The Children of the Castle

“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.”

    Three Worlds.

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.