THE RUBY GLASS

Poor Cousin Jane (as she was for ever afterwards known) arrived on a visit to the Cole family in Polchester in the spring of Jeremy’s eighth year. He remembered the day exactly, because on that afternoon he had bought a bunch of daffodils as a peace-offering for his mother. A peace-­offering was badly needed, both on his own part and that of his dog, Hamlet, for they had both of late been repeatedly in disgrace.

On Tuesday of that week Jeremy in a temper had thrown ink at Mary, his sister; on Wednesday he broke the window of the bathroom with a cricket-ball; on Thursday he insulted Miss Jones, their governess, so brutally that she gave notice, and was only with the greatest difficulty persuaded to remain.

It was perhaps the spring—it was certainly the hard truth that it was time that he went to school.

Hamlet also was unfortunate. On Tuesday he brought two filthy bones into the drawing-­room at the very moment when the Dean’s wife was paying a call. On Wednesday he frightened Mrs. Cole by running out on her from a dark passage, and on Thursday he was horribly sick on the dining-­room carpet.

They were both in disgrace; they were both punished. In fact, matters were in a very ticklish state indeed. So Jeremy bought some daffodils and prayed most fervently that Fate would leave him alone for a while.

He disliked to be in disgrace; he disliked to make his incomprehensible elders unhappy; most of all did he dislike it when people muttered concerning Hamlet, ‘That dog must go. We really cannot endure him any longer.’

So he was walking on egg-­shells when Poor Cousin Jane arrived.

They christened her that immediately. In the first place she was a miserable scrap of a thing. When she stood in the hall, covered with innumerable wraps, she did not appear to be there at all.

Only her very red (for it was April weather) sharply peaked little nose and strange pepper-­and-­salt eyes, with their sandy eyebrows, were visible.

Unwrapped she was revealed as a thin little girl, with an untidy bow in her hair and wrinkled black stockings on her spindly­ legs.

But what struck Jeremy, Mary and Helen immediately on sight of her was her terror. She was shaking with fright; her eyes roamed the room as though she were a wild animal for the first time caged, and when her aunt who had brought her from her home in Drymouth left her she burst into floods of tears.

Now the Coles were not an unkind family. The Rev. Mr. Cole, Jeremy’s father, could certainly be severe on occasion when he felt it his duty to be so, but Mrs. Cole was the soul of maternal comfort—a nicer woman didn’t exist anywhere.

Her three children also were kindly intentioned, only, like all normal children, they were healthy savages in process of being civilised.

Mary in especial was sentimental and emotional, wanted a girl friend, and would willingly have romanticised Cousin Jane had she been given the opportunity.

However, the odd thing about this story is that the only person who from the first did romanticise Jane was Hamlet, and that was queer indeed, because he hated little girls and liked to snap at their legs when nobody in authority was near.

Jeremy disliked Cousin Jane from the start. He could not help it. He was easily touched by females in distress, he was at times both courteous and chivalrous, and he had a good heart—but Jane he could not abide.

There was something about her terror that revolted him. He was not touched by it because it was so complete. He was not old enough to understand how anyone could be such a coward and could be such a fool.

His sister Mary was often both a coward and a fool, but she made brave attempts to conquer her weak points. He understood that. He had weak points himself.

But Jane made no attempt to conquer anything. She was frightened of Mr. Cole, Mrs. Cole, Jeremy, Mary, Helen, Miss Jones, the cook, the housemaid, and terrified of Hamlet.

She started at the slightest sound, blinked with alarm if anyone addressed her, and sat in a corner, straight on a chair, waiting for someone to attack her.

But—strangest of all strange things—Hamlet adored her. When on her arrival she stood among them all, bitterly weeping, he smelt her black stockings, then lay down, his pointed beard flat on his paws, and waited for her to ask him to do something for her. She did, of course, nothing of the kind. No matter. He devoted himself to her service.

Now, from the very moment of her arrival, Jeremy felt that something awful would occur in connection with her. He felt also perhaps ashamed of himself for disliking her, although it is difficult to say what small boys of eight feel and what they do not.

