Читать книгу The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories - Charles Weathers Bump - Страница 1

If Edwin Horton had not had a sleepless time that hot June night it probably would never have happened. As it was, after tossing and pitching on an uncomfortably warm mattress for several hours, he had dressed himself and left his Bolton-avenue home for a stroll in Druid Hill Park just as the dawn made itself evident. That was the beginning of the adventure.

Not a soul was in sight when he reached the driveway around the big lake, and he let out to take a little vigorous exercise, breathing in the fresh air with more enjoyment than had been his for some hours.

About half way around he stopped suddenly and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was not dreaming. For a curve in the road had brought him the knowledge that he was not alone in his appreciation of the early morning hour. Seated beside the water, on the rocks that line the lake shore, was a damsel – a rather good-looking one, as well as he could judge at the distance of a hundred yards. She was leaning on her left elbow and looking out over the lake in rather a pensive, dreamy attitude. Of course, young ladies don't ordinarily get up before dawn to go out to Druid Hill Park for the purpose of sitting alone beside the broad sweep of city water, and Edwin naturally felt some surprise at the novelty of the sight. Besides, she was inside the high iron railing, and he wondered how she had got there.

In the intensity of his interest he slowed down his pace as he drew nearer along the roadway. Should he watch her unobserved for a while to ascertain her purpose? Should he frankly hail her and ask whether she objected to company? Should he – well, the damsel settled his doubts for him just then by discovering him. She appeared startled, and he fancied she half meant to plunge into the lake. Then she changed her mind, gave him a bewitching little smile and raised her free hand to beckon him. Edwin needed no second invitation. The novelty of the situation was too alluring to resist.

In another moment he had scaled the fence and was clambering awkwardly down the rocks. And as he came close he found her a very pretty damsel indeed, with youthful, rosy cheeks, fetching blue eyes and long, light tresses that hung unconfined from her head down upon the sloping rocks behind her. She was smiling, and yet he thought he detected a renewed disposition to slip away from him before he had drawn too close.

Then he had a shock.

She was only half a woman!

The other half of her was fish – scaly fish – partly submerged in the waters of the lake!

He paused irresolutely. It was all right, you know, to read about mermaids in old mythologies and fairy tales. But to encounter one in this year of Our Lord, so near home as Druid lake! Oh, fudge! the boys at the Ariel Club would never get through "joshing" him should he ever say he had seen such a thing. It could not be true; it was too amazing! He was a fool to let his nerves get the better of him. He had better cut out those visits to the river resorts, or next he would be seeing pink elephants climbing trees. First thing he knew he would wake up in that stuffy room at home. No, he couldn't be dreaming! There was the railing, and the lake, and the white tower, and General Booth's home, and the Madison-avenue entrance, and the Wallace statue and a dozen other familiar spots in a most familiar perspective.

And there, too, was the damsel in flesh and blood, or, rather, flesh and fish!

She was the first to speak.

"Good morning to you, stranger."

She spoke English – good, clear mother-tongue. Her lips were parted in that alluring smile, and her manner was as saucy as that of any fair flirt he had ever known of womankind.

"In the name of Heaven, who are you?" he stammered as he sat down, awkwardly, beside her.

She laughed outright – mischievously, mockingly.

"I? I am the nymph of the lake. Long years ago I was the naiad of the woodland spring that is now deep down yonder," indicating a spot out in the lake. "But they dammed me in and turned great floods of water in here, and mighty Jupiter gave me my new title."

"And are you really half fish?"

She laughed again.

"I am what you see."

As she spoke she gracefully swayed the lower half of her in the water. A million glistening scales prismatically reflected the increasing morning light. She was half fish, all right. There was no doubt about that.

"By gosh! here's a rum go!" muttered Edwin to himself.

"What did you say?" queried the mermaid.

"I said, if you must know, 'By Jove! you are a beauty,'" he replied, gallantly and impetuously.

The mermaid smiled again. The feminine half of her was pleased with the compliment to her good looks.

"I'm afraid you're a sad flatterer," she said, coquettishly. She lowered her blue eyes, then uplifted the lashes and looked full into his face in a manner that made his heart bound. One little finger was shaken playfully at him. Edwin seized the hand. It was warm; human blood pulsated through it! And as he held it his companion gave just a bit of a squeeze. A score of girls had done the same in bygone sentimental hours. But none so deftly.

"This is certainly an odd adventure," he remarked. "Tell me, lady of the lake, do you often sit here in this unconventional fashion with gentlemen callers?"

"What would you give to know?" she asked, teasingly.

"You are the first for a long, long time," she went on. "Last summer there was a man in a gray uniform who saw me, but he looked so uninteresting I swam away."

"When are you here?" he asked, earnestly.

"I love to sit on the bank when fair Aurora makes the dawning day grow rosy," she acknowledged, "but I have to flee to the depths when the full sun comes." She looked to the east. "It is growing late," she added, hurriedly; "I must be going."

"Not yet, not yet," he pleaded.

"Do not detain me," she cried; "I must go. It means life to me."

Gracefully she glided into the water at his feet.

"You will come tomorrow?" he asked.

The coquettish mood returned to her.

"Perhaps," she said, as with long strokes she headed for the centre of the lake. Edwin watched intently until she had gone a hundred yards and more. Then she ceased swimming, kissed her hand to him and dived under the surface as the single word "Farewell" floated over the water.

It seems superfluous to remark that he was in a trance that day. His father, at the breakfast table, jovially prodded him about being late, until he barely caught himself on the verge of telling his queer secret. And so absent-minded was he at the office that he found he had entered the account of a prosaic old firm as "Mermaid & Nymph."

Long before 4 A. M. the next day he was at the lake. The waning moon was still in the west and there were few signs of the coming day. For half an hour he kept his vigil alone, and had almost begun to think his piscatorial charmer was not coming. Then suddenly he espied her out in the lake, swimming toward him. When about 50 yards off shore she hailed him jovially and bade him go around to the white tower. As he moved along the driveway she kept him company, maintaining the pace with graceful, tireless strokes and occasionally coming nearer to exchange a remark.

"What made you change the trysting place?" he asked.

"Love of change, I suppose," she replied. "A water nymph does not get much chance at novelty."

The half hour they spent upon the water's edge was largely one of sentimental banter between merry maid and enamored man, in which Edwin reached the conclusion that his charmer could give cards to the jolliest little "jollier" in Baltimore. She asked him about his past and present girl friends, and pouted deliciously when he frankly acknowledged them. Finally they parted, she promising to appear the next morning.

The third meeting started a chain of events. They were comfortably chatting on the rocks when Edwin heard the chug-chug of an automobile. The mermaid clutched his arm in alarm. "What are those horrid things?" she naively remarked. "They often make such an awful fuss I can hear them down in my cozy corner."

Edwin's reply was suspended while the machine passed them. The two men who were in it craned their necks most industriously at the sight of a pair of lovers out so early and seated in such an unusual spot for sentimental couples.

When he turned to make the explanations she had asked, he found it a harder task than he had imagined. Her knowledge of human inventions, of worldly means of locomotion, was not extensive, and he had to begin with the A B C of it and go through a course in elementary mechanics. After the forty-second paragraph of instructions the damsel clapped her hands gleefully and cried:

"It would be great fun to take a trip in one!"

"It is great fun," declared Edwin, for a moment forgetting to whom he was talking.

"But then I couldn't do it!" she exclaimed in disappointment. "I couldn't leave the lake."

The unshed tears in her eyes made him ardent.

"You could do it if you are willing," he avowed, earnestly. "You can take the water with you." Visions of a tank lady in the "Greatest Circus on Earth" came to him.

"You are fooling me," murmured the mermaid. And she pouted.

