The Golden Age

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The Golden Age

By
Kenneth Grahame

"'T IS OPPORTUNE TO LOOK BACK UPON OLD TIMES, AND
CONTEMPLATE OUR FOREFATHERS. GREAT EXAMPLES GROW
THIN, AND TO BE FETCHED FROM THE PASSED WORLD.
SIMPLICITY FLIES AWAY, AND INIQUITY COMES AT LONG
STRIDES UPON US.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Contents

PROLOGUE--THE OLYMPIANS
A HOLIDAY
A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS
SAWDUST AND SIN
"YOUNG ADAM CUPID"
THE BURGLARS
A HARVESTING
SNOWBOUND
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
THE ARGONAUTS
THE ROMAN ROAD
THE SECRET DRAWER
"EXIT TYRANNUS"
THE BLUE ROOM
A FALLING OUT
"LUSISTI SATIS"

PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS

Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I
can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents
these things would have worn a different aspect. But to those
whose nearest were aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind
may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as
to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an
indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity),
and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is
merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a
quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity,
and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in
me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague
sense of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the
practice of vagaries--"just choosing so:" as, for instance, the
giving of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable
creatures, when it might far more reasonably have been given to
ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of
chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy--
of their good luck--and pity--for their inability to make use of
it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in their
character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:
which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in
the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might
dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the
most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth
and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire
cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one
of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o'
Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their own accord,
though they betrayed no greater delight in the experience than
ourselves.

On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be
entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined
and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To
anything but appearances they were blind. For them the
orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many
apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the failures of Nature
were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within
fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid therein.
The mysterious sources--sources as of old Nile--that fed the
duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians,
nor recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!),
though the whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared
not about exploring for robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden
treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities
that they spent the greater part of their time stuffily indoors.

To be sure, there was an exception in the curate, who would
receive unblenching the information that the meadow beyond the
orchard was a prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was
our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those
whoops that announce the scenting of blood. He neither laughed
nor sneered, as the Olympians would have done; but possessed of a
serious idiosyncrasy, he would contribute such lots of
valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this particular sort of
big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and eminent
position could scarce have been attained without a practical
knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was
always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of
marauding Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a
distinctly able man, with talents, so far as we could judge,
immensely above the majority. I trust he is a bishop by this
time,--he had all the necessary qualifications, as we knew.

These strange folk had visitors sometimes,--stiff and colourless
Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing
away again to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our
ken. Then brute force was pitilessly applied. We were captured,
washed, and forced into clean collars: silently submitting, as
was our wont, with more contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous
hair and faces stiffened in a conventional grin, we sat and
listened to the usual platitudes. How could reasonable people
spend their precious time so? That was ever our wonder as we
bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, or to
hunt bears among the hazels.

It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would
talk over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the
other social or political inanity, under the delusion that these
pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life. We
illuminati, eating silently, our heads full of plans and
conspiracies, could have told them what real life was. We had
just left it outside, and were all on fire to get back to it. Of
course we didn't waste the revelation on them; the futility of
imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in thought
and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile
fate, a power antagonistic ever,--a power we lived to evade,--we
had no confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of
beings was further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly
beasts who shared our natural existence in the sun. The
estrangement was fortified by an abiding sense of injustice,
arising from the refusal of the Olympians ever to defend,
retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept similar
concessions on our part. For instance, whenI flung the cat
out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and
it didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's
reflection, to own I was wrong, as a gentleman should. But was
the matter allowed to end there? I trow not. Again, when Harold
was locked up in his room all day, for assault and battery upon a
neighbour's pig,--an action he would have scorned, being indeed
on the friendliest terms with the porker in question,--there was
no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of the real
culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the
imprisonment,--indeed he had very soon escaped by the window,
with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time
for his release,--as the Olympian habit. A word would have set
all right; but of course that word was never spoken.

Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does
not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows
of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A
saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in
Arcadia ego,--I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I
too have become an Olympian?

A HOLIDAY.

The masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord
of the morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish;
dead leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the
clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a great harp.

It was one of the first awakenings of the year. The earth
stretched herself, smiling in her sleep; and everything leapt and
pulsed to the stir of the giant's movement. With us it was a
whole holiday; the occasion a birthday--it matters not whose.
Some one of us had had presents, and pretty conventional
speeches, and had glowed with that sense of heroism which is no
less sweet that nothing has been done to deserve it. But the
holiday was for all, the rapture of awakening Nature for all, the
various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge-breaking for
all. Colt-like I ran through the meadows, frisking happy
heels in the face of Nature laughing responsive. Above, the sky
was bluest of the blue; wide pools left by the winter's floods
flashed the colour back, true and brilliant; and the soft air
thrilled with the germinating touch that seemed to kindle
something in my own small person as well as in the rash primrose
already lurking in sheltered haunts. Out into the brimming sun-
bathed world I sped, free of lessons, free of discipline and
correction, for one day at least. My legs ran of themselves, and
though I heard my name called faint and shrill behind, there was
no stopping for me. It was only Harold, I concluded, and his
legs, though shorter than mine, were good for a longer spurt than
this. Then I heard it called again, but this time more faintly,
with a pathetic break in the middle; and I pulled up short,
recognising Charlotte's plaintive note.

She panted up anon, and dropped on the turf beside me. Neither
had any desire for talk; the glow and the glory of existing on
this perfect morning were satisfaction full and sufficient.

"Where's Harold;" I asked presently.

"Oh, he's just playin' muffin-man, as usual," said Charlotte
with petulance. "Fancy wanting to be a muffin-man on a whole
holiday!"

It was a strange craze, certainly; but Harold, who invented his
own games and played them without assistance, always stuck
staunchly to a new fad, till he had worn it quite out. Just at
present he was a muffin-man, and day and night he went through
passages and up and down staircases, ringing a noiseless bell and
offering phantom muffins to invisible wayfarers. It sounds a
poor sort of sport; and yet--to pass along busy streets of your
own building, for ever ringing an imaginary bell and offering
airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging crowd of
your own creation--there were points about the game, it cannot be
denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant
wind-swept morning!

"And Edward, where is he?" I questioned again.

"He's coming along by the road," said Charlotte. "He'll be
crouching in the ditch when we get there, and he's going to be a
grizzly bear and spring out on us, only you mustn't say I told
you, 'cos it's to be a surprise."

"All right," I said magnanimously. "Come on and let's be
surprised." But I could not help feeling that on this day of
days even a grizzly felt misplaced and common.

Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped
into the road; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots,
and unrecorded heroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll
over and die, bulking large and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It
was an understood thing, that whoever took upon himself to be a
bear must eventually die, sooner or later, even if he were the
eldest born; else, life would have been all strife and carnage,
and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won civilisation.
This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all parties
concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting
Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social
mind.

"What would you do?" asked Charlotte presently,--the book of the
moment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and
cast aside,--"what would you do if you saw two lions in the road,
one on each side, and you didn't know if they was loose or if
they was chained up?"

"Do?" shouted Edward, valiantly, "I should--I should--I should--"

His boastful accents died away into a mumble: "Dunno what I
should do."

"Shouldn't do anything," I observed after consideration; and
really it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.

"If it came to DOING," remarked Harold, reflectively, "the
lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?"

"But if they was GOOD lions," rejoined Charlotte, "they would
do as they would be done by."

"Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?" said
Edward. "The books don't tell you at all, and the lions ain't
marked any different."

"Why, there aren't any good lions," said Harold, hastily.

"Oh yes, there are, heaps and heaps," contradicted Edward.
"Nearly all the lions in the story-books are good lions. There
was Androcles' lion, and St. Jerome's lion, and--and--the Lion
and the Unicorn--"

"He beat the Unicorn," observed Harold, dubiously, "all round the
town."

"That PROVES he was a good lion," cried Edwards triumphantly.
"But the question is, how are you to tell 'em when you see 'em?"

