The Children of the Castle

Chapter Nine.

Beginnings?

“Very wrong, very wrong, Very wrong and bad.”

“Let’s run on fast a little way,” said Bertrand, “to make her think we won’t wait for her. That will frighten her, and she will run after us, you’ll see. Don’t look round, Ruby.”

In his heart he really did not believe that Mavis would change her mind or run after them. And he did not care. Indeed, he much preferred having Ruby alone, as he knew he could far more easily persuade her by herself to join in his mischievous schemes. But he felt that she was half-hearted about leaving her sister, and so he did not hesitate to trick her too.

They hurried on for some distance. Then Ruby, who was growing both tired and cross, pulled her hand away from Bertrand.

“Stop,” she said. “I’m quite out of breath. And I want to see if Mavis is coming.”

Bertrand had to give in. They were on higher ground than the shore, and could see it clearly. There lay the little boat as they had left it, and Mavis sitting in it calmly. To all appearance at least.

“She’s not coming – not a bit of her,” exclaimed Ruby angrily. “I don’t believe you thought she would, Bertrand.”

“She will come, you’ll see,” said the boy, “and even if she doesn’t, what does it matter? We’ll run on and spy out the old wizard and have some fun. Mavis will stay there safe enough till we get back.”

“I thought you meant to go home by the village and tell the people about old Adam, if we do see anything queer,” said Ruby.

“So I did, but if you’re in such a fidget about Mavis perhaps we’d better go home as we came, and not say anything in the village to-day. I’d like to see what Master Winfried has been up to when we get back. Perhaps he’ll have got some old witch to lend him a broomstick, and we shall find him flown;” and Bertrand laughed scornfully.

Ruby laughed too.

“I don’t think that’s likely,” she said. “But there’s no telling. I do wish he and his grandfather were out of the country altogether. There’s something about Winfried that makes me feel furious. He is such a prig; and he’s even got cousin Hortensia to think him a piece of perfection.”

“He may take his perfections elsewhere, and he shall, too,” said Bertrand. And the fierceness of his tone almost startled even Ruby.

They were not far from the old fisherman’s cottage by this time. They stopped again to take breath. Mavis and the boat were not visible from where they stood, for the path went in and out among the rocks, and just here some large projecting boulders hid the shore from sight.

Suddenly, as if it came from some cave beneath their feet, both children grew conscious of a faint sound as of distant music. And every moment it became clearer and louder even though muffled. Bertrand and Ruby looked at each other.

“Mermaids!” both exclaimed.

“They always sing,” said Bertrand.

“Yes,” added Ruby, with her old confusion of ideas about syrens; “and they make people go after them by their singing, and then they catch them and kill them, and I’m not sure but what they eat them. I know I’ve read something about bare dry bones being found. Shall we put our fingers in our ears, Bertrand?” She looked quite pale with fear.

“Nonsense,” said the boy. “That’s only sailors at sea. They lure them in among the rocks. We’re quite safe on dry land. Besides, I don’t think it’s mermaids that do that. They’re miserable crying creatures; but I don’t think they kill people.”

The subterraneous music came nearer and nearer. Somehow the children could not help listening.

“Didn’t you say you and Mavis heard singing the day you were here before – at the wizard’s cottage, I mean?” said Bertrand.

“N-no, not exactly singing. It was laughing, and a voice calling out good-bye in a singing way,” answered Ruby.

As if in response to her words, the ringing suddenly stopped, and from below their feet – precisely below it seemed – came the sound of ringing, silvery laughter, clear and unmistakable.

“Oh,” cried Ruby, “come away, Bertrand. I’m sure it’s the mermaids, and they will catch us and kill us, you’ll see.”

Her boasted courage had not come to much. And yet there was nothing very alarming in the pretty sounds they had heard.

“And what if it is the mermaids?” said Bertrand coolly. “We came out to catch them, didn’t we? It’s just what we wanted. Come along, Ruby. How do we get to the cottage? There seems to be a sort of wall in front.”

“We go round by the back,” said Ruby. “It’s there there are the queer grottoes and little caves. But you won’t go far into them, will you, Bertrand? For I am not at all sure but that the mermaids come up from the sea through these caves; you see they do come some underground way.”

Bertrand gave a sort of grunt. What Ruby said only made him the more determined to explore as far as he possibly could.

They entered the strange little garden I have already described without further adventure. There seemed no one about, no sound of any kind broke the almost unnatural stillness.

“How very quiet it is,” said Ruby with a little shiver. “And there’s no smoke coming out of the chimney – there was the last time, for there was a good fire in the kitchen where old Adam was.”

