I
That winter of Jeremy's eighth birthday was famous for its snow. Glebeshire has never yielded to the wishes of its children in the matter of snowy Christmases, and Polchester has the reputation of muggy warmth and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions were fulfilled in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies were treated to a present of snow on so fine a scale that certainly for the rest of their days they will go about saying: “Ah, you should see the winters we used to have when we were children...”
The snow began on the very day after Jeremy's birthday, coming down doubtfully, slowly, little grey flakes against a grey sky, then sparkling white, then vanishing flashes of moisture on a wet, unsympathetic soil. That day the snow did not lie; and for a week it did not come again; then with a whirl it seized the land, and for two days and nights did not loosen its grip. From the nursery windows the children watched it, their noses making little rings on the window-pane, their delighted eyes snatching fascinating glimpses of figures tossed through the storm, cabs beating their way, the rabbit-skin man, the milkman, the postman, brave adventurers all, fighting, as it seemed, for their very lives.
For two days the children did not leave the house, and the natural result of that was that on the second afternoon tempers were, like so many dogs, straining, tugging, pulling at their chains.
It could not be denied that Jeremy had been tiresome to everyone since the afternoon when he had heard the news of his going to school next September. It had seemed to him a tremendous event, the Beginning of the End. To the others, who lived in the immediate present, it was a crisis so remote as scarcely to count at all. Mary would have liked to be sentimental about it, but from this she was sternly prevented. There was then nothing more to be said...
Jeremy was suddenly isolated from them all. His destiny was peculiar. They were girls, he was a boy. They understood neither his fears nor his ambitions; he needed terribly a companion. The snow, shutting them in, laughed at their struggles against monotony. The nursery clock struck three and they realised that two whole hours must pass before the next meal. Mary, her nose red from pressing on the window-pane, her eyes gazing through her huge spectacles wistfully at Jeremy, longed to suggest that she should read aloud to him. She knew that he hated it; she pretended to herself that she did not know.
Jeremy stared desperately at Helen who was sitting, dignified and collected, in the wicker chair hemming a minute handkerchief.
“We might play Pirates,” Jeremy said with a little cough, the better to secure her attention. There was no answer.
“Or there's the hut in the wood—if anyone likes it better,” he added politely. He did not know what was the matter. Had the Jampot not told him about school he would at this very moment be playing most happily with his village. It spread out there before him on the nursery floor, the Noah family engaged upon tea in the orchard, the butcher staring with fixed gaze from the door of his shop, three cows and a sheep absorbed in the architecture of the church.
He sighed, then said again: “Perhaps Pirates would be better.”
Still Helen did not reply. He abandoned the attempted control of his passions.
“It's very rude,” he said, “not to answer when gentlemen speak to you.”
“I don't see any gentlemen,” answered Helen quietly, without raising her eyes, which was, as she knew, a provoking habit.
“Yes, you do,” almost screamed Jeremy. “I'm one.”
“You're not,” continued Helen; “you're only eight. Gentlemen must be over twenty like Father or Mr. Jellybrand.”
“I hate Mr. Jellybrand and I hate you,” replied Jeremy.
“I don't care,” said Helen.
“Yes, you do,” said Jeremy, then suddenly, as though even a good quarrel were not worth while on this heavily burdened afternoon, he said gently: “You might play Pirates, Helen. You can be Sir Roger.”
“I've got this to finish.”
“It's a dirty old thing,” continued Jeremy, pursuing an argument, “and it'll be dirtier soon, and the Jampot says you do all the stitches wrong. I wish I was at school.”
“I wish you were,” said Helen.
There was a pause after this. Jeremy went sadly back to his window-seat. Mary felt that her moment had arrived. Sniffing, as was her habit when she wanted something very badly, she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper:
“It would be fun, wouldn't it, perhaps if I read something, Jeremy?”
Jeremy was a gentleman, although he was only eight. He looked at her and saw behind the spectacles eyes beseeching his permission.
“Well, it wouldn't be much fun,” he said, “but it's all beastly this afternoon, anyway.”
“Can I sit on the window too?” asked Mary.
“Not too close, because it tickles my ear, but you can if you like.”
She hurried across to the bookshelf. “There's 'Stumps' and 'Rags and Tatters,' and 'Engel the Fearless,' and 'Herr Baby' and 'Alice' and—”
“'Alice' is best,” said Jeremy, sighing. “You know it better than the others.” He curled himself into a corner of the window-seat. From his position there he had a fine view. Immediately below him was the garden, white and grey under the grey sky, the broken fountain standing up like a snow man in the middle of it. The snow had ceased to fall and a great stillness held the world.
