there were old pictures in dim frames, and a piece of a coloured rug, and lots and lots of other things as well.
Jeremy pushed the door back, heard a little bell tinkle above his head, and at once was in a shop so crowded that it was impossible to see t’other from which. A young man with a pale face and carroty hair was behind the very high counter, so high that Jeremy’s nose just tipped the level of it.
“Have you got such a thing as a book?” he asked very politely.
The young man smiled.
“What sort of a book?”
“Well, she said she wanted ‘Queechy’ or ‘Sylvie and Bruno’ or—I’ve forgotten the names of the others. You haven’t got those two, I suppose?”
“No, I haven’t,” said the young man, quite grave now.
“Have you got any books?” said Jeremy breathlessly, because time was slipping by and he had to stand on his toes.
“I’ve got this old Bible,” said the young man, producing a thick, heavy volume with brass clasps. “You see it’s got rather fine pictures. I think you’d better sit on this,” he added, producing a high stool; “you’ll be able to see better.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Jeremy, fascinated by Moses twisting a serpent around his very muscular arm as though it were a piece of string. “How much is this?”
“Eight pounds and ten,” said the young man, as though he’d said a halfpenny.
“I think I’d better tell you at once,” said Jeremy, leaning his elbows confidentially on the counter, “that I’ve only got five shillings and threepence halfpenny.”
The young man scratched his head. “I doubt if we’ve got any book,” he began; then suddenly, “Perhaps this will be the very thing—if you like pictures.”
He burrowed deep down in the back somewhere, and then produced two or three long, flat-looking books, dusty and a faded yellow. He wiped them with a cloth and presented them to Jeremy. At the first sight of them he knew that they were what he wanted. He read the titles: one was “Robinson Crusoe,” another “The Swiss Family Robinson,” the third “Masterman Ready.” He looked at “Crusoe,” and gave a delighted squeal of ecstasy as he turned over the pages. The print was funny and blacker than he had ever seen print before; the pictures were coloured, and richly coloured, the reds and greens and purples sinking deep into the page. Oh! it was a lovely book! a perfect book! the very, very thing for Mary.
“How much is it?” he asked, trembling before the answer.
“Exactly five shillings and threepence halfpenny,” said the young man gravely.
“That is strange,” said Jeremy, almost crowing with delight and keeping his hand on the book unless it should suddenly melt away. “That’s just what I’ve got. Isn’t that lucky?”
“Very fortunate indeed,” said the young man. “Shall I wrap it up for you?”
“Oh, yes, please do—and very carefully, please, so nobody can guess what it is.”
The young man was very clever about this, and when he emerged from the back of the shop he had with him a parcel that might easily have been a ship or a railway train. Jeremy paid his money, climbed down from his stool, then held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll come again one day and look at the other things in your shop.”
“Please do,” said the young man, bowing.
He went out, the little bell tinkling gaily behind him, and there, coming at that very moment out of the hotel, was Miss Jones.
We all know the truth of the familiar proverb that “Distance lends enchantment to the view,” and it was never more true of anything in the world than of parcels.
All the way back in the ’bus the book grew and grew in magnificence simply because Jeremy could not see it. He clutched the parcel tightly on his knees and resisted all Miss Jones’s attempts to discover its contents. Back in the rectory, he rushed up to his bedroom, locked the door, and then, with trembling fingers, undid the paper.
The first glimpse of “Robinson Crusoe and the Footmark on the Sand” thrilled him so that the white-washed walls of his room faded away and the thin pale evening glow passed into a sky of burning blue, and a scarlet cockatoo flew screaming above his head and the sand lay hot and sugar-brown at his feet. Mystery was there—the footprint in the sand, and Crusoe with his shaggy beard and peaked hat, staring. . . .
Feverishly his fingers turned the pages, and picture after picture opened for his delight. He had never before seen a book with so many pictures, pictures so bright and yet so true, pictures so real that you could almost touch the trees and the figures and Crusoe’s hatchet. He knelt then on the floor, the book spread out upon the bed, so deeply absorbed that it was with a terrific jolt that he heard the banging on the door and Mary’s voice:
“Aren’t you coming, Jeremy? We’re half through supper. The bell went hours ago.”
Mary! He had forgotten all about her. Of course, this book was for her. Just the book for her. She would love the pictures. He had forgotten all about . . .
He went down to supper and was bewildered and absent-minded throughout the meal. That night his dreams were all of Crusoe, of burning sands and flaming skies, of the crimson cockatoo and Man Friday. When he woke he jumped at once out of bed and ran on naked feet to the book. As a rule the next morning is the testing time, and too often we find that the treasure that we bought the day before has already lost some of its glitter and shine. Now it was not so; the pictures had grown better and better, richer and ever more rich. The loveliest pictures . . .
Just the book for Mary. It was then, standing half stripped before his basin, pausing as he always did ere he made the icy attack with the sponge, that he realized his temptation. He did not want to give the book to Mary. He wanted to keep it for himself.
