The Golden Age
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Kenneth Grahame >> The Golden Age
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"You have to be careful with mice," reflected Edward; "they're
such slippery things. Do you remember we were playing with a
dead mouse once on the piano, and the mouse was Robinson Crusoe,
and the piano was the island, and somehow Crusoe slipped down
inside the island, into its works, and we couldn't get him out,
though we tried rakes and all sorts of things, till the tuner
came. And that wasn't till a week after, and then--"
Here Charlotte, who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into the
fender; and we realised that the wind had dropped at last, and
the house was lapped in a great stillness. Our vacant beds
seemed to be calling to us imperiously; and we were all glad when
Edward gave the signal for retreat. At the top of the staircase
Harold unexpectedly turned mutinous, insisting on his right
to slide down the banisters in a free country. Circumstances did
not allow of argument; I suggested frog's-marching instead, and
frog's-marched he accordingly was, the procession passing
solemnly across the moonlit Blue Room, with Harold horizontal and
limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was just slipping off
into slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle and snort.
"By Jove!" he said; "I forgot all about it. The new tutor's
sleeping in the Blue Room!"
"Lucky he didn't wake up and catch us," I grunted, drowsily; and
both of us, without another thought on the matter, sank into
well-earned repose.
Next morning we came down to breakfast braced to grapple with
fresh adversity, but were surprised to find our garrulous friend
of the previous day--he was late in making his appearance--
strangely silent and (apparently) preoccupied. Having polished
off our porridge, we ran out to feed the rabbits, explaining to
them that a beast of a tutor would prevent their enjoying so much
of our society as formerly.
On returning to the house at the fated hour appointed for
study, we were thunderstruck to see the station-cart disappearing
down the drive, freighted with our new acquaintance. Aunt Eliza
was brutally uncommunicative; but she was overheard to remark
casually that she thought the man must be a lunatic. In this
theory we were only too ready to concur, dismissing thereafter
the whole matter from our minds.
Some weeks later it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a
flying visit, produced from his pocket a copy of the latest
weekly, Psyche: a Journal of the Unseen; and proceeded
laborously to rid himself of much incomprehensible humour,
apparently at our expense. We bore it patiently, with the forced
grin demanded by convention, anxious to get at the source of
inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in a paragraph
circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation.
"Case III.," it began. "The following particulars were
communicated by a young member of the Society, of undoubted
probity and earnestness, and are a chronicle of actual and recent
experience." A fairly accurate description of the house
followed, with details that were unmistakable; but to this
there succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel about apparitions,
nightly visitants, and the like, writ in a manner betokening a
disordered mind, coupled with a feeble imagination. The fellow
was not even original. All the old material was there,--the
storm at night, the haunted chamber, the white lady, the murder
re-enacted, and so on,--already worn threadbare in many a
Christmas Number. No one was able to make head or tail of the
stuff, or of its connexion with our quiet mansion; and yet
Edward, who had always suspected the man, persisted in
maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow or other,
at the bottom of it.
A FALLING OUT
Harold told me the main facts of this episode some time later,--
in bits, and with reluctance. It was not a recollection he cared
to talk about. The crude blank misery of a moment is apt to
leave a dull bruise which is slow to depart, if it ever does so
entirely; and Harold confesses to a twinge or two, still, at
times, like the veteran who brings home a bullet inside him from
martial plains over sea.
He knew he was a brute the moment he had done it; Selina had not
meant to worry, only to comfort and assist. But his soul was one
raw sore within him, when he found himself shut up in the
schoolroom after hours, merely for insisting that 7 times 7
amounted to 47. The injustice of it seemed so flagrant. Why not
47 as much as 49? One number was no prettier than the other to
look at, and it was evidently only a matter of arbitrary taste
and preference, and, anyhow, it had always been 47 to him, and
would be to the end of time. So when Selina came in out of
the sun, leaving the Trappers or the Far West behind her, and
putting off the glory of being an Apache squaw in order to hear
him his tables and win his release, Harold turned on her
venomously, rejected her kindly overtures, and ever drove his
elbow into her sympathetic ribs, in his determination to be left
alone in the glory of sulks. The fit passed directly, his eyes
were opened, and his soul sat in the dust as he sorrowfully began
to cast about for some atonement heroic enough to salve the
wrong.
