Chapter XXVI

Melissa’s fever, however, ran a stubborn course. It sank for a deceptive while very nearly to normal and the night nurse was dismissed, Miss Kenning began to talk of leaving ... then, apparently without explanation, a relapse ... and all to do over again.

The Marchesa, in this trying time, became as a rock in a weary land, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, if that be not too exuberant a description of her unfaltering attendance at Melissa’s bedside. Only the most skeptic of observers could have had the heart to suggest that Melissa’s illness was climactic, so to speak, and afforded to a romantic comedy of the Marchesa’s staging and directing, the most poignant of all possible third acts.

In the Marchesa’s pocket, while she sat holding Melissa’s hand and listening to those husky and one-sided conversations which took up so much of Melissa’s time, reposed a cable ... signed Roderick.

It had arrived in very nearly instant response to the one the Marchesa had sent and it said without agitation--“Sailing next month in any case.”

How like Roderick the Marchesa thought, to put in those last three words--as if cable tolls had no terrors for him--as if, frankly, he had quite overlooked them. He was in a position to do so, of course.

The Marchesa had tried to tell Melissa that her nephew was returning.

But, in her hazier moments, Melissa didn’t understand--and in her lucid ones, didn’t seem to want to talk about him.

The Marchesa decided then that his arrival might just as well come in the form of a surprise--surprises being always interesting to observers, innocent and otherwise, whether or no the victim shares the pleasure.

“I had rather,” said the Marchesa to Miss Kenning, with whom by that time, she was on the friendliest footing, Miss Kenning being a facile narrator of the human comedy, in terms chiefly physiological and obstetric ... being, as a matter of fact an absolute gold-mine of professional experience, readily shared.... “I had rather we said nothing more to Miss Wayne about--Mister Roderick.”

“I think you are quite right,” said Miss Kenning. “She’s got an obsession on the subject already--and a complex, besides.”

“After all,” said the Marchesa, polishing her sharp rosy nails with her wisp of a handkerchief--“What is love but an obsession--and a complex?”

“It’s a flop, if you want my opinion,” replied Miss Kenning frankly.

Her last young man had engendered that belief in her, having failed at the crucial moment to make anything like proportionate return for the time and encouragement she had lavished upon him.

“It may be, as you say, a flop,” returned the Marchesa amiably, “but I fancy it will always be the most amusing feature of a badly arranged universe. Have you saved the cards from those flowers for Miss Wayne?”

“There’s a flock of cards on the desk,” said Miss Kenning. “That Mr. Fleming has kept the place looking like a flower-shop.”

“Poor boy!” sighed the Marchesa tenderly. She had by that time definitely decided that Murdock would have to go overboard.

* * * * *

Melissa came slowly back to herself from a region of dolor and doubt. A month from the day she went to bed, she arose again weakly, feeling as if her bones had melted and her sinews frayed within her, pitifully shaky about the knees, heavy-headed, hollow-eyed. Weighed to earth moreover by that indescribable sense of depression which influenza leaves behind it. Twice in her first day she shed hopeless, ineffectual tears. Once because the waiter forgot the salt upon her breakfast tray and again because Kathleen in dusting the desk in the living-room had somehow swept out of sight the snap-shot of Mister Roderick, safely hidden--as Melissa supposed--in the drawer it had primarily occupied.

Melissa could not or would not ask about the picture in any but the most roundabout way ... and Kathleen, sympathetic as she was, seemed yet stupidly unable to understand for what Miss Wayne was searching.

“I gave the desk a good clanein’--last week,” insisted Kathleen anxiously. “Was it letters you left there?”

“Not letters, Kathleen--a--clipping--that is--some old kodaks and things....”

Melissa’s pride would allow her no nearer the truth than that.

“I threw out some torn-up theayter programs,” admitted Kathleen humbly. “Cud it have been among ’em?”

Melissa didn’t think so. She realized the impossibility, however, without absolute frankness and a detailed description of the object of her search of any help from Kathleen.

So Melissa merely cried, weakly, her head on a green brocade cushion on the couch. Cried for a long time--till Miss Kenning came back from her walk, in fact, and put her patient to bed with a hearty scolding.

“It’s nothing,” said Miss Kenning in conclusion--“but nerves. You’ll be like this for some time, I dare say--and you _must_ not give way to it! If you want to get well in a hurry.”

Without Mister Roderick’s picture, Melissa didn’t know that she cared--one way or the other. Nothing to hold to, now. No raft---on a sailless sea. She had been happier in her fever-distorted dreams. Then, for days, and nights unnumbered, Mister Roderick had moved through his rooms at her call. Had stood in the doorway, smiling at her, had sat on the side of her bed and talked to her ... endlessly. She hadn’t had to conjure him up--he had been there. As real as the pillow under her head. Realler than the Doctor or the nurse. Realler than life. Real ... between Melissa and death! But as Melissa came out into daylight--Mister Roderick receded into the shadows. And Melissa was too tired to hold him. Too tired to call him back. With the little picture to touch and to look at, for proof of his existence--somewhere--Melissa must have tried.... Without the picture it began to seem as if in her fever she had dreamed it all. As if with the going of the fever the whole dear delusion sank away from her.

