The Green Mouse
took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
surroundings.
Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
of New England.
So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
and poured forth melody.
As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
_Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
Dass ich so traurig bin----_
she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
her tail.
She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
her out.
On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
attractive features.
"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
either."
Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
and climbed it.
Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
squinted through them.
"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
glasses to destruction on the ground below.
How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
overboard.
"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I _didn't_ see what I think I saw,
I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
hatter who made it!"
Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
side of the woods.
And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
A terrible calm descended upon him.
"This is interesting," he said aloud.
A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
his shoulders.
"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
speech:
"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
better----"
He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
calmly all the while.
"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
it _is_ there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of
Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
on the ruddy rocks.
[Footnote A: Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]
Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
gently beat time with her tail.
So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
her.
However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
floating weeds almost at her feet.
"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
fettered her.
"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
"Y-yes.... Are you?"
"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you _human?_"
"V-very. Are _you?_"
He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
breath and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"
"You thought I was a _real_ one?"
"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
She looked at him hopefully.
"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"
"I don't know what compelled me."
"But--you _were_ compelled?"
"I--it seems so----"
"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
and gazed at him.
"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
it exciting?"
He looked at her, then turned red:
"Yes, it is," he said.
Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
exhibit him at his best.
But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
"My hair?"
"Certainly. I want to look at you."
He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"
At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"
"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.
She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
Northport----"
"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me,
_are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
day or two."
"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his
horse."
"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! _You_
never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
"Never!"
"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
"No."
"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
destined for."
"Nobody--by machinery."
She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
_don't_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
what might have been destruction!"
Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
into his.
"It _was_ destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter