CHAPTER V
WITHIN THE WALLS
Again the knocking, muffled but softly insistent, and Arlee's eyes, heavy with tardy sleep, came slowly open, resting blankly on the glittering strangeness of the room. The daylight was streaming in the wide windows, striking brightly on the white enameled furniture which had glimmered so ghost-like through the wakeful darkness of the night, and flung back in dancing points of color from the mirrors and the glass and gold of toilet pieces. The air was hot and close, as if the first freshness of the morning was already past.
Again through the heavy door came the knocking and the soft reassurance of a girl's voice. Arlee sprang from the couch where she had lain down that night, not undressed, but with her white frock exchanged for the negligée she had found laid out for her among other things, and hurried toward the door where she had piled two chairs to supplement the lock—a foolish-looking barricade in the shining light of day, she thought, her lips lifting whimsically.
The young Turkish maid entered with a huge jar of water which she emptied into the bath, returning to the door to take in another and yet another and another from some unseen porter, and pouring these into the bath, she added a spray of perfume and laid out powders and towels, smiling the while at Arlee, with the fascinated interest of a child.
"Do you speak English?" said Arlee eagerly.
But the girl laughed and shook her head at the question, and at the French and German with which Arlee next addressed her, and answered in soft Turkish, at which it was Arlee's turn to laugh and shake her head. But she felt a little rueful behind her pleasant smiling. She wished she could talk with the girl. She wondered about her. She had very handsome dark eyes, though perhaps overbold at times, but her lips were thick and her nose was flattened as if generations of yashmak-wearing women had crushed every hope of contour.
The cool freshness of the water was grateful to her senses. It was a plunge back into sanity and normal life again, drowning those ghosts of vague foreboding and anxieties which had kept such unpleasant vigil with her, and when the Turkish girl returned with a tray, Arlee was able to sit and eat breakfast with a trace of amusement at the oddity of the affair—sipping coffee in this Parisian boudoir overlooking an Egyptian garden.
As she was buttering a last crumb of toast the girl re-entered with a box from the florist. Her white teeth flashing at Arlee in a smile of admiring interest, she broke the cord with thick fingers and Arlee found the box full of roses, creamy pink and dewy fresh. The Captain's card was enclosed, and across the back of it he had written a message:
I am sending out for some flowers for our guest and I hope that they will convey to her my greeting. If there is anything that you would have, it is yours if it is in my power to give. My sister is indisposed, but will visit you when her indisposition will permit. This afternoon I will see you and report the result of our protests to the authorities. Until then, be tranquil, and accommodate yourself here.
A tacit apology, thought Arlee, pondering the dull letter a moment, then dropping it to touch the roses with light fingers. The young man's wits had evidently returned with the sun. He had utterly lost them last night with the starshine and the shadows and his Oriental conception of the intimacy of the situation—but, after all, he had too much good sense not to be aware of the folly of annoying her. Her cheeks flushed a little warmer at the memory of the bold words and the lordly hand on her arm, and her heart quickened in its beating. She had certainly been playing with fire, and the sparks she had so ignorantly struck had lighted for her an unforgettable glimpse of the Oriental nature beneath all its English polish, but she imagined, very fearlessly, that the spark was out. She was not a nature that was easily alarmed or daunted; beneath her look of delicate fragility was a very sturdy confidence, and she had the implicit sense of security instinct in the kitten whose blithe days have known nothing but kindness. Yet she felt herself tremendously experienced and initiated....
She wrote back a word of thanks for the flowers and a request for writing paper and ink, and when they were brought she wrote three most urgent letters, and after an instant's hesitation a fourth—to the Viceroy himself. Feeling that his mail might be bulky, she marked it "Immediate" in large characters and gave them to the maid, who nodded intelligently and shuffled away.
It was very odd, she thought then, that she had no letters. By now the Evershams must surely have written—she had begged them to.... But she was not going to be silly and panicky, she determinedly informed that queer little catch in her side which came at the thought of her isolation, and humming defiantly she sat down at the white piano and opened the score of a light opera which she knew:
Say not love is a dream,
Say not that hope is vain ...
She had danced to that tune last night—no, the night before last—danced to it with that extraordinarily impulsive young man from home—for all America was now home to her spirit. And she had promised to see him last night. She wondered what he had thought of her absence.... She could imagine the Evershams dolefully deploring her rashness, yet not without a totally unconscious tinge of proper relish at its prompt punishment. They were such dismal old dears! They would complain—they must have made her the talk of the hotel by now. Robert Falconer would enjoy that! And his sister and Lady Claire would ask about her, and Lady Claire would say, "How odd—fancy!" in that rather clipped and high-bred voice of hers.... But she was not going to think about it!
