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"Tell me, are there any mermaids, or fairies, or water-sprites, or any of those sort of creatures here?" "I must still say 'not exactly," said the cuckoo. "There are beings here, or rather there have been, and there may be again; but you, Griselda, can know no more than this." His tone was rather solemn, and again Griselda felt a little "eerie."
Not that the festive meeting was disturbed by any spectral apparitions: we have seen that the castle was safe from any intrusion of the malicious water-sprites. But the Knight, the Fisherman, and all the guests were haunted by a feeling that the chief person, the soul of the feast, was missing; and who was she but the gentle, beloved Undine?
There was a roar of conflict, and a golden mist hanging in the air, like the smoke of battle. All along the place where the river sank from sight, dazzling heads of foam were flashing up and falling back, as if a horde of water-sprites were vainly trying to fight their way up to the lake.
Strange, tropical flowers, vivid as flame, burned in green recesses; water-sprites upset their caskets of pearls over rock-shelves into translucent pools where lilies lay asleep, dreaming of their own pale beauty.
Aasa well knew that every brook and river has its Neck, besides hosts of little water-sprites. She had heard also that in the moonlight at midsummer, one might chance to see them rocking in bright little shells, playing among the pebbles, or dancing on the large leaves of the water-lily.
It was a tale which brings back a feeling as of snows and tempests; torrents and water-sprites; lovers parted for long, and meeting at last; with a gorgeous summer night to close up the whole. I listened till she and I were blended with the tale; till she and I were the whole history.
And she herself could now scarcely realize at times that the stout, good-natured, short-sighted little man with the big white brow, who had lounged with her daily at the end of the pier, telling her stories, was the most mordant wit in Europe, "the German Aristophanes"; and that those nursery tales, grotesquely compact of mermaids, water-sprites, and a funny old French fiddler with a poodle that diligently took three baths a day, were the frolicsome improvisations of perhaps the greatest lyric poet of his age.
The fallen beauty of past woodland summers had tinged the water till it glowed like nut-brown wine; so brown it was that the pools of the river, where it swirled and rushed past the schoolhouse bend, seemed to greet the sun with the soft dark glances of fawn-eyed water-sprites.
"I do not like the water," she said presently; "it always frightens me. Let us land, Mr. Laurence, please. I will never go on the lake again." Gaspar laughed, and Mr. Dacre declared Beatrice had had too strong a dose of Undine and the water-sprites. Lord Airlie felt her hand tremble as he helped her to leave the boat.
It was a blessed thought! We knew nothing till sunrise, when the motion of our aquatic cot awakened us. I looked up, and beheld Zeke wading toward the shore, and towing us after him by the bark cable. Pointing to the reef, he told us we had had a narrow escape. It was true enough; the water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away.
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