A Man's Hearth Part 25

"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 sh.o.r.eward 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 l.u.s.trous 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 suns.h.i.+ne of the South.

"But by-and-by superst.i.tious 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sertion 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.