Christopher Morley.
Thunder on the Left.
S. A. E.The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous.
-Oliver Goldsmith.
On parla des pa.s.sions. "Ah! qu"elles sont funestes!" disait Zadig."Ce sont les vents qui enflent les voiles du vaisseau," repart.i.t Termite: "elles le submergent quelquefois; mais sans elles il ne pour-rait voguer. La bile rend colere et malade; mais sans la bile l"homme ne saurait vivre. Tout est dangereux ici-bas, et tout est necessaire."
-Voltaire, Zadig "Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you could see a G.o.d."
"It was cruel of you to do this," she said.
-James Stephens, In the Land of Youth.
I
Now that the children were getting big, it wasn"t to be called the Nursery any longer. In fact, it was being re-papered that very day: the old scribbled Mother Goose pattern had already been covered with new strips, damp and bitter-smelling. But Martin thought he would be able to remember the gay fairy-tale figures, even under the bright fresh paper. There were three bobtailed mice, dancing. They were repeated several times in the procession of pictures that ran round the wall. How often he had studied them as he lay in bed waiting for it to be time to get up. It must be excellent to be Grown Up and able to dress as early as you please. What a golden light lies across the garden those summer mornings.
At any rate, it would be comforting to know that the bobtailed mice were still there, underneath. Today the smell of the paste and new paper was all through the house. The men were to have come last week.
Today it was awkward: it was Martin"s birthday (he was ten) and he and Bunny had been told to invite some friends for a small party. It was raining, too: one of those steady drumming rains that make a house so cosy. The Grown Ups were having tea on the veranda, so the party was in the dining room. When Mrs. Richmond looked through the gla.s.s porch doors to see how they were getting on, she was surprised to find no one visible.
"Where on earth have those children gone?" she exclaimed. "How delightfully quiet they are."
There was a seven-voiced halloo of triumph, and a great scuffle and movement under the big mahogany table. Several steamer rugs had been pinned together and draped across the board so that they hung down forming a kind of pavilion. From this concealment the children came scrambling and surrounded her in a lively group.
"We had all disappeared!" said Bunny. She was really called Eileen, but she was soft and plump and brown-eyed and twitch-nosed; three years younger than her brother.
"You came just in time to save us," said Martin gaily.
"Just in time to save my table," amended Mrs. Richmond. "Bunny, you know how you cried when you scratched your legs going blackberrying. Do you suppose the table likes having its legs scratched any better than you do? And those grimy old rugs all over my lace cloth. Martin, take them off at once."
"We were playing Stern Parents," explained Alec, a cousin and less awed by reproof than the other guests, who were merely friends.
Mrs. Richmond was taken aback. "What a queer name for a game."
"It"s a lovely game," said Ruth, her face pink with excitement. "You pretend to be Parents and you all get together and talk about the terrible time you have with your children - "
Martin broke in: "And you tell each other all the things you"ve had to scold them for - "
"And you have to forbid their doing all kinds of things," said Ben.
"And speak to them Very Seriously," chirped Bunny. Mrs. Richmond felt a twinge of merriment at the echo of this familiar phrase.
"And every time you"ve punished them for something that doesn"t really matter - " (this was Phyllis) "You"re a Stern Parent, and have to disappear!" cried Martin."You get under the table and can"t come out until someone says something nice about you."
"It"s a very instructing game, "cause you have to know just how far children can be allowed to go - "
"But we were all Stern Parents, and had all disappeared."
"Yes, and then Mother said we were delightfully quiet, and that saved us."
"What an extraordinary game," said Mrs. Richmond.
"All Martin"s games are extraordinary," said Phyllis. He just made up one called Quarrelsome Children."
"Will you play it with us?" asked Bunny.
"I don"t believe that"s a new game," said her mother. "I"m sure I"ve seen it played, too often. But it"s time for the cake. Straighten up the chairs and I"ll go and get it."
Seated round the table, and left alone with the cake, the lighted candles, and the ice cream, the children found much to discuss.
