WHEN elder brothers insisted on their rights with undue harshness, or
when the grown-up people descended from Olympus with a tiresome tale of
broken furniture and torn clothes, the groundlings of the schoolroom went
into retreat. In summer-time this was an easy matter; once fairly
escaped into the garden, any climbable tree or shady shrub provided us
with a hermitage. There was a hollow tree-stump full of exciting insects
and pleasant earthy smells that never failed us, or, for wet days, the
tool-shed, with its armoury of weapons with which, in imagination, we
would repel the attacks of hostile forces. But in the game that was our
childhood, the garden was out of bounds in winter-time, and we had to
seek other lairs. Behind the schoolroom piano there was a three-cornered
refuge that served very well for momentary sulks or sudden alarms. It
was possible to lie in ambush there, at peace with our grievances, until
life took a turn for the better and tempted us forth again into the
active world.
But when the hour was tragic and we felt the need for a hiding-place more
remote, we took our troubles, not without a recurring thrill, to that
enchanted place which our elders contemptuously called the
“mouse-cupboard.” This was a low cupboard that ran the whole length of
the big attic under the slope of the roof, and here the aggrieved spirit
of childhood could find solitude and darkness in which to scheme deeds of
revenge and actions of a wonderful magnanimity turn by turn. Luckily our
shelter did not appeal to the utilitarian minds of the grown-up folk or
to those members of the younger generation who were beginning to trouble
about their clothes. You had to enter it on your hands and knees; it was
dusty, and the mice obstinately disputed our possession. On the inner
walls the plaster seemed to be oozing between the rough laths, and
through little chinks and crannies in the tiles overhead our eyes could
see the sky. But our imaginations soon altered these trivial blemishes.
As a cave the mouse-cupboard had a very interesting history. As soon as
the smugglers had left it, it passed successively through the hands of
Aladdin, Robinson Crusoe, Ben Gunn, and Tom Sawyer, and gave satisfaction
to them all, and it would no doubt have had many other tenants if some
one had not discovered that it was like the cabin of a ship. From that
hour its position in our world was assured.
For sooner or later our dreams always returned to the sea—not, be it
said, to the polite and civilised sea of the summer holidays, but to that
sea on whose foam there open magic casements, and by whose crimson tide
the ships of Captain Avery and Captain Bartholomew Roberts keep faithful
tryst with the _Flying Dutchman_. It needed no very solid vessel to
carry our hearts to those enchanted waters—a paper boat floating in a
saucer served well enough if the wind was propitious—so the fact that our
cabin lacked portholes and was of an unusual shape did not trouble us.
We could hear the water bubbling against the ship’s side in a
neighbouring cistern, and often enough the wind moaned and whistled
overhead. We had our lockers, our sleeping-berths, and our cabin-table,
and at one end of the cabin was hung a rusty old cutlass full of notches;
we would have hated any one who had sought to disturb our illusion that
these notches had been made in battle. When we were stowaways even the
mice were of service to us, for we gave them a full roving commission as
savage rats, and trembled when we heard them scampering among the cargo.
But though we cut the figure of an old admiral out of a Christmas number,
and chased slavers with Kingston very happily for a while, the vessel did
not really come into her own until we turned pirates and hoisted the
“Jolly Roger” off the coast of Malabar. Then, by the light of guttering
candles, the mice witnessed some strange sights. If any of us had any
money we would carouse terribly, drinking ginger-beer like water, and
afterwards water out of the ginger-beer bottles, which still retained a
faint magic. Jam has been eaten without bread on board the _Black
Margaret_, and when we fell across a merchantman laden with a valuable
consignment of dried apple-rings—tough fare but interesting—and the
savoury sugar out of candied peel, there were boisterous times in her dim
cabin. We would sing what we imagined to be sea chanties in a doleful
voice, and prepare our boarding-pikes for the next adventure, though we
had no clear idea what they really were.
And when we grew weary of draining rum-kegs and counting the pieces of
eight, our life at sea knew quieter though no less enjoyable hours. It
was pleasant to lie still after the fever of battle and watch the
flickering candles with drowsy eyes. Surely the last word has not been
said on the charm of candle-light; we liked little candles—dumpy sixteens
they were perhaps—and as we lay they would spread among us their
attendant shadows. Beneath us the water chuckled restlessly, and
sometimes we heard the feet of the watch on deck overhead, and now and
again the clanging of the great bell. In such an hour it was not
difficult to picture the luminous tropic seas through which the _Black
Margaret_ was making her way. The skies of irradiant stars, the desert
islands like baskets of glowing flowers, and the thousand marvels of the
enchanted ocean—we saw them one and all.
It was strange to leave this place of shadows and silences and hour-long
dreams to play a humble part in a noisy, gas-lit world that had not known
these wonders; but there were consolations. Elder brothers might prevail
in argument by methods that seemed unfair, but, beneath a baffled
exterior, we could conceal a sublime pity for their unadventurous lives.
Governesses might criticise our dusty clothes with wearisome eloquence,
but the recollection that women were not allowed on board the _Black
Margaret_ helped us to remain conventionally polite. Like the gentleman
in Mr. Wells’s story, we knew that there were better dreams, and the
knowledge raised us for a while above the trivial passions of our
environment.
We were not the only children who had found the mouse-cupboard a place of
enchantment, for when we explored it first we discovered a handful of
wooden beads carefully hidden in a cranny in the wall. These breathed of
the nursery rather than of the schoolroom, and yet, perhaps, those
forgotten children had known what we knew, and our songs of the sea
stirred only familiar echoes. It is likely enough that to-day other
children have inherited our dreams, and that other hands steer the _Black
Margaret_ under approving stars. If this indeed be so, they are in our
debt, for in one of our hiding-places we left the “Count of Monte Cristo”
in English, rare treasure-trove for any proper boy. If this should ever
meet his eyes he will understand.