CHAPTER XVI
THE HIDDEN GIRL
Hour after hour the little boat held its steady course; hour after hour the distant banks flowed past in changing scenes. Forward on the narrow deck a girl sat in a lounge chair beneath a striped awning and gazed out over the water. Squatting in the shade behind her an old woman stared up out of half-closed eyes with pupils as keen and bright under their puckered lids as the eyes of a watching hawk.
No disturbing consciousness of this incessant scrutiny muffled the serenity of the girl's appearance. Her hands lax in her lap, her blue eyes quietly intent upon the view, she lay back in her chair with as much confident unconcern as she might have shown in an opera box. As a matter of incredulous fact she was feeling incredulously at ease.
The terrible tension of those days in the palace was over—for the time, at least. She did not understand this new move, she had been bewildered ever since that early dawn, on Sunday, when the old woman and the eunuch had rushed her into the limousine, driven her swiftly through the empty streets to a landing place on the river beyond the bridge, and hurried her on board this little boat, an old dahabiyeh reconstructed and given a new engine.
The Captain had not appeared except for a brief interview in the vestibule where he had told her that the quarantine was prolonged and that he was going to try to escape out of Cairo where the authorities would not be aware, and would first try to smuggle her out of the city, too. She must do exactly as the old woman indicated and everything would be all right.
And she had said, "How exciting!" and "What fun!" with lips that smiled pluckily in apparent acceptance of this flimsy excuse.
She had connected this flight with the pandemonium she had heard in the palace the night before, and she guessed that in some way her presence there had become embarrassing for the Turk. Perhaps her friends had traced her! Perhaps Robert Falconer—for after all it would only be Robert Falconer's flouted devotion, she thought, that would interest itself in her. He mistrusted Kerissen; he would suspect.
So hope rose high in her, and hopeful, too, was this new glimpse of freedom. Somewhere, soon, she thought confidently, the chance to escape would come. The old woman could not watch forever. The big eunuch was occupied with the boat. She could hear him now muttering angrily to the little brown boy at the engines, while over the sound of his muttering rose the rhythmic, unconcerned chant of two other boys marching up and down the narrow passageways of deck outside the little staterooms with a scrubbing brush under each left foot. "Allah Illeh Lessah," they chanted monotonously, with a scrub of the brush at each emphasis. "Allah Illeh Lessah."
"Allah help me," thought Arlee Beecher.
All day Sunday she had sat there in that chair watching the pyramids, at first so sharp-cut against the cloudless blue, wane imperceptibly and fade from sight, watching the golden Mokattan Hills and the pearly tinted Tura range slip softly from the horizon and all the old landmarks of the Egypt that she knew disappear and be replaced by strange, new sights. Other pyramids showed like child's toys upon the horizon; dense groves of palm trees appeared along the banks, then the banks grew higher and higher and upon them, silhouetted against the bright blue sky, showed a frieze-like procession of country folk driving camels or donkeys or bullocks.
All night long they had steamed, a search-light on the bow, and Arlee had lain in the little stateroom trying to sleep, but continually aware of the breathing of the old woman huddled outside against her door, of the soft thudding of bare feet about the deck, of the pulse of the engine, beating, beating steadily, and of quick, muffled commands, of reversals, grinding of chains as some treacherous shallow appeared ahead, then of the onward drive and the steady rhythmic progress again.
Where were they taking her? South to some haunt where she would be farther than ever from the civilization which had flowed so unheedingly past that old palace of darkened windows, south toward the strange native cities and tiny villages and the grain fields and the deserts. But it was all better than that stifling palace and the absence of the Captain gave her a sense of temporary security.
Sunday had been hot and dry, but this Monday was cooler and the north wind, blowing freshly over the wide Nile, broke the amber-brown of the water into little waves of sparkling blue edged with silver ripples. The river was beautiful to her, even in her sorry plight, and to-day there were little clouds in the sky, furtive, scuddy little clouds with wind-teased edges, and they cast soft shadows over the river and over the tender green of the fields and the flat, mirroring water standing level in the trenches. In the fields brown men and women were working, and on the river banks the half-naked figures of fellaheen were ceaselessly bending, ceaselessly straightening, as they dipped up the water from the shadoufs to feed the thirsty land. Sometimes in the fields Arlee saw the red rusty bulk of the old engines, which the Mad Khedive had tried to install among his people, to do away with this back-breaking work, now lying useless and ignored. God forbid that we do otherwise than our fathers, said the people.
Across the water came the monotonous chant of their labor song, and sometimes the creak and squeak of some inland well-sweep drawn round and round by some patient camel. She felt herself to be in another world, as she sat in that boat guarded by that old woman and an eunuch, a world strange and remote, yet desperately real as it enmeshed her in its secret motives, its incalculable forces....
As she watched, as the surface of her mind reflected these sights and was caught in the maze of fresh impressions, the back of that mind was forever at work on her own terrifying problem. She thought confidently of escape, not able to plan it but waiting intently upon opportunity, upon the passing of a boat perhaps, or the moment of tying to some bank.
There was in her a high spirit of undaunted pluck and an excitement in adventure, which made her heart quicken instead of flag at the odds before her. Only the thought of the desperate stakes and the reality of her hidden fears would often draw the color from her cheeks and stop an instant the beating of that hurrying heart.... If those hawk-like eyes were watching then they might see the slim hands pressed feverishly together before warning self-control turned them lax again.