No wonder Melissa cried. The bottom had fallen out of her world ... and the sky had fallen in ... or was that too merely the aftermath of sickness? She lay on her couch long hours, staring into the fire--for which by this time it was almost too warm, with late spring whistling outside the windows--but a fire Melissa would have. She didn’t want food, though she took it rather than be argued with.... She didn’t want sleep--especially--she would have read all night rather than not ... but she did want a fire.

So Kathleen kept the windows open and humored “the poor lamb” no matter how radiant the day.

“Ye’ll be feelin’ better once ye see yer friends again,” was Kathleen’s comfortable prophecy--but Melissa, tired to the center of her soul, twice-tired with the thought of having to speak and smile and pretend that all was once more well with her ... wanted that least of all.

She wouldn’t see Murdock--though his flowers blossomed in every corner of her sitting-room. She sent him word that she loved them--but that he must wait till she could thank him properly.

She wouldn’t see Beall, who tried once or twice then drifted on, as might have been expected, after another flame. Beall had never really mattered and Melissa neither knew nor cared that he was drifting. She might have had him ... but she let him go without further effort. She couldn’t, in any case, have appealed to him, in a state of convalescence. Beall hated sick people. He was at once impatient--and secretly terrified of--disease.

Nelly Rivers telephoned and telephoned again. Even that friendly contact, Melissa refused. Nelly’s eyes were too keen--her speech too trenchant. “Tell her as soon as I’m seeing any one--I’ll let her know,” said Melissa and burrowed deeper among her cushions--alone.

Alone--except for the Marchesa. The Marchesa came and went, as usual, like a shower of sparks, like a witch popping out of a chimney. She took Melissa to drive--in spite of herself--upon a heavenly afternoon toward the end of May when the skies were translucent azure, the wind a mocking caress.

“It may or may not do you good,” said the Marchesa. “In any case--you’ve mooned long enough. Make an effort, my good girl! You’ll never get your looks back at this rate. It’s all very well to be pale--sallow’s another story.”

Pale, Melissa had been--up to that moment.

“Good--you can still blush!” exclaimed the Marchesa shrilly and pinched Melissa’s arm. “How much have you lost?”

“I don’t know,” said Melissa wearily.

“Your bones will be showing if you lose another ounce,” the Marchesa assured her--“your face looks a trifle drawn as it is. Do you put sour cream on it before going to bed--as I told you?”

“No,” said Melissa and shuddered uncontrollably.

The Marchesa was annoyed. “Very well!” she retorted. “Just look in the glass when you get home. You’ve got to do something--and that’s all there is to it!” Something further she said--having the grace to mumble--about a sick cat. She was captious and more than a little cruel to Melissa that day. But after all there was Mister Roderick on his way back from Japan with the Marchesa’s cable somewhere about him ... and there was the Marchesa with her Proposition going limp on her hands. Losing its looks and whatnot. “I shall send you my own masseuse, to-morrow,” said the Marchesa crisply in parting. “You will please do exactly as she tells you--if you’re not a complete fool! You haven’t got all the time in the world, you know.”

Melissa was still rather weak. She set her teeth and shut her eyes for a moment going up in the elevator, to keep back the tears.

Lonelier than the loneliest soul in hell--that was Melissa.

“It’s been a nice afternoon,” said Henry, the boy who took her up.

“Has it?--Yes, it has, of course,” said Melissa.

She let herself into the apartment with shaking hands. Dusk was coming on. The lights beside her couch were lit. Some one got up from the farthest corner of that couch and came toward her quietly. A man--tall and slim and dark-haired. He put out both hands.... “Lissa--I waited for you ... you don’t mind?”

It was Luke.

Melissa said his name with almost a sob in her voice.

Luke--his smile and his eyes and his warm quick comforting hands! Luke--who cared what became of one!

“Child!” he said very gently--“how white you are!” and drew her over to the couch and put her down with a hand on each slender shoulder, among the cushions. “You want,” he said--“a fire and something else. Sit still and let me take care of you.”

Melissa sat still while he lit the fire--while he brought her something in a glass and made her drink it. While he sat down at length beside her and took both her chilly hands in his and looked into her eyes.

“I didn’t know you’d been ill,” he said, “till I walked in here this afternoon--and Kathleen told me about it. She said you weren’t seeing any one--so I stayed. Aren’t you going to smile--for me?”

“I’m too tired,” said Melissa unsteadily.