She opened more music, stared wonderingly at the unfamiliar pages, read the English translation beneath the German lines, then pushed them away, her cheeks the pinker. They were as bad as French postcards, she thought, aghast. Whose room was this, anyway? Whose piano was this? Whose was the lacy negligée she had worn and the gossamer lingerie the maid had placed in the chiffonier for her? Was she usurping her hostess's boudoir?
She began to walk restlessly up and down the room, feeling time interminable, hating each lagging second of delay.
Then came a tray of luncheon, and lying upon it a yellow envelope. With an eagerness that hurt in its keenness she snatched it up and tore out the folded sheet. Her eyes leaped down the lines. Then slowly they followed them again:
I think it very strange of you to leave us like that, but of course you are your own mistress. We are sorry and hope it will soon be over and you will join us again, unless you prefer your other friends, the Maynards. We have packed your clothes and sent them to Cook's for your orders, and we have paid your hotel bill. Let us know when you can join us.
Mrs. Eversham.
That was all. No word of real sympathy—no declaration of help. Passive acceptance of her predicament—perhaps indeed a retributive feeling of its fitness for her folly. They were annoyed.... Packing her clothes must have been a bother—so was paying her hotel bill.
She crumpled the telegram with an angry little hand. Evidently they had done none of the telephoning she had begged of them. Surely there would have been time for that, if only they had hurried a little! She remembered with a sort of hopeless rage their maddening deliberateness.... Well, they were gone off to the Nile—the telegram, she saw, had been sent as they were on their way to the boat—and she had nothing more to hope from them! But surely the other people, the consul, the ambassador, the mysterious medical authorities, would understand when they had read her letters.
She sent another note to the Captain, asking to be called when the doctor came, and then she sat down at the little white table and began again to write.
But not to Falconer. Never would she beg of him, never, she resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips. She would never let him know how miserable she was over this stupid scrape; when she returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the old-world charm of her hostess. She laughed, in angry mockery. Never to him, after their quarrel, would she confess herself.
The letter was to a young man whose gray eyes she remembered as very kind and whose chin as very vigorous. He would do things, she thought. And he would understand—he was an American. And dimly she felt that she didn't want him to think she had utterly forgotten her promise of the evening before last, and she didn't want him to be filled with whatever dismal impression the Evershams were giving out. So she dwelt very lightly upon her annoyance at being detained, and asked him please to see the consul or the English Ambassador or somebody in power and hurry matters up a little, as her rightful caretakers had taken themselves off to the Nile. And she said nothing stupid about the strangeness of her writing to him after only speaking to him twice and never being really presented. She merely added, "Please hurry things—I hate being a prisoner," and sealed and addressed it with a flourish to William B. Hill, and sent it off by the maid, and felt oddly comforted by the memory of Billy's vigorous chin.
The heat of the rose-and-white room was stifling now as the slant sun of afternoon burned through the closed blinds and drawn hangings. Languidly she curled up upon the sofa and pillowed her heavy head on the scented silk, and so, drowsing with fitful dreams, she lost the sense of the lagging hours.
She roused to find the maid at hand with more water jars, and, when she had bathed, the girl reappeared and beckoned her to follow. Perhaps the doctor was below, thought Arlee; perhaps the consulate had sent for her! With flying feet she followed down the dark old stairs and across the anteroom into the dim salon, only to find a candle-lighted table set for dinner in the middle of the room and Captain Kerissen bowing ceremoniously beside it.
In the blankness of her disappointment she scarcely grasped what he was saying about the dinner hour being early and his sister being indisposed. She interrupted with a breathless demand for news:
"And my letters—surely there has been time for answers!"
"Answers, yes," he replied, "but not such as I could wish for your sake."
"You mean——?"
"The English have written to me and request that I cease to trouble the department with my importunities. For I myself had written to them again, that I might find grace in your eyes by accomplishing your desires. They say to me that it is useless. The plague is more serious than the convenience of my visitors, and all must be done according to rule. When there is no danger you may depart."
The crash of hopes went echoing to the farthest reaches of her consciousness. But pride stiffened her to dissemble, and she tried to smile as she mechanically accepted the Captain's invitation to be seated at the little candle-lighted table.
"There was no word to me personally?" she asked.
"None, but the telegram which came this morning. I judged that it was not of a significance, for you did not send me a report."
"No—it was not of a significance," she repeated, with a ghost of a little smile. "It was from the Evershams."
"Ah! Their condolences, I think?... And is it that they still make the Nile trip?"
"Yes.... They went this morning." She spoke hesitantly, averse to having this eager-eyed young host perceive how truly deserted she was. "They expect me to take the express train later and join them."
"It is only a night's ride to Assouan." He spoke soothingly. "But you are not eating, Miss Beecher. I recommend this consommé."
