The Cuckoo Clock

In the morning, when Griselda awoke, her pillow was wet with tears. Thus many stories end. She was happy, very happy in the thought of her kind new friends; but there were tears for the one she felt she had said farewell to, even though he was only a cuckoo in a clock.

THE CASTLE IN THE LOUGH
A LEGEND OF DONEGAL

Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the castle in the lough."

Dermot M'Swyne was a little lad, with blue soft eyes and bright fair hair. He was the only son of Brian, the chief of the M'Swynes, and people used sometimes to say scornfully that he was a poor puny son to come of such a father, for he was not big and burly, as a M'Swyne ought to be, but slim and fair, and like a girl. However, Brian M'Swyne loved his fair-haired boy, and would have given up most other pleasures in the world for the pleasure of having the little fellow by his side and listening to his prattling voice. He was like his mother, those said who remembered the blue-eyed stranger whom Brian M'Swyne had brought home ten years before as his wife to Doe Castle, in Donegal, and who had pined there for a few years and then died; and perhaps it was for her sake that the child was so dear to the rough old chief. He was never tired of having the little lad beside him, and many a time he would carry him about and cradle him in his arms, and pass his big fingers through the boy's golden curls, and let the little hands play with his beard.

Sitting together in the firelight on winter nights, while the peat fire was burning on the floor, and the wind, sweeping across Lough Eske, went wailing round the castle walls and sighing in the leafless trees, the boy would often get his father to tell him stories of the country-side. There were many strange legends treasured up in the memories of all old inhabitants of the place, wild stories of enchantments, or of fairies or banshees; and little Dermot would never tire of listening to these tales. Sometimes, when he had heard some only half-finished story, he would go dreaming on and on to himself about it, till he had woven an ending, or a dozen endings, to it in his own brain.

But of all the tales to which he used to listen there was one that perhaps, more than any other, he liked to hear – the story of the enchanted castle swallowed up by Lough Belshade. There, down beneath the waters of the dark lough, into which he had looked so often, was the castle standing still, its gates and towers and walls all perfect, just as it had stood upon the earth, the very fires still alight that had been burning on its hearths, and – more wonderful than all – the people who had been sunk in it, though fixed and motionless in their enchanted sleep, alive too. It was a wonder of wonders; the child was never tired of thinking of it, and dreaming of the time in which the enchantment should be broken, and of the person who should break it; for, strangest of all, the story said that they must sleep until a M'Swyne should come and wake them. But what M'Swyne would do it? And how was it to be done? "Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the enchanted castle in the lough."

The legend was thus: On the shores of the desolate lough there had once stood a great castle, where lived a beautiful maiden called Eileen. Her father was the chieftain of a clan, and she was his only child. Many young lovers sought her, but she cared for none of them. At last there came to the castle a noble-looking knight. He had traveled from a far country, he said, and he began soon to tell wonderful stories to Eileen of the beauty and the richness of that land of his; how the skies there were always blue, and the sun always shone, and lords and ladies lived, not in rough stone-hewn castles like these, but in palaces all bright with marbles and precious stones; and how their lives were all a long delight, with music and dancing and all pleasant things.

Eileen listened while he told these tales to her, till she began to long to see his country; and her heart yearned for something brighter and better than the sombre life she led by the shores of the dark lough; and so when, after a time, the knight one day told her that he loved her, she gave him her promise to go to his home with him and marry him.

She was very contented for a little while after she had promised to be the knight's wife, and spent nearly all her time in talking to her lover and in picturing to herself the new and beautiful things that she was going to see. She was very happy, on the whole; though now and then, to tell the truth, as time went on, she began to be a little puzzled and surprised by certain things that the knight did, and certain odd habits that he had; for, in fact, he had some very odd habits, indeed, and, charming and handsome as he was, conducted himself occasionally in really quite a singular way.

For instance, it was a curious fact that he never could bear the sight of a dog; and if ever one came near him (and as there were a good many dogs about the castle, it was quite impossible to keep them from coming near him now and then) he would set his teeth, and rise slowly from his seat, and begin to make a low hissing noise, craning his neck forward, and swelling and rounding his back in such an extraordinary way that the first time Eileen saw him doing it she thought he was going to have a fit, and was quite alarmed.

