Part 20 (1/2)

She looked at him for some time with an innocent, almost childish, curiosity s.h.i.+ning under her long lashes. At last she gave a low little laugh: 'Are you _afraid_ of me?' she asked; 'why don't you speak? but perhaps,' she added to herself, 'mortals _cannot_ speak.'

'I was silent,' he said, 'lest by speaking I should anger you--for surely you must be some G.o.ddess or sea-nymph?'

'Ah, you _can_ speak!' she cried. 'No, I am no G.o.ddess or nymph, and you will not anger me--if only you will tell me many things I want to know!'

And she began to ask him all the questions she could think of: first about the great world in which men lived, and then about himself, for she was very curious, in a charmingly wilful and capricious fas.h.i.+on of her own.

He answered frankly and simply, but it seemed as if some influence were upon him which kept him from being dazzled and overcome by her loveliness, for he gave no sign as yet of yielding to the glamour she cast upon all other men, nor did his eyes gleam with the despairing adoration the siren knew so well.

She was quick to perceive this, and it piqued her. She paid less and less attention to the answers he gave her, and ceased at last to question him further.

Presently she said, with a strange smile that showed her cruel little teeth gleaming between her scarlet lips, 'Why don't you ask me who _I_ am, and what I am doing here alone? do not you care to know?'

'If you will deign to tell me,' he said.

'Then I will tell you,' she said; 'I am a siren--are you not afraid _now_?'

'Why should I be afraid?' he asked, for the name had no meaning in his ears.

She was disappointed; it was only her voice--nothing else, then--that deprived men of their senses; perhaps this youth was proof even against that; she longed to try, and yet she hesitated still.

'Then you have never heard of me,' she said; 'you don't know why I sit and watch for the great gilded s.h.i.+ps you mortals build for yourselves?'

'For your pleasure, I suppose,' he answered. 'I have watched them myself many a time; they are grand as they sweep by, with their sharp brazen beaks cleaving the frothing water, and their painted sails curving out firm against the sky. It is good to hear the measured thud of the great oars and the cheerful cries of the sailors as they clamber about the cordage.'

She laughed disdainfully. 'And you think I care for all that!' she cried. 'Where is the pleasure of looking idly on and admiring?--that is for them, not for me. As these galleys of yours pa.s.s, I sing--and when the sailors hear, they must come to me. Man after man leaps eagerly into the sea, and makes for the sh.o.r.e--until at last the oars grind and lock together, and the great s.h.i.+p drifts helplessly on, empty and aimless. I like that.'

'But the men?' he asked, with an uneasy wonder at her words.

'Oh, they reach the sh.o.r.e--some of them, and then they lie at my feet, just as you are lying now, and I sing on, and as they listen they lose all power or wish to move, nor have I ever heard them speak as you speak; they only lie there upon the sand or rock, and gaze at me always, and soon their cheeks grow hollower and hollower, and their eyes brighter and brighter--and it is I who make them so!'

'But I see them not,' said the youth, divided between hope and fear; 'the beach is bare; where, then, are all those gone who have lain here?'

'I cannot say,' she replied carelessly; 'they are not here for long; when the sea comes up it carries them away.'

'And you do not care!' he cried, struck with horror at the absolute indifference in her face; 'you do not even try to keep them here?'

'Why should I care?' said the siren lightly; 'I do not want them. More will always come when I wish. And it is so wearisome always to see the same faces, that I am glad when they go.'

'I will not believe it, siren,' groaned the young man, turning from her in bitter anguish; 'oh, you cannot be cruel!'

'No, I am not cruel,' she said in surprise. 'And why will you not believe me? It is true!'

'Listen to me,' he said pa.s.sionately: 'do you know how bitter it is to die,--to leave the sunlight and the warm air, the fair land and the changing sea?'

'How can I know?' said the siren. '_I_ shall never die--unless--unless something happens which will never be!'

'You will live on, to bring this bitterness upon others for your sport.

We mortals lead but short lives, and life, even spent in sorrow, is sweet to most of us; and our deaths when they come bring mourning to those who cared for us and are left behind. But you lure men to this isle, and look on unmoved as they are borne away!'

'No, you are wrong,' she said; 'I am not cruel, as you think me; when they are no longer pleasant to look at, I leave them. I never see them borne away. I never thought what became of them at last. Where are they now?'