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
Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents, cooperated with
his grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in
person and risking his own life, he began to play imaginative games, in
which he risked the lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles, stones and
beans. Of these forms of "chair a canon" he made collections, and, using
them alternately, fought the Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty
Years, and other wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big
History of Europe which had been his grandfather's. He altered them to
suit his genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery,
so that nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus
Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because
of the sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians,
and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful
he had to invent them in his games. His favourite generals were
Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack
("music-hall turns" he heard his father call them one day, whatever that
might mean) one really could not love very much, Austrian though they
were. For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.