On the first afternoon of her stay it poured with rain, and the children sat in the schoolroom trying to play games. Cousin Jane, however, was a blight on all the proceedings.

‘I know!’ said Jeremy. ‘We’ll play buffaloes. I’ll be the buffalo. Jane shall be captured by the Indians, and Mary and Hamlet shall rescue her.’

Jane’s eyes nearly split with terror.

‘Wouldn’t you like that, Jane dear?’ asked Mary in her propitiatory, mother-­visiting-­the-­sick-­and-ailing voice.

‘Oh no, no, no!’ cried Jane.

‘There’s halma,’ said Jeremy disgustedly.

But Jane could understand nothing. She sat at the schoolroom table staring in front of her.

‘Mary shall play with you and show you how to move.’

But it was of no use. She had an awful way of whispering under her breath. She was probably saying that she wanted to go home, but nobody could be sure.

‘Mary shall tell us a story,’ said Jeremy, trying hard to be a perfect gentleman. They sat round the fire and Mary began (very quickly lest someone should stop her, for she loved telling stories­).

‘Once upon a time there was a king who had three lovely daughters. One had black hair, one yellow, and one was between the two, and one day when the king——’

But Jane interrupted by slipping off her chair and creeping away to the window-­seat, where she sat desolately looking out on to the rain. This was as bad an insult as any author ever received!

This sense of misfortune that Jeremy had in connection with his weeping cousin grew in the following days. He was in no way a morbid child, his imaginings were healthy, he very rarely saw visions, but just now he had the sense of the world that it was waiting round the corner to catch him.

He had had nightmares after stolen cheese or too much toffee, and in these to move a step was to lose your life!

So it was now. Something would happen to plunge him into disgrace, and Cousin Jane would be the agent. He knew it. He felt it in all his bones.

On a certain morning he woke and at once knew that this was an Evil Day. There were Evil Days, there were Ordinary Days and Days of Delight, and the kind of Day it intended to be it began from the very first moment by being!

This day began badly because Hamlet was not there. Always at a quarter to eight Hamlet, released by the cook from his basket in the kitchen, his hair brushed, his beard in shape, rushed upstairs and scratched on Jeremy’s door. He was admitted, and games followed.

To-­day there was no scratching at the door. Jeremy knew at once what had occurred. He was scratching at Cousin Jane’s door. What did he see in the girl? What was it that had softened his ironic heart?

She had, Jeremy would have supposed, no charms for dogs at all. She did not like dogs. She screamed whenever they came near her.

Jeremy, his heart torn by a jealousy that he was far too proud to admit, went down to breakfast. Here for a moment things took a better turn.

‘What do you think, my dears?’ cried Mrs. Cole (who, loving her children, had never realised how intensely Mary and Jeremy hated to be ‘my deared ’). ‘Miss Willink has asked us all to tea on Friday.’

Now, Miss Willink was one of life’s joys. She was an elderly lady living five miles out of Polchester in the middle of one of the loveliest gardens in the world. Her house was large and grand, but Jeremy never gave it a thought.

The point was the garden with its lawns, rockeries, ponds, terraces, shrubberies, conservatories and gigantic trees. Moreover, Miss Willink understood what children wanted—namely, food, freedom and fraternity. She was a jolly old lady.

‘Oh, hurray!’ cried Jeremy, wondering whether he had been wrong about the day’s omens. But he had not.

‘Now mind, Jeremy,’ said his father, who had neuralgia that morning. ‘I don’t know what’s been the matter with you this week. One thing after another. Take care, or Miss Willink’s is not for you.’

He would take care, and it occurred to him that he would propitiate the fates by being nice to Cousin Jane. They were to go for a walk that morning, it being a lovely spring morning, with clouds like galleons, sunny and shining, stretches of sky like violet-­fields, and excited birds in flight.

He would take Cousin Jane to his secret place in Conmer Wood, where the daffodils were so thick that they were like shadowed plates of gold.

Smiling, he suggested it to her. But she shook her head. They were standing together alone in the schoolroom, and Hamlet was watching the girl, his eyes soft with sentiment. Every once and again he snapped dramatically at an imaginary fly, but plainly his thoughts were only for his adored one.

