II On the Bottom of the Sea
They met more formally, presently, on the bottom of the sea. Brassid plunged in the moment he arrived at the surf, and went out and under with a long, strong push. He saw a face on the bottom. It stared uncannily up at him through the wavering green water. Brassid followed it and dragged it breathlessly to the surface. There she laughed at him.
“I—I—thought you were d-dead!” gasped Brassid.
“Not at all,” smiled the Sea-Lady.
“Why, how long were you under?”
“Not long.”
“It seemed as if you had been there all day!”
“My grandfather was a whaler,” said the Sea-Lady, winking the water out of her eyes solemnly, as if that explained her.
“My grandfather was an Indian-fighter,” cried Brassid, joyously, which was his way of saying that the one was as intelligible as the other.
Her laughter broke loose.
“Look at me!” commanded Brassid, suddenly, with that savagery which he had from his grandfather. “You are shamming—and doing it beautifully. You were in distress down there! And if I hadn’t come along—”
But by that time she was doing exactly what Brassid had asked—looking at him with the most wonderful eyes of blue Brassid had seen since his mother died. Brassid funked ingloriously. Think of it!
“The lady with the lorgnon has seen us, and is coming,” she warned.
“Yes!”
He was frightened, too.
“Let us swim a little.”
“Yes.”
They plunged in.
“Be careful,” said Brassid.
“My grandfather was a whaler,” she laughed back as she raced away to sea.
“Oh, you can swim!” he exclaimed joyously.
“Can you?” she laughed.
“A little,” he answered—more carefully now.
“Come!”
After that she admitted Brassid to a precarious intimacy, based upon swimming. In the sea she was everything Brassid could wish. On the land she was not.
“She’s like a fish out of water,” jested the lady who took snuff.
“Do not be discouraged,” shouted she of the pepper-box. “I do not think she knows yet that you’re courting her.”
All the ladies cackled.
“Who said I was courting her?” demanded Brassid, with ferocity.
The ladies laughed again. And when Miss Princeps came down they surrounded her and told her Brassid’s delightful joke.
“I’ve warned him,” said one, “that you’re a siren—one of those ladies who—”
Well, it was his first comradeship, and it happened to be an extraordinarily perfect one. It was so very blessed that, to use the words of Mrs. Paradigm (she was the lady with the lorgnon), he went crazy over it. And perhaps if you had known Brassid’s Sea-Lady, you would not have wondered—you might have commended him for going crazy. You remember that she had the eyes of Brassid’s blessed mother.
“I never hoped to see them on earth again,” he said to the face in the mirror.
Oh, she was rich and splendid and fragrant and melodious—I am using Brassid’s book of adjectives—and altogether more lovely in every detail of herself than any one else on earth! And he had constantly the ecstatic feeling that he had discovered her, really; but he never did. For the Sea-Lady was unlike any one he had ever known. He literally knew that she was wonderful in every way that a lover could wish a sweetheart to be wonderful, yet there was not a single admission to go upon. Whenever she caught herself showing Brassid her heart,—and she would have been fond of showing this to Brassid if he had been a woman, perhaps,—she went to cover—and asked him to swim! And I am glad to think that that is the only reason he never saw her heart—never really discovered her.
Until that last day—that second time the eyes said, “Too late!”
And of that I am now to tell you.