The Mermaid

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A short period of hard exertion, of pushing and pulling the bits of ice,
followed, and then:

"I'm thinking we'll make the channel, any way, before she comes by, and
then we'll just hail her, and the happy bridegroom can come off if he's
so moinded, being in the hurry that he is. 'Tain't many bridegrooms that
makes all the haste he has to jine the lady."

Caius said nothing; the subject was too horrible.

"Ye and yer bags could jist go on board the ship before the loving
husband came off; ye'd make the harbour that way as easy, and I'm
thinking the ice on the other side of the bay is that thick ye'd be
scared and want me to sit back in my boat and yelp for help, like a
froightened puppy dog, instead of making the way through."

Cains thought that O'Shea might be trying to dare him to remain in the
boat. He inclined to believe that O'Shea could not alone enter into
conflict with a strong unscrupulous man in such a boat, in such a sea,
with hope of success. At any rate, when O'Shea, presuming on his
friendship with the skipper, had accomplished no less a thing than
bringing the sailing vessel to a standstill, Caius was prepared to board
her at once.

The little boat was still among the ice, but upon the verge of clear
water. The schooner, already near, was drifting nearer. O'Shea was
shouting to the men on her deck. The skipper stood there looking over
her side; he was a short stout man, of cheery aspect. Several sailors,
and one or two other men who might be passengers, had come to the side
also. Beside the skipper stood a big man with a brown beard; his very
way of standing still seemed to suggest habitual sluggishness of mind or
manner; yet his appearance at this distance was fine. Caius discovered
that this was Le Maitre; he was surprised, he had supposed that he would
be thin and dark.

"It's Captain Le Maitre I've come for; it's his wife that's wanting to
see him," O'Shea shouted.

"He's here!"

The skipper gave the information cheerfully, and Le Maitre made a slight
sign showing that it was correct.

"I'll just take him back, then, in the boat with me now, for it's easy
enough getting this way, but there's holes in the sand that makes
drivin' unpleasant. Howsomever, I can't say which is the best passage.
This city gentleman I've got with me now thinks he's lost his life
siveral times already since he got into this boat."

He pointed to Caius as he ended his invitation to Le Maitre. The men on
the schooner all grinned. It was O'Shea's manner, as well as his words,
that produced their derision.

Caius was wondering what would happen if Le Maitre refused to come in
the boat. Suspicion said that O'Shea would cause the boat to be towed
ashore, and would then take the Captain home by the quicksands. Would
O'Shea make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing
sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the
cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he
for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one
day to his wife, and that she in simplicity had taken for earnest.

Le Maitre signified that he would go with O'Shea. Indeed, looked at from
a short distance, the passage through the ice did not look so difficult
as it had proved.

O'Shea and Caius parted without word or glance of farewell. Caius
clambered over the side of the schooner; the one thought in his mind was
to get a nearer view of Le Maitre.

This man was still standing sleepily. He did not bear closer inspection
well. His clothes were dirty, especially about the front of vest and
coat; there was everything to suggest an entire lack of neatness in
personal habits; more than that, the face at the time bore unmistakable
signs that enough alcohol had been drunk to benumb, although not to
stupefy, his faculties: the eye was bloodshot; the face, weather-beaten
as it was, was flabby. In spite of all this, Caius had expected a more
villainous-looking person, and so great was his loathing that he would
rather have seen him in a more obnoxious light. The man had a certain
dignity of bearing; his face had that unfurrowed look that means a low
moral sense, for there is no evidence of conflict. His eyes were too
near each other; this last was, perhaps, the only sign by which Nature
from the outset had marred a really excellent piece of manly proportion.

Caius made these observations involuntarily. As Le Maitre stepped here
and there in a dull way while a chest that belonged to him was being
lowered into the boat, Caius could not help realizing that his
preconceived notions of the man as a monster had been exaggerated; he
was a common man, fallen into low habits, and fixed in them by middle
age.

