"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or," she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by making mistakes--very pleasantly."
Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fête and Go-cart Fair.
"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have a horrid old machine settle you for life."
"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's _such_ fun! He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly new man----"
"Flavilla!"
"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
"Are you utterly demoralized!"
"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard, after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let me."
The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
Her choice of rôle and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume. When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and singing away like the Musical Arts.
"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and rôle in the coming water fête. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to intervene.
She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a collapsed fish in the sunshine.
"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to rehearse."
"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
"Certainly."
As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge, hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little, wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the gravelly shores of Northport.
"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the throat as beautifully as her own skin.
It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed to wriggle down to the water's edge.
A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the surroundings.
Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either, because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction of New England.
So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing, golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward, and poured forth melody.
As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously, and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
_Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin----_
she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping her tail.
She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help her out.
On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour, steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually attractive features.
"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour, either."
Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder, walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree, and climbed it.
Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved, glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and squinted through them.
"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the glasses to destruction on the ground below.
How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy," he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen overboard.
"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I _didn't_ see what I think I saw, I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the hatter who made it!"
Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.