And as she said this there came over her the remembrance of the kind old man’s gentle hospitality and interest in them. Why had she taken such a hatred to Winfried and his grandfather, especially since Bertrand’s arrival? She could not have given any real reason.

“I hope he isn’t very ill – or —dead,” she said, dropping her voice. “And Winfried locked up and not able to get to him. It would be our fault, Bertrand.”

“Nonsense,” said Bertrand roughly, with his usual scornful contempt of any softer feelings. “He’s fallen asleep over his pipe and glass of grog. I daresay he drinks lots of grog – those fellows always do.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” contradicted Ruby, feeling angry with herself as well as Bertrand. “Let’s go to the window and peep in before we look at the caves.”

She ran round to the front, followed by her cousin, taking care to make as little sound as possible. She remembered on which side of the door was the kitchen, and softly approached what she knew must be its window. But how surprised she was when she looked in! It was the kitchen; she remembered the shape of the room; she recognised the neat little fireplace, but all was completely deserted. Every trace of furniture had disappeared; old Adam’s large chair by the hearth might never have been in existence, well as she remembered it. Except that it was clean and swept, the room might not have, been inhabited for years.

Ruby turned to Bertrand, who was staring in at another window.

“I say, Ruby,” he whispered, “the room over here is quite – ”

“I know,” she said. “So is the kitchen. They’re gone, Bertrand, quite gone, and we’ve had all our trouble for nothing. It’s too bad.”

“They!” repeated Bertrand, “you can’t say they, when you know that Winfried is locked up in the turret-room.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Ruby starting, “I quite forgot. He must have hidden his grandfather somewhere. And yet I don’t see how they could have managed it so quietly. We always know when any of the village people are moving their furniture; they send to borrow our carts.”

“Well,” said Bertrand, “there’s one thing certain. If you didn’t believe it before, you must now; I should think even Mavis would – the old fellow is a wizard, and so’s his precious grandson.”

“Shall we go into the house?” said Ruby, though she looked half afraid to do so.

“Isn’t the door locked?” said Bertrand, trying it as he spoke. It yielded to his touch; he went in, followed, though tremblingly, by Ruby.

But after all there was little or nothing to see; the three rooms, though scrupulously clean, even the windows shining bright and polished, were perfectly empty. As the children strolled back to the kitchen, annoyed and disappointed, feeling, to tell the truth, rather small, something caught Ruby’s eye in one corner of the room. It was a small object, gleaming bright and blue on the white stones of the floor. She ran forward and picked it up, it was a tiny bunch of forget-me-nots tied with a scrap of ribbon; the same large brilliant kind of forget-me-not as those which she and Mavis had so admired on their first visit to the now deserted cottage. She gave a little cry.

“Look, Bertrand,” she said, “they can’t have been long gone. These flowers are quite fresh. I wonder where they came from. They must have been growing in a pot in the house, for there are none in the garden. I looked as we came through.”

Bertrand glanced at the flowers carelessly.

“Wizards,” he began, “can – ”

But his sentence was never finished. For as he spoke there came a sudden gust of wind down the wide chimney, so loud and furious that it was as startling as a clap of thunder. Then it subsided again, but for a moment or two a long low wail sounded overhead, gradually dying away in the distance.

“What was that?” said Bertrand. While the sounds lasted both children had stood perfectly still.

“The wind of course,” said Ruby. She was more accustomed than her cousin to the unexpected vagaries of the storm spirits so near the sea, still even she seemed startled. “It’s often like that,” she was beginning to say, but she hesitated. “It was very loud,” she added.

“There must be rough weather coming,” said Bertrand. “We’d better go home by the road, I think, Ruby.”

“We,” exclaimed Ruby indignantly. “Do you mean you and me, Bertrand? And what about Mavis?”

“She can come on shore,” replied the boy carelessly. “She knows where we are. It’s her own fault. Come along, there’s nothing to wait for in this empty old hole. I want you to show me the caves outside.”

“I’ll try to signal to Mavis first,” said Ruby. “I’ll tie my handkerchief to a stick and wave it about. She can see us up here quite well, and perhaps when she finds we’re alone she’ll come.”

They left the cottage, and Ruby got out her handkerchief. But it was small use. For just as they stepped on to the rough little terrace in front from whence they could clearly see the shore, there came another and even – it seemed so at least now they were standing outside – more violent blast. It was all Ruby could do to keep her feet, and when she recovered from the giddying effect of the wind she was still breathless and shaken. And that the hurricane was gathering strength every second was plain to be seen; the waves were dashing in excitedly, the sky at one side had that strange lurid purple colour which foretells great disturbance.

