The Mermaid
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Lily Dougall >> The Mermaid
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At the time when he had little or nothing to do, and when Madame Le
Maitre had left Cloud Island, Caius would have been glad enough to go
and explore the other islands, or to luxuriate again in the cookery of
the old maids at the inn at which he had first been housed. Two
considerations kept him from this holiday-taking. In the first place, in
fear of a case of illness he did not like to leave the island while its
benefactress was away; and, secondly, it was reported that all visitors
from The Cloud were ruthlessly shut out from the houses upon the other
islands, because of the unreasoning terror which had grown concerning
the disease. Whether he, who carried money in his pocket, would be shut
out from these neighbouring islands also, he did not care to inquire. He
felt too angry with the way the inhabitants behaved to have any dealings
with them.
The only means of amusement that remained to Caius in these days were
his horse and a gun that O'Shea lent him. With his lunch in his pocket,
he rode upon the ice as far as he might go and return the same day. He
followed the roads that led by the shores of the other islands; or,
where the wind had swept all depth of snow from the ice, he took a path
according to his own fancy on the untrodden whiteness.
Colonies of Arctic gulls harboured on the island, and the herring gulls
remained through the winter; these, where he could get near their rocks
upon the ice, he at first took delight in shooting; but he soon lost the
zest for this sport, for the birds gave themselves to his gun too
easily. He was capable of deriving pleasure from them other than in
their slaughter, and often he rode under their rocky homes, noting how
dark their white plumage looked against their white resting-places,
where groups of them huddled together upon the icy battlements and
snowdrift towers of the castles that the frost had built them. He would
ride by slowly, and shoot his gun in the air to see them rise and wheel
upward, appearing snow-white against the blue firmament; and watched
them sink again, growing dark as they alighted among the snow and ice.
His warning that he himself must be nearing home was to see the return
of such members of the bird-colony as had been out for the deep-sea
fishing. When he saw them come from afar, flying high, often with their
wings dyed pink in the sunset rays, he knew that his horse must gallop
homeward, or darkness might come and hide such cracks and fissures in
the ice as were dangerous.
The haunts of the birds which he chiefly loved were on the side of the
islands turned to the open sea, for at this time ice had formed on all
sides, and stretched without a break for a mile or so into the open.
There was a joy in riding upon this that made riding upon the bay tame
and uninteresting; for not only was the seaward shore of island and dune
wilder, but the ice here might at any time break from the shore or
divide itself up into large islands, and when the wind blew he fancied
he heard the waves heaving beneath it, and the excitement which comes
with danger, which, by some law of mysterious nature, is one of the
keenest forms of pleasure, would animate his horse and himself as they
flew over it.
His horse was not one of the native ponies; it was a well-bred,
delicately-shaped beast, accustomed to be made a friend of by its rider,
and giving sympathetic response to all his moods. The horse belonged to
Madame Le Maitre, and was similar to the one she rode. This, together
with many other things, proved to Caius that the lady who lived so
frugally had command of a certain supply of money, for it could not be
an easy or cheap thing to transport good horses to these islands.
Whatever he did, however his thoughts might be occupied, it was never
long before they veered round to the subject that was rapidly becoming
the one subject of absorbing interest to him. Before he realized what he
did, his mind was confirmed in its habit; at morn, and at noontime, and
at night, he found himself thinking of Madame Le Maitre. The lady he was
in love with was the youthful, adventurous maiden who, it seemed, did
not exist; the lady that he was always thinking of was the grave,
subdued, self-sacrificing woman who in some way, he knew not how,
carried the mystery of the other's existence within herself. His mind
was full of almost nothing but questions concerning her, for, admire and
respect her as he might, he thought there was nothing in him that
responded with anything like love to her grave demeanour and burdened
spirit.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MARRIAGE SCENE.