While he dressed the temptation did not approach him very closely. It was so horrible a temptation that he did not look it in the eyes. He was a generous little boy, had never done a mean thing in all his life. He was always eager to give anything away although he had a strong and persistent sense of possessions so that he loved to have his things near him, and they seemed to him, his books and his toys and his football, as alive as the people around him. He had never felt anything so alive as this book was.
When he came down to breakfast he was surprised to find that the sight of Mary made him feel rather cross. She always had, in excess of others, the capacity for irritating him, as she herself well knew. This morning she irritated him very much. Her birthday would be four days from now; he would be glad when it arrived; he could give her the book and the temptation would be over. Indeed, he would like to give her the book now and have done with it.
By the middle of the day he was considering whether he could not give her something else “just as good” and keep the book for himself. He wrapped the book in all its paper, but ran up continually to look at it. She would like something else just as much; she would like something else more. After all, “Robinson Crusoe” was a book for boys. But the trouble was that he had now no money. He would receive threepence on Saturday, the last Saturday before Mary’s birthday, but what could you get with threepence? Five shillings of the sum with which he had bought Mary’s present had been given him by Uncle Samuel—and Uncle Samuel’s next present would be the tip before he went to school.
That afternoon he quarrelled with Mary—for no reason at all. He was sitting under the oak tree on the lawn reading “Redgauntlet.” Mary came and asked him whether she could take Hamlet for a run. Hamlet, as though he were a toy-dog made of springs, was leaping up and down. He did not like Mary, but he adored a run.
“No, you can’t,” said Jeremy.
“Oh! Jeremy, why can’t I? I’ll take the greatest care of him and those horrid little boys are gone away now and——”
“You can’t because I say you can’t.”
“Oh, Jeremy, do let——”
He started up from his chair, all rage and indignation.
“Look here, Mary, if you go on talking——”
She walked away down the garden, her head hanging in that tiresome way it had when she was unhappy. Hamlet tried to follow her, so he called him back. He came, but was quite definitely in the sulks, sitting, his head raised, very proud, wrath in his eyes, snapping angrily at an occasional fly.
“Redgauntlet” was spoilt for Jeremy. He put the book down and tried to placate Hamlet who knew his power and refused to be placated. Why didn’t he let Mary take Hamlet? What a pig he was! He would be nice to Mary when she came back. But when she did return that face of hers, with its beseeching look, irritated him so deeply that he snapped at her more than before.
After all, “Robinson Crusoe” was a book for boys. . . .
Two days later he had decided, quite definitely, that he could not part with it. He must find something else for her, something very fine indeed, the best thing that he had. He thought of every possible way of making money, but time was so short and ways of making money quickly were so few. He thought of asking his father for the pocket-money of many weeks in advance, but it would have to be so very many weeks in advance to be worth anything at all, and his father would want to know what he needed the money for; and after the episode of last Christmas he did not wish to say anything about presents. He thought of selling something; but there was no place to sell things in, and he had not anything that anyone else wanted. He thought of asking his mother; but she would send him to his father who always managed the family finances.
He went over all his private possessions. The trouble with them was that Mary knew them all so well.
Impossible to pretend that there was anything there that she could want! He collected the most hopeful of them and laid them out on the bed—a pocket-knife, three books, a photograph frame (rubbed at the edges), a watch chain that had seemed at first to be silver but now most certainly wasn’t, a leather pocket-book, a red blotting pad—not a very brilliant collection.
He did not now dare to look at the book at all. He put it away in the bottom of the chest of drawers. He thought that perhaps if he did not see it nor take it out of its brown paper until the actual day that it would be easier to give. But he had imagination as, in later years, he was to find to his cost, and the book grew and grew in his mind, the pictures flaming like suns, the spirit of the book smiling at him, saying to him with confidential friendship: “We belong to one another, you and I. No one shall part us.”
Then Helen said to him:
“What are you going to give Mary on her birthday?”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“I only wanted to know. I’ve got mine. Everyone knows you went into St. Mary’s and bought something. Mary herself knows.”
That was the worst of being part of a family. Everyone knew everything!
“Perhaps it wasn’t for Mary,” he said.
Helen sniffed. “Of course, if you don’t want to tell me,” she said, “I don’t care to know.”
Then he discovered the little glass bottle with the silver stopper. It had been given him two years ago on his birthday by a distant cousin who happened to be staying with them at the time. What anybody wanted to give a boy a glass bottle with a stopper for Jeremy couldn’t conceive. Mary had always liked it, had picked it up and looked at it with longing. Of course she knew that it had been his for two years. He looked at it, and even as Adam, years ago, with the apple, he fell.
Mary’s birthday came, and with it a day of burning, glowing colour. The first early autumn mists were hanging like veils of thinly-sheeted bronze before the grass wet with heavy dew, the sky of azure, the sea crystal pale. In the mist the rectory was a giant box of pearl. The air smelt of distant fires.
