Part 40

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.