By riding across the small lagoon that lay beside Cloud Island to the
inward side of the bay, and then eastward some twelve miles toward an
island that was little frequented, the last of the chain on this horn of
the crescent, one came under the highest and boldest facade of cliffs
that was to be found in all that group. It was here that Caius chanced
to wander one calm mild day in early March, mild because the thermometer
stood at less than 30 deg. below the freezing point, and a light vault of
pearly cloud shut in the earth from the heaven, and seemed, by way of
contrast with other days, to keep it warm. He had ridden far, following
out of aimless curiosity the track that had been beaten on the side of
the bay to this farthest island. It was a new road for him; he had never
attempted it before; and no sooner had he got within good sight of the
land, than his interest was wholly attracted by the cliffs, which,
shelving somewhat outward at the top, and having all their sides very
steep and smooth, were, except for a few crevices of ice, or an outward
hanging icicle, or here and there a fringe of icicles, entirely free
from snow and ice. He rode up under them wonderingly, pleased to feast
his eyes upon the natural colour of rock and earth, and eager, with
what knowledge of geology he had, to read the story they told.
This story, as far as the history of the earth was concerned, was soon
told; the cliffs were of gray carboniferous limestone. Caius became
interested in the beauty of their colouring. Blue and red clay had
washed down upon them in streaks and patches; where certain faults in
the rock occurred, and bars of iron-yielding stone were seen, the rust
had washed down also, so that upon flat facets and concave and convex
surfaces a great variety of colour and tint, and light and shade, was
produced.
He could not proceed immediately at the base of the cliffs, for in their
shelter the snow had drifted deep. He was soon obliged to keep to the
beaten track, which here ran about a quarter of a mile distant from the
rock. Walking his horse, and looking up as he went, his attention was
arrested by perceiving that a whitish stain on a smooth dark facet of
the rock assumed the appearance of a white angel in the act of alighting
from aerial flight. The picture grew so distinct that he could not take
his eyes from it, even after he had gone past, until he was quite weary
of looking back or of trying to keep his restive horse from dancing
forward. When, at last, however, he turned his eyes from the majestic
figure with the white wings, his fancy caught at certain lines and
patches of rust which portrayed a horse of gigantic size galloping upon
a forward part of the cliff. The second picture brought him to a
standstill, and he examined the whole face of the hill, realizing that
he was in the presence of a picture-gallery which Nature, it seemed, had
painted all for her own delight. He thought himself the discoverer; he
felt at once both a loneliness and elation at finding himself in that
frozen solitude, gazing with fascinated eyes at one portion of the rock
after another where he saw, or fancied he saw, sketches of this and that
which ravished his sense of beauty both in colour and form.
In his excitement to see what would come next, he did not check the
stepping of his horse, but only kept it to a gentle pace. Thus he came
where the road turned round with the rounding cliff, and here for a bit
he saw no picture upon the rock; but still he looked intently, hoping
that the panorama was not ended, and only just noticed that there was
another horse beside his own within the lonely scene. In some places
here the snow was drifted high near the track; in others, both the road
and the adjoining tracts of ice were swept by the wind almost bare of
snow. He soon became aware that the horse he had espied was not upon the
road. Then, aroused to curiosity, he turned out of his path and rode
through shallow snow till he came close to it.
The horse was standing quite still, and its rider was standing beside
it, one arm embracing its neck, and with head leaning back against the
creature's glossy shoulder. The person thus standing was Madame Le
Maitre, and she was looking up steadfastly at the cliffs, of which this
point in the road displayed a new expanse.
So silently had the horse of Caius moved in the muffling snow that,
coming up on the other side, he was able to look at the lady for one
full moment before she saw him, and in that moment and the next he saw
that the sight of him robbed her face of the peace which had been
written there. She was wrapped as usual in her fur-lined cloak and
hood. She looked to him inquiringly, with perhaps just a touch of
indignant displeasure in her expression, waiting for him to explain, as
if he had come on purpose to interrupt her.
"I am sorry. I had no idea you were here, or I would not have come."
The next moment he marvelled at himself as to how he had known that this
was the right thing to say; for it did not sound polite.
Her displeasure was appeased.
"You have found my pictures, then," she said simply.
"Only this hour, and by chance."
By this time he was wondering by what road she had got there. If she had
ridden alone across the bay from Harbour Island, where the Pembrokes
lived, she had done a bold thing for a woman, and one, moreover, which,
in the state of health in which he had seen her last, would have been
impossible to her.
Madame Le Maitre had begun to move slowly, as one who wakes from a happy
dream. He perceived that she was making preparations to mount.
"I cannot understand it," he cried; "how can these pictures come just by
chance? I have heard of the Picture Rocks on Lake Superior, for
instance, but I never conceived of anything so distinct, so lovely, as
these that I have seen."
"The angels make them," said Madame Le Maitre. She paused again (though
her bridle had been gathered in her hand ready for the mount), and
looked up again at the rock.
Caius was not unheedful of the force of that soft but absolute
assertion, but he must needs speak, if he spoke at all, from his own
point of view, not hers.
"I suppose," he said, "that the truth is there is something upon the
rock that strikes us as a resemblance, and our imagination furnishes the
detail that perfects the picture."
"In that case would you not see one thing and I another?"
Now for the first time his eyes followed hers, and on the gray rock
immediately opposite he suddenly perceived a picture, without definite
edge it is true, but in composition more complete than anything he had
seen before. What had formerly delighted him had been, as it were, mere
sketches of one thing or another scattered in different places, but here
there was a large group of figures, painted for the most part in varied
tints of gray, and blue, and pink.
In the foreground of this picture a young man and young woman, radiant
both in face and apparel, stood before a figure draped in priestly
garments of sober gray. Behind them, in a vista, which seemed to be
filled with an atmosphere of light and joy, a band of figures were
dancing in gay procession, every line of the limbs and of the light
draperies suggesting motion and glee. How did he know that some of these
were men, and some were women? He had never seen such dresses as they
wore, which seemed to be composed of tunics and gossamer veils of blue
and red. Yet he did know quite distinctly which were men and which were
women, and he knew that it was a marriage scene. The bride wore a wreath
of flowers; the bridegroom carried a sheaf or garland of fruit or grain,
which seemed to be a part of the ceremony. Caius thought he was about
to offer it to the priest.
For some minutes the two looked up at the rock quite silently. Now the
lady answered his last remark:
"What is it you see?"
"You know it best; tell me what it is."
"It is a wedding. Don't you see the wedding dance?"
He had not got down from his horse; he had a feeling that if he had
alighted she would have mounted. He tried now, leaning forward, to tell
her how clearly he had seen the meaning, if so it might be called, of
the natural fresco, and to find some words adequately to express his
appreciation of its beauty. He knew that he had not expressed himself
well, but she did not seem dissatisfied at the tribute he paid to a
thing which she evidently regarded with personal love.
"Do you think," she said, "that it will alter soon, or become defaced?
It has been just the same for a year. It might, you know, become defaced
any day, and then no one would have seen it but ourselves. The
islanders, you know, do not notice it."
"Ah, yes," said Caius; "beauty is made up of two parts--the objects seen
and the understanding eye. We only know how much we are indebted to
training and education when we find out to what extent the natural eye
is blind."
This remark did not seem to interest her. He felt that it jarred
somehow, and that she was wishing him away.
"But why," he asked, "should angels paint a marriage? They neither
marry----" He stopped, feeling that she might think him flippant if he
quoted the text.
"Because it is the best thing to paint," she said.
"How the best?"
"Well, just the best human thing: everyone knows that."
"Has her marriage been so gloriously happy?" said Caius to himself as
the soft assurance of her tones reached his ears, and for some reason or
other he felt desolate, as a soul might upon whom the door of paradise
swung shut. Then irritably he said: "_I_ don't know it. Most marriages
seem to me----" He stopped, but she had understood.
"But if this picture crumbles to pieces, that does not alter the fact
that the angels made it lovely." (Her slight accent, because it made the
pronunciation of each word more careful, gave her speech a quaint
suggestion of instruction that perhaps she did not intend.) "The idea is
painted on our hearts in just the same way; it is the best thing we can
think of, except God."
"Yet," urged Caius, "even if it is the best from our point of view, you
will allow that it is written that it is not a heavenly institution. The
angels should try to teach us to look at something higher."
"The words do not mean that. I don't believe there is anything higher
for us. I don't believe people are not married in heaven."
With sweet unreason she set aside authority when it clashed with her
opinion. To Caius she had never been so attractive as now, when, for the
first time to him, she was proving herself of kin to ordinary folk; and
yet, so curiously false are our notions of sainthood that she seemed to
him the less devout because she proved to be more loving.
