It was incredible to Jeremy that no one else of the house perceived him;but no one ever mentioned him,and this made it appear all the more a dream,as though the Captain were invisible to everyone save himself.He began to hate him even more than he feared him,and yet with that hatred the pleasure and excitement remained.I remember how,years ago in Polchester,when I could not have been more than six years old,I myself was haunted with exactly that same mixture of pleasure and horror by the figure of a hunch-backed pedlar who used to come to our town.Many years after I heard that he had been hung for the murder of some wretched woman who had accompanied him on some of his journeys.I was not surprised;but when I heard the story I felt then again the old thrill of mingled pleasure and fear.
One windy afternoon,near dusk,when they were returning from their walk,Jeremy suddenly heard the voice in his ear:
"I may be coming to visit yer one o'these nights.Keep yer eyes open and yer tongue quiet if I do."Jeremy saw the figures of Miss Jones and his sisters pass round the corner of the road.
"What for?"he gasped.
The Captain's figure seemed to swell gigantic against the white light of the fading sky.The wind whistled about their ears.
"Just to visit yer,that's all.'Cause I've taken a fancy to yer."The Captain chuckled and had vanished.
Jeremy flung one glance at the grey desolate road behind him,then ran for his life to join the others.
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?