Beyond the little iron gate of the garden that always sneezed “Tishoo” when you closed it, was the top of Orange Street; then down the hill on the right was the tower of his father's church; exactly opposite the gate was the road that led to the Orchards, and on the right of that was the Polchester High School for Young Ladies, held in great contempt by Jeremy, the more that Helen would shortly be a day-boarder there, would scream with the other girls, and, worst of all, would soon be seen walking with her arm round another girl's neck, chattering and eating sweets...
The whole world seemed deserted. No colour, no movement, no sound. He sighed once more—“I'd like to eat jam and jam—lots of it,” he thought. “It would be fun to be sick.”
Mary arrived and swung herself up on to the window-seat.
“It's the 'Looking Glass' one. I hope you don't mind,” she said apprehensively.
“Oh, it's all right,” he allowed. He flung a glance back to the lighted nursery. It seemed by contrast with that grey world outside to blaze with colour; the red-painted ships on the wallpaper, the bright lights and shadows of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the salmon fronts of the doll's house, the green and red of the village on the floor with the flowery trees, the blue tablecloth, the shining brass coal-scuttle all alive and sparkling in the flames and shadows of the fire, caught and held by the fine gold of the higher fender. Beyond that dead white—soon it would be dark, the curtains would be drawn, and still there would be nothing to do. He sighed again.
“It's a nice bit about the shop,” said Mary. Jeremy said nothing, so she began. She started at a run:
“She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have '“—sniff, sniff—“,' sud-den-ly suddenly wra-wra-w-r-a-p-p-e-d wrapped—'”
“Wrapped?” asked Jeremy.
“I don't know,” said Mary, rubbing her nose, “what it means, but perhaps we'll see presently, herself up in w-o-o-l wool. 'Alice rubbed her eyes and looked again she couldn't—'”
“'Looked again she couldn't'?” asked Jeremy. “It should be, 'she couldn't look again.'”
“Oh, there's a stop,” said Mary. “I didn't see. After 'again' there's a stop. 'She couldn't make out what had happened at all—'”
“I can't either,” said Jeremy crossly. “It would be better perhaps if I read it myself.”
“It will be all right in a minute,” said Mary confidently. “'Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a ship that was sitting on the counter?'” she finished with a run.
“A what?” asked Jeremy.
“A ship—”
“A ship! How could it sit on a counter?” he asked.
“Oh no, it's a sheep. How silly I am!” Mary exclaimed.
“You do read badly,” he agreed frankly. “I never can understand nothing.” And it was at that very moment that he saw the Dog.
He had been staring down into the garden with a gaze half abstracted, half speculative, listening with one ear to Mary, with the other to the stir of the fire, the heavy beat of the clock and the rustlings of Martha the canary.
He watched the snowy expanse of garden, the black gate, the road beyond. A vast wave of pale grey light, the herald of approaching dusk, swept the horizon, the snowy roofs, the streets, and Jeremy felt some contact with the strange air, the mysterious omens that the first snows of the winter spread about the land. He watched as though he were waiting for something to happen.
The creature came up very slowly over the crest of Orange Street. No one else was in sight, no cart, no horse, no weather-beaten wayfarer. At first the dog was only a little black smudge against the snow; then, as he arrived at the Coles' garden-gate, Jeremy could see him very distinctly. He was, it appeared, quite alone; he had been, it was evident, badly beaten by the storm. Intended by nature to be a rough and hairy dog, he now appeared before God and men a shivering battered creature, dripping and wind-tossed, bedraggled and bewildered. And yet, even in that first distant glimpse, Jeremy discerned a fine independence. He was a short stumpy dog, in no way designed for dignified attitudes and patronising superiority; nevertheless, as he now wandered slowly up the street, his nose was in the air and he said to the whole world: “The storm may have done its best to defeat me—it has failed. I am as I was. I ask charity of no man. I know what is due to me.”
It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot, and the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions had been resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation for sulkiness had been soundly established with all his circle.
Mary was reading...! “'an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!'”
He touched her arm and whispered:
“I say, Mary, stop a minute—look at that dog down there.”
They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the gate; it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very slowly but with real dignity continued its way up the road.
“Poor thing,” said Jeremy. “It IS in a mess.” Then to their astonishment the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again as though it had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as though it were not wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the gate.
“Oh,” said Mary and Jeremy together.
“It's like Mother,” said Jeremy, “when she's going to see someone and isn't sure whether it's the right house.”
