The days and weeks and months went on, till it was full summer time
again; more than full summer indeed. For it was August, and in a day or
two Rafe and Alix were to go to the seaside for several weeks. They
were very pleased of course, but still there is always a _little_ sad
feeling at "going away," especially from one's own home, even though it
is only for a short time. They went all round the garden saying
good-bye, as well as to the stables and the poultry yard and all the
familiar places.
Then a sudden thought struck Alix.
"Rafe," she said--it was the very evening before they left--"do let's
say good-bye to the old garden too. And perhaps if we stood close to
the corner of the wall and called through very loud, _perhaps_ Mrs
Caretaker would hear us. It seems so funny that we've never seen her
again. I think she _must_ be away."
"I don't know, I'm sure," Rafe replied.
"I've sometimes had a feeling like you, Alix, that she was there all the
time."
"And of course it was she who made the birds tell us their stories,"
said Alix, "so we really should be very much obliged to her. Just think
what nice games we've made out of them; and what nice things we've begun
to get ready for the poor children next Christmas. I do think, Rafe,
we've _never_ felt dull since we've played so much in the Lady wood
garden."
Rafe quite agreed with her, and they made their way down the lane and
through the well-known old gateway. It was the first time they had been
in the deserted grounds so late of an evening. For they had had tea
long ago, and it was not so _very_ far off bedtime: already the bushes
and shrubs began to look shadowy and mysterious in the twilight, and the
moon's profile--for it was about half-way to full--to gleam pearl-like
up among the branches.
"We mustn't stay very long," said Rafe.
"Nurse won't mind our being a little later than usual, as she's busy
packing," said Alix. "And it's still so hot, indoors at least. Last
night I _couldn't_ get to sleep, though I pushed off everything except
one sheet. I was just boiling. And when I told mamma she said it was
no use going to bed only to toss about, and that we might as well sit up
a little later."
"I hope it will be cooler at the seaside," said Rafe.
"It's pretty sure to be," Alix replied. "If it was just about as cool
as it is here just now. Isn't it lovely? And that breeze is so
refreshing."
They were standing near the walled-up mound as she spoke, and the wind
came with a long sighing sound through the trees. It seemed at first
like a sigh, but by degrees it changed into a soft kind of laughter,
which did not fade away, but grew, as they listened, more and more
distinct. And then it sounded as if coming not from up among the trees
overhead, but from somewhere underground. And it was not the wind after
all, for by this time everything was perfectly, strangely still. The
children looked at each other; they were used to odd things happening in
the garden. They just stood still and waited to see what was going to
take place.
The laughing ceased, and there came a voice instead, and the voice grew
clearer as the hidden door in the wall which they had sought for so
often, swung round, and out from the dark passage came the small figure,
red cloak, hood, and all, of Mrs Caretaker. She was still laughing
just a little, and her laugh was so bright and rippling that it made the
children laugh too, though they did not know why.
"And so you are going away, my dears," said their old friend. How she
got up so quickly to where they stood they did not see, but there she
was, as alert as possible. And again she laughed.
"If you please, if it's not rude, we'd like to know what you're laughing
at," said Alix, not quite sure if she was pleased or not.
"Only a little joke, my dear; only a little joke I was having all to
myself. I hear so many funny stories, you see. They all have to tell
me them: the wind and the rain often chatter to me, as well as the birds
and the bees and all the others that _you_ call living creatures. And
the sea, ah! the sea has grand stories to tell sometimes."
"We're going to the seaside," said Rafe.
Mrs Caretaker nodded.
"I know," she said, "I know most things about my friends. I thought you
would come to say good-bye before you left. I've been waiting for you.
And if there is anything you would like me to take care of for you while
you're away, you have only to tell me."
"Thank you," said the children. But Alix did not feel quite pleased
yet.
"Mrs Caretaker," she said, "you shouldn't speak as if this was the only
time we've come to see you. We've been and been _ever_ so often, but we
never could find the door. And we've always kept saying how kind you'd
been; making the birds tell us stories too."