Edwin rose to the occasion. "I am not fooling," he protested. "It would not be difficult to put a tank of water in the machine for you to put your" – He was going to say feet, but he ended his sentence, stumblingly, "your other half in."

In her joy the Lady of the Lake took his cheeks in her hands and gave him an impulsive kiss. "You are the loveliest being on earth," she said, enthusiastically.

That settled it. The rest of the conversation that morning was about automobiles, and when they parted it was with a definite assurance on his part that Edwin would be on hand the next morning with a motor car suitably equipped for her use. It was only when he had gotten away that he realized the ridiculous side of the job he had undertaken. He could get an automobile all right. Tom Reese was a good friend, and a willing one, and his car had a tonneau capacious enough to accommodate the ex-naiad and her movable pool. But he would have to tell Tom the whole peculiar adventure to get him to take his auto out at such an unearthly hour.

"He'll think me clean daft when I unfold it to him," said Edwin to himself.

And Tom did, too. He laughed loud and long when Edwin chose what he thought to be a propitious moment and began his confession. "What are you stuffing me with?" Tom demanded, with tears in his eyes. Edwin renewed his explanations, only to bring on another explosion. "You'll be the death of me yet, old fellow," asserted Tom. "You'd better cut out those absinthes." Edwin added details most earnestly. "You're crazy, boy," was the only reply he got. He grew angry and hurt. "Now, Tom Reese," he demanded, "have I ever failed you when you wanted my help?" Tom apologized and began to study Edwin with intentness. "Look here, Edwin Horton," he said, "if there is any such girl at Druid lake as you describe, she's a 'fake' and she's got you strung mightily." Edwin swallowed this dig at his intelligence peacefully. He saw he had won. "All I ask, Tom," he rejoined, "is that you will take me out in the car and see for yourself." Tom gave him his hand. "I'm from Missouri, and you'll have to show me," he chuckled.

A wash tub from Mrs. Reese's cellar was requisitioned at 3 A. M. for use as a tank. After it had been lifted into the tonneau a hose supplied the needed water. "Climb into the water wagon," ordered Tom, and he threw on the lever and spun out to Druid Hill Park.

The day was still in embryo when the lake tower was reached. But the nymph was there. Her trim blue blouse was still wet after her swim ashore. The morning was summery, but Edwin had appreciated that the ride might be cold for the water lady, and had thoughtfully brought his sister's raincoat.

Tom's astonishment at seeing a bona-fide mermaid was balm to Edwin. The lad stood open-mouthed after Edwin had introduced them. In fact, he was so dumfounded that he failed to notice the hand the damsel had extended to him.

"Come on, Tom," said Edwin; "there isn't much time."

One on each side, the two boys supported the nymph as she cavorted as gracefully as possible up the rocks. They hadn't thought of the iron railing. "Caesar's ghost!" muttered Tom in dismay. "How are we going to get her over that?" Edwin turned to the mermaid. "If you don't mind," said he, "we will have to lift you." "I don't mind," she said, simply, "if you don't drop me."

At Edwin's suggestion he clambered over first, and then Tom raised the young creature boldly until she was clear of the iron spikes. There Edwin took hold of her and carried her to the auto. She was not a heavy burden, but her wet condition and her combination shape increased the difficulties.

From the moment she was once in the auto her joy was a pleasure to observe. She began by expressing her delight at their thoughtfulness in supplying the wash tub. When the machine began to move she clapped her hands in childish glee. From glee to wonderment her mood changed as they spun along the park roads. A hundred naive questions were asked about the objects unfamiliar to a lady whose habitat was at the bottom of a big pond. Edwin answered faithfully, and had his reward in his enjoyment of her artlessness and winsomeness. Occasionally Tom looked round to share in it.

At a good clip the auto was run out Park Heights avenue and back. The dawn seemed most kindly disposed to the trio, for it was long in coming. And when they had reached Pimlico, Tom proposed a detour by way of Roland Park, to return to the lake across Cedar-avenue bridge. The damsel hailed it with glee, only stipulating that she must be back by "sun-up."

