A DESPERATE GAME
Very slowly the black night grayed down into a wan, spectral morning, and slowly the gray morning paled into a dim mother-of-pearl dawn. And then suddenly the mother-of-pearliness brightened into a shimmering opal, and the ray of pale gold light slanted through the barred window and the bright face of new day peeped over the sill, staring out of countenance the lurking shadows of the night.
And then Arlee's eyes closed, and the heart which had been beating like a frightened rabbit's at every sound and shadow steadied into a rhythm as regular as a clock. She slept like a tired baby; while the light grew brighter and higher, and reached in over the shining dressing table, over the white piano, to rest upon the oblivious face upon the couch and to play with the bright, tangled hair.
The first knocking upon the door did not disturb that sleep, and it was a long time before the knock was again sounded. Then Arlee heard and sprang to her feet in a lightning rush of consciousness. It was Mariayah again, and the water jars which already looked familiar to her, and after the water jars appeared more roses and with the roses a letter.
Those roses came, the letter explained, to droop their heads before her loveliness, which put theirs to shame. They would greet her as humbler sisters greet a fairer. For they were roses of a day, but she was the Rose of Life. The capitals were Kerissen's own. And then abruptly the letter demanded:
Did I frighten you last night? Is it so strange to you that you have magic to make a man forget all the barriers of your convention? Do you not know you have an enchantment which distills in the blood and changes it to wine? You are the Rose of Life, the Rose of Desire, and no man can look upon you without longing. But you must not be angry at me for that, for I am your slave, and would strew roses always to soften the world for your little feet.... Fortune has made you my guest. Will you not smile upon me while Fortune smiles? Luncheon will be in the garden, for it is cool and fresh today.
The mask was slipping. Only a flimsy veil of sentiment now over his rash will. Only a light pretense of her freedom, of his courtesy. He was beginning to declare himself....
But she must not let him suspect that she knew. She must not.
Her spirit responded fiercely to this tense demand upon it. The dread, the panic of the night was gone. The fear that had shaken her was beaten down like a cowardly dog. Excitement burned in her blood. Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look, perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her, nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. She would play her rôle with every breath she drew.
She crossed the room at the luncheon summons in the nervous tensity of mood that an actress might go to play a part in which her career would live or die. Every half hour with Kerissen was now a duel, every minute was a stroke to be parried, and she flung herself into that duel with the desperate exhilaration of such daring. Her hands were icy, and her cheeks were flaming with the excitement which consumed her, but she revealed no other trace of it, and she wondered to herself at the inscrutable fairness of the face which, looked back at her from the glass.
None of the record of those frightened, sleepless hours was written there, none of her furious pride, her fixed intensity. Only the soft shadows under the blue eyes gave her face a look of added delicacy for all the unnatural flare of brilliant color, and a faint wistfulness in those eyes seemed to overlay the smiles she practiced, like a cloud shadow on a brook. And never, never, in all her glad, care-free days, had she been as distractingly pretty as she was that moment. With an angry little pang she recognized it, pinning on the lace hat with its enchanting rose, and then desperately she resolved to employ it and added two of Kerissen's pink roses to the costume.
She thought the scene was very like a stage, when she came out through the narrow door which the old woman unlocked from a key she carried on a girdle, and slowly descended the stone steps. Beneath the wide-spreading lebbek a low table was laid for luncheon with two wicker chairs beside it. The green of the fresh turf was as vivid as stage grass; the lilies loomed unreally large and white; the poinsettias flaunted like red paper flowers behind the vivid picture that the Captain made in a dazzling buff and green uniform picked out with gold. His bow was theatric, so was the deep look of exaggerated admiration he bent upon her—it was strange to remember that her danger was not theatric also. But that was deadly real, and real, too, was the sudden surge of color into the young man's sallow face.
"You are kind to my roses—if not to me," he said quickly, and held out his hand for the brief little clasp she accorded.
"Your roses are dumb and have said nothing to make me cross," she laughed lightly, and looked swiftly about her. "How lovely this is," she ran on, "and how charming to feel a breeze. That room is rather warm and close.... Is you sister still too ill to come?"
And scarcely waiting for the assent which he began to frame with his searching eyes upon her, she added, "I am afraid I made her angry last night by intruding upon her. But I heard her voice and ran back to her room to ask after her. She wouldn't let me stay at all."
