THE GUITAR OF ALENYA OF THE SEA
That one day, in a mood of fierce impatience, had seized upon Anthony
Adriance and hurried him through a range of feeling and experience such
as Time usually brings in leisurely sequence, spaced apart. From Elsie's
confidence in the morning, with its moving love and pride and awe he in
nowise was afraid to name holy, he had gone to the spectacle of his
friend's degradation in the tawdry restaurant. And as a completion, he
had been confronted with the new and ugly vision of a father he could
not honor.
He always had respected his father very sincerely, and felt more
affection for him than either of them ever had realized. He had admired
the success of the elder Adriance, and secretly regretted that he was
not allowed to work with him or share it except by spending its
proceeds. His hope of a reconciliation had not been all mercenary. Now
all that was thrown down, an image overturned and shattered. He saw
only a selfish, narrow-minded man, scheming to divorce a pretty woman
from her husband in order that she might be free to come between his son
and the unwelcome wife he had taken. For of course Elsie was judged by
the servant's position she had held; there was no one to tell of her
gentle birth and breeding. Anthony had understood this, and had looked
forward with eager anticipation to enlightening his father, some day
when his other plans were quite ready.
He had meant that day to be soon; now he knew that it would never come
in the way he had fancied. And the loss of an ideal hurt. Masterson had
told him the truth; there was no escaping the logical inference to be
drawn from it. Anthony wasted no energy in trying, instead addressing
himself still more closely to the work in hand.
He worked harder than ever, at the mill, but the buoyant enthusiasm was
gone. Now he dreaded the possibility that Mr. Goodwin might speak to Mr.
Adriance of the young man who bore his name and who was making such
changes in the shipping department. For Anthony did not content himself
with regulating the trucking system. He had inherited his father's
ability, although the unused tool had lain undiscovered. His attention
aroused, he found other slack lines, and indicated how to tighten them
to taut efficiency. Mr. Goodwin visited the underground room more than
once, observed and approved. Cook, won by the new man's tact that never
slighted or criticised injuriously his former chief and present
associate, aided him with warm co-operation. Anthony found his salary
increased. When Ransome returned, after his illness, he was given a new
position, upstairs.
The evenings in the little red house were no longer entirely devoted to
play, after that night spent abroad. Adriance took to keeping a book of
records, in the form of cryptic notes and columns of figures.
"Chauffeur's accounts," he called them, when Elsie questioned; and she
laughed acceptance of the evasion, forbearing to tease him with
curiosity.
Long before, there had arrived the replies to the letters of
announcement he and Elsie had written to her parents, and Adriance had
been touched home by the serious, graciously cordial welcome extended
to the unknown son-in-law. He had promised himself, and Elsie, that some
time a visit to Louisiana should be paid. Since that, she had described
the neighborhood, the countryside and people, with her knack of vivid
word-sketching, until all lay as clearly before him as a place seen. Now
he recalled this with a new consideration.
"Do you remember the old house and plantation that you once told me
about?" he asked her, one Sunday morning. "The deserted place, that had
been for sale so long. Do you suppose it is still for sale?"
"It was, the last time Virginia wrote," she replied, regarding him
questioningly. "She spoke of a picnic held under the old trees."
"If I--well, was crowded out of here, would you be content to try life
down there? I remembered yesterday that I own some rather valuable stuff
left me by my mother; nothing very much, just jewelry she had as a girl.
I do not like the idea of selling it, but if I am forced into a corner,
it would buy such a place for us. I have some ideas I would like to try
out."
Elsie set down the salad-bowl with which she was busied; her rain-gray
eyes grave, she considered her husband.
"Of what are you thinking, Anthony?"
Adriance looked away. Even to her, he could not bring himself to speak
of his lost confidence in his father or to say whom he now feared as an
enemy. Mr. Adriance could not divide Anthony and his wife without their
consent, but he could make it bitterly hard for them to live together.
