“ ‘Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool. …’ ”
There was a splash and a swirl in the pool, and there was the Mermaid herself, sure enough. Their eyes had grown used to the dusk and they could see her quite plainly, could see too that she was holding out her arms to them and smiling so sweetly that it almost took their breath away.
“My cherished preservers,” she cried, “my dear, darling, kind, brave, noble, unselfish dears!”
“You’re talking to Reuben, in the plural, by mistake, I suppose,” said Francis, a little bitterly.
“To him, too, of course. But you two most of all,” she said, swishing her tail around and leaning her hands on the edge of the pool. “I am so sorry I was so ungrateful the other night. I’ll tell you how it was. It’s in your air. You see, coming out of the water we’re very susceptible to aerial influences—and that sort of ungratefulness and, what’s the word—?”
“Snobbishness,” said Francis firmly.
“Is that what you call it?—is most frightfully infectious, and your air’s absolutely crammed with the germs of it. That’s why I was so horrid. You do forgive me, don’t you, dears? And I was so selfish, too—oh, horrid. But it’s all washed off now, in the nice clean sea, and I’m as sorry as if it had been my fault, which it really and truly wasn’t.”
The children said all right, and she wasn’t to mind, and it didn’t matter, and all the things you say when people say they are sorry, and you cannot kiss them and say, “Right oh,” which is the natural answer to such confessions.
“It was very curious,” she said thoughtfully, “a most odd experience, that little boy … his having been born of people who had always been rich, really seemed to me to be important. I assure you it did. Funny, wasn’t it? And now I want you all to come home with me, and see where I live.”
She smiled radiantly at them, and they all said, “Thank you,” and looked at each other rather blankly.
“All our people will be unspeakably pleased to see you. We Mer-people are not really ungrateful. You mustn’t think that,” she said pleadingly.
She looked very kind, very friendly. But Francis thought of the Lorelei. Just so kind and friendly must the Lady of the Rhine have looked to the “sailor in a little skiff” whom he had disentangled from Heine’s poem, last term, with the aid of the German dicker. By a curious coincidence and the same hard means, Mavis had, only last term, read of Undine, and she tried not to think that there was any lack of soul in the Mermaid’s kind eyes. Kathleen who, by another coincidence, had fed her fancy in English literature on the “Forsaken Merman” was more at ease.
“Do you mean down with you under the sea?” she asked—
“ ‘Where the sea snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine,
Where great whales go sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye
Round the world for ever and aye?’ ”
“Well, it’s not exactly like that, really,” said the Mermaid; “but you’ll see soon enough.”
This had, in Bernard’s ears, a sinister ring.
“Why,” he asked suddenly, “did you say you wanted to see us at dead of night?”
“It’s the usual time, isn’t it?” she asked, looking at him with innocent surprise. “It is in all the stories. You know we have air stories just as you have fairy stories and water stories—and the rescuer almost always comes to the castle gate at dead of night, on a coal-black steed or a dapple-gray, you know, or a red-roan steed of might; but as there were four of you, besides me and my tail, I thought it more considerate to suggest a chariot. Now, we really ought to be going.”
“Which way?” asked Bernard, and everyone held their breath to hear the answer.
“The way I came, of course,” she answered, “down here,” and she pointed to the water that rippled around her.
“Thank you so very, very much,” said Mavis, in a voice which trembled a little; “but I don’t know whether you’ve heard that people who go down into the water like that—people like us—without tails, you know—they get drowned.”
“Not if they’re personally conducted,” said the Mermaid. “Of course we can’t be responsible for trespassers, though even with them I don’t think anything very dreadful has ever happened. Someone once told me a story about Water Babies. Did you ever hear of that?”
“Yes, but that was a made-up story,” said Bernard stolidly.
“Yes, of course,” she agreed, “but a great deal of it’s quite true, all the same. But you won’t grow fins and gills or anything like that. You needn’t be afraid.”
The children looked at each other, and then all looked at Francis. He spoke.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much, but we would rather not—much rather.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said the lady kindly. “Look here, it’s as easy as easy. I give you each a lock of my hair,” she cut off the locks with her shell knife as she spoke, long locks they were and soft. “Look here, tie these round your necks—if I’d had a lock of human hair round my neck I should never have suffered from the dryness as I did. And then just jump in. Keep your eyes shut. It’s rather confusing if you don’t; but there’s no danger.”
The children took the locks of hair, but no one regarded them with any confidence at all as lifesaving apparatus. They still hung back.
“You really are silly,” said the sea lady indulgently. “Why did you meddle with magic at all if you weren’t prepared to go through with it? Why, this is one of the simplest forms of magic, and the safest. Whatever would you have done if you had happened to call up a fire spirit and had had to go down Vesuvius with a Salamander round your little necks?”
She laughed merrily at the thought. But her laugh sounded a little angry too.
“Come, don’t
