Major Vigoureux Part 20

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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.serted 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sured 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 Zen.o.bia."

"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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p had been tossing for three days and nights, past all hope, so that she was glad enough to reach a sh.o.r.e, however barren. She reached it, holding on to the shoulders of a brown man, a Moor, who swam for land as the s.h.i.+p 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 Zen.o.bia 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ngle The sh.o.r.e did abound; With white sand she covered him And built him a mound.

With flotsam and with wreckage The sh.o.r.e 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 Zen.o.bia, "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 sc.r.a.p 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 Zen.o.bia, A Queen of renown."

"Lithe lad, she is s.h.i.+pwrecked; 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 Zen.o.bia, "I have lost Carthage town, But I like this lithe shepherd So handsome and brown.

"If I marry you," said Zen.o.bia, "Farewell to renown!

If I marry you," said Zen.o.bia, "I mate with a clown.