The Mermaid

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THE MERMAID

"Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God."

A Love Tale

by

L. DOUGALL

Author of Beggars All, What Necessity Knows, Etc.

New York
D. Appleton and Company
1895
Copyright, 1895,
by D. Appleton and Company.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--THE BENT TWIG 1

II.--THE SAD-EYED CHILD 4

III.--LOST IN THE SEA 11

IV.--A QUIET LIFE 19

V.--SEEN THROUGH BLEAR EYES 24

VI.--"FROM HOUR TO HOUR WE RIPE----" 34

VII.--"A SEA CHANGE" 41

VIII.--BELIEF IN THE IMPOSSIBLE 49

IX.--THE SEA-MAID'S MUSIC 56

X.--TOWED BY THE BEARD 65

XI.--YEARS OF DISCRETION 71

BOOK II.

I.--THE HAND THAT BECKONED 75

II.--THE ISLES OF ST. MAGDALEN 85

III.--BETWEEN THE SURF AND THE SAND 90

IV.--WHERE THE DEVIL LIVED 101

V.--DEVILRY 109

VI.--THE SEA-MAID 118

VII.--THE GRAVE LADY 122

VIII.--HOW THEY LIVED ON THE CLOUD 126

IX.--THE SICK AND THE DEAD 136

X.--A LIGHT-GIVING WORD 141

XI.--THE LADY'S HUSBAND 149

XII.--THE MAIDEN INVENTED 155

XIII.--WHITE BIRDS; WHITE SNOW; WHITE THOUGHTS 166

XIV.--THE MARRIAGE SCENE 173

BOOK III.

I.--HOW WE HUNTED THE SEALS 183

II.--ONCE MORE THE VISION 188

III.--"LOVE, I SPEAK TO THY FACE" 193

IV.--HOPE BORN OF SPRING 201

V.--TO THE HIGHER COURT 208

VI.--"THE NIGHT IS DARK" 216

VII.--THE WILD WAVES WHIST 227

VIII.--"GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN" 236

IX.--"GOD'S PUPPETS, BEST AND WORST" 249

X.--"DEATH SHRIVE THY SOUL!" 254

XI.--THE RIDDLE OF LIFE 263

XII.--TO CALL A SPIRIT FROM THE VASTY DEEP 271

XIII.--THE EVENING AND THE MORNING 283

THE MERMAID.

_BOOK I._

CHAPTER I.

THE BENT TWIG.

Caius Simpson was the only son of a farmer who lived on the north-west
coast of Prince Edward's Island. The farmer was very well-to-do, for he
was a hard-working man, and his land produced richly. The father was a
man of good understanding, and the son had been born with brains; there
were traditions of education in the family, hence the name Caius; it was
no plan of the elder man that his son should also be a farmer. The boy
was first sent to learn in what was called an "Academy," a school in the
largest town of the island. Caius loved his books, and became a youthful
scholar. In the summer he did light work on the farm; the work was of a
quiet, monotonous sort, for his parents were no friends to frivolity or
excitement.

Caius was strictly brought up. The method of his training was that which
relies for strength of character chiefly upon the absence of temptation.
The father was under the impression that he could, without any laborious
effort and consideration, draw a line between good and evil, and keep
his son on one side of it. He was not austere--but his view of
righteousness was derived from puritan tradition.

A boy, if kindly treated, usually begins early to approve the only
teaching of which he has experience. As a youth, Caius heartily endorsed
his father's views, and felt superior to all who were more lax. He had
been born into that religious school which teaches that a man should
think for himself on every question, provided that he arrives at a
foregone conclusion. Caius, at the age of eighteen, had already done
much reasoning on certain subjects, and proved his work by observing
that his conclusions tallied with set models. As a result, he was, if
not a reasonable being, a reasoning and a moral one.

