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 p. 138vowed 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 p. 139virtue 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 p. 140forgotten, 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 p. 141that 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 p. 142our 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 p. 143fear 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.
