“Then you mustn’t miss Alexandria or you’ll always be sorry.”
In a flat, low tone Melanie said, “You’ll have to go without me, Miss Hogg. I’m not going ashore.”
She felt bruised and let down. Both at Mindoa and Bombay she had been assured that it was unlikely the ship would touch Alexandria. The Tjisande had picked up passengers and freight there on the outward journey, but Melanie had spent the time below, with Elfrida. She remembered a quayside and vociferous hawkers, but little more. She wanted never to see Alexandria, never to hear of it again.
She had imagined the ship passing the port well out at sea, there being a moment when she could safely assure herself, it’s all past, part of the hot seas east of Suez, part of Mindoa, but no longer part of me.
Thinking about it, though, Melanie realized that nothing ever had been made easy for her. She had been left without parents at a time when a girl most needs them, had been forced to knock music into heads that apparently had no inlet for the arts. For months she had struggled to please Elfrida, and others. Depressingly, it came to her that perhaps her life was patterned that way, an obstacle ahead all along the route, and her degree of happiness a pale sunbeam in the far distance.
In the cabin Miss Hogg called for her usual glass of warm milk. Into it she dropped two cubes of chocolate, and as she stirred her gaze was thoughtful upon Melanie.
“You look as if you could do with this more than I. Got a headache?”
“No. I’m only sleepy.”
“You act as if you’re fairly strong, but you don’t look particularly robust. Maybe it would be best, after all, if you rested on deck the whole of tomorrow. No sense in overdoing it.”
That concluded all argument. They climbed into their beds, snapped off their lights and said good-night.
The Meridian edged into the western harbor of Alexandria at nine-thirty next morning. Intending shore-goers were asked by loudspeaker to be back before lunch, as departure was scheduled for two o’clock. Many more braved Alexandria than had ventured into Port Said, and by shortly after ten Melanie seemed to have the whole liner to herself.
Restless, and rather sick through having tasted nothing but coffee for breakfast, she went to the library; but the bookcases were locked and the chief deck steward, who kept the keys, was nowhere around. She remembered her promise to write to Henry and Lucille at every port of call, but the fact that she had mailed a letter to them yesterday made it pointless to send another today.
The lounge was deserted, with all doors wide open to the decks. She went to the piano, was vexed and almost hurt to find that that, too, had been locked against her. No doubt the regulation for sealing everything while in port was necessary, but it made her feel unwanted, locked out.
She stood in one of the wide doorways, looking beyond the glaring white deck at the widespread city of Alexandria, was aware of two white-clad men wearing sunglasses approaching along the deck, one of them, taller and broader than the other. Her heart contracted and her face went white; if she could, she would have backed into the lounge, and into the recesses of the ship.
Now the men were in front of her, raising their hats. Afterward Melanie knew that it was the second, unknown man who had held her there, compelled her to behave like any young woman who is visited by a friend in a foreign port. If Stephen had been alone...
“Why, Melanie,” he said coolly, pleasantly, holding out his hand. “How nice to see you.”
In a voice that to herself sounded harsh and unnatural, she said, “Hello, Stephen,” and straightway looked at his companion.
“This is Bill Melford,” said Stephen. “He’s our company doctor ... Miss Paget.”
Bill Melford was slightly older than Stephen and unremarkable to the eye. Behind the dark glasses his glance was keen, but Melanie was not to know that; nor would she have bothered just then if she had. She said, “How do you do,” and took a long uneven breath to revive her depleted lungs.
“We had some difficulty in getting aboard,” Stephen was saying in the familiar suave tones, “but the company’s name invariably gets results. Bill kept saying you’d probably gone ashore. I had an idea, though, that Alexandria wouldn’t appeal to you.”
Was that satire or convention? Melanie was in no condition to analyze it. “How did you know I was on the Meridian?”
“Henry cabled me the date you were leaving Bombay.”
“Oh.” Henry ... trying to be a fairy godmother. The mistaken kindness that she might have expected of him had she not been convinced that he had come to detest Stephen. “Well, won’t you sit down? I’m afraid I can’t offer you a drink. There isn’t anyone on duty.”
