They met, the two, on the beach, on a long sweep of the ocean shore
where snipe were running at the edge of the lacy waves but where there
was no other human being within sight or sound of them. They had
met, you may say, before--at the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station, for
instance, where Mermaid had kissed her father and shaken hands with
everybody, including the one or two surviving honorary uncles of her
childhood. They had sat them down at the long table over which Cap’n
Smiley still presided, encouraging the art of conversation as one of
those social amenities that marked the civilized man. They had eaten
heartily of simple and appetizing fare, had joked, laughed, told
stories. Mermaid had been delighted at the physical transformation
in Guy. He was broader shouldered, or certainly seemed so, and was
obviously heavier, “filled out,” as her father put it. The colour in
his cheeks was a thing to wonder at; so was the calm of his eyes. They
were still those wild-animal eyes, but the look in them was that of a
creature at peace with the world and, for the rest, unafraid. He was,
except for the fact of a somewhat wider education, one of them.
But that had not been a meeting. This was their meeting, here on the
smooth and endless stretch of hard-packed sand at the ocean’s edge.
They stood side by side, not looking at each other but at the ocean, at
the curling, magnificent breakers which the southeast wind was driving
in. The sun shone, the air was magic. Bird cries reached them, a tiny
treble to the bass of the water’s roar.
“Out of the ocean you came,” he said. “Will you slip away and return
into it again some day, I wonder? Mermaid! The name is poetry and the
story is romance. When you go back, you must look for me. I shall be a
wreathed Triton, blowing upon a conch shell. I shall be among those who
pull the sea god’s chariot while you will be among those who swim in
his escort. And we shall be much together. Always.”
“You have done it!” she said, exultingly. “You have become a man, and
yet you have not lost the child and the poet in you. You are really the
Guy Vanton I first knew, only grown, matured, with the world before
you.”
“I have it all yet to conquer,” he told her, half laughing.
“Your greatest conquest has been made.”
He reached for her hand, pressed it, and held it.
“Guy,” she said, suddenly, “will you marry me?”
She felt his hand tremble. The tremendous tide within her swept on, and
in her ears there was a noise like singing. She felt his arm about her,
and it was needed. She made out his voice, saying: “Mermaid, will you
have me? Will you--have--me? Oh, if you will!”
It was a cry of entreaty, a prayer, a thanksgiving.
She suddenly slipped down onto the sand and quite ridiculously
collapsed in a heap. And he was on the sand beside her, folding her
to him, murmuring little words that were inaudible and precious. She
felt his hair against her cheek and for an instant their strange eyes
confronted each other. In his were brown and golden lights; hers were
less brilliantly blue, as if the surface reflection were gone, and
looking into them it would be possible, almost for the first time, to
guess at the depths concealed by their mirror-like quality.
They sat there for a long time while the sun declined slowly through
the heavens, a futile effort of the wheeling universe to measure by
cycles and hours a moment of eternity.
X
The death of “Mrs. Vanton”--no one ever was heartless enough to call
her anything else--left entirely to Guy the moderate fortune which had
been Captain Vanton’s. And now he had a use for it.
Mermaid and her husband travelled about, crossing the Atlantic and
visiting Paris, where Guy showed his wife some scenes of his boyhood.
They rambled through little towns. And in these the streets seemed
always to be crowded with youngsters at play.
Mermaid had hold of Guy’s arm. He felt her red-gold hair brush his
cheek.
“Children!” he said, and fell silent. “We, too, were children once. I
think we will always remain children, you and I. The spirit does not
die, but the body must be renewed. It is ours to renew it.”
They walked on together, and everywhere the children looked up from the
excitement and laughter of their games to glance at them interestedly
or disinterestedly, curiously or with indifference, and here and there
they caught a smile, fleeting and momentary, fashioned expressly for
them, inviting them to share the instant’s joy. As they walked they
drew closer together. They were no longer blissfully happy, moving in
a thoughtless perfection of shared and reciprocated love. They were
intelligently happy, perceptively, hopefully happy. To the delight of
the moment and of each other was added the delight of anticipation.
They walked on and looked down the long vista of the future.
Their love had now a meaning and a purpose for both of them that
transcended the dear comradeship and pleasure of the present. It
was still love, but it was not the same love; it had in it a sense
of obligation, an instinct of fidelity, a passion of service, an
element of devotion. In a little village church they knelt together,
reverently, before the altar, and the same prayer was in both their
hearts.