On such a day who would not be happy? And Mary was perhaps the happiest little girl in the kingdom. Happy as she was she lost much of her plainness, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, her mouth smiling. Something tender and poignant in her, some distant prophecy of her maturity, one day beautifully to be fulfilled, coming forth in her, because she felt that she was beloved even though it were only for an hour. She was lucky in her presents; her mother gave her a silver watch, a little darling, quite small, with the hours marked in blue on the face, and her father gave her a silver watch chain so thin that you thought that it would break if you looked at it, and in reality so strong that not the strongest man in the world could break it. Aunt Amy gave her a muff, soft and furry, and Helen gave her a red leather blotter, and Uncle Samuel sent her a book, the very “Dynevon Terrace” that she wanted—how did he know? And Miss Jones gave her a work basket with the prettiest silk lining inside you ever saw, and a pair of gloves from Barbara and—a glass bottle with a silver stopper from Jeremy!
It seemed that she liked this last present best of all. She rushed up to Jeremy and kissed him in the wettest possible way.
“Oh, Jeremy! I am so glad. That’s just what I wanted! I’ve never seen such a darling. I’ve never had any silver things to stand on my table and Gladys Sampson has such a lot, and this is prettier than any that Gladys has. Oh! mother, do look! See what Jeremy’s given me! Father, see what Jeremy’s given me! Isn’t it pretty, Miss Jones? You are a dear, Jeremy, and I’ll have it all my life!”
Jeremy stood there, his heart like lead. It may be said with truth of him that never in his whole existence had he felt such shame as he did now. Mean, mean, mean! Suddenly, now that it was too late, he hated that book upstairs lying safely in his bottom drawer. He didn’t want ever to look at it again.
And Mary. She must know that this was his old glass bottle that he had had so long. She had seen it a hundred times. It is true that he had rubbed it up and got the woman in the kitchen to polish the silver, but still she must know. He looked at her with new interest. Was it all acting, this enthusiasm? No, it was not. She was genuinely moved and delighted. Was she pretending to herself that she had never seen it before, forcing herself to believe that it was new? He would keep the book and give it to her at Christmas. But that would not be the same thing. The deed was done now. The shabby, miserable deed.
He did everything that he could to make her birthday a happy one. He was with her all the day. He allowed her to read to him a long piece of the story that she was then writing, a very tiresome business because she could not read her own script, and because there were so many characters that he could never keep track of any of them. He went blackberrying with her in the afternoon and gave her all the best blackberries. But nothing could raise his spirits. The beautiful day said nothing to him. He felt sick in the evening from eating too many blackberries and went to bed directly after supper.
The days that followed could hardly help but be jolly because the weather was so lovely—still, breathless days, when the world seemed to be painted in purple and blue on a wall of ivory, when the sea came over the sand with a ripple of utter content, when the moon appeared early in the evening, a silver bow, and mounted gently into a sky thick with stars, when every sound, the rattle of carts, the barks of dogs, the cries of men, struck the air sharply like blows upon iron. Yet, though the world was so lovely and everyone—even Aunt Amy—was in the best and most contented tempers, something hung over him like a black, heavy cloth. His pride in himself was gone. He had done something shabbier than even the Dean’s Ernest would do.
He continued to see Mary with new eyes. She was a decent kid. He looked back over the past months and saw how much more decent she had been to him than he had been to her. She had been irritating, of course, but then that was because she was a girl. All girls were irritating. Just look at Helen, for instance! Meanwhile he never glanced at the book again. It lay there neglected in its paper.
One day Mary received in a letter a postal order for ten shillings. This was a present from a distant aunt in America who had suddenly remembered Mary’s birthday. Filled with glee and self-importance, she went in to St. Mary’s with Miss Jones to spend it.
That evening when Jeremy was washing his hands there was a knock on his door and Mary’s voice: “May I come in?”
“Yes,” he said.
She came in, her face coloured with mysterious purpose. In her hands she held a paper parcel.
“Oh, are you washing your hands, Jeremy?” she said, her favourite opening in conversation being always a question of the obvious. The red evening sunlight flooded the room.
“What is it?” Jeremy asked rather crossly.
She looked at him pleadingly, as though begging him to save her from the difficulties of emotion and explanation that crowded in upon her.
“Oh, Jeremy, St. Mary’s was lovely, and there was a man with an organ and a monkey, and I gave the monkey a penny and it took it in its hand and took off its cap. . . . Miss Jones has got a cold,” she added, “and sneezed all the way home.”
“She always has a cold,” he said, “or something.”
“And it goes straight to her face when she has a cold and makes all her teeth ache—not only one of them, but all. She isn’t coming down to supper. She’s gone to bed.”
Still he waited, striving for politeness.
“I’ve got something for you,” Mary suddenly said, dropping her voice in the sentimental manner that he hated. Then, as though she were ashamed of what she had done, she took the parcel to the bed and undid the paper with clumsy fingers.
“There,” she said, “I got it for you because I thought you’d like it.”
He looked at it; it was a book: it was “Swiss Family Robinson”: it was a companion to his “Robinson Crusoe.” He stared at it: he could say nothing.
