The Mermaid

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It was one day towards the end of the month, when the last film of snow
had evaporated from many a field and slope, and the vivid green of grass
appeared for the first time to gladden the eyes, although many an
ice-wreath and snowy hollow still lay between. On such a day the sight
of a folded head of saxifrage from which the pearls are just breaking
makes the heart of man bound with a pleasure that has certainly no
rational cause which is adequate.

Caius came up from the western shore, where he had been watching a
distant ship that passed on the other side of the nearer ice-floes, and
which said, by no other signal than that of her white sails, that winter
was gone. The sea, whose rivers and lakes among the ice had of late
looked so turbid by reason of frozen particles in the water, was clear
now to reflect once more the blue above it, and the ice-cakes were very
white in the sunshine. Caius turned his back upon this, and came up a
stony path where large patches of the hill were green; and by chance he
came upon O'Shea's wife, who was laying out linen to bleach at some
distance from her own house. Close to her Caius saw the ledge of rock on
which the first flowers of the year were budding, and straightway fell
in love with them. Knowing that their plants would flourish indoors as
well as out, he stooped to lift the large cakes of moss in which their
roots were set. The woman, who wore a small pink shawl tied over her
head and shoulders, came near to where he was stooping, and made no
preface, but said:

"He's dead, sir; or if he isn't, and if he should come back, O'Shea will
kill him!"

Caius did not need to ask of whom she spoke.

"Why?" he asked. "Why should O'Shea want to kill him?"

"It would kill her, sir, if he came back to her. She couldn't abide him
no ways, and O'Shea says it's as good one murder should be done as
another, and if he was hung for it he wouldn't mind. O'Shea's the sort
of man that would keep his word. He'd just feel it was a kind of
interesting thing to do, and he worships her to that extent. But I feel
sure, sir, that Le Maitre is dead. God would not be so unkind as to have
me and the children bereft in that way."

Her simple belief in her husband's power to settle the matter was
shocking to Caius, because he felt that she probably knew her husband
perfectly.

"But why," said he again, "would it kill her if he came back?"

"Well, what sort of a decent man is it that would have stayed away from
her all these years, poor lamb? Why, sir, she wasn't but a child at the
convent when her father had them married, and she back to school, and he
away to his ship, and never come to see her since."

Caius turned as he knelt upon the grass, and, holding the emerald moss
and saxifrage plants in his hand, looked up at her. "He went away two
years ago," he said, repeating defiantly what he believed he had heard.

"He went away six year ago," corrected she; "but it's two years now
since aught was heard of him, and his ship went down, sir, coming back
from Afriky--that we know; but word came that the crew were saved, but
never a word from him, nor a word of him, since."

"Did she"--his throat would hardly frame the words--a nervous spasm
impeded them; yet he could not but ask--"did she care for him?"

"Oh well, sir, as to that, he was a beautiful-looking man, and she but a
child; but when she came to herself she wrote and asked him never to
come back; she told me so; and he never did."

"Well, that at least was civil of him." Caius spoke in full earnest.

"No, sir; he's not civil; he's a beast of a man. There's no sort of low
trick that he hasn't done, only it can't be proved against him; for he's
the sort of beast that is a snake; he only married madame for the money
he'll get with her. It was when _she_ learned that that she wrote to him
not to come back; but he never sent an honest word to say whether he'd
stay away or not. She knows what he is, sir, for folks that he'd cheated
and lied to come to her to complain. Young as she is, there's white
threads in her hair, just to think that he might come back at any time.
It's making an old woman of her since she's come of an age to think; and
she the merriest, blithest creature that ever was. When she first came
out of the convent, to see her dance and sing was a sight to make old
eyes young."

"Yes," said Caius eagerly, "I know it was--I am sure it was."

"Oh, but you never saw her, sir, till the shadow had come on her."

"Do you know when it was I first saw her?" said Caius, looking down at
the grass.

"She told me 'twas when she went to Prince Edward's Land, the time she
went to see the wife of her father's brother. 'Twas the one time that
O'Shea let her out of his sight; but no one knew where she was, so if
the Captain had come at that time he couldn't have found her without
coming to O'Shea first. And the other time that O'Shea let her go was
the first winter she came here, for he knew no one could come at the
islands for the snow, and we followed by the first ship in spring."