Bill Melford said, “I’d like a word with the ship’s doctor. Will you excuse me?”
He walked away. Stephen placed a deck chair for Melanie, brought another into position beside it with his foot. He offered cigarettes from the thin gold case, flicked his lighter. She blew smoke, kept a tight hold on her nerves.
“Henry shouldn’t have cabled you, or you should have ignored it,” she said.
“I nearly did ignore it. The Meridian wasn’t supposed to dock at Alexandria, but we have some vitally important stuff for England, so the ship was cabled in the canal to collect it.”
“If we’d passed Alexandria I’d never have seen you again. You’re still unflattering, Stephen.”
“I have to be. How have you been getting on?”
“Very well. I finished off the manuscripts.” She paused. “I saw the letter you sent to Colin.”
Very slightly he compressed his mouth. “He showed it to you? That was in rather bad taste.”
“Not really. We were good friends. Besides, I was curious about it.”
She saw the old, sardonic twist at his lips. “Didn’t he ask you to marry him?”
“Not outright. He was at the other extreme from Ramon. I shall have to find someone in between.” Still on a light note, she said, “Did the hush-hush mission turn out a winner?” His reply was so long in coming that she darted him a swift, sidelong glance. His dark face was set and he was staring out across the harbor.
“It was a winner, all right,” he said. “I’m now comparatively wealthy and am acclaimed one of the world’s most thorough and successful geologists.”
“You don’t seem too pleased about it, but then it takes an awful lot to please you, doesn’t it? Are you living in Alexandria?”
“Temporarily—with Bill Melford. If there’d been time we’d have taken you there to lunch.”
“But you’re not sorry there isn’t time,” she suggested with an edge of bitterness. “I wish you’d stayed away from me altogether, Stephen.”
He shrugged. “It would have looked bad, because Bill saw the cable. In fact it was he who put me up to coming this morning. That’s the sort he is. If his most ferocious great-aunt were passing through town he’d act the dutiful and affectionate nephew. That’s what comes of being a doctor of men—the women have his sympathy, always.”
His manner was deliberately aloof, calculated neither to please nor annoy. He was enjoying this interview no more than she, but once started he would see it through. The sunglasses, obscuring those perceptive gray eyes, closed away his expression, no doubt that was why he kept them on. She hardened to combat him.
“Why,” she asked, “did you wait so long before writing to Colin?”
“For two months I was some way to the south, in sticky country. I didn’t get down to it till I was back here.”
“But need you have written at all?”
“Apparently not, if you won’t marry him. I’d told him to see that you came to no harm. Turning it over in my mind, it occurred to me that he might consider you still tied to me in some way. If he’d had the sense to tell Lucille and Henry ... and you, that I’d fallen for some other woman, he might ultimately have gained by it.”
In flinty little words she said, “Why should he tell me that? I didn’t need to be reminded that no bond existed between you
and me. And it would have taken more than a few lines from you to make me marry Colin Jameson.”
“I see that now,” he answered smoothly. “You’re growing up, Melanie, learning to discriminate and to know what you want. Are you going to train for a career in England?”
“What do you care?”
“Enough to want to help you.”
She bent away from him to flick her cigarette into a glass ashtray on a deck table. “Thanks, but I’ll manage.”
She had no sooner straightened than Stephen remarked casually, “Here’s Bill. He’s a decent man—puts up with no end from me.”
Bill wasn’t the only one, she thought hollowly.
The doctor came up, pulled a chair around to face them and dropped into it. “I tried to get drinks, but there was nothing doing. The doc wasn’t there, either.”
“Where have you been, then,” inquired Stephen sarcastically. “Diplomatically hiding?”
Bill’s smile was disarming. “If I had a pretty girl on deck I wouldn’t want you around. Ever been to Alex before, Miss Paget?”
“Once—but never again,” she responded. “I haven’t seen the town, but I’m not anxious to. One can have an overdose of the East.”
