THE SEA-MAID.
Caius understood that he had still three miles of the level beach to
tread. At first he hardly felt the sand under his feet, they were so
dead with cold. The spray from the roaring tide struck his face
sideways. He had time now to watch each variation, each in and out of
the dune, and he looked at them eagerly, as the only change that was
afforded to the monotony. Then for the first time he learned how
completely a man is shut out from all one half of the world by the
simple command not to look behind him, and all the unseen half of his
world became rife, in his thought, with mysterious creatures and their
works. At first he felt that he was courting certain death by keeping
the word he had given; in the clap of the waves he seemed to hear the
pistol-shot that was to be his doom, or the knife-like breath of the
wind seemed the dagger in the hand of a following murderer. But as he
went on and no evil fate befell, his fear died, and only curiosity
remained--a curiosity so lively that it fixed eagerly upon the stretch
of the surf behind him, upon his own footsteps left on the soft sand,
upon the sand-hills that he had passed, although they were almost the
same as the sand-hills that were before. It would have been a positive
joy to him to turn and look at any of these things. While his mind
dwelt upon it, he almost grudged each advancing step, because it put
more of the interesting world into the region from which he was shut out
as wholly as if a wall of separation sprang up between the behind and
before.
By an effort of will he turned his thought from this desire, or from
considering what the mysterious something could be that it was
all-important for him not to see, or who it was that in this desolate
place would spy upon him if he broke his vow.
When his activity had set the blood again coursing warmly in his veins,
all that was paltry and depressing passed from his mind and heart, as a
mist is rolled away by the wind. The sweet, wild air, that in those
regions is an elixir of life to the stranger, making him young if he be
old, and if he be young making him feel as demigods felt in days of
yore, for a day and a night had been doing its work upon him. Mere life
and motion became to him a delight such as he had never felt before; and
when the moon came out again from the other side of the cloud, the sight
of her beams upon surf and sand was like a rare wild joy. He was glad
that no one interfered with his pleasure, that he was, as far as he
knew, alone with the clouds that were winging their way among moonbeams
in the violet sky, and with the waves and the wind with which he held
companionship.
He had gone a mile, it might be more; he heard a step behind him. In
vain he tried to convince himself that some noise natural to the lonely
beach deceived him. In the high tide of life that the bracing air had
brought him, his senses were acute and true. He knew that he heard this
step: it was light, like a child's; it was nimble, like a fawn's;
sometimes it was very near him. He was not in the least afraid; but do
what he would, his mind could form no idea of what creature it might be
who thus attended him. No dark or fearful picture crossed his mind just
then; all its images were good.
The fleet of white clouds that were sailing in the sky rang glad changes
upon the beauty of the moonlit scene. Half a mile or more Caius walked
listening to the footstep; then he came on a wrecked boat buried in the
sand, its rim laid bare by the tide. Caius struck his foot and fell upon
it.
Striking his head, stunned for a moment, then springing up again, in the
motion of falling or rising, he knew not how, he saw the beach behind
him--the waves that were now nearing the foot of the dune, the track
between with his footsteps upon it, and, standing in this track, alert
to fly if need be, the figure of a girl. Her dress was all blown by the
wind, her curling hair was like a twining garland round her face, and
her face--ah! that face: he knew it as well as, far better than he knew
his own; its oval curves, its dimpled sweetness, its laughing eyes. Just
for such brief seconds of time as were necessary for perfect recognition
he saw it; and then, impelled by his former purpose--no time now for a
new volition--he got himself up and walked on, with his eyes in front as
before.
He thought the sea-maid did not know that he had seen her, for her
footsteps came on after his own. Or, if she knew, she trusted him not to
turn. That was well; she might trust him. Never in his life had Caius
felt less temptation to do the thing that he held to be false. He knew
now, for he had seen the whole line of the beach, that there was
nothing there for him to fear, nothing that could give any adequate
reason to any man to compel him to walk as he now walked. That did not
matter; he had given his word. In the physical exaltation of the hour
the best of him was uppermost. Like the angels, who walk in heavenly
paths, he had no desire to be a thing that could stoop from moral
rectitude. The knowledge that his old love of the sea was his companion
only enhanced the strength of his vow, only made all that the strength
of vows mean more dear to him; and the moonlit shore was more beautiful,
and life, each moment that he was then living, more absolutely good.
So they went on, and he did not try to think where the sea-maid had come
from, or whether the gray flapping dress and the girlish step were but
the phantom guise that she could don for the hour, or whether, if he
should turn and pursue her, she would drop from her upright height into
the scaly folds that he had once seen, and plunge into the waves, or
whether _that_ had been the masquerade, and she a true woman of the
land. He did not know or care. Come what come might, his spirit walked
the beach that night with the beautiful spirit that the face of the
sea-maid interpreted to him.