"Couldn't she get a separation?"

"O'Shea says the law is that way made that she couldn't."

"If she changed her name and went away somewhere----" Caius spoke
thoughtfully.

"And that's what O'Shea has been at her to do, for at least it would
give her peace; but she says, no, she'll do what's open and honest, and
God will take care of her. And I'm sure I hope He will. But it's hard,
sir, to see a young thing, so happy by nature as her, taking comfort in
nothing but prayers and hymns and good works, so young as she is; it's
enough to make the angels themselves have tears in their eyes to see
it."

At this the woman was wiping her own eyes; and, making soft sniffing
sounds of uncultivated grief, she went back to her work of strewing wet
garments upon the grass.

Caius felt that O'Shea's wife had read the mind of the angels aright.

CHAPTER V.

TO THE HIGHER COURT.

If Caius, as he went his way carrying the moss and budding flowers,
could have felt convinced with O'Shea's wife that Le Maitre was dead, he
would have been a much happier man. He could not admit the woman's
logic. Still, he was far happier than he had been an hour before. Le
Maitre might be dead. Josephine did not love Le Maitre. He felt that
now, at least, he understood her life.

Having the flowers, the very first darlings of the spring, in his hand,
he went, in the impulse of the new sympathy, and knocked at her house
door. He carried his burden of moss, earth, moisture, and little gray
scaly insects that, having been disturbed, crawled in and out of it,
boldly into the room, whose walls were still decorated with the faded
garlands of the previous autumn.

"Let me talk to you," said Caius.

The lady and the one young girl who happened to be with her had
bestirred themselves to receive his gift. Making a platter serve as the
rock-ledge from which the living things had been disturbed, they set
them in the window to grow and unfold the more quickly. They had brought
him a bowl also in which to wash his hands, and then it was that he
looked at the lady of the house and made his request.

He hardly thought she would grant it; he felt almost breathless with his
own hardihood when he saw her dismiss the girl and sit before him to
hear what he might have to say. He knew then that had he asked her to
talk to him he would have translated the desire of his heart far better.

"O'Shea's wife has been talking to me," he said.

"About me?"

"I hope you will forgive us. I think she could not help speaking, and I
could not help listening."

"What did she say?"

It was the absolutely childlike directness of her thoughts and words
that always seemed to Caius to be the thing that put the greatest
distance between them.

"I could not tell you what she said; I would not dare to repeat it to
you, and perhaps she would not wish you to know; but you know she is
loyal to you, and what I can tell you is, that I understand better now
what your life is--what it has been."

Then he held out his hands with an impulsive gesture towards her. The
large table was between them; it was only a gesture, and he let his
hands lie on the table. "Let me be your friend; you may trust me," he
said. "I am only a very ordinary man; but still, the best friendship I
have I offer. You need not be afraid of me."

"I am not afraid of you." She said it with perfect tranquillity.

He did not like her answer.

"Are we friends, then?" he asked, and tried to smile, though he felt
that some unruly nerve was painting the heaviness of his heart in his
face.

"How do you mean it? O'Shea and his wife are my friends, each of them in
a very different way----" She was going on, but he interrupted:

"They are your friends because they would die to serve you; but have you
never had friends who were your equals in education and intelligence?"
He was speaking hastily, using random words to suggest that more could
be had out of such a relation than faithful service.

"Are you my equal in intelligence and education?" she asked appositely,
laughter in her eyes.

He had time just for a momentary flash of self-wonder that he should so
love a woman who, when she did not keep him at some far distance,
laughed at him openly. He stammered a moment, then smiled, for he could
not help it.

"I would not care to claim that for myself," he said.

"Rather," she suggested, "let us frankly admit that you are the superior
in both."

He was sitting at the table, his elbows upon it, and now he covered his
face with his hands, half in real, half in mock, despair:

"What can I do or say?" he groaned. "What have I done that you will not
answer the honest meaning you can understand in spite of my clumsy
words?"

Then he had to look at her because she did not answer, and when he saw
that she was still ready to laugh, he laughed, too.

"Have you never ceased to despise me because I could not swim? I can
swim now, I assure you. I have studied the art. I could even show you a
prize that I took in a race, if that would win your respect."

