THE LADY FROM THE SEA
How it happened the children never precisely knew. When they came to
compare notes that evening their recollections varied on several
important particulars. But this was certain, that before they could
rise and run--and Matthew Henry protested that, for his part, he had
never an idea of running--the apparition had stepped down from her
pedestal and seated herself among them in the friendliest way.
"Good day!" she nodded. "Now let me see ... this is Annet, and this is
Linnet, and that is Matthew Henry, and I hope you're all uncommonly
well."
Annet gasped that they were quite well, thank you. Who and what could
she be, this lady out of nowhere?... Not a witch, for no witch could
smile with such a beautiful face or wear such beautiful clothes. On the
other hand, Annet had not supposed that fairies were ever so tall. Yet
something of the sort she must be, for she knew their names....
"You want to know where I come from? But that is easy." The stranger
reached out a white hand with a diamond upon it, and Annet yielded the
book to her without resisting. "I come from here"--and she tapped the
pages mysteriously.
"But how can that be?" demanded Linnet, who was always the
matter-of-fact one. "Out of a book! Such things do not happen."
Vashti laughed merrily. "I assure you," she answered, with a glance at
the fly-leaf, "I have been in the book all the while you were reading;
and," she added, her eyes softening as they rested on the child, "of
you three it is Linnet who is most like her mother."
They had not thought of this before, but she had no sooner said it than
they knew it to be the truth; and the discovery made her more
marvellous than ever.
"Yes," she went on, "I have lived inside this book; and, what is more,
I know the man who wrote it."
She looked around on the three faces; and--so strange are children--for
the first time in his life Matthew Henry at once asserted himself as a
person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely
looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon
which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads
about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine
eyes still wider.
"Tell us about him," he demanded.
Vashti eyed the child curiously for a moment before answering. "He
lives in the north," she said, "in a city where the sea is sometimes
frozen for weeks in the winter, and where night after night you may see
the Northern Lights over the roofs. That is why he writes so much of
snow and fir-trees and cold winters."
Annet nodded. "I have seen the Northern Lights--once--from Saaron
here," she announced proudly. "Father took me out of my bed and held me
up to the window to look at them; Linnet, too--but she was too young to
remember, and Matthew Henry was not even born at the time."
"But tell us," persisted Matthew Henry, "about the man who wrote the
book."
"Well, the Northern Lights were shining in the streets on the night
when I met him. I drove to his house in a sleigh from the theatre--if
you know what a theatre is?" Vashti paused dubiously; but Annet nodded
and assured her--
"That's all right. We don't know about these things, but they are all
in the book."
"And so," said Vashti, "is the man himself, or most of him. He was a
queer, shy old man, with oddly-shaped hands and feet, but oh, such
timid eyes! And he lived in a fine house all by himself, for he had no
wife. In the days when he wanted a wife he had been an Ugly Duckling,
and now, when he had turned into a swan, it was too late to marry. He
was very old indeed; but this was his birthday, and he had lit up all
his rooms for us and made a great feast, and at the feast he made me
sit on his right hand.... There were princesses to do him honour, but
he chose me out because I had sung to him; and the princesses were not
angry because he was an old man. Out in the streets the people were
letting off fireworks, and while he talked to me I could hear the whole
sky banging with rockets and crackers. It put me in mind of his story
of 'The Flying Trunk.' But he talked of Italy and the South, because I
had come from there; and of the Mediterranean and of beautiful inland
lakes which he had known, but would never see again; for he was over
seventy. And he told me that, in spite of the snow and frost outside,
he could feel the spring coming northward again with the storks. It was
the last time (he said) that he should ever see it, but he filled his
glass and drank to me because, as he put it, I had sung the South back
to him for this last time. So now you know why I was proud to come to
you out of his book."
"But," said Linnet, gravely, "we were reading about mermaids; and you
can't be one of _them_, because there aren't any."
Matthew Henry would by no means allow this. "But Jan's father caught
one," he objected, "in a pool just inside Piper's Hole, where she was
left by the tide. He has told us about her, dozens of times. And
besides," he added, getting in a home-thrust, "if there isn't any such
thing, why were you crying over the story, just now?"
"I wasn't," contended Linnet, very red in the face. But she shifted her
ground. "Why," pointing to Vashti's skirts--"her clothes aren't even
wet, to say nothing of a tail!"
Vashti laughed. "My dears, you are both right and both wrong. As for
the mermaids, Linnet, they were friends of mine before I reached your
age, and you must let me introduce you to one by-and-by, to cure you of
disbelieving. But you are right about me. I am not a mermaid; and yet I
have come from the sea ... like the Queen Zenobia."
"Who was she?" asked Annet, speaking for the others.
"She was a Queen in Carthage, more than two thousand years ago. She
came to the Islands in a ship, to visit the tin-mines which used to lie
between them and the mainland before the sea covered them, and from
which she drew her great wealth. Her ship arrived in the middle of the
Great Storm; and before she came to land, here on Saaron, the waters
were rolling over the richest part of all her dependencies. Little she
cared; for in the first place she had never seen it, and could not
realise her loss, and moreover her ship had been tossing for three days
and nights, past all hope, so that she was glad enough to reach a
shore, however barren. She reached it, holding on to the shoulders of a
brown man, a Moor, who swam for land as the ship began to break up; and
the story goes that when his feet touched the sand he fell forward and
died, for the swimming had burst his heart. But have you never heard
the song about it?" Vashti sank her voice and began to chant, and low
though the strain was, and monotonous, the children had never heard
such wonderful singing--
It was the Queen Zenobia
With her gold crown,
That sailed away from Africa
With a down-derry-down!
--To westward and to northward
From Carthage town,
Beyond the strait of Cadiz
The sky began to frown.
"Well-a-mercy!" cried her ladies,
All of high renown;
"I think the sea is troublesome
And we shall all drown."
The seas came white aboard
And wetted her gown;
"Would I were back in Carthage
A-walking up and down!
That I were back in Carthage
Which is dry ground,
I would give my jewels
And a thousand pound."
Then round went the good ship,
And thrice she went round,
The third time she brast herself
With a down-derry-down!
Some cried misericordia,
And others did swoun;
But up there stood a guardsman
A naked man and brown--
"You are the Queen of Carthage
And gey young to drown;
But hold you to my girdle
That goes me around;
And swim with me to Saaron,
As I will be bound."
"Your girdle it is breaking
That goeth you around."
"Nay, hold you to the girdle
That is strong yet and sound;
My heart you felt a-breaking,
But here is dry ground."
With white sand and shingle
The shore did abound;
With white sand she covered him
And built him a mound.
With flotsam and with wreckage
The shore was all strown;
She built of it a cottage,
And there she sat down.
"Though this be not Africa,
Nor yet Carthage town,
Deo-gracey," said Zenobia,
"That I did not drown!"
"That's where the tune changes," interrupted Matthew Henry, clapping
his small sunburnt hands together.
"You know the song then?" asked Vashti, looking from one to the other.
All three nodded. "We know a verse or two," Annet answered. "Mother was
always singing it when she rocked Matthew Henry to sleep, and sometimes
we get her to sing as much as she can remember for a treat."
"But she can only remember five or six verses," said Linnet; "and her
voice is not beautiful like yours."
Annet and Matthew Henry protested. Their mother's was a beautiful
voice; one of the most beautiful in the world.
"But not beautiful like hers," Linnet persisted. "I mean that it's
quite different."
They admitted this--so much their loyalty allowed them. "And I like the
end of the song best," Linnet went on, "because it's cheerfuller. It
goes on 'At daybreak she dressed her....'"
But for a moment or two, though she felt the children's eyes fastened
on her expectantly, Vashti did not resume the song. Those same
expectant eyes were open windows through which she looked into the
past, as into a house tenanted by ghosts. Through Annet's, through
Linnet's, she saw familiarly, recognising the dim children that played
within and beyond the shadow of the blinds. But the child Matthew
Henry's frightened her. She and Ruth had lost a brother once. He had
died in infancy, a scrap of childhood, almost forgotten.... Yes,
Matthew Henry's eyes too had a playroom behind them; and there too a
shadowy child played at hide and seek.
Her voice shook a little as she picked up the old song--
At daybreak she dressed her,
Her wet hair she wound,
When she saw a lithe shepherd,
Stood under the mound.
He stood among the wreckage
With crook and with hound,
Alone in the morning,
That most did astound.
"O tell to me, lithe shepherd,
What king owns this ground?"
"No king, ma'am, but Zenobia,
A Queen of renown."
"Lithe lad, she is shipwrecked;
Myself saw her drown."
"Then 'tis you are Queen of Saaron
If you will step down.
"I have sheep, goat, and cattle
And a clear three pound,
If you'll mate with me and settle
In goods we will abound."
"Well-a-way!" sighed Zenobia,
"I have lost Carthage town,
But I like this lithe shepherd
So handsome and brown.
"If I marry you," said Zenobia,
"Farewell to renown!
If I marry you," said Zenobia,
"I mate with a clown.
But I'll marry you for all that,
With a down-derry-down!"
"And," said Linnet, as the song concluded, "they married and had twelve
children--six boys and six girls. Mother told me about it."
But Matthew Henry turned to the singer gravely. "Is it true?" he asked.
"And are you really Queen Zenobia?"
"Come and see," said Vashti, rising. "The sands are bare between us and
Brefar, and if Linnet is brave enough we will take a boat and she shall
be shown the cave where Jan's father caught the mermaid."
"But we must get back again," objected Annet.
"I will see that you get back again."
"The sands may not be safe."
"When you told us yourself that they were quite safe!" protested
Matthew Henry. "And you said you would lead us over and back without
any danger at all."
"The fact is," said Vashti, quietly, "Annet feels herself responsible
for you, and thinks that very likely I am a witch."
The child faced her bravely, biting her lip upon the inward struggle.
"You are not a witch," she said. "Your eyes are too good. And, besides,
there are people in Brefar who will take care of us if we miss our way
back."
Vashti smiled, and again half sadly, for out of her own past this child
confronted her. "That is brave, Annet; brave enough for the moment,
though by and by we shall have to be braver. See how the sands shine
below us! Shall we race for them and see who wins?"
She took Matthew Henry's small, unresisting hand, and the four pelted
down the slope. Something in Vashti's eyes--it could not have been in
the words of her last answer, for they were mysterious enough--had
apparently reassured Annet, who cast away care and called back in
triumph as she won the race down to the golden sands.
They were damp yet in patches, and these patches shone like metal
reflecting the greenish-blue spaces that showed between the clouds in
the heart of the gathering sunset. But along the fairway the sand lay
firm to the tread, yet soft to the look as a stretch of amber-coloured
velvet laid for their feet. Beyond rose Brefar, with its lower cliffs
in twilight, its rounded upper slopes one shining green. Vashti had
kilted her gown higher and helped the two girls to pin up their short
skirts. All had taken off their shoes and stockings, for here and there
a shallow channel must be waded.
They crossed without mishap, and, having shod themselves again, mounted
the turfy slope where the larks flew up from their hiding-places among
the stones. Vashti's talk was of the birds, for in all Brefar the spot
best worth visiting is Merriman's Head, where the birds congregate in
their thousands--cormorants, curlews, whimbrels, gulls and kittiwakes,
oyster-catchers, sandpipers--these all the year round--and in early
summer the razorbills and sea parrots. Zenobia, it appeared, knew not
only Merriman's Head, but every rock, down to the smallest and farthest
in the Off Islands, where these creatures nested. She spoke to them of
the island from which Annet took her name--a low-lying ridge to the
west of St. Ann's, curved like a snake, in nesting-time sheeted with
pink thrift. There the sea-parrots breed, and so thickly that you can
scarcely set foot ashore without plunging into their houses; but there
is a mound near the western end where no sea-parrot may come, for the
herring-gulls and the black-backs claim it for their own. She spoke of
Great Rose, still further westward, where the gulls encamp among the
ruined huts once used by the builders of the Monk Lighthouse; of Little
Rose, where the great cormorant is at home; of Melligan and Carregan,
the one favoured by shags, the other by razor-bills and guillemots. And
so talking, while they wondered, she brought them across the hill to
the great headland.
Merriman's Head, in truth, is itself an islet, being cut off from
Brefar by a channel, scarcely eight feet wide, through which the seas
rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was
cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the
headland rises grim and stark--a very Gibraltar of the birds, that
roost in regiments on its giddy ledges.
As the children came down to the brink a flock of white gulls seemed to
drop from the rock, hung in the air for a moment, and began wheeling
overhead in wide circles, uttering their strange cries. A score of
little oyster-catchers, too, tucked up their scarlet legs and skimmed
off in flight. But the majority kept their posts and looked down almost
disdainfully.
"They know we can't get to them," said Matthew Henry. "But wait till I
am grown up! Then I'll come over to Brefar and build a bridge."
"You will not need a bridge when you are grown up," said Vashti. "See!"
She stepped back a pace or two, and the children, before they guessed
her purpose, saw her flash past them and leap. She cleared the chasm,
easily alighted, and stood smiling back at them, while the birds poured
out from their ledges, cloud upon cloud of them. Their wings darkened
the air. Their uproar beat from cliff to cliff, and back again in
broken echoes, like waves caught in a narrow cave and rebounding.
Vashti looked up and laughed. Like a witch she stood, waving her arms
to them.
"It is easy," she called back to the children; "easy enough, if you
don't let the water frighten you. Why, Annet could jump it if she
dared. Annet ... but no, child! go back!"
But Annet, with a quick glance at her, and another at the water
swirling below, had set her teeth and stepped back half-a-dozen paces.
She would follow this woman, witch or no witch.
Linnet cried, too, and Matthew Henry. Vashti, stretching out both hands
to wave back the child, opened them suddenly to catch her--and not too
soon, for Annet alighted on a rock that sloped back towards the gulf,
and had measured her powers against the leap so narrowly that her heels
overhung the water and her body was bending backward when Vashti
gripped, and, dragging her up to firm ground, took her in both arms.
"But why? Why, Annet?"
"I don't know," Annet answered, almost stupidly. The danger past, she
felt faint of a sudden and dazed; nor could she understand what the
strange lady meant by embracing her again, almost with a sob, and
murmuring:
"The little water, and so hard to cross! But we had the courage,
Annet--you and I!"
She turned and lifted her voice in a long, full-throated cry, that sent
the birds flying in fresh circles from the eyries over which they were
poising; and before its echoes died between the cliffs a boat came
round the point--a boat with one man in it, and that man Major
Vigoureux.
At another time they might have wondered how a boat came here, and why
the Governor himself--whom they had seldom seen, but regarded from afar
with awe--should be in charge of it. But the afternoon had fed them
full with marvels. Here the great man was, and in a boat, and the
strange lady stood apparently in no awe of his greatness.
"The little ones are tired," said Vashti. "We will sail them home and
land them on Saaron."
The Commandant backed his boat skilfully into the passage between the
walls of rock, lifted the two younger ones on board, and then stretched
out a hand to the other shore to help Vashti and Annet. When all were
stowed, he pushed out for an offing, and hoisted his small lug-sail,
while Vashti took the tiller.
The breeze blew off the shore. The little boat heeled, flinging the
spray merrily from her bows. Beyond and under the slack of the sail a
golden sea stretched away to the dying sunset.
It was an enchanted hour, and it held the children silent. In silence
they were landed on the beach of West Porth, and climbed over the hill
to their house. From its summit they looked down upon a small sail
dancing through the sunken reefs towards the Roads, away into the
twilight where the sea lights already shone from the South Islands.