So hour after hour the boat went on. On the left now the long mountain of Gebel-el-Tayr stretched golden and tawny like a lion of stone basking in the sun. They passed Beni-Hassan, where a Nile steamer lay staked to the shore, the passengers streaming gaily out and starting off on donkeys for an excursion to the tombs. If only it had been a little nearer, close enough to risk a desperate hail—! But the very sight of it was comforting.
Toward dusk the engine failed. That night the boat lay by the bank, tied to long stakes which the boys had driven in. The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were on the move again.
Stepping out on deck for breakfast, she found the boat was sailing. Two lanteen sails were hoisted; a great one in the bow, a small one in the stern, and the boat was running swiftly before the north wind that blew fresher than ever. But the course was variable now as the river curved and as sand-banks threatened, and Arlee watched the waters eagerly for a near-passing boat. But when they did draw close to a dahabiyeh upon whose deck she saw some white-clad loungers, the Nubian gave a low order to the old woman who rose and gripped Arlee on the wrist and led her to the stateroom, sitting in silence opposite her like a squat gargoyle, till the Nubian's voice permitted them to emerge.
And now they came to a city upon the right bank and the domes and minarets, the crowded building and high flat roofs pierced Arlee with a terrible sense of loneliness. And when her eyes caught the gleam of flags over a building and she saw her own stars and stripes blowing against this Egyptian sky, the tears could not be fought back. With wet eyes and working mouth she stood there and looked and looked. She thought she could endure no more and that her heart was breaking.
Leaden discouragement was upon her as the boat made in toward the shore. It did not approach the city landings; it came in south near a shallow bank, and one of the brown boys jumped overboard and splashed to the shore while the boat went on. But by and by it turned in its course and came beating back against the wind till opposite it was the city; then it tacked in to that same place near the bank, and there the boy was waving at them. Skillfully the dahabiyeh was brought about close to the high bank; and ropes thrown from bow and stern were quickly staked and made fast.
A plank was put over the side and with the eunuch ahead and the old woman behind Arlee was taken ashore and mounted on one of the camels the boys had brought, with the old woman behind, gripping her about the waist. The eunuch, on another camel, held the bridle rope, and led them at a terrific pace along the river road and then across the fields, thudding down the narrow, beaten paths, till the lush green was past and the dry desert lands began.
Ahead of them a low, tawny mass of mountain seemed to shimmer and waver in the hot sun, and as they drew nearer and nearer the mass was resolved into many masses broken into small foothills at the base, through which the Nubian threaded a rapid, circuitous way that led out on a rolling ground. A wide detour, still at the same urgent speed which jolted the breath from the girl and made her cling to the carpeted pummel of the saddle with both hands, led them at last within sight of palm trees and mud walls.
Arlee had no means of guessing whether these houses were the outskirts of that city she had glimpsed or whether they were a separate village. She only saw that they were being taken to the largest house of the place, which stood a little apart from the others and was half-surrounded by mud walls. Into this walled-in court her camel was led and halted and jerkingly it accomplished its collapsing descent, and Arlee found herself on her feet again, quite breathless, but very alert.
Her fleet glance saw a number of black-robed figures about a stair; the next instant a mantle was flung over her head and that compelling hand upon her wrist urged her swiftly forward, and up a flight of steps. Within were more steps and then a door. Thrusting back the mantle she found herself in the sudden twilight of a small, low-ceiled chamber. There was no other door to it but the one she heard bolted behind her; there was one window completely covered with brown mashrubiyeh. She flew to it; it looked out over wide sands, with a glimpse, toward the right, of a mud wall and pigeon houses. The room was musty and dusty and dirty; but the rugs in it were beautiful, and a divan was filled with pillows and hung with embroidered cotton hangings. Other pillows were on the floor about the walls. A green silk banner embroidered in gold hung upon one of those walls and a laquered table stood by the divan.
And as Arlee Beecher stood there in that strange, stifling room, the mutterings of foreign voices, the squeals of the camels, the bray of a donkey coming through that screened window, a sudden rage came over her which was too hot to bear. Her heart burned; her hands clenched; she could have beaten upon those walls with her helpless fists and screamed at the top of her unavailing lungs. It was a fury of despair that seized her, a fury that she fought back with every breath of sanity within her. Then suddenly the air was black. The room seemed to swim before her eyes and the ground came swaying dizzily up to meet her, and receive her spent unconsciousness.
Water had been brought; she woke to find herself upon the couch, the old woman woodenly sopping her head and hands. She smiled weakly into that strange dark face; it was as unchanged as if it had been carved from bronze. The business of reviving finished, the old woman left her a handkerchief damp with a keen scent and went about the work of unpacking a hamper that she brought in.
Dully, Arlee saw the preparations for a meal advancing. She shook her head at it; a cup of tea was all that she could touch. A lethargy had seized her; even the anger of revolt was gone. She closed her eyes languidly, grateful when the old woman went away, grateful when the darkness deepened. When it was quite night, she thought, she would break open the wooden screen and fling herself through the wood into the sands. She lay there passively waiting; her heavy eyes closed, and she slept.
CHAPTER XVII
AT BAY
Voices sounded below; footsteps hurried; a door slammed. Then feet upon the stairs, and a hand at the door. Arlee struggled to her feet in sudden terror; the candle was out and the room was in darkness. Outside a gale was blowing. The door opened, but the figure which hurried in was not the one her fright anticipated.
It was the old woman again, bustling with haste. She brought more candles for the table, and then a tray with a bottle and glasses and dishes covered with napkins. Then she bestowed her attention to Arlee, bringing her a mirror and a comb from the hamper she had left upon the floor, and a cloth thick with powder. Then Arlee was sure.
