The Golden Age
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Kenneth Grahame >> The Golden Age
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Selina had kicked my shins--like the girl she is!--during a
scuffle in the passage, and I was still rubbing them with one
hand when I found that the uncle-on-approbation was half-
heartedly shaking the other. A florid, elderly man, and
unmistakably nervous, he dropped our grimy paws in succession,
and, turning very red, with an awkward simulation of heartiness,
"Well, h' are y' all?" he said, "Glad to see me, eh?" As we
could hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an opinion
on him at that early stage, we could but look at each other in
silence; which scarce served to relieve the tension of the
situation. Indeed, the cloud never really lifted during his
stay. In talking it over later, some one put forward the
suggestion that he must at some time or other have committed a
stupendous crime; but I could not bring myself to believe that
the man, though evidently unhappy, was really guilty of anything;
and I caught him once or twice looking at us with evident
kindliness, though seeing himself observed, he blushed and turned
away his head.
When at last the atmosphere was clear of this depressing
influence, we met despondently in the potato-cellar--all of us,
that is, but Harold, who had been told off to accompany his
relative to the station; and the feeling was unanimous, that, at
an uncle, William could not be allowed to pass. Selina roundly
declared him a beast, pointing out that he had not even got us a
half-holiday; and, indeed, there seemed little to do but to pass
sentence. We were about to put it, when Harold appeared on the
scene; his red face, round eyes, and mysterious demeanour,
hinting at awful portents. Speechless he stood a space: then,
slowly drawing his hand from the pocket of his knickerbockers, he
displayed on a dirty palm one--two--three--four half-crowns! We
could but gaze--tranced, breathless, mute; never had any of us
seen, in the aggregate, so much bullion before. Then Harold told
his tale.
"I took the old fellow to the station," he said, "and as we went
along I told him all about the station-master's family, and how I
had seen the porter kissing our housemaid, and what a nice fellow
he was, with no airs, or affectation about him, and anything I
thought would be of interest.; but he didn't seem to pay much
attention, but walked along puffing his cigar, and once I
thought--I'm not certain, but I THOUGHT--I heard him say,
`Well, thank God, that's over!' When we got to the station he
stopped suddenly, and said, `Hold on a minute!' Then he shoved
these into my hand in a frightened sort of way; and said, `Look
here, youngster! These are for you and the other kids. Buy what
you like--make little beasts of yourselves--only don't tell the
old people, mind! Now cut away home!' So I cut."
A solemn hush fell on the assembly, broken first by the small
Charlotte. "I didn't know," she observed dreamily, "that there
were such good men anywhere in the world. I hope he'll die to-
night, for then he'll go straight to heaven!" But the repentant
Selina bewailed herself with tears and sobs, refusing to be
comforted; for that in her haste she had called this white-souled
relative a beast.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Edward, the master-mind,
rising--as he always did--to the situation: "We'll christen the
piebald pig after him--the one that hasn't got a name yet.
And that'll show we're sorry for our mistake!"
"I--I christened that pig this morning," Harold guiltily
confessed; "I christened it after the curate. I'm very sorry--
but he came and bow'ed to me last night, after you others had all
been sent to bed early--and somehow I felt I HAD to do it!"
"Oh, but that doesn't count," said Edward hastily; "because we
weren't all there. We'll take that christening off, and call it
Uncle William. And you can save up the curate for the next
litter!"
And the motion being agreed to without a division, the House went
into Committee of Supply.
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
"Let's pretend," suggested Harold, "that we're Cavaliers and
Roundheads; and YOU be a Roundhead!"
"O bother," I replied drowsily, "we pretended that yesterday; and
it's not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow." The fact is, I was
lazy, and the call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three
younger ones were stretched at length in the orchard. The sun
was hot, the season merry June, and never (I thought) had there
been such wealth and riot of buttercups throughout the lush
grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant key that day. Instead of
active "pretence" with its shouts and perspiration, how much
better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend to one's self, in
green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing, a
careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and
green! But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed of.
"Well, then," he began afresh, "let's pretend we're Knights of
the Round Table; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!"
