"I can't endure this," muttered Emily. "I CAN'T, Ilse. I feel as if I'd go mad with horror. I'd rather be out in the storm."
Lank Mrs. Hollinger, looking at once sympathetic and important, came out of the bedroom and shut the door.
"Awful, isn't it! She'll go on like that all night. Would you like to go to bed? Its quite airly, but mebbe you're tired an' 'ud ruther be where you can't hear her, pore soul. She wouldn't take the tea... she's scared the doctor put a sleeping pill in it. She doesn't want to sleep till he's found, dead or alive. If he's in the quicksands o' course he never WILL be found."
"Julia Hollinger, you are a fool and the daughter of a fool, but surely even you must see that a child CAN'T be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradshaw.
"Well, if it was anybody but you called me a fool, Grandfather, I'd be mad," said Mrs. Hollinger, a trifle tartly. She lighted a lamp and took the girls upstairs. "I hope you'll sleep. I advise you to get in between the blankets though there's sheets on the bed. They wuz all aired to-day, blankets AND sheets. I thought it'd be better to air 'em in case there was a funeral. I remember the New Moon Murrays wuz always particular about airing their beds, so I thought I'd mention it. Listen to that wind. We'll likely hear of awful damage from this storm. I wouldn't wonder if the roof blew off this house to-night. Troubles never come singly. I advise you not to git upset if you hear a noise through the night. If the men bring the body home Clara'll likely act like all possessed, pore thing. Mebbe you'd better turn the key in the lock. Old Mrs. McIntyre wanders round a bit sometimes. She's quite harmless and mostly sane enough but it gives folks a start."
The girls felt relieved as the door closed behind Mrs. Hollinger. She was a good soul, doing her neighbourly duty as she conceived it, faithfully, but she was not exactly cheerful company. They found themselves in a tiny, meticulously neat "spare room" under the sloping eaves. Most of the space in it was occupied by a big comfortable bed that looked as if it were meant to be slept in, and not merely to decorate the room. A little four-paned window, with a spotless white muslin frill, shut them in from the cold, stormy night that was on the sea.
"Ugh," shivered Ilse, and got into the bed as speedily as possible. Emily followed her more slowly, forgetting about the key. Ilse, tired out, fell asleep almost immediately, but Emily could not sleep. She lay and suffered, straining her ears for the sound of footsteps. The rain dashed against the window, not in drops, but sheets, the wind snarled and shrieked. Down below the hill she heard the white waves ravening along the dark shore. Could it be only twenty-four hours since that moonlit, summery glamour of the haystack and the ferny pasture? Why, that must have been in another world.
Where was that poor lost child? In one of the pauses of the storm she fancied she heard a little whimper overhead in the dark as if some lonely little soul, lately freed from the body, were trying to find its way to kin. She could discover no way of escape from her pain: her gates of dream were shut against her: she could not detach her mind from her feelings and dramatize them. Her nerves grew strained and tense. Painfully she sent her thoughts out into the storm, seeking, striving to pierce the mystery of the child's whereabouts. He MUST be found... she clenched her hands... he MUST. That poor mother!
"O God, let him be found, SAFE... let him be found, SAFE," Emily prayed desperately and insistently, over and over again... all the more desperately and insistently because it seemed a prayer so impossible of fulfilment. But she reiterated it to bar out of her mind terrible pictures of swamp and quicksand and river, until at last she was so weary that mental torture could no longer keep her awake, and she fell into a troubled slumber, while the storm roared on and the baffled searchers finally gave up their vain quest.
CHAPTER 14. THE WOMAN WHO SPANKED THE KING
The wet dawn came up from the gulf in the wake of the spent storm and crept greyly into the little spare room of the whitewashed house on the hill. Emily woke with a start from a troubled dream of seeking... and finding... the lost boy. But where she had found him she could not now remember. Ilse was still asleep at the back of the bed, her pale-gold curls lying in a silken heap on the pillow. Emily, her thoughts still tangled in the cobweb meshes of her dream, looked around the room... and thought she must be dreaming still.