We have ceased to draw a distinction between Nature and the forces of
education. It is a great problem why Nature sets so many young people in
the world who are apparently unfitted for the battle of life, and
certainly have no power to excel in any direction. The subjective
religion which Caius had been taught had nourished within him great
store of noble sentiment and high desire, but it had deprived him of
that rounded knowledge of actual life which alone, it would appear,
teaches how to guide these forces into the more useful channels. Then as
to capacity, he had the fine sensibilities of a poet, the facile
introspection of the philosophical cast of mind, without the mental
power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in
youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which
appear necessary to heroism. In mockery the quality of ambition was
bestowed upon him but not the requisites for success. Nature has been
working for millions of years to produce just such characters as Caius
Simpson, and, character being rather too costly a production to throw
away, no doubt she has a precise use for every one of them.

It is not the province of art to solve problems, but to depict them. It
is enough for the purpose of telling his story that a man has been
endowed with capacity to suffer and rejoice.

CHAPTER II.

THE SAD-EYED CHILD.

One evening in early summer Caius went a-fishing. He started to walk
several miles to an inlet where at high tide the sea-trout came within
reach of the line. The country road was of red clay, and, turning from
the more thickly-settled district, Caius followed it through a wide wood
of budding trees and out where it skirted the top of low red cliffs,
against which the sea was lapping. Then his way led him across a farm.
So far he had been walking indolently, happy enough, but here the shadow
of the pain of the world fell upon him.

This farm was a lonesome place close to the sea; there was no appearance
of prosperity about it. Caius knew that the farmer, Day by name, was a
churl, and was said to keep his family on short rations of happiness. As
Caius turned off the public road he was not thinking specially of the
bleak appearance of the particular piece of farmland he was crossing, or
of the reputation of the family who lived upon the increase of its
acres; but his attention was soon drawn to three children swinging on a
gate which hung loosely in the log fence not far from the house. The
eldest was an awkward-looking girl about twelve years of age; the second
was a little boy; the youngest was a round-limbed, blond baby of two or
three summers. The three stood upon the lowest bar of the gate, clinging
to the upper spars. The eldest leaned her elbows on the top and looked
over; the baby embraced the middle bar and looked through. They had set
the rickety gate swinging petulantly, and it latched and unlatched
itself with the sort of sound that the swaying of some dreary wind would
give it. The children seemed to swing there, not because they were
happy, but because they were miserable.

As Caius came with light step up the lane, fishing gear over his
shoulder, the children looked at him disconsolately, and when he
approached the gate the eldest stepped down and pulled it open for him.

"Anything the matter?" he asked, stopping his quick tread, and turning
when he had passed through.

The big girl did not answer, but she let go the gate, and when it jerked
forward the baby fell.

She did not fall far, nor was she hurt; but as Caius picked her up and
patted her cotton clothes to shake the dust out of them, it seemed to
him that he had never seen so sad a look in a baby's eyes. Large, dark,
dewy eyes they were, circled around with curly lashes, and they looked
up at him out of a wistful little face that was framed by a wreath of
yellow hair. Caius lifted the child, kissed her, put her down, and went
on his way. He only gave his action half a thought at the time, but all
his life afterwards he was sorry that he had let the baby go out of his
arms again, and thankful that he had given her that one kiss.

His path now lay close by the house and on to the sea-cliff behind. The
house stood in front of him--four bare wooden walls, brown painted, and
without veranda or ornament; its barns, large and ugly, were close
beside it. Beyond, some stunted firs grew in a dip of the cliff, but on
the level ground the farmer had felled every tree. The homestead itself
was ugly; but the land was green, and the sea lay broad and blue, its
breast swelling to the evening sun. The air blew sweet over field and
cliff, add the music of the incoming tide was heard below the
pine-fringed bank. Caius, however, was not in the receptive mind which
appreciates outward things. His attention was not thoroughly aroused
from himself till the sound of harsh voices struck his ear.

Between the farmhouse and the barns, on a place worn bare by the feet of
men and animals, the farmer and his wife stood in hot dispute. The
woman, tall, gaunt, and ill-dressed, spoke fast, passion and misery in
all her attitude and in every tone and gesture. The man, chunky in
figure and churlish in demeanour, held a horsewhip in his hand,
answering his wife back word for word in language both profane and
violent.

