CHAPTER XXII
UPON THE PYLON
Two miles of Sphinxes in the moonlight—a double row of them on each side of the way from the temple of Luxor—and then a towering pylon overhead. Karnak was reached.
Out of the victoria jumped two young men in evening clothes, one sandy-haired with a slight moustache, the other black-haired and clean shaven, and handed out three ladies. The first lady was middle-aged and haughty featured, in a black evening gown overhung with a black and gold Assiout shawl; the second was a tall girl in a rose cloak, the third was a small girl, and her cloak was a delicate blue.
There was a pause at the pylon for the presentation of the little red entrance books, and then the gate closed behind them, and the five moved cautiously forward into the shadowy dark of the confusion of the ruins. Beside the blue-cloaked girl bent the sandy-haired young man; the black-haired young man was between the rose-cloaked girl and the lady with the Roman nose.
"You must be our dragoman, Mr. Hill; I understand you are up on all this," said the lady, adhering closely to his side. "Where are we now?"
"Temple of Khonsu," said Billy with bitter brevity. Ahead of them Arlee's blonde head was uptilted toward Falconer's remarks.
"Khonsu? I never heard of him! Or is it her?" Lady Claire laughingly demanded.
"Khonsu is the son of the god, Amon, or Amon-Ra, and the goddess, Mut, and so is the third person of the trinity of Thebes," Billy pedagogically recited, his eyes on the little white shoes ahead picking their delicate way over the fallen stones. "This temple at Karnak is the temple of the god Amon, and so it was natural for old Rameses the third to put the temple to Khonsu under the father's wing like this—but it spoils the effect of the entrance from this pylon. You don't get Karnak's bigness at a burst—but wait till you reach the court ahead. Then you'll see Karnak."
And then they did see it—as much as one view can give of that vast desolation. Ahead of them, shadowy and mysterious in the velvet dark and silver pallor of the stars, loomed the columns of the great court, huge monoliths that dwarfed to pigmies the tiny groups of people dotting the ground about them, trying to say something appropriate.
The place had been made for dead and gone gods, giants of gods, and their spirits stalked now through its waste spaces, dominating and ironic. There was an air about the place that seemed to scorn the facile awe it woke in the breasts of the beholders and that fleered at the human banalities upon their lips.
"There are no words for a spot like this," said a voice near them.
"Silence is fittest," corroborated a second voice.
"Thomas Hardy once said, speaking of the heavens," said the first voice again, "'There is a size at which dignity begins; farther on there is a size at which grandeur begins; farther on there is a size at which solemnity begins; farther on a size at which awfulness begins; farther on a size at which ghastliness begins.' Surely that was written unknowingly for this temple of Karnak?"
A fluttering murmur from the group confirmed this thought.
"Nice little speech," said Falconer in an undertone.
The second voice was raised a trifle resentfully. "Yet was not the very pith of it spoken by Ruskin when he stood upon this identical spot? His words were these, 'At last size tells!'"
Another murmur agreed that it was indeed the pith.
"That's Clara Eversham," said Arlee under her breath. "They came over early with some people from the boat."
"She must be frightfully up on the guide books," muttered Falconer.
"She's a miner in them," Arlee laughed, as they made their way over the rubbishy ground where great beams of stone and fallen statues lay half-buried in the sands.
"They must be very glad to have you back again with them," Falconer told her, trying hard to keep their progress ahead of the others.
"Oh, I don't know!" Honest dubiety spoke in Arlee's tone. "They have mentioned twice how convenient it was to use my stateroom!"
"They felt very badly when you ran away from them in Cairo."
"I was shockingly sudden about that," owned the girl lightly, "but the chance came—Are we going to climb the great pylon now?"
"It will be a jolly high place to see the moon rise."
It was a jolly high place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy cliffs of Thebes beyond. It gave Arlee the dizzying sensation of being suspended between heaven and earth, so high was she above those far-reaching plains, so high above the giant columns beneath her, the vast beamed roofs, the pointing obelisks. It made her breath quicken and her pulses beat.
"Watch the moon," said Falconer in a low tone.
Blood-red it rose behind the dark pile, throwing into sinister relief a gallows-like angle of stone beams, then higher and higher it soared till its resplendent light poured unchecked into the wide courts and broken temples, the unroofed altars and the empty shrines.
"A dead world lighting a dead world," said Arlee under her breath.
"I could read by it," stated Miss Falconer impressively.
Lady Claire glanced up at Billy with a touch of mischief. "Would you like to paint it?" she suggested.
"Heaven forbid!" said Billy soberly.
