Dangerous Ages

Dangerous Ages

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Title: Dangerous Ages
Author: Rose Macaulay

Release Date: October 4, 2005 [eBook #16799]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DANGEROUS AGES***
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DANGEROUS AGES

by
ROSE MACAULAY
Author of "Potterism"
Boni and Liveright Publishers New York
1921

TO MY MOTHER DRIVING GAILY THROUGH THE
ADVENTUROUS MIDDLE YEARS

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY II. MRS. HILARY'S BIRTHDAY III.
FAMILY LIFE IV. ROOTS V. SEAWEED VI. JIM VII. GERDA VIII.
NAN IX. THE PACE X. PRINCIPLES XI. THAT WHICH REMAINS
XII. THE MOTHER XIII. THE DAUGHTER XIV. YOUTH TO
YOUTH XV. THE DREAM XVI. TIME XVII. THE KEY

'As to that,' said Mr. Cradock, 'we may say that all ages are dangerous
to all people, in this dangerous life we live.'
'Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this minute and perishing
planet is a mere episode, and as brief as a dream....'
_Trivia_: Logan Pearsall Smith.
CHAPTER I

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY
1
Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her
birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot
with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the
multitudinous silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and
bickered about the creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred
brooks running together down steep rocky places after snow. And, not
like brooks, and strangely unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the
world except a cuckoo clock, a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest
boughs of the great elm across the silver lawn.
Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her
sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy
of the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide
window. She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly onto her bare throat
and chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot
how she had lain and thought "Another year gone, and nothing done yet.
Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done
by her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will
know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor
others with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they
have eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night
and rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of
life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand with
time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, the
undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it
depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once
a year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others
call it vanity, discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes no
difference either way.
Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes, sprang out of bed,
thrust her brown feet into sand shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad
body into a big coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind
three shut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and stole down the

back stairs to the kitchen, which was dim and blinded, blue with china
and pale with dawn, and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea.
She also got some bread and marmalade out of the larder, spread two
thick chunks, and munching one of them, slipped out of the sleeping
house into the dissipated and riotous garden.
Looking up at the honeysuckle-buried window of the bedroom of
Gerda, Neville nearly whistled the call to which Gerda was wont to
reply. Nearly, but not quite. On the whole it was a morning to be out
alone in. Besides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about
birthdays, and Gerda would have reminded her.
Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't
remind her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed with a warning hand.
Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, between the monstrous
shadows of the elms, her feet in the old sand shoes leaving dark prints
in the dew, her mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait
bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round her. Across the
lawn to