But it was not these things only which made Ruby turn pale and shiver.

“Bertrand,” she gasped, “I don’t know if there’s something the matter with my eyes, I can’t see clearly – Bertrand – look – where is Mavis – Mavis and the boat; can you see them?”

Bertrand shaded his brow with his hand and gazed.

“’Pon my soul,” he said, “it’s very odd. I can’t see them. And there’s not been time for Mavis to have rowed out to sea or even to have drifted out; we can see right out ever so far, and there’s no boat; not a sign of one.”

“Can – can she have landed and dragged the boat ashore somehow?” said Ruby, her teeth chattering with cold and fear.

“No,” said Bertrand, “we’d certainly see her and the boat in that case.”

“Then, where is she?” cried Ruby. “Bertrand, you must care. What do you think has become of her?”

“Can’t say, I’m sure,” said the boy. “The boat may have capsized: the sea’s awfully rough now.”

“Do you mean that Mavis may be drowned or drowning?” screamed Ruby. She had to scream, even had she been less terribly excited, for the roar of wind was on them again, and her voice was scarcely audible.

“I don’t see that she need be drowned,” said Bertrand. “It’s shallow. She may have crept on shore, and be lying somewhere among those big stones; and if not, can’t your precious wizard friends look after her? She’s fond enough of them.”

He was partly in earnest; but Ruby took it all as cruel heartless mocking. She turned upon him furiously.

“You’re a brutal wicked boy,” she screamed. “I wish you were drowned; I wish you had never come near us; I wish – ” she stopped, choked by her fury and misery, and by the wind which came tearing round again.

Bertrand came close to her.

“As you’re so busy wishing,” he called into her ear, “you’d better wish you hadn’t done what you have done yourself. It was all you who started the plan, and settled how we were to trick Winfried into the turret-room; you know you did.”

“And did I plan to drown Mavis, my own darling little sister?” returned Ruby as well as she could speak between her sobs and breathlessness. “Come down to the shore with me this moment and help me to look for her, if you’re not altogether a cruel heartless bully.”

“Not I,” said Bertrand, “we’d probably get drowned ourselves. Just see how the waves come leaping in; they look as if they were alive. I believe it’s all witches’ work together. I’m not going to trust myself down there. Come and show me the grottoes and the caves, Ruby. We may as well shelter in them till the wind goes down a bit. We can’t do Mavis any good; if she’s on the shore she can take care of herself, and if she’s under the water we can’t reach her;” and he caught hold of Ruby to pull her along, but she tore herself from his grasp with a wrench.

“You wicked, you heartless, brutal boy,” she cried.

“I don’t care if I am drowned; I would rather be drowned with Mavis than stay alive with you.”

And almost before Bertrand knew what she was doing, Ruby was rushing through the little garden at the back of the cottage on her way to descend the rough path to the shore.

He stood looking after her coolly for a moment or two with his hands in his pockets. He tried to whistle, but it was not very successful; the wind had the best of it.

“I don’t believe Mavis has come to any harm,” he said aloud, though speaking to himself, and almost as if trying to excuse his own conduct. “Anyway, I don’t see that it’s my business to look after her, it was all her own obstinacy.”

He kicked roughly at the pebbles at his feet, and as he did so, his glance fell on a tiny speck of colour just where he was kicking. It was one of the blue flowers Ruby had found in the cottage. Bertrand stooped and picked it up, and, strange to say, he handled it gently. But as he looked at it there came again to him the queer smarting pain in his eyes which he had complained of in the turret-room, and glancing up he became aware that the wind had suddenly gone down, everything had become almost unnaturally still, while a thin bluish haze seemed gathering closely round where he stood. Bertrand rubbed his eyes.

“There can’t be smoke here,” he said. “What can be the matter with my eyes?” and he rubbed them impatiently. It did no good.

“No, that will do no good,” said a voice. It seemed quite near him.

“Look up;” and in spite of himself the boy could not help looking up.

“Oh,” he screamed; “oh, what is it? what is it?”

For an agony, short but indescribable, had darted through his eyeballs, piercing, it seemed to him, to his very brain; and Bertrand was not in some ways a cowardly boy.

There was silence, perfect, dead silence, and gradually the intense aching, which the short terrible pain had left, began to subside. As it did so, and Bertrand ventured to look up again, he saw that – what he had seen, he could not describe it better – was gone, the haze had disappeared, the air was again clear, but far from still, for round the corner of the old cottage the blast now came rushing and tearing, as if infuriated at having been for a moment obliged to keep back; and with it now came the rain, such rain as the inland-bred boy had never seen before – blinding, drenching, lashing rain, whose drops seemed to cut and sting, with such force did they fall. It added to his confusion and bewilderment. Like a hunted animal he turned and ran, anywhere to get shelter; and soon he found himself behind the house, and then the thought of the grottoes the little girls had told him of returned to his mind.

