The Children of the Castle

“Lazy things,” said Ruby, shrugging her shoulders, “I’d like to shake that old trumpeter sometimes.”

“And sometimes you’d like to pat him to sleep, wouldn’t you?” said Mavis. “When cousin Hortensia’s telling us stories, and he says it’s bed-time.”

Miss Hortensia looked at Mavis in some surprise, but she seemed very pleased too. It was not often Mavis spoke so brightly.

“Suppose you use up the half-hour in telling me stories,” said their cousin. “Mine will keep till after tea. What were all the adventures you met with?”

“Oh,” said Ruby, “it was too queer. Did you know, cousin, that there was a short way home from the sea-shore near old Adam’s cottage? Such a queer way;” and she went on to describe the path between the rocks.

Miss Hortensia looked very puzzled.

“Who showed it to you?” she said; for Ruby, in her helter-skelter way, had begun at the end of the story, without speaking of the boy Winfried, or explaining why they – or she – had been so curious about the old man whom the villagers called a wizard.

“It was the boy,” Mavis replied; “such a nice boy, cousin Hortensia, with funny bluey eyes – at least they’re sometimes blue.”

“Oh, Mavis, do not talk so sillily,” said Ruby; “his eyes aren’t a bit blue. She’s got blue on the brain, cousin, she really has. Seeing forget-me-nots in the sky too! I don’t think he was a particularly nice boy. He was rather cool. I’m sure we wouldn’t have done his grandfather any harm. Did you ever hear of him, cousin? Old Adam they call him;” and then she went on to give a rather more clear account of their walk, and all they had seen and heard.

Miss Hortensia listened attentively, and into her own eyes crept a dreamy, far-away, or rather long-ago look.

“It is odd,” she said; “I have a kind of fancy that I have heard of the old ‘solitary,’ for he must be almost a hermit, before. But somehow I don’t think it was here. I wonder how long he has lived here?”

“I don’t know,” said Ruby. “A good while, I should think. He was here when Joan was our nurse.”

“But that was only two years ago,” said Miss Hortensia, smiling. “If he had been here many years the people would not count him so much of a foreigner. And the boy you met – has he come to take care of the old man?”

“I suppose so. We didn’t ask him,” said Ruby carelessly. “He was really such a cool boy, ordering us not to go near the cottage indeed! I told him he might come up to get some soup or jelly for his grandfather,” she went on, with a toss of her head. “I said it, you know, just to put him in his place, and remind him whom he was speaking to.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude,” said Mavis; “and, cousin, there really was something rather ‘fairy’ about him. Isn’t it very queer we never heard of that path before?”

“Yes,” Miss Hortensia replied. “Are you sure you didn’t both fall asleep on the shore and dream it all? Though, to be sure, it is rather too cold weather for you to have been overcome by drowsiness.”

“And we couldn’t both have dreamt the same thing if we had fallen asleep,” said Mavis, in her practical way. “It wasn’t like when you were a little girl and saw or dreamt – ”

“Don’t you begin telling the story if cousin Hortensia’s going to tell it herself,” interrupted Ruby. “I was just thinking I had forgotten it a good deal, and that it would seem fresh. But here’s tea at last – I am so glad.”

They were very merry and happy during the meal. Ruby was particularly pleased with herself, having a vague idea that she had behaved in a very grand and dignified way. Mavis’s eyes were very bright. The afternoon’s adventure had left on her a feeling of expecting something pleasant, that she could hardly put in words. And besides this, there was cousin Hortensia’s story to hear.

When the table was cleared, cousin Hortensia settled herself with her knitting in a low chair by the fire, and told the children to bring forward two little stools and seat themselves beside her. They had their knitting too, for this useful art had been taught them while they were so young that they could scarcely remember having learnt it. And the three pairs of needles made a soft click-click, which did not the least disturb their owners, so used were they to it. Rather did it seem a pleasant accompaniment to Miss Hortensia’s voice.