“You do like it, don’t you?” she asked, gazing at him anxiously. “It’s got lots and lots of pictures. There was a funny shop at the end of the street and I went in with Miss Jones and the man was very nice. And I thought it was just what you’d like. You do like it, don’t you?” she asked again.
But he could only stare at it, not coming forward to touch it. He was buried deep, deep in shame. There came a rattle then on the door and Helen’s voice:
“Mary, if you’re in there with Jeremy, mother says you’re to come at once and have your hair brushed because it’s five minutes to supper.”
“Oh, dear, I’d forgotten.” And with one last glance of anxiety towards Jeremy she went.
Still he did not move. Could anything possibly have happened to prove to him what a pig he was, what a skunk and a cur? Mary had bought it with her own money, five and threepence halfpenny out of ten shillings.
He did not touch the book, but with chin set and eyes resolved, he went down to supper. When the meal was finished he said to Mary:
“Come upstairs a minute. I want to speak to you.”
She followed him tremulously. He seemed to be clothed in his domineering manner. How often, especially of late, she had determined that she would not be afraid of him, but would dig up from within her the common sense, the easy companionship, the laughter that were all there for him, she knew, could she only be at her ease! She even sympathized with him in thinking her so often a fool! She was a fool when she was with him, simply because she cared for him so much and thought him so wonderful and so clever!
He didn’t like the book! He was going to thank her for it in the way that he had when he was trying to be polite, and didn’t find it easy. She followed him into the bedroom. He carefully closed the door. She saw at once that the book lay exactly where she had placed it on the bed—that he had not even opened it. He regarded her sternly.
“Sit down on that chair!” he said. She sat down.
“Look here, you oughtn’t to have given me that book. You know that Aunt Lucy sent that money for you to spend on yourself.”
“I thought you’d like it,” she said, pushing at her spectacles as she always did when she was distressed.
“I do like it,” he said. “It’s splendid. But I’ve done something awful—and I’ve got to tell you now you’ve given me that.”
“Oh, Jeremy! something awful! What is it?”
He set his jaw and, without looking at her, made his confession.
“That day I went in with Miss Jones to St. Mary’s I was going to buy you a present. And I did buy you one. I went into that same shop you went to and I bought ‘Robinson Crusoe’ just like the one you bought me. When I bought it I meant it for you, of course, but when I got home I liked it so much I kept it for myself and I gave you that old bottle instead—and then I didn’t like the rotten book after all and I’ve never looked at it since your birthday.”
Mary’s pleasure at being made his confidante in this way was much greater than her horror at his crime. Her bosom heaved with gratified importance.
“I’ve done things like that, Jeremy,” she said. “I got six handkerchiefs for Miss Jones one Christmas, and I kept three of them because I got a terrible bad cold just at the time.”
“That’s not so bad,” he said, shaking his head, “because I gave you an old thing that I’d had for years.”
“No,” she interrupted; “I’ve wanted that bottle ever so long. I used to go up to your room and look at it sometimes when you were at school.”
He went to the drawer and produced “Robinson Crusoe” and gave it to her. She accepted it gratefully, but said:
“And now I shall have to give you back the bottle.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.”
“But I can’t have two presents.”
“Yes, you can. I don’t want the old bottle, anyway. I never used it for anything. And now we’ll each have a book, so it won’t be like a present exactly.”
She smiled with pleasure. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not angry.”
“Angry?” he repeated after her.
“Yes,” she said, getting up from the bed where she had been sitting. “I thought you were when you asked me to come up here.”
He looked at her puzzled. She seemed to him a new Mary whom he had never seen before.
“Am I often angry?” he asked.
“Not angry exactly; but I get frightened that you are going to be cross, and then I say the silliest things—not because I want to, but because I want to be clever, and then, of course, I never am.”
He stood staring at her. “Am I as beastly as that?” he asked.
“Oh, you’re not beastly,” she reassured him. “Never—you’re not,” forgetting her grammar in her eagerness; “but I’m afraid of you, and I’m fonder of you than anybody—lots fonder—and I always say to myself, ‘Now I’m not going to be silly this time,’ and then I am. I don’t know why,” she sighed. “But I’m not nearly as silly as I seem,” she ended.
No, she wasn’t. He suddenly saw that, and he also suddenly saw that he had all this time been making a great mistake. Here was a possible companion, not only possible, but living, breathing, existing. She was on her own to-night, neither fearful nor silly, meeting him on his own level, superior to him, perhaps, knowing more than he did about many things, understanding his feelings. . . .
“I say, Mary, we’ll do things together. I’m awfully lonely sometimes. I want someone to tell things to—often. We’ll have a great time next holidays.”
It was the happiest moment of Mary’s life. Too much for her altogether. She just nodded and, clutching “Robinson Crusoe” to her, ran.
The town was ringed with fire, and out of that magic circle, like Siegfried, Uncle Percy came. The sunset flamed up the hill and wrapped the top of the monument in crocus shadows, the garden of the Coles was rose and amber.
