It sometimes happened that Mrs Wilson went out to spend the evening with a married daughter who resided somewhere within visiting distance; and, when this was the case, my studies were of course interrupted, and other means of employing my time had to be found. Thanks, chiefly, to the fact that these occasions afforded Mary, my particular attendant, an opportunity of escape from the somewhat dismal lonesomeness of the nursery, these evenings were very frequently spent in the servants’ hall, where I had an opportunity of enjoying the conversation of the housemaid Jane, the cook, and Tim, the presiding genius of the knife-board and boot-brushes. I always greatly enjoyed these visits to the lower regions, for two reasons; the first of which was that they were surreptitious, and much caution was needed, or supposed to be needed, in order that my journey down-stairs might be accomplished without “master’s” knowledge; the remaining reason for my enjoyment being that I generally heard something which interested me. Whether the interest excited was or was not of a healthy character the reader shall judge.
The cook, of course, reigned supreme in the servants’ hall, the other occupants taking their cue from her, and regulating their tastes and occupations in accordance with hers. Now this woman—an obese, red-armed, and red-visaged person of about forty years of age—was possessed by a morbid and consuming curiosity concerning all those horrors and criminal mysteries which appear from time to time in the public prints; and the more horrible they were, the greater was her interest in them. The evening, after all the work was done and there was opportunity to give her whole attention to the subject, was the time selected by her for the satisfaction of this curiosity; and it thus happened very frequently that, when I made my appearance among the servants, they were deep in the discussion of some murder, or mysterious disappearance, or kindred matter. If the item under discussion happened to be fresh, the boy Tim was delegated to search the newspaper and read therefrom every paragraph bearing upon it, the remainder of the party listening intently and open-mouthed as they sat in a semicircle before the blazing fire. And if the item happened to be so stale as to have passed out of the notice of the papers, the cook would recapitulate for our benefit its leading features, together with any similar events or singular coincidences connected with the case which might occur to her memory at the moment. From the discussion of murders to the relation of ghost stories is a natural and easy transition, and here Jane, the housemaid, shone pre-eminent. She would sit there and discourse by the hour of lonely and deserted houses, long silent galleries, down which misty shapes had been seen to glide in the pallid moonlight, gaunt and ruinous chambers, the wainscot of which rattled, and the tattered tapestry of which swayed and rustled mysteriously; gloomy passages through which unearthly sighs were audibly wafted; dismal cellars, with never-opened doors, from whose profoundest recesses came at dead of night the muffled sound of shrieks and groans and clanking chains; “of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, and airy tongues that syllable men’s names on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses,” until not one of the party, excepting myself, dared move or look round for fear of seeing some dread presence, some shapeless dweller upon the threshold, some horrible apparition, the sight of which, Medusa-like, should blast them into stone. Not infrequently the situation was rendered additionally harrowing by the cook, who would suddenly interrupt the narrative, send an icy thrill down our spines, and cause the unhappy Tim’s scalp to bristle even more than usual, by exclaiming in a low startling whisper:
“Hark! didn’t you hear something move in the passage just then?”
Whereupon Jane and Mary would spring to their feet, and, with pallid faces, starting eyes, and blanched lips, cling convulsively to each other, convinced that at last their unspoken fears were about to be dreadfully realised.
It will naturally be supposed that these séances would have a dreadfully trying effect upon my infantile nerves; but, strangely enough, they did not. I never looked beneath my cot with the expectation of discovering a midnight assassin; for, in the first place, the outer doors of the house were always kept so carefully closed that I did not see how such an individual could well get in; and, in the second place, admitting, for argument’s sake, the possibility of his effecting an entrance, I did not for a moment believe he would give himself the wholly unnecessary trouble of murdering a little boy, or girl either, for that matter. Then, as to the ghosts, though it never occurred to me to doubt their existence, I entirely failed to understand why people should be afraid of them. I felt that, in regarding these beings as objects of dread and apprehension, the housemaid, the cook, and in fact everybody who took this view of them, entirely misunderstood them, and were doing the poor shadows a most grievous injustice. My own experience of ghosts led me to the conclusion that, so far from their being inimical to mankind, they were distinctly benign. There was one ghost in particular to whose visitations I used to look forward with the greatest delight; and I was never so happy as when I awoke in the morning with the vague remembrance that, at some time during the silent watches of the past night, I had become conscious of a sweet and gracious presence beside my cot, bending over me with eyes which looked unutterable love into mine, and with lips which mingled kisses of tenderest affection with softly-breathed blessings upon my infant head. At first I used to mention these visitations to Mary, my nurse, but I soon forbore to do so, noticing that she always looked uncomfortably startled for a moment or two afterwards, and generally dismissed the subject somewhat hurriedly by remarking:
“Ah, poor lamb! you’ve been dreaming about your mother.”
Which remark annoyed me, for I felt convinced that so realistic an experience could not possibly result from a mere dream.
