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

/> "You asked me what I had been doing for this age," said he. It was miserably stupid to explain.

When Caius and Mabel had sauntered up through the warm fields to the house, his mother met them in the front parlour with a fresh cap on. Her cap, and her presence in that room, denoted that Mabel was company. She immediately began to make sly remarks concerning Mabel's coming to them while Caius was at home, about her going to meet him, and their homeward walk together.

The mother was comparatively at ease about Mabel; she had little idea that Caius would ever make love to her, so she could enjoy her good-natured slyness to the full. What hurt Caius was that she did enjoy it, that it was just her natural way never to see two young people of opposite sex together without immediately thinking of the subject of marriage, and sooner or later betraying her thought. Heretofore he had been so accustomed to this cast of mind that, when it had tickled neither his sense of humour nor his vanity, he had been indifferent to it. To-night he knew it was vulgar; but he had no contempt for it, because it was his mother who was betraying vulgarity. He felt sorry that she should be like that--that all the men and women with whom she was associated were like that. He felt sorry for Mabel, because she enjoyed it, and consequently more tenderhearted towards her than he had ever felt before.

He had not, however, a great many thoughts to give to this sorrow, for he was thinking continually of the bright apparition of the afternoon.

When he went to his room to get ready for tea he fell into a muse, looking over the fields and woods to the distant glimpse of blue water he could see from his window. When he came down to the evening meal, he found himself wondering foolishly upon what food the child lost in the sea had fed while she grew so rapidly to a woman's stature. The present meal was such as fell to the daily lot of that household. In homely blue delft cups a dozen or more eggs were ranged beside high stacks of buttered toast, rich and yellow. The butter, the jugs of yellow cream, the huge platter heaped with wild raspberries--as each of these met his eye he was wondering if the sea-maid ever ate such food, or if her diet was more delicate.

"Am I going mad?" he thought to himself. The suspicion was depressing.

Three hours after, Caius sough his father as the old man was making his nightly tour of the barns and stables. By way of easing his own sense of responsibility he had decided to tell his father what he had seen, and his telling was much like such confession of sins as many people make, soothing their consciences by an effort that does not adequately reveal the guilt to the listener.

Caius came up just as his father was locking the stable door.

"Look here, father; wait a minute. I have something to say. I saw a very curious thing down at the shore to-day, but I don't want you to tell mother, or Mabel, or the men."

The old man stood gravely expectant. The summer twilight just revealed the outline of his thin figure and ragged hair and beard.

"It was in the water swimming about, making darts here and there like a big trout. Its body was brown, and it looked as if it had horny balls round its neck; and its head, you know, was like a human being's."

"I never heard tell of a fish like that, Caius. Was it a porpoise?"

"Well, I suppose I know what a porpoise is like."

"About how large was it?" said the elder man, abandoning the porpoise theory.

"I should think about five or six feet long."

"As long as that? Did it look as if it could do any harm?"

"No; I should think it was harmless; but, father, I tell you its head looked like a person's head."

"Was it a shark with a man stuck in its throat?"

"N--n--no." Not liking to deny this ingenious suggestion too promptly, he feigned to consider it. "It wasn't a dead man's head; it was like a live woman's head."

"I never heard of sharks coming near shore here, any way," added the old man. "What distance was it off--half a mile?"

"It came between me and the little island off which we lost baby Day. It lay half-way between the island and the shore."

The old man was not one to waste words. He did not remark that in that case Caius must have seen the creature clearly, for it went without saying.

"Pity you hadn't my gun," he said.

Caius inwardly shuddered, but because he wished to confide as far as he might, he said outwardly: "I shouldn't have liked to shoot at it; its face looked so awfully human, you know."

"Yes," assented the elder, who had a merciful heart "it's wonderful what a look an animal has in its eyes sometimes." He was slowly shuffling round to the next door with his keys. "Well, I'm sure, my lad, I don't know what it could ha' been, unless 'twas some sort of a porpoise."

"We should be quite certain to know if there was any woman paying a visit hereabout, shouldn't we? A woman couldn't possibly swim across the bay."

"Woman!" The old man turned upon him sternly. "I thought you said it was a fish."

"I said she _swam_ like a fish. She might have been a woman dressed in a fish-skin, perhaps; but there isn't any woman here that could possibly be acting like that--and old Morrison told me the same thing was about the shore the summer before he died."