Mary and Jeremy were hanging over the banisters watching for the arrival. The windows behind them burnt with the sun, and their bodies also burnt and their hair was in flames. In the hall there was green dusk until, at the rumble of the cab, Emily suddenly lit the gas, and the umbrellas and Landseer’s “Dignity and Impudence” were magnificently revealed.
The door opened, and out of the evening sun into the hissing gas stepped Uncle Percy. The children heard him say:
“Mrs. Cole at home?” and his voice was roaring, laughing, vibrating, resounding tumultuous. He seemed in his rough grey overcoat too huge to be human, and when this was taken from him by the smiling Emily—she always smiled, as Jeremy had long since observed, at gentlemen more than at ladies—in his bright brown tweeds he was still huge, and, with his brown hair and red face, like a solid chunk of sunset thrown into the dark house to cheer it up. He went bursting up the staircase, and the children fled—only just in time.
From the schoolroom they heard him erupt into the drawing-room, and then the bumping of his box up the stairs and the swearing of the cabman.
This was their Uncle Percy from California, South America, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and anywhere else you like; the brother of their father, the only prosperous one of that family, prosperous, according to Aunt Amy, because for twenty years he had kept away from England; according to father, because he had always had wonderful health, even as a very small boy; and to Uncle Samuel because he had never married—although that was a strange reason for Uncle Samuel to give, because he also had never married, and he could not, with the best wish in the world, be said to be prosperous.
It had been sprung upon them all with the utmost suddenness that he was coming to pay them a visit. They had but just returned from Caerlyon and the sea—in another ten days Jeremy would be off to school again—when the telegram arrived that threw them all into such perturbation. “Arrive eleventh. Hope you can put me up for day or two—Percy.” Percy! Fortunately there was for them in the whole world only one Percy or they might have been in sad confusion, because their Percy was, they imagined, safe in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand. A letter followed confirming the telegram. Mr. Cole had not seen his brother for twenty years. They had received one photograph of a large fat staring man on a large fat staring horse. Such thighs, such a back, both of man and of horse! “Feed their animals well in New Zealand” was Uncle Samuel’s only comment, and he, back only that minute from painting the moors, departed at a moment’s notice for London.
“Don’t you want to see Uncle Percy?” asked Jeremy.
“I shall see him better if I study him from a distance,” said Uncle Samuel. “He’s too large to see properly close to,” and he went—voted selfish by all because he would not help in the entertaining. “Of course I’m selfish,” said Uncle Samuel. “No one else cares tuppence about me, so where should I be if I didn’t look after myself?”
In any case their Uncle Percy actually was shut into the drawing-room, and five minutes later the children were sent for.
It had not been intended that Hamlet should enter with them, but he had a way of suddenly appearing from nowhere and joining, unobtrusively, any company that he thought pleasant and amusing. To-day, however, he was anything but unobtrusive; at the sudden shock of that red flaming figure with legs spread wide across the centre of the carpet he drew himself together and barked like a mad thing. Nothing would quiet him, and when Jeremy dragged him into the passage and left him there he still barked and barked and barked, quivering all over, in a perfect frenzy of indignation and horror. He had then to be taken to Jeremy’s bedroom on the top floor and shut in, and there, too, he barked, stopping only once and again for a howl. All this disturbed Uncle Percy’s greeting of the children, but he did not seem to mind. It was obvious at once that nothing could upset him. Jeremy simply could not take his eyes off him, off his brown, almost carroty, hair that stood on end almost like an aureole, off his purple cheeks and flat red nose and thick red neck, off his flaming purple tie, his waistcoat of red and brown squares, his bulging thighs, his tartan socks. This his father’s brother, the brother of his father who sat now, the dim shadow of a shade, pale and apprehensive upon the sofa. The brother of his father! Impossible! How could it be possible?
“Well, kid, what are you staring at?” came suddenly to him. “Know your old uncle again, hey? Think you’ll recognize him if you meet him in the Strand, ho? Know him anywhere, won’t you, ha? A likely kid that of yours, Herbert. Come and talk to your uncle, boy—come and talk to your uncle.”
Jeremy moved across the carpet slowly; he was deeply embarrassed, conscious of the solemn gaze of Aunt Amy, of Helen and Mary. A great red hand fell upon his shoulder. He felt himself suddenly caught up by the slack of his pants, held in mid-air, then dropped, cascades of laughter billowing meanwhile around him.
“That’s a fine boy, hey? That’s what we do to boys in New Zealand to make ’em grow. Want to grow, hey? Be a bigger man than your father, ho? Well, that won’t be difficult, anyway. Never were much of a size, were you, Herbert? Well, boy, go to school?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Like it?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“Bully the boys smaller than yourself?”
“No,” said Jeremy.
“Bet you do. I always did when I was at school. Any good at games?”
“No,” said Jeremy, suddenly to his own surprise determining that he would tell his uncle nothing.