Of course poor Selina looked for no sacrifice nor heroics
whatever: she didn't even want him to say he was sorry. If he
would only make it up, she would have done the apologising part
herself. But that was not a boy's way. Something solid, Harold
felt, was due from him; and until that was achieved, making-up
must not be thought of, in order that the final effect might not
be spoilt. Accordingly, when his release came, and poor Selina
hung about, trying to catch his eye, Harold, possessed by the
demon of a distorted motive, avoided her steadily--though he was
bleeding inwardly at every minute of delay--and came to me
instead. Needless to say, I approved his plan highly; it
was so much more high-toned than just going and making-up tamely,
which any one could do; and a girl who had been jobbed in the
ribs by a hostile elbow could not be expected for a moment to
overlook it, without the liniment of an offering to soothe her
injured feelings.
"I know what she wants most," said Harold. "She wants that set
of tea-things in the toy-shop window, with the red and blue
flowers on 'em; she's wanted it for months, 'cos her dolls are
getting big enough to have real afternoon tea; and she wants it
so badly that she won't walk that side of the street when we go
into the town. But it costs five shillings!"
Then we set to work seriously, and devoted the afternoon to a
realisation of assets and the composition of a Budget that might
have been dated without shame from Whitehall. The result worked
out as follows:--
s. d.
By one uncle, unspent through having been
lost for nearly a week--turned up at last
in the straw of the dog-kennel . . . . 2 6
----
Carry forward, 2 6
s. d.
Brought forward, 2 6
By advance from me on security of next
uncle, and failing that, to be called in at
Christmas . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0
By shaken out of missionary-box with the
help of a knife-blade. (They were our
own pennies and a forced levy) . . . . . 0 4
By bet due from Edward, for walking across
the field where Farmer Larkin's bull was,
and Edward bet him twopence he wouldn't
--called in with difficulty . . . . . . 0 2
By advance from Martha, on no security at
all, only you mustn't tell your aunt . . . 1 0
----
Total 5 0
and at last we breathed again.
The rest promised to be easy. Selina had a tea-party at five on
the morrow, with the chipped old wooden tea-things that had
served her successive dolls from babyhood. Harold would slip off
directly after dinner, going alone, so as not to arouse
suspicion, as we were not allowed to go into the town by
ourselves. It was nearly two miles to our small metropolis, but
there would be plenty of time for him to go and return, even
laden with the olive-branch neatly packed in shavings; besides,
he might meet the butcher, who was his friend and would give
him a lift. Then, finally, at five, the rapture of the new tea-
service, descended from the skies; and, retribution made, making-
up at last, without loss of dignity. With the event before us,
we thought it a small thing that twenty-four hours more of
alienation and pretended sulks must be kept up on Harold's part;
but Selina, who naturally knew nothing of the treat in store for
her, moped for the rest of the evening, and took a very heavy
heart to bed.
When next day the hour for action arrived, Harold evaded Olympian
attention with an easy modesty born of long practice, and made
off for the front gate. Selina, who had been keeping her eye
upon him, thought he was going down to the pond to catch frogs, a
joy they had planned to share together, and made after him; but
Harold, though he heard her footsteps, continued sternly on his
high mission, without even looking back; and Selina was left to
wander disconsolately among flower-beds that had lost--for her--
all scent and colour. I saw it all, and although cold reason
approved our line of action, instinct told me we were brutes.
