SNOWBOUND The Golden Age | ||
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,
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 —
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
"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,
"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
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
"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
"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.
SNOWBOUND The Golden Age | ||