Not very long ago I was turning over some old books, when a small piece of cardboard slipped from between the pages and fell to the ground. It was in the likeness of a man, a man dressed in riding-boots and yellow satin; yet it was some moments before I realised that I was in the presence of the once great Paul Clifford. With recognition came something like remorse. It was no more than just to forgive his faults after so many years, and he really was a very good actor until an excess of praise turned his little pasteboard head.
I looked round the library, and after due consideration took a volume of the Laureate’s poems from the shelves, and laid the tired highwayman to rest between its pages.
“Sleep on, brave Paul!” I said softly. “No one will ever disturb you there.”
And now I have written his epitaph.
CHILDREN AND THE SPRING
Poets and careless, happy fellows like that may say what they like for the spring, but there are only two seasons in the year for children. The parties of Christmas appealed to our senses in a hundred pleasant ways. They shone with Jack Frost and Chinese lanterns and the gay gelatine from crackers; they compressed our limbs in the pride of new, uncomfortable suits and tight, shiny shoes; they tasted of burnt raisins and orange jelly; they sang with frosty carols and sensible tunes and the agreeable din of penny musical instruments; they smelt of Christmas-tree candles and tangerine oranges. Then there were pantomimes and large silver pieces from the pockets of millionaire uncles, and if all else failed, the possibility of snow. Certainly there was nothing the matter with winter.
Summer, too, had its fierce, immeasurable joys. This was the season of outdoor sports, hunting and boating and digging holes to New Zealand. There was cricket, real cricket, which means that you are out if you hit the ball into the next garden, and that you stop playing if you break a window, and there was hurling of javelins in wild shrubberies, and dabbling in silver brooks for elusive minnows. Later there would come long, adventurous journeys in railway-trains, when, like wise travellers, we would cuddle provisions of buns and pears and tepid sandwiches in our laps. Our legs would be so stiff when we reached our destination that we would totter on the platform like old men, and our eyes would be weary with watching the fleeting world. But as the cab crept up the gritty hills we would see the ocean waiting for us to come and play with it, and everything else in life would be forgotten. The country, with its apple-trees and its pigs and its secret places, was not to be despised, but it was the sea that led us home to our dreams.
Yet possibly the finest thing that the summer had to give us was the healthy, joyous sense of fatigue that comes from games. It was pleasant to drop on the lawn when cricket was over, and stay there, not wholly displeased with the scent of the flowers, looking into the blue sky until the gnats drove you in to tea. It was pleasant to lie on the beach, with the heat creeping up and down your face, and to let the sand trickle through your fingers, while the long waves whispered out to sea. It was pleasant to drowse in the hay after hunting buffaloes all the sunny afternoon. It was only at such moments, when the air had a savour of sleep, that we really felt conscious of youth as a desirable possession.
A child’s year would be divided abruptly into winter and summer, for youth is impatient of compromise, but as things are, there are spring and autumn to be reckoned with. For autumn, there is not much to be said. There were nuts and blackberries, and the sweet-scented fallen leaves, in which we would paddle up to our knees. But the seaside brown was wearing off our legs, and night came so soon and with so harsh and boisterous a note. It was not bad when we happened to be feeling very brave to lie awake at night and hear the branches screaming when the wind hurt them. The sheer discomfort of the outer world made bed delicious. But the necessary courage for this point of view was rare, and normally we would wish the nights quieter and less exciting. The autumn wind was for ever fumbling at our nursery windows like a burglar, or creeping along the passages like a supernatural thing. Sometimes our hearts stopped beating while we listened.
But of all the seasons of the year, spring is most oppressive to the spirit of childhood. The dear, artificial things that had made the winter lovely were gone, and the pastoral delights of the summer were still to come, yet Nature called us forth to a muddy, unfinished world. Then was the season of the official walk, a dreary traffic on nice, clean pavements, that placed everything in the world worth walking to out of bounds. A cold wind without the compensating advantage of snow would swing round the corners of streets, and we would feel as if we were wearing the ears and noses of other people. When we were not quarrelling we were sulking, and each was equally fatal, for the Olympians only needed a pretext to make our days bitter with iron and quinine. And our quarrels, that at kinder seasons of the year were the regretted accidents of moments, lingered now from day to day, and became the source of fierce and lonely pride. If one of us, released for a minute from the wearing of the world’s woes, made timid efforts to arrange a concerted game, he would become the object of general suspicion, and his sociability would be regarded as a hypocritical effort to win the favour of the grown-up folk. The correct attitude was one of surly aloofness that spluttered once or twice a day into tearful rebellion against the interference of the authorities. It is insulting to give a man medicine when he tells you that he wishes he were dead.