The Golden Age

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-table. 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 Bœotia, 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, while 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 γαρ 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 severely, 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 – ερως ανἱκατε μἁχαν – not that – nor even the placid respectable στοργἡ – 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.

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 Faëry, 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 reindeer's feet, halting of a sudden 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 connexion 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 – '

'But how can you learn anything,' persisted Charlotte, 'from what doesn't exist?' And she left the table defiant, howbeit depressed.

'Don't you mind her,' I said consolingly; 'how can she know anything about it? Why, she can't even throw a stone properly!'

'Edward says they're all rot, too,' replied Charlotte doubtfully.

'Edward says everything's rot,' I explained, 'now he thinks he's going into the Army. If a thing's in a book it must be true, so that settles it!'

Charlotte looked almost reassured. The room was quieter now, for Edward had got the dragon down and was boring holes in him with a purring sound; Harold was ascending the steps of the Athenæum with a jaunty air – suggestive rather of the Junior Carlton. Outside, the tall elm-tops were hardly to be seen through the feathery storm. 'The sky's a-falling,' quoted Charlotte softly; 'I must go and tell the king.' The quotation suggested a fairy story, and I offered to read to her, reaching out for the book. But the Wee Folk were under a cloud; sceptical hints had embittered the chalice. So I was fain to fetch Arthur– second favourite with Charlotte for his dames riding errant, and an easy first with us boys for his spear-splintering crash of tourney and hurtle against hopeless odds. Here again, however, I proved unfortunate; what ill-luck made the book open at the sorrowful history of Balin and Balan? 'And he vanished anon,' I read: 'and so he heard an horne blow, as it had been the death of a beast. "That blast," said Balin, "is blowen for me, for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead."' Charlotte began to cry: she knew the rest too well. I shut the book in despair. Harold emerged from behind the arm-chair. He was sucking his thumb (a thing which members of the Reform are seldom seen to do), and he stared wide-eyed at his tear-stained sister. Edward put off his histrionics, and rushed up to her as the consoler – a new part for him.

'I know a jolly story,' he began. 'Aunt Eliza told it me. It was when she was somewhere over in that beastly abroad' – (he had once spent a black month of misery at Dinan) – 'and there was a fellow there who had got two storks. And one stork died – it was the she-stork.' – ('What did it die of?' put in Harold.) – 'And the other stork was quite sorry, and moped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked about and found a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, but the stork didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as could be. By and by another duck came along – a real she-duck this time – and when the drake saw her he fell in love, and left the stork, and went and proposed to the duck: for she was very beautiful. But the poor stork who was left, he said nothing at all to anybody, but just pined and pined and pined away, till one morning he was found quite dead! But the ducks lived happily ever afterwards!'

This was Edward's idea of a jolly story! Down again went the corners of poor Charlotte's mouth. Really Edward's stupid inability to see the real point in anything was too annoying! It was always so. Years before, it being necessary to prepare his youthful mind for a domestic event that might lead to awkward questionings at a time when there was little leisure to invent appropriate answers, it was delicately inquired of him whether he would like to have a little brother, or perhaps a little sister? He considered the matter carefully in all its bearings, and finally declared for a Newfoundland pup. Any boy more 'gleg at the uptak' would have met his parents half-way, and eased their burden. As it was, the matter had to be approached all over again from a fresh standpoint. And now, while Charlotte turned away sniffingly, with a hiccup that told of an overwrought soul, Edward, unconscious (like Sir Isaac's Diamond) of the mischief he had done, wheeled round on Harold with a shout.

'I want a live dragon,' he announced: 'You've got to be my dragon!'

'Leave me go, will you?' squealed Harold, struggling stoutly. 'I'm playin' at something else. How can I be a dragon and belong to all the clubs?'

'But wouldn't you like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green,' said Edward, trying persuasion, 'with a curly tail and red eyes, and breathing real smoke and fire?'

Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The next he was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scaly and so curly as his. Clubland was a thousand years away. With horrific pants he emitted smokiest smoke and fiercest fire.

'Now I want a Princess,' cried Edward, clutching Charlotte ecstatically; 'and you can be the Doctor, and heal me from the dragon's deadly wound.'

