THE SIREN
He saw the glad smile on her lips, the light in her great, lustrous,
dark eyes, and the beauty of her faultless body, and yet they all
faded to nothing beside the astounding and inexplicable fact that she
was in the mystery schooner.
"You here!" he gasped, taking her hands in his big rough ones and
gripping them tight. The impulse to draw her to him in an embrace was
almost irresistible, for not only was she lovely in the extreme, but
she was from Freekirk Head and home, and his soul had been starved
with loneliness and the ceaseless repetition of his own thoughts.
"Yes," she replied in her gentle voice, "I am here. You are
surprised?"
"That hardly expresses it," he returned. "So many things have happened
to-day that I expect anything now."
"Come, let us go in," she said, and led him through a doorway that
connected with an adjoining room. In the center of it was a small
table laid with linen and furnished with glittering silver and glass.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
"You know fishermen well enough not to ask that," he laughed, and they
sat down. Elsa did not make any tax upon his conversational powers. It
was Code himself who first put a pertinent question.
"I take for granted your being here and your living like this," he
said; "but I am bursting with curiosity. How do you happen to be in
this schooner?"
"It is my schooner; why shouldn't I be in it?" she smiled.
"Yours?" He was mystified. "But why should you have a vessel like
this? You never used one before that I know of."
"True, Code; but I have always loved the sea, and--it amuses me. You
remember that sometimes I have been away from Freekirk Head for a
month at a time. I have been cruising in this schooner. Once I went
nearly as far as Iceland; but that took longer. A woman in my position
must do something. I _can't_ sit up in that great big house alone all
the time."
The intensity with which she said this put a decidedly new face on the
matter. It was just like her to be lonely without Jim, he thought.
Naturally a woman with all her money must do something.
"But, Elsa," he protested, "your having the schooner for your own use
is all right enough; but why has it always turned up to help me when
I needed help most? Really, if I had all the money in the world I
could never repay the obligations that you have put me under this
summer."
"I don't want you to repay me," she said quietly. "Just the fact that
I have helped you and that you appreciate it is enough to make me
happy."
He looked steadily into her brown eyes for a few moments. Then her
gaze dropped and a dull flush mounted from her neck until it suffused
her face.
He had never seen her look so beautiful. The wealth of her black hair
was coiled about the top of her head like a crown, and held in its
depths a silver butterfly.
Her gown was Quaker gray in color, and of some soft clinging material
that enhanced the lines of her figure. It was an evening gown, and cut
just low enough to be at the same time modest and beautiful. Code,
without knowing why, admired her taste and told himself that she erred
in no particular. Her mode of life was, at the same time, elegant and
feminine--exactly suited her.
"You are easily made happy," he remarked, referring to her last
sentence.
"No, I'm not," she contradicted him seriously. "I am the hardest woman
in the world to make happy."
"And helping me does it?"
"Yes."
"You are a good woman," he said gratefully, "and always seem to be
doing for others. No one will ever forget how you offered to stand by
the women of Grande Mignon while the men went fishing."
Again Elsa blushed, but this time the color came from a different
source. Little did he know that her philanthropy was all a part of the
same plan--to win his favor.
"And the things I know you must have done for my mother," he went on.
"Those are the things that I appreciate more than any. It is not every
woman who would even think of them, let alone do them."
Why would he force her into this attitude of perpetual lying?
she thought. It was becoming worse and worse. Why was he so
straightforward and so blind? Could he not see that she loved
him? Was he one of those cold and passionless men upon whom no
woman ever exerts an intense influence?
Though she did not know it, she expressed the whole fault in her
system. A man reared in a more complex community than a fishing
village would have divined her scheme, and the result would have been
a prolonged but most delightful duel of wits and hearts.
But Code, by the very directness of his honesty, and simplicity of
his nature, cut through the gauzy wrappings of this delectable package
and went straight to its heart. And there he found nothing, because
what little of the deeply genuine there lay in this woman's restless
nature was disguised and shifted at the will of her caprice.
When Code had experienced the pleasure of lighting a genuine clear
Havana cigar after many months of abstinence, she leaned across the
table to him, her hands clasped before her.
"Code, what does loneliness represent to you?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," he temporized, taken aback. "I don't go in for
loneliness much; but when I do, why all I want is--well, let me see, a
good game of quoits with the boys in front of the church, or a talk
with my mother about how rich we are going to be some day when I get
that partnership in the fishstand. I'm too busy to be lonely."
"And I'm too lonely to be busy!" He looked at her unbelievingly.
"You!" he cried. "Why, you have everything in the world; you can go
anywhere, do anything, have the people about you that you want. You,
lonely? I don't understand you."