It was worth the recommending. Miss Beecher spooned it slowly, then demanded, "Why was I not called when the doctor came?"
"But he does not come! Perhaps he is afraid"—the young man's brows and shoulders rose expressively—"but certainly he does not risk himself. If a servant is ill we are to tell a soldier and the sick one will be taken away to the house of plague—bien simple. It is so hard that I am helpless for you," he said, with sympathetic concern, then added, with an air of boyish confession, "although I do not deny that it is happiness for me to see you here."
The look in his eyes forced itself upon her. And the secret sense of discomfort intruded like a third presence at the little table.
In a clear voice of dry indifference: "That's very polite of you," she remarked, "but I imagine you are pretty furious, too, to be kept pent up in somebody else's house like this."
"But this is not somebody else's house," he smiled, his eyes observant of her quick glance and look of confusion. "I am chez moi."
"Oh! I thought—I was visiting your sister."
"My sister lives with me. She is a widow—and we are both alone."
"She does not seem to care for company."
"She is indisposed. She regrets it exceedingly." The young man looked grave and solicitous. "But I trust your comfort is not being neglected?"
"Oh, my comfort is being beautifully attended to, thank you, but my patience is wearing itself out!" Arlee spoke with a blithe assumption of humor.
"I wish that I could extend the resources of my palace for you."
"You must tell me about the palace. I shall want to picture it to my friends when I tell them about it. It's very old, isn't it? It must have seen a great deal of life."
"Ah, yes, it has seen life—and what life! Quelle vie!" A flash of real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence of his handsome features.
"Have you seen those old rooms? Those rooms that were built by the Mamelukes? There is nothing now in Cairo like them."
"I thought them very beautiful," said the girl. "Tell me about those Mamelukes who lived here."
"They were men," he said with pride, his eyes kindling, "men who lived as kings dare not live to-day!" The subject of those old days and those old ancestors of his was evidently dear to the young modern, and he launched into an animated sketch of those times, trying to picture for Arlee something of the glowing pageant of the past. And as she listened she found her own high spirit stirring in sympathy with the barbaric strength of those old nobles, riding to battle on their fiery Arab steeds, waging their private wars, brooking no affront, no command, working no other man's will.
"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless.... And taste? Taste is a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"
"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.
He nodded. "It should be the concern of nobles—not of the rabble. That is why I should hate your America—where the rabble prevail."
"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"
"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those nobles were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he knew it—and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes.... The Mamelukes were fêted and courted, and then, as they were leaving the Citadel—you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's, "and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls, between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken leave of their Sultan—they were a picture of such pride and pomp as Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery—the great gates closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the hosts of death—the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last moan and hiccough of blood."
"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really escaped?"
"Anym-bey—yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre. He had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop, he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down—down—down! Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape. Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He was killed."
"Oh, the pity—after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it all when the dragoman told me—probably because he showed me the mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it was all a legend—like the mark."
"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?" laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles they think you tourists!"
But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.
"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.
The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No, that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been brought to the home of her husband—there she holds her reception. Those are the fêtes to which the English ladies come in such curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.
"You cannot blame them for feeling a real—interest," said Arlee hesitantly.
"Their interest—pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband till to-day! How strange—how strange! Has he not written to you? Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles—whose own marriages are abominations!"
For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to exchange a word with him—but her young anger darted through her discretion.
"They are not abominations!" she gave back proudly.
"But I know—I know—have I not been at marriages in England?" he declared, with startling fierceness. "Men and women crowd about the bride; they press in line and kiss her; bearded mouths and shaven lips, young and old, they brush off that exquisite bloom of innocence which a husband delights to discover. Her lips are soiled, fanée.... And then the man and woman go away together into a public hotel or a train, and the people laugh and shout after them, and hurl shoes and rice, with a great din of noise. I have heard!" He stopped, looked a moment at the flushed curve of Arlee's averted face, the droop of her shadowy lashes which veiled the confusion and anger of her spirit, and then, leaning forward, his eyes still upon her, he spoke in a lower, softer tone, caressing in its inflections.
"With us it is not so," he said. "We have dignity in our rejoicing, and delicacy in our love. The bride is brought in state to the home of her husband, no eyes in the street resting upon her, and there, in his home, her husband welcomes her and retires with his friends, while she holds a reception with hers. Later the husband will come home and greet her, and he wooes her to him as tenderly as he would gather a flower that he would wear. He is no rude master, no tyrant, as you have been taught to think! He wins her heart and mind to him; it is the conquest of the spirit!... I tell you that our men alone understand the secret of women! Is not the life he gives her better than what you call the world? The woman blooms like a flower for her husband alone; his eyes only may dwell upon the beauty of her face; for him alone, her lips—her lips——"
The young man's voice, grown husky, died away. A dreadful stillness followed, a stillness vibrating with unspoken thought. Her eyes lifted toward him, then fled away, so full of strange, dark, desirous things was the look she encountered. Abruptly he rose—he was coming toward her, and she struggled suddenly to her feet, battling against the cold terror which held her dumb and unready. She flung one arm out before her and found it grasped by hands that were hot and burning. The touch shot her with a fierce rage that cleared her brain and unlocked her lips.
