The Golden Age
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Kenneth Grahame >> The Golden Age
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Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet
bank; below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could
reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away,
straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was
being blown, clear and thin; it sounded like the golden streak
grown audible, while the gold seemed the visible sound. It
pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of music and
colour, and I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as
if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with
me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my
hand once more to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of
small sigh, almost a sob--as it were--of relief, the secret
drawer sprang open.
I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the
failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my
dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I
saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No
ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo
of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song,
the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and
still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down
like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.
And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay
within that drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my
heart as I recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at
the making of it. Two tarnished gilt buttons,--naval,
apparently,--a portrait of a monarch unknown to me, cut from some
antique print and deftly coloured by hand in just my own bold
style of brush-work,--some foreign copper coins, thicker and
clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself,--and a list of
birds' eggs, with names of the places where they had been found.
Also, a ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still
faintly aromatic. It was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had
happened upon. He too had found out the secret drawer, this
happy starred young person; and here he had stowed away his
treasures, one by one, and had cherished them secretly awhile;
and then--what? Well, one would never know now the reason why
these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but
across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment
with my little comrade of seasons long since dead.
I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau,
and heard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some
other boy, perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I
trusted he would be equally appreciative. As I opened the door
to go, I could hear from the nursery at the end of the passage
shouts and yells, telling that the hunt was up. Bears,
apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill of fare, judging
by the character of the noises. In another minute I would be in
the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter.
And yet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and
time, to me yet lingering on the threshold of that old-world
chamber!
"EXIT TYRANNUS"
The eventful day had arrived at last, the day which, when first
named, had seemed--like all golden dates that promise anything
definite--so immeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a
fortnight before, that Miss Smedley was really going, the
resultant ecstasies had occupied a full week, during which we
blindly revelled in the contemplation and discussion of her past
tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling to each other this
or that insult, dishonour, or physical assault, sullenly endured
at a time when deliverance was not even a small star on the
horizon; and in mapping out the golden days to come, with special
new troubles of their own, no doubt, since this is but a work-a-
day world, but at least free from one familiar scourge. The time
that remained had been taken up by the planning of practical
expressions of the popular sentiment. Under Edward's masterly
direction, arrangements had been made for a flag to be run
up over the hen-house at the very moment when the fly, with Miss
Smedley's boxes on top and the grim oppressor herself inside,
began to move off down the drive. Three brass cannons, set on
the brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our deathless
sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe: the dogs were to
wear ribbons, and later--but this depended on our powers of
evasiveness and dissimulation--there might be a small bonfire,
with a cracker or two, if the public funds could bear the
unwonted strain.
I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and "She's going
to-day!" was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep.
Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of
spirits that I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I
dressed, a dull disagreeable feeling that I could not define grew
within me--something like a physical bruise. Harold was
evidently feeling it too, for after repeating "She's going to-
day!" in a tone more befitting the Litany, he looked hard in my
face for direction as to how the situation was to be taken. But
I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not
bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days
like the present seemed to hang my heavens with black?
Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us,
swinging on a gate, and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all
the beasts appear in due order, jargoning in their several
tongues, and every verse begins with the couplet--
"Now, my lads, come with me,
Out in the morning early!"
The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory
entirely. I touched him on the shoulder. "She's going to-day!"
I said. Edward's carol subsided like a water-tap turned off.
"So she is!" he replied, and got down at once off the gate: and
we returned to the house without another word.
At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for
manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes
no right to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their
victims, they ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below
the belt. Charlotte was crying, of course; but that counted for
nothing. Charlotte even cried when the pigs' noses were ringed
in due season; thereby evoking the cheery contempt of the
operators, who asserted they liked it, and doubtless knew. But
when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside, resorted to
tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and
placed in a false and difficult position. What would the Romans
have done, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even
considered the possibility. Rules and precedents should be
strictly observed on both sides; when they are violated, the
other party is justified in feeling injured.
There were no lessons that morning, naturally--another grievance!
The fitness of things required that we should have struggled to
the last in a confused medley of moods and tenses, and parted for
ever, flushed with hatred, over the dismembered corpse of the
multiplication table. But this thing was not to be; and I was
free to stroll by myself through the garden, and combat, as best
I might, this growing feeling of depression. It was a wrong
system altogether, I thought, this going of people one had
got used to. Things ought always to continue as they had been.
Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and
went with disturbing frequency--
"Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged and sank at last,"--
but Nature had ordered it so, and in requital had provided for
rapid successors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken
from you, grief was quickly assuaged in the delight of selection
from the new litter. But now, when it was no question of a
peerless pig, but only of a governess, Nature seemed helpless,
and the future held no litter of oblivion. Things might be
better, or they might be worse, but they would never be the same;
and the innate conservatism of youth asks neither poverty nor
riches, but only immunity from change.