"Oh, dear, I – I'm afraid you're ill!" she exclaimed, getting upon her feet and feeling very uneasy.

"No, no, it's only – it's only – the dog," gasped the knight, gripping his seat with both hands, as if it needed the greatest effort to keep himself still. "Hiss – s – s – s! I've such a terrible dislike to dogs. It's – it's in my family," said the poor young man; and he could not recover his composure at all till the little animal that had disturbed him was carried away.

Then he had such a strange fashion of amusing himself in his own room where he slept. It was a spacious room, hung all round with arras; and often, after the household had gone to bed, those who slept nearest to the knight were awakened out of their sleep by the noise he made in running up and down, and here and there; scudding about over the floor, and even – as far as could be guessed by the sounds – clambering up the walls, just as though, instead of being a gracious high-bred young gentleman, he had been the veriest tomboy.

"I fear, Sir Knight, you do not always rest easily in your apartment," Eileen's old father said to him one morning after he had been making even more disturbance of this sort than usual. "We have rough ways here in the North, and perhaps the arrangement of your sleeping quarters is not exactly to your liking?"

But the knight, when he began to say this, interrupted him hastily, and declared that he had never slept more comfortably in any room in his life, or more peacefully, he said; he was seldom conscious of even so much as awakening once. Of course, when he said this, Eileen and her father could only open their eyes, and come to the conclusion that the poor young knight was a somnambulist, and afflicted with the habit of running and leaping in his sleep.

Again, too, out-of-doors, it was very odd how it affected him to hear the birds sing. Whenever they began their songs, all sorts of nervous twitchings would come over him, and he would lick his lips and make convulsive movements with his hands; and his attention would become so distracted that he would quite lose the thread of his discourse if he were talking, or the thread of Eileen's, if she were talking to him. "It is because I enjoy hearing them so much," he said once; and of course when he said so Eileen could only believe him; yet she could not help wishing he would show his pleasure in some other way than this curious one of setting his teeth and rolling his eyes, and looking much more as if he wanted to eat the birds than to listen to them.

Still, in spite of these and a good many other peculiarities, the young knight was very charming, and Eileen was very fond of him. They used to spend the happiest days together, wandering about the wild and beautiful country, often sitting for hours on the rocky shores of the dark lough, looking into the deep still water at their feet. It was a wild, romantic, lonely place, shut out from the sunlight by great granite cliffs that threw their dark weird shadows over it.

"Do you know there is a prophecy that our castle shall stand one day here in the middle of the lough?" Eileen said, laughing, once. "I don't know how it is to be done, but we are to be planted somehow in the middle of the water. That is what the people say. I shouldn't like to live here then. How gloomy it would be to have those great shadows always over us!" and the girl shivered a little, and stole her hand into her lover's, and they began to talk about the far different place where she should live; his beautiful palace, far away in the sunny country beyond the sea. She was never weary of hearing about the new place and new life that she was going to, and all the beauty and happiness that were going to be hers.

So time went on, until at last the day before the marriage-day came. Eileen had been showing her lover all her ornaments; she had a great number of very precious ones, and, to please him and amuse herself, she had been putting them all on, loading herself with armlets, and bracelets, and heavy chains of gold, such as the old Irish princesses used to wear, till she looked as gorgeous as a princess herself.

It was a sunny summer day, and she sat thinking to herself, "My married life will begin so soon now – the new, beautiful, strange life – and I will wear these ornaments in the midst of it; but where everything else is so lovely, will he think me then as lovely as he does now?"

Presently she glanced up, with a little shyness and a little vanity, just to see if he was looking at and thinking of her; but as she lifted up her head, instead of finding that his eyes were resting on her, she found —

Well, she found that the knight was certainly not thinking of her one bit. He was sitting staring fixedly at one corner of the apartment, with his lips working in the oddest fashion; twitching this way and that, and parting and showing his teeth, while he was clawing with his hands the chair on which he sat.

"Dear me!" said Eileen rather sharply and pettishly, "what is the matter with you?"

