Angel and I scurried up the stairway. We could hear The Seraph panting as
he laboured after us.
Once in the haven of our little room we rolled in a confused heap on the
bed, scuffling indiscriminately. It was a favourite punishment with Mrs.
Handsomebody, and we had a suspicion that she relished the fact that so
much food was saved when we went dinnerless. At any rate, we were not
allowed to make up the deficiency at tea-time.
We always passed the hours of our confinement on the bed, for the room was
very small and the one window stared blankly at the window of an unused
room in the Peggs' house, which blankly returned the stare.
But these were not dull times for us. As Elizabethan actors, striding about
their bare stage, conjured up brave pictures of gilded halls or leafy
forest glades, so we little fellows made a castle stronghold of our bed; or
better still, a gallant frigate that sailed beyond the barren walls into
unknown seas of adventure, and anchored at last off some rocky island where
treasure lay hid among the hills.
What brave fights with pirates there were, when Angel as Captain, I as
mate, with The Seraph for a cabin boy, fought the bloody pirate gangs on
those surf-washed shores, and gained the fight, though far out-numbered!
They were not dull times in that small back room, but gay-coloured lawless
times, when our fancy was let free, and we fought on empty stomachs, and
felt only the wind in our faces, and heard the creak of straining cordage.
What if we were on half-rations!
On this particular morning, however, there was something to be disposed of
before we got to business. To wit, the rank insubordination of The Seraph.
It was not to be dealt with too lightly. Angel sat up with a dishevelled
head.
"Get up!" he commanded The Seraph, who obeyed wonderingly.
"Now, my man," continued Angel, with the scowl that had made him dreaded
the South Seas over, "have you anything to say for yourself?"
The Seraph hung his head.
"I was on'y danglin' a bit o' stwing," he murmured.
"String"--repeated Angel, the scowl deepening, "dangling a bit of string!
You may be dangling yourself at the end of a rope before the sun sets, my
hearty! Here we are without any dinner, all along of you. Now see here,
you'll go right over into that corner by the window with your face to the
wall and stand there all the time John and I play! An'--an' you won't know
what we're doing nor where we're going nor _anything_--so there!"
The Seraph went, weeping bitterly. He hid his face in the dusty lace window
curtain. He looked very small. I could not help remembering how father had
said we were to take care of him and not make him cry.
Somehow that morning things went ill with the adventure. The savour had
gone out of our play. Two were but a paltry company after all. Where was
the cabin-boy with his trusty dirk, eager to bleed for the cause? Though we
kept our backs rigorously turned to the window, and spoke only in whispers,
neither of us could quite forget the presence of that dejected little
figure in the faded holland smock.
After a bit The Seraph's whimpering ceased, and what was our surprise to
hear the chuckling laugh with which he was wont to signify his pleasure!
We turned to look at him. His face was pressed to the window, and again he
giggled rapturously.
"What's up, kid?" we demanded.
"Ole Joseph-an'-his-Bwethern," he sputtered, "winkin' an' wavin' hands wiv
me!"
We were at his side like a shot, and there in the hitherto blank window of
the Peggs' house stood the old gentleman of the flowered dressing-gown
laughing and nodding at The Seraph! When he saw us he made a sign to us to
open our window, and at the same instant raised his own.
It took the three of us to accomplish it, for the window moved unreadily,
being seldom raised, as Mrs. Handsomebody regarded fresh air much as she
regarded a small boy, as something to be kept in its place.
At last the window rose, protesting and creaking, and the next moment we
were face to face with our new acquaintance.
"Hello!" he said, in a loud jovial voice.
"Hello!" said we, and stared.
He had a strong, weather-beaten face, and wide-open light eyes, blue and
wild as the sea.
"Hello, boy!" he repeated, looking at Angel, "What's your name?"
Now Angel was shy with strangers, so I usually answered questions.
"His name," I replied then, "is David Curzon but mother called him Angel,
so we jus' keep on doing it."
"Oh," said the old gentleman. Then he fixed The Seraph with his eye.
"What's the bantling's name?"
The Seraph, mightily confused at being called a bantling, giggled inanely,
so I replied again.
"His name is Alexander Curzon, but mother called him The Seraph, so we jus'
keep on doing it too."
"Um-hm," assented the old gentleman, "and you--what's your name?"
"John," I replied.
"Oh," he said, with an odd little smile, "and what do they keep on calling
_you_?"
"Just John," I answered firmly, "nothing else."
"Who's your father?" came the next question.
"He's David Curzon, senior," I said proudly, "and he's in South America
building a railroad an' Mrs. Handsomebody used to be his governess when he
was a little boy, so he left us with her, but some day, pretty soon, I
think, he's coming back to make a really home for us with rabbits an'
puppies an' pigeons an' things."
Our new friend nodded sympathetically. Then, quite suddenly, he asked:
"Where's your mother?"
"She's in Heaven," I answered sadly, "she went there two months ago."
"Yes," broke in The Seraph eagerly, "but she's comin' back some day to make
a _weally_ home for us!"
"Shut up!" said Angel gruffly, poking him with his elbow.
"The Seraph's very little," I explained apologetically, "he doesn't
understand."
The old gentleman put his hand in the pocket of his dressing-gown.
"Bantling," he said with his droll smile, "do you like peppermint
bull's-eyes?"
