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

Gaspe Basin. She's on the Magdalens now. I understood that you had had dealings with her."

"Yes; I was just about to suggest--I was going to say----"

"I wrote to her. She is coming," said Day.


CHAPTER XIII.

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING.

Josephine had come. All night and all the next day she had been by her aunt's bedside; for Day's wife lay helpless now, and death was very near. This much Caius knew, having kept himself informed by communication with the village doctor, and twenty-four hours after Josephine's arrival he walked over to the Day farm, hoping that, as the cool of the evening might relax the strain in the sick-room, she would be able to speak to him for a few minutes.

When he got to the dreary house he met its owner, who had just finished his evening work. The two men sat on wooden chairs outside the door and watched the dusk gathering on sea and land, and although they did not talk much, each felt glad of the other's companionship.

It was nine years since Caius had first made up his mind that Day was a monster of brutality and wickedness; now he could not think himself back into the state of mind that could have formed such a judgment When Caius had condemned Day, he had been a religions youth who thought well of himself; now his old religious habits and beliefs had dropped off, but he did not think well of himself or harshly of his neighbour. In those days he had felt sufficient for life; now all his feeling was summed up in the desire that was scarcely a hope, that some heavenly power, holy and strong, would come to his aid.

It is when the whole good of life hangs in a trembling balance that people become like children, and feel the need of the motherly powers of Heaven. Caius sat with Day for two hours, and Josephine did not come down to speak to him. He was glad to know that Day's evening passed the more easily because he sat there with him; he was glad of that when he was glad of nothing that concerned himself.

Day and Caius did not talk about death or sorrow, or anything like that. All the remarks that they interchanged turned upon the horses Day was rearing and their pastures. Day told that he had found the grass on the little island rich.

"I remember finding two of your colts there one day when I explored it. It was four years ago," said Caius dreamily.

Day took no interest in this lapse of time.

"It's an untidy bit of land," he said, "and I can't clear it. 'Tisn't mine; but no one heeds the colts grazing."

"Do you swim them across?" asked Caius, half in polite interest, half because his memory was wandering upon the water.

"They got so sharp at swimming, I had to raise the fence on the top of the cliff," said Day.

The evening wore away.

In the morning Caius, smitten with the fever of hope and fear, rose up at dawn, and, as in a former time he had been wont to do, ran to the seashore by the nearest path and walked beside the edge of the waves. He turned, as he had always done, towards the little island and the Day Farm.

How well he knew every outward curve and indentation of the soft red shelving bank! how well he knew the colouring of the cool scene in the rising day, the iridescent light upon the lapping waves, the glistening of the jasper red of the damp beach, and the earthen pinks of the upper cliffs! The sea birds with low pathetic note called out to him concerning their memories of the first dawn in which he had walked there searching for the body of the dead baby. Then the cool tints of dawn passed into the golden sunrise, and the birds went on calling to him concerning the many times in which he had trodden this path as a lover whose mistress had seemed so strange a denizen of this same wide sea.

Caius did not think with scorn now of this old puzzle and bewilderment, but remembered it fondly, and went and sat beneath baby Day's epitaph, on the very rock from which he had first seen Josephine. It was very early in the morning; the sun had risen bright and warm. At that season even this desolate bit of shore wag garlanded above with the most lovely green; the little island was green as an emerald.

Caius did not intend to keep his present place long. The rocky point where the red cliff ended hid any portion of the Day farm from his view, and as soon as the morning was far enough advanced he intended to go and see how the owner and his household had fared during the night.

In the meantime he waited, and while he waited Fate came to him smiling.

Once or twice as he sat he heard the sound of horse's feet passing on the cliff above him. He knew that Day's horses were there, for they were pastured alternately upon the cliff and upon the richer herbage of the little island. He supposed by the sounds that they were catching one of them for use on the farm. The sounds went further away, for he did not hear the tread of hoofs again. He had forgotten them; his face had dropped upon his hands; he was looking at nothing, except that, beneath the screen of his fingers, he could see the red pebbles at his feet. Something very like a prayer was in his heart; it had no form; it was not a thing of which his intellect could take cognizance. Just then he heard a cry of fear and a sound as if of something dashing into the water. The sounds came from behind the rocky point. Caius knew the voice that cried and he rose up wildly, but staggered, baffled by his old difficulty, that the path thither lay only through deep water or round above the cliff.