She stood rigid a moment, listening to that low buzz of voices from below, then desperately she shook out her tangled hair and combed it back from her hot face. It was still damp from the water that had been dashed upon her, and as she knotted it swiftly, soft strands of it broke away and hung in wet, childish tendrils. She brushed some powder on her face; she bit her bloodless lips, and stared into the glass, to see a wan and big-eyed girl staring back affrighted.
Then the door opened, and desperately calling on her courage, Arlee heard the Captain speaking her name and saw his smiling face advancing through the shadows.
"A thousand greetings, Mademoiselle. Ah, I am glad to see you." A strained emotion quivered through the false assurance of his tone.
She stood very straight and tense before him, a childishly small figure there in the dusk, the blowing candles making strange play of light and shadow over her. Steadily she answered, "And I am very glad to see you, Captain Kerissen."
"And I am glad that you are glad." But his ear had caught the hardness of her voice, for answering irony was in his. Some devil of delay and disappointment seemed to enter into him, for his face, as she saw it now in his advancing, struck fright into her. The four fingers of his right hand were wrapped in a bandage and he extended his left to her, murmuring an apology. "A slight accident, you see."
"There is so much I do not see that I do not feel like shaking hands," gave back Arlee. "Captain Kerissen, this is too strange a situation to be maintained. You must end it."
"It is a very delightful situation," he returned blandly, looking about with dancing eyes. "To be again your host, even in so poor a place as this old house of the Sheik—and the place has its possibilities, Mademoiselle. It is romantic. Your window overlooks that desert you were so anxious to see. The sunsets——"
"Captain Kerissen, I must say that you use a very strange way to keep me your guest!"
"I might respond that any way was justifiable so that it kept you a guest.... But you wrong me. Did I not bring you safely out from that quarantine, as you besought me?" His smile was mockery itself.
"But you did not bring me to my friends. I do not like your sending me here, without explanation," she returned, trying to be very wise and speak quietly and not rouse him to anger. "We passed a city where the American flags were flying over a house, and I could have gone there."
"I am sorry you do not care for my hospitality. I did not know that I was displeasing to you."
"It is those ways that are displeasing to me. I——"
"Then you shall change them," he laughed. "That will give me pleasure.... But I did not come in the dead of this night, half sick and fatigued, to find such welcome. Come, you must smile a little and sit down at the table with me. Here are delicacies I sent from Cairo."
Smilingly he seated himself at the divan by the table and lifted the covers from the plates, nodded satisfaction at the food, and began to help himself, while she stood there, motionless.
Without looking up, "Will you not help me to the Apollinaris, Mademoiselle?" he suggested. "My right hand, you see, is not as it should be. There is a bottle opener on the tray."
Feeling a fool, but unwilling to provoke a crisis, Arlee tugged at the cork and poured him a glass of the sparkling water and then a glass for herself, which she thirstily drank. "How did you hurt your hand?" it occurred to her to say.
"By playing with fire—the single pastime of entertainment!" He spoke gaily, but his lips twitched. "But will you not sit down and join me? This caviar I recommend."
"I do not care to eat."
"No?" He finished his sandwich and drained his glass, talking banteringly the while to her. She did not answer. Something told her that the time of explanation between them was coming fast; he had ceased to play with his good fortune, ceased to feel he could afford to wait and look and fancy. He had come urgent, in the dead of night. His mood was teasing, mocking, but imperative.... Slowly she moved toward the unlatched door.
Alertly he was before her; the bolts shot home. "Ah, pardon, but I was negligent! We might be interrupted—and also," he laughed, as if deprecatingly, "I have foolish fears that you are so dream-like that you will vanish like a dream without those earthly bars. Locks are for treasures.... And now where is that welcome for me? I came in that door on fire to see you, and your eyes froze me. I came to love—you made me mock. Shall we begin again? Will you be nice now, little one, be kind and sweet——"
"Captain Kerissen, you make it impossible for me to like you at all! Why do you treat me like this? You shut me in this house like a prisoner. If you—if you care for me at all," stammered Arlee, "you would not treat me so!"
"And how, then, would I treat you?" he inquired slowly.
"You would—you would take me to my own people and give me back my independence, my dignity. Then there would be honor in your—your courtship. I——"
"Would you come back to me?"
"I——"
The lie choked her. And the passion of anger which had flared in her that afternoon sprang up in flame again; the candlelight showed the hot blood in her cheeks. "I shall not come to you if you keep me here!" she gave back fearlessly.
"But here I can come to you. And the preliminaries are always stupid—I have no desire to reënact them. I am well content with where we have arrived. Be content, also."
She stared back at his smiling face. And all she thought was, "Shall I defy him now, or try to hold him off a little longer?" She had ceased to feel afraid; her blood was on fire; it was battle now between them; perhaps a battle of the wits a little longer, then——
"In America men do not make love by force," she flung at him. "You are mad, Captain Kerissen! You will be sorry if you go on like this. If you wish to marry me you must give me the freedom of choice. You must give me time. I must have a minister of my own faith. Do you think I will submit to this? You make me hate you!"
"Hate is often love with a mask," he laughed, his eyes fixed on the spirited, flushed face, the flashing eyes, the defiant mouth. "And do not quote your America to me. You are done with America."