“That’s like your father. Never any good at games, were you, Herbert? Remember when we tossed you in a blanket and your head bumped on the ceiling?”
Mr. Cole gave a sickly smile.
“That was a lark. I can see it as though it were yesterday. With your legs sticking out of your nightdress——”
Luckily at this point tea arrived, and everyone was very busy. Uncle Percy sat down and then was suddenly aware of Helen. She was looking her prettiest in her blue silk; she knew better than to push herself forward. She had waited patiently through all the examination of Jeremy, certain that her time would come. And it did.
“Why, there’s a pretty one!” he jerked his great body upwards. “Why, I hardly saw you just now! And you’re Helen!”
“Yes, uncle.” She smiled that smile so beautifully designed for worth-while relations.
He stared at her with all his eyes. “Why, you’re a beauty, ’pon my soul, you are! Come and sit here beside your old uncle and tell him how all the boys run after you. I’m sure they do if boys are still the same as when I was young. Come along, now, and tell me all about it.”
Helen demurely “came along,” sat beside her uncle and answered his questions with exactly the right mixture of deference and humour. She brought him his tea and his cake, and was the perfect hostess—a much better hostess, as Jeremy noticed, than her mother; and noticing it, hated her for it.
Before twenty-four hours had passed Uncle Percy had made his mark not only upon his own family, but upon Polchester. One walk up the High Street and everyone was asking who was that “big, red-faced man”? But it was not only that he was big and red-faced; he moved with such complete assurance. He was more like our Archdeacon Brandon (although, of course, not nearly so handsome) than anyone who had been to our town for years. He had just the archdeacon’s confidence; it would have been interesting to watch the two men together.
He took charge of the Cole family in simply no time at all. For one thing he smoked all over the house. Uncle Samuel had been hitherto the only smoker in the family household, and it was understood that he smoked only in his studio. But Uncle Percy smoked everywhere—and cigars—and big black terribly-smelling cigars too! He appeared on the very first morning, just as the bell rang for breakfast, clad only in a dressing-gown with a great deal of red chest exposed, and thus confronted Aunt Amy on the way to dining-room prayer. He arrived for breakfast an hour late and ordered fresh tea. He sat in his brother’s study most of the morning, talking and smoking. He forced his way into Uncle Samuel’s studio and laughed at his pictures. (Of course, Uncle Samuel was in London.)
“Call them pictures?” he cried all through luncheon. “Those daubs of paint? Why, I could do better myself if I shut my eyes and splashed coloured ink on the canvas. And I know something about painting, mind you. Wasn’t a bad hand myself at it once. Gave it up because I hadn’t time to waste! Call them pictures!”
For this Aunt Amy almost forgave him his naked chest.
“It’s what I’ve always said,” she remarked, “only no one would listen to me. Samuel’s pictures are folly, folly!”
During the first day both Hamlet and Jeremy were fascinated. Hamlet recovered from his first fit of horror, smelt something in the stockings and knickerbockers in which Uncle Percy now appeared that fascinated him. He followed those stockings all round the house, his nose just a little ahead of his body, and he had to move quickly because Uncle Percy was never still for a moment. Uncle Percy, of course, laughed at Hamlet.
“Call that a dog!” he cried. “I call it a dog-fight!” and laughed immoderately.
But Hamlet bore him no grudge; with his beard projecting and his eyes intent on the pursuit, he followed the stockings. Such a smell! and such calves! Both smell and calves were new in his experience—to lick the one and bite the other! What a glorious ambition!
Jeremy, on his part, was at the beginning dazzled. He had never before seen such superb despotism! For those twenty-four hours he admired it all immensely—the unceasing flow of words, the knowledge of every imaginable quarter of the globe, the confident, unfaltering answer to every possible question, the definite assumption of universal superiority, the absence of every doubt, hesitation or shyness.
Jeremy was as yet no analyser of human nature, but, young as he was, he knew his own shynesses, awkwardnesses and reticences, and for twenty-four hours he did wish he were like his Uncle Percy. He even envied his calves and looked at his own in his bedroom looking-glass to see how they were getting along.
It cannot, however, be denied that every member of the Cole family went that night to bed feeling desperately weary; it was as though they had spent a day with a thunder-storm or sat for twelve hours in the very middle of Niagara Falls, or lodged for an hour or two in the west tower of the cathedral amongst the bells. They were tired. Their bedrooms seemed to them strangely, almost ominously silent.
It was as though they had passed quite suddenly into a deaf and mute world.
On the second day it might have been noticed, had there been anyone here or there especially observant, that Uncle Percy was beginning to be bored. He looked around him for some fitting entertainment and discovered his brother Herbert.
Although it was twenty years since he had seen his brother, it was remarkable with what swiftness he had slipped back into his childhood’s attitude towards him. He had laughed at him then; he laughed at him now with twice his original heartiness because Herbert was a clergyman, and clergymen seemed to Uncle Percy very laughable things. Our colonies promote a directer form of contact between individuals than is our custom at home; it is a true word that there are no “frills” in the colonies. You let a man know what you think of him for good or ill without any disguise. Uncle Percy let his brother know what he thought of him at once, and he let everyone else know too—and this was, for his brother, a very painful experience.