“You want me to tell you the story of my night in the west turret-room when I was a little girl,” she began. “You have heard it before, partly at least, but I will try to tell it more fully this time. I was a very little girl, younger than you two – I don’t think I was more than eight years old. I had come here with my father and mother and elder sisters to join a merry party assembled to celebrate the silver wedding of your great-grandparents. Your grandfather himself, their eldest child, was about three and twenty. He was not then married, so it was some time before your father was born. I don’t quite know why they had brought me. It seems to me I would have been better at home in my nursery, for there were no children as young as I to keep me company. Perhaps it was that they wished to have me to represent another generation, as it were, though, after all, that might have been done by my sisters. The elder of them, Jacintha, was then nineteen; it was she who afterwards married your grandfather, so that besides being cousins of the family, as we were already, I am your grandmother’s sister, and thus your great-aunt as well as cousin.”

The little girls nodded their heads.

“I was so much younger than Jacintha,” Miss Hortensia went on, “that your father never called me aunt. He and I have always been Robert and Hortensia to each other, and to me he has always been like a younger brother.”

“But about your adventure,” said Ruby, who was not of a sentimental turn.

“I am coming to it,” said their cousin. “Well, as I said, the party was a merry one. They had dancing and music in plenty every evening, and the house, which was in some ways smaller than it is now, was very full. There were a great many bedrooms, though few of them were large, and I and my sisters, being relations, were treated with rather less ceremony than some of the stranger guests, and put to sleep in the turret-room. I had a little bed in one corner, and my sisters slept together in the same old four-poster which is still there. I used to be put to bed much earlier than they came, for, as I said, there were dancing and other amusements most evenings till pretty late. I was not at all a nervous or frightened child, and even sometimes when I lay up there by myself wide awake – for the change and the excitement kept me from going to sleep as quickly as at home – I did not feel at all lonely. From my bed I could see out of the window, for the turret windows are so high up that it has never been necessary to have blinds on them, and I loved to lie there watching the starlit sky, or sometimes, when the moon was bright and full, gazing up at the clouds that went scurrying over her face. One night I had been unusually wakeful. I lay there, hearing now and then very, very faint, far-off sounds of the music down below. It was a mild night, and I think the windows were a little open. At last I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke, or rather when I thought I awoke, the room was all in darkness except in one corner, the corner by the west window. There, there was a soft steady light, and it seemed to me that it was on purpose to make me look that way. For there, sitting on the old chair that still stands in the depth of that window was some one I had never seen before. A lady in a cloudy silvery dress, with a sheen of blue over it. My waking, or looking at her, for though it must all have been a dream, I could not make you understand it unless I described it as if it were real, seemed to be made conscious to her, for she at once turned her eyes upon me, then rose slowly and came over the room towards me.”

“Weren’t you frightened?” said Ruby breathlessly. In spite of her boasted disbelief in dreams and visions her cousin’s story had caught her attention. Miss Hortensia shook her head.

“Not in the very least,” she said. “On the contrary, I felt a strange and delightful kind of pleasure and wonder. It was more intense than I have ever felt anything of the kind in waking life; indeed, if it had lasted long I think it would have been more than I could bear – ” Miss Hortensia stopped for a moment and leant back in her chair. “I have felt something of the same,” she went on, “when listening to very, very beautiful music – music that seemed too beautiful and made you almost cry out for it to stop.”

“I’ve never heard music like that,” whispered little Mavis, “but I think I know what you mean.”

“Or,” continued Miss Hortensia, “sometimes on a marvellously beautiful day – what people call a ‘heavenly’ day, I have had a feeling rather like it. A feeling that makes one shut one’s eyes for very pleasure.”

“Well,” said Ruby, “did you shut your eyes then, or what did you do?”

“No,” said her cousin. “I could not have shut them. I felt she was looking at me, and her eyes seemed to catch and fasten mine and draw them into hers. It was her eyes above all that filled me with that beautiful wonderful feeling. I can never forget it – never. I could fancy sometimes even now, old woman as I am, that I am again the little enraptured child gazing up at the beautiful vision. I feel her eyes in mine still.”

“How funny you are,” interrupted Ruby. “A minute ago you said she pulled your eyes into hers, now you say hers came into yours. It would be a very funny feeling whichever it was; I don’t think I should like it.”