"_I_ should ask Martha," said Harold of the simple creed.

Edward snorted contemptuously, then turned to Charlotte. "Look
here," he said; "let's play at lions, anyhow, and I'll run on to
that corner and be a lion,--I'll be two lions, one on each side
of the road,--and you'll come along, and you won't know whether
I'm chained up or not, and that'll be the fun!"

"No, thank you," said Charlotte, firmly; "you'll be chained up
till I'm quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll
tear me in pieces, and make my frock all dirty, and p'raps you'll
hurt me as well. _I_ know your lions!"

"No, I won't; I swear I won't," protested Edward. "I'll be quite
a new lion this time,--something you can't even imagine." And he
raced off to his post. Charlotte hesitated; then she went
timidly on, at each step growing less Charlotte, the mummer of a
minute, and more the anxious Pilgrim of all time. The lion's
wrath waxed terrible at her approach; his roaring filled the
startled air. I waited until they were both thoroughly absorbed,
and then I slipped through the hedge out of the trodden highway,
into the vacant meadow spaces. It was not that I was unsociable,
nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; but the
passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood.

Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of
the day; and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these
human discussions and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no
more, was singing that full-throated song of hers that thrills
and claims control of every fibre. The air was wine; the moist
earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts from the cow-shed
at top of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant train,--all
were wine,--or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all
blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth-
effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found
words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the
squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a
stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I
somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,--
irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary,
unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a
genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting
and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with
scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and
accepted it without a flicker of dissent.

All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from
where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide
to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it
in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you
have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale,
expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the
trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster,
relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the
best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one,
the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and
unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough
to fall in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole
holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to
speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise
course my chainless pilot laid for me.

A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it
in jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought
me plump upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a
discreet unwinking stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me
as the most pitiful tomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through
a gate were natural and right and within the order of things; but
that human beings, with salient interests and active pursuits
beckoning them on from every side, could thus--! Well, it was a
thing to hurry past, shamed of face, and think on no more. But
this morning everything I met seemed to be accounted for and set
in tune by that same magical touch in the air; and it was with a
certain surprise that I found myself regarding these fatuous ones
with kindliness instead of contempt, as I rambled by, unheeded of
them. There was indeed some reconciling influence abroad, which
could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth and
the frolic air.

A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at
a fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village
church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth
the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for
foothold, with larceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every
wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment.
Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they
were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless
bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could
easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of biscuits,
kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official trappings.

For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. I protest I
was not on Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's,
and there was something in this immoral morning which seemed to
say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the
biscuits as the Vicar, and would certainly enjoy them better; and
anyhow it was a disputable point, and no business of mine.
Nature, who had accepted me for ally, cared little who had the
world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going to let any
friend of hers waste his time in playing policeman for
Society.

He was tugging at me anew, my insistent guide; and I felt sure,
as I rambled off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to
show me. And so, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same
lawless tune. Like a black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air,
a hawk hung ominous; then, plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow,
whence there rose, thin and shrill, a piteous voice of squealing.

By the time I got there a whisk of feathers on the turf--like
scattered playbills--was all that remained to tell of the tragedy
just enacted. Yet Nature smiled and sang on, pitiless, gay,
impartial. To her, who took no sides, there was every bit as
much to be said for the hawk as for the chaffinch. Both were her
children, and she would show no preferences.

Further on, a hedgehog lay dead athwart the path--nay, more than
dead; decadent, distinctly; a sorry sight for one that had known
the fellow in more bustling circumstances. Nature might at least
have paused to shed one tear over this rough jacketed little son
of hers, for his wasted aims, his cancelled ambitions, his whole
career of usefulness cut suddenly short. But not a bit of
it! Jubilant as ever, her song went bubbling on, and "Death-in-
Life," and again, "Life-in-Death," were its alternate burdens.
And looking round, and seeing the sheep-nibbled heels of turnips
that dotted the ground, their hearts eaten out of them in frost-
bound days now over and done, I seemed to discern, faintly, a
something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant.