Falconer said nothing at all, except to Arlee. He was very shrewdly drawing her to the other end of the pylon, seeing that the time of descent was nearly upon them. And when the time arrived, and the English ladies and their stoic escort started down the steep steps, Falconer made no motion of following them. He stood still, his hands in his pockets, and chuckled softly at the sound of his sister's voice, floating lesseningly up to them.
"How Emma is dragoning that William Whatdycallit Hill," he said appreciatively.
"Why do you call him that?" questioned Arlee.
"Oh, that chap is so deuced odd about that name of his. I asked him what the B. stood for, and he looked me in the eye like a fighting cock and said for his middle name.... Queer chap—" Suddenly Falconer looked sidewise at Arlee and stopped.
"He is—unusual," she agreed, moving toward the steps.
The curious expression upon Falconer's face deepened. "Let 'em go on," he said jerkily. "I don't want to leave this yet, do you?"
Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.
In silence she looked out over the temple. The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars. She felt very strange and unreal—a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....
"We never have a chance for a word together," Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.
Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds.... Her own was upon her. She turned and laughed at him. "We've talked for three whole days!"
"Have we? But always in some group.... I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?" Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.
But Arlee's smile was very sweet. It made the sandy-haired young man's heart quicken mysteriously. "He told me," she said. "I think it was fine of you."
"Fine? It was lunacy.... He'd got worked up over some horrible story he'd heard," went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarrassment, "and nothing for it but that you'd gone the same way. And if you'll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off—and served us jolly well right! He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch."
"A scratch—? You mean—you don't mean——?"
"He didn't tell you that?" Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy's narration had led romantically to Billy's wound. He made the American a silent apology. "He was shot in the arm."
"Badly?"
"Of course not badly—he's all right now, isn't he? He said it was a scratch."
Arlee was silent. He had been hurt all the time that he had been riding with her over the desert ... he had been hurt all through those horrible hot hours. And he had said nothing....
"When I think of what that chap got me in for—scaling a man's walls, smashing in his locks, letting myself down the front of his house like a monkey on a rope! I might have been a dashed school kid again." Resentment and reluctant humor struggled in the young man's speech. "Why, the fellow has the imagination of a detective ... and of course he had some reason." Falconer's thoughts touched on the fair-haired girl of Fritzi's report. "I'll admit he had me worried—until I heard from the Evershams that you were all O.K. You see what bally nonsense you put into young men's heads," he added with a look of meaning.
"He's a very—chivalrous—young man," said Arlee.
"He's a very unbalanced young idiot," contradicted Falconer. "I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare—but no ballast. He might have set all Cairo talking of you." His voice hardened; "I told him that. I told him you wouldn't thank him for it."
"I do thank him. I thank him with all my heart."
"Well, you've no reason to," Falconer returned in blunt belief. "Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace—he might have started a lot of rotten rumor!"
"What's—rumor?" said the girl in a breathless voice. "He was thinking of—my safety!"
"Well, your safety didn't depend on him, did it?" Sharp jealousy of her defense of the American intruder drove Falconer to unseemly curtness. He gave a short laugh. "You and I," he said, "seem to be always tilting over some chap or other."
A faint smile touched the girl's lips, a sorry little smile, edged with rueful reminiscence ... and strange comparisons. In silence she looked down into the shadowy temple courts where absurdly small-looking people were strolling to and fro, while Falconer stood looking down at her, with something akin to angry wonder in his adoring eyes.
"Why didn't you write to a chap?" he abruptly demanded.
"Why should I?"
"Then you meant to let it go at that?" He drew a sharp breath. "Just the way you flared off from that table—not a word more?"
"Why didn't you write?" the girl parried.
"I did," indignantly. "Twice—to Alexandria."
"Oh.... I didn't get them."
"I wrote, all right. I was so stirred up over that alarm of Hill's that I urged you to answer me at once. And when you didn't, and when I heard you had written the Evershams, well, I thought I knew what I had to think.... When I met you here Friday I half expected you to cut me, upon my word!"
"But I didn't!" She laughed softly. "I remembered you—perfectly."
"Oh, you did, did you?... You've acted as if that was about all you did remember."
"I've been very, very nice to you!"
"But with a difference," he insisted resentfully. "Didn't you know I must have written? You didn't think I wanted to let it stop there, did you? You didn't think I meant that nonsense at tea——"
"Please don't go back to that," said the girl hurriedly. "We've been good friends these three days without bringing it up—don't let us do it now."
"Well, I don't enjoy thinking about it." His voice was sharp with feeling. "You gave me the most miserable time of my life."
"I was very horrid."
"You told me you didn't give a piastre for what I thought!"
"I said I didn't give half a piastre!" murmured Arlee irrepressibly, with a wicked dimple.