"You say that? You forget who I am! My brother—I tell you my brother will——"
"Do I not know the risks?" His eyes narrowed. "But your brother will ask in vain. He will not see you—until we reappear as husband and wife. I will take you to the Continent, then I will give you everything a woman wants, luxury and jewels—the pearls of my ancestors I will hang on you. These have no woman of mine worn. You shall be my adored, my dearest—— Oh, you must not turn from me," he pleaded, his voice sinking softer and softer as he stole closer to her. "You know that I am mad for you. You have bewitched me, little Rose, you have made me strong and weak in a breath. I am clay in your hands. Be sweet, be kind, be wife to me——" His hot hand gripped her arm. He bent over her, and she sprang back, her hands flung out before her.
"Oh, wait!" she cried beseechingly. "Wait—please wait."
"Wait? I have waited too long!" His voice was a snarl now. The mask of indolent mockery was gone; his face was stamped with cruelty and greed. "Nom d'un nom, I am through with this waiting!"
She sprang back before his approach, then whirled about to face him, trying to beat him back with words, with reason, with appeal. Insanely he laughed and clutched at her as she flew past his outstretched arms; in the corner he pinioned her against the wall and gripped her to him.
Terror gave her the strength of two—and his hand was bandaged. Desperately she attacked it, and as his laughter changed to curses, she wrenched free once more and flew across the room. With both hands she seized the candles and flung them into the pillowed divan; holding the last two to the draperies. Like magic the little flames zigzagged up the cotton hangings.
He threw himself upon the fire, dragging down the hangings, beating on the cushions, but the corner was ablaze. Overhead the flames seized cracklingly on the dry wood and darted little red tongues over the dry surface and a scarlet snake ran out over the carved ceiling.
In utter wildness Arlee had carried the last candle to the open hamper and the garments there caught instant fire. She was oblivious of the sparks falling about her, oblivious of the increasing peril. When Kerissen ran to the door, tearing open the bolts, furiously cursing her, she gave him back the ghost of his earlier mocking laughter and threatened him with a blazing cloth as he turned to drag her from the room.
But the fire reached her fingers and she flung the cloth at him, to have him trample it under foot as he sprang toward her again.
"Would you be burned—be marred?" he shouted at her. "You are mad, you——"
Behind him the door opened. Behind him a tall figure appeared through the thickening smoke. She saw a face she knew; a voice she knew cried out her name:
"Arlee!"
"Oh, here!" she cried and flung herself toward him.
"Not unless you want another?" said Billy B. Hill to the Captain, turning his gun suggestively.
One tense instant the three faced each other in that flaming room, then with a sound of impotent fury, Kerissen turned and darted out the door. But as Billy turned to follow, his hand on Arlee's, there was a sound of sliding bolts.
"Burn, burn, then! Burn together!" called a hoarse voice through the wood.
Hill flung himself against the door; it was unyielding. On the other side the taunts continued. He ran to the window, catching up the little table as he ran, and rained a fury of blows with the table against the close-carved screen. The wood splintered and broke; he wrenched a side away, and dropping his gun in his pocket he crashed through the hole and hung on the outside by his hands.
"Climb out on my shoulders," he commanded, and Arlee climbed—how, she never knew. For one instant she had an impression of hanging out over an abyss with fire crackling in her face; the next instant the soles of her feet were smarting and her eyes still seemed to see stars.
There was a run, stumbling, with Billy's hand sustaining her, and then she was on a camel, clutching the saddle as the beast rose swiftly in response to urgent whacks, and beside her Billy was on another. Some one on foot goaded the beasts into a startled run, and behind them yells and screeches were growing louder and louder.
Over her lurching shoulder she had one last glimpse of a burning building and saw flames pouring from the roof, and the room where she had been an open furnace, and then she turned her face toward the dark ahead.
"Hang tight," Billy was calling to her, and she saw him lean over and lash both camels into furious speed. "Some one is riding after," and then he turned and shot his gun warningly into the air.
The yells behind them stopped. But after some moments they heard a camel snarl, and knew that some one was still back there in the darkness, hanging on their trail. So they rode hard ahead, into the enveloping night, over the rolling dunes, with the wind leaping and tearing and hurling the sand in their faces, as if the very elements were fighting against them.
It was a strange chase and a hot one, pounding on and on, racked with the wild, lurching flight, deeper and deeper into the yellow-gray night that welcomed them with more strident blasts and more stinging particles of sand.
"It's a storm," Billy shouted at her, raising his voice above the wind. "It's been blowing up this way for an hour now—they won't follow long in the face of it. Can you hang on a little longer?"
"Forever," she cried back, gripping the pommel tight and bending her head before the whirling particles. There was sand in her hair, sand on her lashes and in her eyes, sand on her face and down her neck, and sand in her mouth when she wet her lips, but she heard herself laughing in the night.
"By and by we'll get off," he called back, and by and by when the hot, stifling, stinging, choking, whirling gale was too blinding to be borne, he checked the camels in one of the hollows of the desert dunes from which the wind was skimming ammunition for its peppery assaults, and the beasts knelt with a haste that spoke of gladness.
"It's the backbone of it now; cover your head and lie down," Billy commanded, and Arlee covered it with what he thrust into her hands—his overcoat, she found—and tucked herself down against him as he crouched beside the camels.
"I should think—it was—the backbone," she gasped, unheard, into her muffling coat. For the wind howled now like a rampaging demon; it tore at them in hot anger; it dragged at the coat about her head, and when her clutch resisted, it flung the sand over and over her till she lay half buried and choking. And then, very slowly and sulkily, it retreated, blowing fainter and fainter, but slipping back for a last spiteful gust whenever she thought it finally gone, but at last her head came out from its burrow, and she began cautiously to wipe the sand crust off her face and lashes.
