الفصل الفصل 1 · PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS

. PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS

Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I can

see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things

would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest were

aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They

treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh,

but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the

result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction

that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember

realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that

stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew

up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense

of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the practice of

vagaries--“just choosing so:” as, for instance, the giving of authority

over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might far

more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders,

our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a

certain blend of envy--of their good luck--and pity--for their inability

to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in

their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:

which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in the

pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble

in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most

uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy

gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire cannons and explode

mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No

irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there

regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delight

in the experience than ourselves.

On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely

void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and

their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances

they were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)

simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the

failures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never

set foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid

therein. The mysterious sources--sources as of old Nile--that fed the

duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians, nor

recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!), though the

whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared not about exploring

for robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed,

it was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of

their time stuffily indoors.

To be sure, there was an exception in the curate, who would receive

unblenching the information that the meadow beyond the orchard was

a prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was our delight,

moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announce

the scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympians

would have done; but possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he would

contribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this

particular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age

and eminent position could scarce have been attained without a practical

knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was always

ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of marauding

Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a distinctly able

man, with talents, so far as we could judge, immensely above the

majority. I trust he is a bishop by this time,--he had all the necessary

qualifications, as we knew.

These strange folk had visitors sometimes,--stiff and colourless

Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and

intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing away again

to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our ken. Then brute

force was pitilessly applied. We were captured, washed, and forced into

clean collars: silently submitting, as was our wont, with more

contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous hair and faces stiffened in

a conventional grin, we sat and listened to the usual platitudes. How

could reasonable people spend their precious time so? That was ever our

wonder as we bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, or

to hunt bears among the hazels.

It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk

over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the other social

or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms

of reality were among the importances of life. We illuminati, eating

silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told them

what real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on fire

to get back to it. Of course we didn't waste the revelation on them;

the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in

thought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile

fate, a power antagonistic ever,--a power we lived to evade,--we had

no confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of beings was

further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who shared

our natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by an

abiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympians

ever to defend, retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept

similar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the cat out

of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it didn't

hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I was

wrong, as a gentleman should. But was the matter allowed to end there?

I trow not. Again, when Harold was locked up in his room all day, for

assault and battery upon a neighbour's pig,--an action he would have

scorned, being indeed on the friendliest terms with the porker in

question,--there was no handsome expression of regret on the discovery

of the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the

imprisonment,--indeed he had very soon escaped by the window, with

assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for his

release,--as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but of

course that word was never spoken.

Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does not seem

to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time have

shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt, a dull

suspicion, creeps over me. Et in Arcadia ego,--I certainly did once

inhabit Arcady. Can it be I too have become an Olympian?