Reluctantly he grinned. "Well?" he put to her questioningly.
"Well?"
Their eyes met, sparkling, combative.
"You do, don't you?"
"What?"
"You do give a piastre for what I——"
"I'm afraid I do. I'm afraid I give a good many piastres for what everyone thinks." The girl's smile had suddenly faded; her eyes lowered and sought the far horizons.
In the silence he came a little closer to her. "Then Arlee—Arlee, dear——"
She started, and turned hurriedly. "We must go down——"
"Why must we?"
"They'll be waiting."
"Let 'em. They'll be glad of the chance if they can get away from Emma.... I want to talk to you."
"I think Mr. Hill is quite as nice as Lady Claire," flashed Arlee in a childish voice.
"Claire seems to agree with you." Falconer spoke lightly, but underneath sounded the note of the disgruntled male ... resentful of the defection of even the girls he left behind him. He added, with his fatal gift of truculent expression, "But that's perfectly absurd."
"Why absurd?" Arlee's voice held careful calm. The flash in her eyes was hidden.
Falconer made a gesture of extreme exasperation. To waste these precious moonlight moments in trifling debate was the very height of maddening futility.
"Oh, the chap's a feather-headed adventurer. What's the use of talking about him?... But that's aside the mark. I want——"
"You mustn't call him an adventurer!" The flash was far from hidden now. Her wide eyes blazed challenge at the disconcerted young man. "It's not fair. It's not true."
"Oh, I don't mean it in any—any financial sense," the harassed Falconer gave back. "But you can't expect me to take him seriously after his exploits in Cairo? He's flighty. He goes off like a rocket. He has illusions—but——"
"If you are going to slander him because of what he did for me—" Arlee's voice was shaking.
"Oh, can't you see that's the key to his character!"
"Yes, I do see it." She sounded triumphant now. For a moment her eves met his full of bright defiance; she hung fire, half scared, then blazed into her revelation.
"For I was in that palace."
"What? What?" Falconer questioned in sheer vacancy of shock.
"I said—I was in that palace, Kerissen's palace."
"What!" came from him again, but now in twenty different intonations, with absolute incredulity struggling for dominance.
Desperately she rushed on, her voice shaken but passionate.
"I tell you it is so. He got me there by a trick, a call upon his sister. And he kept me by another trick, pretending a quarantine. I was trapped there. The messages and all the Alexandria story were Kerissen's frauds. He wanted to marry me. I'd have been there to-night if it hadn't been for Billy Hill—that adventurer, as you call him!"
It was impossible. It was unthinkable. Falconer stood staring down at this girl whose white, upturned face, so amazingly ethereal and childish, met his astounded gaze with unfaltering fixity, and from his stiff lips dropped disjointed words and phrases, ejaculations of denial, of disbelief.
She swept them utterly aside in her complete affirmation. "It's all true—every bit."
"You—in that man's palace!" He was very pale, but into her white face there surged a sudden flood of color, crimsoning it from brow to throat.
"He didn't—hurt me," she stammered. "He was—quite mad—but he didn't—hurt me."
She heard Falconer draw his breath with a queer, whistling sound. He pushed back his hat and drew his hand over his forehead.
"It's—impossible," he persisted thickly, but there was bitter relief in his voice. "The blackguard—the filthy blackguard!"
"Don't, don't, please don't! I can't bear to think of him. I've done with even the thought of him.... He was trying to make me marry him. I told you he was quite mad."
Sharply Falconer pulled himself together, in the tense effort to meet this horrible astonishment like a man.
"And Hill got you out?"
"Yes.... He got me out."
"But the Evershams—they don't know——?"
"No, no, I've told no one. I'm not going to tell anyone. No one knows of it but you and me—and Billy Hill."
"That's right." He drew another long breath, this time in sharp relief. The color was coming back to his face, splotching it unevenly. "You mustn't tell anyone. You don't know how a beastly thing like that would spread. You mustn't let anyone have a hint. Not even my sister."
Arlee's eyes were in shadow. Her voice came slowly. "They would think so badly of me?"
"No—not of you—but it's the kind of thing, the impossible things—A girl simply can't afford——"
"She can't afford to have even speculation against her," Arlee finished quietly, but a little pulse in her throat was beating away like mad. She knew he spoke the simple truth, but the taste of it was bitter as gall to her mouth. However she had humbled herself in secret self-communion, she had known no such shame as this.... She felt cheapened ... tarnished....
"It's beastly—but she can't," he jerkily agreed, but with evident relief at her sensible understanding. Perhaps he had remembered Billy's fearful prophecy of the conversation with which the adventure would supply her. "But of course nobody has a notion——"
"Not a notion. And I shan't give them any—not till I'm a white-haired old lady in Mechlin caps, and then I shall make up for lost time by boring all my world with the story of my romantic youth and the wild deeds done for me!" She laughed airily, pride high in her face, hiding her secret hurts.
"And Hill got you out," Falconer repeated, with a sudden twinge of jealous envy in his young voice. "He—he's a lucky one."
"I'm the lucky one," Arlee flashed. "Think of the glorious luck for me that sent him to paint there, outside the palace, where a maid mistook him, and so gave a message. Why, it was a chance in a million, in ten million—and it happened!"
"Happened?" Falconer looked at her a minute before continuing. Then he asked quietly, "He told you that he just—happened—there?"
"Yes, he said by accident. He was painting——"
Now Falconer was an honest young man—and a gentleman. Deliberately he brushed away his rival's generous subterfuge. "He doesn't paint," he told her. "He did that for an excuse—for a reason to stay outside the palace. No chance directed it."
"Why, how—how did he know? Before——"
"He guessed. He was uneasy from the beginning—he made conjectures and set himself to verify them."
After a moment, "I never knew—that!" said Arlee in slow wonder.
"Well, you know now," returned Falconer with a sense of grim justice to the man he had belittled.
In the silence the girl moved toward the steps. He made a gesture to stay her.
"You're not going—yet?"
"Yet?" she echoed, faintly mocking. "It's hours."
"But—but we can never see this again," he argued, weakly, parrying with himself.
"We won't—forget it."
The words held a too-keen prophecy for him. He looked at her in heart-beating uncertainty, and it seemed to him that all his future was waiting on that moment. Should he speak? Should he utter that which had been so near utterance when her astounding revelation had stopped him?... After all, he knew nothing of her—but that she was lovely and wilful and enchanting—with a capacity for risk—and a dire disregard of consequences.... She was volatile, unstable, bewildering—so he thought stiffeningly as he looked at her, but he looked too long.
She was the very spirit of loveliness in the silver moon, her hair a crown of light, her eyes deep with shadowy wistfulness, her lips half sad, half tender.... He felt the blood burn hot in his face, and took a quick step to bar the way.
"You must wait to hear what I was saying," he said, with a ring of new command.
She gave him a sudden, startled look, and moved as if to pass him.
"You were saying—nothing," she answered proudly.
"I was saying—everything," he gave back incoherently. "Oh, Arlee, do you think that story stops me! Don't you know—how much I want you?" and with sudden vehemence he bent to clasp her in his arms.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BETTER MAN
Down in the court of Rameses, Lady Claire and Hill were straying. A most opportune old bachelor, passing with a party of acquaintances, had diverted even Emma Falconer from her dragoning, and the young English girl and her American escort were left for the time to their own devices.
Not much was said. Claire, who had been fitfully gay all afternoon, grew still as a church mouse now as they paced back and forth in the shadows, stealing a slant glance from time to time at Billy's set and silent face. She wondered a little at his absorption. But chiefly she was thinking that she had never seen him look so handsome ... with his brows knitted and his clear-cut lips pressed sharply together ... but the boy of him somehow kept by that wilful lock of black hair over his forehead.
To Billy it seemed that the bitterest drop of the cup was at his lips. Those two—upon the pylon—were they never coming down? He was waiting for them in every nerve, and yet he shrank from the look he might read upon their faces. He thought, very grimly, that this could mean but one thing, and that thing was the end forever and ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements of torture which civilization imposes.
But the game had to be played. He was no quitter, he told himself fiercely; he could stand up and take his punishment like a man. She was not for him. He had loved her from the first, he had loved her so that he had been clairvoyant to her peril, he had risked his neck for her a dozen times and snatched her from a life that was a death-in-life—and yet she was not for him. She was for a man who had not believed in her danger, had not bestirred himself.... Black, seething bitterness was boiling in Billy B. Hill. Darkly, through a fog, he heard the outer man replying to some speech from the girl beside him.
He understood, he told himself in a burst of despairing anguish, how Kerissen could have plotted for her. Almost he longed to be a scrupleless Oriental and carry her off across his saddle bow.... And then he brought himself up short.
Was that all she meant to him, he asked himself with the sweat of pain on his forehead beneath that black lock which was finding such favor in Lady Claire's eyes—was that all she meant to him?—a prize to be won? One man had tried to steal her; he had wished to earn her—but she was a gift beyond all price and the giving lay in her own heart alone.... And if Falconer was the man for her, then at least he, Billy B. Hill, was man enough to stand up and be glad for her and be humbly grateful to the end of his days that he had been able to save her ... and give her her happiness. For it was really he who had given it to her. And in that thought Billy Hill's young heart expanded, and his soul stretched itself to such unwonted heights that it seemed to push among the stars.