"In your eyes?" said a sympathetic voice.
In the darkness beside her Billy Hill was sitting up, digging at his countenance.
"Not now—I've cried—that all gone," she panted back.
He chuckled. "I'll try it—swearing's no use."
She sat up suddenly. "Are they coming?"
"Not a bit. No use, if they did. You're safe now."
"Oh, my soul!" She drew a long, long breath. "I can't believe it." Then she whirled about on him. "How—why—why is it you?"
He looked suddenly embarrassed, but the darkness hid it from her. He became oddly intent on brushing his clothes. "Oh, I guessed," he said in a casual tone.
"You guessed? Don't they know? What did they think? Oh, where did everyone think I was?"
He told her, dwelling upon the misleading details; the hasty message of farewell from the station, the directions about luggage, the money to pay the hotel bill. "You see, his wits and luck were just playing together," he said.
"Then the Evershams are up the Nile?"
"Of course. They never dreamed——"
"They wouldn't." Arlee was silent. She wondered confusedly—she wanted to ask a question—she wanted to ask two questions.
"But—but—no one else——?" she stammered.
There was a particularly large lump of sand in Billy B. Hill's throat just then; he cleared it heavily. "Oh, yes, some one else guessed, too," he said then. "That English friend of yours, Robert Falconer, he and I had a regular old shooting party in the palace last Sunday evening. If you'd been there then he would certainly have had you out."
"So he knows." She said it a little faintly, Billy thought, as if she was disappointed and troubled. She would know, of course, by intuition, how the Englishman would think about a scrape of that sort.
"But he doesn't know now," he said eagerly. "He is sure you are all right in Alexandria, because the Evershams received another fake telegram from you from Alexandria. The Captain was stalling them along, apparently, keeping everything under cover as long as possible. And when Falconer heard about that, his suspicions were over. He thought we'd made fools of ourselves in going to the palace."
She was silent. Looking at her, after a while, Billy saw her staring out obliviously into the darkness; her hair was hanging all about her.
His glance seemed to recall her thoughts. She started and then brushed back her hair; the sand fell from it and she took hold of one soft strand. "Look out, I'm going to shake this!" she warned, and he half shut his eyes and underneath the lids he saw her shaking her head as vigorously as a little terrier after a bath.
"Isn't it awful?" she appealed.
"I could scratch a match on my face," he confirmed.
"But tell me," she began again, "how did you know I was in that palace? And I must tell you how I happened to go and how I was kept there."
"You were told there was a quarantine, weren't you?" Billy supplied, as she hesitated.
Her astonishment found quick speech. "Why, how did you know that?"
"The Baroff told me—that Viennese girl who came into your room."
"Why, you know everything! How did you?"
"Oh, I carried her over a wall, thinking it was you."
"But how could you think it was I? And what were you doing at the wall? I don't see how——"
"Oh, one of the palace maids gave me a message in Arabic and I thought it was from you. You see, I suspected—I had seen you drive off in that motor——"
"But how could the maid bring you a message? Where were you? Where did she see you?"
"I was painting out in front of the palace." Billy sounded more and more casual.
"You said you were an engineer," said Arlee. His heart jumped. At least she had remembered that!
"So I am—the painting was just a joke."
"And you happened there," she began, wondering, and after he had opened his mouth to correct her, he closed it silently again. Gratitude was an unwieldy bond. He did not want to burden her with obligation. And he suspected, with a rankling sort of pang, that he was not the rescuer she had expected. So he made as light as possible of his entrance into the affair, telling her nothing at all of his first uneasiness and his interview with the one-eyed man which had confirmed his suspicions against the Captain's character, and the masquerade he had adopted so he could hang about the palace. Instead he let her think him there by chance; he ascribed the delivery of Fritzi's message to sheer miracle, and his presence under the walls that night to wanton adventure, with only a half-thought that she was involved.
Stoutly he dwelt upon Falconer's part in the attack the next night, and upon the entire reasonableness of his abandonment of the trail. He put it down to his own mulishness that he had hung on and had learned through the little boy of her removal from the palace.
He interrupted himself then with questions, and she told him of her strange trip down the Nile in the dahabiyeh, under guard of the old woman and the Nubian. "But how did you come?" she demanded.
"Well, I just swung on to the same train he was in," said Billy. "And I got out at Assiout because he'd bought a ticket there, but I couldn't see a thing of him in the darkness and confusion of the station, and I had a horrid feeling that he'd gone somewhere else, the Lord knew where, to you. But the Imp—that's the little Arab boy who adopted me and my cause—went racing up and down, and he got a glimpse of the Captain tearing off on a horse and behind him a man loping along with a bundle on a donkey, and the Imp raced behind him and yelled he'd dropped something. The man went back to look, and the Imp ran alongside him, asking him for work as a donkey boy. The fellow shook him off, but that had delayed him, and though we lost the horseman we kept the donkey-man in sight and followed him on to the village. I reconnoitered while the Imp stole these two camels—jolly good ones they are—and while I was trying to make out where you were, for there were lights in several windows, I suddenly heard your voice and then I saw a glare of fire. Well, my revolver was a passport.... Now, how about that fire? What started it?"
"I did; he—he was trying to make love to me," she answered breathlessly, "and I just got to the candles."
"Are you burned at all? Truthfully now? I never stopped to ask."
"If I am, I don't know it," she laughed tremulously. Then, "Isn't this crazy!" she burst forth with.
