The Mermaid by Lily Dougall (portable ebook reader TXT) 📕

an artful trick, and he did not fail to suggest that the woman had wanted modesty. Nothing, he observed, was more common than for men who were in love to attribute mental and physical charms to women who were in reality vulgar and blatant. Caius, feeling that he could advance no argument, refused to discuss the subject; it was months before he had the same liking for this friend, and it was a sign that what the other called "the sea-myth" was losing its power over him when he returned to this friendship.

Caius did not make many friends. It was not his nature to do so, and though constant to the few that he had, he did not keep up any very lively intercourse. It was partly because of this notable failure in social duty that, when he at last decided that the work of preparation must be considered at an end, and the active work of life begun, no opening immediately revealed itself to his inquiring gaze. Two vacant positions in his native country he heard of and coveted, and before he returned he gathered such testimonials as he could, and sent them in advance, offering himself as a candidate. When he landed in Canada he went at once to his first college to beg in person that the influence of his former teachers might be used on his behalf. The three years that had passed without correspondence had made a difference in the attitude of those who could help him; many of his friends also were dispersed, gone from the place. He waited in Montreal until he heard that he was not the accepted candidate for the better of the two positions, and that the other post would not be filled till the early spring.

Caius went home again. He observed that his parents looked older. The leaves were gone from the trees, the days were short, and the earth was cold. The sea between the little island and the red sandstone cliff was utterly lonely. Caius walked by its side sometimes, but there was no mermaid there.


BOOK II.


CHAPTER I.

THE HAND THAT BECKONED.

It was evening. Caius was watering his father's horses. Between the barns and the house the space was grass; a log fence divided it, and against this stood a huge wooden pump and a heavy log hollowed out for a trough. House and barns were white; the house was large, but the barns were many times larger. If it had not been that their sloping roofs of various heights and sizes formed a progression of angles not unpleasant to the eye, the buildings would have been very ugly; but they had also a generous and cleanly aspect which was attractive.

Caius brought the horses to the trough in pairs, each with a hempen halter. They were lightly-built, well-conditioned beasts, but their days of labour had wrought in them more of gentleness than of fire. As they drank now, the breeze played with their manes and forelocks, brushing them about their drooping necks and meek faces. Caius pumped the water for them, and watched them meditatively the while. There was a fire low down in the western sky; over the purple of the leafless woods and the bleak acres of bare red earth its light glanced, not warming them, but showing forth their coldness, as firelight glancing through a window-pane glows cold upon the garden snows. The big butter-nut-tree that stood up high and strong over the pump rattled its twigs in the air, as bare bones might rattle.

It was while he was still at the watering that the elder Simpson drove up to the house door in his gig. He had been to the post-office. This was not an event that happened every day, so that the letter which he now handed Caius might as well as not have been retarded a day or two in its delivery. Caius took it, leading the horses to their stalls, and he examined it by the light of the stable lantern.

The writing, the appearance of the envelope and post-mark, were all quite unfamiliar. The writing was the fine Italian hand common to ladies of a former generation, and was, in Caius' mind, connected only with the idea of elderly women. He opened the letter, therefore, with the less curiosity. Inside he found several pages of the same fine writing, and he read it with his arm round the neck of one of the horses. The lantern, which he had hung on a nail in the stall, sent down dim candlelight upon the pair.

When Caius had read the letter, he turned it over and over curiously, and began to read it again, more out of sheer surprise than from any relish for its contents. It was written by one Madame Josephine Le Maitre, and came from a place which, although not very far from his own home, was almost as unknown to him as the most remote foreign part. It came from one of the Magdalen Islands, that lie some eighty miles' journey by sea to the north of his native shore. The writer stated that she knew few men upon the mainland--in which she seemed to include the larger island of Prince Edward--that Caius Simpson was the only medical man of whom she had any personal knowledge who was at that time unemployed. She stated, also, that upon the island where she lived there were some hundreds of fisher-folk, and that a very deadly disease, that she supposed to be diphtheria, was among them. The only doctor in the whole group refused to come to them, because he feared to take back the infection to the other islands. Indeed, so great was the dread of this infection, that no helpful person would come to their aid except an English priest, and he was able only to make a short weekly visit. It was some months now since the disease had first appeared, and it was increasing rather than diminishing.