"It is an unforgettable night," said the girl in the rose cloak.
He thought that was just the word for it, and a wryly humorous glint was in the look he gave her. And he thought that she, too, was playing the game mighty stanchly, and had been playing it bravely these three days, since her conquering little rival had made her reappearance. His heart warmed toward her in understanding and compassion. They were comrades in affliction. He was not the only one in the world who was not getting the heart's desire.
Aloud he answered, "And the last night for me."
Lady Claire looked up quickly. Her voice showed her struck with sudden surprise. "You are going—so soon?"
"To-morrow."
"To Assouan?" Odd sharpness edged the question.
He waited a perceptible moment, though his resolution had been taken. "Back to Cairo."
"Oh ... How long shall you be there?"
"Just till I get sailings. It's time for me to be off. I'm really a working person, you know, not a playing one."
"You make bridges—and dams—and things, don't you?" she questioned vaguely.
"Bridges—and dams—and things."
"Why don't you wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally after another pause. "It's so much more attractive here than Cairo."
"I'd like to." He thought of next Friday—and Arlee's return—and the masked ball. For a moment temptation urged. Then he threw back his head with a gesture of decision. "But I can't. It's impossible."
Now Lady Claire did not know that he was thinking of next Friday—and Arlee's return—and the masked ball. She only knew that he spoke with a curious fierceness, and that his eyes were very bright. And something in the girl, something strange and acknowledged that had been so fitfully gay and light these three days, quickened in mysterious excitement.
"Nothing is impossible," she gave back, "to a man!"
Billy thought she was resenting the conventions of the restricted sex. She could not make any open advance toward Falconer while he, as man, could make all the open advances to Arlee he was willing to—but in this case his hands were tied. A man cannot inflict himself upon a girl who may not feel herself free to reject him. He laughed, with sorry ruefulness.
"There's a whole lot," he observed, "that is impossible to a man who tries to be one," and then, oblivious of any construction she might choose to put upon this cryptic utterance, he strolled moodily on, in brooding silence.
After a pause, "Of course," said Lady Claire in so gentle a little voice that it seemed to glide undisturbingly among his silent meditations, "of course, a man has his—pride."
"I hope so," said the young man briefly. He understood her to be probing for his reason for abandoning the chase; he understood that for her own sake she would like to see him successful with Arlee, and he was queerly sorry to be failing to help her there. But he had done all that he could....
The girl spoke again, her face straight ahead, her shadowy eyes staring out into the moonlight. "Is it—money?" she said in the same little breath of a voice.
"Money!" Billy threw back the words in surprise, half contemptuous, "Oh, Lord, no, it's not money! I haven't much of it now, but I'm going to make a bunch of the stuff—if I want to." He spoke with naïve and amazing confidence which somehow struck astounded belief into the listener. "There's enough of it there, waiting to be made—no, it's not money—though perhaps one might well think it ought to be. I suppose my work might strike a girl as hard for her," he went on, considering aloud these problems of existence, "for it's here to-day and there to-morrow—now doing a building in a roaring city and now damming up some reservoir deep in the mountains—but it always seemed to me that the girl who would like me would like that, too. It's seeing so much of life—and such real life! Oh, no," he said, and though a trace of doubt had struck into his voice, "that in itself wouldn't be what I'd call impossible—not for the right girl."
"But your work—would it always be in America?" said Lady Claire.
"Oh, always. It has to be, of course."
"Oh.... And—and—you—have to have—that work?"
"Why, of course, I have to have it!" Billy was bewildered, but entirely positive. "That's my work—the thing I'm made to do. I couldn't earn my salt selling apartment houses."
"Oh, no, no," the girl hurriedly agreed.
A long, long silence followed, a silence in which he was entirely oblivious to her imaginings. The moonlight lay heavy as dreams about them; her thoughts went darting to and fro like fluttering swallows.... She felt herself a stranger to herself.... She looked up at him with a sudden deer-like lift of her head, and then looked swiftly away.
"Don't go," she said in a quick, low voice. "Don't go—yet. Even things that look impossible—can be made to come right."
He understood that she was pleading with him, partly for the sake of her own chance with Falconer, but the sympathy flicked him on the raw. He was sorry for her, sorry for the queer, strained look in her face, sorry for the voice so full of feeling, but he couldn't do anything to help her.
In silence he shook his head and was astounded at the look of sudden proud anger she darted at him.
"You're a mighty real friend to take such an interest in my luck," he said quickly, with warm liking in his voice, "and I only wish you could play fairy godmother and give me my wish—but you can't, Lady Claire, and apparently she won't, and that is the end of the matter. I have to take off my hat to the Better Man."
