The Stolen Singer Part 6

"See, your Highness, how ready I am to do you homage! Only smile on the most devoted of your servants."

Melanie could not resist his gentle gaiety. It was as if they were two children playing at a story. Aleck, in such a mood as this, was as much fun as a dancing bear, and in five minutes more he had won peals of laughter from Melanie. It was what he wanted--to brighten her spirits. So presently he came back to the big chair, though he did not again take her hand.

"I knew you were t.i.tled and important, Melanie, and at first I thought that sealed my case entirely. But you seemed to forget your state, seemed not to care so very much about it; and perhaps that made me think it was possible for us both to forget it, or at least to ignore it. I haven't a gold throne to give you; but you're the only woman I've ever wanted to marry, and I wasn't going to give up the chance until you said so."

"Do you know also that if I marry out of my rank and without the consent of Duke Stephen, I shall forfeit all my fortune?"

"'Cut off without a cent!'" Aleck laughed, but presently paused, embarra.s.sed for the first time since he had begun his plea. "I, you know, haven't millions, but there's a decent income, even for two. And then I can always go to work and earn something," he smiled at her, "giving information to a thirsty world about the gill-slit, as you call it. It would be fun, earning money for you; I'd like to do it."

Melanie smiled back at him, but left her chair and wandered uneasily about the room, as if turning a difficult matter over in her mind.

Aleck stood by, watching. Presently she returned to her chair, pushed him gently back into his seat and dropped down beside him. Before she spoke, she touched her fingers lightly, almost lovingly, along the blue veins of his big hand lying on the arm of the chair. The hand turned, like a magnet spring, and imprisoned hers.

"No, dear friend, not yet," said Melanie, drawing away her hand, yet not very quickly after all. "There is much yet to say to you, and I have been wondering how to say it, but I shall do it now. Like the heroes in the novels," she smiled again, "I am going to tell you the story of my life."

"Good!" said Aleck. "All ready for chapter one. But your maid wants you at the door."

"Go away, Sophie," said Melanie. "Serve luncheon to Madame Reynier alone. I shall wait; and you'll have to wait, too, poor man!" She looked scrutinizingly at Aleck. "Or are you, perhaps, hungry? I'm not going to talk to a hungry man," she announced.

"Not a bite till I've heard chapter thirty-nine!" said Aleck.

In a moment she became serious again.

"I have lived in England and here in America," she began, "long enough to understand that the differences between your people and mine are more than the differences of language and climate; they are ingrained in our habits of thought, our education, our judgments of life and of people. My childhood and youth were wholly different from yours, or from what an American girl's could be; and yet I think I understand your American women, though I suppose I am not in the least like them.

"But I, on the other hand, have seen the dark side of life, and particularly of marriage. When I was a child I was more important in my own country than I am now, since it seemed then that my father would succeed to the throne. I was brought up to feel that I was not a woman, but a p.a.w.n in the game of politics. When I had been out of the convent for a year or more, I loved a youth, and was loved in return, but our marriage was laughed at, put aside, declared impossible, because he was of a rank inferior to my own. My lover disappeared, I know not where or how. Then affairs changed. My father died, and it transpired that I had been officially betrothed since childhood to Duke Stephen's brother, the Count Lorenzo. The duke was my guardian, and there was no one else to whom I could appeal; but the very week set for the wedding I faced the duke and declared I would never marry the count. His Highness raged and stormed, but I told him a few things I knew about his brother, and I made him see that I was in earnest. The next day I left Krolvetz, and the duke gave out that I was ill and had gone to a health resort; that the wedding was postponed. I went to France and hid myself with my aunt, took one of my own middle names and her surname, and have been known for some time, as you know, as Melanie Reynier."

"I know you wish to tell me all these things, Melanie, but I do not want you to recall painful matters of the past now," said Aleck gently.

"You shall tell me of them at another time."

The color brightened in Melanie's face, her eyes glowed.

"No, not another time; you must understand now, especially because all this preface leads me to what I really want to say to you. It is this: I do not now care for the man I loved at nineteen, nor for any of the other men of my country who have been pleased to honor me with their regard. But ever since those early days I have had a dream of a home--a place different from Duke Stephen's home, different from the homes of many people of my rank. My dream has a husband in it who is a companion, a friend, my equal in love, my superior in strength."

Melanie's eyes lifted to meet Aleck's, and they were full of an almost tragic pa.s.sion; but it was a pa.s.sion for comprehension and love, not primarily for the man sitting before her. She added simply: "And for my dream I'd give all the wealth, all the love, I have."

The room was very still. Aleck Van Camp sat quiet and grave, his forehead resting on his hand. He looked up, finally, at Melanie, who was beside him, pale and quite worn.

"Poor child! You needed me more than I thought!" was what he said.

But Melanie had not quite finished. "No, that is not enough, that I should need you. You must also need me, want what I alone can give you, match my love with yours. And this, I think, you do not do. You calculate, you remain cool, you plan your life like a campaign, and I am part of your equipment. You are a thousand times better than Count Lorenzo, but I think your principles of reasoning are the same. You do not love me enough, and that is why I can not say yes."

Aleck had taken this last blow standing. He walked slowly around and stood before Melanie, much as he had stood before her when he first asked her to marry him; and this time, as he looked down on her fairness, there was infinite gentleness and patience and love in his eyes. He bent over, lifted Melanie's two hands, and drew her bodily out of her seat. She was impa.s.sive. Her quick alertness, her vitality, her pa.s.sionate seriousness, had slipped away. Aleck put his arms around her very tenderly, and kissed her lips; not a lover's kiss exactly, and yet nothing else. Then he looked into her face.

"I shall not do this again, Melanie dear, till you give me leave. But I have no mind to let you go, either. You and Madame Reynier are going on a cruise with me; will you? Get your maid to pack your grip. It will be better for you than the 'professional advice' which you came to New York for."

Aleck stopped suddenly, his practical sense coming to the surface.

"Heavens! You haven't had any lunch, and it's all times of the day!"

He rang the bell, begged the maid to fetch bread and b.u.t.ter and tea and to ask Madame Reynier to come to the drawing-room. When she appeared, he met her with a grave, but in no wise a cowed, spirit.

"Madame Reynier, your niece refuses, for the present, to consider herself engaged to me; I, however, am unequivocally betrothed to her.

And I shall be endlessly grateful if you and Miss Reynier will be my guests on the _Sea Gull_ for as long a time as you find it diverting.

We shall cruise along the coast and put into harbor at night, if it seems best; and I'll try to make you comfortable. Will you come?"

Madame Reynier was willing if Melanie was; and Melanie had no strength, if she had the will, to combat Aleck's masterful ways. It was soon settled. Aleck swung off down the street, re-reading Jim's letter, intent only on the _Sea Gull_ and the preparations for his guests. But at the back of his mind he was thinking, "Poor girl! She needs me more than I thought!"

CHAPTER VI

ON BOARD THE JEANNE D'ARC

If hard usage and obstacles could cure a knight-errant of his sentiment, then Jimmy Hambleton had been free of his pa.s.sion for the Face. His plunge overboard had been followed by a joyous swim, a l.u.s.ty call to the yacht for "Help," and a growing amazement when he realized that it was the yacht's intention to pa.s.s him by. He had swum valiantly, determined to get picked up by that particular craft, when suddenly his strength failed. He remembered thinking that it was all up with him, and then he lost consciousness.

When he awoke he was on a hard bunk in a dim place, and a sailor was jerking him about. His throat burned with a fiery liquid. Then he felt the plunging and rising of the boat, and came to life sufficiently to utter the stereotyped words, "Where am I?"

In Jim's case the question did not imply the confused groping back to sense that it usually indicates, but rather an actual desire to know whether or not he was on board the _Jeanne D'Arc_. Plainly his wits had not been badly shattered by his experience overboard. But the sailor who was attending him with such ministrations as he understood, answered him with a sample of French which Jim had never met with in his school-books, and he was not enlightened for some hours.