Miss Hortensia glanced at her, but gravely. She did not smile.

“It must be a very ‘funny’ feeling, as you call it, to a hitherto blind man the first time he sees the sunshine. I daresay he would find it difficult to describe; and to a still blind person it would be impossible to explain it. I daresay the newly-cured man would not feel sure whether the sun had come into his eyes or his eyes had reached up to the sun.”

Ruby fidgeted.

“Oh, do go on about the fairy or whatever she was,” she said. “Never mind about what I said.”

Miss Hortensia smiled.

“The lady came slowly across the room to me,” she went on, “and stood by my bed, looking down at me with those wonderful blue eyes. Then she smiled, and it seemed as if the light about her grew still brighter. I thought I sat up in bed to see her better. ‘Are you a fairy?’ I said at last. She smiled still more. ‘If you like, you may call me a fairy,’ she answered. ‘But if I am a fairy my home must be fairyland, and this turret-room is one of my homes. So you are my guest, my little girl.’ I did not mind her saying that. I smiled too. ‘I’ve never seen you here before,’ I said. And she laughed a little – I never heard anything so pretty as her laugh. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘but I have seen you and every one that has ever been here, though every one has not seen me. Now listen, my child. I wanted you to see me because I have something to say to you. There will come a time when you will be drawn two ways, one will be back here to the old castle by the sea, after many years; many, many years as you count things. Choose that way, for you will be wanted here. Those yet unborn will want you, for they will want love and care. Look into my eyes, little girl, and promise me you will come to them.’ And in my dream I thought I gazed again into her eyes, and I felt as if their blue light was the light of a faith and truth that could not be broken, and I said, ‘I promise.’ And then the fairy lady seemed to draw a gauze veil over her face, and it grew dim, and the wonderful eyes were hidden, and I thought I fell asleep. In reality, I suppose, I had never been awake.”

“And when you did wake up it was morning, I suppose, and it had all been a dream?” asked Ruby.

Miss Hortensia gave a little sigh.

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose it had been a dream. It was morning, bright morning, the sun streaming in at the other window when I awoke, and I never saw the fairy lady again – not even in a dream. But what she had said came true, my dears. Many, many years after, when I was already beginning to be an old woman, it came true. I am afraid I had grown selfish – life had brought me many anxieties, and I had lived in a great city where there was much luxury and gaiety, and where no one seemed to have thought for anything but the rush of pleasure and worldly cares. I had forgotten all about my beautiful vision, when one day there came a summons. Your sweet young mother had died, my darlings, and your poor father in his desolation could think of no one better to come and take care of his little girls – you were only two years old – than his old cousin. And so I came; and then there crept back to me the remembrance of my dream. I had indeed been drawn two ways, for the friends I might have gone to live with were rich and good-natured, and they promised me everything I could wish. But I thought of the two little motherless ones, here in the old castle by the sea, in want of love and care as she had said, and I came.”

Miss Hortensia stopped. Even Ruby was impressed by what she had heard.

“Dear cousin,” she said, “it was very good of you.”

“And have you never seen the beautiful lady again?” said Mavis. “She told you the west turret was her own room, didn’t she? Have you never seen her there?”

Miss Hortensia shook her head.

“You forget, dear, it was only a dream. And even if it had been more than that, we grow very far away from angels and fairies as we get old, I fear.”

“Not you,” Mavis said; “you’re not like that. And the lady must have been so pleased with you for caring for us, I wonder she hasn’t ever come to see you again. Do you know,” she went on eagerly, after a moment’s pause, “I have a feeling that she is in the west turret-room sometimes!”

Miss Hortensia looked at the child in amazement Mavis’s quiet, rather dull face seemed transformed; it was all flushed and beaming, her eyes sparkling and bright.

“Mavis!” she said, “you look as if you had seen her yourself. But it was only a dream, you mustn’t let my old-world stories make you fanciful. I am too fanciful myself perhaps – I have always loved the vest turret, and that was why I chose it for your play-room when you were little dots.”

“I’m so glad you did,” said Mavis, drawing a long breath.