“I’ll find them.”
With relief, Melanie dropped to the path and skirted the house. Those first minutes with Stephen had been suffocating. She had sat tense and still, knowing that Lucille, and perhaps Henry, expected from him some slight demonstration of affection toward the girl he was supposed to cherish above others. She had felt almost sick with longing, and even with disappointment. It was mad to be disappointed in Stephen, futile to make oneself ill with longing. She shook herself, tilted her chin. He was here, wasn’t he? And solely for her benefit. Well, then!
She found Colin mourning with Denise over a dead butterfly. Upon the child’s head perched a three-cornered hat made from a newspaper, and she thought how instinctively sensible he was with children. He pushed himself up from the grass and set Denise in the crook of one arm.
“Have we been too long? This young lady is indefatigable.”
Melanie moved slowly at his side. “She’s fond of you.”
“She’s not old enough to be really fond of anyone. Hello— “they had rounded the corner of the house “—isn’t that Stephen Brent’s car?”
“He’s on the veranda.”
“I wasn’t aware that he and Henry were acquainted.” For a harassed few seconds she tried to frame a reply, but they came within sight of the others and she had to give it up. Stephen had an arm on the wall and was quizzically watching their approach.
“Quite the family man, Colin,” he said, and imperceptibly shifted his glance to Melanie as if including her in the remark.
Colin relinquished the baby to Lucille. “At that size they’re not critical. I make a better uncle than I do a golfer.” He grinned at his brother. “Stephen left me gasping on the course yesterday, and knocked the daylights out of me at tennis the day before. He’s one of those smashing terrors.”
“Only occasionally, when a foul phase is on me,” Stephen corrected him. “I’m always happier in the middle of a job than at the beginning or end.”
“Didn’t you find anything on Mindoa?” inquired Lucille.
“Not in sufficient quantity to warrant mining—didn’t expect to. There’s a buried village on one of the hillsides.”
“A buried village! But that’s important.”
“Only as a tourist attraction, and it’s on our land. It’s more crude than anything of the type I’ve yet met with. If you’re interested, I’ll take you over.”
“Of course we’re interested. Maybe we could go tomorrow.” Lucille was at the door of the house. “You won’t mind if I take a nap? I’m sure you and Melanie have lots to talk about.”
“Lots,” he agreed, with smiling sarcasm.
Henry heaved out of his chair. “I’m trying out a new seed supplier. Want to take a look at a sample, Colin?”
The younger man nodded readily, but with puzzlement. Stephen’s lips thinned, cynically.
“You’re all very tactful. We’re grateful, aren’t we, Melanie?”
She made no answer. Even when the others had wandered off she stayed at one end of the wicker bench, as far as she could get from him. It was Stephen who ended the long pause.
“Nice man, Colin,” he said ruminatively. “I rather think that Henry is how advising him not to show quite such open admiration for you, and kicking himself for not telling him before that you’re booked.”
“I’m a bit tired of your brand of humor, Stephen. You overworked it with Ramon.”
“My dear girl, be thankful you haven’t to live with it for a lifetime.” Stephen lazily stretched his feet to the rung of another chair. “I’ve some information for you. Senor Perez and Ramon are departing on a coastal vessel for Beira on Monday.”
“Oh.” Again she experienced a pang of regret for the old senor’s unhappiness. “I hope everything will go well for them now. I’ll always have the horrid feeling that I treated them shabbily.”
“Ramon’s heart isn’t a delicate instrument. It’ll mend—and his conceit will do the rest. Before long he’ll be persuading himself that he did the turning down, not you.” He snapped his fingers, dismissing the volatile young Spaniard. “Elfrida’s sailing on Friday. She’ll pick up a liner at Bombay.”
“Is she going to England?”
“That seems to be her intention.”
“Have you seen her?”
“She came to see me, early in the week.” With an air of measuring each word, he added, “When I asked her to pack your clothes last Sunday I also demanded the necklace that Ramon gave you. She said she’d sold it, and I told her to buy it back. She did so, and brought it up to my house. The next morning I gave it to Ramon.”