"I won't play unless I'm Lancelot," I said. I didn't mean it
really, but the game of Knights always began with this particular
contest.
"O PLEASE," implored Harold. "You know when Edward's here I
never get a chance of being Lancelot. I haven't been Lancelot
for weeks!"
Then I yielded gracefully. "All right," I said. "I'll be
Tristram."
"O, but you can't," cried Harold again.
"Charlotte has always been Tristram. She won't play unless she's
allowed to be Tristram! Be somebody else this time."
Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight
before her. The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero
of romance, and rather than see the part in less appreciative
hands, she would even have returned sadly to the stuffy
schoolroom.
"I don't care," I said: "I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay.
Come on!"
Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights
paced through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing
wrong; and bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to
their caves. Once again were damsels rescued, dragons
disembowelled, and giants, in every corner of the orchard,
deprived of their already superfluous number of heads; while
Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir Breuse
Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear
that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight
in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the
earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters;
and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The
varying fortune of the day swung doubtful--now on this side, now
on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and great, thrusting through
the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy task), and bestrode
her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight, forgetting hard-
won fame of old, cried piteously, "You're hurting me, I tell you!
and you're tearing my frock!" Then it happed that Sir Kay,
hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching
sight suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet
afar off; while the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with
talk and laughter, was borne to our ears.
"What is it?" inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her
curls; while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted
nimbly to the hedge.
I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
"Soldiers!" I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up
and scurrying after.
Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet
flamed in the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked
delightfully; while the men, in a halo of dust, smoked their
short clays like the heroes they were. In a swirl of
intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by, while we
shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly
horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The
moment they were past we were through the hedge and after them.
Soldiers were not the common stuff of everyday life. There had
been nothing like this since the winter before last, when on a
certain afternoon--bare of leaf and monochrome in its hue of
sodden fallow and frost-nipt copse--suddenly the hounds had burst
through the fence with their mellow cry, and all the paddock was
for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof and dotted with
glancing red. But this was better, since it could only mean that
blows and bloodshed were in the air.
"Is there going to be a battle?" panted Harold, hardly able to
keep up for excitement.
"Of course there is," I replied. "We're just in time. Come on!"
Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet-- The pigs and
poultry, with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little
concerning the peace that in these latter days lapped this sea-
girt realm. In the schoolroom we were just now dallying with the
Wars of the Roses; and did not legends of the country-side inform
us how Cavaliers had once galloped up and down these very lanes
from their quarters in the village? Here, now, were soldiers
unmistakable; and if their business was not fighting, what was
it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed hard on their
tracks.
"Won't Edward be sorry," puffed Harold, "that he's begun that
beastly Latin?"
It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us
all, was drearily conjugating AMO (of all verbs) between four
walls; while Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat,
was struggling with the uncouth German tongue. "Age," I
reflected, "carries its penalties."
It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed
through the village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to
my companions, ought to have been loopholed, and strongly held.
But no opposition was offered to the soldiers, who, indeed,
conducted themselves with a recklessness and a want of precaution
that seemed simply criminal.
At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered
across me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back.
The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged
reluctant feet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold
no stout fellows slain that day; but Harold and I held steadily
on, expecting every instant to see the environing hedges crackle
and spit forth the leaden death.
"Will they be Indians?" inquired my brother (meaning the enemy);
"or Roundheads, or what?"
I reflected. Harold always required direct, straightforward
answers--not faltering suppositions.
"They won't be Indians," I replied at last; "nor yet Roundheads.
There haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long
time. They'll be Frenchmen."
Harold's face fell. "All right," he said; "Frenchmen'll do; but
I did hope they'd be Indians."
"If they were going to be Indians," I explained, "I--I don't
think I'd go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they
scalp you first, and then burn you at a stake. But Frenchmen
don't do that sort of thing."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Harold doubtfully.
"Quite," I replied. "Frenchmen only shut you up in a thing
called the Bastille; and then you get a file sent in to you in a
loaf of bread, and saw the bars through, and slide down a rope,
and they all fire at you--but they don't hit you--and you run
down to the seashore as hard as you can, and swim off to a
British frigate, and there you are!"
