Jeremy

by Hugh Walpole

What, after that, did he expect? He did not know. Only the Captain was drawing closer, and closer, and closer.

He could feel now always his hot breath upon his ear. Two days after the whispered dialogue in the road, that first promise of spring broke down into a tempest of wind and rain. The Coles' house in Orange Street, although it looked, with its stout, white stone, strong enough, was old and shaky. Now, in the storm, it shook and wheezed and rattled in every one of its joints. Jeremy, at ordinary times, loved the sound of the wind about the house, when he himself was safe and warm and cosy; but this was now another affair. Lying in his bed he could hear the screams down the chimney, then the tug at his window-pane, the rattling clutch upon the wood, then the sweep under the bed and the rush up the wallpaper, until at last, from behind some badly defended spot where the paper was thin, there would come a wailing, whistling screech as though someone were being murdered in the next room. On other days Jeremy, when he heard this screech, shivered with a cosy, creeping thrill; but now he put his head under the bedclothes, shut his eyes very tight, and tried not to see the Captain with his ugly nose and tiny gimlet eyes.

He would be half asleep.

“Come,” said the Captain from the window, “the boat is waiting! You promised, you know. Come just as you are—no time to dress,” and poor Jeremy would feel the great, heavy hand upon his shoulder and wake shivering and shaking from head to foot.

On the third day following his last interview with the Captain he went to bed a little reassured and comforted. Perhaps the Captain had gone away. For three days he had seen and heard nothing of him at all.

That was a night of rain—rain that slashed and whipped the house as though it would batter it to the ground. The rain would come with a wild fury upon the panes, trembling with its excited anger, would crash against the glass, then fall back and hang waiting for a further attack; next the results of the first attack would slip and slide like the crawling of a thousand snakes, then fall and drop slowly and heavily as though every drop were foretelling some awful peril. Jeremy lay and listened; but he resolved that to-night he would not be frightened, would not think of the Captain.

He said the Lord's Prayer five times, then counted sheep jumping over the gate, a safe solution for sleepless hours. He saw the sheep—first one a very fat one, then one a very thin one; but the gate stood at the bottom of a little hill, so that it was very difficult for the poor creatures, who jumped and slipped back on the incline. Then a lot of sheep insisted on jumping together, and he could hardly count them—forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.... He was asleep.

After a long, long time of soundlessness, of lying upon a sea that was like a bed of down, and looking up, happily into clear blue light, he was once more conscious of the rain. Yes, there it was with its sweeping rush, its smash upon the pane, its withdrawal, its trickling patter and heavy drops as though it were striking time. Yes, that was the rain and that—What was that?

He was wide awake, lying back against his pillow, but his eyes staring in front of them till they burnt. The house was absolutely dark, absolutely silent, but between the attacks of the rain there was a wound, something that had not to do with the house nor with the weather. He strained with his ears, sitting up in bed, his hands clutching the bed clothes. He heard it quite clearly now. Someone was moving in the nursery.

With that the whole of his brain was awake and he knew quite clearly, beyond a shadow of any doubt, what had happened; the Captain had come to fetch him. With that knowledge an icy despair gripped him. He did not want to go. Oh, he did not want to go! He was trembling from head to foot so that the bed shook beneath him, his breath came in little hot gasping pants, and his eyes were wide with terror. He was helpless. The Captain would only say “Come,” and go he must, leave his warm house and his parents whom he loved and Mary and Helen and Hamlet, yes, and even Miss Jones. He would be dragged down the long white road, through the lighted village, out on to the shiny beach, in a boat out to the dark ship—and then he would be alone with the Captain, alone in the dark ship, with the Captain's heavy hand upon his shoulder, his mouth smiling, his great legs drawing him in as a spider draws a fly into its web, and everyone asleep, only the stars and the dark water. He tried to say the Lord's Prayer again, but the words would not come. The sweat began to trickle down his nose...