"Is that—the conquest of the spirit?" she gasped, and for an instant the white-hot scorn in her eyes, flashing into his, hid any hint of the fear in her.
Involuntarily his grasp relaxed, and violently she wrenched her arm away and stood facing him, a little white-clad image of war, her eyes blazing, her breast heaving, a defiant child in her intrepidity who gave him back look for look.
In his eyes there glowed and battled a conflict of desires. For one moment they seemed flaming at her from the dark, like some wild creature ready to spring; the next moment they were human, recognizable. She read there grudging admiration, arrested ardor, irresolution, dubiety, and secret calculation.
Then he put both hands behind him and bowed with ceremony.
"The spirit," he remarked dryly, "is worth the conquest."
She said proudly, "You would not like your English friends to know how you treat a guest!"
At that she saw his lip curl in irony—at the mention of the English, perhaps, or in disdain at the appearance of fearing a threat, however powerful that threat might be. He answered with calmness, "It is not the English I am considering.... Nor have I treated my guest so ill, chère petite mademoiselle.... If for the moment I mistook my cue—that look within your face—I ask grace for my stupidity."
Suddenly she was frightened. He did not look like a man who wholly surrenders his desires. His eyes seemed to say to her, "Wait—the last word has not been spoken!" She felt her knees trembling.
With an effort she got out, "It is granted—but never again—must you misunderstand. An American girl——"
She stopped. There was a lump in her throat. Across a bright, familiar veranda she could hear a clear, sharp voice answer, "American goose!" She saw a lean tanned face burn red with anger. A wave of loneliness went through her. The irony of it was pitiless. How right Robert Falconer had been!
He was staring down at the table beside him, frowning, considering. She saw with peculiar distinctness how the cigarette he had dropped had burned a hole in the fine linen. One of the candles was dripping lopsidedly. She thought some one ought to right it. She wondered if that soft step, hesitating, behind the curtains, was the serving woman's, and she turned toward that doorway.
"I don't think I care for any coffee," she said, with an air of careless finality. "I think I will go back to my room. Good evening."
He followed her to the doorway, drawing aside the curtains as she passed into the anteroom, and opening the door at the foot of the steps, with an answering, "Good evening," and an added, "Till to-morrow, Mademoiselle." And then, as the door closed below her, she paused on the dark stairs and huddled against the wall, listening to the faint footfalls from below, crossing and recrossing. Then, when the silence seemed continual, she tiptoed down the stairs again, softly pushed open the unlatched door, stole across the anteroom to the curtained doorway and peered in.
The salon was empty, and in its center the supper table stood stripped of its cloth and candles. Only the pale light from the windows dispelled the growing dark. Like a little white wraith Arlee fled through the room and turned the handle of the door at the head of the haremlik stairs. The door was locked.
She shook the handle, first cautiously, then with increasing violence, then she ran back into the room to the nearest window, staring down through the screen. It would have been a steep jump down into the street, but her tense nerves would have dared it instantly. Her hands tore at the mashrubiyeh, but the tiny spindles and delicate curves held sound and firm. She beat against it with fierce little fists; she leaped against it with all her trifling weight. It did not yield an inch. Was there iron in all that delicacy? Or was that old wood impregnable in its grim trust?
Wildly she glanced back into the room. Suppose she took a chair and beat at this carving—could she clear a way before the servants came? Could she take the jump successfully? She gazed down into the street, estimating the fall, trying to calculate the hurt.
As she gazed, her eyes grew fixed and filled with utter amazement. Down the street, on a black horse that arched his curving neck and danced on light, fleet feet, rode a man in a uniform of green and gold. He sat erect, his clear-cut profile toward her. The next instant his horse, side-stepping at a blowing paper, turned his face into view. It was Captain Kerissen.
Some one was stirring in the anteroom, and Arlee darted to the left of the throne-chair and through the door there which stood ajar. She was in a dim salon, like the one that she had left, but smaller, and across from her was another door. She flew toward it, wild with the hope of escape, and it opened before her eager hands.
From the shadows of the room it disclosed came a figure with a quick cry. So suddenly it came, so tumultuously it threw itself toward her that Arlee had a startled vision of bare arms, glittering with jeweled bands, arrested outstretched before her as the low gladness of the cry broke in an angry guttural. Slowly the arms dropped in a gesture of despair. She saw a face, distorted, passionate, grow haggard beneath its paint in the reversal of hope.