It did not occur to Caius that the whip was in his hand otherwise than
by accident. The men in that part of the world were not in the habit of
beating their wives, but no sooner did he see the quarrel than his wrath
rose hot against the man. The woman being the weaker, he took for
granted that she was entirely in the right. He faltered in his walk,
and, hesitating, stood to look. His path was too far off for him to hear
the words that were poured forth in such torrents of passion. The boy's
strong sentiment prompted him to run and collar the man; his judgment
made him doubt whether it was a good thing to interfere between man and
wife; a certain latent cowardice in his heart made him afraid to venture
nearer. The sum of his emotions caused him to stop, go on a few paces,
and stop to look and listen again, his heart full of concern. In this
way he was drawing further away, when he saw the farmer step nearer his
wife and menace her with the whip; in an instant more he had struck her,
and Caius had run about twenty feet forward to interfere, and halted
again, because he was afraid to approach so angry and powerful a man.

Caius saw the woman clearly now, and how she received this attack. She
stood quite still at her full stature, ceasing to speak or to
gesticulate, folded her arms and looked at her husband. The look in her
hard, dark face, the pose of her gaunt figure, said more clearly than
any passionate words, "Hold, if you value your life! you have gone too
far; you have heaped up punishment enough for yourself already." The
husband understood this language, vaguely, it might be, but still he
understood enough to make him draw back, still growling and menacing
with the whip. Caius was too young to understand what the woman
expressed; he only knew strength and weakness as physical things; his
mind was surging with pity for the woman and revenge against the man;
yet even he gathered the knowledge that for the time the quarrel was
over, that interference was now needless. He walked on, looking back as
he went to see the farmer go away to his stables and the wife stalk
past him up toward the byre that was nearest the sea.

As Caius moved on, the only relief his mind could find at first was to
exercise his imagination in picturing how he could avenge the poor
woman. In fancy he saw himself holding Day by the throat, throwing him
down, belabouring him with words and blows, meting out punishment more
than adequate. All that he actually did, however, was to hold on his way
to the place of his fishing.

The path had led him to the edge of the cliff. Here he paused, looking
over the bank to see if he could get down and continue his walk along
the shore, but the soft sandy bluff here jutted so that he could not
even see at what level the tide lay. After spending some minutes in
scrambling half-way down and returning because he could descend no
further, he struck backwards some paces behind the farm buildings,
supposing the descent to be easier where bushes grew in the shallow
chine. In the top of the cliff there was a little dip, which formed an
excellent place for an outside cellar or root-house for such farm stores
as must be buried deep beneath the snow against the frost of winter. The
rough door of such a cellar appeared in the side of this small
declivity, and as Caius came round the back of the byre in sight of it,
he was surprised to see the farmer's wife holding the latch of its door
in her hand and looking vacantly into the dark interior. She looked up
and answered the young man's greeting with apathetic manner, apparently
quite indifferent to the scene she had just passed through.

Caius, his mind still in the rush of indignation on her behalf, stopped
at the sight of her, wondering what he could do or say to express the
wild pity that surged within him.

But the woman said, "The tide's late to-night," exactly as she might
have remarked with dry civility that it was fine weather.

"Yes," said Caius, "I suppose it will be."

She was looking into the cellar, not towards the edge of the bank.

"With a decent strong tide," she remarked, "you can hear the waves in
this cave."

Whereupon she walked slowly past him back toward her house. Caius took
the precaution to step after her round the end of the byre, just to see
that her husband was not lying in wait for her there. There was no one
to be seen but the children at a distance, still swinging on the gate,
and a labourer who was driving some cows from the field.

Caius slipped down on to the red shore, and found himself in a wide
semicircular bay, near the point which ended it on this side. He crept
round the bay inwards for half a mile, till he came to the mouth of the
creek to which he was bound. All the long spring evening he sat angling
for the speckled sea-trout, until the dusk fell and the blue water
turned gray, and he could no longer see the ruddy colour of the rock on
which he sat. All the long spring evening the trout rose to his fly one
by one, and were landed in his basket easily enough, and soft-throated
frogs piped to him from ponds in the fields behind, and the smell of
budding verdure from the land mingled with the breeze from the sea. But
Caius was not happy; he was brooding over the misery suggested by what
he had just seen, breathing his mind after its unusual rush of emotion,
and indulging its indignant melancholy. It did not occur to him to
wonder much why the object of his pity had made that quick errand to the
cellar in the chine, or why she had taken interest in the height of the
tide. He supposed her to be inwardly distracted by her misery. She had
the reputation of being a strange woman.

