_THE SEA-NYMPHS._
After his friend had left him, our merman swam once more after The
Sea-nymph. He felt wicked, ashamed, remorseful and very miserable, but
for all that he followed his wooden goddess. He was so worn out with his
long journeying and with trouble of mind that he could not keep up with
the ship—he who had once beaten a fin-back whale in a race. He had lost
sight of the brig before she went into the harbor of Syracuse, but he
knew where she was going, and he followed in her track. It was a
beautiful moonlit night. The water was all golden ripples. The ruins of
the ancient town stood up white, still and solemn in the flood of silver
light. The modern city did not look dirty as it does by sunlight, but
white and cool and still. Only a bell rung at intervals from the tower
of a convent.
On a fragment of a broken capital that lay in the water near the island
shore of Ortyggia sat three lovely ladies. They looked young and
beautiful as the day, but they were very, very old. They had known the
place before the first Greek ship bore the first Greek colonists to
Sicily. The broken capital was the last bit of a temple that had been
reared in their honor ages ago, for these were the real sea-nymphs. They
had come back from the unknown countries where they went when men forgot
them, and the monks shattered their beautiful marble statues to replace
them with waxen virgins dressed in tinsel. They were taking a journey
just to see what sort of a place this world had grown to be. They were
all three rather low-spirited—as much so as sea-nymphs can be.
“This is all so different,” said Arethusa. “It was hardly sadder in the
great siege; I could hardly find the place where my fountain was once.”
“And nothing of Alpheus?” said Cymodoce with a little smile.
“No, thank Heaven!” said Arethusa; “the stream is there, but it has
another name. I wonder what has become of the old gentleman? My dears,
you can’t think what a torment he was. I really don’t know what I should
have done but for Diana.”
“Maybe you would have married him,” said Panope. “He was very devoted to
you.”
“Not he,” said Arethusa. “He was determined to have his own way, but he
didn’t get it.”
“Sing something,” said Cymodoce. “What concerts we used to have on this
very shore! Oh dear!”
Arethusa began to sing. I only wish you had been there to hear her.
“Years ago when the world was young,
And this weary time was yet to be,
A little bay lay the hills among
Where the hills slope down to the sand and sea.
“The shepherd came down to the cool seashore,
Fearless and tall and fair was he;
Careless the cornel spear he bore,
As he paced the sand along the sea.
“Low in the sky the red moon hung,
The wind went wandering wild and free;
To and fro the foam-bells swung
Off from the sand into the sea.
“‘Come up, my love,’ he called, ‘oh come!
Give, oh goddess, once more to me
That fairest face in the whitening foam,
On the pebbly marge ’twixt the sand and sea.’
“The sunset faded like smouldering brand,
And never the nymph again saw he;
The shadow sloped from the tall headland
Off from the sand, out o’er the sea.
“His was a being that, born to-day,
Grows old to-morrow and dies, and she
Lived on for ages as fair alway,
To sing on the shore ’twixt the sand and the sea.
“Yet oh, my lover, by this right hand,
It was fate, not I, that was false to thee;
For thine was the life of the solid land,
And I was a thing of the restless sea.”
As Arethusa finished her song, the merman came swimming wearily toward
the three nymphs. If he had been a human being, he would not have seen
them, but as it was they were revealed to his eyes. He knew what they
were in a moment. They were dressed like his wooden nymph, and Arethusa
carried a little silver vase in her hand, but they were not like the
figure-head, for they had sweet, kind faces, and could laugh and cry.
The merman made a most respectful bow, for he knew how to do it.
“Well,” said Panope, kindly, “can we do anything for you?”
“Lovely nymphs,” said the merman, “have you seen a ship pass this way
with one of your fair sisters on its prow?”
“One of _our_ sisters?” said Arethusa, a little haughtily. “That seems
very unlikely.”
“I assure you she is, my lady,” said the merman, reverently but firmly.
“She has her name, The Sea-nymph, written below her.”
“He has lost his wits,” said Panope, sighing.
“What a pity! Such a handsome youth!”
“You don’t mean that wooden figure-head?” cried Arethusa.
“Surely she is your sister,” said the merman, looking at Cymodoce, who
was more like the wooden nymph than the other two, and whose manners
were always a little stiff and prim.
“My sister!” cried Cymodoce, quite bristling. “Am I related to a log of
wood?”
Here Arethusa slyly pinched Panope behind Cymodoce’s back, for the truth
was Cymodoce had once been a wooden ship, and had been made into a nymph
to save her from a conflagration. She never would allow, however, that
this was a true story.
“No, of course there is nothing wooden about you, dear,” said Panope,
soothingly. “Don’t be vexed. Let us help the poor boy if we can.”
“He’s very like a Triton I used to know,” said Arethusa, aside.
“I saw a ship pass,” said Panope, looking down at him with her kind blue
eyes. “Such a big ship! Not like the ones I used to see here years ago,
and it certainly had a wooden statue on the prow, but it was only a
wooden image; it was not alive.”
“How strange it is,” thought the merman to himself, “that these three
goddesses should be jealous of my beauty—just like three mortal
mermaids.”
“Jealous of that stick indeed!” cried Cymodoce, answering his thought.
“Men!” said Arethusa. “Panope, my darling, they are just the creatures
they always were in the water or out of it.”
“So it seems,” said Panope, playing in the sand with her little pink
toes like a mortal girl.