Then, most marvellous of unexpected climaxes, the dog suddenly began to squeeze itself between the bottom bar of the gate and the ground. The interval was fortunately a large one; a moment later the animal was in the Coles' garden.
The motives that led Jeremy to behave as he did are uncertain. It may have been something to do with the general boredom of the afternoon, it may have been that he felt pity for the bedraggled aspect of the animal—most probable reason of all, was that devil-may-care independence flung up from the road, as it were, expressly at himself.
The dog obviously did not feel any great respect for the Cole household. He wandered about the garden, sniffing and smelling exactly as though the whole place belonged to him, and a ridiculous stump of tail, unsubdued by the weather, gave him the ludicrous dignity of a Malvolio.
“I'm going down,” whispered Jeremy, flinging a cautious glance at Helen who was absorbed in her sewing.
Mary's eyes grew wide with horror and admiration. “You're not going out,” she whispered. “In the snow. Oh, Jeremy. They WILL be angry.”
“I don't care,” whispered Jeremy back again. “They can be.”
Indeed, before Mary's frightened whisper he had not intended to do more than creep down into the pantry and watch the dog at close range; now it was as though Mary had challenged him. He knew that it was the most wicked thing that he could do—to go out into the snow without a coat and in his slippers. He might even, according to Aunt Amy, die of it, but as death at present meant no more to him than a position of importance and a quantity of red-currant jelly and chicken, THAT prospect did not deter him. He left the room so quietly that Helen did not even lift her eyes.
Then upon the landing he waited and listened. The house had all the lighted trembling dusk of the snowy afternoon; there was no sound save the ticking of the clocks. He might come upon the Jampot at any moment, but this was just the hour when she liked to drink her cup of tea in the kitchen; he knew from deep and constant study every movement of her day. Fortune favoured him. He reached without trouble the little dark corkscrew servants' staircase. Down this he crept, and found himself beside the little gardener's door. Although here there was only snow-lit dusk, he felt for the handle of the lock, found it, turned it, and was, at once, over the steps, into the garden.
Here, with a vengeance, he felt the full romance and danger of his enterprise. It was horribly cold; he had been in the nursery for two whole days, wrapped up and warm, and now the snowy world seemed to leap up at him and drag him down as though into an icy well. Mysterious shadows hovered over the garden; the fountain pointed darkly against the sky, and he could feel from the feathery touches upon his face that the snow had begun to fall again.
He moved forward a few steps; the house was so dark behind him, the world so dim and uncertain in front of him, that for a moment his heart failed him. He might have to search the whole garden for the dog.
Then he heard a sniff, felt something wet against his leg—he had almost stepped upon the animal. He bent down and stroked its wet coat. The dog stood quite still, then moved forward towards the house, sniffed at the steps, at last walked calmly through the open door as though the house belonged to him. Jeremy followed, closed the door behind him; then there they were in the little dark passage with the boy's heart beating like a drum, his teeth chattering, and a terrible temptation to sneeze hovering around him. Let him reach the nursery and establish the animal there and all might be well, but let them be discovered, cold and shivering, in the passage, and out the dog would be flung. He knew so exactly what would happen. He could hear the voices in the kitchen. He knew that they were sitting warm there by the fire, but that at any moment Jampot might think good to climb the stairs and see “what mischief they children were up to.” Everything depended upon the dog. Did he bark or whine, out into the night he must go again, probably to die in the cold. But Jeremy, the least sentimental of that most sentimental race the English, was too intent upon his threatened sneeze to pay much attention to these awful possibilities.
He took off his slippers and began to climb the stairs, the dog close behind him, very grave and dignified, in spite of the little trail of snow and water that he left in his track. The nursery door was reached, pushed softly open, and the startled gaze of Mary and Helen fell wide-eyed upon the adventurer and his prize.
The dog went directly to the fire; there, sitting in the very middle of the golden cockatoos on the Turkey rug, he began to lick himself. He did this by sitting very square on three legs and spreading out the fourth stiff and erect, as though it had been not a leg at all but something of wood or iron. The melted snow poured off him, making a fine little pool about the golden cockatoos. He must have been a strange-looking animal at any time, being built quite square like a toy dog, with a great deal of hair, very short legs, and a thick stubborn neck; his eyes were brown, and now could be seen very clearly because the hair that usually covered them was plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs, a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his great-great-great-grandson “Jacob,” described in the Chronicles of the Beaminster Family.
The children meanwhile gazed, and for a long time no one said a word. Then Helen said: “Father WILL be angry.”