CHAPTER III.

LOST IN THE SEA.

There was no moon that night. When the darkness began to gather swiftly,
Caius swung his basket of fish and his tackle over his shoulder and
tramped homeward. His preference was to go round by the road and avoid
the Day farm; then he thought it might be his duty to go that way,
because it might chance that the woman needed protection as he passed.
It is much easier to give such protection in intention than in deed;
but, as it happened, the deed was not required. The farmstead was
perfectly still as he went by it again.

He went on half a mile, passing only such friendly persons as it was
natural he should meet on the public road. They were few. Caius walked
listening to the sea lapping below the low cliff near which the road
ran, and watching the bats that often circled in the dark-blue dusk
overhead. Thus going on, he gradually recognised a little group walking
in front of him. It was the woman, Mrs. Day, and her three children.
Holding a child by either hand, she tramped steadily forward. Something
in the way she walked, in the way the children walked--a dull,
mechanical action in their steps--perplexed Caius.

He stepped up beside them with a word of neighbourly greeting.

The woman did not answer for some moments; when she did, although her
words were ordinary, her voice seemed to Caius to come from out some far
distance whither her mind had wandered.

"Going to call on someone, I suppose, Mrs. Day?" said he, inwardly
anxious.

"Yes," she replied; "we're going to see a friend--the children and me."

Again it seemed that there was some long distance between her and the
young man who heard her.

"Come along and see my mother," he urged, with solicitude. "She always
has a prime welcome for visitors, mother has."

The words were hearty, but they excited no heartiness of response.

"We've another place to go to to-night," she said. "There'll be a
welcome for us, I reckon."

She would neither speak to him any more nor keep up with his pace upon
the road. He slackened speed, but she still shrank back, walking slower.
He found himself getting in advance, so he left her.

A hundred yards more he went on, and looked back to see her climbing the
log fence into the strip of common beside the sea.

His deliberation of mind was instantly gone. Something was wrong now. He
cast himself over the low log fence just where he was, and hastened back
along the edge of the cliff, impelled by unformulated fear.

It was dark, the dark grayness of a moonless night. The cliff here was
not more than twenty feet above the high tide, which surged and swept
deep at its base. The grass upon the top was short; young fir-trees
stood here and there. All this Caius saw. The woman he could not see at
first. Then, in a minute, he did see her--standing on the edge of the
bank, her form outlined against what light there was in sea and sky. He
saw her swing something from her. The thing she threw, whatever it was,
was whirled outwards, and then fell into the sea. With a splash, it
sank.

The young man's mind stood still with horror. The knowledge came to him
as he heard the splash that it was the little child she had flung away.
He threw off his basket and coat. Another moment, and he would have
jumped from the bank; but before he had jumped he heard the elder girl
groaning as if in desperate fear, and saw that mother and daughter were
grappled together, their figures swaying backwards and forwards in
convulsive struggle. He did not doubt that the mother was trying to
drown this child also. Another low wild groan from the girl, and Caius
flung himself upon them both. His strength released the girl, who drew
away a few paces; but the woman struggled terribly to get to her again.
Both the girl and little boy stood stupidly within reach.

"Run--run--to the road, and call for help!" gasped Caius to the
children, but they only stood still.

He was himself shouting with all his strength, and holding the desperate
woman upon the ground, where he had thrown her.

Every moment he was watching the dark water, where he thought he saw a
little heap of light clothes rise and sink again further off.

"Run with your brother out of the way, so that I can leave her," he
called to the girl. He tried with a frantic gesture to frighten them
into getting out of the mother's reach. He continued to shout for aid as
he held down the woman, who with the strength of insanity was struggling
to get hold of the children.

