LOOKING back to those days of old, ere the gate shut to behind me, I
can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these
things would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest
were aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They
treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh,
but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise,
the result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace
conviction that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I
remember realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence
of that stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while
there grew up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a
vague sense of a ruling power, wilful, and freakish, and prone to the
practice of vagaries—‘just choosing so’: as, for instance, the giving
of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when
it might far more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them.
These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect,
but only a certain blend of envy—of their good luck—and pity—for their
inability to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless
features in their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a
thought on them: which wasn’t often) that, having absolute licence to
indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They
might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in
the most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth
and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun—free to fire cannons and
explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things.
No irresistible Energy haled them to church o’ Sundays; yet they went
there regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater
delight in the experience than ourselves.
On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely
void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and
their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances
they were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)
simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn’t—when the
failures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never
set foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid
therein. The mysterious sources, sources as of old Nile, that fed the
duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians, nor
recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!), though
the whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared not to explore
for robbers’ caves, nor dig for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it
was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of
their time stuffily indoors.
To be sure there was an exception in the curate, who would receive,
unblenching, the information that the meadow beyond the orchard was
a prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was our delight,
moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announce
the scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympians
would have done; but, possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he would
contribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this
particular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature
age and eminent position could scarce have been attained without a
practical knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too,
he was always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band
of marauding Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a
distinctly able man, with talents, so far as we could judge, immensely
above the majority. I trust he is a bishop by this time. He had all the
necessary qualifications, as we knew.
These strange folk had visitors sometimes—stiff and colourless
Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing away
again to drag on an aimless existence somewhere beyond our ken. Then
brute force was pitilessly applied. We were captured, washed, and
forced into clean collars: silently submitting as was our wont, with
more contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous hair and faces stiffened
in a conventional grin, we sat and listened to the usual platitudes.
How could reasonable people spend their precious time so? That was ever
our wonder as we bounded forth at last: to the old clay-pit to make
pots, or to hunt bears among the hazels.
[Illustration: “... HE WAS ALWAYS READY TO CONSTITUTE HIMSELF A HOSTILE
ARMY OR A BAND OF MARAUDING INDIANS”]
It was perennial matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk
over our heads—during meals, for instance—of this or the other social
or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms of
reality were among the importances of life. We _illuminati_, eating
silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told
them what real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on
fire to get back to it. Of course we didn’t waste the revelation on
them, the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated.
One in thought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one
hostile fate, a power antagonistic ever—a power we lived to evade—we
had no confidants save ourselves. This strange anæmic order of beings
was further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who shared
our natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by an
abiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympians
ever to defend, to retract, to admit themselves in the wrong, or to
accept similar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the
cat out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and
it didn’t hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment’s reflection, to
own I was wrong, as a gentleman should. But was the matter allowed to
end there? I trow not. Again, when Harold was locked up in his room
all day, for assault and battery upon a neighbour’s pig—an action he
would have scorned: being indeed on the friendliest terms with the
porker in question—there was no handsome expression of regret on the
discovery of the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much
the imprisonment—indeed, he had very soon escaped by the window,
with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for his
release—as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but of
course that word was never spoken.
Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does not
seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time
have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt,
a dull suspicion, creeps over me. _Et in Arcadia ego_—I certainly did
once inhabit Arcady. Can it be that I also have become an Olympian?
[Illustration]