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

utmost care, and at the same time with despatch. He had some chemical work that had been lying aside for weeks waiting to be done, and this afternoon he did it. He had it on his mind to utilize some of his leisure by writing long letters that he might post when it was possible for him to go home; to-night he wrote two of them.

While he was writing he heard the people coming in twos and threes along the road back to their houses for the night. He supposed that O'Shea had got home with the girls he had been escorting, and that his wife had come home, and that Madame Le Maitre had come back to her house and taken up again her regular routine of life.


CHAPTER III.

"LOVE, I SPEAK TO THY FACE."

Caius thought a good deal about the words that O'Shea's wife had said to him. He did not know exactly what she meant, nor could he guess at all from what point of view concerning himself she had spoken; but the general drift of her meaning appeared to be that he ought not to let Madame Le Maitre know where and how he had seen her the day before. In spite of this, he knew that he could neither be true to himself, nor to the woman he was forced to meet daily, if he made any disguise of the recognition which had occurred. He was in no hurry to meet her; he hoped little or nothing from the interview, but dreaded it. Next day he went without his horse out to where the men were killing the seals upon the edge of the ice.

The warm March sun, and the March winds that agitated the open sea, were doing their work. To-day there was water appearing in places upon the ice where it joined the shore, and when Caius was out with a large band of men upon the extreme edge of the solid ice, a large fragment broke loose. There were some hundred seals upon this bit of ice, which were being butchered one by one in barbarous fashion, and so busy were the men with their work that they merely looked at the widening passage of gray water and continued to kill the beasts that they had hedged round in a murderous ring. It was the duty of those on the shore to bring boats if they were needed. The fragment on which they were could not float far because the sea outside was full of loose ice, and, as it happened, when the dusk fell the chasm of water between them and the shore was not too broad to be jumped easily, for the ice, having first moved seaward, now moved landward with the tide.

For two or three days Caius lent a hand at killing and skinning the gentle-eyed animals. It was not that he did not feel some disgust at the work; but it meant bread to the men he was with, and he might as well help them. It was an experience, and, above all, it was distraction. When the women had seen him at work they welcomed him with demonstrative joy to the hot meals which they prepared twice a day for the hunters. Caius was not quite sure what composed the soups and stews of which he partook, but they tasted good enough.

When he had had enough of the seal-hunt it took him all the next day to cleanse the clothes he had worn from the smell of the fat, and he felt himself to be effeminate in the fastidiousness that made him do it.

During all these days the houses and roads of the island were almost completely deserted, except that Caius supposed that, after the first holiday, the maids who lived with Madame Le Maitre were kept to their usual household tasks, and that their mistress worked with them.

At last, one day when Caius was coming from a house on one of the hills which he had visited because there was in it a little mortal very new to this world, he saw Madame Le Maitre riding up the snowy road that he was descending. He felt glad, at the first sight of her, that he was no longer a youth but had fully come to man's estate, and had attained to that command of nerve and conquest over a beating heart that is the normal heritage of manhood. This thought came to him because he was so vividly reminded of the hour in which he had once before sought an interview with this lady--even holding her hand in his--and of his ignominious repulse. In spite of the sadness of his heart, a smile crossed his face, but it was gone before he met her. He had quite given up wondering now about that seafaring episode, and accepted it only as a fact. It did not matter to him why or how she had played her part; it was enough that she had done it, and all that she did was right in his eyes.

The lady's horse was walking slowly up the heavy hill; the reins she hardly held, letting them loose upon its neck. It was evident that with her there was no difference since the time she had last seen Caius; it appeared that she did not even purpose stopping her horse. Caius stopped it gently, laying his hand upon its neck.

"What is it?" she asked, with evident curiosity, for the face that he turned to her made her aware that there was something new in her quiet life.

It was not easy to find his words; he did not care much to do so quickly. "I could not go on," he said, "without letting you know----" He stopped.

She did not answer him with any quick impatient question. She looked at the snowy hill in front of her. "Well?" she said.