"I am glad you took the prize."

"I have not yet learned the magic with which mermaids move."

"No, and you have not heard any excuse for the boldness of that play
yet. And I was almost the cause of your death. Ah! how frightened I was
that night--of you and for you! And again when I went to see Mr.
Pembroke before the snow came, and the storm came on and I was obliged
to travel with you in O'Shea's great-coat--that again cannot seem nice
to you when you think of it. Why do you like what appears so strange?
You came here to do a noble work, and you have done it nobly. Why not go
home now, and be rid of such a suspicious character as I have shown
myself to be? Wherever you go, our prayers and our blessings will follow
you."

Caius looked down at the common deal board. There were dents and marks
upon it that spoke of constant household work. At length he said:

"There is one reason for going that would seem to me enough: if you will
tell me that you neither want nor need my companionship or help in any
way; but if you cannot tell me that----"

"Want," she said very sadly. "Ah, do you think I have no heart, no mind
that likes to talk its thoughts, no sympathies? I think that if
_anyone_--man, woman, or child--were to come to me from out the big
world, where people have such thoughts and feelings as I have, and offer
to talk to me, I could not do anything else than desire their
companionship. Do you think that I am hard-hearted? I am so lonely that
the affection even of a dog or a bird would be a temptation to me, if it
was a thing that I dared not accept, because it would make me weaker to
live the life that is right. That is the way we must tell what is right
or wrong."

In spite of himself, he gathered comfort from the fact that, pausing
here, without adequate reason that was apparent, she took for granted
that the friendship he offered would be a source of weakness to her.

She never stooped to try to appear reasonable. As she had been speaking,
a new look had been coming out of the habitual calmness of her face, and
now, in the pause, the calm went suddenly, and there was a flash of fire
in her eyes that he had never seen there before:

"If I were starving, would you come and offer me bread that you knew I
ought not to eat? It would be cruel." She rose up suddenly, and he stood
before her. "It is cruel of you to tantalize me with thoughts of
happiness because you know I must want it so much. I could not live and
not want it. Go! you are doing a cowardly thing. You are doing what the
devil did when our Lord was in the wilderness. But He did not need the
bread He was asked to take, and I do not need your friendship. Go!"

She held out the hand--the hand that had so often beckoned to him in
play--and pointed him to the door. He knew that he was standing before a
woman who had been irritated by inward pain into a sudden gust of anger,
and now, for the first time, he was not afraid of her. In losing her
self-control she had lost her control of him.

"Josephine," he cried, "tell me about this man, Le Maitre! He has no
right over you. Why do you think he is not dead? At least, tell me what
you know."

It seemed that, in the confusion of conflicting emotions, she hardly
wondered why he had not obeyed her.

"Oh, he is not dead!" She spoke with bitterness. "I have no reason to
suppose so. He only leaves me in suspense that he may make me the more
miserable." And then, as if realizing what she had said, she lifted her
head again proudly. "But remember it is nothing to you whether he is
alive or dead."

"Nothing to me to know that you would be freed from this horrible
slavery! It is not of my own gain, but of yours, I am thinking."

He knew that what he had said was not wholly true, yet, in the heat of
the moment, he knew that to embody in words the best that might be was
to give himself the best chance of realizing it; and he did not believe
now that her fierce assertion of indifference for him was true either,
but his best self applauded her for it. For a minute he could not tell
what Josephine would do next. She stood looking at him helplessly; it
seemed as though her subsiding anger had left a fear of herself in its
place. But what he dreaded most was that her composure should return.

"Do not be angry with me," he said; "I ask because it is right that I
should know. Can you not get rid of this bond of marriage?"

"Do you think," she asked, "that the good God and the Holy Virgin would
desire me to put myself--my life--all that is sacred--into courts and
newspapers? Do you think the holy Mother of God--looking down upon me,
her child--wants me to get out of trouble in _that_ way?" Josephine had
asked the question first in distress; then, with a face of peerless
scorn, she seemed to put some horrid scene from before her with her
hand. "The dear God would rather I would drown myself," she said; "it
would at least be"--she hesitated for a word, as if at a loss in her
English--"at least be cleaner."