"Ten candles," said Alec, counting them carefully.
"I had thirteen on mine, last birthday," said Phyllis, the oldest of the girls.
"That"s nothing, so did I," said Ben.
"Your cook"s clever," said Ruth. "She"s marked the places to cut, with icing, so you can make all the pieces even."
"I think it was foolish of her," said Martin, "because Bunny is quite a small child still; if she has too much chocolate she comes out in spots."
Bunny and Joyce, at the other end of the table, looked at each other fleetingly, in a tacit alliance of juniority. Joyce was also seven, a dark little elf, rather silent.
"Why don"t you blow out the candles?" shrilled Bunny.
This effectively altered the topic. After the sudden hurricane had ceased, Martin began to cut, obediently following the white spokes of sugar.
"I wonder what it feels like to be grown up?" said Alec.
"I guess we"ll know if we wait long enough," said Phyllis.
"How old do you have to be, to be grown up?" asked Ruth.
"A man"s grown up when he"s twenty-one," Ben stated firmly.
"Is Daddy twenty-one?" said Bunny.
Cries of scorn answered this. "Of course he is," said Martin. "Daddy"s middle-age, he"s over thirty. He"s what they call primeoflife, I heard him say so."
"That"s just before your hair begins to come out in the comb," said Alec.
Bunny was undismayed, perhaps encouraged by seeing in front of her more ice cream than she had everbeen left alone with before.
"Daddy isn"t grown up," she insisted. "The other day when we played blind man"s buff on the beach, Mother said he was just a big boy."
"Girls grow up quicker," said Phyllis. "My sister"s eighteen, she"s so grown up she"ll hardly speak to me. It happened all at once. She went for a week-end party, when she came back she was grown up."
"That"s not grown up," said Ben. "That"s just stuck up. Girls get like that. It"s a form of nervousness."
They were not aware that Ben had picked up this phrase by overhearing it applied to some eccentricities of his own. They were impressed, and for a moment the ice cream and cake engaged all attentions. Then a round of laughter from the veranda reopened the topic.
"Why do men laugh more than ladies?" asked Bunny.
"It must be wonderful," said Martin.
"You bet!" said Ben. "Think of having long trousers, and smoking a pipe, blowing rings, going to town every day, going to the bank and getting money - "
"And all the drug stores where you can stop and have sodas," said Ruth.
"Sailing a boat!"
"Going shopping!"
"The circus!" shouted Bunny.
"I don"t mean just doing things," said Martin. "I mean thinking things." His eager face, clearly lit by two candles in tall silver sticks, was suddenly and charmingly grave. "Able to think what you want to; not to have to - to do things you know are wrong." For an instant the boy seemed to tremble on the edge of uttering the whole secret infamy of childhood; the most pitiable of earth"s slaveries; perhaps the only one that can never be dissolved. But the others hardly understood; nor did he, himself. He covered his embarra.s.sment by grabbing at a cracker of gilt paper in which Alec was rummaging for the pull.
Joyce had slipped from her chair and was peeping through one of the windows. Something in the talk had struck home to her in a queer, troublesome way. Suddenly, she didn"t know why, she wanted to look at the Grown Ups, to see exactly what they were like. The rest of the party followed her in a common impulse. Joyce"s att.i.tude caused them to tiptoe across the room and peer covertly from behind the long curtains. Without a word of explanation all were aware of their odd feeling of spying on the enemy - an implacable enemy, yet one who is (how plainly we realize it when we see him off guard in the opposing trench, busy at his poor affairs, cooking or washing his socks) so kin to ourselves. With the apprehensive alertness of those whose lives may depend on their nimble observation, they watched the unconscious group at the tea table.
"Daddy"s taking three lumps," said Bunny. She spoke louder than is prudent in an outpost, and was s-s-sh-ed.
"Your mother"s got her elbow on the table," Ruth whispered.
"Daddy"s smacking his lips and chomping," insisted Bunny.
"That"s worse than talking with your mouth full.""How queer they look when they laugh."