"Madame!" stammered Arlee to that strange figure of her hostess. "Madame—Oh, pardon me," she cried, snatching at her French, "but tell me how I can go away from here. Tell me——"
"C'est toi—va-t-en!" the woman answered in a voice of smothered fury. She made a menacing gesture toward the door. "Va-t-en." Suddenly her voice rose in a passion of angry phrases that were indistinguishable to the girl, and then she broke off as suddenly and flung herself down upon a couch. From behind her the old woman came shuffling forth and put a hand on Arlee's arm, and Arlee felt the muscles of that hand as strong and rigid as a man's. Utterly confused and bewildered, the girl suffered herself to be led back through the rooms to the foot of her stairs.
"Mariayah!" screamed the old woman, and after a moment the voice of waiting-maid answered from above, and then as Arlee dumbly ascended the stairs, the voice of the old woman rose with her in shrill admonition.
It was the voice of a jailer, thought the white-lipped girl, and that little, dark-skinned maid who waited upon her so eagerly, with such sidelong glances of strange interest, was the tool of a jailer. And though the turning of the key in her own hand gave her a momentary sense of refuge from them, it was but a false illusion of the moment. There was neither refuge nor safety here. She was being deceived ...
The quarantine was lifted.
How else could the Captain be cantering down the street? He did not look like a man escaping.... Perhaps he had bribed the doorkeeper—that which he had declared impossible for Arlee.... But certainly he was deceiving her.
Like a swollen river bursting its banks, her racing mind, wild with suspicion, surged out of its simple channels and swirled in every direction.... What did he mean? What was he trying to do? Keep her in ignorance of the outside world, detain her as long as he dared while the Evershams' absence left her friendless, and inflict his dreadful love-making upon her? Perhaps he thought that he could fascinate her!
She laughed aloud, but it was such a ghostly little laugh that it set her nerves jumping. She stopped in her feverish pacing of the floor; she tried to control her racing mind, she tried to be very calm and to plan.
Had he sent all those letters she had written? Steadily she stared at the possibility that he had not. But at least the Evershams knew where she was. Even the meager warmth of their telegram was like an outstretched hand through the dark. She clung tight to it.
It was absurd to be frightened. He would never dare to annoy her—never, in his sober senses. When they were alone together he had lost his head, but that was accident—impulse...
She rolled the divan against the locked door. She piled two chairs upon it.
No, of course, she had nothing really to fear from him. He was too wise not to understand the gulf between them. To-morrow she would confront him flatly with his deceit; she would array the power of the authorities behind her race. She would sweep instantly from that ill-omened palace. There would be no more philandering.
Her lips moved as she silently rehearsed the mighty speeches that she would make, and all the while as she leaned there against a window, staring strangely through the candle-light at the barricade before the door, she could think of nothing but how mad and unreal it all seemed—like some bad dream from which she would wake in an instant.
But she did not wake. The dream persisted, and the iron bars across her window were very tangible. Down below her in the garden the old lebbek tree rustled stealthily in the stillness. Gusty clouds hid the stars. In the distance the interminable tom-tom beat.
She cast herself into the bed and cried convulsively, like a desperately frightened child, while the awful sense of terror and utter loneliness seemed to be rolling over and over her, like an unending sea. Her sobbing racked her from head to foot. She cried until she was spent with weakness. Then, her wet face still pressed against the pillow and her tangled hair flung out in disordered curls, she fell at last into the deep sleep of exhausted youth.
She woke with a smothered cry. In the darkness a hand had touched her.
CHAPTER VI
A GIRL IN THE BAZAARS
Billy slapped on his hat with a clap of violence. She might have just seen him! Then he got up and marched down the steps. There was no more use in camping on that veranda. There was no more use in guarding that entrance. When a girl went whirling off in a limousine, "all dolled up" as his academic English put it, that girl wasn't going to be back in five minutes. And anyway he'd be blessed if he lay around in the way any longer like a doormat with "Welcome" inscribed upon the surface.
So this spurt of masculine shame at his swift surrender to her, and his masculine resentment at being ignored as she went by, sent him hurrying down the street resolved not to return till dinner.
From habit his steps took him to the bazaars. But the zest of that bright pageant was dulled for him. The color was gone even from the red canopies, and the excitement had vanished from the din of noises, the interest fled from the grave figures squatting in their cubby holes of shops draped with silky rags or sewing upon scarlet slippers. He listened apathetically to the warring shouts of the donkey boys and the anathemas of a jostled water carrier stooping under his distended goatskin, then dodged out of the way of a goaded donkey and turned into one of the passages where the four-footed could not penetrate.
