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.