"It's—it's off the beaten track," Billy B. Hill admitted. "It's a jump back into the Middle Ages." His note of laughter joined hers as they sat staring owlishly at each other through the dark of the after-storm.
A little longer they talked, their questions and answers flitting back and forth over those six strange days; then, as the excitement waned, Billy heard a sleepy little sigh and saw a small hand covering a yawn. The girl's slender shoulders were wilting with incalculable fatigue.
Instantly he commanded sleep, and obediently she curled down into the little nest he prepared, pillowing her head upon his coat, and almost instantly he heard her rhythmic breathing, slow and unhurried as a little child. His heart swelled with a feeling for which he had no name, as he sat there, his back against a camel, staring out into the night, an unknown feeling in which joy was very deep and triumph was merged into a holy thankfulness.
CHAPTER XVIII
DESERT MAGIC
He had meant but forty winks, but it had been dark when his eyes closed and he opened them to the unreal half-lights of early dawn. The sky was pearl; the sands were fawn-colored; the crest of a low hill to the east shone as if it were living gold, and the next instant it seemed as if a fire were kindled upon it. It was the sun surging up into the heavens, and great waves of color, like a sea of flame, mounted higher and higher with it.
Impulsively Billy bent over the little figure sleeping so soundly at his side, speaking her name gently. And Arlee, waking with a start and a catch of her breath that went to his heart, opened her eyes on a wild splendor of morning that seemed the outer aspect of the radiant joy within her.
They looked and looked while the east flamed like a burning Rome, and then the glow softened and paled and dissolved in mysteries and miracles of color, in tender rose and exquisite shell pinks, in amethysts and violets and limpid, delicate, fair greens. All about them the sands were turning to gold, and the rim of the distant horizon grew clearer and clearer against the brightening blue of the sky, like a great circling tawny sea lapping on every side the arch of the heavens.
As they looked their hearts stirred and quickened with that incommunicable thrill of the desert, and their eyes turned and sought each other in silence. The gold of the sun was on Arlee's hanging hair and the morning-blue of the sky in her eyes; her face was flushed from sleep and a tiny tendril still clung to the pink cheek on which she had been sleeping. Somehow that inconsequent small tendril roused in Billy a thrill of absurd tenderness and delight.... She was so very small and childish, sitting there in the Libyan desert with him, looking up at him with such adorable simplicity.... In her eyes he seemed to see something of the wonder and the joy in his. It was a moment of magic. It brought a lump into his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch the sandy little hands....
Somehow he managed not to. The moment of longing and of glamor passed.
"It's exactly as if we'd been shipwrecked!" said Arlee, looking about with an air of childish delight.
"On a very large island," he smiled back, and felt a furtive pain mingling with his joy. He was just her rescuer to her, of course; she accepted him simply as a heaven-dropped deliverer; her thoughts had not been going out to him in those long days as his had gone to her.... Decisively he jumped to his feet and said breakfast. Where was it? What was to be done?
Directions were vague. They had come south on the edge of the desert, and the Nile lay somewhere to the east of them, and to the east, therefore lay breakfast and trains and telegraph lines and all the outposts of civilization.
To the east they rode then, straight toward the tinted dawn, and as they went they laughed out at each other on their strange mounts like two children on a holiday. Their spirits lifted with the beauty of the morning, and with that strange primitive exhilaration of the desert, that wild joy in vast, lonely reaches, in far horizons and illimitable space. The air intoxicated them; the leaping light and the free winds fired them, and with laughing shouts and challenges they urged their camels forward in a wild race that sent the desert hares scattering to right and left. Like runaways they tore over the level wastes and through the rolling dunes, and at last, spent and breathless, they pulled back into a walk their excited beasts that squealed and tossed their tasseled heads.
Their eyes met in a gaiety of the spirit that no words could express. When Arlee spoke she merely cried out, "I've read the camel had four paces, but mine has forty-four," and Billy gave back, "And forty-three are sudden death!" and their ringing laughter made a worried little jackal draw back his cautious nose into his rocky lair.
They were in broken ground now, more and more rocky, leading through the low hills ahead of them, and great clumps of grayish mit minan and bright green hyssop dotted the amber of the sands. Here and there the fork-like helga showed its purple blossom, and sometimes a scarlet ice-plant gleamed at them from a rocky crack. Across their path two great butterflies strayed, as gold and jeweled as the day. High overhead, black against the stainless blue, hung a far hawk.
At last the way entered a narrow defile among the rocky hills, and a sharp curve led them finally out upon the other side, looking down into green fields, as straight and trim as a checker board in their varying tints, and off over the far Nile. The fertile lands were wide here, and fed with broad canals that offered the surprise of boats' white wings between the fields of grain. Not far ahead, before the desert sands reached that magic green rose a group of palms, and near them some mud houses and a pigeon tower.
"Breakfast," said Billy triumphantly, and gaily they rode down on the sleeping village.
Back toward the Libyan hills runs the canal El-Souhagich, and as it curves to the north a reach of sand sweeps down from the higher ground, interrupting the succession of green fields. Several jagged rocks have tumbled from the limestone plateaus above and increased the grateful bit of shade which the half dozen picturesque palms do not sufficiently bestow.
Here the runaways breakfasted upon the roast pigeon, dates and tangerines they had bought from the curious villagers, and here Billy, his back against a rock, was smoking a meditative cigar over the situation. Beside him, tied to a palm, knelt the camels, and before him, nibbling a last tangerine, Arlee was sitting.
