It's Too Late Now

by A. A. Milne

  And we were disqualified. The uncle said that we had stopped on the way. Well, of course we had, we’d just told him. But that wasn’t fair. What d’you mean, not fair? Well, suppose it had been a hill-climbing competition for bicycles, then you couldn’t stop and rest. But this wasn’t bicycles, it was tricycles. Yes, but you weren’t allowed to stop, that was the rule. Well, why hadn’t he made the rules for us before we began? Naturally, he thought we knew; everybody knew that you couldn’t stop and rest. But we’d told him, we’d have gone backwards if we hadn’t put the brake on. Well, there we were, we hadn’t done it.

  We looked at him, entirely bewildered. Such a thing had never happened to us before.

  ‘Do you mean—’

  ‘Get on with your porridge now, dear,’ said Mama. ‘We can talk about it afterwards.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ said Ken slowly, picking up his porridge spoon with a trembling hand, ‘that we don’t get the money?’

  ‘Of course you don’t. You didn’t do it.’

  We got on with our porridge. For the first time in our lives porridge brought us no satisfaction. Civilization had crashed. Say not the struggle nought availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain; but that was how it seemed to be at the moment. We finished our breakfast in silence, we separated, each of us afraid, perhaps, that the other might want to cry and would rather do it alone. It was Papa who found me, and said: ‘Rules are rules, darling, but I think you deserve a consolation prize,’ and left a small tin of sweets in my hand; Mama who found Ken and said: ‘Never mind, dear, your uncle is like that sometimes, and I think it was wonderful that you did it at all,’—comforting words when accompanied by threepence. We joined each other more cheerfully, a cheerfulness which was doubled when we found that the other had got something too; we trotted down the village to our favourite shop.

  Now here was Providence’s great chance of doing something spectacular. Providence, however, is rarely tempted by the spectacu-lar, seeming, in fact, quite lackadaisical about what she is doing. She does not trouble to choose the exact moment, neither for her favours nor her frowns. There was a large, flat, circular chocolate-cream to be bought at this shop, whose extraordinary virtue was that its slightly hollow inside might contain a sixpenny-bit. We bought twelve. Assuming that Papa and Mama had given us equal presents, we were exactly sixpence short. We had never yet bitten into one of the lucky chocolates. Surely to-day, with twelve chances and being owed six-pence anyway—No. Providence remained stolid. And, as far as uncles were concerned, Limpsfield Hill remained ‘a very steep hill, not worth while riding up.’

  I shall now introduce myself as a writer, on my first appearance in print:

  We walked to Edenbridge, six miles, and drank out of a pump­ and while we were drinking a girl came to us and told us we were drinking river-water, so we went into a shop and bought some ginger-beer. After we had had a good drink we walked to Hever. . . . When we got to Hever, a distance of nine miles, we had a good dinner. While we were waiting for dinner we went over Hever Church and Castle, where Queen Anne Boleyn was born. We then had a lovely dinner of ham and eggs. Afterwards we went two miles across some fields, and ate some lovely nuts, and then into a road which led to Chiding Stone. When we got there we bought some biscuits and some ginger-beer, and we went on the Stone and ate them. Then we walked to Cowden. On the road we met a gentleman who showed us the way (he himself was going to the Isle of Wight). He left us at Cowden Station, which was a mile from the town. We then walked to Cowden, and here we hoped to have a rest. When we got there, we found there was no room at the inn! We then hurried away to the station a mile off, and took train to Tunbridge Wells. Here we found a lovely hotel called ‘Carlton Hotel;’ we had a tremendous tea of ham and eggs, after a grand wash, and then went to bed. It was nineteen miles’ walk that day altogether.

  I like the opening of this: ‘We walked to Edenbridge, six miles, and drank out of a pump’; as if we thought nothing of walking six miles for a drink. And I shall insist again that I was eight years old; and I will add, because it has just occurred to me, that I was carrying a knapsack. If any other eight-year-old has walked nineteen miles in a day, carrying a knapsack, let him write to his local paper about it.

