The Golden Age
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Kenneth Grahame >> The Golden Age
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"Don't see what that's got to do with it," I said.
"Nor don't I," rejoined Edward. "But anyhow the notes and things
stopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered,
for he had bought two ferrets on tick, and promised to pay a
shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever,
the silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being
dunned for the shilling, he went off to the fellow and said,
`Your broken-hearted Bella implores you to meet her at sundown,--
by the hollow oak, as of old, be it only for a moment. Do not
fail!' He got all that out of some rotten book, of course.
The fellow looked puzzled and said,--
"`What hollow oak? I don't know any hollow oak.'
"`Perhaps it was the Royal Oak?' said Bobby promptly, 'cos he saw
he had made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book;
but this didn't seem to make the fellow any happier."
"Should think not," I said, "the Royal Oak's an awful low sort of
pub."
"I know," said Edward. "Well, at last the fellow said, `I think
I know what she means: the hollow tree in your father's paddock.
It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn't know the difference.
All right: say I'll be there.' Bobby hung about a bit, for he
hadn't got his money. `She was crying awfully,' he said. Then
he got his shilling."
"And wasn't the fellow riled," I inquired, "when he got to the
place and found nothing?"
"He found Bobby," said Edward, indignantly. "Young Ferris was a
gentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another
message from Bella: `I dare not leave the house. My cruel
parents immure me closely If you only knew what I suffer. Your
broken-hearted Bella.' Out of the same rotten book. This made
the fellow a little suspicious,'cos it was the old Ferrises who
had been keen about the thing all through: the fellow, you see,
had tin."
"But what's that got to--" I began again.
"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, impatiently. `I'm telling you
just what Bobby told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he
couldn't exactly call Bella's brother a liar, so Bobby escaped
for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff
French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sister,
she was too sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow women
seem more mistrustful than men. They're so beastly suspicious by
nature, you know."
"_I_ know," said I. "But did the two--the fellow and the
sister--make it up afterwards?"
"I don't remember about that," replied Edward, indifferently;
"but Bobby got packed off to school a whole year earlier than his
people meant to send him,--which was just what he wanted. So you
see it all came right in the end!"
I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was
evidently meant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden
lamplight mingled with the moon rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria
and the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and took
the direction of a garden seat that was backed by a dense laurel
shrubbery reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edward
mediated moodily. "If we only knew what they were talking
about," said he, "you'd soon see whether I was right or not.
Look here! Let's send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!"
"Harold's asleep," I said; "it seems rather a shame--"
"Oh, rot!" said my brother; "he's the youngest, and he's got to
do as he's told!"
So the luckless Harold was hauled out of bed and given his
sailing-orders. He was naturally rather vexed at being stood up
suddenly on the cold floor, and the job had no particular
interest for him; but he was both staunch and well disciplined.
The means of exit were simple enough. A porch of iron trellis
came up to within easy reach of the window, and was habitually
used by all three of us, when modestly anxious to avoid
public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch like a white
rat, and his night gown glimmered a moment on the gravel walk ere
he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief
interval of silence ensued, broken suddenly by a sound of
scuffle, and then a shrill, long-drawn squeal, as of metallic
surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen into the hands of the
enemy!
Indolence alone had made us devolve the task of investigation on
our younger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there
was no hesitation. In a second we were down the side of the
porch, and crawling Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the back
of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt
Maria was on the seat, in a white evening frock, looking--for an
aunt--really quite nice. On the lawn stood an incensed curate,
grasping our small brother by a large ear, which--judging from
the row he was making--seemed on the point of parting company
with the head it adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did
not really affect us otherwise than aesthetically. To one who
has tried both, the wail of genuine physical anguish is easy
distinguishable from the pumped-up ad misericordiam
blubber. Harold's could clearly be recognised as belonging to
the latter class. "Now, you young--" (whelp, _I_ think it was,
but Edward stoutly maintains it was devil), said the curate,
sternly; "tell us what you mean by it!"
"Well, leggo of my ear then!" shrilled Harold, "and I'll tell you
the solemn truth!"
"Very well," agreed the curate, releasing him; "now go ahead, and
don't lie more than you can help."
We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but
even we had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of
resource and powers of imagination.
"I had just finished saying my prayers," began that young
gentleman, slowly, "when I happened to look out of the window,
and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins!
A burglar was approaching the house with snake-like tread! He
had a scowl and a dark lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!"