But she did not mean it. The three were, by the entrance of the dog, instantly united into an offensive and defensive alliance. They knew well that shortly an attack from the Outside World must be delivered, and without a word spoken or a look exchanged they were agreed to defend both themselves and the dog with all the strength in their power. They had always wanted a dog; they had been prevented by the stupid and selfish arguments of uncomprehending elders.
Now this dog was here; they would keep him.
“Oh, he's perfectly sweet,” suddenly said Helen.
The dog paused for a moment from his ablutions, raised his eyes, and regarded her with a look of cold contempt, then returned to his task.
“Don't be so silly,” said Jeremy. “You know you always hate it when Aunt Amy says things like that about you.”
“Did Nurse see?” asked Mary.
“No, she didn't,” said Jeremy; “but she'll be up in a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Mary her mouth wide open.
“Do? Keep him, of course,” said Jeremy stoutly; at the same time his heart a little failed him as he saw the pool of the water slowly spreading and embracing one cockatoo after another in its ruinous flood.
“We ought to wipe him with a towel,” said Jeremy; “if we could get him dry before Nurse comes up she mightn't say so much.”
But alas, it was too late for any towel; the door opened, and the Jampot entered, humming a hymn, very cheerful and rosy from the kitchen fire and an abundant series of chronicles of human failings and misfortunes. The hymn ceased abruptly. She stayed there where she was, “frozen into an image,” as she afterwards described it. She also said: “You could 'ave knocked me down with a feather.”
The dog did not look at her, but crocked under him the leg that had been stiff like a ramrod and spread out another. The children did not speak.
“Well!” For a moment words failed her; then she began, her hands spread out as though she was addressing a Suffragette meeting in Trafalgar Square. (She knew, happy woman, nothing of Suffragettes.) “Of all the things, and it's you, Master Jeremy, that 'as done it, as anyone might have guessed by the way you've been be'aving this last fortnight, and what's come over you is more nor I nor anyone else can tell, which I was saying only yesterday to your mother that it's more than one body and pair of hands is up to the managing of now you've got so wild and wicked; and wherever from did you get the dirty animal dropping water all over the nursery carpet and smelling awful, I'll be bound, which anyone can see that's got eyes, and you'd know what your father will do to you when he knows of it, and so he shall, as sure as my name is Lizzie Preston.... Go on out, you ugly, dirty animal-ough, you 'orrible creature you. I'll—”
But her advance was stopped. Jeremy stopped it. Standing in front of the dog, his short thick legs spread defiantly apart, his fists clenched, he almost shouted:
“You shan't touch him.... No, you shan't. I don't care. He shan't go out again and die. You're a cruel, wicked woman.”
The Jampot gasped. Never, no, never in all her long nursing experience had she been so defied, so insulted.
Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show.
She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked. She began: “The moment your mother comes I give her notice. To think that all these years I've slaved and slaved only to be told such things by a boy as—”
Then a very dramatic thing occurred. The door opened, just as it might in the third act of a play by M. Sardou, and revealed the smiling faces of Mrs. Cole, Miss Amy Trefusis and the Rev. William Jellybrand, Senior Curate of St. James's, Orange Street.
Mr. Jellybrand had arrived, as he very often did, to tea. He had expressed a desire, as he very often did, to see the “dear children.” Mrs. Cole, liking to show her children to visitors, even to such regular and ordinary ones as Mr. Jellybrand, at once was eager to gratify his desire.
“We'll catch them just before their tea,” she said happily.
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of our Press and stage to caricature our curates; this tendency I would willingly avoid. It should be easy enough to do, as I am writing about Polchester, a town that simply abounds—and also abounded thirty years ago—in curates of the most splendid and manly type. But, unfortunately, Mr. Jellybrand was not one of these. I, myself, remember him very well, and can see him now flinging his thin, black, and—as it seemed to me then—gigantic figure up Orange Street, his coat flapping behind him, his enormous boots flapping in front of him, and his huge hands flapping on each side of him like a huge gesticulating crow.
He had, the Polchester people who liked him said, “a rich voice.” The others who did not like him called him “an affected ass.” He ran up and down the scale like this:
______________________________________________________________
Mrs.
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dear
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My
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Cole.
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and his blue cheeks looked colder than any iceberg. But then I must confess that I am prejudiced. I did not like him; no children did.
The Cole children hated him. Jeremy because he had damp hands, Helen because he never looked at her, Mary because he once said to her, “Little girls must play as well as work, you know.” He always talked down to us as though we were beings of another and inferior planet. He called it, “Getting on with the little ones.” No, he was not popular with us.