Le Maitre got into the boat in seaman-like fashion. He was perfectly at
home there, and dull as his eye looked, he tacitly assumed command. He
took O'Shea's pole from him, stepped to the prow, and began to turn the
boat, without regarding the fact that O'Shea was still holding hasty
conversation with the men on the schooner concerning the public events
of the winter months--the news they had brought from the mainland.

Everything had been done in the greatest haste; it was not twelve
minutes after the schooner had been brought to a stand when her sails
were again turned to catch the breeze. The reason for this haste was to
prevent more sideways drifting, for the schooner was drifting with the
wind against the floating ice amongst which O'Shea's boat was lying. The
wind blew very softly; her speed when sailing had not been great, and
the drifting motion was the most gentle possible.

Caius had not taken his eyes from the boat. He was watching the strength
with which Le Maitre was turning her and starting her for Cloud Island.
He was watching O'Shea, who, still giving back chaff and sarcasm to the
men on the schooner, was forced to turn and pick up the smaller pole
which Caius had relinquished; he seemed to be interested only in his
talk, and to begin to help in the management of the boat mechanically.
The skipper was swearing at his men and shouting to O'Shea with
alternate breath. The sails of the schooner had hardly yet swelled with
the breeze when O'Shea, bearing with all his might against a bit of ice,
because of a slip of his pole, fell heavily on the side of his own boat,
tipping her suddenly over on a bit of ice that sunk with her weight. Le
Maitre, at the prow, in the violent upsetting, was seen to fall headlong
between two bits of ice into the sea.

"By----! Did you ever see anything like that?" The skipper of the
schooner had run to the nearest point, which was beside Caius.

Then followed instantly a volley of commands, some of which related to
throwing ropes to the small boat, some concerning the movement of the
schooner, for at this moment her whole side pressed against all the bits
of ice, pushing them closer and closer together.

The boat had not sunk; she had partially filled with water that had
flowed over the ice on which she had upset; but when the weight of Le
Maitre was removed and O'Shea had regained his balance, the ice rose
again, righting the boat and almost instantly tipping her toward the
other side, for the schooner had by this time caused a jam. It was not
such a jam as must of necessity injure the boat, which was heavily
built; but the fact that she was now half full of water and that there
was only one man to manage her, made his situation precarious. The
danger of O'Shea, however, was hardly noticed by the men on the
schooner, because of the horrible fact that the closing of the bits of
ice together made it improbable that Le Maitre could rise again.

For a moment there was an eager looking at every space of blue water
that was left. If the drowning man could swim, he would surely make for
such an aperture.

"Put your pole down to him where he went in!" The men on the schooner
shouted this to O'Shea.

"Put the rope round your waist!" This last was yelled by the skipper,
perceiving that O'Shea himself was by no means safe.

A rope that had been thrown had a noose, through which O'Shea dashed his
arms; then, seizing the pole, he struck the butt-end between the blocks
of ice where Le Maitre had fallen.

It seemed to Caius that the pole swayed in his hands, as if he were
wrenching it from a hand that had gripped it strongly below; but it
might have been only the grinding of the ice.

O'Shea thrust the pole with sudden vehemence further down, as if in a
frantic effort to bring it better within reach of Le Maitre if he were
there; or, as Caius thought, it might have been that, feeling where the
man was, he stunned him with the blow.

Standing in a boat that was tipping and grinding among the ice, O'Shea
appeared to be exercising marvellous force and dexterity in thus using
the pole at all.

The wind was now propelling the schooner forward, and her pressure on
the ice ceased. O'Shea threw off the noose of the rope wildly, and
looked to the men on the vessel, as if quite uncertain what to do next.

It was a difficult matter for anyone to decide. To leave him there was
manifestly impossible; but if the schooner again veered round, the
jamming of the ice over the head of La Maitre would again occur. The men
on the schooner, not under good discipline, were all shouting and
talking.

"He's dead by now, wherever he is." The skipper made this quiet
parenthesis either to himself or to Caius. Then he shouted aloud: "Work
your boat through to us!"

