Awakening To Let | Page 6

of rescuing sails.
He made a daily raft out of the towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows.
He saved the juice from his French plums, bottled it in an empty
medicine bottle, and provisioned the raft with the rum that it became;
also with pemmican made out of little saved-up bits of chicken sat on
and dried at the fire; and with lime juice against scurvy, extracted from
the peel of his oranges and a little economised juice. He made a North
Pole one morning from the whole of his bedclothes except the bolster,
and reached it in a birch-bark canoe (in private life the fender), after a
terrible encounter with a polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four
skittles dressed up in "Da's" nightgown. After that, his father, seeking
to steady his imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about
King Arthur, and Tom Brown's Schooldays. He read the first, and for
three days built, defended and stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking
every part in the piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with
piercing cries of: "En avant, de Bracy!" and similar utterances. After
reading the book about King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir
Lamorac de Galis, because, though there was very little about him, he
preferred his name to that of any other knight; and he rode his old
rocking-horse to death, armed with a long bamboo. Bevis he found

tame; besides, it required woods and animals, of which he had none in
his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz and Puck Forsyte, who permitted
no liberties. For Tom Brown he was as yet too young. There was relief
in the house when, after the fourth week, he was permitted to go down
and out.
The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of
ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard on
his knees, suits, and the patience of "Da," who had the washing and
reparation of his clothes. Every morning the moment his breakfast was
over, he could be viewed by his mother and father, whose windows
looked out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace,
climbing the old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright. He
began the day thus because there was not time to go far afield before
his lessons. The old tree's variety never staled; it had mainmast,
foremast, top-gallant mast, and he could always come down by the
halyards--or ropes of the swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven,
he would go to the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two
French plums--provision enough for a jolly- boat at least--and eat it in
some imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols, and
sword, he would begin the serious climbing of the morning,
encountering by the way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates, leopards,
and bears. He was seldom seen at that hour of the day without a cutlass
in his teeth (like Dick Needham) amid the rapid explosion of copper
caps. And many were the gardeners he brought down with yellow peas
shot out of his little gun. He lived a life of the most violent action.
"Jon," said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, "is terrible. I'm
afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or something hopeless. Do you see
any sign of his appreciating beauty?"
"Not the faintest."
"Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines! I can bear
anything but that. But I wish he'd take more interest in Nature."
"He's imaginative, Jolyon."
"Yes, in a sanguinary way. Does he love anyone just now?"
"No; only everyone. There never was anyone born more loving or more
lovable than Jon."
"Being your boy, Irene."
At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them,

brought them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk lodged,
thick, in his small gizzard. Loving, lovable, imaginative, sanguinary!
The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his birthday,
which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was always
memorable for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms,
macaroons, and ginger beer.
Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he
stood in the July radiance at the turning of the stairway, several
important things had happened.
"Da," worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious
instinct which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left the very
day after his birthday in floods of tears "to be married"--of all
things--"to a man." Little Jon, from whom it had been kept, was
inconsolable for an afternoon. It ought not to have been kept from him!
Two large boxes of soldiers and some artillery, together with The
Young