It was droll how natural her voice sounded, she thought. His eyes held their fixed scrutiny in an instant, then dropped carelessly away, as he drew forward the wicker chairs. "She is a nerveuse, you understand," he said with an air of indolent resignation, "and one can do nothing for that sort of thing. A crisis comes—one must wait for it to pass.... She regrets that condition.... And she wished me to present her regrets to you," he added suavely, "for that reception of you last night. She was ill and did not expect you—and she did not wish you to see her in that condition."
"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any English, so I cannot send any messages."
"But you can write them."
"My French spelling is worse than my pronunciation!" She laughed amusedly. "I wish you would find me an interpreter to put my polite remarks into polite sounding phrases. I know I put things like a First Reader!"
He smiled. "You do not put them like a First Reader to me. We do not need an interpreter.... Unless I need one to speak to you?"
"Oh, no, your English is wonderful!" She waited an instant, then took a breathless plunge. "Have you any more news for me?" she demanded, forcing the note of expectancy. It would be suspicious, indeed, if she did not ask that. But what if he had decided to throw the pretense aside——
"Not one word of news more," he said slowly.
She felt him watching her as she looked down on her plate. The pretty little girl was passing a platter of pigeon: Arlee did not speak until she had helped herself, then she said in a voice touched faintly with chagrin, "Well, the English are not very gallant toward ladies in misfortune, are they? I feel furiously snubbed.... Of course Mrs. Eversham never was much of a writer, but they might send over my letters from the hotel. The last mail ought to have brought a lot from that big brother of mine."
"Ah, yes, that big, grown-up, married brother who is so satisfied with all you do!"
She felt she had been unfortunate in her rash confidences.
"He won't be so pleased when he learns how I wasted a perfectly good Nile ticket," she remarked. "And Big Brother is rather fierce when he isn't pleased."
His eyes smiled, as if he understood and despised her suggestion. "Cairo and your America are not so near," he observed negligently, "that an incident here is a matter of immediate knowledge there."
She felt the danger of seeming to threaten him. "Oh, I'd 'fess up," she said lightly, playing with her food. "There—shoo—go away!" she cried suddenly, with a militant gesture about her plate. "That's one thing I hate about Egypt—the flies!"
"I hope that is the only thing you hate," said the young man blandly.
"Isn't that enough? There are so many of them!"
He laughed with real amusement at her petulance. "Is there netting enough in your room?" he inquired. "Would you like more for your bed?"
"Oh, no, I'm all right, thank you. The flies are chiefly bothersome at meals. This is certainly their paradise."
"But is there anything you would like—to make you happy here? I will get it for you. Would you not like some books, some music, some new clothes——"
"I don't wonder you ask! But really this white gown will last a little longer—Cairo is so clean. No, thank you, there is nothing I need bother you about—Oh, yes, there really is one book that I would like—a Turkish or an Arabic dictionary. I have always meant to learn a little of the language and this would seem the opportunity."
In the pause in which he appeared to be consuming pigeon she could feel him weighing her request, foreseeing its results.
"I shall be most happy to teach you," was what he said, but she knew she would never have that dictionary. And so one plan of the morning went flying to the winds. But she snatched at the next opening she saw and plunged into interested questions about the Turkish language, asking the words for such things as seemed spontaneously to occur to her—wall, palace, table—numbers—days of the week—repeating the pronunciation with the earnestness of a diligent young pupil, until she felt that her memory had all it could hold. And distrust, always ready now like a prompter in the box, suggested most upsettingly that perhaps he was not giving the right words. She resolved to experiment upon Mariayah.
He reverted, with increasing emphasis, upon his desire to make her happy in the palace, to surround her with whatever she desired, and swiftly she availed herself of this second opening.
"Yes, indeed, there is something that would make me happier, if you don't mind, please," she added with a droll assumption of meekness. "You don't know how horrid it is for me to be caged in one room and not be out of doors, and I would love to come down into the garden when I want to. Won't you give me a key to that door? That is, if it is always locked."
"Generally it is not," he said readily, "but now with the soldiers about it is safer. You see, the soldiers can approach the garden through the open banquet hall"—and he nodded to the colonnade behind them—"and though it is forbidden, one cannot foretell their obedience."
To one who knew those soldiers were chimerical acquiescence was maddening.
"But, dear me, can't you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo the soldiers away?" Arlee argued persuasively. "Since the rest of the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the ladies have the garden for their airing."
"It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies. Whenever you wish to be in the garden you have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court, as is, indeed, the custom."