Jeremy was so deeply irritated that it was all he could do not to pull her long and lanky hair, but, remembering the fates, he held himself in.

‘Don’t you want to go anywhere?’ he cried disgustedly. ‘Don’t you want to do anything?’

Her under-­lip trembled.

‘I don’t like daffodils,’ was her amazing statement.

‘Don’t like daffodils? But you don’t like anything! All the time you’ve been here you haven’t liked a thing. We’re all being as nice as nice. Don’t you like being here?’

Upon which Cousin Jane burst into tears, and at the same moment Mrs. Cole came into the room.

‘Now, Jeremy, what have you been doing to Jane? What is it, dear? . . . Never mind. Come with me and I’ll show you some pretty things. Jeremy, I don’t know what has come over you lately. You’re always doing something wrong. Your father is very vexed. Remember what he said about Miss Willink. Now, come along, dear. Dry your eyes. We’ll see what we’ve got downstairs to show you.’

Hamlet attempted to follow his heroine, but that at least Jeremy prevented.

‘What has come over you?’ he asked him. ‘You can’t like her. You don’t like girls and this is one of the worst. Besides, she hates you.’

These remarks had no effect whatever on Hamlet, who had the art of sulking when he wanted to sulk beyond any dog ever known. He would half close his eyes, bury his mouth in his beard, turn his head away and yawn lazily, impertinently.

‘Now come on,’ said Jeremy. ‘We’ll go out and enjoy ourselves.’

But Hamlet refused. He would not go out. He would not budge. He sat there, his feet firmly planted, his head obstinately screwed away from his master. Jeremy dragged at his collar; his paws seemed to stick to the carpet. Jeremy pulled him, however, as far as the passage, then bumped, breathless and exasperated, into his father.

‘Really, Jeremy,’ Mr. Cole, whose neuralgia was worse, cried, ‘you must look where you are going, my boy. And what are you doing to the poor dog?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ And Jeremy, running downstairs, left dog, father and all to their proper destinies.

‘Sulky,’ thought Mr. Cole sadly. ‘Sulky and ill-tempered. The boy will have to go to school.’

At luncheon another misfortune befell.

It happened that it was cold-­beef day—cold beef and potatoes in their jackets. Now, Jeremy hated cold fat. So, apparently, did Cousin Jane. Her eyes filled with tears and she looked beseechingly at Mrs. Cole.

‘Mother says I needn’t eat fat when I feel sick,’ she remarked. ‘I feel sick now.’

‘Very well, dear,’ said Mrs. Cole, benevolently smiling.

A short while later Mr. Cole said cheerfully: ‘Eat it up, Jeremy, my boy. You know what I’ve always told you. One day perhaps you will be glad——’

The injustice was more than he could bear.

‘Jane didn’t have to!’ he said.

‘Jeremy!’

‘Well, father, Jane didn’t——’

‘Jeremy!’

‘Well, but, father——’

He ate it, and most disgusting it was. He swallowed with splutterings a full glass of water. His eye rested on the splendid, tall, ruby glass that stood in the middle of a small table opposite him. This was the family pride.

It was, the children understood, Bohemian. There were little patterns of gold traced delicately over its crimson glories. Jeremy thought that it was laughing at him.

After luncheon he brooded miserably. Hamlet was nowhere to be seen. Even his sisters seemed to hold aloof from him. A hatred of his Cousin Jane stronger than any hatred that he had ever known for anyone possessed him.

He would like to torture her, to stick pins into her legs, to twist her arms, to pull her hair till she screamed.

Meanwhile, as the afternoon drew on, he felt catastrophe drawing nearer.

At tea-­time he could have burst into tears, although he was not given to crying. The intensity of those moments in childhood when one is deserted, helpless, under a curse that is eternal, is unknown to maturity.

It would be a miracle if he reached bedtime without disaster. Even the clocks seemed to say to him: ‘Now—You—Are—Done—For—Little—Man. Now—You—Are—Done—For—Little—Man.’ And indeed there is nothing more complacent and patronising than a moon-­faced, stubborn clock.

