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

yet, in the heat of the moment, he knew that to embody in words the best that might be was to give himself the best chance of realizing it; and he did not believe now that her fierce assertion of indifference for him was true either, but his best self applauded her for it. For a minute he could not tell what Josephine would do next. She stood looking at him helplessly; it seemed as though her subsiding anger had left a fear of herself in its place. But what he dreaded most was that her composure should return.

"Do not be angry with me," he said; "I ask because it is right that I should know. Can you not get rid of this bond of marriage?"

"Do you think," she asked, "that the good God and the Holy Virgin would desire me to put myself--my life--all that is sacred--into courts and newspapers? Do you think the holy Mother of God--looking down upon me, her child--wants me to get out of trouble in _that_ way?" Josephine had asked the question first in distress; then, with a face of peerless scorn, she seemed to put some horrid scene from before her with her hand. "The dear God would rather I would drown myself," she said; "it would at least be"--she hesitated for a word, as if at a loss in her English--"at least be cleaner."

She had no sooner finished that speech than the scorn died out of her face:

"Ah, no," she cried repentant; "the men and women who are driven to seek such redress--I--I truly pity them--but for me--it would not be any use even if it were right. O'Shea says it would be no use, and he knows. I don't think I would do it if I could; but I could not if I would."

"Surely he is dead," pleaded Caius. "How can you live if you do not believe that?"

She came a little nearer to him, making the explanation with child-like earnestness:

"You see, I have talked to God and to the holy Mother about this. I know they have heard my prayers and seen my tears, and will do what is good for me. I ask God always that Le Maitre may not come back to me, so now I know that if" (a gasping sigh retarded for a moment the breath that came and went in her gentle bosom) "if he does come back it will be God's will. Who am I that I should know best? Shall I choose to be what you call a 'missionary' to the poor and sick--and refuse God's will? God can put an end to my marriage if He will; until He does, I will do my duty to my husband: I will till the land that he left idle; I will honour the name he gave me. I dare not do anything except what is very, very right, because I have appealed to the Court of Heaven. You asked me just now if I did not want and need friendship; it does not matter at all what I want, and whatever God does not give me you may be sure I do not need."

He knew that the peace he dreaded had come back to her. She had gone back to the memory of her strength. Now he obeyed the command she had given before, and went out.


CHAPTER VI.

"THE NIGHT IS DARK."

Caius went home to his house. Inconsistency is the hall-mark of real in distinction from unreal life. A note of happy music was sounding in his heart. The bright spring evening seemed all full of joy. He saw a flock of gannets stringing out in long line against the red evening sky, and knew that all the feathered population of the rocks was returning to its summer home. Something more than the mere joy of the season was making him glad; he hardly knew what it was, for it appeared to him that circumstances were untoward.

It was in vain that he reasoned that there was no cause for joy in the belief that Josephine took delight in his society; that delight would only make her lot the harder, and make for him the greater grievance. He might as well have reasoned with himself that there was no cause for joy in the fact of the spring; he was so created that such things made up the bliss of life to him.

Caius did not himself think that Josephine owed any duty to La Maitre; he could only hope, and try to believe, that the man was dead. Reason, common-sense, appeared to him to do away with what slight moral or religious obligation was involved in such a marriage; yet he was quite sure of one thing--that this young wife, left without friend or protector, would have been upon a very much lower level if she had thought in the manner as he did. He knew now that from the first day he had seen her the charm of her face had been that he read in it a character that was not only wholly different to, but nobler than, his own. He reflected now that he should not love her at all if she took a stand less high in its sweet unreasonableness, and his reason for this was simply that, had she done otherwise, she would not have been Josephine.

The thought that Josephine was what she was intoxicated him; all the next day time and eternity seemed glorious to him. The islands were still ringed with the pearly ring of ice-floes, and for one brief spring day, for this lover, it was enough to be yet imprisoned in the same bit of green earth with his lady, to think of all the noble things she had said and done, and, by her influence, to see new vistas opening into eternity in which they two walked together. There was even some self-gratulation that he had attained to faith in Heaven. He was one of those people who always suppose that they would be glad to have faith if they could. It was not faith, however, that had come to him, only a refining and quickening of his imagination.

