The Mermaid

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When his college had conferred upon him the degree of doctor of
medicine, he felt that he had climbed only on the lower rungs of the
ladder of knowledge. It was his father, not himself, who had chosen his
profession, and now that he had received the right to practise medicine
he experienced no desire to practise it; learning he loved truly, but
not that he might turn it into golden fees, and not that by it he might
assuage the sorrows of others; he loved it partly for its own sake,
perhaps chiefly so; but there was in his heart a long-enduring ambition,
which formed itself definitely into a desire for higher culture, and
hoped more indefinitely for future fame.

Caius resolved to go abroad and study at the medical schools of the Old
World. His professors applauded his resolve; his friends encouraged him
in it. It was to explain to his father the necessity for this course of
action, and wheedle the old man into approval and consent, that the
young doctor went home in the spring of the same year which gave him his
degree.

Caius had other sentiments in going home besides those which underlay
the motive which we have assigned. If as he travelled he at all regarded
the finery of all that he had acquired, it was that he might by it
delight the parents who loved him with such pride. Though not a fop, his
hand trembled on the last morning of his journey when he fastened a
necktie of the colour his mother loved best. He took an earlier train
than he could have been expected to take, and drove at furious rate
between the station and his home, in order that he might creep in by the
side door and greet his parents before they had thought of coming to
meet him. He had also taken no breakfast, that he might eat the more of
the manifold dainties which his mother had in readiness.

For three or four days he feasted hilariously upon these dainties until
he was ill. He also practised all the airs and graces of dandyism that
he could think of, because he knew that the old folks, with ill-judging
taste, admired them. When he had explained to them how great a man he
should be when he had been abroad, and how economical his life would be
in a foreign city, they had no greater desire than that he should go
abroad, and there wax as great as might be possible.

One thing that consoled the mother in the heroism of her ambition was
that it was his plan first to spend the long tranquil summer by her
side. Another was that, because her son had set his whole affection upon
learning, it appeared he had no immediate intention of fixing his love
upon any more material maid. In her timid jealousy she loved to come
across this topic with him, not worldly-wise enough to know that the
answers which reassured her did not display the noblest side of his
heart.

"And there wasn't a girl among them all that you fancied, my lad?" With
spotless apron round her portly form she was serving the morning rasher
while Caius and his father sat at meat.

"I wouldn't say that, mother: I fancied them all." Caius spoke with
generous condescension towards the fair.

"Ay," said the father shrewdly, "there's safety in numbers."

"But there wasn't one was particular, Caius?" continued the dame with
gleeful insinuation, because she was assured that the answer was to be
negative. "A likely lad like you should marry; it's part of his duty."

Caius was dense enough not to see her true sentiment. The particular
smile that, in the classification of his facial expressions, belonged to
the subject of love and marriage, played upon his lips while he
explained that when a man got up in the world he could make a better
marriage than he could when comparatively poor and unknown.

Her woman's instinct assured her that the expression and the words arose
from a heart ignorant of the quality of love, and she regarded nothing
else.

The breakfast-room in which they sat had no feature that could render it
attractive to Caius. Although it was warm weather, the windows were
closely shut and never opened; such was the habit of the family, and
even his influence had not strength to break through a regulation which
to his parents appeared so wise and safe. The meadows outside were
brimful of flowers, but no flower found its way into this orderly room.
The furniture had that desolate sort of gaudiness which one sees in the
wares of cheap shops. Cleanliness and godliness were the most
conspicuous virtues exhibited, for the room was spotless, and the map of
Palestine and a large Bible were prominent objects.

The father and mother were in the habit of eating in the kitchen when
alone, and to the son's taste that room, decorated with shining
utensils, with its door open to earth and sky, was infinitely more
picturesque and cheery; but the mother had a stronger will than her son,
and she had ordained that his rise in the world should be marked by his
eating in the dining-room, where meals were served whenever they had
company. Caius observed also, with a pain to which his heart was
sensitive, that at these meals she treated him to her company manners
also, asking him in a clear, firm voice if he "chose bread" or if he
would "choose a little meat," an expression common in the country as an
elegant manner of pressing food upon visitors. It was not that he felt
himself unworthy of this mark of esteem, but that the bad taste and the
bad English grated upon his nerves.