"Come," said the letter, "and do what you can to save the lives of these poor people--their need of you is very great; but do not come if you are not willing to risk your life, for you will risk it. Do not come if you are not willing to be cut off from the world all the months the ice lies in the gulf, for at that time we have no communication with the world. You are a good man; you go to church, and believe in the Divine Christ, who was also a physician. It is because of this that I dare to ask you. There is a schooner that will be lying in the harbour of Souris for two or three weeks after the time that you receive this letter. Then she will come here upon her last winter trip. I have arranged with the captain to bring you to us if you can come."

After that the name of the schooner and its captain was given, a list also of some of the things that he would need to bring with him. It was stated that upon the island he would receive lodging and food, and that there were a few women, not unskilled in nursing, who would carry out his instructions with regard to the sick.

Caius folded the letter after the second reading, finished his work with the horses, and walked with his lantern through the now darkening air to the house. Just for a few seconds he stopped in the cold air, and looked about him at the dark land and the starry sky.

"I have now neither the belief nor the enthusiasm she attributes to me," said Caius.

When he got into the bright room he blinked for a moment at the light by which his father was reading.

The elder man took the letter in his hard, knotted hand, and read it because he was desired to do so. When finished, he cast it upon the table, returning to his newspaper.

"Hoots!" said he; "the woman's mad!" And then meditatively, after he had finished his newspaper paragraph: "What dealings have you ever had with her?"

"I never had any dealings with her."

"When you get a letter from a strange woman"--the father spoke with some heat--"the best thing that you can do with it is to put it in the fire."

Now, Caius knew that his father had, as a usual thing, that kindly and simple way of looking at the actions of his fellow-men which is refinement, so that it was evident that the contents of the letter were hateful. That was to be expected. The point that aroused the son's curiosity was to know how far the father recognised an obligation imposed by the letter. The letter would be hateful just in so far as it was considered worthy of attention.

"I suppose," said the young man dubiously, "that we can easily find out at Souris whether the statements in the letter are true or not?"

The father continued to read his paper.

The lamp upon the unpolished walnut table had no shade or globe upon it, and it glared with all the brilliancy of clean glass, and much wick and oil. The dining-room was orderly as ever. The map of Palestine, the old Bible, and some newly-acquired commentaries, obtruded themselves painfully as ornaments. There was no nook or corner in which anything could hide in shadow; there were no shutters on the windows, for there was no one to pass by, unless it might be some good or evil spirit that floated upon the dark air.

Mr. Simpson continued to read his paper without heeding his son. The mother's voice chiding the maid in the next room was the only sound that broke the silence.

"I'll write to that merchant you used to know at Souris, father," Caius spoke in a business-like voice. "He will be able to find out from all the vessels that come in to what extent there is disease on the Magdalens."

The exciting cause in Caius of this remark was his father's indifference and opposition, and the desire to probe it.

"You'll do nothing of the sort." Simpson's answer was very testy. "What call have you to interfere with the Magdalens?" His anger rose from a cause perhaps more explicable to an onlooker than to himself.

In the course of years there had grown in the mind of Caius much prejudice against the form and measure of his parents' religion. He would have throttled another who dared to criticise them, yet he himself took a certain pleasure in an opportunity that made criticism pertinent rather than impertinent. It was not that he prided himself on knowing or doing better, he was not naturally a theorist, nor didactic; but education had awakened his mind, not only to difficulties in the path of faith, but to a higher standard of altruism than was exacted by old-fashioned orthodoxy.

"I think I'd better write to Souris, sir; the letter is to me, you see, and I should not feel quite justified in taking no steps to investigate the matter."

How easy the hackneyed phrase "taking steps" sounded to Caius! but experience breeds strong instincts. The elder man felt the importance of this first decision, and struck out against it as an omen of ill.

"In my opinion you'll do well to let the matter lie where it is. How will you look making inquiries about sick folk as if you had a great fortune to spend upon philanthropy, when it turns out that you have none? If you'd not spent all my money on your own schooling, perhaps you'd have some to play the fine gentleman