His father still looked at him sharply. "Well, the question is, whether the thing you saw was a woman or a fish, for you must have seen it pretty clear, and they aren't alike, as far as I know."

Caius receded from the glow of confidence. "It lay pretty much under the water, and wasn't still long at a time."

The old man looked relieved, and in his relief began to joke. "I was thinking you must have lost your wits, and thought you'd seen a mermaid," he chuckled.

"I'd think it was a mermaid in a minute"--boldly--"if there were such things."

Caius felt relieved when he had said this, but the old man had no very distinct idea in his mind attached to the mythical word, so he let go the thought easily.

"Was it a dog swimming?"

"No," said Caius, "it wasn't a dog."

"Well, I give it up. Next time you see it, you'd better come and fetch the gun, and then you can take it to the musee up at your college, and have it stuffed and put in a case, with a ticket to say you presented it. That's all the use strange fish are that I know of."

When Caius reflected on this conversation, he knew that he had been a hypocrite.


CHAPTER IX.

THE SEA-MAID'S MUSIC.

At dawn Caius was upon the shore again, but he saw nothing but a red sunrise and a gray sea, merging into the blue and green and gold of the ordinary day. He got back to breakfast without the fact of his matutinal walk being known to the family.

He managed also in the afternoon to loiter for half an hour on the same bit of shore at the same hour as the day before without anyone being the wiser, but he saw no mermaid. He fully intended to spend to-morrow by the sea, but he had made this effort to appear to skip to-day to avoid awaking curiosity.

He had a horse and buggy; that afternoon he was friendly, and made many calls. Wherever he went he directed the conversation into such channels as would make it certain that he would hear if anyone else had seen the mermaid, or had seen the face of a strange woman by sea or land. Of one or two female visitors to the neighbourhood within a radius of twenty miles he did hear, but when he came to investigate each case, he found that the visit was known to everyone, and the status, lineage and habits of the visitors all of the same humdrum sort.

He decided in his own mind that ten miles was the utmost length that a woman could possibly swim, but he talked boldly of great swimming feats he had seen in his college life, and opined that a good swimmer might even cross the bay from Montrose or from the little port of Stanhope in the other direction; and when he saw the incredulity of his listeners, he knew that no one had accomplished either journey, for the water was overlooked by a hundred houses at either place, and many a small vessel ploughed the waves.

When he went to sleep that night Caius was sure that the vision of the mermaid was all his own, shared only by old Morrison, who lay in his grave. It was perhaps this partnership with the dead that gave the matter its most incredible and unreal aspect. Three years before this lady of the sea had frequented this spot; none but the dead man and himself had been permitted to see her.

"Well, when all's said and done," said Caius to himself, rolling upon a sleepless bed, "it's a very extraordinary thing."

Next morning he hired a boat, the nearest that was to be had; he got it a mile and a half further up the shore. It was a clumsy thing, but he rowed it past the mouth of the creek where he used to fish, all along the water front of Day's farm, past the little point that was the beginning of the rocky part of the shore, and then he drew the boat up upon the little island. He hid it perfectly among the grass and weeds. Over all the limited surface, among the pine shrubs and flowering weeds, he searched to see if hiding-place for the nymph could be found. Two colts were pastured on the isle. He found no cave or hut. When he had finished his search, he sat and waited and watched till the sun set over the sea; but to-day there was no smiling face rearing itself from the blue water, no little hand beckoning him away.

"What a fool I was not to go where she beckoned!" mused Caius. "Where? Anywhere into the heart of the ocean, out of this dull, sordid life into the land of dreams."

For it must all have been a dream--a sweet, fantastic dream, imposed upon his senses by some influence, outward or inward; but it seemed to him that at the hour when he seemed to see the maid it might have been given him to enter the world of dreams, and go on in some existence which was a truer reality than the one in which he now was. In a deliberate way he thought that perhaps, if the truth were known, he, Dr. Caius Simpson, was going a little mad; but as he sat by the softly lapping sea he did not regret this madness: what he did regret was that he must go home and--talk to Mabel.

He rowed his boat back with feelings of blank disappointment. He could not give another day to idleness upon the shore. It was impossible that such an