"You see"--she spoke and paused--"you see, when I was at school in a
convent I had a friend. I was perfectly happy when I was with her and
she with me; it was a marriage. When we went in the garden or on the
sea, we were only happy when we were with each other. That is how I
learned early that it is only perfect to be two. Ah, when one knows what
it is to be lonely, one learns that that is true; but many people are
not given grace to be lonely--they are sufficient to themselves. They
say it is enough to worship God; it is a lie. He cannot be pleased; it
is selfish even to be content to worship God alone."
"The kind of marriage you think of, that perhaps may be made in heaven."
Caius was feeling again that she was remote from him, and yet the hint
of passionate loneliness in tone and words remained a new revelation of
her life. "Is not religion enough?" He asked this only out of curiosity.
"It is not true religion if we are content to be alone with God; it is
not the religion of the holy Christ; it is a fancy, a delusion, a
mistake. Have you not read about St. John? Ah, I do not say that it is
not often right to live alone, just as it may be right to be ill or
starving. That is because the world has gone wrong; and to be content,
it is to blaspheme; it is like saying that what is wrong is God's ideal
for us, and will last for ever."
Caius was realizing that as she talked she was thinking only of the
theme, not at all of him; he had enough refinement in him to perceive
this quite clearly. It was the first time that she had spoken of her
religion to him, and her little sermon, which he felt to be too wholly
unreasonable to appeal to his mind, was yet too wholly womanly to repel
his heart.
Some dreamy consciousness seemed to come to her now that she had tarried
longer than she wished, and perhaps that her subject had not been one
that she cared to discuss with him. She turned and put her hand on the
pommel, and sprang into the saddle. He had often seen her make that
light, wonderful spring that seated her as if by magic on her horse's
back, but in her last weeks of nursing the sick folk she had not been
strong enough to do it. He saw now how much stronger she looked. The
weeks of rest had made her a different woman; there was a fresh colour
in her cheek, and the tired lines were all gone. She looked younger by
years than when he saw her last--younger, too, than when he had first
seen her, for even then she was weary. If he could only have seen the
line of her chin, or the height of her brow, or the way her hair turned
back from her temples, he thought that he might not have reckoned the
time when he had first seen her in the sick-room at Cloud Island as
their first meeting.
"You are going on?" said Madame Le Maitre.
"Unless I can be of service to you by turning with you."
He knew by the time of day that he must turn shortly; but he had no hope
that she wanted him to go with her.
"You can do me more service," she said, and she gave him a little smile
that was like the ghost of the sea-maid's smile, "by letting me go home
alone."
He rode on, and when he looked back he saw that her horse was galloping
and casting up a little cloud of light snow behind it, so that, riding
as it were upon a small white cloud, she disappeared round the turn of
the cliffs.
Caius found no more pictures that day that he felt to be worthy of much
attention. He went back to the festive scene of the marriage, and moving
his horse nearer and further from it, he found that only from the point
where the lady had taken her stand was it to be distinctly seen. Twenty
yards from the right line of vision, he might have passed it, and never
known the beauty that the streaks and stains could assume.
When he went home he amused himself by seeking on the road for the track
of the other horse, and when he found that it turned to Cloud Island he
was happier. The place, at least, would not be so lonely when the lady
was at home.
_BOOK III._
CHAPTER I.
HOW HE HUNTED THE SEALS.
At this time on the top of the hills the fishermen were to be seen
loitering most of the day, looking to see if the seals were coming, for
at this season the seals, unwary creatures, come near the islands upon
the ice, and in the white world their dark forms can be descried a long
distance off. There was promise of an easy beginning to seal-fishing
this year, for the ice had not yet broken from the shore on the seaward
side of the island, and there would not at first be need of boats.
Caius, who had only seen the fishermen hanging about their doors in lazy
idleness, was quite unprepared for the excitement and vigour that they
displayed when this first prey of the year was seen to approach.