He stood on this particular and dramatic occasion in front of the group in the doorway and stared—as well he might. Unfortunately the situation, already bad enough, was aggravated by this dark prominence of Mr. Jellybrand. It cannot be found in any chronicles that Mr. Jellybrand and the dog had met before; it is simply a fact that the dog, raising his eyes at the opening of the door and catching sight of the black-coated figure, forgot instantly his toilet, rose dripping from his rug, and advanced growling, his lips back, his ears out, his tail erect, towards the door. Then everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed placidity, said: “Nurse... Nurse...” Jeremy cried: “It's all right, he wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly.” Mary and Helen together moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be heard in a confused wail: “Not me, Mum... Wickedest boy... better give notice... as never listens... dog... dog...”
The animal, however, showed himself now, as at that first earlier view of him, indifferent to his surroundings. He continued his advance and then, being only a fraction of an inch from Mr. Jellybrand's tempting gleaming black trousers, he stopped, crouched like a tiger, and with teeth still bared continued his kettle-like reverberations. Aunt Amy, who hated dogs, loved Mr. Jellybrand, and was not in the least sentimental when her personal safety was in danger, cried in a shrill voice: “But take it away. Take it away. Alice, tell him. It's going to bite Mr. Jellybrand.”
The dog raised one eye from his dreamy contemplation of the trousers and glanced at Aunt Amy; from that moment may be dated a feud which death only concluded. This dog was not a forgetful dog.
Jeremy advanced. “It's all right,” he cried scornfully. “He wouldn't bite anything.” He bent down, took the animal by the scruff of the neck, and proceeded to lead it back to the fire. The animal went without a moment's hesitation; it would be too much to say that it exchanged a wink with Jeremy, but something certainly passed between them. Back again on the Turkey rug he became master of the situation. He did the only thing possible: he disregarded entirely the general company and addressed himself to the only person of ultimate importance—namely, Mrs. Cole. He lay down on all fours, looked up directly into her face, bared his teeth this time in a smile and not in a growl, and wagged his farcical tail.
Mrs. Cole's psychology was of the simplest: if you were nice to her she would do anything for you, but in spite of all her placidity she was sometimes hurt in her most sensitive places. These wounds she never displayed, and no one ever knew of them, and indeed they passed very quickly—but there they occasionally were. Now on what slender circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings at the Rectory; she liked the cheerful chatter, the hospitality, the gentle scandal and her own position as hostess.
She did not like—she never liked—Miss Maple, who was always pushing herself forward, criticising and back-biting. Mr. Jellybrand should not have settled this without consulting her. He had taken it for granted that she would agree. He had said: “I agreed with Miss Maple that it would be better to have it at her house. I'm sure you will think as I do.” Why should he be sure? Was he not forgetting his position a little?...
Kindest woman in the world, she had seen with a strange un-Christian pleasure the dog's advance upon the black trousers. Then Mr. Jellybrand had been obviously afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she too had been afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she was not mistress in her house, that she could be browbeaten by her sister and her nurse.
She smiled at him. “There's no reason to be afraid, Mr. Jellybrand. ... He's such a little dog.”
Then the dog smiled at her.
“Poor little thing,” she said. “He must have nearly died in the snow.”
Thus Miss Maple, bitterest of spinsters, influenced, all unwitting, the lives not only of a dog and a curate, but of the entire Cole family, and through them, of endless generations both of dogs and men as yet unborn. Miss Maple, sitting in her little yellow-curtained parlour drinking, in jaundiced contentment, her afternoon's cup of tea, was, of course, unaware of this. A good thing that she was unaware—she was quite conceited enough already.
After that smiling judgment of Mrs. Cole's, affairs were quickly settled.
“Of course it can only be for the night, children. Father will arrange something in the morning. Poor little thing. Where did you find him?”
“We saw him from the window,” said Jeremy quickly, “and he was shivering like anything, so we called him in to warm him.”
“My dear Alice, you surely don't mean—” began Aunt Amy, and the Jampot said: “I really think, Mum-,” and Mr. Jellybrand, in his rich voice, murmured: “Is it quite wise, dear Mrs. Cole, do you think?”
With thoughts of Miss Maple she smiled upon them all.
“Oh, for one night, I think we can manage. He seems a clean little dog, and really we can't turn him out into the snow at once. It would be too cruel. But mind, children, it's only for one night. He looks a good little dog.”