She was a strong, comely woman, this housemother, portly in person and
large of face, with plentiful gray hair brushed smooth; from the face
the colour had faded, but the look of health and strong purpose
remained. The father, on the other hand, tended to leanness; his large
frame was beginning to be obviously bowed by toil; his hair and beard
were somewhat long, and had a way of twisting themselves as though blown
by the wind. When the light of the summer morning shone through the
panes of clean glass upon this family at breakfast, it was obvious that
the son was physically somewhat degenerate. Athletics had not then come
into fashion; Caius was less in stature than might have been expected
from such parents; and now, after his years of town life, he had an
appearance of being limp in sinew, nor was there the same strong will
and alert shrewdness written upon his features. He was a handsome
fellow, clear-eyed and intelligent, finer far, in the estimation of his
parents, than themselves; but that which rounded out the lines of his
figure was rather a tendency to plumpness than the development of
muscle, and the intelligence of his face suggested rather the power to
think than the power to utilize his thought.

After the first glad days of the home-coming, the lack of education and
taste, and the habits that this lack engendered, jarred more and more
upon Caius. He loved his parents too well to betray his just distress at
the narrow round of thought and feeling in which their minds
revolved--the dogmatism of ignorance on all points, whether of social
custom or of the sublime reaches of theology; but this distress became
magnified into irritation, partly because of this secrecy, partly
because his mind, wearied by study, had not its most wholesome balance.

Jim Hogan at this time made overtures of renewed friendship to Caius.
Jim was the same as of old--athletic, quick-witted, large and strong,
with his freckled face still innocent of hair; the red brush stood up
over his unnaturally high forehead in such fashion as to suggest to the
imaginative eye that wreath of flame that in some old pictures is
displayed round the heads of villains in the infernal regions. Jim was
now the acknowledged leader of the young men of that part who were not
above certain low and mischievous practices to which Caius did not dream
of condescending. Caius repulsed the offer of friendship extended to
him.

The households with which his parents were friendly made great
merrymakings over his return. Dancing was forbidden, but games in which
maidens might be caught and kissed were not. Caius was not diverted; he
had not the good-nature to be in sympathy with the sort of hilarity
which was exacted from him.

CHAPTER VII.

"A SEA CHANGE."

In the procession of the swift-winged hours there is for every man one
and another which is big with fate, in that they bring him peculiar
opportunity to lose his life, and by that means find it. Such an hour
came now to Caius. The losing and finding of life is accomplished in
many ways: the first proffer of this kind which Time makes to us is
commonly a draught of the wine of joy, and happy is he who loses the
remembrance of self therein.

The hour which was so fateful for Caius came flying with the light winds
of August, which breathed over the sunny harvest fields and under the
deep dark shade of woods of fir and beech, waving the gray moss that
hung from trunk and branch, tossing the emerald ferns that grew in the
moss at the roots, and out again into light to catch the silver down of
thistles that grew by the red roadside and rustle their purple bloom;
then on the cliff, just touching the blue sea with the slightest ripple,
and losing themselves where sky and ocean met in indistinguishable azure
fold.

Through the woods walked Caius, and onward to the shore. Neddy Morrison
was dead. The little child who was lost in the sea was almost forgotten.
Caius, thinking upon these things, thought also upon the transient
nature of all things, but he did not think profoundly or long. In his
earlier youth he had been a good deal given to meditation, a habit which
is frequently a mere sign of mental fallowness; now that his mind was
wearied with the accumulation of a little learning, it knew what work
meant, and did not work except when compelled. Caius walked upon the red
road bordered by fir hedges and weeds, amongst which blue and yellow
asters were beginning to blow, and the ashen seeds of the flame-flower
were seen, for its flame was blown out. Caius was walking for the sake
of walking and in pure idleness, but when he came near Farmer Day's land
he had no thought of passing it without pausing to rest his eyes for a
time upon the familiar details of that part of the shore.

He scrambled down the face of the cliff, for it was as yet some hours
before the tide would be full. A glance showed him that the stone of
baby Day's tablet yet held firm, cemented in the niche of the soft rock.
A glance was enough for an object for which he had little respect, and
he sat down with his back to it on one of the smaller rocks of the
beach. This was the only place on the shore where the sandstone was hard
enough to retain the form of rock, and the rock ended in the small,
sharp headland which, when he was down at the water's level, hid the
neighbouring bay entirely from his sight.

The incoming tide had no swift, unexpected current as the outgoing water
had. There was not much movement in the little channel upon which Caius
was keeping watch. The summer afternoon was all aglow upon shore and
sea. He had sat quite still for a good while, when, near the sunny
island, just at the point where he had been pulled ashore on the
adventurous night when he risked his life for the child, he suddenly
observed what appeared to be a curious animal in the water.

There was a glistening as of a scaly, brownish body, which lay near the
surface of the waves. Was it a porpoise that had ventured so near? Was
it a dog swimming? No, he knew well that neither the one nor the other
had any such habit as this lazy basking in sunny shallows. Then the head
that was lying backwards on the water turned towards him, and he saw a
human face--surely, surely it was human!--and a snow-white arm was
lifted out of the water as if to play awhile in the warm air.

The eyes of the wonderful thing were turned toward him, and it seemed to
chance to see him now for the first time, for there was a sudden
movement, no jerk or splash, but a fish-like dart toward the open sea.
Then came another turn of the head, as if to make sure that he was
indeed the man that he seemed, and then the sea-maid went under the
surface, and the ripples that she left behind subsided slowly, expanding
and fading, as ripples in calm waters do.

Caius stood up, watching the empty surface of the sea. If some
compelling fate had said to him, "There shalt thou stand and gaze," he
could not have stood more absolutely still, nor gazed more intently. The
spell lasted long: some three or four minutes he stood, watching the
place with almost unwinking eyes, like one turned to stone, and within
him his mind was searching, searching, to find out, if he might, what
thing this could possibly be.

He did not suppose that she would come back. Neddy Morrison had implied
that the condition of her appearing was that she should not know that
she was seen. It was three years since the old man had seen the same
apparition; how much might three years stand for in the life of a
mermaid? Then, when such questioning seemed most futile, and the spell
that held Caius was loosing its hold, there was a rippling of the calm
surface that gave him a wild, half-fearful hope.

As gently as it had disappeared the head rose again, not lying backward
now, but, with pretty turn of the white neck, holding itself erect. An
instant she was still, and then the perfect arm which he had seen before
was again raised in the air, and this time it beckoned to him. Once,
twice, thrice he saw the imperative beck of the little hand; then it
rested again upon the rippled surface, and the sea-maid waited, as
though secure of his obedience.

The man's startled ideas began to right themselves. Was it possible that
any woman could be bathing from the island, and have the audacity to ask
him to share her sport?

He tarried so long that the nymph, or whatever it might be, came nearer.
Some twelve feet or so of the water she swiftly glided through, as it
seemed, without twist or turn of her body or effort; then paused; then
came forward again, until she had rounded the island at its nearest
point, and half-way between it and his shore she stopped, and looked at
him steadily with a face that seemed to Caius singularly womanly and
sweet. Again she lifted a white hand and beckoned him to come across the
space of water that remained.

Caius stood doubtful upon his rock. After a minute he set his feet more
firmly upon it, and crossed his arms to indicate that he had no
intention of swimming the narrow sea in answer to the beckoning hand.
Yet his whole mind was thrown into confusion with the strangeness of it.
He thought he heard a woman's laughter come across to him with the
lapping waves, and his face flushed with the indignity this offered.

