Castle Nowhere Part 6

The early autumn gales swept over the hikes, leaving wreck and disaster behind, but the crew of the castle stayed safely at home and listened to the tempest cosily, while the flowers bloomed on, and the gulls brought all their relations and colonized the balcony and window sills, fed daily by the fair hand of Silver. And Waring went not.

Then the frosts came, and turned the forests into splendor; they rowed over and brought out branches, and Silver decked the long room with scarlet and gold. And Waring went not.

The dreary November rains began, the leaves fell, and the dark water surged heavily; but a store of wood was piled on the flat roof, and the fire on the hearth blazed high. And still Waring went not.

At last the first ice appeared, thin flakes forming around the log foundations of the castle; then old Fog spoke. 'I am quite well now, quite strong again; you must go to-day, or you will find yourself frozen in here. As it is, you may hit a late vessel off the islands that will carry you below. I will sail over with you, and bring back the boat.'

'But you are not strong enough yet,' said Waring, bending over his work, a shelf he was carving for Silver; 'I cannot go and leave you here alone.'

'It is either go now, or stay all winter. You do not, I presume, intend to make Silver your wife,--Silver, the daughter of Fog the wrecker.'

Waring's hands stopped; never before had the old man's voice taken that tone, never before had he even alluded to the girl as anything more than a child. On the contrary, he had been silent, he had been humble, he had been openly grateful to the strong young man who had taken his place on sea and sh.o.r.e, and kept the castle full and warm.

'What new thing is this?' thought Waring, and asked the same.

'Is it new?' said Fog. 'I thought it old, very old, I mean no mystery, I speak plainly. You helped me in my great strait, and I thank you; perhaps it will be counted unto you for good in the reckoning up of your life. But I am strong again, and the ice is forming. You can have no intention of making Silver your wife?'

Waring looked up, their eyes met. 'No,' he replied slowly, as though the words were being dragged out of him by the magnetism of the old man's gaze, 'I certainly have no such intention.'

Nothing more was said; soon Waring rose and went out. But Silver spied him from her flower-room, and came down to the sail-boat where it lay at the foot of the ladder. 'You are not going out this cold day,' she said, standing by his side as he busied himself over the rigging. She was wrapped in a fur mantle, with a fur cap on her head, and her rough little shoes were fur-trimmed. Waring made no reply.

'But I shall not allow it,' continued the maiden, gayly. 'Am I not queen of this castle? You yourself have said it many a time. You cannot go, Jarvis; I want you here.' And with her soft hands she blinded him playfully.

'Silver, Silver,' called old Fog's voice above, 'come within; I want you.'

After that the two men were very crafty in their preparations.

The boat ready, Waring went the rounds for the last time. He brought down wood for several days and stacked it, he looked again at all the provisions and reckoned them over; then he rowed to the north sh.o.r.e, visited his traps, called out the dogs from the little house he had made for them, and bade them good by. 'I shall leave you for old Fog,'

he said; 'be good dogs, and bring in all you can for the castle.'

The dogs wagged their tails, and waited politely on the beach until he was out of sight; but they did not seem to believe his story, and went back to their house tranquilly without a howl. The day pa.s.sed as usual. Once the two men happened to meet in the pa.s.sage-way. 'Silver seems restless, we must wait till darkness,' said Fog in a low tone.

'Very well,' replied Waring.

At midnight they were off, rowing over the black water in the sail-boat, hoping for a fair wind at dawn, as the boat was heavy. They journeyed but slowly through the winding channel, leaving the sedge-gate open; no danger now from intruders; the great giant, Winter, had swallowed all lesser foes. It was cold, very cold, and they stopped awhile at dawn on the edge of the marsh, the last sh.o.r.e, to make a fire and heat some food before setting sail for the islands.

'Good G.o.d!' cried Waring.

A boat was coming after them, a little skiff they both knew, and in it paddling, in her white dress, sat Silver, her fur mantle at her feet where it had fallen unnoticed. They sprang to meet her knee-deep in the icy water; but Waring was first, and lifted her slight form in his seems.

'I have found you, Jarvis,' she murmured, laying her head down upon his shoulder; then the eyes closed, and the hand she had tried to clasp around his neck fell lifeless. Close to the fire, wrapped in furs, Waring held her in his arms, while the old man bent over her, chafing her hands and little icy feet, and calling her name in an agony.

'Let her but come back to life, and I will say not one word, more,' he cried with tears. 'Who am I that I should torture her? You shall go back with us, and I will trust it all to G.o.d,--all to G.o.d.'

'But what if I will not go back, what if I will not accept your trust?

said Waring, turning his head away from the face pillowed on his breast.

'I do not trust you, I trust G.o.d; he will guard her.'

'I believe he will,' said the young man, half to himself. And then they bore her home, not knowing whether her spirit was still with them, or already gone to that better home awaiting it in the next country.

That night the thick ice came, and the last vessels fled southward.

But in the lonely little castle there was joy; for the girl was saved, barely, with fever, with delirium, with long prostration, but saved!

