The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 9

"And my letters--surely there has been time for answers!"

"Answers, yes," he replied, "but not such as I could wish for your sake."

"You mean----?"

"The English have written to me and request that I cease to trouble the department with my importunities. For I myself had written to them again, that I might find grace in your eyes by accomplishing your desires. They say to me that it is useless. The plague is more serious than the convenience of my visitors, and all must be done according to rule. When there is no danger you may depart."

The crash of hopes went echoing to the farthest reaches of her consciousness. But pride stiffened her to dissemble, and she tried to smile as she mechanically accepted the Captain's invitation to be seated at the little candle-lighted table.

"There was no word to me personally?" she asked.

"None, but the telegram which came this morning. I judged that it was not of a significance, for you did not send me a report."

"No--it was not of a significance," she repeated, with a ghost of a little smile. "It was from the Evershams."

"Ah! Their condolences, I think?... And is it that they still make the Nile trip?"

"Yes.... They went this morning." She spoke hesitantly, averse to having this eager-eyed young host perceive how truly deserted she was. "They expect me to take the express train later and join them."

"It is only a night's ride to a.s.souan." He spoke soothingly. "But you are not eating, Miss Beecher. I recommend this consomme."

It was worth the recommending. Miss Beecher spooned it slowly, then demanded, "Why was I not called when the doctor came?"

"But he does not come! Perhaps he is afraid"--the young man's brows and shoulders rose expressively--"but certainly he does not risk himself. If a servant is ill we are to tell a soldier and the sick one will be taken away to the house of plague--_bien simple_. It is so hard that I am helpless for you," he said, with sympathetic concern, then added, with an air of boyish confession, "although I do not deny that it is happiness for me to see you here."

The look in his eyes forced itself upon her. And the secret sense of discomfort intruded like a third presence at the little table.

In a clear voice of dry indifference: "That's very polite of you,"

she remarked, "but I imagine you are pretty furious, too, to be kept pent up in somebody else's house like this."

"But this is not somebody else's house," he smiled, his eyes observant of her quick glance and look of confusion. "I am _chez moi_."

"Oh! I thought--I was visiting your sister."

"My sister lives with me. She is a widow--and we are both alone."

"She does not seem to care for company."

"She is indisposed. She regrets it exceedingly." The young man looked grave and solicitous. "But I trust your comfort is not being neglected?"

"Oh, my comfort is being beautifully attended to, thank you, but my patience is wearing itself out!" Arlee spoke with a blithe a.s.sumption of humor.

"I wish that I could extend the resources of my palace for you."

"You must tell me about the palace. I shall want to picture it to my friends when I tell them about it. It's very old, isn't it? It must have seen a great deal of life."

"Ah, yes, it has seen life--and what life! _Quelle vie!_" A flash of real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence of his handsome features.

"Have you seen those old rooms? Those rooms that were built by the Mamelukes? There is nothing now in Cairo like them."

"I thought them very beautiful," said the girl. "Tell me about those Mamelukes who lived here."

"They were _men_," he said with pride, his eyes kindling, "men who lived as kings dare not live to-day!" The subject of those old days and those old ancestors of his was evidently dear to the young modern, and he launched into an animated sketch of those times, trying to picture for Arlee something of the glowing pageant of the past. And as she listened she found her own high spirit stirring in sympathy with the barbaric strength of those old n.o.bles, riding to battle on their fiery Arab steeds, waging their private wars, brooking no affront, no command, working no other man's will.

"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day beauty is beggared, and power is l.u.s.terless.... And taste? Taste is a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"

"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.

He nodded. "It should be the concern of n.o.bles--not of the rabble.

That is why I should hate your America--where the rabble prevail."

"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"

"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those n.o.bles were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he knew it--and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were all a.s.sembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes....

The Mamelukes were feted and courted, and then, as they were leaving the Citadel--you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's, "and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls, between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken leave of their Sultan--they were a picture of such pride and pomp as Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery--the great gates closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the hosts of death--the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last moan and hiccough of blood."

"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really escaped?"

"Anym-bey--yes, he was the only one that escaped that ma.s.sacre. He had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop, he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down--down--down!

Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape.

Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He was killed."

"Oh, the pity--after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it all when the dragoman told me--probably because he showed me the mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it was all a legend--like the mark."

"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?"

laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles they think you tourists!"

But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.

"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.

The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No, that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been brought to the home of her husband--there she holds her reception.

Those are the fetes to which the English ladies come in such curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.

"You cannot blame them for feeling a real--interest," said Arlee hesitantly.

"Their interest--pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband till to-day! How strange--how strange! Has he not written to you?

Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles--whose own marriages are abominations!"

For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to exchange a word with him--but her young anger darted through her discretion.

"They are _not_ abominations!" she gave back proudly.

"But I know--I know--have I not been at marriages in England?" he declared, with startling fierceness. "Men and women crowd about the bride; they press in line and kiss her; bearded mouths and shaven lips, young and old, they brush off that exquisite bloom of innocence which a husband delights to discover. Her lips are soiled, _fanee_.... And then the man and woman go away together into a public hotel or a train, and the people laugh and shout after them, and hurl shoes and rice, with a great din of noise. I have heard!"

He stopped, looked a moment at the flushed curve of Arlee's averted face, the droop of her shadowy lashes which veiled the confusion and anger of her spirit, and then, leaning forward, his eyes still upon her, he spoke in a lower, softer tone, caressing in its inflections.

"With us it is not so," he said. "We have dignity in our rejoicing, and delicacy in our love. The bride is brought in state to the home of her husband, no eyes in the street resting upon her, and there, in his home, her husband welcomes her and retires with his friends, while she holds a reception with hers. Later the husband will come home and greet her, and he wooes her to him as tenderly as he would gather a flower that he would wear. He is no rude master, no tyrant, as you have been taught to think! He wins her heart and mind to him; it is the conquest of the spirit!... I tell you that our men alone understand the secret of women! Is not the life he gives her better than what you call the world? The woman blooms like a flower for her husband alone; his eyes only may dwell upon the beauty of her face; for him alone, her lips--her lips----"

The young man's voice, grown husky, died away. A dreadful stillness followed, a stillness vibrating with unspoken thought. Her eyes lifted toward him, then fled away, so full of strange, dark, desirous things was the look she encountered. Abruptly he rose--he was coming toward her, and she struggled suddenly to her feet, battling against the cold terror which held her dumb and unready.