The Rev. Herbert Cole had been brought up in seclusion. People had taken from the first trouble that his feelings should not be hurt, and when it was understood that he was “destined for the ministry,” a mysterious veil had been drawn in order that for the rest of his days he never should see things as they were. No one, for twenty long years, had been rude to him. If he wanted to be angry he was angry; if things were wrong he said so; if he felt ill he said so; if he had a headache he said so; and if he felt well he didn’t say so quite as often as he might have done. He believed himself to be a good honest God-fearing man, and on the whole he was so. But he did not know what he would be were anyone rude to him; he did not know until Percy came to stay with him. He had, of course, disliked Percy when they were small boys together, but that was so long ago that he had forgotten all about it; and during the first twenty-four hours he put everything down to Percy’s high animal spirits and delight at being home again and pleasure at being with his relations.
It was not until luncheon on the second day that he began to realize what was happening. Over the chops he said something in his well-known definite authoritative manner about “the Church not standing it, and the sooner those infidels in Africa realized it the better.”
“Bosh!” said Uncle Percy. “Bosh!”
“My dear Percy . . .” began Mr. Cole.
“Don’t ‘dear Percy’ me,” came from the other end of the table. “I say it’s bosh! What do you know of Africa or of the Church for the matter of that? You’ve never been outside this piffling little town for twenty years and wouldn’t have noticed anything if you had. That’s the worst of you miserable parsons—never seeing anything of life or the world, and then laying down the law as though you were God Almighty. It fair makes me sick! But you were always like that, Herbert. Even as a boy you’d hide behind some woman’s skirts and then lay claim to someone else’s actions. Don’t you talk about Africa, Herbert. You know nothing about it whatever. Here, Helen, my girl, pass up the potatoes!”
Had a large iron thunderbolt crashed through the ceiling and broken the room to pieces consternation could not have been more general. Mr. Cole at first simply did not believe the evidence of his ears, then as it slowly dawned upon him that his brother had really said these things, and before a mixed company (Emily was at that moment handing round the cabbage), a dull pink flush stole slowly over his cheeks and ended in fiery crimson at the tips of his ears.
Mrs. Cole and Amy were, of course, devastated, but dreadful was the effect upon the children. Three pairs of eyes turned instantly towards Mr. Cole and then hurriedly withdrew. Mary attacked once again the bone of her chop, already sufficiently cleaned. Helen gazed at her uncle, her eyes full of a lovely investigating interest. Jeremy stared at the tablecloth. He himself could not at once realize what had occurred. He had been accustomed for so long now to hear his father speak with authority upon every conceivable topic and remain uncontradicted. Even when visitors came—and they were so often curates—his opinions were generally confirmed with a “Quite so,” or “Is that so indeed?” or “Yes, yes; quite.” His first interest now was to see how his father would reply to this attack. They all waited.
Mr. Cole feebly smiled.
“Tee. Tee. Violent as ever, Percy. I dare say you’re correct. Of course, I never was in Africa.”
Capitulation! Complete capitulation! Jeremy’s cheeks burnt hot with family shame. Was nobody going to stand up to the attack? Were they to allow it to pass like that? They were apparently. The subject was changed. Bread-and-butter pudding arrived. The world went on.
Uncle Percy himself had no conception that anything unusual had occurred. He had been shouting people down and bullying them for years. Something subconsciously told him that his brother was going to be easy game; perhaps deep down in that mighty chest of his something chuckled; and that was all.
But for Jeremy that was not all. He went up to his room and considered the matter. Readers of this chronicle and the one that preceded it will be aware that his relations with his father had not been altogether happy ones. He had not quite understood his father, and his father had not quite understood him, but he had always felt awe of his father and had cherished the belief that he must be infinitely wise. Uncle Samuel was wise too, but in quite another way. Uncle Samuel was closer, far closer, and he could talk intimately to him about every sort of thing, but people laughed at Uncle Samuel quite openly and said he was no good, and Uncle Samuel himself confessed this.
His father had been remote, august, Olympian. It was true that last Christmas he had hit his father and tried to bite him; but that had been in a fit of rage that was madness, neither more nor less. When you were mad you might do anything. His father had been august—but now?
Jeremy dared not look back over the luncheon scene, dared not face once again the nervous flush, the silly laugh, the feeble retort. His father was a coward and the honour of the family was at stake.
After that luncheon outburst, however, the situation moved so swiftly that it went far beyond poor Jeremy. I don’t suppose that Uncle Percy was aware of anything very much save his own happiness and comfort, but to any outsider it would have seemed that he now gave up the whole of his time and energy to baiting his brother. He was not a bad man nor deliberately unkind, but he loved to have someone to tease, as the few women for whom in his life he had cared had discovered in time to save themselves from marrying him.