By the tiny table, covered with its white, lace-trimmed cloth, a woman was sitting... a tall, stout, old woman, wearing over her thick grey hair a spotless white widow's cap, such as the old Highland Scotch-women still wore in the early years of the century. She had on a dress of plum-coloured drugget with a large, snowy apron, and she wore it with the air of a queen. A neat blue shawl was folded over her breast. Her face was curiously white and deeply wrinkled but Emily, with her gift for seeing essentials, saw instantly the strength and vivacity which still characterized every feature. She saw, too, that the beautiful, clear blue eyes looked as if their owner had been dreadfully hurt sometime. This must be the old Mrs. McIntyre of whom Mrs. Hollinger had spoken. And if so, then old Mrs. McIntyre was a very dignified personage indeed.
Mrs. McIntyre sat with her hands folded on her lap, looking steadily at Emily with a gaze in which there was something hard to define... something just a little strange. Emily recalled the fact that Mrs. McIntyre was supposed to be not "quite right." She wondered a little uneasily what she should do. Ought she to speak? Mrs. McIntyre saved her the trouble of deciding.
"You will be having Highlandmen for your forefathers?" she said, in an unexpectedly rich, powerful voice, full of the delightful Highland accent.
"Yes," said Emily.
"And you will be Presbyterian?"
"Yes."
"They will be the only decent things to be," remarked Mrs. McIntyre in a tone of satisfaction. "And will you please be telling me what your name is? Emily Starr! That will be a fery pretty name. I will be telling you mine... it iss Mistress Margaret McIntyre. I am no common person... I am the woman who spanked the King."
Again Emily, now thoroughly awake, thrilled with the story-teller's instinct. But Ilse, awakening at the moment, gave a low exclamation of surprise. Mistress McIntyre lifted her head with a quite regal gesture.
"You will not be afraid of me, my dear. I will not be hurting you although I will be the woman who spanked the King. That iss what the people say of me... oh, yess... as I walk into the church. 'She iss the woman who spanked the King.'"
"I suppose," said Emily hesitatingly, "that we'd better be getting up."
"You will not be rising until I haf told you my tale," said Mistress McIntyre firmly. "I will be knowing as soon as I saw you that you will be the one to hear it. You will not be having fery much colour and I will not be saying that you are fery pretty... oh, no. But you will be having the little hands and the little ears... they will be the ears of the fairies, I am thinking. The girl with you there, she iss a fery nice girl and will make a fery fine wife for a handsome man... she is clefer, oh, yes... but you haf the way and it is to you I will be telling my story."
"Let her tell it," whispered Ilse. "I'm dying of curiosity to hear about the King being spanked."
Emily, who realized that there was no "letting" in the case, only a matter of lying still and listening to whatever it seemed good to Mistress McIntyre to say, nodded.
"You will not be having the twa talks? I will be meaning the Gaelic."
Spellbound, Emily shook her black head.
"That iss a pity, for my story will not be sounding so well in the English... oh, no. You will be saying to yourself the old woman iss having a dream, but you will be wrong, for it iss the true story I will be telling you... oh, yess. I spanked the King. Of course he would not be the King then... he would be only a little prince and no more than nine years old... just the same age as my little Alec. But it iss at the beginning I must be or you will not be understanding the matter at all at all. It wass all a long, long time ago, before ever we left the Old Country. My husband would be Alistair McIntyre and he would be a shepherd near the Balmoral Castle. Alistair was a fery handsome man and we were fery happy. It wass not that we did not quarrel once in a while... oh, no, that would be fery monotonous. But when we made up it is more loving than ever we would be. And I would be fery good-looking myself. I will be getting fatter and fatter all the time now but I wass fery slim and peautiful then... oh, yess, it iss the truth I will be telling you though I will be seeing that you are laughing in your sleeves at me. When you will be eighty you will be knowing more about it.