Then he saw a horse swimming round the red rocks, and on its back a woman sat, not at ease--evidently distressed and frightened by the course the animal was taking. To Caius the situation became clear. Josephine had thought to refresh herself after her night's vigil by taking an early ride, and the young half-broken horse, finding himself at large, was making for the delicacies which he knew were to be found on the island pasture. Josephine did not know why her steed had put out to sea, or whither he was going. She turned round, and, seeing Caius, held out her hand, imploring his aid.

Caius thanked Heaven at that moment It was true that Josephine kept her seat upon the horse perfectly, and it was true that, unless the animal intended to lie down and roll when he got into the deep grass of the island, he had probably no malicious intention in going there. That did not matter. Josephine was terrified by finding herself in the sea and she had cried to him for aid. A quick run, a short swim, and Caius waded up on the island sands. The colt had a much longer distance to swim, and Caius waited to lay his hand on the bridle.

For a minute or two there was a chase among the shallow, rippling waves, but a horse sinking in heavy sand is not hard to catch. Josephine sat passive, having enough to do, perhaps, merely to keep her seat. When at length Caius stood on the island grass with the bridle in his hand, she slipped down without a word and stood beside him.

Caius let the dripping animal go, and he went, plunging with delight among the flowering weeds and bushes. Caius himself was dripping also, but, then, he could answer for his own movements that he would not come too near the lady.

Josephine no longer wore her loose black working dress; this morning she was clad in an old habit of green cloth. It was faded with weather, and too long in the skirt for the fashion then in vogue, but Caius did not know that; he only saw that the lower part of the skirt was wet, and that, as she stood at her own graceful height upon the grass, the wet cloth twisted about her feet and lay beside them in a rounded fold, so that she looked just now more like the pictures of the fabled sea-maids than she had ever done when she had floated in the water.

The first thing Josephine did was to look up in his face and laugh; it was her own merry peal of low laughter that reminded him always of a child laughing, not more for fun than for mere happiness. It bridged for him all the sad anxieties and weary hours that had passed since he had heard her laugh before; and, furthermore, he knew, without another moment's doubt, that Josephine, knowing him as she did, would never have looked up to him like that unless she loved him. It was not that she was thinking of love just then--that was not what was in her face; but it was clear that she was conscious of no shadow of difference between them such as would have been there if his love had been doomed to disappointment. She looked to him to join in her laughter with perfect comradeship.

"Why did the horse come here?" asked Josephine.

Caius explained the motives of the colt as far as he understood them; and she told how she had persuaded her uncle to let her ride it, and all that she had thought and felt when it had run away with her down the chine and into the water. It was not at all what he could have believed beforehand, that when he met Josephine they would talk with perfect contentment of the affairs of the passing hour; and yet so it was.

With graver faces they talked of the dying woman, with whom Josephine had passed the night. It was not a case in which death was sad; it was life, not death, that was sad for the wandering brain. But Josephine could tell how in those last nights the poor mother had found peace in the presence of her supposed child.

"She curls my hair round her thin fingers and seems so happy," said Josephine.

She did not say that the thin hands had fingered her wedding-ring; but Caius thought of it, and that brought him back the remembrance of something that had to be said that must be said then, or every moment would become a sin of weak delay.

"I want to tell you," he began--"I know I must tell you--I don't know exactly why, but I must--I am sorry to say anything to remind you--to distress you--but I hated Le Maitre! Looking back, it seems to me that the only reason I did not kill him was that I was too much of a coward."

Josephine looked off upon the sea. The wearied pained look that she used to wear when the people were ill about her, or that she had worn when she heard Le Maitre was returning, came back to her face, so that she seemed not at all the girl who had been laughing with him a minute before, but a saint, whose image he could have worshipped. And yet he saw then, more clearly than he had ever seen, that the charm, the perfect consistency of her character, lay in