WHEN the winter fires were burning their merriest in the grates, or when
the summer sun was melting to crimson shadows down in the western fields,
we, pressing our noses on the window-panes in placable discussion of the
day’s cricket, or dreaming our quiet dreams on the playroom floor, would
hear a heart-breaking pronouncement fall tonelessly from the lips of the
Olympians: “Come, children, it is time you were in bed!” It needed no
more than that to bring our hearts to zero with a run, and set our lips
quivering in eloquent but supremely useless protest. Against this decree
there was, we knew, no appeal; and we pleaded our hopeless cause rather
from habit than from any expectation of success. And even while we
uttered passionate expressions of our individual wakefulness, and vowed
our impatience for the coming of that golden age when we should be
allowed to sit up all night, we were collecting the honoured toys that
shared our beds, in mournful recognition of the inevitable.
It was not that we had any great objection to bed in itself, but that
fate always decreed that bed-time should fall in the brightest hour of
the day. No matter what internecine conflicts, whether with the
Olympians or each other, had rendered the day miserable, when bed-time
drew near the air was sweet with the spirit of universal brotherhood, as
though in face of our common danger we wished to propitiate the gods by
means of our unwonted merit. Feuds were patched up, confiscated property
was restored to its rightful owner, and brother hailed brother with a
smiling countenance and that genial kind of rudeness that passed with us
for politeness. This was the time of day, too, when the more interesting
kind of Olympian would make his appearance, uncles—at least, we called
them uncles—who could perform conjuring tricks and tell exciting stories,
and aunts who kissed us, but had a compensating virtue in that they had
been known to produce unexpected sweets. The house that might have been
a gloomy prison of dullness during the long day became, by a sudden
magic, entertaining and happily alive. The kitchen was fragrant with the
interesting odours that come from the cooking of strange adult viands;
the passages were full of strong men who could lift small boys to the
ceiling without an effort, and who would sometimes fling sixpences about
with prodigal lavishness; the whole place was gay with parcels to be
opened, and lively, if incomprehensible, conversation. And ever while we
were thrilling to find that our normal environment could prove so
amusing, the Olympians would realise our existence in their remote eyries
of thought, and would send us, stricken with barren germs of revolt, to
our uneventful beds.
On me, as the youngest of the brothers, the nightly shock should have
fallen lightly; for I was but newly emancipated from the shameful ordeal
of going to bed for an hour in the afternoon, and I could very well
remember, though I pretended I had forgotten, the sensations of that
drowsy hour, when the birds sang so loudly outside the window and the sun
thrust fingers of dusty gold through the crannies of the blind. I should
therefore probably have been reconciled to the common lot, which spelt
advancement to me, had I not newly discovered the joy of dreaming those
dreams that men have written in books for the delight of the young. The
Olympians were funny about books. They gave them to us, or at the least
smiled graciously when other people gave them to us, but the moment
rarely arrived when they could endure to see us reading, or spoiling our
eyes as their dreadful phrase ran. And especially at nightfall, when the
shadows crept in from the corners of the room and made the pages of the
dullest book exciting, it was inviting an early bed-time to be detected
in the act of reading. As sure as the frog was about to turn into a
prince or the black enchantress had appeared with her embarrassing
christening present, the book would be taken from my hands and I would be
threatened with the compulsory wearing of old-maidish spectacles—an end
that would make me an object of derision in the eyes of man. And even if
I shut the book of my own accord, and sat nodding before the fire,
working out the story in my own fashion with some one I knew very well to
play the part of hero, some ruthless adult would accuse me of being “half
asleep already,” and the veil of illusion would be torn beyond repair.
In winter-time the bedroom would seem cold after the comfortable kingdom
of the hearth-rug, and the smell of scented soap was a poor substitute
for the friendly fragrance of burning logs. So we would undress as
quickly as possible, and lie cuddled up in the chilly bed-clothes,
holding our own cold feet in our hands as if they belonged to somebody
else. But if it happened that one of us had a bad cold, and there was a
fire in the bedroom, we would keep high festival, sitting in solemn
palaver round the camp-fire, and toasting our pink toes like Arctic
explorers, while the invalid lay in bed crowing over his black-currant
tea or hot lemonade. It was pleasant, too, when natural weariness had
driven us to our beds, to lie there and watch the firelight laughing on
the walls; and the invalid, for the time being, was rather a popular
person.
In summer-time getting into bed was a far more complex process, for the
youth of the night held us wakeful; and if the weather were warm, bed was
an undesirable place as soon as we had exhausted such coolness as
lingered in the sheets. Then we would devote ourselves to
pillow-fighting, which was, I think, a more humorous sport for elder
brothers than for younger, or we would express our firm intention of
sleeping all night on the floor under tents made of the bedclothes. The
best of this resolution was that it made bed seem so comfortable, when we
climbed back after the first fine romance of camping-out had worn off.
Thunderstorms we loved with a love not untouched by awe, and we would
huddle together at the window, measuring the lightning, appraising the
thunder, and listening to the cool thresh of the rain on the garden
below.
There were rare nights—nights of great winds—when we would suddenly
realise that fear had entered into the room, and that, after all, we were
children in a world of men. Our efforts to talk resulted in tremulous
whispers that bred fear rather than allayed it, and though we would not
even then admit it, we knew that we were possessed with a great
loneliness. Sooner or later some cunning spirit would suggest a
pilgrimage to the realms of the Olympians, and treading the warm
stair-carpet with our bare feet, we would journey till we heard the
comforting sound of their laughter and the even murmur of their
conversation. Sometimes we would stay there till we grew sleepy, and the
fear passed away, so that we could tiptoe back to bed, wondering a little
at ourselves; sometimes the Olympians would discover us, and comfort our
timid hearts with rough words and sweet biscuits. In the morning we
would pretend that the whole business had been only an adventure, and we
were not above bragging of our courage in daring the ire of the grown-up
people. But we knew better.