Anthony had known of men who had incurred his father's enmity, and the
memory was not reassuring. Before his interview with Masterson, he would
have ridiculed the idea of such a situation between his father and
himself; now, he was uncertain.
"Put on your hat and coat," he evaded the question. "Come for a walk; I
want to show you something."
"And our dinner?" she demurred.
"Never mind it. We will eat scrambled eggs."
Laughing, she complied.
"What am I going to see, Anthony?"
"A house," briefly.
The walk took them quite away from the neighborhood of such small
cottages as their own. In fact, the house before which Anthony finally
halted was standing so much away from any others as scarcely to be
called in a neighborhood, at all. It stood out on a little spur of the
Palisades, delightfully nestled in a bit of woodland and lawns of its
own.
"There!" he indicated it. "Pretty?"
Elsie looked, with a satisfying seriousness. The house was so new that
the builder's self-advertisement still jostled the sign offering for
sale: "this modern residence, all improvements."
"I love it," she pronounced. "Those white cement houses are adorable; it
looks as if it were made of cream-candy. What deep porches, like caves
of white coral; and how deliciously the light gleams in those cunning,
stained-glass windows! I suppose they are set up the stairs? It is a
nice size, too; large enough to be quite luxurious, but not so large as
to be appalling. How did you happen to notice it, dear?"
"I took this road for a short cut, one day. Look what a view you have up
here. One must see twenty miles up and down the river, and over half
New York. But it is open to inspection; let us go in."
"As if we were considering buying it," she fell in with the sport. "Yes,
and we will be very critical indeed; find flaws and finally reject it.
Really, Anthony, it does not at all compare with our present residence."
"You'll do," he approved, drawing her up the broad, lazily-low steps.
It really was an enchanting house; a house that developed unexpected
charms to the pair who wandered through its empty, echoing rooms and
halls. It indulged in nooks, and inconsequential little balconies; it
displayed a most inviting window-seat halfway up the stairs that could
only have been designed for lovers.
"But none have been there, yet," Elsie observed, lingering on the stairs
to contemplate this last allurement. "Just think, Anthony, that it is a
mere debutante of a house with its ball-book all unfilled. No one has
sat before its hearth, or nestled in its window-seat, or opened its door
to let in love or give out charity. It is an Undine house whose soul has
not yet entered its cool whiteness. Oh, I hope the people who buy it
are both fair and good, and respect its innocence!"
"Coral caves and Undines--your sentiment is all deep-sea, to-day," he
teased her. "Elsie, doesn't all this make you want something?"
"Yes," she promptly returned looking over her shoulder at him as she
descended. "I want something that I saw in the Antique Shop, yesterday.
Will you buy it for me?"
"That depends. What is it?"
"A guitar. A guitar that might have been made to go with our ivory and
jade chessmen, for some heavy-lidded slave-girl to touch while her
master and his favored guest moved the pieces on the board. It is _El
Aud_ of Arabia; all opalescent inlay of mother-of-pearl, pegs and frets
marked with dull color. I am quite sure it belonged to some Eastern
princess; perhaps Zaraya the Fair or Alenya of the Sea. It will sing of
court-yards in Fez where fountains splash all the hot, still days, of
midnight, in the Alhambra gardens, and the nightingales of lost Zahara.
And the antiquarian person will sell it for five dollars!"
Adriance threw back his head and laughed, beguiled from serious
thoughts.
"What a peroration! We will buy the thing on our way home, Sunday or no
Sunday. That is, if you can play it for me, and if it will come West
enough for the sleepy, creepy song about Maitre Raoul Galvez that should
never be sung between midnight and dawn? I have never heard that one,
yet."
"You shall," she promised. "And also the song with which Alenya of the
Sea charmed the king from his sadness."
"Tell me first who Alenya was."