It turned out, indeed, to be the _Jeanne D'Arc_, as Jim proved for himself the next day, and he was lying in the seamen's quarters in the fo'cas'le. By morning he felt much better, hungry, and prepared in his mind for striking a bargain with one of the sailors for clothes. He could make out their lingo soon, he guessed, and then he would get a suit of clothes and fare on deck. Suddenly he grasped his waist, struck with an unpleasant thought; his money-belt was gone! He was wearing a sailor's blue flannel shirt and nothing else. He turned over on his hard bunk, thinking that he would have to wait a while before making his entrance on the public stage of the _Jeanne D'Arc_.

And wait he did. Not a rag of clothing was in sight, and no cajolery or promise of reward could persuade the ship's men into supplying his need. He received consignments of food; short rations they would be, he judged, for an able-bodied seaman. But inactivity and confinement to the fo'cas'le soon worked havoc with his physique, so that appet.i.te, and even desire of life itself, temporarily disappeared in the gloom of seasickness.

In spite of difficulties, Jim tried to find out something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present voyage was an unlucky one by all the signs and omens known to the seamen's horoscope.

The sullenness of the men was apparent, and was not caused by the enforced presence of a stranger among them. In fact, their bad temper became so conspicuous that Jim began to believe that it might have something to do with the mysterious actions of the man on sh.o.r.e. He pondered the situation deeply; he evolved many foolish schemes to compa.s.s his own enlightenment, and dismissed them one by one. He grimly reflected that a man without clothes can scarcely be a hero, whatever his spirit. Not since the days of Olympus was there any record of man or G.o.d being received into any society whatever without his sartorial sh.e.l.l, thought Jimmy. But in spite of his discomfort, he was glad he was there. The intuition that had led him since that memorable Sunday afternoon was strong within him still, and he never questioned its authority. He believed his turn would come, even though he were a prisoner in the fo'cas'le of the _Jeanne D'Arc_.

As the violence of his sickness pa.s.sed, Jim began to cast about for some means of helping himself. Gradually he was able to dive into the forgotten shallows of his French learning. By much wrinkling of brows he evolved a sentence, though he had to wait some hours before there was a favorable chance to put it to use. At last his time came, with the arrival of his former friend, the sailor.

"Oo avay-voo cashay mon money-belt?" he inquired with much confidence, and with pure Yankee accent.

The sailor answered with a shrug and a spreading of empty hands.

"Pas de money-belt, pas de pantalon, pas de tous! Dam queer Amayricain!"

Jim was not convinced of the sailor's innocence, but perceived that he must give him the benefit of the doubt. As the sailor intimated, Jim, himself, was open to suspicion, and couldn't afford to be too zealous in calumniating others. He fell to thinking again, and attacked the next Frenchman that came into the fo'cas'le with the following:

"Kond j'aytay malade don ma tate, kee a pree mon money-belt?"

It was the ship's cook this time, and he turned and stared at Jimmy as though he had seen a ghost. When he found tongue he uttered a volume of opinion and abuse which Jimmy knew by instinct was not fit to be translated, and then he fled up the ladder.

On the fourth day, toward evening, James had a visitor. All day the yacht had been pitching and rolling, and by afternoon she was laboring in the violence of a storm and was listing badly.

James was a fearless seaman, but it crossed his mind more than once that if he were captain, and if there were a port within reach, he would put into it before midnight. But he could tell nothing of the ship's course. He turned the subject over in his mind as he lay on his bunk in that peculiar state half-way between sickness and health, when the body is relaxed by a purely accidental illness and the mind is abnormally alert. He wished intensely for a bath, a shave, and a fair complement of clothes. He longed also to go up the hatchway for a breath of air, and was considering the possibility of doing this later, with a blanket and darkness for a shield, when he became conscious of a pair of neatly trousered legs descending the ladder. It was quite a different performance from the catlike climbing up and down of the sailors.

Jimmy watched in the dim light until the whole figure was complete, fantastically supplying, in his imagination, the coat, the shirt, the collar and the tie to go with the trousers--all the things which he himself lacked. Was there also a hat? Jimmy couldn't make out, and so he asked.

"Have you got on a hat?"

A frigid voice answered, "I beg your pardon!"