Harold brightened up again. The programme was rather attractive.
"If they try to take us prisoner," he said, "we--we won't run,
will we?"
Meanwhile, the craven foe was a long time showing himself; and we
were reaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions
might be expected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my
side, and both Harold's stockings had come down. Just as I was
beginning to have gloomy doubts of the proverbial courage of
Frenchmen, the officer called out something, the men closed up,
and, breaking into a trot, the troops--already far ahead--
vanished out of our sight. With a sinking at the heart, I began
to suspect we had been fooled.
"Are they charging?" cried Harold, weary, but rallying gamely.
"I think not," I replied doubtfully. "When there's going to be a
charge, the officer always makes a speech, and then they draw
their swords and the trumpets blow, and--but let's try a short
cut. We may catch them up yet."
So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded
down that, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted,
yet hoping for the best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle
began to fall; we were muddy, breathless, almost dead beat; but
we blundered on, till at last we struck a road more brutally,
more callously unfamiliar than any road I ever looked upon. Not
a hint nor a sign of friendly direction or assistance on the
dogged white face of it. There was no longer any disguising it--
we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continued steadily, the
evening began to come on. Really there are moments when a fellow
is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold had
not been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder
brother as a veritable god; and I could see that he felt himself
as secure as if a whole Brigade of Guards hedged him round with
protecting bayonets. But I dreaded sore lest he should begin
again with his questions.
As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the
sound of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being;
increasing to rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle
the familiar carriage of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged
from a machine, it was when this heaven-sent friend,
recognising us, stopped and jumped out with a cheery hail.
Harold rushed up to him at once. "Have you been there?" he
cried. "Was it a jolly fight? who beat? were there many people
killed?"
The doctor appeared puzzled. I briefly explained the situation.
"I see," said the doctor, looking grave and twisting his face
this way and that. "Well, the fact is, there isn't going to be
any battle to-day. It's been put off, on account of the change
in the weather. You will have due notice of the renewal of
hostilities. And now you'd better jump in and I'll drive you
home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you might have both
been taken and shot as spies!"
This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of
it accentuated the cosey homelike feeling of the cushions we
nestled into as we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the
journey with blood-curdling narratives of personal adventure in
the tented field, he having followed the profession of arms (so
it seemed) in every quarter of the globe. Time, the destroyer of
all things beautiful, subsequently revealed the baselessness
of these legends; but what of that? There are higher things than
truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time we were dropped
at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been postponed.
THE FINDING OF THE
PRINCESS.
It was the day I was promoted to a tooth-brush. The girls,
irrespective of age, had been thus distinguished some time
before; why, we boys could never rightly understand, except that
it was part and parcel of a system of studied favouritism on
behalf of creatures both physically inferior and (as was shown by
a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre. It was not
that we yearned after these strange instruments in themselves;
Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his
squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was
grim on him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently; but the
nimbus of distinction that clung to them--that we coveted
exceedingly. What more, indeed, was there to ascend to, before
the remote, but still possible, razor and strop?
Perhaps the exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the
perfect morning joined to him at disaffection; anyhow, having
breakfasted, and triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken
down in the last Sunday--'twas one without rhythm or
alliteration: a most objectionable collect--having achieved thus
much, the small natural man in me rebelled, and I vowed, as I
straddled and spat about the stable-yard in feeble imitation of
the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventor of them. It
was only geography that morning, any way: and the practical thing
was worth any quantity of bookish theoretic; as for me, I was
going on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and
capitals, might very well wait while I explored the breathing,
coloured world outside.
True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule,
have been counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was
very proud. The week before he had "gone into tables," and had
been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge
attached, wherewith we washed the faces of Charlotte's dolls,
thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck terror into
the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemic
visitations. As to "tables," nobody knew exactly what they
were, least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of
the rest, and therefore a subject for self-adulation and--
generally speaking--airs; so that Harold, hugging his slate and
his chains, was out of the question now. In such a matter, girls
were worse than useless, as wanting the necessary tenacity of
will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually
I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and issued
forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was
sitting down to lessons.