It sometimes happened that there were no tragedies or other horrors in the newspapers sufficiently piquant to tempt the cook’s intellectual palate; and in the absence of these, if it happened also to be Jane’s “evening out,” Mary would occasionally produce a well-thumbed copy of the Arabian Nights, or some old volume of fairy tales, from which she read aloud.
How I enjoyed those evenings with the old Eastern romancist! How I revelled in the imaginary delights and wonders of fairydom! Of course I pictured myself the hero of every story, the truth of the most outrageous of which it never occurred to me to doubt. Sitting at Mary’s feet, on a low stool before the fire, with the old cat blinking and purring with drowsy satisfaction upon my knee, I used to gaze abstractedly at the glowing coals, now thinking myself the prince in “Cinderella,” now the happy owner of “Puss in Boots,” and now the adventurous Sindbad. There was one story, however—I quite forget its title—which, in strong contrast with the others, instead of affording me gratification, was a source of keen annoyance and vexation to me whenever I heard it. It related to a boy who on one occasion had the good fortune to meet, in the depths of the forest, a little old man in red cap and green jerkin—a gnome or fairy, of course—who with the utmost good-nature offered to gratify any single wish that boy might choose to express. Here was a glorious chance, the opportunity of a lifetime! The boy’s first thought was for ginger-bread, but before the thought had time to clothe itself in words the vision of a drum and trumpet flashed across his mind. He was about to express a wish for these martial instruments, and a real sword, when it occurred to him that the fairies were quite equal to the task of providing gifts of infinitely greater value and splendour than even these coveted articles. And then that unfortunate boy completely lost his head; his brain became muddled with the endless variety of things which he found he required; and he took so long a time to make up his mind that, when, in desperation, he finally did so, the unwelcome discovery was made that his fairy friend, disgusted at the delay and vacillation, had vanished without bestowing upon him so much as even one poor ginger-bread elephant. It was that boy’s first and last opportunity, and he lost it. He never again met a fairy, though he wandered through the forest, day after day, week after week, and year after year, until he became an old man, dying at last in a state of abject p
overty.
The moral of this story was obvious even to my juvenile mind. It plainly pointed to the necessity for being prepared to take the fullest advantage of every opportunity, whenever it might present itself; and I was resolved that, if ever I encountered a fairy, he should find me fully prepared to tax his generosity to its utmost limit. And, forthwith, I began to ask myself what was the most desirable thing at all likely to be within a fairy’s power of bestowal. At this point I, for the first time, began to realise the difficulties of the situation in which the unhappy boy of the story found himself. I thought of several things; but none of them came quite up to my idea of a gift such as would do full honour and justice to a fairy’s power of giving; the utmost I could imagine was a real ship full of real sailors, wherein I might roam the seas and perform wonderful voyages like Sindbad; and, in my efforts to achieve a still higher flight of imagination, I found myself so completely at a loss that I was fain to turn to Mary for counsel. Accordingly, as I was being escorted by that damsel upstairs to bed one night, I broached the subject by saying:
“Mary, supposing you were to meet a fairy, what would you ask him to give you?”
“Lor’! Master Lionel, I dun know,” she replied. “That’s a question I shouldn’t like to answer just off-hand; I should want to think it over a good bit. I should read a lot of books, and find out what was the best thing as was to be had.”
“What sort of books?” I asked.
“Oh! any sort,” was the reply; “books such as them down-stairs in your pa’s lib’ry; them’s downright beautiful books—your pa’s—full of all sorts of wonderful things such as you never heard tell of.”
This reply afforded me food for a considerable amount of profound reflection before I went to sleep that night; the result of which was that on the following morning, as soon as I had taken my breakfast, I descended to the “lib’ry,” opened the doors of one of the book-cases, and dragged down upon my curly pate the most bulky volume I could reach. With the expenditure of a considerable amount of labour I conveyed it to the nursery, and, flinging it and myself upon the floor, opened it hap-hazard, feeling sure that, in a book of such imposing dimensions, I should find something valuable wherever I might open it. It was an English work of some kind, I remember; but, alas for my aspirations! it might almost as well have been Greek. I was equal, just then, to the mastery of words of two syllables, but no more; and the result was that, though I occasionally caught a glimpse of the meaning of a sentence here and there, the subject matter of the book, as a whole, remained a profound mystery to me. My want of knowledge was at once made most painfully apparent to myself; I discovered that I had a very great deal to learn before the treasures of wisdom by which I was surrounded could be made available; and I forthwith bent all my energies to the task of perfecting myself in the art of reading as a first and indispensable step.
CHAPTER TWO
My Mother’s Portrait
Actuated by what was to me so powerful an incentive, my progress toward proficiency as a reader was rapid; and, in a comparatively short time, I felt equal to a renewed effort to sound the depths of the well of knowledge.