Harold reached the town--so he recounted afterwards--in
record time, having run most of the way for fear the tea-things,
which had reposed six months in the window, should be snapped up
by some other conscience-stricken lacerator of a sister's
feelings; and it seemed hardly credible to find them still there,
and their owner willing to part with them for the price marked on
the ticket. He paid his money down at once, that there should be
no drawing back from the bargain; and then, as the things had to
be taken out of the window and packed, and the afternoon was yet
young, he thought he might treat himself to a taste of urban joys
and la vie de Boheme. Shops came first, of course, and he
flattened his nose successively against the window with the
india-rubber balls in it, and the clock-work locomotive; and
against the barber's window, with wigs on blocks, reminding him
of uncles, and shaving-cream that looked so good to eat; and the
grocer's window, displaying more currants than the whole British
population could possibly consume without a special effort; and
the window of the bank, wherein gold was thought so little of
that it was dealt about in shovels. Next there was the market-
place, with all its clamorous joys; and when a runaway calf came
down the street like a cannon-ball, Harold felt that he had
not lived in vain. The whole place was so brimful of excitement
that he had quite forgotten the why and the wherefore of his
being there, when a sight of the church clock recalled him to his
better self, and sent him flying out of the town, as he realised
he had only just time enough left to get back in. If he were
after his appointed hour, he would not only miss his high
triumph, but probably would be detected as a transgressor of
bounds,--a crime before which a private opinion on multiplication
sank to nothingness. So he jogged along on his homeward way,
thinking of many things, and probably talking to himself a good
deal, as his habit was, and had covered nearly half the distance,
when suddenly--a deadly sinking in the pit of his stomach--a
paralysis of every limb--around him a world extinct of light and
music--a black sun and a reeling sky--he had forgotten the tea-
things!
It was useless, it was hopeless, all was over, and nothing could
now be done; nevertheless he turned and ran back wildly, blindly,
choking with the big sobs that evoked neither pity nor comfort
from a merciless mocking world around; a stitch in his side,
dust in his eyes, and black despair clutching at his heart. So
he stumbled on, with leaden legs and bursting sides, till--as if
Fate had not yet dealt him her last worst buffet--on turning a
corner in the road he almost ran under the wheels of a dog-cart,
in which, as it pulled up, was apparent the portly form of Farmer
Larkin, the arch-enemy, whose ducks he had been shying stones at
that very morning!
Had Harold been in his right and unclouded senses, he would have
vanished through the hedge some seconds earlier, rather than pain
the farmer by any unpleasant reminiscences which his appearance
might call up; but as things were, he could only stand and
blubber hopelessly, caring, indeed, little now what further ill
might befall him. The farmer, for his part, surveyed the
desolate figure with some astonishment, calling out in no
unfriendly accents, "Why, Master Harold! whatever be the matter?
Baint runnin' away, be ee?"
Then Harold, with the unnatural courage born of desperation,
flung himself on the step, and climbing into the cart, fell in
the straw at the bottom of it, sobbing out that he wanted to go
back, go back! The situation had a vagueness; but the
farmer, a man of action rather than words, swung his horse round
smartly, and they were in the town again by the time Harold had
recovered himself sufficiently to furnish some details. As they
drove up to the shop, the woman was waiting at the door with the
parcel; and hardly a minute seemed to have elapsed since the
black crisis, ere they were bowling along swiftly home, the
precious parcel hugged in a close embrace.
And now the farmer came out in quite a new and unexpected light.
Never a word did he say of broken fences and hurdles, of trampled
crops and harried flocks and herds. One would have thought the
man had never possessed a head of live stock in his life.
Instead, he was deeply interested in the whole dolorous quest of
the tea-things, and sympathised with Harold on the disputed point
in mathematics as if he had been himself at the same stage of
education. As they neared home, Harold found himself, to his
surprise, sitting up and chatting to his new friend like man to
man; and before he was dropped at a convenient gap in the garden
hedge, he had promised that when Selina gave her first public
tea-party, little Miss Larkin should be invited to come and
bring ha whole sawdust family along with her; and the farmer
appeared as pleased and proud as if he hat been asked to a
garden-party at Marlborough House. Really, those Olympians have
certain good points, far down in them. I shall have to leave off
abusing them some day.
At the hour of five, Selina, having spent the afternoon searching
for Harold in all his accustomed haunts, sat down disconsolately
to tea with her dolls, who ungenerously refused to wait beyond
the appointed hour. The wooden tea-things seemed more chipped
than usual; and the dolls themselves had more of wax and sawdust,
and less of human colour and intelligence about them, than she
ever remembered before. It was then that Harold burst in, very
dusty, his stockings at his heels, and the channels ploughed by
tears still showing on his grimy cheeks; and Selina was at last
permitted to know that he had been thinking of her ever since his
ill-judged exhibition of temper, and that his sulks had not been
the genuine article, nor had he gone frogging by himself. It was
a very happy hostess who dispensed hospitality that evening to a
glassy-eyed stiff-kneed circle; and many a dollish
gaucherie, that would have been severely checked on ordinary
occasions, was as much overlooked as if it had been a birthday.
