Stories by English Authors: The Sea Part 12

Why, she almost looked as if she were made of Venetian gla.s.s, and a fall on deck would shatter her into a thousand fragments.

And her talk all the way was of the joys of Europe--the castles and abbeys she was leaving behind, the pictures and statues she had seen and admired, the pictures and statues she had left unvisited.

"Somebody told me in Paris," she said to me one day, as she hung on my arm on deck, and looked up into my face confidingly with that childlike smile of hers, "the only happy time in an American woman's life is the period when she's just got over the first poignant regret at having left Europe, and hasn't just reached the point when she makes up her mind that, come what will, she really MUST go back again. And I thought, for my part, then my happiness was fairly spoiled for life, for I shall never be able again to afford the journey."

"Melissa, my child," I said, looking down at those ripe, rich lips, "in this world one never knows what may turn up next. I've observed on my way down the path of life that, when fruit hangs rosy red on the tree by the wall, some pa.s.ser-by or other is pretty sure in the end to pluck it."

But that was too much for Melissa's American modesty. She looked down and blushed like a rose herself; but she answered me nothing.

A night or two before we reached New York I was standing in the gloom, half hidden by a boat on the davits amids.h.i.+ps, enjoying my vespertinal cigar in the cool of evening; and between the puffs I caught from time to time stray s.n.a.t.c.hes of a conversation going on softly in the twilight between Bernard and Melissa. I had noticed of late, indeed, that Bernard and Melissa walked much on deck in the evening together; but this particular evening they walked long and late, and their conversation seemed to me (if I might judge by fragments) particularly confidential. The bits of it I caught were mostly, it is true, on Melissa's part (when Bernard said anything he said it lower). She was talking enthusiastically of Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, with occasional flying excursions into Switzerland and the Tyrol. Once, as she pa.s.sed, I heard something murmured low about Botticelli's "Primavera"; when next she went by it was the Alps from Murren; a third time, again, it was the mosaics at St. Mark's, and t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption," and the doge's palace. What so innocent as art, in the moonlight, on the ocean?

At last Bernard paused just opposite where I stood (for they didn't perceive me), and said very earnestly, "Look here, Melissa,"--he had called her Melissa almost from the first moment, and she to prefer it, it seemed so natural,--"look here, Melissa. Do you know, when you talk about things like that, you make me feel so dreadfully ashamed of myself."

"Why so, Mr. Hanc.o.c.k?" Melissa asked, innocently.

"Well, when I think what opportunities I've had, and how little I've used them," Bernard exclaimed, with vehemence, "and then reflect how few you've got, and how splendidly you've made the best of them, I just blush, I tell you, Melissa, for my own laziness."

"Perhaps," Melissa interposed, with a grave little air, "if one had always been brought up among it all, one wouldn't think quite so much of it. It's the novelty of antiquity that makes it so charming to people from my country. I suppose it seems quite natural, now, to you that your parish church should be six hundred years old, and have tombs in the chancel, with Elizabethan ruffs, or its floor inlaid with Plantagenet bra.s.ses. To us, all that seems mysterious, and in a certain sort of way one might almost say magical. n.o.body can love Europe quite so well, I'm sure, who has lived in it from a child. YOU grew up to many things that burst fresh upon us at last with all the intense delight of a new sensation."

They stood still as they spoke, and looked hard at one another.

There was a minute's pause. Then Bernard began again. "Melissa,"

he faltered out, in a rather tremulous voice, "are you sorry to go home again?"

"I just hate it!" Melissa answered, with a vehement burst. Then she added, after a second, "But I've enjoyed the voyage."

"You'd like to live in Europe?" Bernard asked.

"I should love it!" Melissa replied. "I'm fond of my folks, of course, and I should be sorry to leave them; but I just love Europe. I shall never go again, though. I shall come right away back to Kansas City now, and keep store for father for the rest of my natural existence."

"It seems hard," Bernard went on, musing, "that anybody like you, Melissa, with such a natural love of art and of all beautiful things,--anybody who can draw such sweet dreams of delight as those heads you showed us after Filippo Lippi, anybody who can appreciate Florence and Venice and Rome as you do,--should have to live all her life in a far Western town, and meet with so little sympathy as you're likely to find there."

"That's the rub," Melissa replied, looking up into his face with such a confiding look. (If any pretty girl had looked up at ME like that, I should have known what to do with her; but Bernard was twenty-four, and young men are modest.) "That's the rub, Mr.

Hanc.o.c.k. I like--well, European society so very much better. Our men are nice enough in their own way, don't you know; but they somehow lack polish--at least, out West, I mean, in Kansas City.