Eileen spoke pretty crossly; for as she had on various previous occasions seen the knight conduct himself in this sort of way, her feeling was less of alarm at the sight of him than simply of annoyance that at this moment, when she herself had been thinking of him so tenderly, he could be giving his attention to any other thing. "What is the matter with you?" she said; and she raised herself in her chair and turned round her head to see if she could perceive anything worth looking at in that corner into which the knight was staring almost as if the eyes would leap out of his head.

"Why, there's nothing there but a mouse!" she said contemptuously, when she had looked and listened for a moment, and heard only a little faint scratching behind the tapestry.

"No, no, I believe not; oh, no, nothing but a mouse," replied the knight hurriedly; but still he did not take his eyes from the spot, and he moved from side to side in his chair, and twitched his head from right to left, and looked altogether as if he hardly knew what he was about.

"And I am sure a mouse is a most harmless thing," said Eileen.

"Harmless? Oh! delicious!" replied the knight, with so much unction that Eileen, in her turn, opened her eyes and stared. "Delicious! quite delicious!" murmured the knight again.

But after a moment or two more, all at once he seemed to recollect himself, and made a great effort, and withdrew his eyes from the corner where the mouse was still making a little feeble scratching.

"I mean a – a most interesting animal," he said. "I have always felt with regard to mice – "

But just at this instant the mouse poked out his little head from beneath the tapestry, and the knight leaped to his feet as if he was shot.

"Hiss – s – s! skier – r – r! hiss – s – s – s!" he cried; and – could Eileen believe her eyes? – for one instant she saw the knight flash past her, and then there was nothing living in the room besides her but a great black cat clinging by his claws half-way up the arras, and a little brown mouse between his teeth.

Of course the only thing that Eileen could do was to faint, and so she fainted, and it was six hours before she came to herself again. In the mean time nobody in the world knew what had happened; and when she opened her eyes and began to cry out about a terrible black cat, they all thought she had gone out of her mind.

"My dear child, I assure you there is no such thing in the house as a black cat," her father said uneasily to her, trying to soothe her in the best way he could.

"Oh, yes, he turned into a black cat," cried Eileen.

"Who turned into a black cat?" asked her father.

"The knight did," sobbed Eileen.

And then the poor old father went out of the room, thinking that his daughter was going mad.

"She is quite beside herself; she says that you are not a man, but a cat," he said sorrowfully to the young knight, whom he met standing outside his daughter's room. "What in the world could have put such thoughts into her head? Not a thing will she talk about but black cats."

"Let me see her; I will bring her to her right mind," said the knight.

"I doubt it very much," replied the chief; but as he did not know what else to do, he let him go into the room, and the knight went in softly and closed the door, and went up to the couch on which Eileen lay. She lay with her eyes closed, and with all her gold chains still upon her neck and arms; and the knight, because he trod softly, had come quite up to her side before she knew that he was there. But the moment she opened her eyes and saw him, she gave such a scream that it quite made him leap; and if he had not bolted the door every creature in the castle would have rushed into the room at the sound of it. Fortunately for him, however, he had bolted the door; and as it was a very stout door, made of strong oak, Eileen might have screamed for an hour before anybody could have burst it open. As soon, therefore, as the knight had recovered from the start she gave him, he quietly took a chair and sat down by her side.

"Eileen," he said, beginning to speak at once – for probably he felt that the matter he had come to mention was rather a painful and a delicate one, and the more quickly he could get over what he had to say the better – "Eileen, you have unhappily to-day seen me under – ahem! – under an unaccustomed shape – "

He had only got so far as this, when Eileen gave another shriek and covered her face with her hands.

"I say," repeated the knight, in a tone of some annoyance, and raising his voice, for Eileen was making such a noise that it was really necessary to speak pretty loudly – "I say you have unfortunately seen me to-day under a shape that you were not prepared for; but I have come, my love, to assure you that the – transformation – was purely accidental – a mere blunder of a moment – an occurrence that shall never be repeated in your sight. Look up to me again, Eileen, and do not let this eve of our marriage-day – "

But what the knight had got to say about the eve of their marriage-day Eileen never heard, for as soon as he had reached these words she gave another shriek so loud that he jumped upon his seat.