"Your mother lifts her head like a hen swallowing."
"Yours has her legs crossed."
"It"s a form of nervousness."
"They do all the things they tell us not to," said Joyce.
"Look, he"s reaching right across the table for another cake."
Martin watched his parents and their friends. What was there in the familiar scene that became strangely perplexing? He could not have put it into words, but there was something in those voices and faces that made him feel frightened, a little lonely. Was that really Mother, by the silver urn with the blue flame flattened under it? He could tell by her expression that she was talking about things that belong to that Other World, the thrillingly exciting world of Parents, whose secrets are so cunningly guarded. That world changes the subject, alters the very tone of its voice, when you approach. He had a wish to run out on the veranda, to rea.s.sure himself by the touch of her soft cool arm in the muslin dress. He wanted to touch the teapot, to see if it was hot. If it was, he would know that all this was real. They had gone so far away. Or were they also only playing a game?
"They look as though they were hiding something," he said.
"They"re having fun," Phyllis said. "They always do; grown ups have a wonderful time."
"Come on," - Martin remembered that he was the host - "the ice cream will get cold." This was what Daddy always said.
Bunny felt a renewed pride as she climbed into her place at the end of the table. Martin looked solemnly handsome in his Eton collar across the shining spread of candlelight and cloth and pink peppermints. The tinted gla.s.s panes above the sideboard were cheerful squares of colour against the wet grey afternoon.
She wriggled a little, to reestablish herself on the slippery chair. "Our family is getting very grown up," she said happily. "We"re not going to have a nursery any more. It"s going to be the guest room."
"I don"t think I want to be grown up," said Alec suddenly. "It"s silly. I don"t believe they have a good time at all."
This was a disconcerting opinion. Alec, as an older cousin, held a position of some prestige. A faint dismay was apparent in the gazes that crossed rapidly in the sparkling waxlight.
"I think we ought to make up our minds about it," Martin said gravely. "Pretty soon, the way things are going, we will be, then it"ll be too late."
"Silly, what can you do?" said Phyllis. "Of course we"ve got to grow up, everyone does, unless they die."
Her tone was clear and positive, but also there was a just discernible accent of inquiry. She had not yet quite lost her childhood birthright of wonder, of belief that almost anything is possible.
"We"d have to Take Steps," cried Alec, unconsciously quoting the enemy. "We could just decide among ourselves that we simply wouldn"t, and if we all lived together we could go on just like we are."
"It would be like a game," said Martin, glowing.
"With toys?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bunny, entranced.Ben was firmly opposed. "I won"t do it. I want to have long trousers and grow a moustache."
Martin"s face was serious with the vision of huge alternatives.
"That"s it," he said. "We"ve got to know before we can decide. It"s terribly important. If they don"t have a good time, we"d better - "
"We could ask them if they"re happy," exclaimed Ruth, thrilled by the thought of running out on the veranda to propose this stunning question.
"They wouldn"t tell you," said Alec. "They"re too polite."
Phyllis was trying to remember instructive examples of adult infelicity. "They don"t tell the truth," she agreed. "Mother once said that if Daddy went on like that she"d go mad, and I waited and waited, and he did and she didn"t."
"You mustn"t believe what they say," Martin continued. "They never tell the truth if they think children are around. They don"t want us to know what it"s like."
"Perhaps they"re ashamed of being grown up," Ben suggested.
"We must find out," Martin said, suddenly feeling in his mind the expanding brightness of an idea. "It"ll be a new game. We"ll all be spies in the enemy"s country, we"ll watch them and see exactly how they behave, and bring in a report."
"Get hold of their secret codes, and find where their forces are hidden," cried Ben, who liked the military flavour of this thought.
"I think it"s a silly game," said Phyllis. "You can"t really find out anything; and if you did, you"d be punished. Spies always get caught."
"Penalty of death!" shouted the boys, elated.
"It"s harder than being a real spy," said Martin. "You can"t wear the enemy"s uniform and talk their language. But I"m going to do it, anyhow."