When weeks had pa.s.sed, and she was in her low chair again, propped with cushions, pallid as a snow-drop, weak and languid, but still there, she told her story, simply and without comprehension of its meaning.

'I could not rest that night,' she said, 'I know not why; so I dressed softly and slipped past Orange asleep on her mattress by my door, and found you both gone,--your father, and you, Jarvis. You never go out at night, and it was very cold; and Jarvis had taken his bag and knapsack, and all the little things I know so well. His gun was gone from the wall, his clothes from his empty room, and that picture of the girl holding up the fruit was not on his table. From that I knew that something had happened; for it is dear to Jarvis, that picture of the girl,' said Silver with a little quiver in her voice. With a quick gesture Waring drew the picture from his pocket and threw it into the fire; it blazed, and was gone in a moment. 'Then I went after you,' said Silver with a little look of grat.i.tude. 'I know the pa.s.sage through the south channels, and something told me you had gone that way. It was very cold.'

That was all, no reasoning, no excuse, no embarra.s.sment; the flight of the little sea-bird straight to its mate.

Life flowed on again in the old channel, Fog quiet, Silver happy, and Waring in a sort of dream. Winter was full upon them, and the castle beleaguered with his white armies both below and above, on the water and in the air. The two men went ash.o.r.e on the ice now, and trapped and hunted daily, the dogs following. f.a.gots were cut and rough roads made through the forest. One would have supposed they were planning for a lifelong residence, the young man and the old, as they came and went together, now on the snow-crust, now plunging through breast-deep into the light dry ma.s.s. One day Waring said, 'Let me see your reckoning. Do you know that to-morrow will be Christmas?'

'Silver knows nothing of Christmas,' said Fog, roughly.

'Then she shall know,' replied Waring.

Away he went to the woods and brought back evergreen. In the night he checked the cabin-like room, and with infinite pains constructed a little Christmas-tree and hung it with everything he could collect or contrive.

'It is but a poor thing, after all,' he said, gloomily, as he stood alone surveying his work. It was indeed a shabby little tree, only redeemed from ugliness by a white cross poised on the green summit; this cross glittered and shone in the firelight,--it was cut from solid ice.

'Perhaps I can help, you,' said old Fog's voice behind. 'I did not show you this, for fear it would anger you, but--but there must have been a child on board after all.' He held a little box of toys, carefully packed as if by a mother's hand,--common toys, for she was only the captain's wife, and the schooner a small one; the little waif had floated ash.o.r.e by itself, and Fog had seen and hidden it.

Waring said nothing, and the two men began to tie on the toys in silence. But after a while they warmed to their work and grew eager to make it beautiful; the old red ribbon that Orange had given was considered a precious treasure-trove, and, cut into fragments, it gayly held the little wooden toys in place on the green boughs.

Fog, grown emulous, rifled the cupboards and found small cakes baked by the practised hand of the old cook; these he hung exultingly on the higher boughs. And now the little tree was full, and stood bravely in its place at the far end of the long room, while the white cross looked down on the toys of the drowned child and the ribbon of the slave, and seemed to sanctify them for their new use.

Great was the surprise of Silver the next morning, and many the questions she asked. Out in the world, they told her, it was so; trees like that were decked for children.

'Am I a child?' said Silver, thoughtfully; 'what do you think, papa?'

'What do you think?' said Waring, turning the question.

'I hardly know; sometimes I think I am, and sometimes not; but it is of no consequence what I am as long as I have you,--you and papa. Tell me more about the little tree, Jarvis. What does it mean? What is that white shining toy on the top? Is there a story about it?'

'Yes, there is a story; but--but it is not I who should tell it to you,' replied the young man, after a moment's hesitation.

'Why not! Whom have I in all the world to tell me, save you?' said fondly the sweet child-voice.

They did not take away the little Christmas-tree, but left it on its pedestal at the far end of the long room through the winter; and as the cross melted slowly, a new one took its place, and shone aloft in the firelight. But its story was not told.

February came, and with it a February thaw; the ice stirred a little, and the breeze coming over the floes was singularly mild. The arctic winds and the airs from the Gulf Stream had met and mingled, and the gray fog appeared again, waving to and fro. 'Spring has come,' said Silver; 'there is the dear fog.' And she opened the window of the flower room, and let out a little bird.

'It will find no resting-place for the sole of its foot, for the snow is over the face of the whole earth,' said Waring. 'Our ark has kept us cosily through bitter weather, has it not, little one?' (He had adopted a way of calling her so.)

'Ark,' said Silver; 'what is that?'

'Well,' answered Waring, looking down into her blue eyes as they stood together at the little window, 'it was a watery residence like this, and if j.a.pheth,--he was always my favorite of the three--had had you there, my opinion is that he would never have come down at all, but would have resided permanently on Ararat.'

Silver looked up into his face with a smile, not understanding what he said, nor asking to understand; it was enough for her that he was there. And as she gazed her violet eyes grew so deep, so soft, that the man for once (give him credit, it was the first time) took her into his arms. 'Silver,' he whispered, bending over her, 'do you love me?'

'Yes,' she answered in her simple, unconscious way, 'you know I do, Jarvis.'