“Yes, I love it,” replied Philomène, looking away over it towards the horizon, “it is beautiful in the same sort of way as the deep red of S. Mary Magdalene’s dress in the chapel, burning red like cherries with the sun on them, and like the third chord in ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ and like the smell of the garden early in the morning, and they all make one hurt inside in just the same way, though they are such very different things.”
Philomène was wondering if anything were making the merman “hurt inside,” he was so silent and grave, but then she remembered that the mer-folk are said to have no souls, and must feel that everything beautiful is but for a very little while.
“I don’t expect he would marry me even if I asked him to,” she reflected, “and that is supposed to be the only way of helping a merperson to a soul. Oh, I do wish I could get one for him! But perhaps there is another way after all, though no one has found it out yet. I must not forget to think of him next time I go to church.”
She was not quite sure what particular prayer could be made to fit him, but at last decided that he might very well count as one of the people in the Litany who “travel by water.” She had just arrived at this conclusion, when the merman roused himself from his reverie, and turned towards her.
“I cannot tell you all about the sea in one conversation,” he said, “but a little is better than nothing at all, so I will tell you a story. It is the way of the land-folk to speak of the sea as treacherous, but this story will show you that she keeps faith with her own.”
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH THE MERMAN TELLS HIS STORY
There was once upon a time a poor fisher couple who lived together in a hut upon a lonely beach, and while the husband was absent fishing upon the high seas, the wife earned a scanty livelihood by spinning.
Now one stormy winter’s night a little daughter was born to them, and because the mother would have it that the child was ailing, the fisherman struggled forth into the howling gale to fetch a priest for the christening. The path was narrow between the cliffs and the sea, and the waves were so violent that he feared lest they might overwhelm him at any moment. All at once he caught sight of a merman mounted on one of the crested billows.
“Whither away, good neighbour, in the wind and dark?” quoth he.
“My wife lies at home with a newborn child,” replied the fisherman, “and I go in search of a priest that he may christen it.”