"Do you think that I will ever marry a black cat?" cried Eileen, fixing her eyes with a look of horror on his face.

"Eileen, take care!" exclaimed the knight sternly. "Take care how you anger me, or it will be the worse for you."

"The worse for me! Do you think I am afraid of you?" said Eileen with her eyes all flashing, for she had a high enough spirit, and was not going to allow herself to be forced to marry a black cat, let the knight say what he would. She rose from her couch and would have sprung to the ground, if all at once the knight had not bent forward and taken her by her hand.

"Eileen," said the knight, holding her fast and looking into her face, "Eileen, will you be my wife?"

"I would sooner die!" cried Eileen.

"Eileen," cried the knight passionately, "I love you! Do not break your promise to me. Forget what you have seen. I am a powerful magician. I will make you happy. I will give you all you want. Be my wife."

"Never!" cried Eileen.

"Then you have sealed your fate!" exclaimed the knight fiercely; and suddenly he rose and extended his arms, and said some strange words that Eileen did not understand; and all at once it appeared to her as if some thick white pall were spreading over her, and her eyelids began to close, and involuntarily she sank back.

Once more, but as if in a dream, she heard the knight's voice.

"If you do not become my wife," he said, "you shall never be the wife of any living man. The black cat can hold his own. Sleep here till another lover comes to woo you."

A mocking laugh rang through the room – and then Eileen heard no more. It seemed to her that her life was passing away. A strange feeling came to her, as if she were sinking through the air; there was a sound in her ears of rushing water; and then all recollection and all consciousness ceased.

Some travelers passing that evening by the lough gazed at the spot on which the castle had stood, and rubbed their eyes in wild surprise, for there was no castle there, but only a bare tract of desolate, waste ground. The prophecy had been fulfilled; the castle had been lifted up from its foundation and sunk in the waters of the lough.

This was the story that Dermot used to listen to as he sat in his father's hall on winter nights – a wild old story, very strange, and sweet too, as well as strange. For they were living still, the legend always said – the chief and his household, and beautiful Eileen; not dead at all, but only sleeping an enchanted sleep, till some one of the M'Swynes should come and kill the black cat who guarded them, and set them free. Under those dark, deep waters, asleep for three hundred years, lay Eileen, with all her massive ornaments on her neck and arms, and red-gold Irish hair. How often did the boy think of her, and picture to himself the motionless face, with its closed, waiting eyes, and yearn to see it. Asleep there for three hundred years! His heart used to burn at the imagination. In all these centuries had no M'Swyne been found bold enough to find the black cat and kill him? Could it be so hard a thing to kill a black cat? the little fellow thought.

"I'd kill him myself if only I had the chance," he said one day; and when he said that his father laughed.

"Ay, my lad, you might kill him if you had the chance – but how would you get the chance?" he asked him. "Do you think the magician would be fool enough to leave his watch over the lough and put himself in your way? Kill him? Yes, we could any of us kill him if we could catch him; but three hundred years have passed away and nobody has ever caught him yet."

"Well, I may do it some day, when I am grown a man," Dermot said.

So he went on dreaming over the old legend, and weaving out of his own brain an ending to it. What if it should be, indeed, his lot to awake Eileen from her enchanted sleep? He used to wander often by the shores of the dark little lough and gaze into the shadowy waters. Many a time, too, he would sail across them, leaning down over his boat's side, to try in vain to catch some glimpse of the buried castle's walls or towers. Once or twice – it might have been mere fancy – it seemed to him as if he saw some dark thing below the surface, and he would cry aloud, "The cat! I see the black cat!" But they only laughed at him when he returned home and said this. "It was only a big fish at the bottom of the water, my boy," his father would reply.

When he was a boy he talked of this story often and was never weary of asking questions concerning it; but presently, as he grew older, he grew more reserved and shy, and when he spoke about Eileen the color used to come into his cheek. "Why, boy, are you falling in love with her?" his father said to him one day. "Are there not unbewitched maidens enough to please you on the face of the earth, but you must take a fancy to a bewitched one lying asleep at the bottom of the lough?" and he laughed aloud at him. After that day Dermot never spoke of Eileen in his father's hearing. But although he ceased to speak of her, yet only the more did he think and dream about her; and the older he grew, the less did he seem to care for any of those unbewitched maidens of whom his father had talked; and the only maiden of whom he thought with love and longing was this one who lay asleep in the enchanted castle in the lough.

So the years passed on, and in time Dermot's father died, and the young man became chieftain of his clan. He was straight and tall, with blue, clear eyes, and a frank, fair face. Some of the M'Swynes, who were a rough, burly race, looked scornfully on him and said that he was fitter to make love to ladies than to head men on a battle-field; but they wronged him when they said that, for no braver soldier than Dermot had ever led their clan. He was both brave and gentle too, and courteous, and tender, and kind; and as for being only fit to make love to ladies – why, making love to ladies was almost the only thing he never did.

"Are you not going to bring home a wife to the old house, my son?" said his foster-mother, an old woman who had lived with him all her life. "Before I die I'd love to dandle a child of yours upon my knee."

But Dermot only shook his head. "My wife, I fear, will be hard to win. I may have to wait for her all my days." And then, after a little while, when the old woman still went on talking to him, "How can I marry when my love has been asleep these three hundred years?"

This was the first time that he had spoken about Eileen for many a day, and the old nurse had thought, like everybody else, that he had forgotten that old legend and all the foolish fancies of his youth.

She was sitting at her spinning-wheel, but she dropped the thread and folded her hands sadly on her knees.

"My son, why think on her that's as good as dead? Even if you could win her, would you take a bewitched maiden to be your wife?"

It was a summer's day, and Dermot stood looking far away through the sunshine toward where, though he could not see it, the enchanted castle lay. He had stood in that same place a thousand times, looking toward it, dreaming over the old tale.

For several minutes he made no answer to what the old woman had said; then all at once he turned round to her.

"Nurse," he said passionately, "I have adored her for twenty years. Ever since I first stood at your knees, and you told me of her, she has been the one love of my heart. Unless I can marry her, I will never marry any woman in this world." He came to the old woman's side, and though he was a full-grown man, he put his arms about her neck. "Nurse, you have a keen woman's wit; cannot you help me with it?" he said. "I have wandered round the lough by day and night and challenged the magician to come and try his power against me, but he does not hear me, or he will not come. How can I reach him through those dark, cruel waters and force him to come out of them and fight with me?"

"Foolish lad!" the old woman said. She was a wise old woman, but she believed as much as everybody else did in the legend of the castle in the lough. "What has he to gain that he need come up and fight with you? Do you think the black cat's such a fool as to heed your ranting and your challenging?"

"But what else can I do?"

The old woman took her thread into her hands again, and sat spinning for two or three minutes without answering a word. She was a sensible old woman, and it seemed to her a sad pity that a fine young man like her foster-son should waste his life in pining for the love of a maiden who had lain asleep and enchanted for three hundred years. Yet the nurse loved him so dearly that she could not bear to cross him in anything, or to refuse to do anything that he asked. So she sat spinning and thinking for a little while, and then said:

"It was a mouse that made him show himself in his own shape first, and it's few mice he can be catching, I guess, down in the bottom of the lough. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you half a dozen mice in a bag tomorrow, and you can let them loose when you get to the water side, and see if that will bring him up."

Well, Dermot did not think very much of this plan; but still, as he had asked the old woman to help him, he felt that he could not avoid taking her advice, and so the next morning his nurse gave him a bag with half a dozen mice in it, and he carried it with him to the lough. But, alas! as soon as ever he had opened the bag, all the six mice rushed away like lightning and were out of sight in a moment.

"That chance is soon ended," Dermot said mournfully to himself; so he took back the empty bag to his nurse, and told her what had happened.

"You goose, why didn't you let them out one by one?" inquired she. "Sure they would run when you opened the bag. You should have made play with them."

"To be sure, so I should; but I never thought of that. I'll do better next time."

