The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 37

"You're very thoughtful."

"I'll have to beg your pardon," he blurted, for Burroughs was no squire of dames. "I thought you were a little girl and spoke to you as if----"

"It's just the hairpins that make the difference, isn't it?" said Arlee, with a whimsical smile. "I don't suppose you have any of those in camp that I could borrow?"

He shook his head regretfully. Then his brain seized upon the problem. "Bent wires?" he suggested. "I might try----"

"Do," she besought. "I'll be grateful forever."

He withdrew to make the attempt, and in his place came Billy with a tray of luncheon.

"Just--put it down," Arlee said faintly. "I'll eat--by and by."

Worriedly Billy looked down on the girl. Her eyes closed. Excitement had ebbed, leaving her like some spent castaway on the sh.o.r.es. He dropped on his knees beside her, dipping a clean handkerchief in the jar of cold cream.

"Just let me get this off," he said quietly. "You'll feel better."

Like a child she submitted, lying with closed eyes while with anxious care he took the sand from her delicate, burning skin. He did the same for her listless hands; he brushed back her hair and put water on her temples; he dabbed more cold cream tenderly on the pathetic little blisters on her lips.

"I'm--all right." The blue eyes looked suddenly up at him with a clear smile. "I'm--just resting."

"And now you'll eat a bit?"

Obediently she took the sandwich he made for her, and lifted her head to drink the cup of tea.

"I'm a--nuisance," she murmured.

"You're a _brick_!" he gave back, with m.u.f.fled intensity. "You're a perfect brick!"

Then he backed hastily out of her presence, for fear his stumbling tongue would betray him--or his clumsy, longing hands--or his foolish eyes. He felt choking with the tenderness he must not express. He ached with his Big Brother pity for her, and with his longing for her, which wasn't in the least Big Brotherly, and with all the queer, bewildering jumble of emotion that she had power to wake in him.

Very silently he returned to Burroughs, and when he had made a trifle of a toilet and eaten far from a trifle of lunch, the two young men stretched themselves out in the shade, just beyond the entrance of the tomb, conversing in low tones, while around them the labor song of Burroughs' workmen rose and fell in unvarying monotony, as from a nearby hole they carried out baskets of sand upon their heads and poured the contents upon the heap where the patient sifters were at work.

Burroughs talked of his work, the only subject of which he was capable of long and sustained conversation. He dilated upon a rare find of some blue-green tiles of the time of King Tjeser, a third dynasty monarch, and a mummy case of one of the court of King Pepi, of the sixth dynasty, "about 3300 B.C.," he translated for Billy, and then suddenly he saw that Billy's eyes were absent and Billy's pipe was out.

In sudden silence he knocked out the ashes from his own pipe and slowly refilled it. "Congratulations," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and at Billy's slow stare he jerked his head back toward the tomb. "I say, congratulations, old man."

"Oh!" Billy became ludicrously occupied with the dead pipe.

"Nothing doing," he returned decidedly.

"No? ... I thought----"

"You sounded as if you had been thinking. Don't do it again."

"And also I had been remembering," said Burroughs, with caustic emphasis, "knowing that in the past wherever youth and beauty was concerned----"

So successfully had that past been sponged from Billy's concentrated heart, so utterly had other youth and beauty ceased to exist for him, that he greeted the reminder with belligerent unwelcome.

"I tell you it was all an accident," he retorted irritably. "There's nothing more to it.... h.e.l.lo, our horseman is coming this way again!"

Grateful for the interruption to this ticklish excursion into his sacred emotions, he jumped to his feet and went out to meet the man who was riding slowly toward them, the two others in his train.

Burroughs went with him, and a brief parley followed.

"He says," Burroughs translated, "that these are his camels and he is going to take them away. He says you stole them from him at a.s.siout."

"That's right," Billy confirmed easily. "He can have 'em," and Burroughs, vouchsafing no comment on this curious development, gave the message to the Nubian. Then he turned again to Billy. "He wants: the money for their hire."

"For their----! Of all the dad-blasted, iron-clad cheek! You just tell him for me that he'll get his 'hire' all right if he hangs around me. Tell him I'll have him arrested for molesting and robbing travelers; and tell him to tell his master that if he shows his head near an English girl again I'll have him hanged as high as Haman--and shot to pieces while he swings! The infernal scoundrel----"

Whatever work Burroughs made of this translation it sent the sullen, inscrutable-looking fellow off in silence, his followers leading the recovered camels.

"And may that be the last of them," said Billy B. Hill, in fervent thanksgiving. "Except Kerissen. I've got to meet him again--just once."

Perhaps it was the hairpins. Perhaps it was the bathed face and the sleep-brightened eyes and the rearranged gown. But certainly Burroughs stared in amazement at the slim little figure that issued from the entrance, and a queer, a very queer confusion seized upon him. Not even outrageous sunburn and pathetic blisters could hide Arlee's young loveliness. They only added an utterly upsetting tenderness to the beholder, and a most dangerous compa.s.sion.

And just as each man is smitten with madness after the manner of his kind, so Burroughs, the taciturn, was struck into amazing volubility. As they sat about a cracker box of a table at an early supper, he became a perfect fount of information, pouring out to this girl an account of his diggings that would have astounded any of his intimates, and would surely have amazed Billy B. Hill if that young man had been in a condition to notice his friend's performances. But he was wrapped in a personal gloom that had descended on him like a cloud of unreason. The escapade was nearly over. The little girl comrade was gone, the little girl whose face he had so tenderly scrubbed of its grimy sand. A very self-possessed young lady was sitting beside him, drinking her coffee, an utterly lovely and gracious young lady--but unfathomably remote--elusive....

Perhaps, again, it was the hairpins.

Off to town on donkey back the three Americans rode slowly, a native escort filing after, and there in town the bazaars yielded a long pongee dust coat and a straw hat and a white veil, "to escape detection," Arlee gaily said, and a satchel which she filled with mysterious purchases, and then, clad once more in the semblance of her traveling world, safe and sound and undiscovered, she stood upon the station platform, awaiting the train to Luxor.

Beside her, two very quiet young men responded but feebly to the flow of spirits that had amazingly succeeded her exhaustion.

Burroughs was suddenly suffering from a depression most unfamiliar to his practical mind, which caused him to moon about his work for days and made his depleted jar of cold cream a wincing memory, and Billy was increasingly glum.

It was all over now. The girl, who for two winged days had been so magically his gypsy comrade, was returning to her own world, the world in which he played so infinitesimal a part. For very pride's sake now he could never force himself upon her ... as he might before ...

He stared down at her eagerly, hopefully, for a sign of regret at the ending of this strange companionship, much as a big Newfoundland might watch for a caress from a cherished but tyrannic hand, but not a sc.r.a.p of regret was evidenced. She was as blithe as a cricket. Her only pang was for discovery.

"You're sure," she murmured as Burroughs left them to interview the station clerk, "you're sure they'll never know?"

"I'm positive," he stolidly responded. "Just stick to your story."

"The Evershams won't question--they are never interested in other people," she mused, with thankfulness. "But Mr. Falconer----"

"Won't have a doubt," said Billy firmly. His gloom closed in thickly about him.

It was a local, a train of corridor compartments. In one, marked "Ladies Alone," Arlee was ensconced, with an Englishwoman and her maid, and two pleasant German women, and in another Billy B. Hill sat opposite some young Copts and lighted pipe after pipe. When the train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide gla.s.s windows there, and found Arlee beside him.

"How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally like this--you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her breath.

"Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.

"I arrive on a local which left Cairo this morning.... Did I come alone?"