This hatred was quite new to him.He had once,years ago,hated a black-faced doll that had been given to him.He had not known why he hated it,but there it had been.He had thrown it out of the window,and the gardener had found it and brought it into the house again,battered and bruised,but still alive,with its horrid red smile,and this had terrified him.He had begun to burn it,and the nurse had caught him and slapped him.He had begun to cut it with scissors,and when the sawdust flowed he was more terrified than ever.But that doll was quite different from Aunt Amy.He was not terrified of her at all.He hated her.Hated the fringe of her black hair,the heavy eyelashes,the thin down on her upper lip,the way that the gold cross fell up and down on her breast,her thin,blue-veined hands,her black shoes.She was his first enemy,and he waited,as an ambush hides and watches,for his opportunity.
II
One of our nicest old maids,Miss Maddison,gave every year what she called her "early summer party."This was different from all our other parties,because it occurred neither in the summer nor in the winter,but always during those wonderful days when the spring first began to fade into the high bright colours,the dry warmth,the deep green shadows of the heat of the year.It was early in May that Miss Maddison had her party,and we played games on her little sloping green lawn,and peered over her pink-brick wall down on to the brown roofs of the houses below the Close,and had a tremendous tea of every kind of cake and every kind of jam in her wainscoted dining-room that looked out through its tall open windows on to the garden.Those old houses that run in a half-moon round the Close,and face the green sward and the great western door of the Cathedral,are the very heart of Polchester.Walking down the cobbled street,one may still to-day look through the open door,down the dusky line of the little hall,out into the swimming colour of the garden beyond.In these little gardens,what did not grow?
Hollyhocks,pinks,tulips,nasturtiums,pansies,lilies of the valley,roses,honeysuckle,sweet-williams,stocks--I remember them all at their different seasons in that muddled,absurd profusion.I can smell them now,can see them in their fluttering colours,the great grey wall of the Cathedral,with its high carved door and watching saints behind me,the sun beating on to the cobbles,the muffled beat of the summer day,the sleepy noises of the town,the pigeons cutting the thin,papery blue into arcs and curves and circles,the little lattice-windowed houses,with crooked chimneys and shining doors,smiling down upon me.I can smell,too,that especial smell that belonged to those summer hours,a smell of dried blotting-paper,of corn and poppies from the fields,of cobble-stones and new-baked bread and lemonade;and behind the warmth and colour the cool note of the Cathedral bell echoed through the town,down the High Street,over the meads,across the river,out into the heart of the dark woods and the long spaces of the summer fields.I can see myself,too,toiling up the High Street,my cap on the back of my head,little beads of perspiration on my forehead,and my eyes always gazing into the air,so that I stumbled over the cobbles and knocked against doorsteps.All these things had to do with Miss Maddison's parly,and it was always her party that marked the beginning of them for us;she waited for the fine weather,and so soon as it came the invitations were sent out,the flower-beds were trimmed,the little green wooden seats under the mulberry tree were cleaned,and Poupee,the black poodle,was clipped.
It happened this year that Miss Maddison gave her party during the very week that Mr.and Mrs.Cole went to Drymouth.She sent out her invitations only three days before the great event,because the summer had come with so fine a rush."Master Jeremy and the Misses Cole.Would they give Miss Maddison the pleasure ."Yes,of course they would.Aunt Amy would take them.
On the morning of the great day Jeremy poured the contents of his watering-can upon Aunt Amy's head.It was a most unfortunate accident,arranged obviously by a malignant fate.Jeremy had been presented with a pot of pinks,and these,every morning,he most faithfully watered.He had a bright-red watering-can,bought with his own money,and,because it held more water than the pinks needed,he was in the daily habit of emptying the remnant in a glittering shower out of the pantry window on to the bed nearest the garden wall.Upon this morning someone called him;he turned his head;the water still flowed,and Aunt Amy,hatless and defenceless,received it as it tumbled with that sudden rush which always seizes a watering-can at its last gasp.Jeremy was banished into his bedroom,where he employed the sunny morning in drawing pictures of Aunt Amy as a witch upon the wallpaper.For doing this he was caned by Aunt Amy herself with a ruler,and at the end of the operation he laughed and said she hadn't hurt him at all.In return for this impertinence he was robbed,at luncheon,of his pudding--which was,of course,on that very day,marmalade pudding--and then,Mary being discovered putting some of hers into a piece of paper,to be delivered to him in due course,they were both stood in different corners of the room "until you say you're sorry."When the jingle arrived at three o'clock they had still not made this acknowledgment,and Jeremy said he never would,"not if he lived till he was ninety-nine."At quarter past three Jeremy might have been seen sitting up very straight in the jingle,his face crimson from washing and temper.He was wearing his new sailor suit,which tickled him and was hot and sticky;he sat there devoting the whole of his energies to the business of hating Aunt Amy.