“But you ought to have a peep around.” He pushed his cuff back from his watch. “There’s still time to go for a drive. How about it, Steve?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I had a long day in Port Said yesterday.”
“Port Said!” curtly from Stephen. “Did you walk around the place?”
She nodded. “With my cabin mate. She’s unmarried but a solid matron for all that. She has all the guidebooks off by heart.”
“If you had to investigate why the hell didn’t you get a man to go with you? I never knew a girl so careless of her life and virtue!”
His sudden anger set up a pulsing in her temples, accelerated her heartbeats. She exchanged a brief, alarmed glance with the doctor, imagined that he reassured her.
“It was unwise,” he said, “but she got through. There are two of us to form a bastion today.”
“Thank you, but ...” Melanie shook her head. She was also shaking inside. She leaned back and looked at Stephen, saw him grind out his cigarette on the deck, his lean brown hands on the wooden arms of the chair as he stood up. He was careless and immaculate again.
“We’ll go now, Bill. Glad to have seen you, Melanie. I expect we’ll meet in London.”
This last, she thought hazily, was for Bill’s benefit. Even if he had her address he would never seek her out. Bill smiled, took her hand, then followed Stephen.
And that, it would appear, was really the end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was only eleven o’clock. Melanie got up, supported herself along the deck and down to her cabin. She stood in the center of the green patterned carpet with pain and grief surging around her heart and a weight in her head. If only she had gone with Miss Hogg! If only Henry had not misguidedly sent his cable! It was unfair, horribly unfair, that she should be made to endure more, and still more.
She craved to hear the chugging of the engines, to feel the swaying of the cabin, to hear the wash of the sea outside the porthole. Emptiness and despair ached in her throat, and she threw herself upon the bed and dug her face into the damask cover. Yet tears were a long way off. For months she had been unable to cry out the pain that was Stephen.
She lay there a while, her mind void with the renewed impact of loss, but at last her natural courage made her wash her face and change her crumpled dress. She shook a couple of aspirins from a bottle, poured a glass of water.
A knock at the door stunned her for a second. Then she thought it must be the steward.
“Come in,” she said, and stared stupidly when Dr. Bill Melford obeyed her summons.
He was slightly breathless and slightly embarrassed. He closed the door and stood regarding her both anxiously and apologetically. The tablets that still lay in her palm seemed to prod at the clinical half of his mind, for he said, “What are they ... aspirin? I shouldn’t take those if you haven’t eaten lately. Did you have any breakfast?”
She dropped the tablets into the wash-basin, put both hands to her head and at once let them fall.
“Why are you here, Dr. Melford?”
“It’s a long story, but I’m really here because I must do all I can for Steve.”
“I’m afraid I ... can’t be of any assistance.”
“I wonder?” He came closer and looked down at her kindly. Without the sunglasses his face had a rugged homespun charm. “During those few minutes I was with you and Steve on deck I had a hunch, a strong one. So I got him to drop me at the post office and I returned to the quay by taxi. Miss Paget, I’m going to ask you a personal question that I beg you to answer truthfully. Are you in love with Stephen Brent?” When she did not reply he added, “You can trust me,”
It didn’t seem to matter whether she could or not. “Yes,” she said. “I love him.”
His eyes brightened. “That’s great. So you’re the girl he was engaged to!”
“He told you about that?”
“If you’ll make yourself comfortable I’ll give you the details. Been sleeping badly as well as cheating your body of vitamins, haven’t you?” He waited till she had sunk into a cushioned chair before pacing to the porthole and turning to watch her small pale face. “Maybe I’d better begin with Steve’s return from Mindoa. He lived at my house for a couple of days before moving south, and naturally we talked of where he’d been and what he’d done. I chaffed him about the women he’d probably met and he said, ‘As a matter of fact I did a damfool thing—got myself engaged.’ He was grinning, so I asked if it was serious and he replied, ‘I don’t know, she’s such a kid.’ After that he told me to shut up.”
