“There was something about forget-me-nots in it,” she thought dreamily. “Could it have been true?”
How she had mocked at the story!
She had at last reached the shore by this time. The rain still fell in pitiless torrents, but the wind had fallen a little, and down here she seemed rather less exposed than on the face of the cliffs. Still Ruby was completely drenched through; never before had she had any conception of the misery to which some of our poor fellow-creatures are exposed to almost every day of their lives. And yet, her fears for Mavis overmastered all her other sufferings; for the first time Ruby thought of another more than of herself.
“Mavis, dear little Mavis, Mavis darling, where are you?” she sobbed wildly, her teeth chattering, while terrible shivers shook her from head to foot. “Oh, it can’t be that she is under those dreadful, fierce, leaping waves. They look as if they were dancing in cruel joy over something they had got;” and a shudder worse than those caused by the cold went through the poor child.
“Mavis,” she called out at last, after she had peered round about every large stone, every corner where her sister could possibly have tried to find shelter, without coming upon the slightest trace of either the child or the boat, “you must be in the sea. I’ll go after you; it doesn’t matter if I am drowned if you are. Perhaps—perhaps the mermaids are keeping you safe; there are kind ones among them it says in the fairy stories.”
And she turned resolutely to the water. It was cold, icily cold as it touched first her feet, then her ankles, then crept up to her knees; it seemed to catch her breath even before it was at all deep. Ruby felt her powers going and her senses failing.
“I shall never be able to find Mavis even if she is under the sea,” she thought to herself, just as a huge wave caught her in its rolling clutch, and she knew no more.
It seemed as if time beyond counting, years, centuries had passed when Ruby came to her senses again, enough to know that she was herself, gradually to remember that once, long ago, there had been a little girl called Ruby, somewhere, somehow, and that some one dear, most dear to her, had been in awful danger from which she had tried to rescue her. And through all the long mist, through all the dream wanderings of her spirit, in which may be it had been learning lessons, the fruit of which remained, though the teachings themselves were forgotten,—for who knows, who can limit what we do learn in these mysterious ways?—Ruby’s guardian angel must have rejoiced to see that the thought of her sister, not herself, was uppermost.
“Mavis,” was the first word she whispered; “Mavis, are you alive? Are you not drowned, darling? But it was such a very long time ago. Perhaps the world is finished. But Mavis—I thought Mavis was dead; and, oh! who are you?” she ended with a thrill which seemed to make her quite alive and awake.
“Are you the fairy in the turret? And what are you doing to my eyes?”