“You mean you paid for it?”
“You wanted him to have it—to be completely clear of him, didn’t you?”
Melanie could have wept. Stephen paying for her folly in accepting so costly a gift, Stephen facing Elfrida and Ramon for her, arranging everything as he knew she would prefer it. And not even doing it for love—from pity, perhaps, or because they were both English and in a strange land—but not for love. He had said that he considered her a child, unfit as yet for marriage. She had the depressing conviction that, as usual, he was right. She looked down at the red stone of the veranda floor, her tones were low.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Stephen.”
“For a start you might smile now and then.”
“That wouldn’t come so hard if you weren’t sharp and cynical most of the time. I daresay you feel that way about me, but it’s ... discouraging.”
“You heard me tell Lucille just now that I invariably get irritable at the end of a job. God knows I don’t want to upset you.” For a minute she dared not turn his way. He had sounded different; vibrant and sincere. When she did meet his direct gray glance most of the coldness had gone from his expression and his smile was companionable.
“Come on,” he said. “Let the tension out of your system and show me the estate.”
As they wound along the main path he took her arm. The wind in the trees was like music, the flowers nodded and gossiped, and above arched the hot blue sky. They came to a new brick building with a fat cowled chimney, and went into the primitive interior.
“This is Lucille’s distillery,” said Melanie. “She’s been making geranium essence.”
“Phew!” He picked up one of the small wooden casks. “What does she do with the stuff?”
“It goes to a perfumer and soapmaker in France. They take the patchouli, ilang-ilang—whatever she sends.”
Stephen read out the wording on a label. “Pure Essence of Geranium, de Vaux Distillery, Mindoa.” He looked up. “Is Lucille a de Vaux?”
“The only one left on the island. They’re an old and famous family.” This was an opening, but Melanie shied away from it. “She copied the layout of this place from those she saw in the Bordeaux district. The vat and filters were actually brought from France.”
“She’s a sound sort of woman,” he said. “Your coming here was a wise step. The longer you stay the better pleased they’ll be.”
It was no use trying any longer to put off telling him. Both his mood and the trend of the conversation might have been framed for her purpose. Still, her accents were husky with apprehension as she answered.
“They’re already like old friends. In fact, they’ve invited me to stay on for two or three months.” Briefly, she outlined the work to be done on the de Vaux chronicles. “Lucille and Henry seem quite certain I can do it, and it will be wonderfully interesting. I shall feel at last as if I’m some good in the world.”
“That’s a damn silly thing to say! I thought you had more sense than to take yourself at Elfrida’s valuation. There are times when I could shake you.”
She laughed a little tremulously, turned from contemplation of the big iron vat. “Why don’t you?”
“Because I’m afraid it would hurt you mentally rather than physically,” he told her grimly, “and I might find myself kissing away the tears instead.”
After a crackling paus
e she said, “That would never do,” and went to the door. “Then you don’t object to my remaining here after you’ve gone?”
“Not if it will make you happy.” She heard the dull click as he replaced the cask upon the concrete slab with the others. “You realize the weather will be hot and stormy, and there’s dengue fever near the sea in these places? The Jamesons are hardened against the tropical wet season, but you aren’t.”
“I’m healthy. I can stand it.”
“They’ll watch over you, anyway.”
Inevitably, she asked the question, “Have you fixed your sailing date?”
“Not yet. The Tjisande is due in Bombay a week before Christmas. I’d thought of us both going aboard there and disembarking at Alexandria, where I’d have put you on a boat for Southampton. The Tjisande always finishes at Marseilles.”
Unconsciously, Melanie clenched her hands at her sides. The Tjisande again, with Stephen but no Elfrida. Aden, Suez, Alexandria—and then the drop; a boat for Southampton, without Stephen.
“Will you make the same journey alone?”
