第14章

With merely an ironing-board and a few dozen meat-skewers, he would--provided the ironing-board was not missed in time--turn out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch.He could make a gun out of an umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as a Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly.With half the garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few Dresden china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would build a fountain for the garden.He could make bookshelves out of kitchen tables, and crossbows out of crinolines.He could dam you a stream so that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn.He knew how to make red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities handy to have about a house.Among other things he learned how to make fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came to make them very well indeed.

The boy who can play a good game of cricket is liked.The boy who can fight well is respected.The boy who can cheek a master is loved.But the boy who can make fireworks is revered above all others as a boy belonging to a superior order of beings.The fifth of November was at hand, and with the consent of an indulgent mother, he determined to give to the world a proof of his powers.Alarge party of friends, relatives, and school-mates was invited, and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a manufactory for fireworks.The female servants went about in hourly terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively by smell, one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan, his main premises being inconveniently crowded, as an annex.By the evening of the fourth all was in readiness, and samples were tested to make sure that no contretemps should occur the following night.

All was found to be perfect.

The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman candles tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels sparkled and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs banged.That night he went to bed a proud and happy boy, and dreamed of fame.He stood surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd cheered him.His relations, most of whom, he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot of the family, were there to witness his triumph; so too was Dickey Bowles, who laughed at him because he could not throw straight.The girl at the bun-shop, she also was there, and saw that he was clever.

The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests.They sat, wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door--uncles, cousins, aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big girls, with, as the theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in all, and waited.

But the fireworks did not go off.Why they did not go off I cannot explain; nobody ever COULD explain.The laws of nature seemed to be suspended for that night only.The rockets fell down and died where they stood.No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs.The crackers gave one bang and collapsed.The Roman candles might have been English rushlights.The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms.The fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and then went out.One or two items did their duty, but this only served to render the foolishness of the whole more striking.The little girls giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about supper and trains, the "villagers and retainers" dispersed laughing, the indulgent mother said "never mind," and explained how well everything had gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his room, and blubbered his heart out in the dark.

Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into the garden.He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what could have caused the fiasco.Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago.It smouldered for an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred points of fire.He tried another and another with the same result.He made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece.Point by point the whole picture--minus the captain and one mast--came out of the night, and stood revealed in all the majesty of flame.Its sparks fell upon the piled-up heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before had obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been thrown aside as useless.Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped to light in one grand volcanic eruption.And in front of the gorgeous spectacle he stood with only one consolation--his mother's hand in his.

The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs--YOUR FIREWORKS WON'T GO OFF WHILE THE CROWD IS AROUND.

Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed upon us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say, are coming down the stairs.Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls strangely flat amidst the clinking of the glasses.The passionate torrent of words we meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole, at which--small blame to her--she only laughs.

I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to tell you.You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you have read--by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to me.The stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you one day, I would that you judge me by those.

They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh and cry with me.