Edward slouched up alongside of me presently, with a hang-dog
look on him, as if he had been caught stealing jam. "What a lark
it'll be when she's really gone!" he observed, with a swagger
obviously assumed.
"Grand fun!" I replied, dolorously; and conversation flagged.
We reached the hen-house, and contemplated the banner of freedom
lying ready to flaunt the breezes at the supreme moment.
"Shall you run it up," I asked, "when the fly starts, or--or wait
a little till it's out of sight?"
Edward gazed around him dubiously. "We're going to have some
rain, I think," he said; "and--and it's a new flag. It would be
a pity to spoil it. P'raps I won't run it up at all."
Harold came round the corner like a bison pursued by Indians.
"I've polished up the cannons," he cried, "and they look grand!
Mayn't I load 'em now?"
"You leave 'em alone," said Edward, severely, "or you'll be
blowing yourself up" (consideration for others was not usually
Edward's strong point). "Don't touch the gunpowder till you're
told, or you'll get your head smacked."
Harold fell behind, limp, squashed, obedient. "She wants me to
write to her," he began, presently. "Says she doesn't mind the
spelling, it I'll only write. Fancy her saying that!"
"Oh, shut up, will you?" said Edward, savagely; and once
more we were silent, with only our thoughts for sorry company.
"Let's go off to the copse," I suggested timidly, feeling that
something had to be done to relieve the tension, "and cut more
new bows and arrows."
"She gave me a knife my last birthday," said Edward, moodily,
never budging. "It wasn't much of a knife--but I wish I hadn't
lost it."
"When my legs used to ache," I said, "she sat up half the night,
rubbing stuff on them. I forgot all about that till this
morning."
"There's the fly!" cried Harold suddenly. "I can hear it
scrunching on the gravel."
Then for the first time we turned and stared one another in the
face.
. . . . .
The fly and its contents had finally disappeared through the
gate: the rumble of its wheels had died away; and no flag floated
defiantly in the sun, no cannons proclaimed the passing of a
dynasty. From out the frosted cake of our existence Fate had cut
an irreplaceable segment; turn which way we would, the void was
present. We sneaked off in different directions, mutually
undesirous of company; and it seemed borne in upon me that I
ought to go and dig my garden right over, from end to end. It
didn't actually want digging; on the other hand, no amount of
digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I worked
steadily, strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in
action. At the end of an hour or so, I was joined by Edward.
"I've been chopping up wood," he explained, in a guilty sort of
way, though nobody had called on him to account for his doings.
"What for?" I inquired, stupidly. "There's piles and piles of it
chopped up already."
"I know," said Edward; "but there's no harm in having a bit over.
You never can tell what may happen. But what have you been doing
all this digging for?"
"You said it was going to rain," I explained, hastily; "so I
thought I'd get the digging done before it came. Good gardeners
always tell you that's the right thing to do."
"It did look like rain at one time," Edward admitted; "but it's
passed off now. Very queer weather we're having. I suppose
that's why I've felt so funny all day."
"Yes, I suppose it's the weather," I replied. "_I've_ been
feeling funny too."
The weather had nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we
would both have died rather than have admitted the real
reason.
THE BLUE ROOM
That nature has her moments of sympathy with man has been noted
often enough,--and generally as a new discovery; to us, who had
never known any other condition of things, it seemed entirely
right and fitting that the wind sang and sobbed in the poplar
tops, and in the lulls of it, sudden spirts of rain
spattered the already dusty roads, on that blusterous March day
when Edward and I awaited, on the station platform, the arrival
of the new tutor. Needless to say, this arrangement had been
planned by an aunt, from some fond idea that our shy, innocent
young natures would unfold themselves during the walk from the
station, and that on the revelation of each other's more solid
qualities that must then inevitably ensue, an enduring friendship
springing from mutual respect might be firmly based. A pretty
dream,--nothing more. For Edward, who foresaw that the brunt of
tutorial oppression would have to be borne by him, was
sulky, monosyllabic, and determined to be as negatively
disagreeable as good manners would permit. It was therefore
evident that I would have to be spokesman and purveyor of hollow
civilities, and I was none the more amiable on that account; all
courtesies, welcomes, explanations, and other court-chamberlain
kind of business, being my special aversion. There was much of
the tempestuous March weather in the hearts of both of us, as we
sullenly glowered along the carriage-windows of the slackening
train.
One is apt, however, to misjudge the special difficulties of a
situation; and the reception proved, after all, an easy and
informal matter. In a trainful so uniformly bucolic, a tutor was
readily recognisable; and his portmanteau had been consigned to
the luggage-cart, and his person conveyed into the lane, before I
had discharged one of my carefully considered sentences. I
breathed more easily, and, looking up at our new friend as we
stepped out together, remembered that we had been counting on
something altogether more arid, scholastic, and severe. A boyish
eager face and a petulant pince-nez,--untidy hair,--a head
of constant quick turns like a robin's, and a voice that kept
breaking into alto,--these were all very strange and new, but not
in the least terrible.