"It would not be so terrible, you know, if a gardener or a donkey-boy did see my face!" laughed Arlee. "Plenty of them have had that pleasure before this."
She saw that the young man's face changed. Every clear-cut line of it was sharp with repugnance. "You need not remind me of that," he said with muffled fierceness, staring down at his plate.
"The danger line!" she thought while shaking her head at him, with the tense semblance of an amused little smile.... "You aren't the least bit English," she rebuked, "and I thought you were."
"Not in that.... And some day England will see her folly."
"America is seeing her folly now," thought Arlee with secret bitterness. But when she raised her eyes they were gently contemplative. She spoke musingly.
"In things like that you aren't at all what I thought you were—about our social customs, I mean. Yet fundamentally, I think you are."
"That I am what?"
"What I thought you were."
He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine with absorption, and the question had to come from him. He put it with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest in leash.
"And what did you think I was like, chère petite mademoiselle?"
"Very handsome for one thing, Monsieur! You see, I owe you a compliment for calling me such a pretty name as this!" With a mischievous smile she touched the roses nodding in her girdle. "And very autocratic for another, with a very bad temper. If you can't get your way you would be shockingly disagreeable!"
"But I always get my way," he assured her lazily, his teeth showing under his small, black mustache.
"I believe you do!" Ingenuous admiration, simple and sustained, was in the look she gave him. Her hands were not half so icy now, nor her nerves so tense. She felt strangely surer of herself; the actual presence of the danger calmed her. She must make good with this, she thought simply, in strenuous American.
"And yet," she went on thoughtfully, the pretty picture of fascinated absorption in this most feminine topic—the dissection of a young man—"yet, you are chivalrous. And I think that is the quality we American girls admire most of all."
"The quality—of indulgence?" he questioned, with a half-railing air.
"The quality—of gentleness."
"But is there not another quality which you American girls would admire more than that gentleness—if you ever had the chance in your lives to see it? The quality of dominance? The courage of the man who dares what he desires, and who takes what he wills? Is not that——"
"Ah, yes, we love strong men," Arlee flung into the speech that was bearing him on like a tide, "but we don't think them strong unless they are strong enough to fight themselves. They may take what they will—but they mustn't crush it.... There is a gentleness in great strength—I can't explain what I mean——"
"Ah, I see, I see." He smiled subtly. "I am not to crush you, little Rose of Desire," he said softly.
She met the sly significance of his gaze with a look of frank, unfaltering candor. "Of course not," she said stoutly. "When you—you make me afraid of you, you make me like you less. You seem less like the friend I knew on the boat."
"Ah, that boat!... You were my friend, then!" he added suddenly, with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach. "Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen. And here in Cairo——"
"Yes, here in Cairo," he interrupted triumphantly, "in the face of those eyes and tongues—I saw that red-headed dog of an Englishman looking his anger at you! But you smiled on me before them all—those fools, those tyrannic fools——"
"But you mustn't abuse my other friends! They were only—stupid!"
"Stupid as their blood brother, the ox!... But they are not in the picture now—those other friends!" Disagreeably he laughed. "And you do not grieve for them—no? The world has not touched you? There is no one out there,"—he made a gesture over the guarding walls—"no one who holds a fragment of your thought, of your heart in his hands?"
She looked at him as if puzzled, then burst into a bubbling laugh. "Why, of course not! I've just had a nice time with people. There has never been a bit of sentiment about it!"
"Not on your side," he said meaningly, and because this was hitting the truth smartly on the head she looked past him in some confusion.
"Oh—boys!" she said with a deprecating little laugh. "I've never listened to them."
He leaned back in his chair, feeling for his cigarette case, and the contentment of his look deepened. "You have been a child, asleep to life," he murmured complacently. "I told you you were a princess—let us say a sleeping princess waiting for the prince, like that old fairy tale of the English." He was looking at his cigarette as he tapped it on the arm of his chair, and slowly struck a light, then, after the first breath, "But do you not hear his footsteps in your sleep?" he added, and gave her a glance from the corner of his eyes.
She looked up and then down; she stared out into the sun-flooded garden and laughed softly. "Even princesses dream," she demurely acknowledged, and thought the line and her fleet, meaning glance went very well with this mad opera-bouffe which fate was forcing her to play.