"Yes," said The Seraph, "I yike them--one for each of us."
Whereupon this extraordinary man began throwing us peppermints as fast as
we could catch them. It was surprising how we began to feel at home with
him, as though we had known him for years.
He had travelled all over the world it seemed, and he brought many curious
things to the window to show us. One of these was a starling whose wicker
cage he placed on the sill where the sunlight fell.
He had got it, he said, from one of the crew of a trading vessel off the
coast of Java. The sailor had brought it all the way from Devon for
company, and, he added--"the brute had put out both its eyes so that it
would learn to talk more readily, so now, you see, the poor little fellow
is quite blind."
"Blind--blind--blind!" echoed the starling briskly, "blind--blind--blind!"
He took it from its cage on his finger. It hopped up his arm till it
reached his cheek, where it began to peck at his whiskers, crying all the
while in its shrill, lonely tones,--"Blind, blind, blind!"
We three were entranced; and an idea that was swiftly forming in my mind
struggled for expression.
If this wonderful old man had, as he said, sailed the seas from Land's End
to Ceylon, was it not possible that he had seen, even fought with, real
pirates? Might he not have followed hot on the trail of hidden treasure? My
cheeks burned as I tried to put the question.
"Did you--" I began, "did you--"
"Well?" he encouraged. "Did I what, John?"
"Oh, did you," I burst out, "ever see a pirate ship, an' pirates--real
ones?"
His face lit up.
"Surely," he replied casually, "many an one."
"P'raps--" ventured Angel, with an excited laugh, "p'raps you're one
yourself!"
The old gentleman searched our eager faces with his wide-open, sea blue
eyes, then he looked cautiously into the room behind him, and, apparently
satisfied that no one could overhear, he put his hand to the side of his
mouth, and said in a loud hoarse whisper--
"That I am. Pirate as ever was!"
I think you could have knocked me down with a feather. I know my knees
shook and the room reeled. The Seraph was the first to recover, piping
cheerfully--
"I yike piwates!"
"Yes," repeated the old gentleman, reflectively, "pirate as ever was. The
things I've seen and done would fill the biggest book you ever saw, and
it'd make your hair stand on end to read it--what with fights, and murders,
and hangings, and storms, and shipwreck, and the hunt for gold! Many a
sweet schooner or frigate I've sunk, or taken for myself; and there isn't a
port on the South Seas where women don't hush their children crying with
the fear of Captain Pegg."
Then he added hastily, as though he feared he had gone too far:
"But I'm a changed man, mark you--a reformed man. If things suit me pretty
well here I don't think I shall break out again. It is just that you chaps
seem so sympathetic makes me tell you all this; but you must swear never to
breathe a word of it, for no one knows but you. My son and daughter-in-law
think I'm an archaeologist. It'd be an awful shock to them to find that I'm
a pirate."
We swore the blackest secrecy, and were about to ply him with a hundred
questions, when we saw a maid carrying a large tray enter the room behind
him.
Captain Pegg, as I must now call him, gave us a gesture of warning and
began to lower his window. A pleasant aroma of roast beef came across the
alley. The next instant the flowered dressing-gown had disappeared and the
window opposite stared blankly as before.
Angel blew a deep breath. "Did you notice," he said, "how different he got
once he had told us he was a pirate--wilder and rougher, and used more
sailor words?"
"However did you guess it first?" I asked admiringly.
"I think I know a pirate when I see one," he returned loftily. "But, oh I
say, wouldn't Mrs. Handsomebody be waxy if she knew?"
"An' wouldn't Mary Ellen be scared stiff if _she_ knew?"
"An' won't we have fun? Hurray!"
We rolled in ecstasy on the much-enduring bed.
We talked excitedly of the possibilities of such a wonderful and dangerous
friendship. And as it turned out, none of our imaginings equalled what
really happened.
The afternoon passed quickly. As the hands of our alarm clock neared the
hour of four we obliterated the traces of our sojourn on the bed as well as
we could, and, when Mrs. Handsomebody entered, she found us sitting in a
row on the three cane-bottomed chairs, on which we hung our clothes at
night.
The scolding she gave us was even longer and more humiliating to our
manhood than usual. She shook her hard white finger near our faces and said
that for very little she would write to our father and complain of our
actions.
"Now," she said, in conclusion, "give your faces and hands a thorough
washing and comb your hair, which is disgraceful; then come quietly down to
tea." The door closed behind her.
"What beats me," said Angel, lathering his hands, "is why that wart on her
chin wiggles so when she jaws us! I can't keep my eyes off it."
"It wiggles," piped The Seraph, as he dragged a brush over his curls, "'cos
it's nervous, an' I wiggle when she scolds too, 'cos _I'm_ nervous."
"Don't you worry, old man," Angel responded, gaily, "we'll take care of
you."
We were in fine spirits despite our scolding. Indeed, we almost pitied Mrs.
Handsomebody for her ignorance of the wonders amongst which she had her
being.
Here she was, fussing over some stuffed birds in a glass case, when a live
starling, who could talk, had perched near her very window sill! She spent
hours in conversation with her Unitarian minister, while a real pirate
lived next door.
It was pitiful, and yet it was very funny. We found it hard to go quietly
down to tea with such thoughts in our minds, and after five hours in our
bedroom.