The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 8

"Ah, I know! Was I not in England and did I not hear men talk--yes, of sisters and wives with bold words and laughter? Not so of our ladies--they are sacred names not to be spoken by another.... But I do not wish to speak of these others of your race. I speak of you."

"Really, I would rather you would not speak of me."

"But I wish to tell you." His voice was no louder; it was even lower, but it took on a note of authority. Arlee was silent, a chill creeping up about her heart--like a rising tide....

"You are a flower upon a height," he said, and his tones were soft again and gently caressing, "laughing at others because you know you are so high above them, and so proud. The blue of the skies is in your eyes, and the gold of the sun in your hair. You have a beauty that is too bright to be endured--it burns a man's heart like a flame.... It was never meant to shine in a common field. It must be guarded, revered, adored--a princess upon a height----"

"You have an Oriental imagination," said Arlee Beecher, and prayed G.o.d her voice did not tremble. "I must ask you not to pay me such compliments while I am your guest."

"No?... Why not?"

"They--are embarra.s.sing."

"Embarra.s.sment is an emotion rare to find among your ladies--it is the dewy bloom upon your own perfect innocence.... Ah, I wish you spoke my language! I could tell you many things----"

"Your English is excellent," said the white-faced girl. "Did you learn it at Oxford or before?"

He did not pause for such foolish questionings. "Why do you not wish me to tell you what you are?" he said reproachfully. "Is it because you doubt that I mean it?"

"Because I am not used to such compliments--and I would rather not hear them now. I am your guest and I am very tired. I must go in."

It was very dark in the garden. And it was still and unutterably lonely. Only the stars burned above them in the heavens; only the light wind of the desert stirred. From the far distance the m.u.f.fled beat of the tom-tom sounded. Surely, thought Arlee, surely she was dreaming.... This could not be Arlee Beecher, here with this man--this Turk.

"I must go in," she repeated, with a heightening of a.s.surance.

As he looked down at her for a moment that chill dread seemed to lay its icy hands on her very heart as she glimpsed something of the tumult within his eyes. She had a vision of him as a man capable of all, reckless, impa.s.sioned, poised upon the brink of some desperate plunge.... Then the hands of consequences seemed to lay compelling hold upon him; the fire was extinguished; the vision gone like a mirage. His eyes were friendly, his lips smiling, as he bowed to her, in deferential courtesy, to all appearances a gentleman of her world.

"I must not tire my guest," he said, and stood aside to let her pa.s.s up the narrow stone steps.

"We shall have other walks," he added, and the chill, delicate menace of those words went with Arlee Beecher to the rose and white room, and kept her sorry company through the long and restless hours.

CHAPTER V

WITHIN THE WALLS

Again the knocking, m.u.f.fled but softly insistent, and Arlee's eyes, heavy with tardy sleep, came slowly open, resting blankly on the glittering strangeness of the room. The daylight was streaming in the wide windows, striking brightly on the white enameled furniture which had glimmered so ghost-like through the wakeful darkness of the night, and flung back in dancing points of color from the mirrors and the gla.s.s and gold of toilet pieces. The air was hot and close, as if the first freshness of the morning was already past.

Again through the heavy door came the knocking and the soft rea.s.surance of a girl's voice. Arlee sprang from the couch where she had lain down that night, not undressed, but with her white frock exchanged for the negligee she had found laid out for her among other things, and hurried toward the door where she had piled two chairs to supplement the lock--a foolish-looking barricade in the shining light of day, she thought, her lips lifting whimsically.

The young Turkish maid entered with a huge jar of water which she emptied into the bath, returning to the door to take in another and yet another and another from some unseen porter, and pouring these into the bath, she added a spray of perfume and laid out powders and towels, smiling the while at Arlee, with the fascinated interest of a child.

"Do you speak English?" said Arlee eagerly.

But the girl laughed and shook her head at the question, and at the French and German with which Arlee next addressed her, and answered in soft Turkish, at which it was Arlee's turn to laugh and shake her head. But she felt a little rueful behind her pleasant smiling. She wished she could talk with the girl. She wondered about her. She had very handsome dark eyes, though perhaps overbold at times, but her lips were thick and her nose was flattened as if generations of _yashmak_-wearing women had crushed every hope of contour.

The cool freshness of the water was grateful to her senses. It was a plunge back into sanity and normal life again, drowning those ghosts of vague foreboding and anxieties which had kept such unpleasant vigil with her, and when the Turkish girl returned with a tray, Arlee was able to sit and eat breakfast with a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt at the oddity of the affair--sipping coffee in this Parisian boudoir overlooking an Egyptian garden.

As she was b.u.t.tering a last crumb of toast the girl re-entered with a box from the florist. Her white teeth flashing at Arlee in a smile of admiring interest, she broke the cord with thick fingers and Arlee found the box full of roses, creamy pink and dewy fresh. The Captain's card was enclosed, and across the back of it he had written a message:

I am sending out for some flowers for our guest and I hope that they will convey to her my greeting. If there is anything that you would have, it is yours if it is in my power to give. My sister is indisposed, but will visit you when her indisposition will permit. This afternoon I will see you and report the result of our protests to the authorities. Until then, be tranquil, and accommodate yourself here.

A tacit apology, thought Arlee, pondering the dull letter a moment, then dropping it to touch the roses with light fingers. The young man's wits had evidently returned with the sun. He had utterly lost them last night with the starshine and the shadows and his Oriental conception of the intimacy of the situation--but, after all, he had too much good sense not to be aware of the folly of annoying her.