  The three days’ walking tour did not quite live up to its name. On the first day it rained so continuously that, after an interrupted fourteen miles, we made for the nearest station and splashed home. We started again two days later. The first day now was the one which I have described. On the second day we had done eleven miles by lunch-time. Now it will have been noted, perhaps, that on that first day we had not only ‘a lovely dinner of ham and eggs,’ but also ‘a tremendous tea of ham and eggs.’ Undoubtedly, as was natural, a terrific breakfast of ham and eggs had preceded the one and followed the other. I could have gone on doing this for years, but Ken lacked something of my feeling for ham and eggs, and when at Mayfield on that second day there was nothing to be had for our mid-day meal but— Well, as soon as he heard the unlovely words, he was (as I kindly put it) ‘bilious.’ So we had to go home. But since we had always said that we would have a three days’ walking tour, and since that was to be the title of my great holiday article, we had to make it so by adding in that abortive day in the rain.

  Ken says that we did ‘a lot of cricketing.’ I don’t remember this, but I remember Strawberry, the local fast bowler (and butcher), and a never-ending family of Leveson-Gowers, who all played cricket on the common. We watched their matches with a condescending interest, having been brought up on Grace, Stoddart, Shrewsbury and Gunn; Stoddart had played as a boy against Henley House, and I should have put his name first.

  For the rest, as Ken says, ‘Alan and I often used to get up at five o’clock and go out, and walk about five or eight miles, but towards the close of the holidays we did not.’

  I don’t know why.

  4

  On a day towards the end of July 1891 Ken and I were photographed together—for the first and last time. We are wearing rather tight brown knicker-bocker suits with lace collars. Ken is holding an open book, which the two of us are reading, I with my head resting lovingly on his shoulder. The photograph commemorates an occasion of great happiness to him, of great unhappiness to me. Ken, for the first time in his life, is leaving me. He is going to have his hair cut.

  It shows how completely I had identified myself with him that I had always assumed our hair to be one and indivisible. We couldn’t start algebra together, share a bed and a tandem, fall off the same bicycle, be the only living members of the FN Society, and one of us have long hair and the other short. It didn’t make sense. If we are waiting until Queen Victoria dies or we go into the Navy, all right; if we are waiting for that beastly cousin to come over from Jamaica, all right. We will wait together.

  But no. Ken was too old now for long hair; and I, who thought of myself always as his contemporary, must bear my burden alone. A last photograph of the Little Lords Fauntleroy. I have a particular reason for remembering that photograph. In the dressing-room the usual last-minute combings and curlings and twistings round the finger were going on. Ken was finished first and ran off into the studio. He came running back excitedly to say that there was a suit of armour there. ‘Quick, Alan, come and look.’ I couldn’t. A governess was holding me firmly by the hair, and trying to disentangle her comb.

  ‘Just a moment, darling.’

  ‘I say, can’t I—ow!’

  She has got her comb back, and starts on another lock.

  ‘Just a moment, darling.’

  It is the first day of the holidays. Time cannot go too slowly for me; not a minute now that is not precious. To-morrow we are riding down (the tandem’s last season) to Stanford-in-the-Vale. Six glorious weeks; there they are waiting for us; nothing can shake them. However troublesome my hair, Stanford will still be in the vale, waiting; the armour, as immovable, in the studio. There is no hurry.

 
But there was. I can remember thinking, and it must have been my first philosophical reflection: ‘It may be a little time, it may be a long time, but some time I shall see that armour. And when I have seen it, I have seen it, and it is over. And the holidays will be over; and I shall wish that I hadn’t seen that armour, and that I still had it to see, and that I were here, having my hair pulled, with everything in front of me, armour and holidays. And one day I shall be old, and it won’t matter how long she took over my hair, because I shall be old, and it will all be over. But oh! I want to see that armour now!’

  I saw it. It was a little disappointing.