For a few moments the bargaining over a silver bracelet between two beturbaned and berobed Arabs caught the surface of his attention, and as the wrangling became a bedlam of imprecations, and the explosive gestures made physical violence a development apparently of mere seconds, Billy's eyes brightened and he estimated chances. But as he picked his favorite there was one final frenzy of fury, and then—peace and joy, utter calm on the wild waters! One Arab counted out the coins from a little leather bag about his neck and the other passed over the bracelet, and with mutual salaams and smiling speeches, behold! the affair was accomplished.
Disgustedly Billy turned away. Then on the other side of him he heard a voice, a sweet and rather high voice, with a musical intensity of inflection that was as English as the Union Jack.
"Yes, it's sweetly pretty," the voice was saying irresolutely, "but I don't think I quite care to—not at that price."
"I—I will buy it for you—yes?" said another voice. "It is made for you—so 'sweetly pretty' as you say."
Billy turned. A slim, tall girl in a dark blue frock was standing before a counter of Oriental jewelry, her head turned, with an air of startled surprise, to the man on the other side of her who had just spoken. He was a short, stout, blond man, heavily flushed, showily dressed, with a fulsome beam in his light-blue eyes and an ingratiating grin beneath his upturned straw-colored mustaches.
The girl turned her head away toward the shop-keeper and put back the turquoise-studded buckle she held in her hand. "No, I do not care for it," she said in a steady voice whose coldness was for the intruder and turned away.
Billy had a glimpse of scarlet cheeks and dark lashed eyes before the blond young man again took his attention.
"You do not like it—no?" he said, blocking her path, his face thrust out to smile into hers. "But I buy you anything you wish—I make you one present——"
The girl gave a quick look about. But she was in a pocket; for there was no other exit to that line of shops but the path he was blocking. All about her the dark-skinned venders and shoppers, the bearded men, the veiled women, the impish urchins, were watching the encounter with beady eyes of malicious interest.
Billy took a quick step forward and touched the man on the arm. "Let this lady pass, please," he said.
The German confronted him with blood-shot blue eyes that ceased to smile and clearly welcomed the belligerency.
"Gott! Who are you?" he derided. "Get out—get out the way."
"Get out yourself," said Billy, and stepping in front of the fellow he extended a rigid arm, leaving a passage for the girl behind him.
"Oh, thank you," he heard her say, and as he half turned his head at the grateful murmur he felt a sudden staggering blow on the side of his face. He whirled about, on guard, and as the man struck again, lunging heavily in his intoxication, Billy knocked up the fist as it came.
"You silly fool!" he said impatiently, and as the man made a blind rush upon him he caught him and by main force flung him off, but his own foot struck something slippery and he lurched and went down, with a wave of intense disgust, into the dirt of the bazaars. He heard a chorus of cries and imprecations about him; he jumped up instantly, looking for his assailant, but the German was clinging to the front of the jewelry booth. "Meet you—satisfaction—honor," he was saying stupidly.
A native policeman elbowed his way through the throng, urging some Arabic question upon Billy, who caught its import and replied with the few sentences of reassurance at his command, pointing to the banana peel as the cause of all. A fat dragoman had suddenly appeared from nowhere and was hurriedly attempting to lead away the intoxicated one.
"You in charge of him? Take him to his hotel and throw him in the tub," said Billy curtly, and the dragoman replied with profound respect that he would do even as the heaven-born commanded.
Brushing off his clothes Billy shouldered his way out of the throng and was met by two bright and grateful eyes and a slim, bare, outstretched hand.
"Thank you so much—I am so sorry," said the musical voice.
"You shouldn't have waited," said Billy, with a prompt pressure of the friendly little hand. "It might have been a real row."
"I couldn't run away," she said in serious protest at such ingratitude. "I had to see what happened to you. And I am so sorry about your clothes."
"Not hurt a particle—I chose a fortunate place to drop," he returned lightly, but distinctly chagrined that he had dropped.
"It was so fine of you," she answered, "just to parry him like that—when he'd been drinking. I saw what you did." And then she added, very matter-of-factly, "And I'm afraid your nose is bleeding, too."
Billy put up a startled hand. In the general soreness he had not noticed that warm trickle. His whole face turned as scarlet as the shameless blood. Frantically he rummaged with the other hand.
The girl thrust a square of white linen upon him. "Please take mine—it will ruin your clothes if it gets on them."
Her immense practicality refused to be embarrassed in the least. Feeling immensely foolish Billy accepted hers, but then he discovered his own handkerchief and stuffed hers away into his pocket.
"You're a trump," he said heartily. "And it's all right now—all but the swelling, I suppose." He sounded rueful. He had remembered his engagement for the evening.