“Then don’t!” said Luke and put her fingers to his lips. He might never have been away. Warmth came back about Melissa’s heart like buds to a cold black bough. She tightened her hands in his. She asked almost shyly:

“Luke--when did you get back? And--have things been--very hard--? _I’ve_ only been _ill_. Tell me--about _you_!”

Luke told her, sitting there beside her, uncommonly quiet, his eyes on their gently linked hands, his voice curiously even.

“Well,” he said, “it’s a bit unusual--don’t be startled--or shocked--will you? God knows I’d no right to be! I wrote you Iwalani was in Honolulu when it happened--not on the ranch, at all.”

“Yes--” said Melissa, “why was that, Luke?”

“She’d gone down there,” said Luke, “to visit some people she knew. But the evening she was drowned--at Nanakuli it was; that’s rather a lonely beach about an hour or so out of town--well--the evening she was drowned--she wasn’t with those people. She was with a man who’d been staying up at the ranch on a house-party a week or so before ... and nobody knows how it happened or why because....”

“Oh, Luke,” said Melissa faintly.

“Because he was drowned _with_ her--d’y’ see?” said Luke. “And that’s all there was to it. The bodies were recovered. She may have called for help--a cramp or something--she was a strong swimmer--but there’s a terribly heavy surf on that beach.... I don’t know--when he tried to help her she may have lost her head and pulled him under--struggling. That’s been done, of course. As I say--_nobody_ knows. Although everybody obviously conjectured--one thing and another. I had to wait--till things were settled up. I got away from there as soon as I could. I have a blind persistent feeling that she didn’t mind going like that--I told you, once--our marriage was a mistake--and I have a feeling she cared for this man. I found a picture of him--he must have been rather a decent sort--and a package of letters--one of his initialed handkerchiefs--among her things.”

“You didn’t read the letters, Luke?”

“No--” said Luke, “they were hers--not mine. I told you, too, if you remember, that she was very religious. She wouldn’t have listened to divorce. Yet she was a queer passionate soul--I’m not so sure she wouldn’t rather have had--some one she wanted--like that--in death--than not at all. I’m not so sure ... she minded going ... poor old Iwalani!”

“Did people--say unpleasant things?” Melissa asked him, hesitant.

“They did,” Luke told her grimly. “Both definite and inferential. The consensus of opinion, I fancy, was that if I had stayed in the islands, where I belonged--if I had been taking care of my wife, instead of writing silly rot for New York magazines ... the thing wouldn’t have happened. I was not exactly an heroic nor a sympathetic figure in the eyes of Iwalani’s friends--and they made no bones about it. The fact that we might have been together--any time she cared to come here to live--made nothing. The other fact that we never particularly wanted to be together--made even less. The fact that our marriage was a boner of the worst sort was never for one moment allowed to be our own affair ... we couldn’t even make the best of it, living decently apart, without comment. Oh, the Tribe flayed me--and threw me out!” said Luke. “I am a Modern Tendency and a Hideous Instance....”

“Have you been horribly unhappy?” asked Melissa wistfully. The bitterness in his eyes hurt her.

“No--” said Luke. And was all at once not bitter at all--only rather quiet and infinitely tender.

He added as if it were not in the least a strange thing to be saying.... “I couldn’t be too unhappy--with you in the world ... and knowing I was coming back here where you were.”

“Luke--don’t!”

“Why not? I dare say Iwalani died without a thought of me in her heart ... we’d been--barely friends--for five years. I can wait a conventional time if you’d rather--but, Lissa--aren’t you too tired to pretend? _Let_ me tell you the truth--_now_! There must be one woman in the world a man doesn’t have to lie to!” Two tears slipped down Melissa’s cheeks. She shut her eyes. Luke put his arms around her and she turned her cheek against his shoulder ... she felt his lips upon her hair. She heard him say very low and not very steadily--“Love me, Lissa?”

She moved her head in answer--wordless.

She hadn’t known how sweet it would be to be quiet in Luke’s arms. Not to be lonely any more. To feel the heavenly warmth of human contact and at the same moment to be intimately understood ... flesh and something not flesh satisfied together.... “Luke--” she whispered--“I’ve _wanted_ you so....”

Luke kissed her then, holding her close, and in that moment, through the passionate gentleness of his lips upon hers, Melissa was aware of doubt belying her own soft whisper....

Could there be comfort in contact, intimacy in understanding--and yet--not all?

Something still wanting ... something unanswered ... in the very moment of surrender, something that winced and withheld itself ... or was it--not Luke--that she wanted? After all?

“Lissa--” said Luke, while she desperately questioned.... “Lissa darling!...” His voice was the tenderest Melissa had ever heard. It shamed her.

She let him kiss her again--but lifting up her face, she shut her eyes and shut her hands hard, and said in her soul to something that pitifully protested....

“Hush ... hush ... hush!”