"To-night----"
"No, now." Lightly, but with determination he drew her across the
threshold of the room that opened beside them. Opposite its rawly new,
rose-tiled fireplace he pushed a tool-chest, forgotten by some careless
workman, and spread over it his own coat, making a fairly comfortable
seat. "Sit here," he bade. "You're tired, anyhow; and I have a fancy to
see you here."
Surprised, but yielding to his whim with that cordial readiness he loved
in her, Elsie obeyed. Adriance established himself opposite, on the
comparatively clean tiles of the hearth.
"Shoot," he commanded, lazily and colloquially imperious. "Your sultan
listens."
She made a mutinous face at him and slowly removed her hat, laying it
beside her upon the chest. Her gaze dwelt meditatively upon the broad
ray of sunlight that streamed across from the nearest window and
glittered between them like a golden sword. Watching, Adriance saw her
gray eyes grow reminiscent.
"Very well, I will try to tell the story as my father once told it to
me. But whether he drew it from those strange histories in which he is
so learned, or whether he drew it from his own fancy, I do not know. For
he is more poet than professor, and more antiquarian than either--and
more dear than you can know until you meet him, Anthony. Now imagine
yourself in our neglected old garden, and listen.
"Long, long ago, before the beauty of Cava brought the Moors across
Gibraltar into Spain, there lived in the East a king named Selim the
Sorrowful. The name was his alone. His kingdom was as rich as vast; his
people were content; it seemed that all the country laughed except its
ruler. Upon him lay a vague, sinister spell, and had so lain from the
hour of his birth.
"For always he grieved for a thing unknown, a want undefined and
unsatisfied. Royalty was his, and youth, and absolute power, yet,
because of this great longing of his he moved like a beggar through his
splendor and knew hunger of the heart by night and day. Wise men and
temples were questioned in vain, rich gifts vainly sent to distant
oracles; none could tell the king's desire, or cure it. And his dark,
wistful face came to be accepted by his people as a thing usual and
royal.
"One day, when the king walked alone in his garden by the sea, a strange
mist crept over the land and water, silvery, opalescent, wonderful. He
stood, watching. Suddenly a gigantic wave loomed through the haze and
swept curling and hissing shoreward to his very feet, where it broke
with a great sound. When the glittering foam and spray fell away again,
a girl was standing on the sands before him; a girl clad in the floating
gray of the mist, girdled and crowned with soft, dim pearls. Her
lustrous eyes were green as the heart of the ocean, and when the king
gazed into them his sorrow shrank and fled.
"'Who are you, desire of mine?' asked Selim.
"'Alenya of the Sea,' she answered him, and her voice was the lap of
waves on a summer night.
"Then the king took her in his arms and bore her to his palace."
"And she cured him?"
"Better! She satisfied him. Never was a change more marvellous; in all
the kingdom there was no man so happy as Selim the king. Day and night,
night and day, he lingered by the sea-maiden. Riotous prosperity came to
the land, the fields yielded double crops; it seemed that the king's
smile was a very sunshine of the South.
"But by-and-by superstitious dread fell upon the people, and the jealous
priests fostered it. Strange, strange and weirdly sweet was the music
that drifted from Alenya's apartments. There came a day when the country
demanded that Selim put away the evil enchantress, or die. One month
they gave him for the choice."
"The men of the East were poor lovers," commented Adriance. "He banished
the sea-princess?"
"Not at all! He chose death, and a month with Alenya."
"Well, if he lived one month exactly as he willed, he had something."
"Very true, cynical person. But never was such month as his, when the
lonely man still possessed his love and the wearied king had found an
excitement. Intensity is the leap of a flame, and cannot endure. When
the end of the four weeks came--" she paused, her dark little head
tilted back, her regard inviting his hazard.
"They died?"
"Alenya sang to the king for the last time. There is no record of that
lost music; it is so sad that if it were written the paper would
dissolve in tears. When it ceased the king slept, and Alenya flitted
back to the sea and mist, alone. Later came the people and awakened
Selim with their rejoicing, but he stared in cold amazement at the
pageant of their returning loyalty. He had forgotten all."