Her head a little aslant, the girl regarded him critically. "N-no, it doesn't seem to be swelling," she observed. "Of course it's a little red but that will pass."
They were walking side by side out of the narrow street and now, on a crowded corner, they paused and looked around. "I left Miss Falconer at the Maltese laces," she murmured, and to the laces they turned their steps.
Miss Falconer was still bargaining. She was a middle aged lady, Roman nosed and sandy-haired, and she brought to Billy in a rush the realization that she was "sister" and the girl was Lady Claire Montfort. The story of the encounter and Billy's hero part, related by Lady Claire, appeared most disturbing to the chaperon.
"How awkward—how very awkward," she murmured, several times, and Billy gathered from her covert glance upon him that part of the awkwardness consisted in being saddled with his acquaintance. Then, "Very nice of you, I'm sure," she added. "I hope the creature isn't lingering about somewhere.... We'd better take a cab, Claire—I'm sure we're late for tea."
"Let me find one," said Billy dutifully, and charging into the medley of vehicles he brought forth a victoria with what appeared to be the least villainous looking driver and handed in the ladies.
"Savoy Hotel, isn't it?" he added thoughtlessly, and both ladies' countenances interrogated him with a varying nuance of question.
"I remember noticing you," he hastily explained. "I'm not exactly a private detective, you know,"—the assurance seemed to leave Miss Falconer cold—"but I do remember people. And then I heard you spoken of by Miss Beecher."
The name acted curiously upon them. They looked at each other. Then they looked at Billy. Miss Falconer spoke.
"Perhaps we can drop you at your hotel," said she. "Won't you get in?"
He got in, facing them a little ruefully with his damaged countenance, and subtly aware that this accession of friendliness was not a gush of airy impulse.
"You know Miss Beecher then?" said Miss Falconer with brisk directness.
"Slightly," he said aloud. To himself he added, "So far."
"Ah—in America?"
"No, in Cairo."
Miss Falconer looked disappointed. "But perhaps you know her family?"
"No," said Billy. He added humorously, "But I'll wager I could guess them all right."
"Can you Americans do that for one another? That is more than we can venture to do for you," said the lady, and Billy was aware of irony.
"We know so little about your life, you see," the girl softened it for him, with a direct and friendly smile, and then gazed watchfully at her chaperon. She was a nice girl, Billy decided emphatically.
"How would you construct her family?" was the elder lady's next demand.
"Oh, big people in a small town," he hazarded carelessly. "The kind of place where the life isn't wide enough for the girl after all her 'advantages' and she goes abroad in search of adventure."
"Adventure," repeated Miss Falconer thoughtfully. She seemed to have an idea, but Billy was certain it was not his idea.
He hastened to clarify the light he had tried to cast upon his upsetting little countrywoman. "All life, you know, is an adventure to the American girl," he generalized. "She is a little bit more on her own than I imagine your girls are," and for the fraction of a second his eyes wandered to the listening countenance of Lady Claire, "and that rather exhilarates her. And she doesn't want things cut and dried—she wants them spontaneous and unexpected—and people, just as people, interest her tremendously. I think that's why she's so unintelligible on the Continent," he added thoughtfully. "They don't understand there that girlish love of experience as experience—enjoyment of romance apart from results."
"Romance apart from results," repeated Miss Falconer in a peculiar voice.
"I don't believe you quite get me," said Billy hastily. He felt foolish and he felt resentful. And if these English women couldn't understand the bright, volatile stuff that Arlee was made of, he certainly was not going to talk about it. But Miss Falconer had one more question for him.
"When you say big people in a small town do you mean her father would be a sort of country squire?"
"More probably a captain of industry," Billy smiled.
"A captain—Oh, that is one of your phrases!"
"One of our phrases," he laughed, and then parried, "I thought you were acquainted with Miss Beecher?"
"Quite slightly," said Miss Falconer in an aloof tone. "My brother came over on the same ship with her—he came to join us here."
Billy experienced a flood of mental light. The brother—at the hotel he had discovered that his name was Robert Falconer—was coming to join his elder sister and her young charge. He had come on the same steamer as Miss Beecher. Ergo, he was staying at the hotel where Miss Beecher was and not with his sister. Billy comprehended the anxiety of the lady with the Roman nose. He looked at Lady Claire with a certain sympathy.
He caught her own eyes reconnoitering, and they each looked hastily away.
Again Miss Falconer returned to her attack. "Then you really know nothing positive of Miss Beecher's family?"
"Nothing in the world," said Billy cheerfully. "But why not ask Miss Beecher?"
The lady made no reply. "Miss Beecher is a beautiful girl," said Lady Claire hastily. "She's so beautiful that I suppose we are all rather curious about her—of course people will ask about a girl like that!"
