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

as easy as not have gone over himself, holding the pole under water that time."

The fussy little captain, as far as Caius could judge, was not acting a part. The sailors were French; they could talk some English; and they spoke in both languages a great deal.

"His lady won't be much troubled, I dare say, from all I hear." The captain was becoming easy and good-natured again. He said to Caius: "You are acquainted with her?"

"She will be shocked," said Caius.

He felt as he spoke that he himself was suffering from shock--so much so that he was hardly able to think consecutively about what had occurred.

"They won't have an inquest without the body," shouted the captain to O'Shea. Then to those about him he remarked: "He was as decent and good-natured a fellow as I'd want to see."

The pronoun referred to Le Maitre. The remark was perhaps prompted by natural pity, but it was so instantly agreed to by all on the vessel that the chorus had the air of propitiating the spirit of the dead.


CHAPTER XI.

THE RIDDLE OF LIFE.

The schooner slowly moved along, and lay not far from the steamship. The steamship did not start for Souris until the afternoon. Caius was put on shore there to await the hour of embarking. In his own mind he was questioning whether he would embark with the steamer or return to Cloud Island; but he naturally did not make this problem known to those around him.

The skipper and several men of the schooner came ashore with Caius. There was a great bustle as soon as they reached the small wharf because of what they had to tell. It was apparent from all that was told, and all the replies that were made, that no shadow of suspicion was to fall upon O'Shea. Why should it? He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge against Le Maitre, whose death had been evidently an accident.

A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him. When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt. He found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within sight of her house. "Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.

Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this first mail of the year. He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place. He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly. He had not opened his letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.

The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when necessary, with a good conscience. Had O'Shea a good conscience now? Would he continue to be in all respects the man he had been, and the staunch friend of Josephine? In his heart Caius believed that Le Maitre was murdered; but he had no evidence to prove it--nothing whatever but what O'Shea's wife had said to him that day she was hanging out her linen, and such talk occurs in many a household, and nothing comes of it.

Now Josephine was free. "What a blessing!" He used the common idiom to himself, and then wondered at it. Could one man's crime be another man's blessing? He found himself, out of love for Josephine, wondering concerning the matter from the point of view of the religious theory of life. Perhaps this was Heaven's way of answering Josephine's appeal, and saving her; or perhaps human souls are so knit together that O'Shea, by the sin, had not blessed, but hindered her from blessing. It was a weary round of questions, which Caius was not wise enough to answer. Another more practical question pressed.

Did he dare to return now to Cloud Island, and watch over Josephine in the shock which she must sustain, and find out if she would discover the truth concerning O'Shea? After a good while he answered the question: No; he did not dare to return, knowing what he did and his own cowardly share in it. He could not face Josephine, and, lonely as she was, she did not need him; she had her prayers, her angels, her heaven.

Perhaps Time, the proverbial healer of all wounds, would wash the sense of guilt from his soul, and then he could come back and speak to Josephine concerning this new freedom of hers. Then he remembered that some say that for the wound of guilt Time no healing art. Could he find, then, other shrift? He did not know. He longed for it sorely, because he longed to feel fit to return to Josephine. But, after all, what had he done of which he was ashamed? What was his guilt? Had he felt any emotion that it was not natural to feel? Had he done anything wrong? Again he did not know. He sat with head bowed, and felt in dull misery that O'Shea was a better man than he--more useful and brave, and not more guilty.

He opened his letters, and found that in his absence no worse mishap had occurred at home than that his father had been laid up some time with a bad leg, and that both father and mother had allowed themselves to worry and fret lest ill should have befallen their son.

Caius embarked on the little steamship that afternoon, and the next noon found him at home.

The person who met him on the threshold of his father's house was Jim Hogan. Jim grinned.

"Since you've taken to charities abroad," he said, "I thought I'd begin at home."

Jim's method of beginning at home was not in the literal sense of the proverb. It turned out that he had been neighbouring to some purpose. Old Simpson could not move himself about indoors or attend to his work without, and Jim, who had not before this attached himself by regular employment, had by some freak of good-nature given his services day by day until Caius should return, and had become an indispensable member of the household.

"He's not a very respectable young man," said the mother apologetically to her son, while she was still wiping her tears of joy; "but it's just wonderful what patience he's had in his own larky way with your father, when, though I say it who shouldn't, your father's been as difficult to manage as a crying baby, and Jim, he just makes his jokes when anyone else would have been affronted, and there's father laughing in spite of himself sometimes. So I don't know how it is, but we've just had him to stop on, for he's took to the farm wonderful."

An hour after, when alone with his father, Simpson said to him:

"Your mother, you know, was timorous at night when I couldn't help myself; and then she'd begin crying, as women will, saying as she knew you were dead, and that, any way, it was lonesome without you. So when I saw that it comforted her a bit to have someone to cook for, I encouraged the fellow. I told him he'd nothing to look for from me, for his father is richer than I am nowadays; but he's just the sort to like vagary."

Jim went home, and Caius began a simple round of home duties. His father needed much attendance; the farm servants needed direction. Caius soon found out, without being told, that neither in one capacity nor the other did he fulfil the old man's pleasure nearly so well as the rough-and-ready Jim. Even his mother hardly let a day pass without innocently alluding to some prank of Jim's that had amused her. She would have been very angry if anyone had told her that she did not find her son as good a companion. Caius did not tell her so, but he was perfectly aware of it.

Caius had not been long at home when his cousin Mabel came to visit them. This time his mother made no sly remarks concerning Mabel's reason for timing her visit, because it seemed that Mabel had paid a long and comforting visit while he had been at the Magdalen Islands. Mabel did not treat Caius now with the unconscious flattery of blind admiration, neither did she talk to him about Jim; but her silence whenever Jim's name was mentioned was eloquent.

Caius summed all this up in his own mind. He and Jim had commenced life as lads together. The one had trodden the path of virtue and laudable ambition; the other had just amused himself, and that in many reprehensible ways; and now, when the ripe age of manhood was attained in that state of life to which--as the Catechism would have it--it had pleased God to call them, it was Jim who was the useful and honoured man, not Caius.

It was clear that all the months and years of his absence had enabled his parents to do very well without their son. They did not know it, but in all the smaller things that make up the most of life, his interests had ceased to be their interests. Caius had the courage to realize that even at home he was not much wanted. If, when Jim married Mabel, he would settle down with the old folks, they would be perfectly happy.

On his return, Caius had learned that the post for which he had applied in the autumn had not been awarded to him. He knew that he must go as soon as possible to find out a good place in which to begin his professional life, but at present the state of his father's bad leg was so critical, and the medical skill of the neighbourhood so poor, that he was forced to wait.

All this time there was one main thought in his mind, to which all others were subordinate. He saw his situation quite clearly; he had no doubts about it. If Josephine would come to him and be his wife, he would be happy and prosperous. Josephine had the power to make him twice the man he was without her. It was not only that his happiness was bound up in her; it was not only that Josephine had money and could manage it well, although he was not at all above thinking of that; it was not even that she would help and encourage and console him as no one else would. There was that subtle something, more often the fruit of what is called friendship than of love, by which Josephine's presence increased all his strong faculties and subdued his faults. Caius knew this with the unerring knowledge of instinct. He tried to reason about it, too: even a dull king reigns well if he have but the wit to choose good ministers; and among men, each ruling his small kingdom,