O'Shea began poling vigorously. The ice was again floating loosely, and
it was but the work of a few minutes to push his heavy boat into the
open water that was in the wake of the schooner. There was a pause, like
a pause in a funeral service, when O'Shea, standing ankle-deep in the
water which his boat held, and the men huddled together upon the
schooner's deck, turned to look at all the places in which it seemed
possible that the body of Le Maitre might again be seen. They looked and
looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt,
floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink
to a bier of sand at the bottom of the bay.

"By----! I never saw anything like that." It was the remark which began
and ended the episode with the skipper. Then he raised his voice, and
shouted to O'Shea: "It's no sort of use your staying here! Make the rope
fast to your boat, and come up on deck!"

But this O'Shea would not do. He replied that he would remain, and look
about among the ice a bit longer, and that, any way, it would be twice
as far to take his boat home from Harbour Island as from the place where
he now was. The schooner towed his boat until he had baled the water out
and got hold of his oars. The ice had floated so far apart that it
seemed easy for the boat to go back through it.

During this time excited pithy gossip had been going on concerning the
accident.

"You did all a man could do," shouted the captain to O'Shea consolingly,
and remarked to those about him: "There wasn't no love lost between
them, but O'Shea did all he could. O'Shea might as easy as not have gone
over himself, holding the pole under water that time."

The fussy little captain, as far as Caius could judge, was not acting a
part. The sailors were French; they could talk some English; and they
spoke in both languages a great deal.

"His lady won't be much troubled, I dare say, from all I hear." The
captain was becoming easy and good-natured again. He said to Caius: "You
are acquainted with her?"

"She will be shocked," said Caius.

He felt as he spoke that he himself was suffering from shock--so much so
that he was hardly able to think consecutively about what had occurred.

"They won't have an inquest without the body," shouted the captain to
O'Shea. Then to those about him he remarked: "He was as decent and
good-natured a fellow as I'd want to see."

The pronoun referred to Le Maitre. The remark was perhaps prompted by
natural pity, but it was so instantly agreed to by all on the vessel
that the chorus had the air of propitiating the spirit of the dead.

CHAPTER XI.

THE RIDDLE OF LIFE.

The schooner slowly moved along, and lay not far from the steamship. The
steamship did not start for Souris until the afternoon. Caius was put on
shore there to await the hour of embarking. In his own mind he was
questioning whether he would embark with the steamer or return to Cloud
Island; but he naturally did not make this problem known to those around
him.

The skipper and several men of the schooner came ashore with Caius.
There was a great bustle as soon as they reached the small wharf because
of what they had to tell. It was apparent from all that was told, and
all the replies that were made, that no shadow of suspicion was to fall
upon O'Shea. Why should it? He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge
against Le Maitre, whose death had been evidently an accident.

A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came
down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him.
When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official
personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times
in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder
how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt. He
found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see
any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her
husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within
sight of her house. "Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus
saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.

Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this
first mail of the year. He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out
of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to
walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place.
He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high
black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly. He had not opened his
letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.

The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good
husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when
necessary, with a good conscience. Had O'Shea a good conscience now?
Would he continue to be in all respects the man he had been, and the
staunch friend of Josephine? In his heart Caius believed that Le Maitre
was murdered; but he had no evidence to prove it--nothing whatever but
what O'Shea's wife had said to him that day she was hanging out her
linen, and such talk occurs in many a household, and nothing comes of
it.

Now Josephine was free. "What a blessing!" He used the common idiom to
himself, and then wondered at it. Could one man's crime be another man's
blessing? He found himself, out of love for Josephine, wondering
concerning the matter from the point of view of the religious theory of
life. Perhaps this was Heaven's way of answering Josephine's appeal, and
saving her; or perhaps human souls are so knit together that O'Shea, by
the sin, had not blessed, but hindered her from blessing. It was a weary
round of questions, which Caius was not wise enough to answer. Another
more practical question pressed.

Did he dare to return now to Cloud Island, and watch over Josephine in
the shock which she must sustain, and find out if she would discover the
truth concerning O'Shea? After a good while he answered the question:
No; he did not dare to return, knowing what he did and his own cowardly
share in it. He could not face Josephine, and, lonely as she was, she
did not need him; she had her prayers, her angels, her heaven.