When the “quality” had departed, Jeremy's mind was in a confused condition of horror and delight. Such a victory as he had won over the Jampot, a victory that was a further stage in the fight for independence begun on his birthday, might have very awful qualities. There would begin now one of the Jampot's sulks—moods well known to the Cole family, and lasting from a day to a week, according to the gravity of the offence. Yes, they had already begun. There she sat in her chair by the fire, sewing, sewing, her fat, roly-poly face carved into a parody of deep displeasure. Life would be very unpleasant now. No tops of eggs, no marmalade on toast, no skins of milk, no stories of “when I was a young girl,” no sitting up five minutes “later,” no stopping in the market-place for a talk with the banana woman—only stern insistence on every detail of daily life; swift judgment were anything left undone or done wrong.
Jeremy sighed; yes, it would be horrid and, for the sake of the world in general, which meant Mary and Helen, he must see what a little diplomacy would do. Kneeling down by the dog, he looked up into her face with the gaze of ingenuous innocence.
“You wouldn't have wanted the poor little dog to have died in the snow, would you, Nurse?... It might, you know. It won't be any trouble, I expect—”
There was no reply. He could hear Mary and Helen drawing in their breaths with excited attention.
“Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older—and we are older now.”
Still no word.
“We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember once you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you cried when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how your mother said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and sent it away, and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said that p'r'aps we'll have one one day?—and now we've got one.”
He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral tones:
“Either it goes, or I go.”
The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go?... They could hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot go?
“Oh, Nurse, would you really?” whispered Mary. This innocent remark of Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than was, perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of colour rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have said is uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said; “I hear you have a dog.”
The Jampot rose, as good manners demanded, but said nothing.
“Where is the creature?” he asked.
The new addition to the Cole family had finished his washing; the blazing fire had almost dried him, and his hair stuck out now from his body in little stiff prickles, hedgehog fashion, giving him a truly original appearance. His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador, and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed his dignity.
“There he is,” said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of delight, at the Jampot. “Isn't he lovely?”
“Lovely. My word!” Uncle Samuel's smile broadened. “He's about the most hideous mongrel it's ever been my lot to set eyes on. But he has his points. He despises you all, I'm glad to see.”
Jeremy, as usual with Uncle Samuel, was uncertain as to his sincerity.
“He looks a bit funny just now,” he explained. “He's been drying on the rug. He'll be all right soon. He wanted to bite Mr. Jellybrand. It was funny. Mr. Jellybrand was frightened as anything.”
“Yes, that must have been delightful,” agreed Uncle Samuel. “What's his name?”
“We haven't given him one yet. Wouldn't you think of one, Uncle Samuel?”
The uncle considered the dog. The dog, with grave and scornful eyes, considered the uncle.
“Well, if you really ask me,” said that gentleman, “if you name him by his character I should say Hamlet would be as good as anything.”
“What's Hamlet?” asked Jeremy.
“He isn't anything just now. But he was a prince who Was unhappy because he thought so much about himself.”
“Hamlet'll do,” said Jeremy comfortably. “I've never heard of a dog called that, but it's easy to say.”
“Well, I must go,” said Uncle Samuel, making one of his usual sudden departures. “Glad to have seen the animal. Good-bye.”
He vanished.
“Hamlet,” repeated Jeremy thoughtfully. “I wonder whether he'll like that-”
His attention, however, was caught by the Jampot's sudden outburst.
“All of them,” she cried, “supporting you in your wickedness and disobedience. I won't 'ave it nor endure it not a minute longer. They can 'ave my notice this moment, and I won't take it back, not if they ask me on their bended knees—no, I won't—and that's straight.”
For an instant she frowned upon them all—then she was gone, the door banging after her.
They gazed at one another.
There was a dreadful silence. Once Mary whispered: “Suppose she really does.”
Hamlet only was unmoved.
Ten minutes later, Rose, the housemaid, entered with the tea-things. For a little she was silent. Then the three faces raised to hers compelled her confidence.
“Nurse has been and given notice,” she said, “and the Missis has taken it. She's going at the end of the month. She's crying now in the kitchen.”
They were alone again. Mary and Helen looked at Jeremy as though waiting to follow his lead. He did not know what to say. There was Tragedy, there was Victory, there was Remorse, there was Triumph. He was sorry, he was glad. His eyes fell upon Hamlet, who was now stretched out upon the rug, his nose between his paws, fast asleep.
Then he looked at his sisters.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it's awfully nice to have a dog—anyway.”
Such is the true and faithful account of Hamlet's entrance into the train of the Coles.
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