So next day the woman brought him the bag again, filled this time with fat rats, and he took it to the lough, and laid it down at the water side, and opened the mouth of it just wide enough for one of the rats to put out his nose; and then he sat and watched, and watched, letting the rats run away one by one; but though he sat watching for the whole day, not a sign did he ever see of the black cat. At last he came disconsolately home again with the empty bag on his shoulder.

"Never mind, my son, we'll try something else to-morrow," said nurse cheerfully. So next morning she brought him a fishing-rod, and a large piece of toasted cheese. "Take this to the lough and bait your hook with it," she said, "and see if the black cat won't come up and take a bite. All cats like cheese."

Dermot went immediately to the lough, baited his hook, and threw the line out into the water. After a few minutes his heart gave a great jump, for he felt a sudden pull at the line. He drew it in softly and cautiously; but when he got it to the water's edge there was nothing on his hook but a large flat fish – and the toasted cheese had all broken away and was gone.

"What a foolish old woman, to give me toasted cheese to put into water!" he said to himself; then he heaved a sigh, threw the fish into his bag, and once more went sadly away.

"I dare say the villain of a cat has breakfasted nicely off the toasted cheese without the trouble of coming for it," he said bitterly, when he got home.

"Never mind; we'll maybe have better luck to-morrow," replied the nurse. "I dreamed a dream, and in the dream I thought of something else to do."

So early next morning she brought a fat black pig.

"What in the world am I to do with this?" said Dermot sharply.

"Ah, now, be easy, my dear," said the old woman coaxingly. "Just take it down to the lough and roast it there, and sure when the cat smells the fine smell of it he'll come up for a taste."

Now Dermot was getting rather tired of doing all these odd things; and though he had readily gone to the lough with the mice and the rats and the toasted cheese, yet he did not at all relish the notion of carrying a live pig across the country with him for two or three miles. However, he was very good-natured, and so, although he did not himself think that any good would come of it, after a little while he let his nurse persuade him to take the pig. The old woman tied a string about its leg, and he took it to the lough, and as soon as he got there he collected some sticks and peat together and, building up a good big pile, set light to it. Then he killed the pig with his hunting-knife and hung it up before the fire to roast. Presently a most savory smell began to fill the air.

Dermot withdrew a little way, sat down behind a jutting piece of rock, and watched, his eyes never leaving the smooth surface of the lough; but minute after minute passed and not the slightest movement stirred it. From time to time he made up his fire afresh, and turned his pig from side to side. The whole air around grew full of the smell of roasting meat, so savory that, being hungry, it made Dermot's own mouth water; but still – there lay the lough, quiet and smooth, and undisturbed as glass, with only the dark shadows of the silent rocks lying across it.

At last the pig was cooked and ready, and Dermot rose and drew it from the fire.

"I may as well make my own dinner off it," he thought sorrowfully to himself, "for nobody else will come to have a share of it." So he took his knife and cut himself a juicy slice, and sat down again, concealing himself behind the rock, with his bow and arrow by his side, and had just lifted the first morsel to his lips, when —

Down fell the untasted meat upon the ground, and his heart leaped to his lips, for surely something at last was stirring the waters! The oily surface had broken into circles; there was a movement, a little splash, a sudden vision of something black. A moment or two he sat breathlessly gazing; and then – was he asleep, or was he waking, and really saw it? – he saw above the water a black cat's head. Black head, black paws put out to swim, black back, black tail.

Dermot took his bow up in his hand, and tried to fit an arrow to it; but his hand shook, and for a few moments he could not draw. Slowly the creature swam to the water's edge, and, reaching it, planted its feet upon the earth, and looked warily, with green, watchful eye, all round; then, shaking itself – and the water seemed to glide off its black fur as off a duck's back – it licked its lips, and, giving one great sweep into the air, it bounded forward to where the roasted pig was smoking on the ground. For a moment Dermot saw it, with its tail high in the air and its tongue stretched out to lick the crackling; and then, sharp and sure, whiz! went an arrow from his bow; and the next moment, stretched flat upon the ground, after one great dismal howl, lay the man-cat, or cat-man, with an arrow in his heart.