Perhaps Time, the proverbial healer of all wounds, would wash the sense
of guilt from his soul, and then he could come back and speak to
Josephine concerning this new freedom of hers. Then he remembered that
some say that for the wound of guilt Time no healing art. Could he find,
then, other shrift? He did not know. He longed for it sorely, because he
longed to feel fit to return to Josephine. But, after all, what had he
done of which he was ashamed? What was his guilt? Had he felt any
emotion that it was not natural to feel? Had he done anything wrong?
Again he did not know. He sat with head bowed, and felt in dull misery
that O'Shea was a better man than he--more useful and brave, and not
more guilty.

He opened his letters, and found that in his absence no worse mishap had
occurred at home than that his father had been laid up some time with a
bad leg, and that both father and mother had allowed themselves to
worry and fret lest ill should have befallen their son.

Caius embarked on the little steamship that afternoon, and the next noon
found him at home.

The person who met him on the threshold of his father's house was Jim
Hogan. Jim grinned.

"Since you've taken to charities abroad," he said, "I thought I'd begin
at home."

Jim's method of beginning at home was not in the literal sense of the
proverb. It turned out that he had been neighbouring to some purpose.
Old Simpson could not move himself about indoors or attend to his work
without, and Jim, who had not before this attached himself by regular
employment, had by some freak of good-nature given his services day by
day until Caius should return, and had become an indispensable member of
the household.

"He's not a very respectable young man," said the mother apologetically
to her son, while she was still wiping her tears of joy; "but it's just
wonderful what patience he's had in his own larky way with your father,
when, though I say it who shouldn't, your father's been as difficult to
manage as a crying baby, and Jim, he just makes his jokes when anyone
else would have been affronted, and there's father laughing in spite of
himself sometimes. So I don't know how it is, but we've just had him to
stop on, for he's took to the farm wonderful."

An hour after, when alone with his father, Simpson said to him:

"Your mother, you know, was timorous at night when I couldn't help
myself; and then she'd begin crying, as women will, saying as she knew
you were dead, and that, any way, it was lonesome without you. So when
I saw that it comforted her a bit to have someone to cook for, I
encouraged the fellow. I told him he'd nothing to look for from me, for
his father is richer than I am nowadays; but he's just the sort to like
vagary."

Jim went home, and Caius began a simple round of home duties. His father
needed much attendance; the farm servants needed direction. Caius soon
found out, without being told, that neither in one capacity nor the
other did he fulfil the old man's pleasure nearly so well as the
rough-and-ready Jim. Even his mother hardly let a day pass without
innocently alluding to some prank of Jim's that had amused her. She
would have been very angry if anyone had told her that she did not find
her son as good a companion. Caius did not tell her so, but he was
perfectly aware of it.

Caius had not been long at home when his cousin Mabel came to visit
them. This time his mother made no sly remarks concerning Mabel's reason
for timing her visit, because it seemed that Mabel had paid a long and
comforting visit while he had been at the Magdalen Islands. Mabel did
not treat Caius now with the unconscious flattery of blind admiration,
neither did she talk to him about Jim; but her silence whenever Jim's
name was mentioned was eloquent.

Caius summed all this up in his own mind. He and Jim had commenced life
as lads together. The one had trodden the path of virtue and laudable
ambition; the other had just amused himself, and that in many
reprehensible ways; and now, when the ripe age of manhood was attained
in that state of life to which--as the Catechism would have it--it had
pleased God to call them, it was Jim who was the useful and honoured
man, not Caius.

It was clear that all the months and years of his absence had enabled
his parents to do very well without their son. They did not know it, but
in all the smaller things that make up the most of life, his interests
had ceased to be their interests. Caius had the courage to realize that
even at home he was not much wanted. If, when Jim married Mabel, he
would settle down with the old folks, they would be perfectly happy.

On his return, Caius had learned that the post for which he had applied
in the autumn had not been awarded to him. He knew that he must go as
soon as possible to find out a good place in which to begin his
professional life, but at present the state of his father's bad leg was
so critical, and the medical skill of the neighbourhood so poor, that he
was forced to wait.