The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how
different it all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted
everything with new, strange hues; affecting the individual with
a sort of bruised feeling just below the pit of the stomach, that
was intensified whenever his thoughts flew back to the ink-
stained, smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me? or was
I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other
jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the genial sun? Anyhow,
here was the friendly well, in its old place, half way up the
lane. Hither the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come
to fill their clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms
of wet in the thick dust of the road. They had flat wooden
crosses inside each pail, which floated on the top and (we were
instructed) served to prevent the water from slopping over. We
used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and
who first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for
it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet's
nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome.
Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their
fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange,
three stings from which--so 't was averred--would kill a horse,
these were of a different kidney, and their warning drone
suggested prudence and retreat. At this time neither villagers
nor hornets encroached on the stillness: lessons, apparently,
pervaded all Nature. So, after dabbling awhile in the well--what
boy has ever passed a bit of water without messing in it?--I
scrambled through the hedge, avoiding the hornet-haunted side,
and struck into the silence of the copse.
If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become
personal. Here mystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught
and held with a purpose of their own, and saplings whipped
the face with human spite. The copse, too, proved vaster in
extent, more direfully drawn out, than one would ever have
guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was really glad when
at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet brawling
forth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I wandered
along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of
water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized
stones. Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and
portages--crinkling bays and inlets--caves for pirates and hidden
treasures--the wise Dame had forgotten nothing--till at last,
after what lapse of time I know not, my further course, though
not the stream's, was barred by some six feet of stout wire
netting, stretched from side to side, just where a thick hedge,
arching till it touched, forbade all further view.
The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag
must surely be fluttering close by. Here was evidently a
malignant contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-
boats when we dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair. A
gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the
netting, so close the hedge: but I spied where a rabbit was wont
to pass, close down by the water's edge; where a rabbit could go
a boy could follow, albeit stomach-wise and with one leg in the
stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood inside, safe but
breathless at the sight.
Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of
woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-
edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream,
now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble basin,
in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among
the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous
in the brooding noonday sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped
on the lawn, no fish leapt in the pools, nor bird declared
himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here,
then, at last the Garden of Sleep!
Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust:
gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful
apparitions of either nature, I pursued my way between rich
flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions
de<56>clared her presence patently as trumpets; without this
centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold
topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special
significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She
should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits
of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no
tranced repose, however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage
her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble
bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in
respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no
minor distinctions; to them, the inhabited world is composed of
the two main divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter
being in no way superior to the former--only hopelessly
different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section.)
I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when
there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun
outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight
of me.
"Hallo, sprat!" he said, with some abruptness, "where do you
spring from?"
"I came up the stream," I explained politely and comprehensively,
"and I was only looking for the Princess."
"Then you are a water-baby," he replied. "And what do you think
of the Princess, now you've found her?"
"I think she is lovely," I said (and doubtless I was right,
having never learned to flatter). "But she's wide-awake, so I
suppose somebody has kissed her!"
This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter;
but the Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it
was time for lunch.
"Come along, then," said the grown-up man; "and you too, Water-
baby; come and have something solid. You must want it."
I accompanied them, without any feeling of false delicacy. The
world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day,
and the particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no
importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful, just
what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady,
rather more grownup than the Princess--apparently her mother.
My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the
Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn't
know where Aldershot was, but had no manner of doubt that he was
perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly
correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of
imagination that they are so sadly to seek.
The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in
beautiful clothes--a lord, presumably--lifted me into a high
carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding over me like a
Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had
come from, and to impress the company with my own tooth-brush and
Harold's tables; but either they were stupid--or is it a
characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at the most
ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, "All
right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough
for us." The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no
share in the conversation.
After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my
friend the Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was
going to be, and he told me what he was going to be; and then
I remarked, "I suppose you two are going to get married?" He
only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. "Because if you aren't,"
I added, "you really ought to": meaning only that a man who
discovered a Princess, living in the right sort of Palace like
this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false to all
recognised tradition.
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