The mermaid left her distance, and by a series of short darts came
nearer still, till she stopped again about the width of a broad highroad
from the discomforted man. He knew now that it must be truly a mermaid,
for no creature but a fish could thus glide along the surface of the
water, and certainly the sleek, damp little head that lay so comfortably
on the ripple was the head of a laughing child or playful girl. A crown
of green seaweed was on the dripping curls; the arms playing idly upon
the surface were round, dimpled, and exquisitely white. The dark
brownish body he could hardly now see; it was foreshortened to his
sight, down slanting deep under the disturbed surface. If it had not
been for the indisputable evidence of his senses that this lovely sea
thing swam, not with arms or feet, but with some snake-like motion, he
might still have tried to persuade himself that some playful girl,
strange to the ways of the neighbourhood, was disporting herself at her
bath.

It was of no avail that his reason told him that he did not, could not,
believe that such a creature as a mermaid could exist. The big dark eyes
of the girlish face opened wide and looked at him, the dimpled mouth
smiled, and the little white hand came out from the water and beckoned
to him again.

He was suffering from no delirium; he had not lost his wits. He stamped
his foot to make sure that the rock was beneath him; he turned about on
it to rest his eyes from the water sparkles, and to recall all sober,
serious thought by gazing at the stable shore. His eye stayed on the
epitaph of the lost child. He remembered soberly all that he knew about
this dead child, and then a sudden flash of perception seemed to come to
him. This sweet water-nymph, on whom for the moment he had turned his
back, must be the baby's soul grown to a woman in the water. He turned
again, eager not to lose a moment of the maiden's presence, half fearful
that she had vanished, but she was there yet, lying still as before.

Of course, it was impossible that she should be the sea-wraith of the
lost child; but, then, it was wholly impossible that she should be, and
there she was, smiling at him, and Caius saw in the dark eyes a likeness
to the long-remembered eyes of the child, and thought he still read
there human wistfulness and sadness, in spite of the wet dimples and
light laughter that bespoke the soulless life of the sea-creature.

Caius stooped on the rock, putting his hand near the water as he might
have done had he been calling to a kitten or a baby.

"Come, my pretty one, come," he called softly in soothing tones.

The eyes of the water-nymph blinked at him through wet-fringed lids.

"Come near; I will not hurt you," urged Caius, helpless to do aught but
offer blandishment.

He patted the rock gently, as if to make it by that means more inviting.

"Come, love, come," he coaxed. He was used to speak in the same terms of
endearment to a colt of which he was fond; but when a look of undoubted
derision came over the face of the sea-maiden, he felt suddenly guilty
at having spoken thus to a woman.

He stood erect again, and his face burned. The sea-girl's face had
dimpled all over with fun. Colts and other animals cannot laugh at us,
else we might not be so peaceful in our assumption that they never
criticise. Caius before this had always supposed himself happy in his
little efforts to please children and animals; now he knew himself to be
a blundering idiot, and so far from feeling vexed with the laughing face
in the water, he wondered that any other creature had ever permitted his
clumsy caresses.

Having failed once, he now knew not what to do, but stood uncertain,
devouring the beauty of the sprite in the water as greedily as he might
with eyes that were not audacious, for in truth he had begun to feel
very shy.

"What is your name?" he asked, throwing his voice across the water.

The pretty creature raised a hand and pointed at some object behind him.
Caius, turning, knew it to be the epitaph. Yes, that was what his own
intelligence had told him was the only explanation.

Explanation? His reason revolted at the word. There was no explanation
of an impossibility. Yet that the mermaid was the lost child he had now
little doubt, except that he wholly doubted the evidence of his senses,
and that there was a mermaid.

He nodded to her that he understood her meaning about the name, and she
gave him a little wave of her hand as if to say good-bye, and began to
recede slowly, gliding backward, only her head seen above the disturbed
water.

"Don't go," called Caius, much urgency in his words.

But the slow receding motion continued, and no answer came but another
gentle wave of the hand.

The hand of Caius stole involuntarily to his lips, and he wafted a kiss
across the water. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the cliff had
eyes, and that it might be told of him at home and abroad that he was
making love to a phantom, and had lost his wits.

The sea-child only tossed her head a little higher out of the water, and
again he saw, or fancied he saw, mirth dancing in her eyes.

She beckoned to him and turned, moving away; then looked back and
beckoned, and darted forward again; and, doing this again and again, she
made straight for the open sea.