Quick upon the heels of these high dreams came their test, for life is not a dream.

Between the Magdalen Islands and the mainland, besides the many stray schooners that came and went, there were two lines of regular communication--one was by a sailing vessel which carried freight regularly to and from the port of Gaspe; the other was by a small packet steamer that once a week came from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's Island, and returned by the same route. It was by this steamer, on her first appearance, that Caius ought reasonably to return to his home. She would come as soon as the ice diminished; she would bring him news, withheld for four months, of how his parents had fared in his absence. Caius had not yet decided that he would go home by the first trip; the thought of leaving, when it forced itself upon him, was very painful. This steamer was the first arrival expected, and the islanders, eager for variety and mails, looked excitedly to see the ice melt or be drifted away. Caius looked at the ice ring with more intense longing, but his longing was that it should remain. His wishes, like prayers, besought the cold winds and frosty nights to conserve it for him.

It so happened that the Gaspe schooner arrived before the southern packet, and lay outside of the ice, waiting until she could make her way through. So welcome was the sight that the islanders gathered upon the shores of the bay just for the pleasure of looking at her as she lay without the harbour. Caius looked at her, too, and with comparative indifference, for he rejoiced that he was still in prison.

Upon that day the night fell just as it falls upon all days; but at midnight Caius had a visitor. O'Shea came to him in the darkness.

Caius was awakened from sound sleep by a muffled thumping at his door that was calculated to disturb him without carrying sharp sound into the surrounding air. His first idea was that some drunken fellow had blundered against his wall by mistake. As the sounds continued and the full strangeness of the event, in that lonely place, entered his waking brain, he arose with a certain trepidation akin to that which one feels at the thought of supernatural visitors, a feeling that was perhaps the result of some influence from the spirit of the man outside the door; for when he opened it, and held his candle to O'Shea's face, he saw a look there that made him know certainly that something was wrong.

O'Shea came in and shut the door behind him, and went into the inner room and sat down on the foot of the bed. Caius followed, holding the candle, and inspected him again.

"Sit down, man." O'Shea made an impatient gesture at the light. "Get into bed, if ye will; there's no hurry that I know of."

Caius stood still, looking at the farmer, and such nervousness had come upon him that he was almost trembling with fear, without the slightest notion as yet of what he feared.

"In the name of Heaven----" he began.

"Yes, Heaven!" O'Shea spoke with hard, meditative inquiry. "It's Heaven she trusts in. What's Heaven going to do for her, I'd loike to know?"

"What is it?" The question now was hoarse and breathless.

"Well, I'll tell you what it is if ye'll give me time"--the tone was sarcastic--"and you needn't spoil yer beauty by catching yer death of cold. 'Tain't nicessary, that I know of. There's things that are nicessary; there's things that will be nicessary in the next few days; but that ain't."

For the first time Caius did not resent the caustic manner. Its sharpness was turned now towards an impending fate, and to Caius O'Shea had come as to a friend in need. Mechanically he sat in the middle of the small bed, and huddled its blankets about him. The burly farmer, in fur coat and cap, sat in wooden-like stillness; but Caius was like a man in a fever, restless in his suspense. The candle, which he had put upon the floor, cast up a yellow light on all the scant furniture, on the two men as they thus talked to each other, with pale, tense faces, and threw distorted shadows high up on the wooden walls.

Perhaps it was a relief to O'Shea to torture Caius some time with this suspense. At last he said: "He's in the schooner."

"Le Maitre? How do you know?"

"Well, I'll tell ye how I know. I told ye there was no hurry."

If he was long now in speaking, Caius did not know it. Upon his brain crowded thoughts and imaginations: wild plans for saving the woman he loved; wild, unholy desires of revenge; and a wild vision of misery in the background as yet--a foreboding that the end might be submission to the worst pains of impotent despair.

O'Shea had taken out a piece of paper, but did not open it.

"'Tain't an hour back I got this. The skipper of the schooner and me know each other. He's been bound over by me to let me know if that man ever set foot in his ship to come to this place, and he's managed to get a lad off his ship in the noight, and across the ice, and he brought me this. Le Maitre, he's drunk, lyin' in his bunk;