The blow fell.

It was the pleasant Cole custom that one or two nights a week Mrs. Cole should read to the children for half an hour before bedtime. To-­night the reading was to be in the dining-­room, because a good fire was burning there. The book was The Chaplet of Pearls, by Charlotte Mary Yonge.

The children—Hamlet, Mary, Helen, Jeremy and Jane—assembled and stood by the fire waiting. Hamlet sat, licking a tangled foot and sniffing between licks. Jane showed a little animation. She began in her thin voice that was like a violin-­string struck just out of tune:

‘We’ve got nicer things in our house than you have, Mary.’

‘Oh no, you haven’t,’ said Mary, who was loyal if she was anything.

‘Oh yes, we have.’

‘Oh no, you haven’t.’

‘Oh yes, we have. We’ve got a clock with a Chinaman that nods his head, and a picture as big as this room almost, and a rug with a tiger’s head, and——’

‘You haven’t,’ said Mary slowly, pushing her spectacles straight, ‘anything as lovely as the ruby glass.’

‘Oh yes, we have,’ said Jane. But she was attracted nevertheless. The firelight danced on the deep colours, the thin tracery of gold. She went to the table and picked it up.

‘Oh, you mustn’t!’ cried Mary.

Jane heard the door opening, and, in alarm, dropped the glass. It lay at her feet, ‘smashed,’ as the story-­books have it, ‘into a thousand fragments.’

Mrs. Cole had entered. Her cry was an agonised one.

‘Oh! My glass! My glass!’

Jeremy saw then terror as he was never in all his life again to see it. Nothing, years later, in the Great War equalled it.

To say that Jane was ‘frozen’ with it says little; her face paled to ash, her whole body was seized with a fearful trembling. It was as though she saw the devil.

Something in that agony moved Jeremy to a revulsion of disgust. It was horrible, indecent. Eight years of age though he was, he understood that there was something dreadful here that had nothing to do with his own world—something from beyond boundaries.

Mrs. Cole looked up from her knees.

‘Oh, who——?’ she began.

‘I broke it,’ said Jeremy.

‘You were told never to touch it.’

He stared defiantly. None of the children spoke a word. Mary and Helen knew, as Jeremy knew, that Jane, dislike her as they did, must be protected. The door opened on the scene, and Mr. Cole entered:

‘Well, children—’ he began and then saw what had happened.

‘The glass! . . . Who touched it?’

‘I did,’ said Jeremy.

For the first time in his life Jeremy was locked in his bedroom. He was to have no supper. Miss Willink’s garden would not, on this occasion, offer him a greeting.

He moved up and down, hot tears in his eyes, feeling sick, feeling utterly alone, deserted by all the world. Why had he done it? He did not know. He hated Cousin Jane. It would have given him joy to see her disgraced. Yet if it occurred again he would do as he had done.

He was a pariah (although he did not know what a pariah was). He would never be back any more in a world of sunshine, friendliness, good-­will.

It was too much. He sat down by the dressing-table and burst into a passion of angry, desolated tears. Worst of all—oh, far, far worst of all—was Hamlet’s desertion. That Hamlet should leave him for an ugly, stupid, miserable, little . . .

He heard a sound. He choked down his sobs, raised his head and listened. There was a scratching at his door. Was he mistaken? He moved across the room. No, there was no mistake. The scratching continued. He went to the door and, pressing against it, whispered:

‘Hamlet! Hamlet! Are you there?’

The scratching was eager, demonstrative, and then, quite beyond question, between the scratches, that sniff! That sniff of comradeship, of loyalty, of understanding.

‘Hamlet, I can’t get out. They’ve locked me in!’

He heard a soft thud. Hamlet had laid himself down, and nothing, no power, no authority, was going to move him.

Jeremy, smiling, himself again, all the curses and forebodings suddenly removed, turned to the table by the bed, found a pencil and a piece of paper, and, with wrinkled brow and lickings of the stubborn lead, began to draw pictures of Cousin Jane as a witch.