He proceeded jerkily through the village, with glances on this
side and that; and "Charming," he broke out presently; "quite too
charming and delightful!"
I had not counted on this sort of thing, and glanced for help to
Edward, who, hands in pockets, looked grimly down his nose. He
had taken his line, and meant to stick to it.
Meantime our friend had made an imaginary spy-glass out of his
fist, and was squinting through it at something I could not
perceive. "What an exquisite bit!" he burst out; "fifteenth
century,--no,--yes, it is!"
I began to feel puzzled, not to say alarmed. It reminded me of
the butcher in the Arabian Nights, whose common joints,
displayed on the shop-front, took to a startled public the
appearance of dismembered humanity. This man seemed to see the
strangest things in our dull, familiar surroundings.
"Ah!" he broke out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows:
"and that field now--backed by the downs--with the rain-cloud
brooding over it,--that's all David Cox--every bit of it!"
"That field belongs to Farmer Larkin," I explained politely, for
of course he could not be expected to know. "I'll take you over
to Farmer Cox's to-morrow, if he's a friend of yours; but there's
nothing to see there."
Edward, who was hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if
to say, "What sort of lunatic have we got here?"
"It has the true pastoral character, this country of yours," went
on our enthusiast: "with just that added touch in cottage and
farmstead, relics of a bygone art, which makes our English
landscape so divine, so unique!"
Really this grasshopper was becoming a burden. These familiar
fields and farms, of which we knew every blade and stick, had
done nothing that I knew of to be bespattered with adjectives in
this way. I had never thought of them as divine, unique, or
anything else. They were--well, they were just themselves, and
there was an end of it. Despairingly I jogged Edward in the
ribs, as a sign to start rational conversation, but he only
grinned and continued obdurate.
"You can see the house now," I remarked, presently; "and that's
Selina, chasing the donkey in the paddock,--or is it the donkey
chasing Selina? I can't quite make out; but it's THEM,
anyhow."
Needless to say, he exploded with a full charge of adjectives.
"Exquisite!" he rapped out; "so mellow and harmonious! and so
entirely in keeping!" (I could see from Edward's face that he
was thinking who ought to be in keeping.) "Such possibilities of
romance, now, in those old gables!"
"If you mean the garrets," I said, "there's a lot of old
furniture in them; and one is generally full of apples; and the
bats get in sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about till we go
up with hair-brushes and things and drive 'em out; but there's
nothing else in them that I know of."
"Oh, but there must be more than bats," he cried. "Don't tell me
there are no ghosts. I shall be deeply disappointed if there
aren't any ghosts."
I did not think it worth while to reply, feeling really unequal
to this sort of conversation; besides, we were nearing the house,
when my task would be ended. Aunt Eliza met us at the door, and
in the cross-fire of adjectives that ensued--both of them talking
at once, as grown-up folk have a habit of doing--we two slipped
round to the back of the house, and speedily put several solid
acres between us and civilisation, for fear of being ordered in
to tea in the drawing-room. By the time we returned, our new
importation had gone up to dress for dinner, so till the morrow
at least we were free of him.
Meanwhile the March wind, after dropping a while at sundown, had
been steadily increasing in volume; and although I fell asleep at
my usual hour, about midnight I was wakened by the stress and cry
of it. In the bright moonlight, wind-swung branches tossed and
swayed eerily across the blinds; there was rumbling in chimneys,
whistling in keyholes, and everywhere a clamour and a call.
Sleep was out of the question, and, sitting up in bed, I looked
round. Edward sat up too. "I was wondering when you were going
to wake," he said. "It's no good trying to sleep through
this. I vote we get up and do something."
"I'm game," I replied. "Let's play at being in a ship at sea"
(the plaint of the old house under the buffeting wind suggested
this, naturally); "and we can be wrecked on an island, or left on
a raft, whichever you choose; but I like an island best myself,
because there's more things on it."
Edward on reflection negatived the idea. "It would make too much
noise," he pointed out. "There's no fun playing at ships, unless
you can make a jolly good row."
The door creaked, and a small figure in white slipped cautiously
in. "Thought I heard you talking," said Charlotte. "We don't
like it; we're afraid--Selina too. She'll be here in a minute.
She's putting on her new dressing-gown she's so proud of."
His arms round his knees, Edward cogitated deeply until Selina
appeared, barefooted, and looking slim and tall in the new
dressing-gown. Then, "Look here," he exclaimed; "now we're all
together, I vote we go and explore!"