But Harold and I, in our stupid masculine way, thought all her
happiness sprang from possession of the long-coveted tea-
service.
"LUSISTI SATIS "
Among the many fatuous ideas that possessed the Olympian noddle,
this one was pre-eminent; that, being Olympians, they could talk
quite freely in our presence on subjects of the closest import to
us, so long as names, dates, and other landmarks were ignored.
We were supposed to be denied the faculty for putting two and two
together; and, like the monkeys, who very sensibly refrain from
speech lest they should be set to earn their livings, we were
careful to conceal our capabilities for a simple syllogism. Thus
we were rarely taken by surprise, and so were considered by our
disappointed elders to be apathetic and to lack the divine
capacity for wonder.
Now the daily output of the letter-bag, with the mysterious
discussions that ensued thereon, had speedily informed us that
Uncle Thomas was intrusted with a mission,--a mission, too,
affecting ourselves. Uncle Thomas's missions were many and
various; a self-important man, one liking the business while
protesting that he sank under the burden, he was the missionary,
so to speak, of our remote habitation. The matching a ribbon,
the running down to the stores, the interviewing a cook,--these
and similar duties lent constant colour and variety to his vacant
life in London and helped to keep down his figure. When the
matter, however, had in our presence to be referred to with nods
and pronouns, with significant hiatuses and interpolations in the
French tongue, then the red flag was flown, the storm-cone
hoisted, and by a studious pretence of inattention we were not
long in plucking out the heart of the mystery.
To clinch our conclusion, we descended suddenly and together on
Martha; proceeding, however, not by simple inquiry as to facts,--
that would never have done,--but by informing her that the air
was full of school and that we knew all about it, and then
challenging denial. Martha was a trusty soul, but a bad witness
for the defence, and we soon had it all out of her. The word had
gone forth, the school had been selected; the necessary
sheets were hemming even now; and Edward was the designated and
appointed victim.
It had always been before us as an inevitable bourne, this
strange unknown thing called school; and yet--perhaps I should
say consequently--we had never seriously set ourselves to
consider what it really meant. But now that the grim spectre
loomed imminent, stretching lean hands for one of our flock, it
behoved us to face the situation, to take soundings in this
uncharted sea and find out whither we were drifting.
Unfortunately, the data in our possession were absolutely
insufficient, and we knew not whither to turn for exact
information. Uncle Thomas could have told us all about it, of
course; he had been there himself, once, in the dim and misty
past. But an unfortunate conviction, that Nature had intended
him for a humourist, tainted all his evidence, besides making it
wearisome to hear. Again, of such among our contemporaries as we
had approached, the trumpets gave forth an uncertain sound.
According to some, it meant larks, revels, emancipation, and a
foretaste of the bliss of manhood. According to others,--the
majority, alas!--it was a private and peculiar Hades, that
could give the original institution points and a beating. When
Edward was observed to be swaggering round with a jaunty air and
his chest stuck out, I knew that he was contemplating his future
from the one point of view. When, on the contrary, he was
subdued and unaggressive, and sought the society of his sisters,
I recognised that the other aspect was in the ascendant. "You
can always run away, you know," I used to remark consolingly on
these latter occasions; and Edward would brighten up wonderfully
at the suggestion, while Charlotte melted into tears before her
vision of a brother with blistered feet and an empty belly,
passing nights of frost 'neath the lee of windy haystacks.
It was to Edward, of course, that the situation was chiefly
productive of anxiety; and yet the ensuing change in my own
circumstances and position furnished me also with food for grave
reflexion. Hitherto I had acted mostly to orders. Even when I
had devised and counselled any particular devilry, it had been
carried out on Edward's approbation, and--as eldest--at his
special risk. Henceforward I began to be anxious of the
bugbear Responsibility, and to realise what a soul-throttling
thing it is. True, my new position would have its compensations.