She had no sooner finished that speech than the scorn died out of her
face:

"Ah, no," she cried repentant; "the men and women who are driven to seek
such redress--I--I truly pity them--but for me--it would not be any use
even if it were right. O'Shea says it would be no use, and he knows. I
don't think I would do it if I could; but I could not if I would."

"Surely he is dead," pleaded Caius. "How can you live if you do not
believe that?"

She came a little nearer to him, making the explanation with child-like
earnestness:

"You see, I have talked to God and to the holy Mother about this. I know
they have heard my prayers and seen my tears, and will do what is good
for me. I ask God always that Le Maitre may not come back to me, so now
I know that if" (a gasping sigh retarded for a moment the breath that
came and went in her gentle bosom) "if he does come back it will be
God's will. Who am I that I should know best? Shall I choose to be what
you call a 'missionary' to the poor and sick--and refuse God's will? God
can put an end to my marriage if He will; until He does, I will do my
duty to my husband: I will till the land that he left idle; I will
honour the name he gave me. I dare not do anything except what is very,
very right, because I have appealed to the Court of Heaven. You asked
me just now if I did not want and need friendship; it does not matter
at all what I want, and whatever God does not give me you may be sure I
do not need."

He knew that the peace he dreaded had come back to her. She had gone
back to the memory of her strength. Now he obeyed the command she had
given before, and went out.

CHAPTER VI.

"THE NIGHT IS DARK."

Caius went home to his house. Inconsistency is the hall-mark of real in
distinction from unreal life. A note of happy music was sounding in his
heart. The bright spring evening seemed all full of joy. He saw a flock
of gannets stringing out in long line against the red evening sky, and
knew that all the feathered population of the rocks was returning to its
summer home. Something more than the mere joy of the season was making
him glad; he hardly knew what it was, for it appeared to him that
circumstances were untoward.

It was in vain that he reasoned that there was no cause for joy in the
belief that Josephine took delight in his society; that delight would
only make her lot the harder, and make for him the greater grievance. He
might as well have reasoned with himself that there was no cause for joy
in the fact of the spring; he was so created that such things made up
the bliss of life to him.

Caius did not himself think that Josephine owed any duty to La Maitre;
he could only hope, and try to believe, that the man was dead. Reason,
common-sense, appeared to him to do away with what slight moral or
religious obligation was involved in such a marriage; yet he was quite
sure of one thing--that this young wife, left without friend or
protector, would have been upon a very much lower level if she had
thought in the manner as he did. He knew now that from the first day he
had seen her the charm of her face had been that he read in it a
character that was not only wholly different to, but nobler than, his
own. He reflected now that he should not love her at all if she took a
stand less high in its sweet unreasonableness, and his reason for this
was simply that, had she done otherwise, she would not have been
Josephine.

The thought that Josephine was what she was intoxicated him; all the
next day time and eternity seemed glorious to him. The islands were
still ringed with the pearly ring of ice-floes, and for one brief spring
day, for this lover, it was enough to be yet imprisoned in the same bit
of green earth with his lady, to think of all the noble things she had
said and done, and, by her influence, to see new vistas opening into
eternity in which they two walked together. There was even some
self-gratulation that he had attained to faith in Heaven. He was one of
those people who always suppose that they would be glad to have faith if
they could. It was not faith, however, that had come to him, only a
refining and quickening of his imagination.

Quick upon the heels of these high dreams came their test, for life is
not a dream.

Between the Magdalen Islands and the mainland, besides the many stray
schooners that came and went, there were two lines of regular
communication--one was by a sailing vessel which carried freight
regularly to and from the port of Gaspe; the other was by a small
packet steamer that once a week came from Nova Scotia and Prince
Edward's Island, and returned by the same route. It was by this steamer,
on her first appearance, that Caius ought reasonably to return to his
home. She would come as soon as the ice diminished; she would bring him
news, withheld for four months, of how his parents had fared in his
absence. Caius had not yet decided that he would go home by the first
trip; the thought of leaving, when it forced itself upon him, was very
painful. This steamer was the first arrival expected, and the islanders,
eager for variety and mails, looked excitedly to see the ice melt or be
drifted away. Caius looked at the ice ring with more intense longing,
but his longing was that it should remain. His wishes, like prayers,
besought the cold winds and frosty nights to conserve it for him.