"You're always wanting to explore," I said. "What on earth
is there to explore for in this house?"
"Biscuits!" said the inspired Edward.
"Hooray! Come on!" chimed in Harold, sitting up suddenly. He
had been awake all the time, but had been shamming asleep, lest
he should be fagged to do anything.
It was indeed a fact, as Edward had remembered, that our
thoughtless elders occasionally left the biscuits out, a prize
for the night-walking adventurer with nerves of steel.
Edward tumbled out of bed, and pulled a baggy old pair of
knickerbockers over his bare shanks. Then he girt himself with a
belt, into which he thrust, on the one side a large wooden
pistol, on the other an old single-stick; and finally he donned a
big slouch-hat--once an uncle's--that we used for playing Guy
Fawkes and Charles-the-Second-up-a-tree in. Whatever the
audience, Edward, if possible, always dressed for his parts with
care and conscientiousness; while Harold and I, true
Elizabethans, cared little about the mounting of the piece, so
long as the real dramatic heart of it beat sound.
Our commander now enjoined on us a silence deep as the
grave, reminding us that Aunt Eliza usually slept with an open
door, past which we had to file.
"But we'll take the short cut through the Blue Room," said the
wary Selina.
"Of course," said Edward, approvingly. "I forgot about that.
Now then! You lead the way!"
The Blue Room had in prehistoric times been added to by taking in
a superfluous passage, and so not only had the advantage of two
doors, but enabled us to get to the head of the stairs without
passing the chamber wherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It was
rarely occupied, except when a casual uncle came down for the
night. We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in
darkness, except for a bright strip of moonlight on the floor,
across which we must pass for our exit. On this our leading lady
chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to study the hang of her
new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she proceeded,
after the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a
minuet down the moonlit patch with an imaginary partner. This
was too much for Edward's histrionic instincts, and after a
moment's pause he drew his single-stick, and with flourishes meet
for the occasion, strode onto the stage. A struggle ensued on
approved lines, at the end of which Selina was stabbed slowly and
with unction, and her corpse borne from the chamber by the
ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed after in a clump, with
capers and gesticulations of delight; the special charm of the
performance lying in the necessity for its being carried out with
the dumbest of dumb shows.
Once out on the dark landing, the noise of the storm without told
us that we had exaggerated the necessity for silence; so,
grasping the tails of each other's nightgowns even as Alpine
climbers rope themselves together in perilous places, we fared
stoutly down the staircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier
of the hall, to where a faint glimmer from the half-open door of
the drawing-room beckoned to us like friendly hostel-lights.
Entering, we found that our thriftless seniors had left the sound
red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into a cheerful blaze; and
biscuits--a plateful--smiled at us in an encouraging sort of way,
together with the halves of a lemon, already once squeezed
but still suckable. The biscuits were righteously shared, the
lemon segments passed from mouth to mouth; and as we squatted
round the fire, its genial warmth consoling our unclad limbs, we
realised that so many nocturnal perils had not been braved in
vain.
"It's a funny thing," said Edward, as we chatted, "how; I hate
this room in the daytime. It always means having your face
washed, and your hair brushed, and talking silly company talk.
But to-night it's really quite jolly. Looks different, somehow."
"I never can make out I said, "what people come here to tea for.
They can have their own tea at home if they like,--they're not
poor people,--with jam and things, and drink out of their saucer,
and suck their fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come here
from a long way off, and sit up straight with their feet off the
bars of their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of
stuff every time."
Selina sniffed disdainfully. "You don't know anything about it,"
she said. "In society you have to call on each other. It's the
proper thing to do."
"Pooh! YOU'RE not in society," said Edward, politely; "and,
what's more, you never will be."
"Yes, I shall, some day," retorted Selina; "but I shan't ask you
to come and see me, so there!"
"Wouldn't come if you did," growled Edward.
"Well, you won't get the chance," rejoined our sister, claiming
her right of the last word. There was no heat about these little
amenities, which made up--as we understood it--the art of polite
conversation.
"I don 't like society people," put in Harold from the sofa,
where he was sprawling at full length,--a sight the daylight
hours would have blushed to witness. "There were some of 'em
here this afternoon, when you two had gone off to the station.
Oh, and I found a dead mouse on the lawn, and I wanted to skin
it, but I wasn't sure I knew how, by myself; and they came out
into the garden and patted my head,--I wish people wouldn't do
that,--and one of 'em asked me to pick her a flower. Don't know
why she couldn't pick it herself; but I said, `All right, I
will if you'll hold my mouse.' But she screamed, and threw it
away; and Augustus (the cat) got it, and ran away with it. I
believe it was really his mouse all the time, 'cos he'd been
looking about as if he had lost something, so I wasn't angry with
HIM; but what did SHE want to throw away my mouse for?"
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