MERMAID

BY

GRANT M. OVERTON

“‘Out of the ocean you came,’ he said.... ‘Mermaid! The name is poetry and the story is romance’”

***

“NO ONE,” snapped Keturah Smiley, “can play Providence to a married couple.”

“Some women can play Lucifer,” retorted her brother. His hoarse but not unmusical voice shook with anger.

“I had nothing to do with your wife’s running away,” Keturah Smiley answered. “What is this child you have adopted?”

“I have adopted no child,” said Cap’n John Smiley with coldness. “A child was saved from the wreck of the Mermaid and the men at the station have adopted her. The fancy struck them and—I certainly had no objection. It’s—she’s—a girl, a little girl of about six. We don’t know her name. The men are calling her Mermaid after the ship.”

Keturah Smiley sniffed. She wrapped the man’s coat she wore more closely about her, and made as if to return to her gardening.

Her brother eyed her with a wrathful blue eye. He never saw her that they did not quarrel. He was aware that, deep down, she loved him; he was aware that it was this jealous love of Keturah’s which had caused her to nag the young girl he had married some seven years earlier. Mary Rogers, in Keturah’s eyes, was a silly, thoughtless, flighty person quite unfitted to fill the rôle of John Smiley’s wife and the mother of John Smiley’s children. She must be made to feel this; Keturah had done her best to make her feel it. And there could be no question that the young wife had felt it. So much so that, joined to John Smiley’s long absences on duty at the Coast Guard station on the beach, joined to her loneliness, joined to who knows what secret doubts and anguish, she had disappeared one day some months after their child was born, taking the baby girl with her and leaving no word, no note, no token. And she had never come back. She had never been traced. She might be dead; the child might be dead; no one knew.

Of course this was the crowning evidence of the unfitness Keturah Smiley had found in her; but somehow Keturah Smiley did not make that triumphant point before her brother. It is possible that Keturah Smiley who wore a man’s old coat, who drove hard bargains at better than six per cent., whose tongue made the Long Islanders of Blue Port shrink as under a cutting lash—it is possible that Keturah Smiley was just the least bit afraid of her brother.

If so she could hardly be said to show it. There was no trace of the stricken conscience in the air with which she always faced him. There was none now.

“Well, John,” she said, almost pleasantly, as she hoed her onion bed. “You’re blowing from the southeast pretty strong to-day and you appear to be bringing trouble. I’ll just take three reefs in my temper and listen to what further you have to say.”

John Smiley was not heeding her. He had found that there are times in life when it is necessary not to listen if you would keep sane and kind. He was reflecting on the difficulty of his errand.

“Keturah,” he asked, off-handedly, “this little girl has got to have some clothes. Do you suppose——”

“Perhaps you would like me to adopt her,” his sister interrupted. “No, I thank you, John. As for clothes, I daresay that if you and your men are going to bring up a six-year-old girl the lot of you can get clothes from somewhere.”

Do we always torture the things we love? Love and jealousy, jealousy and torture. Cap’n Smiley saw red for a moment; then he turned on his heel and strode down the path and out the gate.

He walked up the long main street until he came to the handful of stores at the crossroads. Entering one of the largest he went to the counter where a pleasant-faced woman confronted him.

“Oh, Cap’n Smiley!” exclaimed the shopwoman. “Are you all right? Are all the men all right? What a terrible time you have been a-having! That ship—she’s pounded all to pieces they say.”

The Coast Guard keeper nodded. He began his errand:

“I’ve got to get some clothes for a little girl that was saved—only one we got ashore alive except one of the hands. I guess I need a complete outfit for a six-year-old,” he explained.

The shopwoman, with various exclamations, bustled about. She spread out on the counter a variety of garments. The keeper eyed them with some confusion. It appeared he had to make a selection; impossible task! “What would you think was best?” he inquired, anxiously. The shopwoman came to his aid and a bundle was made up. Two little gingham dresses, a warm coat; and did he want a nice dress? A dress-up dress? The keeper had given no thought to the matter. A pity the little girl wasn’t along! It was hard to tell what would become her. She had blue eyes and reddish hair? Something dark and plain, but not too dark. A plaid; yes, a warm plaid would be best. Here was a nice pattern.

“I s’pose you’ll be bringing her over here,” ventured the shopkeeper. “Does any one know who she is?... What a pity! Mermaid! After the ship! I declare. I don’t know’s I ever heard that for a girl’s name, though it’s suitable, to be sure. I s’pose you’ll look after her.”

“The—the men have sort of adopted her,” Cap’n Smiley said, hastily. “We thought we could look after her and it would be rather nice having a youngster around. Of course, it’s unusual,” he went on in answer to the shopwoman’s expression of amazement. He thanked her, and taking his bundles, fared forth.

The woman in the shop sent after him a curious and softened look. She had a habit of saying aloud the things that struck her most forcibly. She remarked now to the empty store:

“Adopt her! Well, there’s those will say a crew of Coast Guardsmen are no fit lot to bring up a six-year-old girl. But any child will be safe with John Smiley to look after her.” A new and important thought struck her.

“Goodness!” she ejaculated. “This will be something for Keturah to exercise her brain about!”

Cap’n Smiley went from the shop directly to the creek where his boat lay. He stowed his bundles and gave several energetic turns to the flywheel; the engine began to chug loudly, the keeper cast off his line, and taking the tiller started back across the Great South Bay.

It was a five-mile trip across to the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station and Keeper John had a little time for reflection. He had not meant to quarrel with his sister; he had gone with the express determination not to have the usual row, but this had proved impossible. No one could avoid fighting with his sister, himself least of all. If it was not some allusion to his wife it was some allusion to their aunt’s will which, drawn to leave her considerable property equally to John and his sister, had at the last moment been altered to leave all to Keturah because of dissatisfaction with John’s marriage. The keeper had never cared about that while he had had his wife and for a few precious months the baby girl; and after he had lost them it would seem he might have cared less than ever. What was money then? Never-ceasing pain still gnawed at his heart, but for that very reason the gibes of his sister became the more unendurable. Was it not she who was in great measure responsible for the loss of Mary and the little Mary? Cap’n Smiley was a clear-minded man; he did not absolve his wife from blame, but she had been, after all, but a young girl and despite her lightmindedness he had loved her. With all her little affectations, with all her craving for amusement, with all her utter inefficiency as a housekeeper, with all her childishness akin to that of the childlike Dora whom David Copperfield cherished—with all and in spite of all John Smiley had loved this young girl. And he could not but believe that his sister was as much to blame for her behaviour in leaving him as Mary’s own weak nature.

And then the baby girl! How deep the wound of losing her John Smiley would never let the world know. Her name, too, had been Mary.

He thought of the mute little figure awaiting him and his bundles on the beach. She was just the age, as nearly as could be surmised, that his own child would have been if ... if....

What was that his sister had said in regard to his own experience? “No one can play Providence to a married couple.” Well, a pretty thing for her to say! She had certainly played a rôle anything but providential in her brother’s marriage. But if no one could play Providence to married folk it might still be possible for someone to be a Providence to a single soul.

This little girl, he thought with a thrill, this little girl of the age his own would have been, with her blue eyes and her reddish hair, coppery, almost burnished—she could play Providence in his life, perhaps.

He remembered how, the night of the wreck, he had put her to bed in his own bed and had slept in some blankets on the floor. In the middle of the night he had been wakened by her crying. Some memory in her sleep had made her sob. Very weak, pitiful sobs. They had stirred him to try to comfort her and after a little she had returned to sleep.