"It's all right, my dear," said the old woman. "Yes, I heard you on the
other side of the wall. But I'm very busy sometimes; too busy for
visitors. I'm not busy to-night though, and it's getting chilly out
here. Come inside with me for a while, and tell me about where you're
going to."
"We mustn't stay long," said the children. "It's later than usual for
us to be out, but it's been so hot all day; we got leave to stay a
little longer."
"I will see you home. Don't be uneasy," said Mrs Caretaker. She led
the way to the wall--almost without her seeming to touch it, the door
opened, and they followed her along the little passage into the kitchen.
The fire was pleasantly low; the curtains were drawn back, and through
the open window the moonlight, much clearer and fuller than in the
garden outside, fell on a little lake of water, where two or three
snow-white swans were floating dreamily. Rafe and Alix almost screamed
with surprise, but Mrs Caretaker only smiled.
"You didn't know what a view I had out of my window," she said, as she
seated herself in her rocking-chair, and drew forward two stools--one on
each side for the children. "Yes, it is beautiful with the moon on it;
and to-morrow night you will be looking at a still more beautiful
sight--the great sea itself."
"Do you love the sea?" they asked.
"Sometimes," Mrs Caretaker replied. "You said it told you stories,"
said Alix. "Will you tell us one of them? Just for a treat, you know,
as we are going away, and we can think of it when we are walking along
the shore watching the waves coming in."
Mrs Caretaker did not speak for a moment.
Then she said--and her voice sounded rather sad--"I can't tell you one
of the stories the sea tells me. They're not of the laughing kind, and
it's best for you to hear them for yourselves when you are older. But I
will tell you a little story, if you like, of some of the folk that live
in the sea. Did you ever hear tell of mermaids?"
"Oh yes!" cried the children, eagerly; "often. There are lovely stories
about them in some of our fairy books; and when we are at the seaside we
do _so_ wish we could see them."
Mrs Caretaker smiled.
"I can't promise you that you ever will," she said; "but you shall have
my story. Yes; sit closer, both of you, and rest your heads on my
knees."
"You're not knitting to-night," said Alix. "The last time the needles
made us hear the story better somehow; it was like as if you took us a
long way off, and the story came so clear and distinct."
"It will be all right, never fear," said the old woman. And as she
spoke, she gently stroked the children's heads. Then the same strange
feeling came over them; they felt as if they were far away; they forgot
all about its being nearly bedtime and about going away to-morrow; they
just lived in the story which Mrs Caretaker's clear voice began to
tell.
"It is called `The Magic Rose,'" said she; "but it is a story of those
that live in the sea. Down, deep down below the waves, all is calm and
still, and there is the country of the mermen. Strange things have
happened before now down there among the sea-folk. Some who have been
thought drowned have been cared for there, and lived their lives long
after those who had known them up above were past and gone. For the
mer-folk are long-lived; what men count age is to them but youth; their
days follow each other in a calm that human beings could scarce imagine.
They live now in these stirring times as their forbears lived when men
and women had their homes in the forests, long before there were houses
or towns, or roads, or any of the things which you now think the
commonest necessities.
"But the sea-folk have their troubles too, sometimes; and my story has
to do with trouble. The Queen--the beautiful Queen of the sea-country--
was ill, and the King was in despair. Now I must tell you that the
Queen was not quite one of the sea race--so at least it was believed.
Her grandmother--or her great-grandmother, maybe--was a maiden of the
land, who had fallen into the sea as a little baby, and had been brought
back to life and cared for by the mer-folk; and when she grew up, a
great lord among them loved her for her beauty and made her his bride.
She had no memory of her native land, of course; but still there were
strange things about her and her children, and their children again,
which told whence they had come.
"And now that the young Queen was so ill, one of these old feelings had
awakened."
"I shall die," she said. "I shall surely die unless I can smell the
scent of a rose--a deep-red rose, such as the land maidens love. It has
come to me in my dreams. Though I have never seen one, I know what it
must be like, and I feel that life would return--life and strength that
are fast fading away--if I could breathe its exquisite fragrance and
bury my face among its soft petals."