It was the morning after Madame Le Maitre had returned to her home that
Caius, standing near his own door, was wondering within himself if he
might treat her like an ordinary lady and give her a formal call of
welcome. He had not decided the point when he heard sounds as of a mob
rushing, and, looking up the road that came curving down the hill
through the pine thicket, he saw the rout appear--men, women and
children, capped and coated in rough furs, their cheeks scarlet with the
frost and exercise, their eyes sparkling with delight. Singly down the
hill, and in groups, they came, hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, some driving
in wooden sleighs, some of them beating such implements of tinware as
might be used for drums, some of them shouting words in that queer
Acadian French he could not understand, and all of them laughing.
He could not conceive what had happened; the place that was usually so
lonely, the people that had been so lazy and dull--everything within
sight seemed transformed into some mad scene of carnival. The crowd
swept past him, greeting him only with shouts and smiles and grimaces.
He knew from the number that all the people from that end of the island
were upon the road to the other end, and running after with hasty
curiosity, he went far enough to see that the news of their advent had
preceded them, and that from every side road or wayside house the people
came out to join in the riotous march.
Getting further forward upon the road, Caius now saw what he could not
see from his own door, a great beacon fire lit upon the hill where the
men had been watching. Its flame and smoke leaped up from the white hill
into the blue heaven. It was the seal-hunting, then, to which all the
island was going forth. Caius, now that he understood the tumult,
experienced almost the same excitement. He ran back, donned clothes
suitable for the hunt across the ice, and, mounting his horse, rode
after the people. They were all bound for the end of the island on which
the lighthouse stood, for a number of fish-sheds, used for cooking and
sleeping in the fishing season, were built on the western shore not far
from the light; and from the direction in which the seals had appeared,
these were the sheds most convenient for the present purpose.
By the time Caius reached the sheds, the greater number of the fishermen
were already far out upon the ice. In boots and caps of the coarse gray
seal-skin, with guns or clubs and knives in their hands, they had a wild
and murderous aspect as they marched forward in little bands. The gait,
the very figure, of each man seemed changed; the slouch of idleness had
given place to the keen manner of the hunter. On shore the sheds, which
all winter had been empty and lonely, surrounded only by curling drifts,
had become the scene of most vigorous work. The women, with snow-shovels
and brooms, were clearing away the snow around them, opening the doors,
lighting fires in the small stoves inside, opening bags and hampers
which contained provision of food and implements for skinning the seals.
The task that these women were performing was one for the strength of
men; but as they worked now their merriment was loud. All their children
stood about them, shouting at play or at such work as was allotted to
them. Some four or five of the women, with Amazonian strength, were
hauling from one shed a huge kettle, in which it was evidently meant to
try the fat from certain portions of the seal.
Caius held his horse still upon the edge of the ice, too well diverted
with the activity on the shore to leave it at once. Behind the animated
scene and the row of gray snow-thatched sheds, the shore rose white and
lonely. Except for the foot-tracks on the road by which they had come,
and the peak of the lighthouse within sight, it would have seemed that a
colony had suddenly sprung to life in an uninhabited Arctic region.
It was from this slope above the sheds that Caius now heard himself
hailed by loud shouting, and, looking up, he saw that O'Shea had come
there to overlook the scene below. Some women stood around him. Caius
supposed that Madame Le Maitre was there.
O'Shea made a trumpet of his hands and shouted that Caius must not take
his horse upon the ice that day, for the beast would be frightened and
do himself harm.
Caius was affronted. The horse was not his, truly, but he believed he
knew how to take care of it, yet, as it belonged to a woman, he could
not risk disobeying this uncivil prohibition. Although he was accustomed
to the rude authority which O'Shea assumed whenever he wished to be
disagreeable, Caius had only learned to take it with an outward
appearance of indifference--his mind within him always chafed; this time
the affront to his vanity was worse because he believed that Madame Le
Maitre had prompted, or certainly permitted, the insult. It did not
soothe him to think that, with a woman's nervousness, she might have
more regard for his safety than that of the horse. The brightness died
out of the beautiful day, and in a lofty mood of ill-used indifference
he assured himself that a gentleman could take little interest in such
barbarous sport as seal-hunting. At any rate, it would go on for many a
day. He certainly had not the slightest intention of dismounting at
O'Shea's command in order to go to the hunt.
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