We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold's
native notes, seemed strangely familiar.
"Go on," said the curate, grimly.
"Pausing in his stealthy career," continued Harold, "he gave a
low whistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the
adjacent shadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants
were both armed to the teeth."
"Excellent," said the curate; "proceed."
"The robber chief," pursued Harold, warming to his work, "joined
his nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones.
His expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that
he was armed to the t--"
"There, never mind his teeth," interrupted the curate, rudely;
"there's too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have
done."
"I was in a frightful funk," continued the narrator, warily
guarding his ear with his hand, "but just then the drawing-room
window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged.
The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid
implications!"
The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained,
and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have
really seen something. How was the poor man to know--though
the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint--that
the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful
lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?
"Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked.
"'Cos I was afraid," said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they
mightn't believe me!"
"But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in
Aunt Maria.
Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!
At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off
through the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low
whistle. I replied by another. The effect was magical. Aunt
Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance
around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back
door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in
the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced
the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on him.
"O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do
not be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second
later, the coast was entirely clear.
By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging;
and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off.
Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to
the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out-
house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window
of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one
day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an
otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling
the title role; and it had proved distinctly useful on
occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some
cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing
something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly
cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.
The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was
generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight,
and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however,
when he hid dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild
curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the
last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark
dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large, "Mr.
Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!"
Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and
it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated
friend in the open.
A HARVESTING
The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a
study in old gold. "A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:"
it may be false Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly
blazons the display that Edward and I considered from the
rickyard gate, Harold was not on in this scene, being stretched
upon the couch of pain; the special disorder stomachic, as usual.
The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had
deigned to carve me out a turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was
peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip
flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife, had
eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special
perquisite. Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance
as the chemist could afford. But Edward and I, knowing that this
particular field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the
privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard
back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to
career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of
a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we
inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such
stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the
smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had
all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they
swayed and bumped afield.
Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the
rickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.
Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me
in a death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he
the captain of the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget
the precise number of guns. Edward always collared the best
parts to himself; but I was holding my own gallantly, when I
suddenly discovered that the floor we battled on was swarming
with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him, and rolled over
the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a war-dance of
triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared
little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of
him, but that I was--and terribly--of earwigs, "those mortal bugs
o' the field." So I let him disappear, shouting lustily for all
hands to repel boarders, while I strolled inland, down the
village.
There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not
our own village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One
felt that sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is
familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the
head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-
present possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile
inhabitants, a class eternally conservative. Elated with
isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than usual: and "even
so," I mused, "might Mungo Park have threaded the trackless
African forest and. . ." Here I plumped against a soft, but
resisting body.
Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude
every boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both
elbows well up over the ears. I found myself facing a tall
elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black--a
clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his
eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could
not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled
thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a
thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-
minded. I trust you will forgive me."
Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style
of address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at
once the natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were
gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of
course, I took the blame on myself; adding, that I was very
absent-minded too,--which was indeed the case.
"I perceive," he said pleasantly, "that we have something in
common. I, an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see
visions. Your lot is the happier. And now--" his hand had been
resting all this time on a wicket-gate--"you are hot, it is
easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgo is the Zodiacal sign.
Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, if your
engagements will permit."
My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I
had not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he
held the gate open politely, murmuring "Venit Hesperus ite,
capellae: come, little kid!" and then apologising abjectly for a
familiarity which (he said) was less his than the Roman poet's.
A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and
my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that,
forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising
humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and
two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor,
eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend
was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special
awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps
o' books," Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate
of discount applicable to Martha's statements.
We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck
me at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None
of your feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and
tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout
volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled
or hunched themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the
pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings; topping all, a
faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly, as
under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head
of the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one
corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.
This I hailed with a squeal of delight. "Want to strum?"
inquired my friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the
world--his eyes were already straying towards another corner,
where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of
Alpine system of book and foolscap.
"O, but may I?" I asked in doubt. "At home I'm not allowed to--
only beastly exercises!"
"Well, you can strum here, at all events," he replied; and
murmuring absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made
his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible
writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A
great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score
or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an
absorption almost passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for
any consciousness he had of me. So with a light heart I
turned to and strummed.
Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags
of mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in
this,--that the wild joy of strumming has become a vanished
sense. Their happiness comes from the concord and the relative
value of the notes they handle: the pure, absolute quality and
nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the
strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some
cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of
greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the
grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight,
and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some
red, and others will tell of an army with silken standards and
march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up
above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the
imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were
full of hiving bees.
Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's
eye over the edge of a folio. "But as for these Germans," he
began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle of a
discussion, "the scholarship is there, I grant you; but the
spark, the fine perception, the happy intuition, where is it?
They get it all from us!"
"They get nothing whatever from US," I said decidedly: the
word German only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was
bitterly hostile.
"You think not?" he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking
about the room. "Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in
so young a critic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they
are pleasing. But just look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how
he struggles and wrestles with a simple {GREEK gar} in this very
passage here!"
I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see
some sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but
all was still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I
said so.
"Precisely," he cried, delighted. "To you, who possess the
natural scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no
difficulty at all. But to this Schrumpffius--" But here,
luckily for me, in came the housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of
staid aspect.
"Your tea is in the garden," she said, as if she were
correcting a faulty emendation. "I've put some cakes and things
for the little gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it
gets cold."
He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist
over my devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there
fell a moment's break in his descant; and then, "You'd better
drink it before it gets cold," she observed again, impassively.
The wretched man cast a deprecating look at me. "Perhaps a
little tea would be rather nice," he observed, feebly; and to my
great relief he led the way into the garden. I looked about for
the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, I concluded
he was absent-minded too, and attacked the "cakes and things"
with no misgivings.
After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened
which, small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory.
To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered,
slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman
and a pariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his
professional whine; and I looked at my friend with the heartiest
compassion, for I knew well from Martha--it was common
talk--that at this time of day he was certainly and surely
penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with pockets lined; and
each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he
proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and even
shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the
gentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case,
set to and cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment.
He reviled his eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his
relatives and surroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing
malice and filth. We watched the party to a turn in the road,
where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop. Her lord, after
some conventional expletives demanded of him by his position,
relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang on his arm
with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a dim
approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick
at her hand.
"See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this
strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the
unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early
morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light
thwartwise--and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the
fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together
the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the
fatal bow--{3 GREEK}not that--nor even the placid respectable
{GREEK}--but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious,
more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must
stoop!"
The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly
homewards down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and
around. Only Hesperus hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably
far-drawn and remote; yet infinitely heartening, somehow, in his
valorous isolation.<113>
SNOWBOUND
Twelfth-night had come and gone, and life next morning seemed a
trifle flat and purposeless. But yester-eve and the mummers were
here! They had come striding into the old kitchen, powdering the
red brick floor with snow from their barbaric bedizenments; and
stamping, and crossing, and declaiming, till all was whirl and
riot and shout. Harold was frankly afraid: unabashed, he buried
himself in the cook's ample bosom. Edward feigned a manly
superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful apparitions
familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too big
to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came
these outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque
and a terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what
strange visitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the
chestnuts popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories
drew the awe-stricken circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, "all
furred in black sheep-skins, and a russet gown, with a bow and
arrows, and bearing wild geese in his hand!" Or stately Ogier
the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to the land that
once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the Snow-
Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of
reindeers' feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while
aloft the Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears among the
quiet stars!
This morning, house-bound by the relentless, indefatigable snow,
I was feeling the reaction Edward, on the contrary, being
violently stage struck on this his first introduction to the real
Drama, was striding up and down the floor, proclaiming "Here be
I, King Gearge the Third," in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold,
accustomed, as the youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that
asked no sympathy, was absorbed in "clubmen": a performance
consisting in a measured progress round the room arm-in-arm with
an imaginary companion of reverend years, with occasional halts
at imaginary clubs, where--imaginary steps being leisurely
ascended--imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was
discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and--regrettable to
say--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows
how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his
small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was
proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I,
crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl
and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our
cheery little world in an uncanny uniform, ghastly in line and
hue.
Charlotte was sadly out of spirits. Having "countered" Miss
Smedley at breakfast, during some argument or other, by an apt
quotation from her favourite classic (the Fairy Book) she had
been gently but firmly informed that no such things as fairies
ever really existed. "Do you mean to say it's all lies?" asked
Charlotte, bluntly. Miss Smedley deprecated the use of any such
unladylike words in any connection at all. "These stories had
their origin, my dear," she explained, "in a mistaken
anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though
we are now too well informed to fall into similar errors,
there are still many beautiful lessons to be learned from these
myths--"
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