"Well, I'll put it another way. Did you ever want something so hard
that it hurt, and couldn't get it?"
"Yes, I wanted my father back after he died," said Code simply.
"And I wanted Jim after he died," added Elsa. "Those things are bad
enough; but one gets used to them. What I mean especially is something
we see about us all the time and have no chance of getting. Did you
ever want something like that, so that it nearly killed you, and
couldn't get it?"
Code was silent. The one rankling hurt of his whole life, after
seemingly being healed, broke out afresh--the engagement of Nat Burns
and Nellie Tanner.
He suddenly realized that, since seeing Elsa, he had not as much as
remembered Nellie's existence, when usually her mental presence was
not far from him. Elsa, with all her luxury and alluring feminine
charms, seemed to cast a spell that bound him helpless like the music
in the fairy stories. He liked the spell, and, after all she had done,
he confessed to an extraordinary feeling for the enchantress.
Now had come the memory of Nellie--dear, frank-eyed, open-hearted
Nellie Tanner--and the thought that her fresh wholesomeness was
pledged to make glad the life of Nat Burns seared his heart. A cloud
settled down on his brow. But in a moment he recalled himself. His
hostess had asked him a question; he must answer it.
"Yes, I have wanted something--and couldn't get it."
"Yes," said Elsa slowly, "a thing is bad enough; but it seems to me
that the most hopeless thing in the world is to want a person in that
way." Her voice was dreamy and retrospective. Its peculiar, vibrant
timbre thrilled him with the thought that perhaps there was some
hidden tragedy in her life that he had never suspected. Any unpleasant
sense that she was curious was overcome by the manner in which she
spoke.
"Yes, it is," he answered solemnly.
She looked up in astonishment at the sincerity of his tone, her heart
tingling with a new emotion of delicious uncertainty. What if, after
all, he had wanted some one in the way she wanted him? What if the
some one were herself and he had been afraid to aspire to a woman of
her wealth and position? She asked this without any feeling of
conceit, for one who loves always dreams he sees signs of favor in the
one beloved.
"Then you have wanted some one?" All her manner, her voice, her eyes
expressed sympathy. She was the soul of tact and no mean actress at
the same time.
Code, still in the depth of reminiscence and averted happiness,
scarcely heard her, but he answered
"Yes, I have." Then, coming to full realization of the confession, he
colored and laughed uneasily. "But let's not talk of such personal
things any more," he added. "You must think me very foolish to be
mooning about like this."
"Can I help you?" she asked, half suffocated by the question. "Perhaps
there might be something I could do that would bring the one you want
to you."
It was the crucial point in the conversation. She held her breath as
she awaited his answer. She knew he was no adept at the half-meanings
and near-confessions of flirtation, and that she could depend upon his
words and actions to be genuine.
He looked at her calmly without the additional beat of a pulse. His
color had died down and left him pale. He was considering.
"You have done much for me," he said at last, "and I shall never
forget it, but in this matter even _you_ could not help me. Only the
Almighty could do it by direct intervention, and I don't believe He
works that way in this century," Code smiled faintly.
As for Elsa, she felt the grip as of an icy hand upon her heart. It
was some one else that he meant. Was it possible that all her
carefully planned campaign had come to this miserable failure? Had she
come this far only to lose all?
The expression of her features did not change, and she sought
desperately to control her emotion, but she could not prevent two
great tears from welling up in her eyes and slowly rolling down her
cheeks.
Code sat startled and nonplused. Only once before in his life had he
seen a woman cry, and that was when Nellie broke down in his mother's
house after the fire. But the cause for that was evident, and the very
fact of her tears had been a relief to him. Now, apparently without
rime or reason, Elsa Mallaby was weeping.
The sight went to his heart as might the scream of a child in pain. He
wondered with a panicky feeling whether he had hurt her in any way.
"I say, Elsa," he cried, "what's the matter? Don't do that. If I've
done anything--" He was on his feet and around the little table in an
instant. He took her left hand in his left and put his right on her
shoulder, speaking to her in broken, incoherent sentences.
But his words, gentle and almost endearing, emphasized the feeling of
miserable self-pity that had taken hold of her and she suddenly sobbed
aloud.
"Elsa, dear," he cried, beside himself with uncertainty, "what is it?
Tell me. You've done so much for me, please let me do something for
you if I can."
"You can't, Code," she said, "unless it's in your heart," and then she
bowed her beautiful head forward upon her bare arms and wept. After
awhile the storm passed and she leaned back.
He kissed her suddenly. Then he abruptly turned to the door and went
out.
Schofield had suddenly come to his senses and disengaged himself from
Elsa's embrace.