"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.
At the station, Edward's first care was to dispose his boxes on
the platform so that every one might see the labels and the
lettering thereon. One did not go to school for the first time
every day! Then he read both sides of his ticket carefully;
shifted it to every one of his pockets in turn; and finally fell
to chinking of his money, to keep his courage up. We were all
dry of conversation by this time, and could only stand round and
stare in silence at the victim decked for the altar. And, as I
looked at Edward, in new clothes of a manly cut, with a hard hat
upon his head, a railway ticket in one pocket and money of his
own in the other,--money to spend as he liked and no
questions asked!--I began to feel dimly how great was the gulf
already yawning betwixt us. Fortunately I was not old enough to
realise, further, that here on this little platform the old order
lay at its last gasp, and that Edward might come back to us, but
it would not be the Edward of yore, nor could things ever be the
same again.
When the train steamed up at last, we all boarded it impetuously
with the view of selecting the one peerless carriage to which
Edward might be intrusted with the greatest comfort and honour;
and as each one found the ideal compartment at the same moment,
and vociferously maintained its merits, he stood some chance for
a time of being left behind. A porter settled the matter by
heaving him through the nearest door; and as the train moved off,
Edward's head was thrust out of the window, wearing on it an
unmistakable first-quality grin that he had been saving up
somewhere for the supreme moment. Very small and white his face
looked, on the long side of the retreating train. But the grin
was visible, undeniable, stoutly maintained; till a curve swept
him from our sight, and he was borne away in the dying
rumble, out of our placid backwater, out into the busy world of
rubs and knocks and competition, out into the New Life.
When a crab has lost a leg, his gait is still more awkward than
his wont, till Time and healing Nature make him totus teres
atque rotundus once more. We straggled back from the station
disjointedly; Harold, who was very silent, sticking close to me,
his last slender props while the girls in front, their heads
together, were already reckoning up the weeks to the holidays.
Home at last, Harold suggested one or two occupations of a spicy
and contraband flavour, but though we did our manful best there
was no knocking any interest out of them. Then I suggested
others, with the same want of success. Finally we found
ourselves sitting silent on an upturned wheelbarrow, our chins on
our fists, staring haggardly into the raw new conditions of our
changed life, the ruins of a past behind our backs.
And all the while Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing
Edward's rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green;
polishing up the cage of his mice till the occupants raved and
swore like householders in spring-time; and collecting
materials for new bows and arrows, whips, boats, guns, and four-
in-hand harness, against the return of Ulysses. Little did they
dream that the hero, once back from Troy and all its onsets,
would scornfully condemn their clumsy but laborious armoury as
rot and humbug and only fit for kids! This, with many another
like awakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil
have been lifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he
would appear a short three months hence, ragged of attire and
lawless of tongue, a scorner of tradition and an adept in strange
new physical tortures, one who would in the same half-hour
dismember a doll and shatter a hallowed belief,--in fine, a sort
of swaggering Captain, fresh from the Spanish Main,--could they
have had the least hint of this, well, then perhaps--. But which
of us is of mental fibre to stand the test of a glimpse into
futurity? Let us only hope that, even with certain
disillusionment ahead, the girls would have acted precisely as
they did.
And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as
children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how
the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear, not only to
others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence. So we pass,
with a gusto and a heartiness that to an onlooker would seem
almost pathetic, from one droll devotion to another misshapen
passion; and who shall care to play Rhadamanthus, to appraise the
record, and to decide how much of it is solid achievement, and
how much the merest child's play?
