The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 6

Again the young man exercised his power of gesture, his dark eyes seeming to plead his own helpless desire to mitigate his words.

"Truly a quarantine. It is tyranny, but what can one do? They will hear nothing--they set their guard and it is finished--_bien simple_. We are their prisoners."

"Prisoners?" Her mind appeared but a hollow echo of his words. Her heart was dropping, dropping sickishly, into unending s.p.a.ce. Then meaning stabbed her like a dentist's needle, and a pandemonium of incredulity and revolt clamored through every nerve in her body.

"Why you can't mean--I'm going back to the hotel this instant! I haven't seen your servant!"

"That is nothing to them. They have no reason--heads of pigs! No one must leave or they shoot--the tyrants, the imbecile tyrants! But their day will not be forever--Islam will not endure----"

It was of no moment to Arlee Beecher what Islam would not endure.

Her heart was galloping now like a runaway horse, but her voice rang with quick reaction from that first sickening shock.

"What nonsense," she said positively. "They wouldn't shoot _me_. Why didn't you call me when the English doctor was here. I could have explained then. But now--now I had better telephone, I suppose.

Either to the doctor or the English amba.s.sador--or the American consul. I'll make them understand in a jiffy. Where is your telephone, please?"

"Alas, not in the palace." The young captain's look of regret deepened.

"But--but you telephoned your sister! You telephoned her this afternoon."

"Ah, yes, but I spoke to a telephone which is in a palace near here--the palace of my uncle. I sent a servant with the message. But I can send a message to that palace," he offered eagerly, "and they can telephone for you. Or I can send notes out to all the people you wish. The soldiers will call boys to deliver them."

Across the girl's perfectly white face a tremor of panic darted; then she bit her lips very hard and stared very intently past the Captain's green and gold shoulder. She had totally forgotten the sister who had sunk on a divan beside them, her brown eyes rimmed in their dark pencilings turning from one to the other as if to read their faces.

"I'll just speak to those soldiers, myself," said Arlee decidedly.

"I'll make them understand." She left them there, their eyes upon her and sped down the long room to the door which the Captain's hurried entrance had left half open. She disappeared down the steps.

In three minutes she was back, a flame in the frightened white of her cheeks, a flame in the frightened blue of her eyes.

"Captain Kerissen," she called, and he took a step nearer to her, his face alert with sympathy, "Captain Kerissen, that is a _native_ soldier! He is at the bottom of the stairs--with a bayonet--and he will not let me pa.s.s. He doesn't know a word I say. Please come and tell him."

"Miss Beecher, it is useless for me to tell him anything," said the young Turk with a ring of quiet conviction. "I have been talking to that one--and to the others. They are at every entrance. It is as I told you--we are prisoners."

"Surely you can tell him that I am a guest--you can _bribe_ him to turn his head, to let me slip by----"

"He would be shot if he let you out that street door. He has his orders to keep the ladies in their quarters and it is death to him to disobey. That is the discipline--and the discipline has no mercy--particularly upon the native soldiers." His tone held bitterness. "It is useless to resist the soldiers. You must resign yourself to remain a guest until I can obtain word to one who can render a.s.sistance.... Will it be so hard?" he added sympathetically, as she stood silent, her lips pressed quiveringly together. "My sister will do everything----"

"Of course I can't stay here," broke in Arlee in her clear, positive young tones. "I must get back to the Evershams--and we are going up the Nile to-morrow morning. Can you get a message to that doctor _at once_? And have someone go and telephone from the next house to the consul and amba.s.sador--and I'll write them notes, too."

Her voice broke suddenly. On what wings of folly she had come alone to this place! Her bright adventure was a stupid sc.r.a.pe. Oh, what mischance--what mischance! She was chokingly ashamed of the predicament--to be penned up by a quarantine in a Moslem household.

She was angry, defiant and humiliated at once. What would the Evershams say--and Robert Falconer----

She had never waited for anything as she waited for the answers to the pa.s.sionately urgent notes she sent out. She had written the doctor, the amba.s.sador, the consul, the Evershams. And then she walked up and down, up and down that long, dim room which grew darker and darker with the fading light and counted off the seconds and the minutes and the hours with her pulsing heart beats. She had never known there was such suspense in the world. It was comparable to nothing in her girl's life--the only faint a.n.a.logy was in the old school-time when she thought she had failed in the history examination and her roommate had gone to the office to find out for her. She remembered walking the floor then, in a silly panic of fear. But she had not failed--she had just squeaked through and it would be like that now. Someone would come to tell her that everything was all right and laugh with her at her foolish fright.

But underneath this strain of fervent rea.s.surance ran a cold little current like an underground brook, a seeping chill of dread and vague fear and strange amazement that she should be here in this lonely palace, peering out of darkened windows, waiting and listening.

This time it _was_ the Captain's steps, coming up the stairs.

Perceptive of her impatience, he had left her to herself, till he could bring word. Now she stood, listening to the nearing jingle that accompanied his footsteps, her hands clasped involuntarily against her breast in rigid tension. And when she saw his face through the dusk, saw the courteous deprecation of it, the solicitous sympathy, she did not need his words to tell her that it was not yet all right.

There was nothing to be done. Legal and medical authorities united in insisting that no one, not even the guest, should leave the palace until the fear of spreading the infection was past. This might be modified in a day or two, but for the present they were too frightened to make exceptions.

And they were going up the Nile Friday morning, Arlee remembered numbly. And this was Thursday night.

"Did the Evershams--did they answer my letter?" she said with dry lips.