It so happened that the Gaspe schooner arrived before the southern
packet, and lay outside of the ice, waiting until she could make her way
through. So welcome was the sight that the islanders gathered upon the
shores of the bay just for the pleasure of looking at her as she lay
without the harbour. Caius looked at her, too, and with comparative
indifference, for he rejoiced that he was still in prison.

Upon that day the night fell just as it falls upon all days; but at
midnight Caius had a visitor. O'Shea came to him in the darkness.

Caius was awakened from sound sleep by a muffled thumping at his door
that was calculated to disturb him without carrying sharp sound into the
surrounding air. His first idea was that some drunken fellow had
blundered against his wall by mistake. As the sounds continued and the
full strangeness of the event, in that lonely place, entered his waking
brain, he arose with a certain trepidation akin to that which one feels
at the thought of supernatural visitors, a feeling that was perhaps the
result of some influence from the spirit of the man outside the door;
for when he opened it, and held his candle to O'Shea's face, he saw a
look there that made him know certainly that something was wrong.

O'Shea came in and shut the door behind him, and went into the inner
room and sat down on the foot of the bed. Caius followed, holding the
candle, and inspected him again.

"Sit down, man." O'Shea made an impatient gesture at the light. "Get
into bed, if ye will; there's no hurry that I know of."

Caius stood still, looking at the farmer, and such nervousness had come
upon him that he was almost trembling with fear, without the slightest
notion as yet of what he feared.

"In the name of Heaven----" he began.

"Yes, Heaven!" O'Shea spoke with hard, meditative inquiry. "It's Heaven
she trusts in. What's Heaven going to do for her, I'd loike to know?"

"What is it?" The question now was hoarse and breathless.

"Well, I'll tell you what it is if ye'll give me time"--the tone was
sarcastic--"and you needn't spoil yer beauty by catching yer death of
cold. 'Tain't nicessary, that I know of. There's things that are
nicessary; there's things that will be nicessary in the next few days;
but that ain't."

For the first time Caius did not resent the caustic manner. Its
sharpness was turned now towards an impending fate, and to Caius O'Shea
had come as to a friend in need. Mechanically he sat in the middle of
the small bed, and huddled its blankets about him. The burly farmer, in
fur coat and cap, sat in wooden-like stillness; but Caius was like a man
in a fever, restless in his suspense. The candle, which he had put upon
the floor, cast up a yellow light on all the scant furniture, on the two
men as they thus talked to each other, with pale, tense faces, and threw
distorted shadows high up on the wooden walls.

Perhaps it was a relief to O'Shea to torture Caius some time with this
suspense. At last he said: "He's in the schooner."

"Le Maitre? How do you know?"

"Well, I'll tell ye how I know. I told ye there was no hurry."

If he was long now in speaking, Caius did not know it. Upon his brain
crowded thoughts and imaginations: wild plans for saving the woman he
loved; wild, unholy desires of revenge; and a wild vision of misery in
the background as yet--a foreboding that the end might be submission to
the worst pains of impotent despair.

O'Shea had taken out a piece of paper, but did not open it.

"'Tain't an hour back I got this. The skipper of the schooner and me
know each other. He's been bound over by me to let me know if that man
ever set foot in his ship to come to this place, and he's managed to get
a lad off his ship in the noight, and across the ice, and he brought me
this. Le Maitre, he's drunk, lyin' in his bunk; that's the way he's
preparing to come ashore. It may be one day, it may be two, afore the
schooner can get in. Le Maitre he won't get off it till it's in th'
harbour. I guess that's about all there is to tell." O'Shea added this
with grim abstinence from fiercer comment.

"Does she know?" Caius' throat hardly gave voice to the words.

"No, she don't; and I don't know who is to tell her. I can't. I can do
most things." He looked up round the walls and ceiling, as if hunting in
his mind for other things he could not do. "I'll not do that. 'Tain't in
my line. My wife is adown on her knees, mixing up prayers and crying at
a great rate; and says I to her, 'You've been a-praying about this some
years back; I'd loike to know what good it's done. Get up and tell
madame the news;' and says she that she couldn't, and she says that in
the morning you're to tell her." O'Shea set his face in grim defiance of
any sentiment of pity for Caius that might have suggested itself.

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