A man's voice gave answering shout. Caius saw someone climbing the
fence. He left the woman and jumped into the sea.

Down under the cold black water he groped about. He was not an expert
swimmer and diver. He had never been under water so long before, but so
strong had been his impulse to reach the child that he went a good way
on the bottom in the direction in which he had thought he saw the little
body floating. Then he knew that he came up empty-handed and was
swimming on the dark surface, hearing confused cries and imprecations
from the shore. He wanted to dive and seek again for the child below,
but he did not know how to do this without a place to leap from. He let
himself sink, but he was out of breath. He gasped and inhaled the water,
and then, for dear life's sake, he swam to keep his head above it.

The water had cooled his excitement; a feeling of utter helplessness and
misery came over him. So strong was his pity for the little sad-eyed
child that he was almost willing to die in seeking her; but all hope of
finding was forsaking him. He still swam in the direction in which he
thought the child drifted as she rose and sank. It did not occur to him
to be surprised that she had drifted so far until he realized that he
was out of hearing of the sounds from the shore. His own swimming, he
well knew, could never have taken him so far and fast. There was a
little sandy island lying about three hundred yards out. At first he
hoped to strike the shallows near it quickly, but found that the
current of the now receding tide was racing down the channel between the
island and the shore, out to the open sea. That little body was, no
doubt, being sucked outward in this rush of water--out to the wide water
where he could not find her. He told himself this when he found at what
a pace he was going, and knew that his best chance of ever returning was
to swim back again.

So he gave up seeking the little girl, and turned and swam as best he
could against the current, and recognised slowly that he was making no
headway, but by using all his strength could only hold his present place
abreast of the outer point of the island, and a good way from it. The
water was bitterly cold; it chilled him. He was far too much occupied in
fighting the current to think properly, but certain flashes of
intelligence came across his mind concerning the death he might be going
to die. His first clear thoughts were about a black object that was
coming near on the surface of the water. Then a shout reached him, and a
stronger swimmer than he pulled him to the island.

"Now, in the devil's name, Caius Simpson!" The deliverer was the man who
had come over the fence, and he shook himself as he spoke. His words
were an interrogation relating to all that had passed. He was a young
man, about the same age as Caius; the latter knew him well.

"The child, Jim!" shivered Caius hoarsely. "She threw it into the
water!"

"In there?" asked Jim, pointing to the flowing darkness from which they
had just scrambled. He shook his head as he spoke. "There's a sort of a
set the water's got round this here place----" He shook his head again;
he sat half dressed on the edge of the grass, peering into the tide, a
dark figure surrounded by darkness.

It seemed to Caius even then, just pulled out as he was from a sea too
strong for him, that there was something horribly bad and common in that
they two sat there taking breath, and did not plunge again into the
water to try, at least, to find the body of the child who a few minutes
before had lived and breathed so sweetly. Yet they did not move.

"Did someone else come to hold her?" Caius asked this in a hasty
whisper. They both spoke as if there was some need for haste.

"Noa. I tied her round with your fish-cord. If yo'd have done that, yo'
might have got the babby the same way I got yo'."

The heart of Caius sank. If only he had done this! Jim Hogan was not a
companion for whom he had any respect; he looked upon him as a person of
low taste and doubtful morals, but in this Jim had shown himself
superior.

"I guess we'd better go and look after them," said Jim. He waded in a
few paces. "Come along," he said.

As they waded round to the inner side of the island, Caius slowly took
off some of his wet clothes and tied them round his neck. Then they swam
back across the channel at its narrowest.

While the water was rushing past their faces, Caius was conscious of
nothing but the animal desire to be on the dry, warm shore again; but
when they touched the bottom and climbed the bank once more to the
place where he had seen the child cast away, he forgot all his fight
with the sea, and thought only with horror of the murder done--or was
there yet hope that by a miracle the child might be found somewhere
alive? It is hope always that causes panic. Caius was panic-stricken.

The woman lay, bound hand and foot, upon the grass.

"If I couldn't ha' tied her," said Jim patronizingly, "I'd a quietened
her by a knock on the head, and gone after the young un, if I'd been
yo'."

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