  Stanford was in Berkshire, a new country to us. We rode down on the tandem. If Ken had been in front, I. shouldn’t have recognized him. We sat on a bank, and dangled our legs, and Papa asked a passer-by if we were right for Stanford.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the farmer. ‘About another six mile.’

  We continued to dangle. Another cart came past.

  ‘How far is it to Stanford?’ asked Ken, and we both giggled.

  ‘About four and a ’arf mile.’

  ‘Good,’ said Papa. ‘We’re getting on. Your turn next, Alan.’

  ‘We can’t keep on asking,’ I protested.

  ‘Yes, we can,’ said Ken.

  A boy came out of a cottage, and looked down the road.

  Ken nudged me.

  ‘Can you tell me how far—’

  ‘He can’t hear you,’ said Ken. ‘Shout.’

  I rolled off the bank and ran over to him.

  ‘Well?’ ‘they asked, when I came back.

  ‘Just three miles,’ I reported.

  ‘What would you like to do?’ said Papa. ‘Wait here until it comes, or go and meet it?’

  We went and met it.

  There was great excitement that night in Stanford-in-the-Vale. The most notorious character in the village was being ‘burnt in effigy.’ Papa explained to us what this meant, and, as discreetly as he could, why it was being done. It was because he was a very bad man, who had run away from his wife. But if he was a very bad man, I said, wasn’t it a good thing for his wife if— Ken interrupted to say that he had got somebody into trouble. What sort of trouble? ‘Just trouble, Davis said. I suppose he sneaked on somebody.’ Papa interrupted to say that we couldn’t know the truth of it, but evidently the village felt very strongly about it. Ken hoped that he would never be burnt in effigy. I hoped I wouldn’t either. Papa thought we probably shouldn’t if we told the truth, and worked hard. So we decided to go on doing this.

  Meanwhile, noses pressed against an upper window, we watched the village’s retribution on the sinner. Three times they paraded his effigy round the green, the men banging pans and kettles, the women screaming, the boys making every sort of noise they could. Then they turned on to the grass, and gathered round into a circle as if for prayer; and there was a moment’s silence; and suddenly a flame shot up to heaven. . . . ‘Coo!’ we said to each other.

  It must have been great fun, and I should have thought that the opportunity for it would occur more often.

  We did very little walking at Stanford. With the loss of Ken’s hair something had gone out of our lives: our love of adventure, our habit of getting up early, even our desire to be alone together. Ken moved a little up to Barry and I clung on as best I could, so that now we were all three playing lawn-tennis for the rest time, and watching and being pole-axed, and messing about by the river with village boys. Of course we had to keep friendly with Barry anyhow, because he was the only one of us who had a bicycle; but later, when Papa took us into Faringdon and hired bicycles for us, I seem to remember that Ken and I were drawn together again, even getting up early in order to practise six different ways of mounting, and riding without hands, and standing on the saddle, and other tricks which would give us the chance of calling proudly to Mama: ‘Look at me!’

  However, we did start another three days’ walking tour, Papa, Ken and I, but something happened to it. We walked over Lambourn Downs, and on the second day were lunching in Savernake Forest. For some reason Papa suddenly thought it would be fun to take train to Southampton. Anything was fun to us, and we agreed happily. We slept at Southampton, and next morning Papa thought it would be fun to take a boat round the Isle of Wight. I thought so too. But Ken, who had once been sick on the ornamental waters of Regent’s Park and rightly felt that he could be sick anywhere, wasn’t so sure. However, after a little persuasion, he said that he didn’t mind practising. So we went round the Isle of Wight. Ken wasn’t ill, but he left his knapsack on board. As the boat was now going round the Isle of Wight again, time slipped by, and eventually, so as not to miss church on Sunday, we went home by train. It was not quite the walk it should have been.

  5

  At Seaford I had my hair cut. The cousin from Jamaica landed in England, came down to Seaford, took one glance at my beautiful hair, and went on telling Mama about her troubles with black servants in Jamaica. There’s gratitude, I thought bitterly. After all I’ve done for her.