“Now that you’ve settled yourself here for a spell, there’s no need for me to hang on so long. I’ll hop a freighter and fly from Bombay to Cairo.” She felt him take her arm again, lead her out into the lane fringed by flaming hibiscus. “On the whole I’d prefer to think of you on Mindoa with the Jamesons than kicking around in London. Will you promise not to take a ship for home without letting me know?”
“No.”
Just slightly his hand tightened around her elbow. “You’d better, my child. In any case, I’ll give that instruction to Henry.”
In an access of anguish she dragged away from him. “Stephen, you’ve already done far too much for me, and I can’t hope to repay one little bit. I’m not the gullible youngster you rescued from beggars in Aden. It may not be very apparent, but I’ve put on a few years since then, and I’m quite capable of taking myself home and earning a living. When we say goodbye let it be ... final.”
“Well, well,” he said with satire. “This sounds like a scene from an old play. If we’re looking so far ahead, why shouldn’t we meet in London next year? We’ll go places together—a concert for you and the theater for me.” His eyes changed suddenly, went icy. “You’re the most exasperating creature I ever had dealings with. You lied about the scar on your neck to protect Elfrida, whitewashed Ramon and were filled with remorse over the senor. Perhaps if I were to push you through a window or purposefully and violently make love to you, you’d go all tender about me, too!”
She was walking rapidly, entering one of the thickets which sprang up wherever a patch of soil was left uncultivated. Stephen strode at her side, slashing here at a leaning bamboo, there at a tall, succulent weed that protruded in the path. There were luscious green banana plants, big, effulgent tropic trees, scarlet-splashed shrubs, but Melanie saw none of them. Her throat ached, her whole being was parched; the thudding of her heart was so heavy that it seemed to shake her.
On a breathless note of challenge, she said, “What use would you have for tenderness? You ridicule softness in any form. To you, it’s a sign of immaturity, and heaven knows you’ve done your best to knock that out of me. If you haven’t quite succeeded it’s because I’m one of those idiots who believe that the hardest person has one vulnerable spot.”
“Except me,” he said. “You don’t believe that of me.”
The excitement and despair went out of her. She put out a hand to gain the support of a tree trunk and her glance went no higher than his chin. “I didn’t mean to argue with you, Stephen,” she whispered. “It’s simply that I feel bad sometimes about your generosity, as well as your imperviousness.”
“I know,” he said with surprising gentleness, “and I behave like something out of the jungle.”
Without haste or roughness he pulled her against him and held her for a while. Tears squeezed from under Melanie’s lids. This closeness without vestige of passion was exquisite torture. What did she lack that Stephen needed in a woman ... what? A bond existed between them but it had no strength, no durability, and if he sailed away soon it would perish. A panic of fright rose in her and the tears ran faster.
“You were due for this a long time ago,” Stephen said. “Here, use my hankie.”
Presently she drew away from him and blew her nose. “That was childish.”
“Don’t apologize,” with a trace of teasing in his voice. “We’re engaged, aren’t we, and you’re young enough to weep without looking ugly. Let’s make a bargain—not another angry word before we part. It may tax you a bit, but it will be worth it. I’ll be a model fiancé of the old-fashioned type—in fact, you may even end up by wishing the engagement were genuine.”
She gave him a washed-out smile. “What would you do about that?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’d marry you. A bogus engagement isn’t too easy to tolerate, but a bogus marriage would be plain hell.”
She shrugged a little wearily, “I’ll never understand you, Stephen.”
“Go on trying, my sweet. I’m only a man after all.”
A remark that Melanie was to recall again and again in the months to come.
They went down to the beach. Stephen talked lightly, explained for the first time some of his findings upon analysis of the island rocks. They climbed to watch the great patches of blowing flowers and meandered among the coffee trees, and when finally they returned to the house the veranda table was set for tea and Lucille and the other two men were drinking their first cups.