On this momentous occasion—momentous to me, at least, for I am convinced that it exercised a very material influence on my eventual choice of a career—I chanced upon an illustrated volume of Travels by Land and Sea. I opened it at the title-page, down which I patiently and conscientiously waded; then on to the preface—which, luckily, was a short one—and so into the body of the book. I of course encountered a great deal that I could only imperfectly understand; and I detected within myself a rapidly-growing disposition to skip all the hard words; but, notwithstanding these drawbacks, I contrived to catch a glimmering, if not something more, of the author’s meaning. It was hard work, but I struggled on, down page after page, fascinated, my imagination vividly depicting the various scenes of which I read. I saw the deep blue tropic sea heaving and sparkling in the joyous sunshine, and the stout ship, with her gleaming wide-spread canvas, sweeping bravely over its bosom. I stood upon the deck of that ship, among the seamen, peering eagerly ahead, and saw a faint grey cloud gradually shape itself in the midst of the haze on the far western horizon. I heard the joyous shout of “Land ho!” break from the lips of the lookout at the mast-head; and watched the cloud gradually hardening its outlines and changing its tints until it assumed the unmistakable aspect of land; saw the distant mountains steal into view, and the trees emerge into distinct and prominent detail along the shore; saw, at length, the strip of sandy beach, dazzlingly white in the blazing sunlight; heard the deep hoarse roar of the breakers, and saw the flashing of the snow-white foam as the rollers swept grandly on and dashed themselves into surf and diamond spray upon the strand. Then I saw the natives launching their light canoes and paddling off through the surf to the ship; or leapt eagerly into the boat alongside; reached the strip of dazzling beach—strewn now with beautiful shells; plunged into the grateful shade of enticing groves rich with the prodigal luxuriance and fantastic beauty of tropical growth, ablaze with flowers of gorgeous hues, alive with birds whose plumage flashed like living gems, and breathed an atmosphere oppressive with perfume.
From that hour forward the entertainments of the servants’ hall paled their ineffectual fires before the superior effulgence of those delightful visions which I now possessed the power of summoning at will; books or stories of travel and adventure alone had now any charm for me; and these I devoured with an appetite which grew by what it fed on. The natural consequence of all this will readily be foreseen: a desire sprang up, which steadily ripened into a resolve, that, when I should become a man, I too would be a traveller, and—like those of whom I was never tired of reading—would make my home upon the pathless sea.
Thus matters went on until the arrival of the eighth anniversary of my birthday, on the morning of which, soon after I had finished my breakfast, I was summoned to my father’s studio. I was received somewhat coldly; and, after indicating to me the chair which he had placed for my occupation, my father resumed his work and continued it for some time without taking the slightest further notice of me.
A silence of perhaps half an hour ensued; when, laying down his brush, he said:
“I am glad to learn from Mrs Wilson that you are making very satisfactory progress with your studies; that, in fact, you are exhibiting a marked disposition to acquire knowledge. This is well; this is as it should be; and, to mark my appreciation of your conduct, I have resolved to further your desires and give you increased facilities for study, by sending you to school, where you will have the advantage of such guidance and assistance as only trained masters can give; and where you will also enjoy the companionship and association of lads of your own age. I hope the prospect is a pleasant one to you.”
As this last remark seemed to partake somewhat of the form of a question, I replied that the prospect was pleasant, and that I felt very much obliged to him for his kind and thoughtful intentions. I wanted to say a great deal more by way of thanks; I wished him to understand how delightful to me would be the change which this arrangement involved; how I had longed for some one to take me by the hand, to guide my erratic footsteps and lead me by the shortest way to that fountain of knowledge for the waters of which I was just beginning to thirst; and I wished him to understand, too, how welcome would be the companionship of the other boys, after so lonely a life as mine had been. But to make all this clear to him through my imperfect method of expressing myself would have involved quite a long speech on my part; and, as my eager glance fell on his unsympathetic face, the words failed me, and I held my peace.
“The school I have selected is a large one,” my father continued. “I am informed that the pupils at present number over two hundred; and it is quite in the country. The principal encourages every kind of innocent pastime, such as cricket, football, swimming, skating in the winter, and so on; so you will not lack amusements—the necessaries for joining in which I will take care that you shall be provided
with. And I have arranged that, for the present, you shall receive from the headmaster sixpence a week as pocket-money—a sum which I consider quite sufficient for a boy of your age. With regard to your studies, I would urge you to make the most of your opportunities; as, on the completion of your education, you will have to make your own way in the world. My profession, as you will perhaps better understand later on, is somewhat a precarious one. As long as I retain my health and strength and the unimpaired use of all my faculties, matters will no doubt go well with me; but accident, disease, or the loss of sight may at any moment interrupt my labours or stop them altogether: in which case my income, which I derive solely from the use of my brush, would cease altogether. You will easily comprehend, therefore, that it would be unwise in the extreme for you to depend upon me in any way to provide for your future. Now, do you think you clearly comprehend what I have been saying?”
I replied, ‘Yes, I believed I did.’ I wanted to add that there was one thing, however, that I did not understand, which was, how a father could communicate to his only child so lengthy an explanation on a subject of so much importance without giving one word or sign of affection to that child, and that I was most earnestly anxious to know the reason, if any, for so marked an omission; but, whilst I was hesitating how to frame my remark in such a manner as to avoid the giving of offence, my father rose from before his easel, and, unlocking a cabinet which stood in the room, said:
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 138