"We have to rest the beasts a bit." This from Billy, suggestive of a conscience pricking at this holiday delay. "And then——"
"Then—?" echoed Arlee cheerfully.
"Then, what in the world am I going to do with you?"
"With me?"
"Yes. It's simple enough, I suppose, getting back to the city—-but if you don't want your friends to know——"
The quick shadow in her eyes distressed him. "I don't," she cried sharply. "At first—I might have made a lark out of it—but afterwards.... No, I don't want to go explaining and explaining forever and ever. Can't I just reappear?"
"You can reappear from Alexandria," he said. "He, himself," his tone changed as he reluctantly brought Kerissen into the beauty of that morning, "has arranged it very neatly for you. You can just have been camping in the desert—and true enough that is!—with those friends of yours whom the Evershams don't know. Only your reappearance has to be—managed a bit."
Very carefully she tore the tangerine skin into very little bits, her head bent over it. Then she flung the fragments far from her with a gesture of rebellion. "I hate fibs," she said explosively. And then, "But I hate explanations more!" She hesitated, stealing a quick glance under her lashes at his frowning face.
"And some people," she stammered, "might—might not—understand—they would feel that—some people would——"
"Some people are great fools, undoubtedly," Billy promptly agreed. But back of the some people he saw Falconer in her mind, and Falconer's instinctive distaste of all strangeness and sensation.
"I have a perfect right to keep it from—them," she went on argumentatively, and then with an upward glance, "Haven't I?"
"Good Lord, yes! It was your adventure; it doesn't concern another soul in this wide world."
"You know," said Arlee, locking and unlocking her fingers, "you know, some people wouldn't take it all for granted the way—you do.... And it was very horrid."
"It's over," said he crisply, "except I'd like to pound him to a jelly."
"I couldn't bear to speak of him before," said the girl, "but now it seems all far away and nightmarish.... And I'd like to tell you how it was—a little."
"You needn't."
"I know I needn't." Arlee's tone was suddenly proud. Then she melted again. "But I want you to know. He was—he was trying to make me care for him.... He wasn't really as dreadful as you might think him, only just insane—about me—and utterly unscrupulous. But he did want me to like him and so, when I found out, when Fritzi told me I was in a trap, I tried to play his game. I flirted one day in the garden, at lunch, and made him think—— You see, I had to gain time and try to get word to people. But I hated him so I——" She broke off, the pupils of her fixed eyes big and black with the memory.
"You know I can't—I can't think of you—alone there," came huskily from the young man.
"He never dared to touch me—really—till last night," she said fiercely. "He tried, but I—I held him off. Only he talked to me—Oh, how he talked. Like a river of words.... I hate all those words.... If ever again a man asks me to marry him I don't ever want him to talk about it. I want him just to say two words, Will you?" Her laugh caught quiveringly in her throat.
It taxed all the young man's control to keep his tongue off the echo.
"He just raved," she went on after a pause, "and I had to listen—but last night he was horrible. I could never have got to the candles if his hand hadn't been hurt."
"I wish I'd shot his hand off," said Billy bitterly.
"Oh! Was it you who——?"
"When we were in the palace." He told her again about the raid and she nodded delightedly over it.
"It's so wonderful for you to have done all this," she said with sudden shyness. "You had just met me——"
The things on Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. "You were my countrywoman—and alone."
"So are the Evershams," said Arlee, with sudden bubbling laughter, and then as suddenly checked herself. Her fleet glance at him was half-scared. "You—you are very good to your countrywomen in distress," she got out stammeringly.
Billy contemplated his cigar. It was safer.
Presently she reverted to the topic of discovery. "But about Mr. Falconer? Are you sure his suspicions are over now?"
"Perfectly sure. Or they will be the moment he sees you. You'll have to laugh at him if he mentions them, of course;" Billy spoke with heartiness.
"He'd hate it," the girl said musingly. "The talk and all—about me—Oh, after being such a fool I'd never be the same to them!" she broke out passionately.
The furtive pain was bolder now; Billy felt it worming deeper and deeper into his sorry consciousness. It mattered so much to her what Falconer thought—so much....
"But I'll do anything you say," she said meekly, looking up at her rescuer with those big eyes whose blueness always startled him like unsuspected lakes. He saw then that she meant to be very grateful to him. Somehow that deepened the pang. He didn't want that kind of bond....
"Then you will bury even the memory of this time and never whisper a word of it," he told her stoutly. "The talk and explanation will be over five minutes after your return. The thing is, to manage that return. Now the Evershams left Friday and this is Wednesday—six days."
"Only six days," she echoed with a ghost of a sigh.
"Now let me see where were we on the sixth day? When I was on the Nile?" He knitted his brows over it. "Why, the steamer leaves Assiout at noon of the fifth day—that was yesterday."
"Oh! I must have passed them on the Nile," cried Arlee.
"Maragha is where they stopped last night. To-day they'll be steaming along steadily and stop to-night at Desneh. To-morrow night they'll be at Luxor."
"And they stay three days at Luxor?"
"The steamer does, I believe. I left the steamer there and went to the hotel for a while and spent another while at Thebes with a friend of mine."
"The excavator!" cried Arlee quickly.
"Then you do remember," said Billy with a direct look, "that dance and——"
"And our talk," she finished gaily. "And your being Phi Beta Kappa. Oh, I was properly impressed! And I didn't know then that you were a regular Sherlock Holmes as well."
"I didn't know it either," said Billy grinning. But he knew that she didn't know now how much of a Sherlock Holmes he had managed to be for her.