My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to
be chuckling softly to himself, doubtless at thought of the
strange new lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a
special bit of waggishness he had still in store. For when at
last he grew weary of such insignificant earthbound company, he
deserted me at a certain spot I knew; then dropped, subsided, and
slunk away into nothingness. I raised my eyes, and before me,
grim and lichened, stood the ancient whipping-post of the
village; its sides fretted with the initials of a generation that
scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout rusty
shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that
generation's ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law.
Had I been an infant Sterne, here was a grand chance for
sentimental output! As things were, I could only hurry
homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, with an uneasy
feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there was more
in this chance than met the eye.

And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying.
Edward, it seemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full
expectation of being duly found and ecstatically pounced upon;
then he had caught sight of the butcher's cart, and, forgetting
his obligations, had rushed off for a ride. Harold, it further
appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and top-heavy with the
eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond. This, in
itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by the back-
door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into the
hands of an aunt, and had been promptly sent off to bed; and
this, on a holiday, was very much. The moral of the whipping-
post was working itself out; and I was not in the least surprised
when, on reaching home, I was seized upon and accused of doing
something I had never even thought of. And my frame of mind was
such, that I could only wish most heartily that I had done
it.

A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE

In our small lives that day was eventful when another uncle was
to come down from town, and submit his character and
qualifications (albeit unconsciously) to our careful criticism.
Previous uncles had been weighed in the balance, and--alas!--
found grievously wanting. There was Uncle Thomas--a failure from
the first. Not that his disposition was malevolent, nor were his
habits such as to unfit him for decent society; but his rooted
conviction seemed to be that the reason of a child's existence
was to serve as a butt for senseless adult jokes,--or what, from
the accompanying guffaws of laughter, appeared to be intended for
jokes. Now, we were anxious that he should have a perfectly fair
trial; so in the tool-house, between breakfast and lessons, we
discussed and examined all his witticisms, one by one, calmly,
critically, dispassionately. It was no good; we could not
discover any salt in them. And as only a genuine gift of
humour could have saved Uncle Thomas,--for he pretended to naught
besides,--he was reluctantly writ down a hopeless impostor.

Uncle George--the youngest--was distinctly more promising. He
accompanied us cheerily round the establishment,--suffered
himself to be introduced to each of the cows, held out the right
hand of fellowship to the pig, and even hinted that a pair of
pink-eyed Himalayan rabbits might arrive--unexpectedly--from town
some day. We were just considering whether in this fertile soil
an apparently accidental remark on the solid qualities of guinea-
pigs or ferrets might haply blossom and bring forth fruit, when
our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George's manner at
once underwent a complete and contemptible change. His interest
in rational topics seemed, "like a fountain's sickening pulse,"
to flag and ebb away; and though Miss Smedley's ostensible
purpose was to take Selina for her usual walk, I can vouch for it
that Selina spent her morning ratting, along with the keeper's
boy and me; while, if Miss Smedley walked with any one, it would
appear to have been with Uncle George.

But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty
condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings,
but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess
some innate badness of character and fondness for low company.
We who from daily experience knew Miss Smedley like a book--were
we not only too well aware that she had neither accomplishments
nor charms, no characteristic, in fact, but an inbred viciousness
of temper and disposition? True, she knew the dates of the
English kings by heart; but how could that profit Uncle George,
who, having passed into the army, had ascended beyond the need of
useful information? Our bows and arrows, on the other hand, had
been freely placed at his disposal; and a soldier should not have
hesitated in his choice a moment. No: Uncle George had fallen
from grace, and was unanimously damned. And the non-arrival of
the Himalayan rabbits was only another nail in his coffin.
Uncles, therefore, were just then a heavy and lifeless market,
and there was little inclination to deal. Still it was agreed
that Uncle William, who had just returned from India, should have
as fair a trial as the others; more especially as romantic
possibilities might well be embodied in one who had held the
gorgeous East in fee.

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