“I assure you, sir,” said Cymodoce, gravely, “that you are under a
serious mistake. That figure is a mere painted figure-head, quite
incapable of a rational thought or instructive conversation.”
“What we admire in woman is her affections, not her intellect,” said the
merman.
“Look at me!” said Arethusa; and the tall nymph stood up before him in
all her immortal beauty and shook down her golden hair till it swept her
ankles.
“My dear Arethusa,” said Cymodoce, “let me ask you to consider if this
is quite proper?”
Panope only smiled, and Arethusa took no sort of notice.
“Look at me,” she said, “and compare me with that wooden thing. Don’t
you see the difference?”
A difference there certainly was. The merman felt a cold chill go to his
heart. For one instant his eyes were opened; for one instant he knew he
had been worshiping a stick. Then he would _not_ see or feel the truth.
“Farewell!” he cried, desperately; “I will follow her to the ends of the
earth, whether she is alive or not;” and he swam away.
“Poor fellow!” said Arethusa.
“He looks a good deal like the pious Æneas,” said Cymodoce, who often
mentioned that gentleman.
“I don’t see it,” said Panope, almost sharply. “He may be a goose, but
he is not a prig. I do wish you ever could talk about any one else,
Cymodoce! I am tired to death of the pious Æneas.”
“So am I,” said Arethusa; “he was a humbug if ever there was one.”
“What an expression!” said Cymodoce.
“Never mind,” said Arethusa; “suppose we do this poor merman a good
turn, and get Aphrodite to make his wooden thing a live creature. Don’t
you think she would do as much for wood as she did for marble?”
“We could ask her,” said Cymodoce. “I have some influence with her. I
was so well acquainted with her son, the pious—”
“Oh bother _him_!” said Arethusa, who had been a mountain nymph
originally, and was apt to be a little brusque.
“I don’t believe she’d be good for much if she did come alive,” said
Panope, looking down. “I’ve heard that match of Pygmalion’s didn’t turn
out very well. I saw the marble woman once. She was pretty enough, but
_so_ stiff, and she walked as though she weighed a ton, and hadn’t a
word to say for herself. And as for this wooden thing, the woodenness
would always remain in her mind and manners. But we can try. Come, if
you like;” and the three slipped into the sea and went swimming after
the merman, but he never saw them. He had caught sight of his wooden
goddess, and had no eyes for the real ones. He thought he had never seen
his idol looking so beautiful, so lifelike. “_She_ wood!” he thought as
he leaned back in the water and looked up in her face. Meanwhile, some
strange influence was at work upon the wooden image. A kind of thrill
ran over it. It began slowly to breathe.
“Dear me!” thought the wooden creature, for it could think a little now.
“I must be coming alive! How very disagreeable! I can see—even feel. I
don’t like it. It’s too much trouble. What is that thing in the sea
staring at me?” and she actually bent her head and looked down.
The merman, of course, was in ecstasies, for he thought she was coming
to him.
“I certainly am growing alive,” thought the wooden thing. “I won’t come
alive; I was made wood, and wood I’ll stay; I won’t go out of my sphere;
I’m sure it’s not proper;” and she stiffened herself as stiff as she
could. “I will be wood,” she thought, and wood she was, for even a
goddess can’t make a thing alive against its own will. “Yes, this is
much the best way,” was the wooden image’s last thought, as the breath
of life went away from her and left her more wooden than ever.
“Let it go, the stupid thing,” said Arethusa in a pet which was scarcely
reasonable, as the image was wood in its nature. “Come, my dears, let us
go from a world where no one cares for our gifts. Don’t cry, Panope
dear. There are just as many fools in the world as ever there were, for
all they pretend to be so much wiser.”
“It is strange too,” said Cymodoce, “considering how long they have had
before them the example of the pious Æneas—”
“_He_ never lost sight of his interest,” said Panope. “I wish we could
persuade that poor merman, but I know very well that the twelve great
gods couldn’t do it;” and the three vanished and were seen no more.
That night there came up a terrible storm. There was wind and rain and
thunder such as the merman had never heard. From far away came a thick
sulphurous cloud of smoke, and in the air was a dull red glare. The land
shook and trembled, for Ætna was feeding his hidden fires, filling his
inmost furnaces. The gale blew fiercely from land. The Sea-nymph snapped
her cable, and drove out of the harbor before the tempest. The merman
followed her. By the glare of the lightning he could see that the figure
stood in its old place holding out her silver vase. “What wonderful
courage!” he thought, for he did not know it was nailed there. The masts
went crashing into the sea. The sailors threw overboard everything they
could to lighten the ship. One of them sprang forward with an axe and
began to cut away the figure-head. The merman swam, balancing himself on
the crest of the waves; every one was too busy to notice him; he could
not hear the blows of the axe in the noise of the wind and thunder; he
did not see what the sailor was doing; he saw the image quiver under the
strokes of the axe, and thought that at last she was coming down to him.
“Oh come, come,” he cried, swimming directly below and holding out his
arms. The wooden image quivered and shook; it bent forward; the next
instant the solid heavy oak fell with a plunge and struck the poor
merman in its fall. He felt that he was dying, but he did not know what
had hurt him. “My own love, my sea-nymph,” he murmured; and he put his
arms round the figure-head that was bobbing up and down in the sea quite
unconcernedly. He kissed the painted lips. Then at length he knew that
his idolized nymph, for whom he had given his life, was nothing but a
carved log. It was well for him that his next breath was his last.