Caius cursed himself that he had not the courage to jump in and swim
after her at any cost. But then he could not swim so fast--certainly not
in his clothes. "There was something so wonderfully human about her
face," he mused to himself. His mind suggested, as was its wont, too
many reasonable objections to the prompt, headlong course which alone
would have availed anything.

While he stood in breathless uncertainty, the beckoning hand became lost
in the blur of sparkling ripples; the head, lower now, looked in the
water at a distance as like the muzzle of a seal or dog as like a human
head. By chance, as it seemed, a point of the island came between him
and the receding creature, and Caius found himself alone.

CHAPTER VIII.

BELIEF IN THE IMPOSSIBLE.

Caius clambered up the cliff and over the fence to the highroad. A man
with a cartload of corn was coming past. Caius looked at him and his
horse, and at the familiar stretch of road. It was a relief so to look.
On a small green hillock by the roadside thistles grew thickly; they
were in flower and seed at once, and in the sunshine the white down,
purple flowers, and silver-green leaves glistened--a little picture,
perfect in itself, of graceful lines and exquisite colour, having for
its background the hedge of stunted fir that bordered the other side of
the road. Caius feasted his eyes for a minute and then turned homeward,
walking for awhile beside the cart and talking to the carter, just to be
sure that there was nothing wild or strange about himself to attract the
man's attention. The cart raised no dust in the red clay of the road;
the monotonous creak of its wheels and the dull conversation of its
owner were delightful to Caius because they were so real and
commonplace.

Caius felt very guilty. He could not excuse himself to himself for the
fact that he had not only seen so wild a vision but now felt the
greatest reluctance to make known his strange adventure to anyone. He
could not precisely determine why this reluctance was guilty on his
part, but he had a feeling that, although a sensible man could not be
much blamed for seeing a mermaid if he did see one, such a man would
rouse the neighbourhood, and take no rest till the phenomenon was
investigated; or, if that proved impossible, till the subject was at
least thoroughly ventilated. The ideal man who acted thus would no doubt
be jeered at, but, secure in his own integrity, he could easily support
the jeers. Caius would willingly have changed places with this model
hero, but he could not bring himself to act the part. Even the reason of
this unwillingness he could not at once lay his hand upon, but he felt
about his mind far it, and knew that it circled round and round the
memory of the sea-maid's face.

That fresh oval face, surrounded with wet curls, crowned with its
fantastic wreath of glistening weed--it was not alone because of its
fresh girlish prettiness that he could not endure to make it the talk of
the country, but because, strange as it seemed to him to admit it, the
face was to him like the window of a lovely soul. It was true that she
had laughed and played; it was true that she was, or pretended to be,
half a fish; but, for all that, he would as soon have held up to
derision his mother, he would as soon have derided all that he held to
be most worthy in woman and all that he held to be beautiful and sacred
in ideal, as have done despite to the face that looked at him out of the
waves that afternoon. His memory held this face before him, held it
lovingly, reverently, and his lips shut firmly over the tale of wonder
he might have told.

At the gate of one of the fields a girl stood waiting for him. It was
his cousin Mabel, and when he saw her he knew that she must have come
to pay them a visit, and he knew too that she must have come because he
was at home. He was not attached to his cousin, who was an ordinary
young person, but hitherto he had always rather enjoyed her society,
because he knew that it was her private ambition to marry him. He did
not attribute affection to Mabel, only ambition; but that had pleased
his vanity. To-day he felt exceedingly sorry that she had come.

Mabel held the gate shut so that he could not pass.

"Where have you been?" asked she, pretending sternness.

"Just along by the shore." He noticed as he said it that Mabel's frock
had a dragged look about the waist, and that the seams were noticeable
because of its tightness. He remembered that her frocks had this
appearance frequently, and he wished they were not so ill-made.

"I shan't let you in," cried Mabel sportively, "till you tell me exactly
what you've been doing for this age."

"I have not been serving my age much," he said, with some weariness in
his tone.

"What?" said Mabel.

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

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

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