Jeremy

by Hugh Walpole

But I think that none of us adored the sea as Jeremy did. From that first moment when, as a small baby, he had been held up in Rafiel Cove to see the tops of the waves catch the morning light as they rolled over to shore, he had adored it. He had never felt any fear of it; he had been able to swim since he could remember, and he simply lived for those days at the end of July when they would all, in a frantic hurry and confusion, take the train for Rafiel and arrive at Cow Farm in the evening, with the roar of the sea coming across the quiet fields to mingle with the lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep. He had in his bedroom a wonderful collection of dusty and sticky sea-shells, and these he would turn over and over, letting them run through his fingers as a miner counts his gold.

Let him catch the faintest glimpse of a shadow of a sailor in the street and he was after it, and he had once, when he was only four or five, been caught by the terrified Jampot, only just in time, walking away confidently down the market-place, his hand in the huge grasp of a villainous looking mariner. He was exceedingly happy in his home, but he did often wonder whether he would not run away to sea; of course, he was going to be a sailor, but it seemed so long to wait until he was thirteen or fourteen, and there was the sea all the time rolling in and out and inviting him to come.

Mrs. Cole warned Miss Jones of this taste of Jeremy's: “Never let him speak to a sailor, Miss Jones. There are some horrible men in the town, and Jeremy simply is not to be trusted when sailors are concerned.”

Miss Jones, however, could not be always on her guard, and Fate is stronger than any governess...

Early in February there came one of those hints of spring that in Glebeshire more than in any other place in the world thrill and stir the heart. Generally they give very little in actual reward and are followed by weeks of hail and sleet and wind, but for that reason alone their burning promise is beyond all other promises beguiling. Jeremy got up one morning to feel that somewhere behind the thick wet mists of the early hours there was a blazing sun. After breakfast, opening the window and leaning out, he could see the leaves of the garden still shining with their early glitter and the earth channelled into fissures and breaks, dark and hard under the silver-threaded frost; beneath the rind of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer the call of the sun above it. Far down the road towards the Orchards a dim veil of gold was spreading behind the walls of mist; the sparrows on the almond tree near his window chattered like the girls of the High School, and blue shadows stole into the dim grey sky, just as light breaks upon an early morning sea; the air was warm behind the outer wall of the frosty morning, and the faint gold of the first crocus beneath the garden wall near the pantry door, where always the first crocuses came, caught his eye. Even as he watched the sun burst the mist, the trees changed from dim grey to sharp black, the blue flooded the sky, and the Cathedral beyond the trees shone like a house of crystal.

All this meant spring, and spring meant hunting for snowdrops in the Meads. Jeremy informed Miss Jones, and Miss Jones was, of course, agreeable. They would walk that way after luncheon.

The Meads fall in a broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank. Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils first, and the primroses afterwards, are so thick that, from the Cathedral walls, the Rope Walk looks as though it wandered between pools and lakes of gold. In the Orchards on the hill also they run like rivers.

Upon this afternoon there were only the trees, faintly pink, along the river and the wide unbroken carpet of green. Miss Jones walked up and down the Rope Walk, whilst Mary told her an endless and exceedingly confused story that had begun more than a week ago and had reached by now such a state of “To be continued in our next” that Miss Jones had only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary's audiences, and Mary never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses, white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she had seen in Thornley's windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.

Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could, his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he saw them scale the air and swim the stream—now, he was close on their trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole... sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them; always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.

Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful afternoon...