Europeans may n't be very much better when you get right at them, perhaps; but on the outside, anyway to ME, they're more attractive somehow."

There was another long pause, during which I felt as guilty as ever eavesdropper before me. Yet I was glued to the spot. I could hardly escape. At last Bernard spoke again. "I should like to have gone round with you on your tour, Melissa," he said. "I don't know Italy; I don't suppose by myself I could even appreciate it. But if YOU were by my side, you'd have taught me what it all meant; and then I think I might perhaps understand it."

Melissa drew a deep breath. "I wish I could take it all over again,"

she answered, half sighing. "And I didn't see Naples, either. That was a great disappointment. I should like to have seen Naples, I must confess, so as to know I could at least in the end die happy."

"Why do you go back?" Bernard asked, suddenly, with a bounce, looking down at that wee hand that trembled upon the taffrail.

"Because I can't help myself," Melissa answered, in a quivering voice. "I should like--I should like to live always in England."

"Have you any special preference for any particular town?" Bernard asked, moving closer to her--though, to be sure, he was very, very near already.

"N--no; n--none in particular," Melissa stammered out, faintly, half sidling away from him.

"Not Cambridge, for example?" Bernard asked, with a deep gulp and an audible effort.

I felt it would be unpardonable for me to hear any more. I had heard already many things not intended for me. I sneaked off, unperceived, and left those two alone to complete that conversation.

Half an hour later--it was a calm, moonlight night--Bernard rushed down eagerly into the saloon to find us. "Father and mother," he said, with a burst, "I want you up on deck for just ten minutes.

There's something up there I should like so much to show you."

"Not whales?" I asked, hypocritically, suppressing a smile.

"No, not whales," he replied; "something much more interesting."

We followed him blindly, Lucy much in doubt what the thing might be, and I much in wonder, after Mrs. Wade's letter, how Lucy might take it.

At the top of the companion--ladder Melissa stood waiting for us, demure, but subdued, with a still timider look than ever upon that sweet, shrinking, small face of hers. Her heart beat hard, I could see by the movement of her bodice, and her breath came and went; but she stood there like a dove, in her dove-coloured travelling dress.

"Mother," Bernard began, "Melissa's obliged to come back to America, don't you know, without having ever seen Naples. It seems a horrid shame she should miss seeing it. She hadn't money enough left, you recollect, to take her there."

Lucy gazed at him, unsuspicious. "It does a pity," she answered, sympathetically.

"She'd enjoy it so much. I'm sorry she hasn't been able to carry out all her programme."

"And, mother," Bernard went on, his eyes fixed hard on hers, "how awfully she'd be thrown away on Kansas City! I can't bear to think of her going back to 'keep store' there."

"For my part, I think it positively wicked," Lucy answered, with a smile, "and I can't think what--well, people in England are about, to allow her to do it."

I opened my eyes wide. Did Lucy know what she was saying? Or had Melissa, then, fascinated her--the arch little witch!--as she had fascinated the rest of us?

But Bernard, emboldened by this excellent opening, took Melissa by the hand as if in due form to present her. "Mother," he said, tenderly, leading the wee thing forward, "and father, too, THIS is what I wanted to show you--the girl I'm engaged to!"

I paused and trembled. I waited for the thunderbolt. But no thunderbolt fell. On the contrary, Lucy stepped forward, and, under cover of the mast, caught Melissa in her arms and kissed her twice over.

"My dear child," she cried, pressing her hard, "my dear little daughter, I don't know which of you two I ought most to congratulate."

"But I do," Bernard murmured low. And, his father though I am, I murmured to myself, "And so do I, also."

"Then you're not ashamed of me, mother dear," Melissa whispered, burying her dainty little bead on Lucy's shoulder, "because I kept store in Kansas City?"

Lucy rose above herself in the excitement of the moment. "My darling wee daughter," she answered, kissing her tenderly again, "it's Kansas City alone that ought to be ashamed of itself for putting YOU to keep store--such a sweet little gem as you are!"

VANDERDECKEN'S MESSAGE HOME;

OR,

THE TENACITY OF NATURAL AFFECTION

(ANONYMOUS)

Our s.h.i.+p, after touching at the Cape, went out again, and, soon losing sight of the Table Mountain, began to be a.s.sailed by the impetuous attacks of the sea, which is well known to be more formidable there than in most parts of the known ocean. The day had grown dull and hazy, and the breeze, which had formerly blown fresh, now sometimes subsided almost entirely, and then, recovering its strength for a short time, and changing its direction, blew with temporary violence, and died away again, as if exercising a melancholy caprice.