On Sunday the five of them drove out to Stephen’s various diggings. He had discovered the ancient village accidentally, had been curious about something that, from his car, had looked like several blighted trees smothered in coarse grass and vines. Poking around with a steel hoe he had found under the soil stone columns instead of tree trunks, and later his party of coolies had worked their way down the hillside, disclosing the remains of walls decorated with crude chevrons and soapstone effigies. There were also evidences of old diggings.
“They were probably Southern Arabians or Indians after gold,” said Stephen, “but there’s not a speck on Mindoa. They fared better in Africa.”
“One day,” said Lucille with a twinkle, “someone will dig out the de Vaux chateau, and people will say, ‘A relic of the French occupation. How cute!’”
“We’ll have it signposted and recorded,” put in Henry truculently.
Stephen lifted his shoulders. “Perhaps I’ve seen too much of this kind of thing to get thrilled about it. Being a geologist rather dulls one’s sense of history and romance.”
“But Melanie tells us you don’t object to her writing up the de Vaux chronicles,” said Lucille.
“That’s rather different,” he answered charmingly. “I must confess that I was influenced by the fact that she would be living with you. Take good care of her for me, won’t you?” The old-fashioned fiancé, thought Melanie wryly. He was an excellent actor.
The next day she completed the first six pages of the chronicles, and during the rest of the week she increased the daily output. Involuntarily she became absorbed in the stories recounted in those aging papers. Port Fernando had been named after a duel between a Spanish don and the Comte Pierre de Marbleux. The Spaniard had won and given his name to the port, but because his opponent had made a miraculous recovery from what had appeared a fatal wound, the next place along the coast had been called Pierre—later distorted by the Indians into Pirree.
There were descriptions of ships with the dawn all pink on their billowing sails, of a mass wedding of French sailors with an assortment of brides, of the arrival of several young scions of the French aristocracy with their fear-filled wives.
The week ended and Stephen came again, to report that Ramon, his father and Elfrida were now on their way to their respective homes. It was not till they were at dinner that he announced his own imminent departure. He was planning to leave Mindoa the following Wednesday.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE ISLAND WITHOUT STEPHEN was a barren garden, a piano minus a keyboard, an untenanted house. At first Melanie could neither eat, sleep nor work. She sat at the writing table with her hands hard against her burning eyes, her teeth clenched so tightly that her ears and temples ached. She walked to tire her body, played with the baby, helped Lucille in the dairy and distillery. But each night when the house settled for sleep her mind awoke from the lethargy and vainly recaptured every moment of the afternoon when Stephen had sailed.
Henry had driven her into Port Fernando, had shaken hands with Stephen at the jetty head. Melanie had moved at Stephen’s side, a frozen smile on her face. They had stopped at a gangplank, become the focus of many dark eyes on the freighter’s deck. One rope had already been cast off, Melanie remembered, and an individual in a singlet and a peaked cap had called out something unintelligible, to which Stephen had made an equally foreign reply.
He had taken Melanie’s elbows. “Be a good child,” he’d said, “I’ll write you from Alexandria and I shall look for a letter from you.”
She’d felt goaded to say, “Are you still being the old-fashioned fiancé?”
“You’d be surprised how old-fashioned,” he’d told her enigmatically. His hands had slid up to her shoulders, gripped while he bent and kissed her lips. “I’m taking one for the road,” he’d said. “So long, my dear.”
Standing there in the hot, waning sunshine she had shivered. Her shoulders were cold where his hands had been, her mouth quivered with the pain of yearning. Blindly, she had made her way back to the car, and Henry had at once turned the two-seater toward home.
It seemed to Melanie that she would never shed the bitterness of that parting, never live down the horror of the first night after his departure. Had he been even dimly conscious of her grief he could not have gone. But to Stephen she was a child, and most children are adaptable to change and loss.
Even Lucille did not quite understand. She had come late to loving a man; her love had always been mature and solid. She had never known the bayonet thrusts of young, unrequited love, nor experienced the utter hopelessness that was now Melanie’s. She accepted the girl’s depression as natural, but had no inkling of its tragic depths.
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