Edward had been masterful exceedingly, imperious, perhaps a
little narrow; impassioned for hard facts, and with scant
sympathy for make-believe. I should now be free and
untrammelled; in the conception and carrying out of a scheme, I
could accept and reject to better artistic purpose.
It would, moreover, be needless to be a Radical any more.
Radical I never was, really, by nature or by sympathy. The part
had been thrust on me one day, when Edward proposed to foist the
House of Lords on our small Republic. The principles of the
thing he set forth learnedly and well, and it all sounded
promising enough, till he went on to explain that, for the
present at least, he proposed to be the House of Lords himself.
We others were to be the Commons. There would be promotions, of
course, he added, dependent on service and on fitness, and open
to both sexes; and to me in especial he held out hopes of speedy
advancement. But in its initial stages the thing wouldn't work
properly unless he were first and only Lord. Then I put my foot
down promptly, and said it was all rot, and I didn't see the
good of any House of Lords at all. "Then you must be a low
Radical! said Edward, with fine contempt. The inference seemed
hardly necessary, but what could I do? I accepted the situation,
and said firmly, Yes, I was a low Radical. In this monstrous
character I had been obliged to masquerade ever since; but now I
could throw it off, and look the world in the face again.
And yet, did this and other gains really out-balance my losses?
Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I
should also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little
clan. To Edward this had been nothing; he had withstood the
impact of Olympus without flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas
unremoved. But was I equal to the task? And was there not
rather a danger that for the sake of peace and quietness I might
be tempted to compromise, compound, and make terms? sinking thus,
by successive lapses, into the Blameless Prig? I don't mean, of
course, that I thought out my thoughts to the exact point here
set down. In those fortunate days of old one was free from the
hard necessity of transmuting the vague idea into the
mechanical inadequate medium of words. But the feeling was
there, that I might not possess the qualities of character for so
delicate a position.
The unnatural halo round Edward got more pronounced, his own
demeanour more responsible and dignified, with the arrival of his
new clothes. When his trunk and play-box were sent in, the
approaching cleavage between our brother, who now belonged to the
future, and ourselves, still claimed by the past, was accentuated
indeed. His name was painted on each of them, in large letters,
and after their arrival their owner used to disappear
mysteriously, and be found eventually wandering round his
luggage, murmuring to himself, "Edward----, in a rapt, remote
sort of way. It was a weakness, of course, and pointed to a soft
spot in his character; but those who can remember the sensation
of first seeing their names in print will not think hardly of
him.
As the short days sped by and the grim event cast its shadow
longer and longer across our threshold, an unnatural politeness,
a civility scarce canny, began to pervade the air. In those
latter hours Edward himself was frequently heard to say "Please,
and also "Would you mind fetchin' that ball?" while Harold
and I would sometimes actually find ourselves trying to
anticipate his wishes. As for the girls, they simply grovelled.
The Olympians, too, in their uncouth way, by gift of carnal
delicacies and such-like indulgence, seemed anxious to
demonstrate that they had hitherto misjudged this one of us.
Altogether the situation grew strained and false, and I think a
general relief was felt when the end came.
We all trooped down to the station, of course; it is only in
later years that the farce of "seeing people off" is seen in its
true colours. Edward was the life and soul of the party; and if
his gaiety struck one at times as being a trifle overdone, it was
not a moment to be critical. As we tramped along, I promised him
I would ask Farmer Larkin not to kill any more pigs till he came
back for the holidays, and he said he would send me a proper
catapult,--the real lethal article, not a kid's plaything. Then
suddenly, when we were about half-way down, one of the girls fell
a-snivelling.
The happy few who dare to laugh at the woes of sea-sickness will
perhaps remember how, on occasion, the sudden collapse of a
fellow-voyager before their very eyes has caused them
hastily to revise their self-confidence and resolve to walk more
humbly for the future. Even so it was with Edward, who turned
his head aside, feigning an interest in the landscape. It was
but for a moment; then he recollected the hat he was wearing,--a
hard bowler, the first of that sort he had ever owned. He took
it off, examined it, and felt it over. Something about it seemed
to give him strength, and he was a man once more.
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