Of all professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst horror and contempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me, and with Charlotte – who courted no barren honours – I made a break for the door. Edward did likewise, and the hostile forces clashed together on the mat, and for a brief space things were mixed and chaotic and Arthurian. The silvery sound of the luncheon-bell restored an instant peace, even in the teeth of clenched antagonisms like ours. The Holy Grail itself, 'sliding athwart a sunbeam,' never so effectually stilled a riot of warring passions into sweet and quiet accord.

WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT

EDWARD was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as the one that had last passed under the dentist's hands, to be the capitalist of the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual tariff obtained in ours: half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if the molar were a loose one. This one, unfortunately – in spite of Edward's interested affectation of agony – had been shakiness undisguised; but the event was good enough to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however, Edward had claimed exemption from any servile duties of procurement, and had swaggered about the garden while I fetched from the village post-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Our preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest and most self-respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace the feast, and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciest plantains; while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in her affected feminine way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing for bits of broken cork.

'Hurry up, can't you?' growled our host; 'what are you girls always so beastly particular for?'

'Martha says,' explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), 'that if you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swells, and it swells inside you, till you – '

'O bosh!' said Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence of indifference to consequences, but all the same (as I noticed) dodging the floating cork-fragments with skill and judgment.

'O, it's all very well to say bosh,' replied Harold nettled: 'but every one knows it's true but you. Why, when Uncle Thomas was here last, and they got up a bottle of wine for him, he took just one tiny sip out of his glass, and then he said, "Poo, my goodness, that's corked!" And he wouldn't touch it. And they had to get a fresh bottle up. The funny part was, though, I looked in his glass afterwards, when it was brought out into the passage, and there wasn't any cork in it at all! So I drank it all off, and it was very good!'

'You'd better be careful, young man!' said his elder brother, regarding him severely: 'D'you remember that night when the Mummers were here, and they had mulled port, and you went round and emptied all the glasses after they had gone away?'

'Ow! I did feel funny that night,' chuckled Harold. 'Thought the house was comin' down, it jumped about so: and Martha had to carry me up to bed, 'cos the stairs was goin' all waggity!'

We gazed searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear that he viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather than of a delinquency.

A third bottle was by this time circling; and Selina, who had evidently waited for it to reach her, took a most unfairly long pull, and then, jumping up and shaking out her frock, announced that she was going for a walk. Then she fled like a hare; for it was the custom of our Family to meet with physical coercion any independence of action in individuals.

'She's off with those Vicarage girls again,' said Edward, regarding Selina's long black legs twinkling down the path. 'She goes out with them every day now; and as soon as ever they start, all their heads go together and they chatter, chatter, chatter the whole blessèd time! I can't make out what they find to talk about. They never stop; it's gabble, gabble, gabble right along, like a nest of young rooks!'

'P'raps they talk about birds'-eggs,' I suggested sleepily (the sun was hot, the turf soft, the ginger-beer potent); 'and about ships, and buffaloes, and desert islands; and why rabbits have white tails; and whether they'd sooner have a schooner or a cutter; and what they'll be when they're men – at least, I mean there's lots of things to talk about, if you want to talk.'

'Yes; but they don't talk about those sort of things at all,' persisted Edward. 'How can they? They don't know anything; they can't do anything – except play the piano, and nobody would want to talk about that; and they don't care about anything – anything sensible, I mean. So what do they talk about?'

'I asked Martha once,' put in Harold; 'and she said, "Never you mind; young ladies has lots of things to talk about that young gentlemen can't understand."'

'I don't believe it,' Edward growled.

'Well, that's what she said, anyway,' rejoined Harold indifferently. The subject did not seem to him of first-class importance, and it was hindering the circulation of the ginger-beer.

We heard the click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge we could see the party setting off down the road. Selina was in the middle; a Vicarage girl had her by either arm; their heads were together, as Edward had described; and the clack of their tongues came down the breeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a bright March morning.

'What do they talk about, Charlotte?' I inquired, wishing to pacify Edward. 'You go out with them sometimes.'