Lady Claire did not gasp or stammer or question. She did none of the dismayedly enlightening things into which a lesser poise might have tottered. After an inconsiderable moment of silence she merely uttered her familiar, "Oh!" and uttered it in a voice in which so many things were blended that their elements could hardly be perceived.
She added hurriedly, "I'm sorry if I've seemed to—to intrude into your affairs."
"My affairs are on my sleeve," answered Billy and wondered at the quick look she gave him.
"Oh, no—not at all," she answered a little breathlessly. "I'm sure they haven't seemed so to me—but then I'm stupid." She stopped for a moment of hot wonder at that stupidity. She had not believed Miss Falconer—had thought her prejudiced ... maneuvering.... Like lightning she reviewed the baffling interchange of sentences, then glanced up at Billy's silent absorption. She felt queerly grateful for his innocent density. "And perhaps she's stupid, too," she told him. "You'd better make sure. You'd better make absolutely sure."
He looked down on her with sorry humor in his face. "Do I need to make surer?" He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway. "They've had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there."
"Oh, yes, they've had time!" She seemed speaking at sudden laughing random. "But we've had the same time and you see we haven't settled anything with it—not even that you're to stay. Yes, you'd better make sure, Mr. Hill."
Billy was hardly heeding. A laugh had caught his ears, a light high laugh like the tinkle of a little silver bell through the darkness. In the shadows behind them he made out a man and a woman arm in arm.
"Just a moment," he begged of Lady Claire. "May I leave you here a moment? I must see those—I think I know——" Without listening to her automatic permission he was gone.
The next moment he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the woman. Both spun quickly about. A babble of explanation broke out.
"Ach, mein freund, mein freund——"
"Oh, it is Billy——"
"How gut to find you here——"
"Our American Billy."
The last voice, piquantly foreign, was the voice of Fritzi Baroff. And the first voice gutterally foreign was the voice of Frederick von Deigen. Arm in arm, flushed, happy, sentimental, the two began talking in a breath, thanking Billy for the letter he had sent von Deigen which had brought them together, and apologizing for their hasty flight—"a honeymoon upon the Nile," the German joyfully explained.
Discreetly Billy forbore to make any discoveries as to the exact status of their "honeymoon." The German's face was very honestly happy, and the little dancer was brimming with restless life and vivacity.
"It was the picture in my watch—hein? The picture I carry night and day," Frederick repeated in needless explanation, and was about to draw out the picture when Billy restrained him.
He had a favor to ask. The American girl of Kerissen's palace had escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of all. She was this moment in the ruins. It would be a great shock to her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her. On the morning she would be gone. Would Fritzi——"
"Fritzi must disappear—for the night?" said the little Viennese smiling wisely, but with a trace of cynicism. "The little American must not be reminded—h'm? We will go.... For you have done so much for me, you big, strange, platonic Mr. Billy!" Dazzlingly she smiled on him, her dark eyes quizzically provocative.
"You're not at the Grand?"
"No, not that." She named another. "You come see me, when that girl goes—h'm?"
Billy caught the German's eyes upon him, in their depths a faint trouble, a vague appeal. He comprehended that the infatuated young man had engaged in the tortuous business of keeping sparks from tinder.
"I'm gone to-morrow," he replied.
"Maybe in Vienna?" went on the dancer. "We go soon—another day or so maybe—and then back over the water to that life I left! Oh, my God, how happy I am to go back to it all—to dance, to sing—Oh, I could kiss you, Mr. Billy, if it would not make you so shock!" she added with a malicious little laugh. "You know the news—about him—h'm?"
"Him?"
"Kerissen—that devil fellow. He is in Cairo with a fever—in the hospital there. A man who come from that hospital just tells us—just by accident he tell us. A bad fever, too!" She laughed in satisfaction. "I hope he burn good and hard up," she added, with energetic spite, "and teach him not to act like a wild man. That man say he got a bad hand," she added, with a shrewd glance at Billy.
The young man merely grunted. "I hope he has," he replied. "It matches the rest of him. Good night."
"Good night—for the now—h'm, Mr. Billy?" and with a quick little clasp of his big hand and a gay little backward look the girl was gone into the shadows upon the arm of her jealous cavalier.
Three people were waiting at the statue foot where he had left the English girl.
"They've come at last, Mr. Hill," Lady Claire's voice struck very gaily upon him, "and Miss Falconer has just come to tell us we must see the colored lights in the great court—and then go home. So hurry!"
She turned as she spoke and put her arm suddenly through Falconer's who was standing next her. "Come on," she lightly commanded, and promptly led the way.