"Forgotten?"
"Yes, for Alenya's last song had swept her image from his mind. From his
mind, not his heart; he was again Selim the Sorrowful, yearning for the
desire he did not know.
"Often, often he wandered along the shore, suffering, uncomprehending.
It is written that his reign was long, and wise. But on the night he
died his attendants found the print of a small, wet hand on the pillow
where rested the king's white head."
After a moment Adriance rose.
"So he could not keep his own, when he had it!" he said. "Thank you,
Madame Scheherazade. Now come outside and I'll tell you why I wanted you
to sit at that hearth, for luck."
Laughing, she followed him, carrying her hat in her hand.
"Why, Anthony?"
"Because I want this place for our home," he answered.
She uttered a faint exclamation, genuinely dismayed.
"Want it? Why it must be worth ten thousand dollars, Anthony! See, it
even has a little garage. And one would need servants; a
maid-of-all-work, at least."
"Yes. I am working for all that. A while ago I thought I was certain of
it. Now, I am afraid not. But you are not going to live the way we are
now for much longer. Either I shall win my game, and bring you here, or
we will go South and try a new venture."
Amazed and hushed, she met his steady, resolute gaze. She had not
glimpsed this purpose of his in all their intimate life together.
"Do you--care to tell me about it?" she wondered. "And, you know I am
quite, quite happy as we are; as I must be happy with you always, win or
lose, my dearest dear."
The place was quite deserted; he kissed her, before the blank windows of
the house that never had been lived in.
"I know," he said. "As I must be with you, and am! But I will wait to
tell you the rest, until I can tell it all."
She accepted the frank reticence. They walked home more quietly than
they had come, each busied with thought.
But Adriance did not forget to stop at the antique shop for the guitar.
The proprietor lived in the rear of the shabby frame building and
willingly admitted his two customers, after examining them beneath a
raised corner of the sun-bleached green curtain.
"The guitar?" he echoed Adriance's request. "For madame? But certainly!"
He produced the instrument from the window with deferential alacrity. He
was a thin, bright-eyed French Jew; quite ugly and quite old enough in
appearance to justify Elsie's assertion that he was the Wandering Jew
and this the very shop of Hawthorne's tale. She smiled at him with a
mischievous recollection of this, as she pulled off her gloves to finger
the rusty strings.
"It is a good guitar," she approved. "And gay, with all this
mother-of-pearl inlay and the little colored stones set in the pegs! But
these wire strings must come off, Anthony. They are too loud and too
harsh."
"It is so, madame," the old man nodded entire agreement, before Adriance
could speak. "The guitar was used on the stage, where loudness----!" He
shrugged. "Never would you guess, madame, who brought that instrument
in to me last week."
"No?" Elsie wondered, politely interested.
"It was that enormous Russian who formerly rode beside your husband in
the motor wagon, madame. He has not a head, that Michael, but he has a
heart. About the cines he is mad--the moving pictures, I would say. Well
then, into the poor boarding-house where he lives came an actress. She
was out of work, or she would not have been there, _bien sur_! The
guitar was hers. Michael brought it here to sell for her. I believe she
is sick. Because she is of the stage, he is a slave to her."
"He is in love?"
"He, madame? It has not even occurred to him. He would not presume."
"Poor idealist!" said Adriance. "We will take the theatrical guitar, but
wrap it up so I can get home without someone tossing me a penny."
He laughed as he spoke, and had forgotten the guitar's story before they
reached Alaric Cottage. But Elsie neither laughed nor forgot. That
evening, as she sat across the hearth from Anthony, evoking music gay
or weird for his enchantment, she thought much of the girl who had last
played her decorative instrument.
"Is it my guitar, truly, Anthony?" she questioned, at last.
"It certainly isn't mine," he retorted teasingly.
She made a grimace at him. But she also made a resolve.