All this time there was one main thought in his mind, to which all
others were subordinate. He saw his situation quite clearly; he had no
doubts about it. If Josephine would come to him and be his wife, he
would be happy and prosperous. Josephine had the power to make him twice
the man he was without her. It was not only that his happiness was bound
up in her; it was not only that Josephine had money and could manage it
well, although he was not at all above thinking of that; it was not even
that she would help and encourage and console him as no one else would.
There was that subtle something, more often the fruit of what is called
friendship than of love, by which Josephine's presence increased all his
strong faculties and subdued his faults. Caius knew this with the
unerring knowledge of instinct. He tried to reason about it, too: even
a dull king reigns well if he have but the wit to choose good ministers;
and among men, each ruling his small kingdom, they are often the most
successful who possess, not many talents, but the one talent of choosing
well in friendship and in love.

Ah! but it is one thing to choose and another to obtain. Caius still
felt that he dared not seek Josephine. Since Le Maitre's death something
of the first blank horror of his own guilt had passed away, but still he
knew that he was not innocent. Then, too, if he dared to woo her, what
would be the result? That last admonition and warning that he had given
her when she was about to leave the island with him clogged his hope
when he sought to take courage. He knew that popular lore declared that,
whether or not she acknowledged its righteousness, her woman's vanity
would take arms against it.

Caius had written to Josephine a letter of common friendliness upon the
occasion of her husband's death, and had received in return a brief
sedate note that might, indeed, have been written by the ancient lady
whom the quaint Italian handwriting learned in the country convent had
at first figured to his imagination. He knew from this letter that
Josephine did not suppose that blame attached to O'Shea. She spoke of
her husband's death as an accident. Caius knew that she had accepted it
as a deliverance from God. It was this attitude of hers which made the
whole circumstance appear to him the more solemn.

So Caius waited through the lovely season in which summer hovers with
warm sunshiny wings over a land of flowers before she settles down upon
it to abide. He was unhappy. A shade, whose name was Failure, lived
with him day by day, and spoke to him concerning the future as well as
the past. Debating much in his mind what he might do, fearing to make
his plight worse by doing anything, he grew timid at the very thought of
addressing Josephine. Happily, there is something more merciful to a man
than his own self--something which in his hour of need assists him, and
that often very bountifully.

CHAPTER XII.

TO CALL A SPIRIT FROM THE VASTY DEEP.

It was when the first wild-flowers of the year had passed away, and
scarlet columbine and meadow-rue waved lightly in the sunny glades of
the woods, and all the world was green--the new and perfect green of
June--that one afternoon Caius, at his father's door, met a visitor who
was most rarely seen there. It was Farmer Day. He accosted Caius,
perhaps a little sheepishly, but with an obvious desire to be civil, for
he had a favour to ask which he evidently considered of greater
magnitude than Caius did when he heard what it was. Day's wife was ill.
The doctor of the locality had said more than once that she would not
live many days, but she had gone on living some time, it appeared, since
this had been first said. Day did not now call upon Caius as a medical
man. His wife had taken a fancy to see him because of his remembered
efforts to save her child. Day said apologetically that it was a woman's
whim, but he would be obliged if Caius, at his convenience, would call
upon her. It spoke much for the long peculiarity and dreariness of Day's
domestic life that he evidently believed that this would be a
disagreeable thing for Caius to do.

Day went on to the village. Caius strolled off through the warm woods
and across the hot cliffs to make this visit.

The woman was not in bed. She was dying of consumption. The fever was
flickering in her high-boned cheeks when she opened the door of the
desolate farmhouse. She wore a brown calico gown; her abundant black
hair was not yet streaked with gray. Caius could not see that she looked
much older than she had done upon the evening, years ago, when he had
first had reason to observe her closely. He remembered what Josephine
had told him--that time had stood still with her since that night: it
seemed true in more senses than one. A light of satisfaction showed
itself in her dark face when, after a moment's inspection, she realized
who he was.

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