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.
p. 50summer, 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 p. 51summer 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 p. 52boisterous 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 p. 53we 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.
of course, underlying these disorders was just that dim spirit of disquiet that has made this season of the year notable for the production of lyric poetry. we had no means of expressing the thing that troubled p. 54our blood. indeed, we ourselves did not know what was the matter, though this ignorance did not make our discomfort less. time, who in the glare of a christmas party or on the shore of a summer sea could run faster than we, seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in lingering in this unattractive place. and although our attitude towards life appeared to have been determined for us by fate, when the long day ended and we thought over things in bed, we had not even the satisfaction of being proud of our day’s work. we would vow silently to our pillows that things should go better to-morrow, but alas! there might be many morrows before summer brought peace to our blood.
it is not only children whom the spring winds stir to madness, but a man has striven but poorly if he cannot contrive to bear in patience with this vernal torment of living, or even to turn it to some useful purpose in his work. but children, who can only express themselves in their play, must pay for the joys of the coming summer in moods speechless and almost too bitter for their p. 55years. in sympathy with all the green, quick things of nature, their blood is in a state of passionate unrest for which their minds can supply no adequate reason, and they are unhappy in consequence. but i am far from blaming the olympians for the attitude they adopted in this difficult business. they kept a wise eye on our health, and if our naughtiness became outrageous, we were punished. for the rest, as they could not give us lips of silver and a pipe of gold with which to chant the amazing gladness of the spring, i do not see what they could do.