That was something like a fairy godmother! Into Billy's eyes flashed a warm light of gladness. Some moments out of that wretched evening should yet be his own, bitter-sweet as they were in their sharp finality.
He turned to the blue-cloaked figure at his side. "Do you like colored fire?" he demanded. "Won't you come and see something else—something I've wanted to see and to have you see with me? It's near the way out. We can meet them at the pylon."
Of course she acquiesced. That was part of the cursed restraint between them, he was reminded, to have her accept so obediently any point-blank request of his. But for the nonce he was glad. He wanted those few minutes desperately.
"What is it?" she murmured.
"I'll show you," and then, as he turned from the way they had come and followed a winding path that dipped lower and lower between the dune-like piles of sand, "It's the Sacred Lake," he explained. "Perhaps you've seen it in the daytime—but I've been wanting to see it at night."
"I think I just caught the glint of it from the pylon," she observed.
"You had time to," said Billy, trying to twinkle down at her in friendly fashion.
She did not twinkle back. She looked as suddenly guilty as a kitten in the cream, and Billy's heart smote him heavily. He did not speak again till they had rounded a corner and their path had brought them out upon the shore of the Sacred Lake.
Like a little horseshoe it circled about three sides of the ruined temple of the goddess Mut, inky-black and motionless with the stars looking up uncannily like drowned lights from its still waters, and inky-black and motionless, like guardian spirits about it, sat a hundred cat-headed women of grim granite. It was a spot of stark loneliness and utter silence, of ancient terror and desolate abandonment; the solitude and the blackness and the aching age smote upon the imagination like a heavy hand upon harp strings.
"Who are—they?" Arlee spoke in a hushed voice, as if the cat-headed women were straining their ears.
"They're mysteries," said Billy, speaking in the same low tone. "Generally they're said to be statues of the Goddess Pasht or Sehket—but it's a riddle why the Amen-hotep person who built this temple to the goddess Mut should have put Sehket here. Sehket is in the trinity of Memphis—and Mut in that of Thebes. And so some people say that this is not Pasht at all, but Mut herself, who was sometimes represented as lion-headed. Between a giant cat and a lion, you know, there's not much of difference."
"I like Pasht better than Mut," said Arlee decidedly.
"There you agree with Baedecker."
"What did Pasht do?"
"She was goddess of girls," said Billy, "and young wives. She got the girls husbands and the wives—er—their requests. Girls used to come down here at night and make a prayer to her and cast an offering into the waters."
"And then they had their prayer?"
"Infallibly."
"I'd like a guardian like that," said Arlee, with a sudden mischievous wistfulness that played the dickens with Billy's forces of reserve. "Do you think she'd grant my prayer?"
"Have you one to make?" said Billy, staring very hard for safety at the monstrous images.
"They look as if they were coming alive," he added.
The moon had come up over an obstructing roof and now flashed down upon them; a ripple of light began to swim across the star-eyes in the inky waters; a finger of quicksilver seemed to be playing over the scarred faces of the granite goddesses.
"They never died," said Arlee positively. "They're just waiting their time. Can't you see they know all about us?... They particularly know that you are the most deceiving young man they ever saw! Why didn't you tell me you were shot in the arm?" she finished rapidly.
"What?... Where did you hear that?"
"Mr. Falconer enlightened me."
"I wish Falconer would keep his stories to himself," said Billy ungratefully. "It's just a——"
"Scratch," said Arlee promptly. "That's always a hero's word for it."
Billy turned scarlet. He felt hot back to his ears.
"And why did you tell me that you happened to be painting outside the palace?" went on the unsparing voice. "You let me think it was all accident—and it was all you, just you!"
"Good Lord," groaned Billy, effecting merriment over his discomfiture, "Is there anything else he told you?... Look here, you shouldn't have been talking about it," he said with sudden anxiety.
Arlee smiled. "It's all over," she said. "I told him everything."
Billy's heart missed a beat, and then hurried painfully to make up for it. He felt a curious constriction in his throat. He tried to think of something congratulatory to say and was lamentably silent.
"Why did you deceive me so?" she continued mercilessly. "Because my gratitude was so obnoxious to you? Were you so afraid I would insist upon flinging more upon you?"
"That's a horrid word, obnoxious," said Billy painfully.
"I thought so," thrust in a pointed voice.
"I only meant," he slowly made out, "that a sense of—of obligation is a stupid burden—and I didn't want you to feel you had to be any more friendly to me than your heart dictated. That is all. It was enough for me to remember that I had once been privileged to help you."