"The other day, you know," he said, "I rode by the back of your poultry farm, and--I saw you when you were feeding the birds."

"Yes?" she said; she was still looking gravely enough at the snow. The communication so far did not affect her much.

"Then, when I saw you, I knew that I had seen you before--in the sea--at home."

A red flush had mantled her face. There was perhaps an air of offence, for he saw that she held her head higher, and knew what the turn of the neck would be in spite of the clumsy hood; but what surprised him most was that she did not express any surprise or dismay.

"I did not suppose," she said, in her own gentle, distant way, "that if you had a good memory for that--foolish play, you would not know me again." Her manner added: "I have attempted no concealment."

"I did not know you in that dress you wear"--there was hatred for the dress in his tone as he mentioned it--"so I supposed that you did not expect me to know who you were."

She did not reply, leaving the burden of finding the next words upon him. It would seem that she did not think there was more to say; and this, her supreme indifference to his recognition or non-recognition, half maddened him. He suddenly saw his case in a new aspect--she was a cruel woman, and he had much with which to reproach her.

"'That foolish play,' as you call it----" he had begun angrily, but a certain sympathy for her, new-born out of his own trouble, stopped him, and he went on, only reproach in his tone: "It was a sad play for me, because my heart has never been my own since. I could not find out who you were then, or where you hid yourself; I do not know now, but----" He stopped; he did not wish to offend her; he looked at the glossy neck of the horse he was holding. "I was young and very foolish, but I loved you."

The sound of his own low sad tones was still in his ears when he also heard the low music of irrepressible laughter, and, looking up, he saw that the recollection which a few minutes before had made him smile had now entirely overcome the lady's gravity. She was blushing, she was trying not to laugh; but in spite of herself she did laugh more and more heartily, and although her merriment was inopportune, he could not help joining in it to some extent. It was so cheerful to see the laughter-loving self appear within the grave face, to be beside her, and to have partnership in her mirth. So they looked in each other's eyes, and they both laughed, and after that they felt better.

"And yet," said he, "it was a frolic that has worked sorrow for me."

"Come," said she, lifting her reins, "you will regret if you go on talking this way."

She would have gone on quite lightly and contentedly, and left him there as if he had said nothing of love, as if their words had been the mere reminiscence of a past that had no result in the present, as if his heart was not breaking; but a fierce sense of this injustice made him keep his hold of her bridle. She could weep over the pains of the poor and the death of their children. She should not go unmindful that his happiness was wrecked.

"Do you still take me for the young muff that I used to be, that you pay no heed to what I say? I would scorn to meet you every day while I must remain here and conceal from you the fact which, such is my weakness, is the only fact in life for me just now. My heart is breaking because I have found that the woman I love is wholly out of my reach. Can you not give that a passing thought of pity? I have told you now; when we meet, you will know that it is not as indifferent acquaintances, but as--enemies if you will, for you, a happy married woman--will count me your enemy! Yet I have not harmed you, and the truth is better at all costs."

She was giving him her full attention now, her lips a little parted as if with surprise, question plainly written upon her face. He could not understand how the cap and hood had ever concealed her from him. Her chief beauty lay, perhaps, in the brow, in the shape of the face, and in its wreath of hair--or at least in the charm that these gave to the strong character of the features; but now that he knew her, he knew her face wholly, and his mind filled in what was lacking; he could perceive no lack. He looked at her, his eyes full of admiration, puzzled the while at her evident surprise.

"But surely," she said, "you cannot be so foolish--you, a man now--to think that the fancy you took to a pretty face, for it could have been nothing more, was of any importance."

"Such fancies make or mar the lives of men."

"Of unprincipled fools, yes--of men who care for appearance more than sympathy. But you are not such a man! It is not as if we had been friends; it is not as if we had ever spoken. It is wicked to call such a foolish fancy by the name of love; it is desecration."

While she was speaking, her words revealed to Caius, with swift analysis, a distinction that he had not made before. He knew now that before he came to this island, before he had gone through the