They showed her the turf tracks on either side as they bowled along Belvidere avenue eastward, and they were still engaged in explaining to her the methods of horse racing when Tom started down the long hill beside the Tyson place, Cylburn, leading down to the bridge across Jones' Falls. The girl was asking questions, with her bewitching face in close proximity to Edwin's, when there came a startling interruption to their fun. Tom, again greatly interested in the talk, failed to notice a large boulder in the road, and the auto shot over it with a jolt that caused him to lose control of the wheel. The big machine regained its balance, but not its course. Instead, it careened to the right and bumped into the ditch before the alarmed occupants had scarcely grasped their peril. Tom was tossed out on the roadway. Edwin was pitched into the front seat, the mermaid shot past him and fell on a clump of green turf and the tub of water upset, and, in seeking an outlet, poured over the car, drenching Edwin.

"Look out for a gasoline explosion!" shrieked Tom, raising himself from the road, apparently unhurt. Edwin knew he could do nothing to prevent such a catastrophe, so he followed the other two out of the auto as quickly as he could. For a moment he and Tom paid no attention to the mermaid, so absorbed were they in the possibility of a blow-up. But when this danger had apparently passed they discovered that she had lifted herself from the grassy sward and was flip-flopping awkwardly in the direction of the brook that runs through Cylburn near the road.

"Come back! Come back! There's no danger!" called Edwin, as he started after her.

The damsel paid no heed. She was intent on getting to that stream of running water.

Again Edwin called, this time more sharply. The mermaid stopped not, but turned a tearful and much convulsed face to him.

Edwin raced after her. So did Tom. But when they got to the edge of the brook the only sign of her was an increasing ripple on the surface of a little pool. The stream was not so deep but that the bottom could be studied. And yet they saw nothing of her. Evidently she had the enchanted gift of being invisible in water.

Tom looked at Edwin. Edwin looked at Tom.

"That beats the Dutch!" said Tom.

"It's worse than that," replied Edwin, an odd catch in his voice. "We certainly have queered her for good. We must find her and get her back to the Park somehow."

For hours they moved up and down alongside the stream, calling pleadingly, but without response, for their quondam friend. Edwin made a little oration to her in absentia, in which he humbly begged her pardon and swore by all the gods of Mount Olympus – by the great Jupiter, the chaste Diana and all the rest of them, as far as he could remember their names – that he would restore her safely to the lake. But she came not. Tom added his entreaties, but she heeded not. Then Tom suggested that perhaps she had worked her way down the brook and into Jones' Falls, whence she could, if she but knew the pipes, get into her beloved lake again. Edwin jumped at the idea, and, leaving Tom to look after the auto, hastened down the ravine to Jones' Falls, and moved up and down the Falls, calling for the vanished damsel with a fervor that might have caused doubts as to his sanity had anyone heard it.

When he returned, terribly downcast, Tom had gotten the car righted and had discovered that it was uninjured.

"No luck, I suppose?" said Tom.

"No," replied Edwin, moodily.

"Get in, then. We can't stay here all day."

Edwin required urging to leave the spot. Finally he consented to go. As he climbed in he saw the overturned wash tub, and his concentrated wrath and grief were heaped upon it. Picking it up, he hurled it savagely at a tree, and, when it fell to pieces with the concussion, he exclaimed, vehemently and inconsequentially:

"That's the blamed thing that got us into this muss!"

At Druid lake he insisted on another long search. Time and again the auto was stopped that he might call aloud for his charmer. But no answering sound came across the water.

"Curses!" said Edwin. "I'm afraid she's lost for good."

And that is probably the true explanation as to why there has been no mermaid in Druid lake since. She may be in Cylburn brook, she may be in Jones' Falls, she may have reached the Patapsco, but no one has ever seen a creature answering her description and aquatic habits since the damsel who once held the job got giddy and went motoring.