Kerissen seemed to think that went very well, too, for his flashing teeth acknowledged his pleasure in her aptness; then his smile faded and she felt him studying her over his cigarette, studying her averted gaze, the bright color in her cheeks, the curves of her lips, and he was puzzled and perturbed by the sweet, baffling beauty of her. A wild elation began to swell his heart. His eyes glowed, his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were paying toward his personality alone. Wary as he was, cynical of subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard. His monstrous vanity whispered eager flattery in his ears.
And still he continued to stare at her, finding her unbelievably lovely. "My grandfather would call you an houri from paradise," he told her, the warmth of admiration deepening in his eyes.
"And your grandfather's grandson knows that I am only an houri from America!... But that is paradise for houris!"
"And not for men, no!... Sometimes I have wished that those English would restore in me that young belief in the heaven of the Prophet," he continued, smiling, "and now that wish is granted. It is here, that paradise," and his smile, flashing about the lonely garden, came to dwell again upon the girl before him.
She laughed. "But does one houri make a paradise?" she bantered, while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till she thought his ears would hear it. "We have a proverb—one swallow does not make a summer."
"Cela dépend—that depends upon the houri.... When you are that one it is paradise indeed." He leaned toward her, speaking softly, but with a voice that thrilled more and more in its own eloquence.
She was the Rose of Desire, he reminded her, and beside her all other flowers drooped in envy. She was as lovely as young Dawn to the eyes of men. She was the ravishing embodiment of gaiety and youth and delight. He quoted from the poets, not from his own Oriental poets, but snatches from Campion and Wilde, vowing that
"There was a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow,"
and adding, with points of fire dancing in his heavy lidded eyes,
1
"Her neck is like white melilote,
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,"
and went on to add praise to praise and extravagance to extravagance, till a sudden little imp of mirth caught Arlee by the throat, hysterically choking her. "I shall never like praise or poetry or—or men again," she thought, struggling between wild laughter and hot disgust, while aloud she mocked, "Ah, you know too much poetry, Captain Kerissen! I do not recognize myself at all! You are laughing at me!"
"Laughing at you?... I am worshipping you," he said tensely, his eyes on hers, and the fierce words shattered her light defenses to confusion.
Silence gripped her. She tried to meet his look and smile in mock reproof, but her eyes fled away affrighted, so full of desperate, passionate things was the dark gaze they touched. She gripped her cold little hands in her lap and looked out beyond the lebbek's shade into the vivid garden. The hot sunshine lay orange on the white-sanded paths; the shadows were purple and indigo. A little lizard had come out from a crack in a stone and was sunning himself, while one bright eye upon them, fixed, motionless, irridescent, warned him of their least stir. She envied him the safety of his crack.... She herself must meet this crisis—must turn this tide....
"It is—so soon," she faltered.
"Soon?" He had risen and was standing over her. "Soon? I was with you on the boat—I walked by your side—I danced with you and held you against my heart. And here in Cairo I walked and talked with you.... And now for three days you have been under my roof, eating at the table with me, alone within these walls, and you call it soon! Truly, you are beyond belief! Soon!"
"But soon—for me!" she interrupted swiftly, and sprang to her feet to face him with eyes and lips that smiled without a trace of fear. Only her cheeks were no longer crimson but white as chalk. "Too soon—for me to be sure—how I feel! I hadn't realized—I hadn't known—Oh, you mustn't hurry me! You mustn't hurry me!" She broke off in a confusion he might well misconstrue, and moved nervously away, her back to him.
He stood staring after her, a man not in two minds but in three and four. Her broken words—her smiles—her emotion—these might well arouse the most flattering surmise, and his vanity and his curiosity were stirred to swift delight. He broke into a storm of words, of protestations, of eager persuasion and honied flattery, drawing nearer and nearer to her, while she slipped continually away from him.
"You mustn't hurry me," she echoed defensively. "I am not like you—you Southerners. I——"
"You are asleep—I have told you that you are that sleeping princess," he broke in, and following after as she turned away from him, he put a quick arm about her, and bending over her, tried to turn her about toward him. "Do you know how that little sleeping princess was awakened by her prince?" he murmured fatuously, bending closer.
The hat saved her, that coquettish little hat with its jealously guarding brim which bent obstinately lower and lower between them. And in the instant of his indecision, while he waited for the surrender his vanity expected before exerting the force that would conquer brutally, she broke unexpectedly from his clasp and darted a few steps away from him, whirling about to face him with her head flung back, her eyes on fire, her lips parted in a breathless excitement.
"Captain Kerissen," she cried, and there was a ring of gaiety in her voice, "do I understand that you are proposing to me?"
Very formally he bowed, a bow that hid the astonishment and the cynical humor which zigzagged across his handsome face. "I am doing myself that honor," he most suavely returned, and eyed her with an astonished curiosity that checked his passion.
"Really?... So soon?" she cried very childishly, and again he bowed. But this time she caught his smile.
"Really so soon, little Arlee."
To his amazement she burst into prankish laughter.
"Oh, you are romantic!" she gave back. "And if I can believe you truly in earnest—last night I was furious at you," she went on rapidly, interrupting the speech forming on his lips, "for I thought you a dreadful flirt, just taking advantage of my being here, and yet—and yet you didn't seem that kind. You seemed a gentleman! And now if you really mean—all you are saying—but you can't, you can't! I know your words are running ahead of you!"
"My words—let my heart speak—I——"
"But I don't know whether I ought to listen or not!" she burst out, and with great naïveté, "I'm afraid it would be very silly to let myself care for you."
"Silly? An adorable silliness! Could you not be happy with me here in this palace? You would be a princess, indeed, a queen of my heart. I would put every luxury at your command." In mingled eagerness and wariness he watched her, incredulous of her assenting mood, but with a hope that lured him on to believe. And in his eyes, dubious, desirous, calculating, watchful, she read the fluctuations of his thought. If afterwards there should happen to be any trouble about this affair, how wonderfully it would smooth things to have the girl infatuated with him, to show that she had been a party to the intrigue! And how spicily it sweetened the taste of success to his lips!
He had caught her two hands in his, and clasping them tightly he bent forward, trying to scan the changes in her hesitating look, while his words poured forth in a stream of praise and promise. She would live like a little princess. His love and his wealth were at her feet. Other women were eager for him, but he was hers alone. She would adore Egypt, the Egypt that he would reveal to her, and when she wearied they would go to the Continent and live always as she desired. Only she must be kind to him, be kind and sweet and lift her eyes and tell him that she would make him happy. She must not keep him waiting. He was not a man with whom one amused oneself.
"And I am not a girl whom one commands!" she gave back with a flash of spirit and a childish toss of her head. "I like you, Monsieur, at least I did like you before you hurt my fingers so horribly"—the tight grasp on her hands relaxed and she drew them swiftly away, rubbing them in mock ruefulness—"and I could like you better and better—perhaps"—her blue eyes flashed a look into his—"if you were very nice and polite and give me time to catch my breath! You are such a hurrying sort of person!" Her whimsical little smile enchanted him, even while he chafed at such delay.
"I am mad about you," he said in a low tone.
"And only me?" she laughed, her dimples showing.
So, teasing and luring, she held him off, and her heart beat exultantly as she saw that she had given him the thought of marriage for that of conquest, the dream of a perfect idyll for that of an enforced submission.... It was a desperate play, but she played it valiantly, and her fearfulness and the spell of her beauty sweetened the rôle of beseeching suitor for him, and gave a glamour to this pretty garden dalliance.... The memory of time came to him at last with a start, and frowningly he stared at the watch he drew out to consult.
"I must hurry away—to another part of the palace," he amended swiftly, "where I have an engagement.... I shall not be at liberty till to-night—rather late. I will send word to you, then——"
She shook her head at him. "To-morrow," she substituted gaily. "Let us have luncheon to-morrow under the trees again like this.
"To-morrow is too far away——"
"No, it is just right for me. And if you really want to please me——"
"But does it please you to make me miserable——?"
"You can't be very miserable when you have a luncheon engagement," she insisted. "I'm not!"
He shrugged. "Till luncheon then—unless I should be back earlier than I think." He gave her a quick look, but her face did not betray awareness of the slip.
"Oh, of course, if you are at liberty sooner—And while you are busy won't you manage things so I can stay out here awhile? I shall love this garden, I know, when I am better friends with it," and after an imperceptible pause he promised to send a maid back to keep watch over her, and with a lingering pressure of hands and a look that plainly said he was but briefly denying himself a more ardent farewell, he hurried away through the banquet hall into the court.
She dared not run after to spy upon his departure. She could only wait, hoping in every throbbing nerve that the maid would prove to be the little one with the wart over her eye. And as she hoped she feared, lest all her frail barrier of cards should be swept away by a single breath.
If he should learn that the little dancer had visited her! If he should discover that she was playing a game with him!