“I won’t go back into that witches’ hole,” he said to himself as he glanced back at the house. “I’ll shelter in one of the grottoes.”

As he thought this he caught sight of an opening in the rockery before him. It was the entrance to the very cave where Mavis had been left by Ruby. Bertrand ran in; what happened to him there you shall hear in good time.

Chapter Ten.

“Forget-Me-Not Land.”

“A world…

Where the month is always June.”

Ruby meanwhile was running or rather stumbling down the stones. She cried and sobbed as she went; her pretty face had never, I think, looked so woebegone and forlorn; for it was new to her to be really distressed or anxious about anything.

“Mavis, Mavis,” she called out every now and then, “are you there darling? can’t you answer?” as if, even had the wind been less wildly raging, Mavis could possibly have heard her so far-off.

And before long Ruby was obliged to stop for a moment to gather strength and breath. The wind seemed to increase every minute. She turned her back to it for a second; the relief was immense; and just then she noticed that she was still clutching the little bunch of flowers she had picked up. They made her begin to cry again.

“Mavis loves them so,” she thought, and her memory went back to the happy peaceful afternoon they had spent with old Adam and his grandson. How kind they were, and how nice the cakes were that Winfried had made for them himself!

“Oh,” thought Ruby, “I wish Bertrand had never come! It’s all – ” but there she hesitated. There had been truth in her cousin’s mean reproach, that the mischief and the cruel tricks they had planned had been first thought of by her. And Ruby knew, too, in her heart, that she had not been gentle or unselfish or kind long before she had ever seen Bertrand. She had not been so actively naughty because she had had no chance of being so, as it were. The coming together of the two selfish unfeeling natures had been like the meeting of the flint and steel, setting loose the hidden fire.

And besides this, for Bertrand there might have been some excuse; he had been neglected and yet spoilt; he had never known what it was truly to love any one, whereas Ruby had lived in love all her life; and this was her return for it.

“I have killed my little Mavis,” she sobbed. “Yes, it has been all me. We needn’t have minded Bertrand; he couldn’t have made me naughty if I hadn’t let him. Oh, Mavis, Mavis, whatever shall I do?” Her glance fell again on the flowers in her hand. They were not the least withered or spoilt, but as fresh as if just newly gathered. They seemed to smile up at her, and she felt somehow comforted.

“Dear little flowers,” she said. Seldom in her life had Ruby spoken so tenderly. She started, as close beside her she heard a faint sigh.

“Ruby,” said a voice, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” said the little girl, beginning to tremble.

“But you cannot see me? and yet I am here, close to you, as I have often been before. Try Ruby, try to see me.”

“Are – are you a mermaid, or a – that other thing?” asked the child.

There came a little laugh, scarcely a laugh, then the sigh again.

“If you could see me you would know how foolish you are,” said the voice. “But I must have patience – it will come – your eyes are not strong, Ruby; they are not even as strong as Bertrand’s.”

“Yes, they are,” said Ruby indignantly. “I’ve never had sore eyes in my life, and Bertrand’s have hurt him several times lately.”

“I know; so much the better for him,” was the reply. “Well, good-bye for the present, Ruby. Go on to look for Mavis; you must face it all – there, the rain is coming now. Ah!”

And with this, which sounded like a long sigh, the voice seemed to waft itself away, and down came the rain. The same swirl which had been too much for sturdy Bertrand was upon Ruby now, standing, too, in a far more exposed place, with no shelter near, and the rough rocky path before her. She did not stand long; she turned again and began to descend, stumbling, slipping, blinded by the rain, dashed and knocked about by the wind.

“She might have helped me, whoever she was that spoke to me,” sobbed Ruby. “It isn’t my fault if I can’t see creatures like that. I’m not good enough, I suppose.”

As she said these last words, or thought them, rather, a queer little thrill passed through her, and something, in spite of herself, made her look up. Was it – no, it could not be – she had suddenly thought a gleam of sunshine and blue sky had flashed on her sight; but no, the storm was too furious. “Yet still, I did,” thought Ruby, “I did see something bright and blue, as if two of my little flowers had got up there and were looking down on me.”

She glanced at her hand; the forget-me-nots were gone!

“I must have dropped them,” she said. “Oh dear, dear!”

And yet as she struggled on again she did not feel quite so miserable.

Yet it was terribly hard work, and every moment her anxiety about Mavis increased; Ruby had never felt so much in all her life.