Her cheeks flushed a little warmer at the memory of the bold words and the lordly hand on her arm, and her heart quickened in its beating. She had certainly been playing with fire, and the sparks she had so ignorantly struck had lighted for her an unforgettable glimpse of the Oriental nature beneath all its English polish, but she imagined, very fearlessly, that the spark was out. She was not a nature that was easily alarmed or daunted; beneath her look of delicate fragility was a very st.u.r.dy confidence, and she had the implicit sense of security instinct in the kitten whose blithe days have known nothing but kindness. Yet she felt herself tremendously experienced and initiated....

She wrote back a word of thanks for the flowers and a request for writing paper and ink, and when they were brought she wrote three most urgent letters, and after an instant's hesitation a fourth--to the Viceroy himself. Feeling that his mail might be bulky, she marked it "Immediate" in large characters and gave them to the maid, who nodded intelligently and shuffled away.

It was very odd, she thought then, that she had no letters. By now the Evershams must surely have written--she had begged them to....

But she was _not_ going to be silly and panicky, she determinedly informed that queer little catch in her side which came at the thought of her isolation, and humming defiantly she sat down at the white piano and opened the score of a light opera which she knew:

Say not love is a dream, Say not that hope is vain ...

She had danced to that tune last night--no, the night before last--danced to it with that extraordinarily impulsive young man from home--for all America was now home to her spirit. And she had promised to see him last night. She wondered what he had thought of her absence.... She could imagine the Evershams dolefully deploring her rashness, yet not without a totally unconscious tinge of proper relish at its prompt punishment. They were such dismal old dears!

They _would_ complain--they must have made her the talk of the hotel by now. Robert Falconer would enjoy that! And his sister and Lady Claire would ask about her, and Lady Claire would say, "How odd--fancy!" in that rather clipped and high-bred voice of hers....

But she was _not_ going to think about it!

She opened more music, stared wonderingly at the unfamiliar pages, read the English translation beneath the German lines, then pushed them away, her cheeks the pinker. They were as bad as French postcards, she thought, aghast. Whose room was this, anyway? Whose piano was this? Whose was the lacy negligee she had worn and the gossamer lingerie the maid had placed in the chiffonier for her? Was she usurping her hostess's boudoir?

She began to walk restlessly up and down the room, feeling time interminable, hating each lagging second of delay.

Then came a tray of luncheon, and lying upon it a yellow envelope.

With an eagerness that hurt in its keenness she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and tore out the folded sheet. Her eyes leaped down the lines. Then slowly they followed them again:

I think it very strange of you to leave us like that, but of course you are your own mistress. We are sorry and hope it will soon be over and you will join us again, unless you prefer your other friends, the Maynards. We have packed your clothes and sent them to Cook's for your orders, and we have paid your hotel bill. Let us know when you can join us.

MRS. EVERSHAM.

That was all. No word of real sympathy--no declaration of help.

Pa.s.sive acceptance of her predicament--perhaps indeed a retributive feeling of its fitness for her folly. They were annoyed.... Packing her clothes must have been a bother--so was paying her hotel bill.

She crumpled the telegram with an angry little hand. Evidently they had done none of the telephoning she had begged of them. Surely there would have been time for that, if only they had hurried a little! She remembered with a sort of hopeless rage their maddening deliberateness.... Well, they were gone off to the Nile--the telegram, she saw, had been sent as they were on their way to the boat--and she had nothing more to hope from them! But surely the other people, the consul, the amba.s.sador, the mysterious medical authorities, would understand when they had read her letters.

She sent another note to the Captain, asking to be called when the doctor came, and then she sat down at the little white table and began again to write.

But not to Falconer. Never would she beg of him, never, she resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips. She would never let him know how miserable she was over this stupid sc.r.a.pe; when she returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the old-world charm of her hostess. She laughed, in angry mockery. Never to him, after their quarrel, would she confess herself.

The letter was to a young man whose gray eyes she remembered as very kind and whose chin as very vigorous. He would do things, she thought. And he would understand--he was an American. And dimly she felt that she didn't want him to think she had utterly forgotten her promise of the evening before last, and she didn't want him to be filled with whatever dismal impression the Evershams were giving out. So she dwelt very lightly upon her annoyance at being detained, and asked him please to see the consul or the English Amba.s.sador or somebody in power and hurry matters up a little, as her rightful caretakers had taken themselves off to the Nile. And she said nothing stupid about the strangeness of her writing to him after only speaking to him twice and never being really presented. She merely added, "Please hurry things--I hate being a prisoner," and sealed and addressed it with a flourish to William B. Hill, and sent it off by the maid, and felt oddly comforted by the memory of Billy's vigorous chin.

The heat of the rose-and-white room was stifling now as the slant sun of afternoon burned through the closed blinds and drawn hangings. Languidly she curled up upon the sofa and pillowed her heavy head on the scented silk, and so, drowsing with fitful dreams, she lost the sense of the lagging hours.

She roused to find the maid at hand with more water jars, and, when she had bathed, the girl reappeared and beckoned her to follow.

Perhaps the doctor was below, thought Arlee; perhaps the consulate had sent for her! With flying feet she followed down the dark old stairs and across the anteroom into the dim salon, only to find a candle-lighted table set for dinner in the middle of the room and Captain Kerissen bowing ceremoniously beside it.

In the blankness of her disappointment she scarcely grasped what he was saying about the dinner hour being early and his sister being indisposed. She interrupted with a breathless demand for news: