Most Dear and Sovran Lady: I call you that because I've just been reading Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" (is that Old French spelling?), and because the style of address seems suitable to King Arthur's Castle--which isn't really his castle, you know, but an hotel. I thought it was the castle, though, when I first saw it standing up gray and massive on an imposing hill. I supposed it had been restored, and was rather disappointed to find it an hotel--though it's very jolly to live in, with all the latest feudal improvements and fittings, and King Arthur's Round Table in the enormous entrance-hall.
Sir Lionel wouldn't let Mrs. Senter laugh at me for thinking it the real castle, but said it was a natural mistake for a girl who had spent all her life in a French school--and how should I know the difference? I was grateful to him, for though I love to have some people laugh at me she isn't one of those people. She laughs in that sniffy way cats have.
The real castle I can see from my own feudal, castellated balcony. It is beautifully ruined; but you can go into it, and I have been. Only I want to tell you about other things first.
In my short note from Launceston, did I mention the old Norman house which belongs to cousins of Sir Lionel's? He used to visit there, and poke about in the castle, which was Godwin's and Harold's before the Conquest. But the nicest cousins are dead and the rest are away, so we could only see the outside of the house. However, we went to call at an ancient stone cottage of the colour of petrified wallflowers, to see a servant who took care of Sir Lionel when he was a child. A wonderful old wisp of a thing, with the reputation of being a witch, which wins her great respect; and she used quaint Cornish words that have come down from generation to generation, ever since the early Celts, without changing. When Sir Lionel sympathized with her about her husband's death, she said it was a grief, but he'd been a sad invalid, and a "good bit in the way of the oven" for several years.
On the way to Tintagel from Launceston we passed Slaughter Bridge, one of the many places where legend says King Arthur fought his last battle. So that was a good entrance to Arthurian country, wasn't it? Our road cut huge, rolling downs in two, and they surged up on either side, so it was rather like the passage through the Red Sea. And under a sky that hung over us like an illimitable bluebell, we saw our first Cornish mountains, Rough Tor and Brown Willy. Names of that sort make you feel at home with mountains at once, as if you'd known them all your life, and might lead them about with a string. But they are only corruptions of old Celtic names that nobody could possibly pronounce; and nearly everything seems more or less Celtic in Cornwall, especially eyes. They are beautiful gray-blue, with their black lashes as long on the lower as on the upper lid, and look as if they had been "rubbed in with a dirty finger." Now I see that Sir Lionel's eyes are Celtic. I didn't know quite how to account for them at first. He has a temper, I think, and could be severe; but he says the Cornish people are so good-hearted that if you ask them the way anywhere, they tell you the one they think you would prefer to take, whether it's really right or not. But I'm glad he is not so easy going as that.
It was exciting to wheel into a little road like a lane, marked "Tintagel"! I felt my copy of "Le Morte d'Arthur" turning in my hand, like a water-diviner's rod. We took the lane to avoid a tremendous hill, because hills give Mrs. Norton the "creeps" in her feet and back hair, and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose, in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing alive in sight except a flock of bright pink sheep, my stage-managing fancy called up knights of the round table, "pricking" o'er the downs on their panoplied steeds to the rescue of fair, distressed damsels. And the bright mirrors which the fleeting rain had dropped along the road were the knights' polished shields, laid down to save the ladies from wetting the points of their jewelled slippers.
Then came my first sight of the Cornish sea, deep hyacinth, with golden sails scattered upon it, and Arthur's cliffs rising dark out of its satin sheen. Beyond, in the background, gray houses and cottages grouped together, the stone and slates worn shiny with age, like very old marble, so that they reflected glints of colour from the rose and violet sky.
By the time I was dressed for dinner it was sunset, and I went to sit on the terrace and watch the splendid cloud pageant. I seemed to be the only one of our party who had come down yet, though, to tell the whole, whole truth, I had had a sneaking idea Sir Lionel would perhaps be strolling about with a cigarette, looking nice and slim, and young, and soldierly in his dinner jacket. He is nicer to look at in that than in almost anything else, I think, as most Englishmen are.
He wasn't there, however, so I had to admire his Cornish sunset without him. And I had such fine thoughts about it, too!--at least they seemed fine to me; and if I weren't quite a congenial friend of my own it would have seemed a waste of good material to lavish them on myself alone.
I saw through the open door of the sunset, into Arthur's kingdom, where he still rules, you know, and is lord of all. The whole west was a Field-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold, and across the blaze of golden glory rode dark shapes of cloud, purple and crimson, violet and black. They were Arthur's knights tilting in tournament, while the Queen of Beauty and her attendant ladies looked on. Now and then, as I watched, a knight fell, and a horse tore away riderless, his gold-'broidered trappings floating on the wind. When this happened, out of the illumined sea would writhe a glittering dragon, or scaly heraldic beast, to prance or fly along the horizon after the vanishing charger of the fallen knight. Sometimes the rushing steed would swim to a fairy island or siren-rock that floated silver-pale on the shining water, or jutted dark out of a creamy line of breakers; and though I knew that the knights and ladies and wondrous animals were but inhabitants of Sunset Kingdom, Limited, and that the glimmering islands and jagged rocks would dissolve by and by into cloud-wreaths, they all looked as real as the long tongue of land beyond which North Devon crouched hiding. And the colour flamed so fiercely in the sky that I was half afraid the sun must be on fire.
As I sat there watching the last of the knights ride away, three people came out of the hotel and stood on the terrace. I just gave them one glance, and went back to the sunset, but somehow I got the feeling that they were looking at me, and talking about me.
Presently they began to walk up and down, and as they passed in front of my seat, they turned an interested gaze upon me. All I had known about them until then was that they were a trio: a man, a woman, and a boy, with conventional backs; but as they turned, I recognized the man and the woman.
You would never guess who they were, so I'll tell you. Do you remember the people for whom you talked Italian at Venice four years and a half ago, the day we arrived, and there was a strike, and no porters to carry anybody's luggage? Well, here they were at Tintagel! I was perfectly certain of this in an instant, and I realized why they were so interested in me. They thought they had seen me before, but perhaps were not sure.
Anyway, they walked on, and only the boy looked back. He was dressed in Eton clothes, and was exactly like all other boys, except that he had mischievous eyes and a bored mouth--almost as dangerous a combination in a boy, I should think, as a box of matches and a barrel of gunpowder.
I thought that he was probably their son, and that, as he had nothing better to do, he was wondering about me. I would have given a lot to know what they were saying, and whether Venice was in their minds or not, but I could do nothing except hope they might not place me mentally. I wouldn't get up and go in, because that would have been too cowardly; and besides, if they were staying in the hotel, I should certainly run up against them afterward.
I had just decided to face it out, and had put on a forbidding expression, when along came Sir Lionel, so I had to take off the expression and fold it away for future emergencies. He was smoking one of those cigarettes which go so well with sunsets, and he had seen the King Arthur sky-tournament from the other side of the house. He said he had not supposed I should be down so soon, but was hoping that I hadn't missed the show, wherever I was. He threw away his cigarette--which is one of his old-fashioned tricks if he sees a woman, never even waiting to know if she minds--and asked if he might sit on the seat by me. That was old-fashioned, too, wasn't it? The Dick Burdens of the world plump themselves down by girls without worrying to get permission. They think female things will be too flattered for words, by a condescending male desire to be near them.
I told you how nice Sir Lionel looks in evening clothes, didn't I? You've no idea what a perfect shape his head is; and a large lake of white shirt under a little black silk bow is particularly becoming to a clean-shaven man with a very tanned skin--though I don't know why. One would think it might have the opposite effect. And Sir Lionel does tie his necktie so nicely, with a kind of careless precision which comes right of itself, like everything he does. (You will think all this is silly, and it is; but I keep noticing things about him, and liking them, so I tell you, because I may have prejudiced you against him at first, as Ellaline prejudiced me.)
We were beginning to have a good talk about Cornwall, and quaint Cornish ways and superstitions, when out of the house came Mrs. Senter. The Venice people had just passed again, and were near the hotel door as she appeared.
"Why, Sallie and George!" she exclaimed.
And "Why, Gwen!" the Venice lady answered.
They shook hands, the boy and all, and though Sir Lionel didn't pay much attention to what was going on, I couldn't keep up our conversation. "Suppose they tell Mrs. Senter they met me in Venice!" I said to myself. "What shall I do?"
Out of one corner of my eye I saw that they did speak of me, and she threw a quick, eager glance in my direction. A minute or two later they all strolled on together, until they had come in front of our seat. There Mrs. Senter paused, and said, "Sir Lionel, these are my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Tyndal, of whom I think I must have spoken to you, and this is their cousin, Mr. Tom Tyndal. They are touring in their motor, and arrived here this afternoon, a little before us. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?" And then, as if on second thoughts, she added me to the introduction.
"Quite a coincidence," indeed! It never rains, but it pours coincidences, on any head that is developing a criminal record.
The Tyndals paid Sir Lionel compliments, and seemed to be delighted to meet him, evidently regarding him as a great celebrity, which, I suppose, he really is. Then, when they had made him sufficiently uncomfortable (compliments are to him what a sudden plague of locusts would be to most men), they turned to me.
"Surely we have met before, Miss Lethbridge?" remarked Mrs. Tyndal. And you ought to have seen how Mrs. Senter's features sharpened, as she waited for me to stammer or blush.
As far as the blush was concerned, she had her money's worth; and I only didn't stammer because I was obliged to stop and think before replying. I almost worshipped Sir Lionel when he answered for me, in a quick, positive way he has, which there seems no gainsaying. I suppose men who live in the East cultivate that, as it keeps natives from arguing and answering back.
"Impossible," said he, "unless it was at Versailles, where my ward has been at school since she was a very small child, with no holidays except at St. Cloud."
"Mightn't it have been at Paris?" obligingly suggested Mrs. Senter, determined I shouldn't be let off, if conviction of any sort were possible.
"No, I don't think it was at Paris," murmured Mrs. Tyndal, reflectively, eyeing me in the sunset light, which was turning to pure amethyst. "Now, where could it have been? I seem to associate your face with--with Italy."
Oh, my goodness! She was getting "warm" in our game of "hide the handkerchief."
"She has never been to Italy," said Sir Lionel, beginning to look rather cross, as if Mrs. Tyndal were taking liberties with his belongings--of which, you see, he thinks me one.
"Not even--Venice?" she persisted. "Oh, yes, that is it! Now I know where I seem to have seen you--at Venice. You remember, don't you, George?"
By this time sparks had lighted up in Sir Lionel's eyes, as if he were a Turk, and one of the ladies of his harem were unjustly suspected.
"It is impossible for Mr. Tyndal to remember what didn't happen," he said, dropping a lump of ice into his voice. "You saw someone who looked like her in Venice, perhaps, but not my ward."
I was almost sorry for the poor Tyndals, who meant no harm, though they had the air of being so frightfully rich and prosperous that it seemed ridiculous to pity them.
"Of course, it could only have been a resemblance," said Mr. Tyndal, with that snubby glare at Mrs. Tyndal which husbands and wives keep for each other.
"It must have been," she responded, taking up her cue; for naturally they didn't want to begin their acquaintance with a distinguished person by offending him.
These signs of docility caused Sir Lionel to relent and come down off his high horse. Whenever he has been at all haughty or impatient with his sister (whose denseness would sometimes try a saint) he is sorry in a minute, and tries to be extra nice. It was the same now in the case of the poor Tyndals, whose Etonian cousin had all the time been gazing up at him with awed adoration, as of a hero on a pedestal; and suddenly a quaint thought struck me. I remembered about the Bengalese Sir Lionel was supposed to have executed for some offence or other, and I could see him being sorry immediately afterward, tearing around trying to stick their heads on again, and saying pleasant words.
Well, he stuck the Tyndals' heads on very kindly, so that they almost forgot they'd ever been slashed off; and when Mrs. Norton came out, which she did in a few minutes, looking as if she'd washed the dust off her face with kitchen soap, we all strolled up and down together, till it was time for dinner.
Mrs. Tyndal walked with me, but not a word did she say about Venice. That subject was to be tabooed, but I'm far from sure she was convinced of her mistake, and she couldn't overcome her intense interest in my features. However, she seems good-natured, as if even to please Mrs. Senter she wouldn't care to do me a bad turn. Only, I don't think people do things from motives as a rule, do you? They just suddenly find they want to do them, and presto, the things are done! That's why the world's so exciting.
We chatted non-committally of cabbages and kings and automobiles; and I recalled tracing pneu-tracks like illusive lights and shadows before us on the damp road, as we spun into Tintagel. No doubt they were the pneus of the Tyndals.
Their table was next ours in the dining room, so close that motor-chat was tossed back and forth, and it appeared that Mr. Tyndal was as proud of his car as a cat of its mouse. Mrs. Tyndal's mice are her jewels, and she has droves of them, which she displayed at dinner. Afterward she did lace-work, which made her rings gleam beautifully, and she said she didn't particularly like doing it, but it was something to "kill time." How awful! But I suppose frightfully rich people are like that. They sometimes get fatty degeneration of the soul.
Well, nothing more happened that evening, except that the Tyndal boy and I made great friends--quite a nice boy, pining for some mischief that idle hands might do; and his cousins said that, as we were going to stop several days at Tintagel, "making it a centre," they would stop, too. Sir Lionel didn't appear overjoyed at the decision, but Mrs. Senter seemed glad. She and her sister, Mrs. Burden, have known the Tyndals for years, and are by way of being friends, yet she works off her little firework epigrams against them when their backs are turned, as she does on everybody. According to her, their principal charm for society in London is their cook; and she says the art treasures in their house are all illegitimate; near-Gobelin, not-quite-Raphaels, and so on. She makes Sir Lionel smile; but I wonder if she'd adopt this cheap method if he'd ever mentioned to her (as he has to me) that of all meannesses he despises disloyalty?
The Tyndal boy went up to bed before the rest of us, and when Sir Lionel and Mrs. Norton had been forced to play bridge with Mrs. Senter and Mr. Tyndal, I slipped away, too.
We'd lived in the hotel such a short time, and it's so big, that I counted on recognizing my room by the boots which I put outside the door when I went down to sunset and dinner. Of course, I'd forgotten my number, as I always do. I wouldn't consider myself a normal girl if I didn't.
There were the boots, not taken away yet--looking abject, as boots do in such situations--but I was pleased to see that they compared favourably in size with the gray alligator-skin and patent leather eccentricities of Mrs. Senter, reposing on an adjacent doormat. With this frivolous reflection in my mind, it didn't occur to me, as I turned the handle of the door marked by my brown footgear, that the room now appeared farther to the left, along the passage, than I had the impression of its being. I opened the door, which was not locked, walked in, felt about for the electric light, switched it on, and had sauntered over to a table in the centre of the room before I noticed anything strange. Then, to my startled vision appeared unfamiliar brushes and combs on a chest of drawers; beautiful, but manly looking silver-backed ones; and along the wall was a row of flat tweed legs, on stretchers.
For an instant I stood still, bewildered, as if I'd walked into a dream, beguiled by a false clue of boots; and during my few seconds of temporary aberration my dazed eyes fell upon a book which lay on the table. It was Sir Lionel's "Morte d'Arthur" (second volume; he's lent me the first), and in it for a marker was a glove of mine. I'd lost it at Torquay, after we had our dear, good talk, and he knew I was looking for it, all about the sitting room we had at the hotel there, yet he never said a word.
Oh, dear little French mother, you can't think what an odd feeling it gave me to see he had kept my glove, and had put it in his book! Yes, I believe you can think, too, because probably you've felt just like that yourself when you were a girl, only you never thought it convenable to describe your symptoms for your daughter's benefit. I know it was perfectly schoolgirlish of me, and I ought to have outgrown such sentimentality with my teens; but if you could see Sir Lionel, and understand the sort of man he is, you wouldn't think me so outrageous. That he--he, of all men--should care to keep anything which would remind him of an insignificant child like me! I'm afraid there came a prickly feeling in my eyelids, and I had the most idiotic desire to kiss the book, which I knew would have a nice smell of his cigarettes, because my borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything, though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind of infatuated fascination of a moth--not for a candle, but for a great, brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. I should have been like them if I'd kissed the book; but instead, after that one look which told me the glove really was my glove, I bounced out of the room, snatching my boots up as I dashed across the threshold.
Bump! as I did so I almost telescoped with Sir Lionel who had retrieved his boots, probably from my doormat. And at the same moment came a boyish yelp from somewhere, followed by the smart slap of a door shutting. I wished it had been a smart slap of my hand on the Tyndal boy's ear, for of course the boot-changing was that little fiend's work, I guessed in a second.
So did Sir Lionel, and we both laughed--at ourselves, at each other, and everything. It seems that the Youthful Horror had changed every pair of boots along the corridor, and made the most weird combinations. I don't suppose Sir Lionel thought about the glove in the book, anyway at the time, and luckily there was nothing tell-tale in my room, in case he strayed in, except your photograph in the silver frame you gave me on my last birthday. And of course he could make nothing of that.
He had got out of playing bridge, because when Mrs. Tyndal saw he wasn't keen, she offered to take a hand, and he said he did want to write to a man in Bengal, his best friend.
We talked to each other only a few minutes, after the boot-puzzle had been put right; but would you believe it, up came Mrs. Senter, while Sir Lionel and I were bidding each other good night in front of my door? She looked as stiff and wicked as a frozen snake for an instant; then she smiled too sweetly, and said she'd come for her Spanish lace mantilla. But I almost know she had fancied that Sir Lionel might have made an excuse to get a word with me, and had flown up to find out for herself.
You can imagine, dear, that I didn't feel much like going to bed when I'd finished saying good-night, and shut my door upon the world. It seemed to me that this birthplace of Sir Lionel's ancestor, King Arthur Pendragon, was too romantic and wonderful to go tamely to sleep in. And what was my covered balcony for, if not to dream dreams and think thoughts, by moonlight?
So I switched off the electricity in my room, and went out to find that the moon (which is big and grand now) had come out, too, tearing apart a great black cloud in order to look down on Arthur-land, and see if she had any adorers. Anyway, she must have seen me, for she turned the night into silver dawn, so clear and bright that she couldn't have missed me if she tried.
I did wish for you to be with me then, and I'm ashamed to confess I wouldn't have minded Sir Lionel as a companion, because Tintagel seems so much more his than mine.
Never did I hear the sea talk poetry and legend as it does round those dark rocks of old "Dundagel." I thought as I leaned out from my balcony, a lonely, unappreciated Juliet--that the sound was like the chanting voice of an ancient bard, telling stories of the golden days to himself or to all who might care to listen. I fancied I could hear the words:
They found a naked child upon the sands
Of dark Dundagel by the Cornish sea.
I could see the ruined castle, on its twin cliffs, below the hotel-castle cliff and between me and the sea; and the very meagreness of what remains seemed to increase the interest and mystery by stimulating the imagination, forcing it to create its own pictures. I "reconstructed" the castle, building it of the same stone they use now at Tintagel, and have used for the last thousand years or so; a dark stone, singularly rich with colour--pansy and wallflower colour, with splashes of green flung on to dead gray, like bright autumn leaves stirred into a heap of other leaves dim and dead. And the mortar for my masonry was the moonlight which flooded the sea and those wide downs whose divisions into fields turned them into enormous maps.
I worked myself up into such a romantic mood that I almost cried in the joy and pain of living, and expected to look back upon myself with the "utmost spurn" when I should come back to real life after a good sleep in the morning. But I didn't,--perhaps because, instead of encouraging the good sleep, I lay and listened to the wild song of the Cornish wind.
I waked early, feeling exactly the same, if not more so, and could hardly wait to get down into the ruins of the old castle. I splashed about in a cold bath, dressed as quickly as a well-groomed girl can, and then--I committed what might seem an indiscreet act if the last of the Pendragons and I did not stand toward each other in the place of guardian and ward. "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so." And Sir Lionel certainly does think we're in those positions; therefore it was all right for me to knock at his door, and ask through the keyhole if he would very, very much mind taking me to the castle?
He was dressed, and opened the door instantly. It was the one thing he would have liked to propose, said he, only he had been afraid of disturbing me so early. Wasn't that kind of him? I remembered the glove, and the thought of it was more delicious than a breakfast of Cornish cream and honey; although, of course, lurking in the background of my mind was the horrid idea that he might have accidentally picked the thing up to use as a bookmark. And another idea, gloomier even, though not so horrid, was that, even if he does like me well enough to keep things of mine, he must soon grow to hate me when he knows who I am.
He suggested coffee, but I wouldn't have it, because I was afraid Mrs. Senter might appear and want to go to the castle too. I had visions of her, hearing our voices in the corridor, and dashing out of bed to fling on her clothes; but even if she did overhear the whole conversation, I don't think she's the kind who looks her best before breakfast, if she has dressed in a hurry; and anyway, we were spared the apparition.
It was a fine scramble getting to the ruins, and when Sir Lionel had opened a door (with a key you get from a cottage close by the sea) it was quite as if he were my host, entertaining me in his ancestral home. I told him that it felt twice as interesting to be there with a true Pendragon, than with a mere king or anybody like that, and he seemed pleased.
"I hope I am a 'true' Pendragon," he said, rather thoughtfully. "One must try to be--always." He looked at me very, very kindly, as if he would have liked to say something more; but he didn't speak, and turned away his eyes to look far over the sea. It was only for a little while, though, that he was absent-minded. Sitting there on the rough, wind-blown grass which is the floor of the castle now, he told me things about the place and its history. How Dundagel meant the "Safe Castle," and how the "Arthurian believers" say it was built by the Britons in earliest Roman days; how David Bruce of Wales was entertained by the Earl of Cornwall on the very spot where we were sitting, and how the great hall, once famous, was destroyed as long ago as when Chaucer was a baby. And as he talked, the rising wind wailed and sobbed like old, old witches crying over the evil fallen on Arthur and his castle. Such an old, wise-sounding wind it was, old enough to have been blowing when Arthur was a baby, drowning the lullabies sung by his mother Igerna, "that greatest beauty in Britain."
We forgot breakfast, and stopped in the ruins a long time, until suddenly we both realized that we were desperately hungry. But instead of going up to our own hotel, we walked into the quaint village (whose real name is Trevena, though nobody calls it that) and had something to eat at a hotel where Sir Lionel used to stop occasionally when he was a boy. Afterward, we went to see the village schoolmaster, whom he knew; such a nice man, who paints pictures as well as teaches the children--and I felt guilty at being introduced as Sir Lionel's "ward." I think my conscience is like a bruised peach, pinched by many fingers to see if it's ripe, I have that guilty feeling so often! When we spoke of the schoolmaster's versatility, he laughed and said it was "nothing to his predecessor's," who used to cut the children's hair, clip horses, measure land, act as parish clerk as well as teacher, pull teeth, and beat such transgressors as had to be punished in a way less serious than prison. Doesn't that take one back to long ago? But so does everything in Tintagel--and all over Cornwall, Sir Lionel says. They have such nice old-fashioned words here! Isn't "jingle" good? It's some kind of a conveyance, exactly the opposite of a motor-car, I fancy, from the description. And I like the word "huer," too. It means a man who gives the hue and cry when the pilchards are coming in, and all the fishermen must run to the sea.
I should like to know everything about Cornwall, from the smugglers, and the famous wrestlers, to the witches--the last of whom lives near Boscastle still. But the little that travellers in motors can learn about places steeped in history, is like trying to know all about a beautiful great tree by one leaf of flying gold which falls into the automobile as it sweeps by, along the road. Still, the little one does learn is unforgettable, impressed upon the mind in a different way from the mere learning. And I suppose few people know everything about every place, even in their own countries. If they did, I'm sure they'd be prigs, and no one would want to know them!
When we got back to our hotel castle on the cliff, the Tyndals' motor was at the door, a huge, gorgeous chariot, and nothing would do but we must "try the car." Mrs. Senter had promised to go, and was putting on her hat.
The Tyndals are difficult people to resist, because if you try to make excuses they pin you down in one way or another, so that you must either do what they want or hurt their feelings; and though Sir Lionel is supposed to have been so strict in Bengal, he is quite soft-hearted in England. I think he hates going about in motors that aren't his, because he enjoys being the man at the helm, which is perhaps characteristic of him; however, the Tyndals swept all of us, except Mrs. Norton, away to Delabole to see the slate quarries, and to have the adventure of sliding down a fearfully steep incline in a tiny trolley-car--if that's the right word for it. I half expected Charon to meet me with his ferry-boat at the bottom. It wouldn't have seemed much stranger than other things in Cornwall.
All that happened yesterday. To-day we have been to Trebarwith Strand and Port Isaac, and have walked to the loneliest church I ever saw, with the gravestones in the burying ground propped by buttresses, that the wind mayn't throw them down. It is Tintagel church, though it's a good long way from the village, and the vicarage is of the fourteenth century.
Oh, and I heard a splendid legend about the ruined castle from the vicar, who is its warden! It seems, when it was built by the old princes of West Wales--very beautiful as well as strong, with walls "painted of many colours," it was placed under a powerful spell by Merlin, that it might become invisible twice in every year. How I should like to be at Tintagel at the right time, and see if the ruins would disappear from before my eyes. I believe they would; and the enchantment would take the form of a sea mist.
To-morrow we are to leave Cornwall for Bideford.
I had got as far as that, when Mrs. Senter knocked at my door, and asked if she might come in for a few minutes; so I had to say yes, and "smile full well in counterfeited glee." But I hated to be interrupted, as there was just time before dressing for dinner to finish my letter to you. Now it is after dinner, and before I go to bed, I'll tell you what has happened.
How conceited I was to suppose it possible that Sir Lionel thought me an important person! I am sure the glove episode must have been a mere accident. Serves me right!
Mrs. Senter came to tell me that they'd all been talking about the way to Bideford, and Sir Lionel said the road was so hilly, he wished we hadn't quite as many passengers in the car. Then the Tyndals asked if they might take me, because they'd made up their minds to go to Bideford too, and Sir Lionel answered that it would be a splendid way out of the difficulty if I were willing. The only trouble was, he didn't like to propose such a thing for fear of hurting my feelings; and the conversation ended, according to Mrs. Senter, by the Tyndals planning to suggest the idea to me as if it were their own, then letting the matter rest on my decision.
Mrs. Senter went on to explain that Sir Lionel didn't know she was repeating to me what had passed, but that she thought I would prefer to know. "I'm sure I should if I were in your place," she purred sweetly. "When the Tyndals invite you, of course you must do exactly as you please; but don't you think for Mrs. Norton's sake, as she's such a coward, it would be best to keep the car as light as possible, since Sir Lionel fears the roads are really bad?"
"Oh, certainly," said I, trying so hard not to blush that I must have been purple. "I shall be delighted to go with Mr. and Mrs. Tyndal, in their lovely car, and it's very nice of them to ask me."
"You won't tell Sir Lionel I interfered, will you?" she begged. "I should be quite afraid of him if he were angry."
"You needn't worry. He shan't hear anything from me," said I.
"And you do think I was right to let you know?" she implored.
"Of course," I assured her. But I was feeling hurt all the way up to my topmost hair and down to my tipmost toe. Not that I mind going with the Tyndals, but that Sir Lionel should pick me out as the bit of superfluous ballast to cast to the winds! That was what made me feel cold and old, and alone in the world. I conscientiously told myself that I was the youngest of the party, and the right one to sacrifice; but nothing was much comfort until the thought jumped into my head that maybe Mrs. Senter had fibbed. I went to dinner buoyed up by that hope, but it died young; for the Tyndals did invite me, in Sir Lionel's hearing; and when I said that I should be charmed--he smiled calmly. So far from making objections, I thought he looked quite pleased.
Poor me! I fancied in the castle ruins that he actually liked my society. But I forgot that I'd invited him to go with me. I shan't forget again. And hang the glove!