"That seems ages ago," she declared, "and in an altogether different world. The only real world seems to be this desert——"
"Bedouin breakfast and camel races," finished Billy. "And it's so much of a lark for me that I can't keep my mind on the problem of the future. But I have to get you to Luxor by to-morrow night——"
"And I can't arrive in the rags and tatters of a white silk calling gown," mentioned Arlee cheerfully, surveying her disreputable and most delightful disarray. "I must have trunks and a respectable air—and a chaperon, I suppose."
"And I won't do at that. But if you get to Luxor you'll be all right. You can go to the hotel and to-morrow night the Evershams' boat will get in about seven in the evening."
"Did you say my trunks were sent to Cook's?"
He repeated the story of the telegram to the Evershams. Over the arrival of the boy with money for her hotel bill she wrinkled her brows in perplexity. "I suppose he thought there would be less discussion about me if my bills were paid," she said finally. "But I'd like to get that money back to him."
"I'll see he gets it—with interest," responded Billy.
"And you——?" She looked up at him with a startled, vivid blush that stained her soft skin from throat to brow. "You must have been to a great deal of expense——"
"Not a bit. Please don't——"
"But I must. When I get to a bank. I still have my letter of credit with me," she said thankfully, "but it didn't do me any good in that wretched palace. It was just paper to them. I showed it to the girl once and tried to make her understand."
"The first station we find we'd better wire for your trunks to be sent by express to Cook's at Luxor—or to the Grand Hotel. And then you can take the train straight to Luxor and buy some clothes there."
"But the train—I can't travel in this! And there would be people on it who would talk——"
"Had we better make it to Assiout then?" said Billy doubtfully. "Once in the city, of course, you'd be safe——"
"How far is Assiout from Luxor? Where are we now?"
"We're Alice in Wonderland about that. Somewhere about twenty-five or thirty miles south of Assiout, I should say. It must be nearly a hundred and twenty, as the crow flies, from Assiout to Thebes—that's right across from Luxor, you know."
Arlee was silent a moment. She lifted a handful of shining sands and let them run down from her fingers in fine dust. "It's such a pity," she mused, "when we've such a good start——"
Billy stared.
"And I never rode a camel," she went on. "I may never have such a chance again."
"You don't mean——?"
"It would make my story a little truer, too.... And wouldn't it be quicker?"
"Quicker? The quickest way is to go back to Assiout and catch the middle-of-the-night express there and get to Luxor to-morrow morning."
Arlee sighed. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she murmured regretfully, "and now I've begun it's such a pity to stop.... And I'm afraid to go back!" she cried, "They will be out looking for us—they are probably now on the way. And they'll shoot at you and carry me off—Oh, do let's go on! Don't go back to that city! We can catch the train another place. Oh, it's so much more sensible!"
"Sensible?" Billy repeated as if hypnotized.
"Why, of course it is. And safer. For all those people back there must be in that tribe of the sheik whose house I was in, and they are dangerous, dangerous. I want to get as far away from them as possible. I'd rather ride all the way to Thebes than run the risk of falling in their traps."
Billy was silent.
"And I'm sure the camels could make the trip in a couple of days," she continued, sounding assured now, and pleasantly argumentative. "I used to read about their speed in my First Reader.... That is, if you don't mind the trouble," she added apologetically, "and being with me that day more?"
Billy choked. She looked entirely unconscious, and his dumfounded gaze fell blankly away. "There isn't anything in the world I'd like better," he said slowly, sounding reluctance in the effort not to sound anything else, "but from your point of view—if we should meet——"
"Only fellaheen on the banks," she returned unconcernedly. "Not half as awkward as people on trains."
"But the—the chaperonless aspect of this picnic——?"
"Oh, that!" She was mildly scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel.... Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast à deux—What's a few meals more?"
There was truth in that—and truth in what she said about the danger of returning to the city. They were already lingering overlong and Billy jumped up and packed their supply of food in sudden haste. It was folly, of course, to dream of the entire trip to Thebes on camelback, but Girgeh was about fifty miles south, and it would be safer and almost as near to push on there or to the next town, wherever that was, and there get the train as to return to Assiout....
Oh, Billy, Billy! What specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously been turned. Billy was Big Brother—the American Big Brother with whom one might go safely adventuring for a day or a year.... And suddenly Billy felt a warm gladness within him. Not even her escapade with the unspeakable Turk had been able to shake her dear faith in her own countrymen.... He was not man to her; he was American. Billy waved the flag loyally in his grateful thoughts.
Aloud he said, "There's risk in trying to go back, of course. That's what they're expecting of us. But there will be uncertainty in going on——"
"I rather like it. It's the certainty that frightens," she gave back eagerly. "I want the way that puts the greatest distance between me and that man.... I don't care what else happens so he doesn't find us."
It is utterly astonishing how unastonishing the most astonishing situations become at the slightest wont.
Nothing on the face of it could have been more preposterous to Billy B. Hill's imagination than trotting along the banks of the Nile on a camel with a gossamer-haired girl trotting beside him, two lone strays in a dark-skinned land, and yet after a few hours of it, it was the most natural thing in the world!
It was all color and light and vivid, unforgettable impressions. It was all sparkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than that day.
Sometimes they rode low on paths between green dhurra fields, sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.
They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian mountains across the river and the first stars pricked through the lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms.... And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet farther south for their tired beasts.
Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.
But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy head on Billy's coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the moonlit world about him—and the awe and mystery of that little bit of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....
With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is the hardest mattress in the world and a camel's back not the softest pillow....