Jeremy and Hamlet/Chapter 10

HE 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 every one 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 every one 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 any one 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 any one 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 every one 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 any one 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 realise 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 realised 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 some one 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 realise 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 some one 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 realised that Uncle Percy was being rude, but they did not realise 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 about your uncle, 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.

Uncle Percy loved the world and desired that, in natural return, the world should love him. It seemed to him that the world did so. Once and again the net of his jollity and fun seemed to miss some straggling fish who gaped and then swam away, but he was of that happy temperament thus described by one of the most lovable of our modern poets:

How could the world help but love him, jolly, amiable, sensible man that he was?

But once and again … once and again. … And so it was now. And the fish that was eluding him was young Jeremy Cole.

On the seventh or eighth day he was aware of it. At breakfast he looked across the table and saw the small square-shaped boy gravely winking at Mary. Why was he winking at his sister? It could not be, surely it could not be because of anything that he himself had said? And yet, looking behind him, so to speak, he could not remember that any one else had been talking. This was enough to make him think, and, thinking, it occurred to him that that small boy had from the very first been aloof and reserved. Not natural for small boys to be reserved with jolly uncles. And it was not as though the boy were in general a reserved child. No, he had heard him laughing and jumping about the house enough to bring the roof down. Playing around with that dog of his. … Quite a normal, sporting boy. Come to think of it, the best of the family. By far the best of the family. You’d never think, to look at him, that he was Herbert’s son.

Therefore after breakfast in the hall he cried in his jolly, hearty tones:

“I say, Jeremy, what do you say to taking your old uncle round the town this morning, eh? Showing him the shops and things, what? Might be something we’d like to buy. …”

Jeremy was half-way up the stairs. He came slowly down again. On the bottom step, looking very gravely at his uncle, he said:

“I’m very sorry, Uncle Percy, but I’m going to school to-morrow morning, and I promised mother”

But Mrs. Cole was at this moment coming out of the dining-room. Looking up and smiling, she said:

“Never mind, Jeremy. Go with Uncle Percy this morning, dear. I can manage about the shirts. …”

Jeremy appeared not to have heard his mother.

“I’m sorry I can’t go out this morning, Uncle Percy. There’s my holiday task too. I’ve got to swot at it—” and then turned and slowly disappeared round the corner of the staircase.

Uncle Percy was chagrined. Really he was. He stood with his large body balanced on his large legs, hesitating, in the hall.

“It is his last morning, Percy,” said Mrs. Cole, looking a little distressed. “He’s a funny child. He’s always making his own plans.”

“Obstinate. That’s what I call it,” said Uncle Percy. “Damned obstinate.” He went out that morning alone. He thought that he would buy something for the kid, something really rich and impressive. It could not be that the boy disliked him, and yet … All that morning he was haunted by the boy’s presence. Going to school to-morrow, was he? Not much time left for making an impression. He could not find anything that morning that would precisely do. Rotten shops, the Polchester ones. He would tip the boy handsomely to-morrow morning. No boy could resist that. Really handsomely—as he had never been tipped before.

Nothing further occurred to him, and that evening he was especially funny about his brother. That story of Herbert when he was round fifteen and quite a grown boy being afraid of a dog chained up in a yard, and how he, Percy, made Herbert go and stroke it. How Herbert trembled and how his knees shook! Oh, it was funny, it was indeed. You’d have roared had you seen it. Percy roared; roared until the table shook beneath him.

But to-night, for some reason or another, Herbert did not seem to mind. He laughed gently and admitted that he was still afraid of dogs—bulldogs especially. Uncle Percy had Jeremy in his mind all that evening; he caught him once again by the slack of his breeches and swung him in the air—just to show what a jolly pleasant uncle he was.

When Mrs. Cole explained that always on Jeremy’s last evening she read to him in the schoolroom after supper, he said that he would come too, and sat there in an easy chair, watching benevolently the children grouped in the firelight round their mother, while “The Chaplet of Pearls” unfolded its dramatic course. A charming picture! And the boy really looked delightful, gazing into the fire, his head against his mother’s knee. Uncle Percy almost wished that he himself had married. Nice to have children, a home, somewhere to come to; and so fell asleep, and soon was snoring so loudly that Mrs. Cole had to raise her voice.

Next morning there was all the bustle of Jeremy’s departure. This was not so dramatic as other departures had been, because Jeremy was now so thoroughly accustomed to school-going and, indeed, could not altogether conceal from the world at large that this was football-time, the time of his delight and pride and happiness.

He went as usual into his father’s study to say good-bye, but on this occasion, for some strange reason, there was no stiffness nor awkwardness. Both were at their ease as they had never been together before. Mr. Cole put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Mind you get into the football team,” he said.

“If I don’t you won’t mind, father, will you?” said Jeremy, looking very fine indeed in a new light-grey overcoat.

“I know you’ll do your best, my boy,” said Mr. Cole, and kissed him.

Outside in the hall, with the others, was Uncle Percy. He motioned to him mysteriously. “I say, kid, come here.”

Jeremy followed him into the dining-room, where they were alone. Uncle Percy shut the door.

“Here’s something for you, my boy, to take back to school. Buy something you want with it and remember your uncle isn’t such a bad sort after all.”

Jeremy crimsoned up to the tips of his ears. On the red palm of his uncle’s big hand there were lying three golden sovereigns.

“No, thank you, uncle.”

“What?”

“No, thank you, uncle. I’ve got Father gave me I don’t want”

“You won’t take it? You won’t?”

“No, thank you, uncle.”

“But what the devil”

Jeremy turned away. His uncle caught him by the shoulder.

“Now, what’s all this about? A boy of your age refuse a tip? Now, what’s this mean?”

Jeremy wriggled himself free. Suddenly he said hotly: “Father’s as good as you, every bit as good. Even though you have been everywhere and he hasn’t. People like father awfully in Polchester, and they say his sermons are better than anybody’s. Father’s just as good as you are I” and then suddenly burst from the room.

Uncle Percy stood there. This may be said to have been the greatest shock of his life. The boy’s father? What was he talking about? The boy’s father? As good as he was? The boy hated him so much that he wouldn’t even take the money. Three pounds, and he wouldn’t take it! Wouldn’t take money from him because he hated him so! Hang it all! Lord, how that dog was howling! What a horrible noise! What was he howling for? … Wouldn’t take the money? But had any one ever heard the like? … But, hang it, three pounds!