I say that he was unconscious of what he was doing; and so in a fashion was the Cole family unconscious. That is, Mrs. Cole and Aunt Amy and the children realized that Uncle Percy was being rude, but they did not realize that the work of years was, in a few days, being completely undone. So used to custom and tradition are we that in our daily life we will accept almost any figure in the condition in which we receive it and then proceed to add our own little “story” to the structure already presented to us.
Mrs. Cole did not wish, Aunt Amy even did not wish, to see their Herbert “a fool”; very much better for their daily life and happiness that he should not be one, and yet in a short two days that was what he was, so that Aunt Amy, without realizing it, spoke sharply to him and Mrs. Cole disagreed with him about the weather prospects. Of course the women did their best to stand up for him and defend him in his weak attempts at resistance, but, after all, Percy was a visitor and wouldn’t be here for long, and “hadn’t been home for such a time that naturally his way of looking at things couldn’t be quite ours,” and then at Sunday supper they were forced to laugh against their will, but “one was glad of anything by Sunday evening to make things a little bright,” at Percy’s account of Herbert when he was a boy tumbling out of the wagonette on a picnic and nobody missing him until they got home that night. It was funny as Percy told it. Poor Herbert! running after the wagonette and shouting and nobody noticing, and then losing himself and not getting home until midnight. Aunt Amy was forced to laugh until she cried, and even Mrs. Cole, regarding her husband with tender affection, said: “So like you, Herbert, dear, not to ask somebody the way!”
The only member of the family who did not see something funny in all of this was Jeremy. He was conscious only of his father. He was aware exactly of how he was feeling. He so thoroughly himself detested being laughed at, especially when it was two to one—and now it was about five to one! As he watched his father’s white face with the slow flushes rising and falling, the pale nervous eyes wandering in their gaze from place to place, the expression of bewilderment as Uncle Percy’s loud tones surged up to him, submerged him and then slowly withdrew, Jeremy was reminded of his own first evening at Thompson’s, when in the dormitory he had been suddenly delivered up to a wild troop of savages who knew neither law nor courtesy. As it had been with him then, so was it with his father now.
Uncle Percy had all the monotony of the unimaginative. One idea was enough for him, and his idea just now was to take it out of “old Herbert.” I can only repeat that he did not mean it unkindly; he thought that he was being vastly amusing for the benefit of those poor dull women who never had any fun from one year’s end to the other. His verdict, after he had left him and gone on somewhere else, would be: “Well, I gave those poor mugs a merry week. Hard work, but one must do one’s best.”
Meanwhile Jeremy watched his father.
Soon he saw his father hurrying off, book under his arm, umbrella in hand.
“Where are you going, father?”
“To the Greybank Schools.”
“I’ll walk up with you.”
“Well, hurry, then. I haven’t much time.”
He did not reveal his surprise. It was the first time in all their lives together that Jeremy had suggested going with him anywhere. They set off together. It was a fine day of early autumn, red mist and faint blue sky, leaves thick upon the ground, the air peppermint in the mouth. Jeremy had to walk fast to keep pace with his father’s long strides.
Mr. Cole suddenly said:
“I’ve got a headache—a bad headache. It’s better out of the house than in.”
In every way it was better, as Jeremy knew. During luncheon, just concluded, Uncle Percy had roared with laughter over his memories of what Herbert was like when, as a small boy, in the middle of the night he thought he heard a burglar.
“When does Uncle Percy go, father?”
“Well—I thought he was going the day after to-morrow—but now he thinks he’ll stay another week.”
“I don’t like Uncle Percy, father,” Jeremy panted a little with his efforts to keep up.
“You mustn’t say that, my boy.”
“It doesn’t matter if I say it to you. Was he like he is now when he was young?”
“Yes; very much. But you must remember that it was a long time ago. I don’t quite clearly recollect my childhood. Nor, I think—does he his.” Mr. Cole coughed.
“We never had very much in common as boys,” he said suddenly.
“He doesn’t know much about England, does he, father? He says the most awfully silly things.”
“You mustn’t say that about your uncle, my boy.”
“No, but he does. Why, he hasn’t been anywhere in England—not even to Drymouth.”
“No, my boy, he hasn’t. You see, when people have lived in the colonies all their lives they get a little—ahem—out of touch.”
“Yes, father.”
Delightful to think of Uncle Percy being out of touch. Quite a savage, a barbarian. Father and son laughed a little together.
“I bet the boys at Thompson’s would laugh at him,” said Jeremy, “like anything.”
“One has to be polite,” said Mr. Cole. “After all, he is our guest. Don’t forget that, my boy.”
“No, father. . . . I bet he was frightened at the burglar, father; more than you were.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Jeremy, he was. I remember the incident perfectly. Percy hid in a cupboard. He’s forgotten that, I’ve no doubt.”
Father and son laughed.
“It would have to be a very large cupboard, father,” said Jeremy; and then they laughed again.
Here they were at the schools, where Mr. Cole was going to teach the little girls their Catechism. They parted, and Jeremy ran all the way down the hill home.