The Ghost Ship

by Richard Middleton

  A Wet Day

  As we grow older it becomes more and more apparent that our momentsare the ghosts of old moments, our days but pale repetitions of daysthat we have known in the past. It might almost be said that after acertain age we never meet a stranger or win to a new place. Thepalace of our soul, grown larger let us hope with the years, ishaunted by little memories that creep out of corners to peep at uswistfully when we are most sure that we are alone. Sometimes wecannot hear the voice of the present for the whisperings of the past;sometimes the room is so full of ghosts that we can hardly breathe.And yet it is often difficult to find the significance of these deaddays, restored to us to disturb our sense of passing time. Why haveour minds kept secret these trivial records so many years to givethem to us at last when they have no apparent consequence? Perhaps itis only that we are not clever enough to read the riddle; perhapsthese trifles that we have remembered unconsciously year after yearare in truth the tremendous forces that have made our lives what theyare.

  Standing at the window this morning and watching the rain, I suddenlybecame conscious of a wet morning long ago when I stood as I stoodnow and saw the drops sliding one after another down the steamypanes. I was a boy of eight years old, dressed in a sailor suit, andwith my hair clipped quite short like a French boy's, and my rightknee was stiff with a half-healed cut where I had fallen on thegravel path under the schoolroom window, it was a really wet, greyday. I could hear the rain dripping from the fir-trees on to thescullery roof, and every now and then a gust of wind drove the raindown on the soaked lawn with a noise like breaking surf. I could hearthe water gurgling in the pipe that was hidden by the ivy, and I sawwith interest that one of the paths was flooded, so that a canal ranbetween the standard rose bushes and recalled pictures of Venice. Ithought it would be nice if it rained truly hard and flooded thehouse, so that we should all have to starve for three weeks, and thenbe rescued excitingly in boats; but I had not really any hope. Behindme in the schoolroom my two brothers were playing chess, but had notyet started quarrelling, and in a corner my little sister waspatiently beating a doll. There was a fire in the grate, but it wasone of those sombre, smoky fires in which it is impossible to takeany interest. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked very slowly, and Irealised that an eternity of these long seconds separated me fromdinner-time. I thought I would like to go out.

  The enterprise presented certain difficulties and dangers, but nonethat could not be surpassed. I would have to steal down to the halland get my boots and waterproof on unobserved. I would have to openthe front door without making too much noise, for the other doorswere well guarded by underlings, and I would have to run down thefront drive under the eyes of many windows. Once beyond the gate Iwould be safe, for the wetness of the day would secure me fromdangerous encounters. Walking in the rain would be pleasant thanstaying in the dull schoolroom, where life remained unchanged for aquarter of an hour at a time; and I remembered that there was alittle wood near our house in which I had never been when it wasraining hard. Perhaps I would meet the magician for whom I had lookedso often in vain on sunny days, for it was quite likely that hepreferred walking in bad weather when no one else was about. It wouldbe nice to hear the drops of rain falling on the roof of the trees,and to be quite warm and dry underneath. Perhaps the magician wouldgive me a magic wand, and I would do things like the conjurer lastChristmas.

  Certainly I would be punished when I got home, for even if I were notmissed they would see that my boots were muddy and that my waterproofwas wet. I would have no pudding for dinner and be sent to bed in theafternoon: but these things had happened to me before, and though Ihad not liked them at the time, they did not seem very terrible inretrospect. And life was so dull in the schoolroom that wet morningwhen I was eight years old!

  And yet I did not go out, but stood hesitating at the window, whilewith every gust earth seemed to fling back its curls of rain from itsshining forehead. To stand on the brink of adventure is interestingin itself, and now that I could think over the details of myexpedition was no longer bored. So I stayed dreaming till the goldenmoment for action was passed, and a violent exclamation from one ofthe chess-players called me back to a prosaic world. In a second theboard was overturned and the players were locked in battle. My littlesister, who had already the feminine craving for tidiness, crept outof her corner and meekly gathered the chessmen from under the feet ofthe combatants. I had seen it all before, and while I led my forcesto the aid of the brother with whom at the moment I had some sort ofalliance, I reflected that I would have done better to dare theadventure and set forth into the rainy world.

  And this morning when I stood at my window, and my memory a littlecruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still ofthe same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproofand gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would havegiven me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pairof seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, andto leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, andpoets, He would have made me a man of action, a statesman, a soldier,a founder of cities or a digger of graves. For there are two kinds ofmen in the world when we have put aside the minor distinctions ofshape and colour. There are the men who do things and the men whodream about them. No man can be both a dreamer and a man of action,and we are called upon to determine what role we shall play in lifewhen we are too young to know what to do.

  I do not believe that it was a mere wantonness of memory thatpreserved the image of that hour with such affectionate detail, whereso many brighter and more eventful hours have disappeared for ever.It seems to me likely enough that that moment of hesitation beforethe schoolroom window determined a habit of mind that has kept medreaming ever since. For all my life I have preferred thought toaction; I have never run to the little wood; I have never met theenchanter. And so this morning, when Fate played me this trick and mydream was chilled for an instant by the icy breath of the past, I didnot rush out into the streets of life and lay about me with a flamingsword. No; I picked up my pen and wrote some words on a piece ofpaper and lulled my shocked senses with the tranquillity of theidlest dream of all.