“It wasn’t a real engagement,” she said with an effort. “He saved me from someone else.”
He weighed this. “If it hadn’t had some significance for Steve he wouldn’t have mentioned it to me. I’ve known him a long time and I’m certain he hasn’t been close friends with a woman before. He’s been acquainted with plenty—I’m not giving him a halo. I suppose he never did say that he ... well, cared for you?”
“I was just a nice child, and a big nuisance.”
He smiled a little. “That’s Steve. You are young, but it’s what he needs, particularly now.”
“Now? It seems to me that he has pretty nearly everything.” Her head lowered. “You heard how he spoke to me, the way he said goodbye ... as though he had completed with relief some boring duty. While he has Stephen Brent he doesn’t need anyone else.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s having just a little too much of Stephen Brent. Miss Paget, did he write to you from the camp?”
“Yes, once. I got the letter about three weeks after he left.”
“But nothing more?”
She hesitated; there appeared to be no point in prevaricating. So she told him about the letter to Colin. He nodded, sympathetically but also with satisfaction.
“It fits together.” He put his hands into his pockets and rested his back against the cabin wall. “When Steve went south the camp there was beginning to close down. It’s no longer a secret that they were searching for uranium, but they hadn’t isolated anything worth mentioning. Steve hadn’t been in charge long before cheerful reports came in. He had the laboratory assistants working night and day and, needless to say, he was on the spot with them. One Sunday night, when the research hut should have been empty, he saw a tiny light through the window. He went over and found one of his juniors trying out some scheme of his own. The chap may have thought himself on the brink of some world-shaking discovery. Steve’s sudden arrival at his elbow scared him; he blundered and there was an explosion.” Swiftly, avoiding her dilated eyes, he went on, “Steve reported it in a few words. The other fellow had burned his hand and arm, and was being sent here for my attention.”
“And Stephen?” she whispered.
“I’m coming to that, but I think to some extent you’ve guessed it. We didn’t learn the truth of it till many weeks later, when his part of the work was finished. He came back wearing sunglasses, said the glare down there had been terrific.”
“His ... eyes,” she breathed. “And I took it that the dark glasses were just another barrier he was putting up. Is his sight impaired?”
“No, it’s perfect.” He came forward, sat on the end of a bed and bent toward her. “You won’t know the construction of the eye, so it’s difficult to explain just what happened. The explosion itself wasn’t much, but the light from it must have been intense and concentrated. You probably learned at school that the pupil is a sort of shutter that controls the amount of light entering the eye. The hut was only dimly lighted and Steve had come in from pitch darkness, so the pupil would naturally be at its widest. The flash caused a violent and terrible strain. The keenness of a geologist’s sight is his most precious equipment, and the fact that Steve went on analyzing and reporting shows that his was not lessened in any way. But his eyes had given him considerable pain—he admitted that.”
If Bill Melford had noticed that the color had deserted even her lips and a faint dew had appeared across her brow, he gave no sign. Possibly he was aware that they were only physical symptoms, that mentally this girl had as much stamina as the best.
“Is he still in pain?” she said.
“Without glasses, yes. Those he was wearing look-like the ordinary sun-resistant type, but they have special lenses that correct the trouble.”
“Will he always have to wear them? He’d hate that ... and what about his work? I ... I can’t imagine Stephen without his job, however rich this uranium find has made him.” She jumped up. “Why should this happen to him! Some other fool’s carelessness! And what does his omnipotent Development Corporation care, so long as they can make money...”
“He’s a director of the corporation,” he pointed out quietly, “has been for a long time.”
“What’s the good of that? What’s the good of anything that costs so much! You’re a doctor—you get someone to provide him with glasses that stop the pain and smugly decide there’s nothing more to be done. But you’re also a man. Can’t you realize how he feels? Hasn’t this almighty corporation got an eye specialist?” She stopped precipitately, pushed nervously at her hair and turned away. “I expect it was the shock that made me carry on like that. I’m sorry.”
Stormy Haven Page 18