The Evershams, it seemed, had not been at the hotel. Perhaps when they had read the letter they would be able to do something about it.

"They'll just _talk_!" cried Arlee pa.s.sionately, her breast heaving.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to rave, she wanted to fly down the stairs and hurl herself recklessly against that barring bayonet.

But because there was pride and spirit behind her delicate loveliness she shut the door hard upon those imps of hysteria and with high-held head and palely smiling lips she thanked the Captain for the hospitality he was extending in his sister's name. Yes, thank you, she would rejoin them at dinner. Yes, thank you, she would like to go to her room now.

A serving maid, called by her hostess, conducted her--the blue-robed girl, she thought, that she had seen drawing water at the well. A black shawl hung from her head and dangling in its folds the _yashmak_ ready to be slipped on at the approach of the men before whom she must appear veiled. Her bare feet were thrust into scarlet slippers, and as she moved silver anklets were visible, hanging loosely over slim, brown ankles. Shuffling slightly, yet with an erectly graceful carriage, the girl led the way into the ante-room again, pulled open one of the closed doors in the opposite wall and pa.s.sed up an encased staircase wrapped in darkness. They emerged into the dusk of a long, dim hall, where hanging lamps from the ceiling shed a mild l.u.s.ter and a strong smell of oil, and pa.s.sing one or two doors on the right, the maid pushed, open one that was rich in old gilding.

Crossing the threshold Arlee felt that she was crossing the centuries again into her own time.

The room was a glitter of white and rose; the windows, unscreened, admitted the warm glow of late afternoon, and windows and doorway and bed were smothered in rose and white hangings. A white triple-mirrored dressing-table gleamed with gold and ivory pieces; a white fur rug was stretched before a rose silk divan billowy with plump pillows, and an open door beyond gave a view of shining tile and a porcelain bath. Near her was a baby grand piano in white enamel--reminding her of one she had seen in the White House--and she noted absently a pile of gaudily covered music upon it betokening tunes different from the Brahms she had heard downstairs.

The maid indicated a pitcher of hot water in the bathroom--evidently pipes and faucets played no part with the shining tub--and then stepped outside, closing the door.

After an instant's hesitation, Arlee took off her hat and bathed her face and hands, then moved slowly to the dressing table to glance at her hair. Hesitantly she picked up the shining brush and stared at the flourish of an unintelligible monogram upon the back. Whose brush was this? Whose room was she in? The place, vivid, silken, scented, was fairly breathing with occupancy.

She laid down the brush without using it, touched her hair with absent fingers, and crossed to the windows. She looked down into a garden, a deep tangle of a garden, presided over by a huge lebbek tree that threw a pall of shadow upon the faintly moving flowers beneath.

The place seemed a riot in neglect, for across the white sanded paths thick creepers had flung their arms, and vines and climbers were scaling the gnarled limbs of the acacia trees and covering the high walls beyond. She was looking to the west where the rose and gold of sunset still hung breathless on the painted air, though the sun was hidden below the fringe of palms which rose above the wall, and for a moment that still brilliance of the sky above the sharply silhouetted palms made her heart quicken in forgetfulness.

And then her hands became aware of the bars she had been unconsciously clasping, white-painted bars extending across the window. They were of iron.

Not even here was there freedom, she thought with a throb of dread, not even here where one faced dark gardens and blank walls and the empty west.

Somehow that dinner had pa.s.sed, that queer dinner in the candle light between the silent, painted woman and the politely talkative young man, and pa.s.sed without a word from outside for the girl whose nerves were fraying with the suspense. The old woman and the little girl had served them with a meal which would have been judged delicious in any European hotel and though Arlee's nerves were tricky her young appet.i.te was not and she ate and talked with a determined little air of trying to dissipate the strangeness of the situation.

And with the coffee came inspiration. She began to plan ... half listening to the Captain's amiable efforts to entertain her with an account of the palace, and of its history under Ismail, the Mad Khedive, who had occupied it for some months, tearing down and building in his feverish way, only to weary at the first hint of completion. She was wondering why in the world the inspiration had not arrived at once. Perhaps something in this fatalistic air, this stupid acceptance of authority had numbed her.

With alacrity she accepted the Captain's suggestion of a stroll in the garden, and was relieved when the silent sister did not rise to accompany them, but remained in the candle-light with her coffee and cigarette. She found the woman's lightly mocking, watchful eyes, the enigmatic smile upon the carmined lips, increasingly hard to bear.

That woman didn't like her--she had failed, somehow, to propitiate her hostile curiosities.

Back through the old empty rooms of the past, the Captain led her, and pa.s.sing by the screened alcove from which Arlee had looked down into the ancient banquet hall he came to a small dark painted door which he unlocked. The door opened upon a flight of worn and narrow stone steps descending into the garden.

It had been night in the palace of darkened windows but in the garden it was yet day, although the rose and gold of sunset had faded to paling pinks and translucent ambers and in the east the stars were shining in the deepening blue. It was the same garden on which her windows opened; Arlee recognized the huge lebbek tree in the center, the row of acacias, and the palms against the farthest wall. It was a very old garden. Those trees must have seen many, many years, she thought, and felt again that sense of vague oppression and melancholy which the lonely rooms of the palace had given her; that row of acacias which cast such crooked shadows over the path had been planted by very long-ago hands.

So she thought fleetingly, then stared about, her concern for other things. Captain Kerissen lighted a cigarette; over his cupped hands his eyes followed hers searchingly.

"That is the hall of banquets?" she said, pointing to the raised colonnade.

"Ah, yes--you are quick to learn!" he complimented.