"You—funny—Billy B. Hill person," said the voice in a very serious tone. Billy continued staring at the unwinking old goddess ahead of him. "You take it all so for granted," laughed Arlee softly, "As if it were part of any day's work! I go about like a girl in a dream—or a girl with a dream ... a dream of fear, of old palaces and painted women and darkened windows. It comes over me at night sometimes. And then I wake and could go down on my knees to you.... I suppose there isn't any more danger from him?" she broke off to half-whisper quickly.
"He's sick in the Cairo hospital," Billy made haste to inform her. "I found out by accident. I understand he has a bad fever. So I think he'll be up to no more tricks—and I'm out the satisfaction of a little heart-to-heart talk."
"Oh, I told you you couldn't," she cried quickly. "You would make him too angry. He isn't just—sane."
"Then all I have to do in Egypt is to hunt up my little Imp," said Billy. "I must see the little chap again—before I go."
He waited—uselessly as he had foretold. She said nothing, and if the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to meet it. He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance. There was a pause.
Then, "However were you able to think of it all?" said Arlee in slow wonder. "However were you able to think such an impossible thought as my imprisonment?"
"Because I was thinking about you," said Billy. Suddenly his tongue ran away with him. "Incessantly," he added.
She looked up at him. Unguardedly he looked down at her. No one but a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B. Hill's young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire. The heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like mad.
Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him, "Then what made you stop?"
"Stop?" he echoed. "Stop? I've never stopped! There hasn't been a moment——"
"There have been three days. Three—horrible—days!"
"Arlee!"
"Do you think I like being snubbed and ignored and—and—obliterated?" she brought indignantly out. "Do you think I call that—being friends?"
"I—I wanted to leave you free—not to force your friendship——" he stammered wildly.
"You couldn't force mine," said Arlee Beecher.
"But—but there was Falconer," he protested. "You had to be free to—to have a choice——"
"A choice? Do you call that a choice?"
"I thought you were making it. That first night——"
"I stayed up to dance with you," she cried hotly. "You never came back!"
"But the next day——"
"I wanted to go. But I couldn't keep up any more. I had to rest.... And you went with Lady Claire!"
"Why, I had to! We'd planned. But when we came back, he was on deck with you——"
"Yes, and I was waiting up—to see you. And you only took two dances that night——"
"You didn't seem to want me to——"
"I never guessed you wanted them! I had my pride, too. I wasn't going to be in the way—because you'd rescued me. I thought you didn't want me in the way!"
"Arlee—my girl—my precious girl——"
"No, I'm not. I'm not."
"Yes, you are," he said fiercely. "I don't care if you are engaged to Falconer or not, I'm going to tell you so."
"I'm not engaged to Falconer," she protested.
He blurted in bewilderment. "Then what in the world were you doing up there on that pylon?"
Her elfish laughter disconcerted him. "Do you think one has to get engaged if she stays on a pylon?... We were getting not engaged."
"I thought—I thought you liked him," he said bewilderedly.
"I did. I do, I mean—but not that way. He—he—Oh, I really like him," she cried tremulously, "but not—we've had it all out and everything's all over. I'm sorry—sorry—but he'll be really glad bye and bye. For my story shocked him terribly.... And then there's Lady Claire. He didn't like to have her down with you even when he was up with me." She laughed softly. "Oh, I shouldn't have let him be so friendly here but I did like him and you—you were so—so hateful."
The moon and stars whirled giddily around him as he put his arms about her. Like a man in a dream he drew her to him.
"I love you—love you," he said huskily over the bright maze of hair.
"You don't!" came with muffled intensity from the hidden lips. "You said to that man—when I was in that cave—'Nothing doing!'"
"It wasn't his affair—I hadn't a hope.... Oh, my dear, my dear, I've been breaking my heart——"
"And I've had such a perfectly h-hateful three days," sobbed the voice.
His arms closed tighter about her, incredible of their happiness.
"Oh, Arlee, I can't tell you—I haven't words——"
"I've had deeds!" she whispered.
Through his rocking mind darted a memory of her earlier speech to him. "You said you didn't want words. Arlee—will you?"
She flung back her head and looked up at him, her face a flower, her eyes like stars tangled in the bright mist of her hair.
"Billy, what's your middle name?"
"Bunker.... I can't help it, dear. They wished it on me and asked me not to let it go. But Bunker Hill——!"
"It's a wonderful name, Billy! A perfectly irresistible name!" Her eyes laughed up at him through a dazzle of tears, and prankishly over her curving lips hovered a mischievous dimple. "It's a name—that—I—simply—can't—do—without—Billy Bunker Hill!"
The dimple deepened then fled before its just deserts. For if ever a dimple deserved to be caught and kissed that was the one.