  The next day saw the last of Shirley Temple. As Ken and I came back from the barber’s, carrying the precious locks in a paper-bag for Mama, we re-passed a little group of locals. They knew us by sight, for they had often seen us chasing butterflies on the cliffs here. They whistled ‘Get your hair cut.’ It is odd that this, the first moment of my emancipation, was the only time when I had ‘Get your hair cut’ whistled at me.

  Seaford brought us two blessings: butterflies and the sea; of the two we probably got greater pleasure from the butterflies. The first article which I wrote for the public press was written at this time. It was severely practical, being entitled ‘How to make a Butterfy-net.’ We hoped a lot from this; and I can only suppose that the reason why Ken wasn’t writing it was because he was busy on an article ‘Common Butterflies and their Haunts.’ My article was sent to Chums, Ken’s to the Boys’ Own Paper. That was the last we heard of them. Seaford in those days was full of butterflies. When, as periodically happens, some enthusiast writes to The Times to say that he has seen six Clouded Yellows simultaneously at Lower Beeding, and is followed by an authority who says that every seventh year brings a visitation of Clouded Yellows from the Continent, I count in sevens from 1892 to see if either of them knows what he is talking about. 1892 was the peak year for Clouded Yellows. Ken and I would go out together with our nets, find a suitable camping-place, and then separate. In half-an-hour we would meet again. Nothing was to be said, but the position of the butterfly-net on the return to camp would indicate to the other the nature of the bag. Net at the trail in the right hand, nothing better than a small Tortoiseshell; in the left hand, Brimstone or Red Admiral; at the slope on the right shoulder, Peacock or Painted Lady; on the left shoulder, Clouded Yellow; over the head, anything special.

  Ken had been given Morris’ British Butterflies for a birthday present, and we knew it by heart. The kings and queens of the British butterfly world were, and I suppose still are, the Swallow-Tail, the Purple Emperor and the Camberwell Beauty. A few Swallow-Tails were to be found in Norfolk, where we never went; a few Purple Emperors at the tops of oak-trees (where we never went); a few Camberwell Beauties, no doubt, at Camberwell—where, also, we never went. We realized that these great butterflies were not for us. One day, while we were at breakfast, Papa called to us to come into the garden and see something. We went . . . and there on the flagstones just outside the garden-door was, incredibly, a Swallow-Tail. Left to ourselves Ken and I could have caught it, but the competition was too severe. Barry rushed for a net, anybody’s net. The Jamaica cousin’s son, who derided our English butterflies, and told us stories of West Indian butterflies like eagles, thought that he might start a collection with a Swallow-Tail, and dashed for his hat. Even Ken and I, each secretly longing to be thecaptor, however certainly we shared the spoil, got into each other’s way. It was all too much for the butterfly, which
went back to Norfolk. I am still hoping that one day I shall read a letter in The Times asking if the Swallow-Tail has ever been seen as far south as Sittingbourne. ‘Sir,’ I shall write.

  I had been taught to swim at the Hampstead Baths, part of the teaching taking the simple form of pushing me in at the deep end and fishing for me with a hooked pole when I came to the surface. It was a relief to discover that nobody could push me into anything at Seaford. When the sea was rough (as it nearly always was), we bathed at the end of a long rope whose other end was held by Papa. Like many Victorians he couldn’t swim; unlike, I imagine, anybody else who couldn’t swim, he could float. At the Hampstead Baths he would lower himself carefully into the water and cross the bath on his back, with an impressive dignity which left you feeling that he would have done it on his front if he had been in a hurry. We wondered sometimes if it was just that he didn’t want to get his beard wet. In any case a rough sea was no good to him. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to save us if we were in danger, he insisted on the rope. We resented it, but I expect he was right. Waves, like everything else are not what they were. In those days they were terrific, and we came out of the water blue, black and red all over.