They were amazed to hear her speak thus. The great court physicians at
first said she was wandering in her mind, and no attention should be
paid to her. But she kept on ever the same entreaty; and the King, who
loved her devotedly, at last could bear it no longer.
"It all comes of her ancestor having been so foolish as to wed a human
bride," said one of the doctors, feeling in a very bad temper, as they
all were.
The sea-doctors are not very wise, I fear, because they have so very
little experience. It happens so rarely that any of the mer-folk fall
ill. And so, as they had nothing to propose, the most sensible thing to
do was to get angry. But the King was not to be so put off.
"Whatever it comes from," he said, "I am determined that the Queen's
wish shall be complied with if it is in any way possible. What is this
thing she is longing for?--what is a rose?"
The doctors did not know; but seeing that the King was so much in
earnest they agreed that they would try to find out. And after a great
deal of consultation together, and looking up in their learned books,
they did find out something. The Queen, meanwhile, soothed by her
husband's promise that all was being done to carry out her entreaty,
grew a shade better; at least for some days she did not get any worse,
which was always something. And on the fourth day the wise men asked
for an audience of the King in order to tell him what they had
discovered.
The King awaited them eagerly.
"Well," he said, "have you found out what the Queen means by a rose?
And if so, how is one to be procured?"
Yes; they were able to describe pretty well what a rose was; for of
course, down below, they are not without gardens and flowers, though of
very different kinds from ours. But a great difficulty remained. Even
if any one was daring enough to swim up to the surface and venture on
land in search of the flower, and even if it was procured, how could it
be brought, alive and fragrant, to the Queen?
"Why not?" asked the King. For he had never been up to the surface of
the sea. It is one of the sea-people's laws that their royal folk must
stay down below, so he knew nothing of the land or the things that grow
there.
The learned men explained to him that, without air, and exposed to the
salt water of the ocean, a flower of the earth must quickly fade and
die; and as the King listened, his face grew sadder and sadder. But
after a few moments' silence, one of the doctors spoke again. They were
never in a hurry, you see, and they felt that it added dignity to their
words to dole them out sparingly.
"It has occurred to us," he said, "that it might be well to consult the
wise woman of the sea--the ancient mermaid who lives in the Anemone
Cave. Not that as a rule, the advice of a member of her sex is of much
use, but the ancient mermaid has lived long and--"
"Of course! of course!" exclaimed the King, impatiently; "she is the
very person. Why did I not think of her before? Why--the story goes
that she nursed the Queen's human ancestress when, as a baby, she came
among us."
"I wish she had stayed away," muttered the wisest of the wise men,
though he spoke too low for the King to hear.
Then the King ordered his chariot and his swiftest steeds--they were
dolphins--to be got ready at once, and off he set.
It was rather a long swim to the Anemone Cave. I wish I could give you
any idea of the wonderful things the King passed by on his way--the
groves of coral and forests of great branching seaweeds of all shapes
and colour, the strangely formed creatures whom he scarcely glanced at.
For of course it was not wonderful to him, and to-day his mind was so
full of his trouble that he would have found it difficult to notice or
admire anything.
The wise woman of the sea was at home. The King's heart beat faster
than usual as he was ushered into her presence, not from cowardice, but
because he was feeling so very anxious about his dearly-loved wife. And
King though he was, he made as low an obeisance before the ancient
mermaid as if he had been one of the humblest of his own subjects.
She was very strange to behold. Mermaids, as your stories tell you, are
often very beautiful, and possibly this aged lady may have been so in
her day, but now she was so very old that she looked like the mummy of a
mermaid; her hair was like a thin frosting of hoar on a winter morning;
her eyes were so deep down in her head that you could scarcely see them;
the scales on her tail had lost all their glitter. Still there was
something dignified about her, and she received the King as if quite
prepared for his visit. She was not the least surprised. Very wise
people, whether on land or in the sea, never are, and she listened to
the King's story as if she knew all about it.
"Yes," she replied, in a thin croaking voice like a frog's, "you have
done well to come to me. When the human baby, the great-grandmother of
the Queen, was confided to my charge, I studied her fate and that of her
descendants. The sea-serpent was an admirer of mine in those days, and
he was very obliging. He noted the position of the stars when he went
up above, and reported them to me. Between us we found out some of the
future. I read that a descendant of the stranger should be seized with
mortal illness while still young, and that her life should only be saved
by the breath of an earth-flower that they call the rose, but that great
difficulties would attend the procuring it for her, and that some
conditions attach to the matter which I was unable to understand fully.
All I know is this, the flower must be sought for by a beautiful and
youthful mermaid, but the first efforts will not succeed. Now you know
all I have to tell you. Farewell, you have no time to lose."
And not another word would the wise mermaid say.
The King had to take leave. His dolphins conducted him home again still
more quickly than they had brought him, for the words rang in his ears,
"You have no time to lose." Yet he knew not what to do. The conditions
he had already been told were difficult enough, for it was not a very
easy task to swim to the surface, as, calm though the ocean always is
down below in the sea-folks' country, there is no telling how stormy and
furious it may be up above. And for a young and beautiful mermaid to
undertake such an adventure would call for great courage. It was quite
against the usual customs of the sea-people.
For the old stories and legends we hear about troops of lovely creatures
seen floating on the water, combing their hair and singing strange
melodies, were only true in the very-long-ago days. Now that mankind
has spread and increased so that there are but few solitary places in
the world, few shores where only the sea-gull and the wild mew dwell,
the daughters of the ocean stay in their own domain, whence it comes
that in these modern times many people do not believe in their existence
at all.
The King went straight to the Queen's bower, where she lay surrounded by
her ladies. She was sleeping, and though so pale and thin, her face was
very sweet and lovely, her golden hair sparkling on the soft cushions of
sea moss on which she lay. Even as she was, she was more beautiful than
any of the mermaids about her.
Yet some of them were very beautiful. The King's glance fell especially
on two who were noted as the most charming among the Queen's attendants.
Their names were Ila and Orona. A sudden idea struck the King.
"I will cause it to be announced that a great reward shall be given to
any young and beautiful mermaid who will undertake the quest of the red
rose on which depends the Queen's recovery," he thought, and the idea
raised his hopes. And as he stooped over the sleeping Queen, she smiled
and whispered something as if she were dreaming.
"The gift of love," were the only words he could distinguish. But he
took the smile as a good omen.
The next morning there was great excitement amongst the fair young
mermaids. For it was announced that whoever of them should succeed in
bringing, blooming and fragrant, a red rose to the suffering Queen,
should be rewarded by the gift of a pearl necklace, which was considered
one of the most precious of the crown jewels, and that furthermore the
fortunate mermaid should take the highest rank of all the sea-ladies
next to the Queen herself.
Ila and Orona were both beautiful and courageous, and before the day was
many hours older they had offered themselves for the task. The King was
delighted, and as Ila was the elder of the two it was decided that she
must be the first to try. She received many compliments on her daring,
and the King thanked her most warmly. She accepted all that was said to
her, but to Orona, who was her chosen confidante, she owned that she
would never have dreamt of making the attempt but for her intense wish
to possess the necklace, which she had often admired on the young
Queen's fair skin.
"I would do anything to win it," she said. "There is nothing in the
world I admire so much as pearls, but if I gain it, Orona, I promise to
lend it to you sometimes."
"Many thanks," Orona replied, "but I do not care for jewels as you do.
If _I_ have the chance of seeking the rose--that is to say if you fail--
my motive will not be to gain the necklace, but to win the position of
the highest rank next to the Queen. _That_ I should care far more for."
Both mermaids, however, kept their ambitions secret from every one else,
and calmly accepted the praises showered upon them.
And the very next day Ila started on her upward journey.