"Of course," said Billy, and Lady Claire, perceiving that he resented this catechism about his young countrywoman, and Miss Falconer perceiving that nothing was to be gotten out of him, the conversation was promptly turned into other channels, the vague, general channels of comment upon Cairo.
The Evershams dined alone. Alternately, from their table to the doorway went Billy's eager eyes, but no vision with shining curls and laughing eyes appeared. Evidently she had stayed to dine with whatever people she had gone to see. Robert Falconer was watching that table, too.... Perhaps she would not return till late; perhaps he would have only a tiny time with her that evening.... And he had not been able to buy out that man's berth upon the steamer....
Consommé and whitebait, bœuf rôti and haricots vert and crême de cérises succeeded one another in deepening gloom. The whole dinner over, and she had not appeared!
He went out to the lounge and smoked with violence. Presently he saw the Evershams in the doorway talking to Robert Falconer, and he jumped up and hurried to join them. As he approached he heard the word Alexandria spoken fretfully by Mrs. Eversham.
"Good evening, good evening," said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies' response—they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely—he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss Beecher to-night?"
"Alexandria," said Mrs. Eversham again, and this time there was a hint of malicious satisfaction in her voice.
"Alexandria?" Billy was incredulous. "Why I—I understood she was to go up the Nile to-morrow morning."
"She was, but she has changed her mind. She had word from some friends of hers while we were out this afternoon and she flew right off to join them."
"You mean she isn't going up the Nile at all now?"
"I haven't an idea what she is going to do. She is not in our care any longer. And I don't suppose the boat company will do anything about her stateroom at this late date—certainly she can't expect us to go to any trouble about it."
"She left us half her packing to do," Clara Eversham contributed, addressing Falconer with plaintive mien, "and her hotel bill to pay. She is the most unexpected creature!"
Two young men silently and heartily concurred.
"What was her hurry?" Billy demanded.
"Oh, she's going camping in the desert with them—that sort of thing would fascinate her, you know. Her telegram wasn't very clear. She just sent a wire from the station, I think, or from Cook's, with some money for her bill by the boy. So careless, trusting him like that!"
"I don't suppose he brought it all," Mrs. Eversham declared. "You see, she didn't say how much she was sending—just said it was enough for her bill."
Billy looked at Falconer. He admired the stolidity of that sandy-haired young man's countenance. He envied the unrevealing blankness of his eyes.
"May I ask where she is stopping in Alexandria?" he persisted.
Mrs. Eversham shook her head. "She didn't give any address—the best hotel, I suppose, whatever that is."
"The Khedivial," Falconer supplied.
"She just said to send her things to Cook's and to write to her there and she would write when she came back. She had been expecting to meet those friends, the Maynards, later, but we had no idea that she was going to run off with them like this. It's very upsetting."
"We shall miss her," said Clara Eversham suddenly, with a note of sincerity that made Billy warm to her a trifle. So he bestirred himself getting their after dinner coffee and remembered to send Mohammed for the cream for her, and listened with a show of attention to their interminable anecdotes and corrections. But his mind was off on the way to Alexandria....
Not a word of farewell. Of course, they had not exactly arrived, in those twenty-four hours, at a correspondence stage, but still she had made a positive engagement for that evening—and she had known he was trying to buy that berth. Only that morning she had listened to his account of his endeavors with a mischievous light in her blue eyes and a prankish smile edging her pink lips ... and she might, after that, have left just a line to tell him to cancel his arrangements.... But what could he expect from such a tricksy sprite of a girl? Only twenty-seven hours before he had seen her, flagrantly tardy, nonchalantly unrepentant, first mock and then annihilate the worthy and earnest young Englishman who had endeavored to correct her ways ... He had known then the volatile stuff that she was made of—and had succumbed to it!
But he had succumbed. On that point he was most disastrously certain. The memory of the young girl possessed him. Her beauty haunted him, that spring-like beauty with its enchanting youth and gaiety. And the spirit that animated that beauty, that young, blithe, innocently audacious spirit which looked out on the world with such sunnily trustful eyes, drew him with a golden cord.
He smoked many a pipe over it that night, his feet on the open window ledge, his eyes on the far-spreading flat roofs, the distant domes and minarets darkly silhouetted against the sky of softest, deepest blue. The stars were silver bright. They spangled the heaven with the radiance they never give to northern skies; they gleamed like bright, wild creatures on their unearthly revels.... It would be glorious camping in the desert on a night like this ... Heaven be praised, he had not bought that berth ... Alexandria ... the Maynards ... the desert ...
He knocked out the ashes from his last pipe and rose briskly. His decision was made, but its success was on the knees of the great god Luck.