DESERT MAGIC
He had meant but forty winks, but it had been dark when his eyes closed and he opened them to the unreal half-lights of early dawn. The sky was pearl; the sands were fawn-colored; the crest of a low hill to the east shone as if it were living gold, and the next instant it seemed as if a fire were kindled upon it. It was the sun surging up into the heavens, and great waves of color, like a sea of flame, mounted higher and higher with it.
Impulsively Billy bent over the little figure sleeping so soundly at his side, speaking her name gently. And Arlee, waking with a start and a catch of her breath that went to his heart, opened her eyes on a wild splendor of morning that seemed the outer aspect of the radiant joy within her.
They looked and looked while the east flamed like a burning Rome, and then the glow softened and paled and dissolved in mysteries and miracles of color, in tender rose and exquisite shell pinks, in amethysts and violets and limpid, delicate, fair greens. All about them the sands were turning to gold, and the rim of the distant horizon grew clearer and clearer against the brightening blue of the sky, like a great circling tawny sea lapping on every side the arch of the heavens.
As they looked their hearts stirred and quickened with that incommunicable thrill of the desert, and their eyes turned and sought each other in silence. The gold of the sun was on Arlee's hanging hair and the morning-blue of the sky in her eyes; her face was flushed from sleep and a tiny tendril still clung to the pink cheek on which she had been sleeping. Somehow that inconsequent small tendril roused in Billy a thrill of absurd tenderness and delight.... She was so very small and childish, sitting there in the Libyan desert with him, looking up at him with such adorable simplicity.... In her eyes he seemed to see something of the wonder and the joy in his. It was a moment of magic. It brought a lump into his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch the sandy little hands....
Somehow he managed not to. The moment of longing and of glamor passed.
"It's exactly as if we'd been shipwrecked!" said Arlee, looking about with an air of childish delight.
"On a very large island," he smiled back, and felt a furtive pain mingling with his joy. He was just her rescuer to her, of course; she accepted him simply as a heaven-dropped deliverer; her thoughts had not been going out to him in those long days as his had gone to her.... Decisively he jumped to his feet and said breakfast. Where was it? What was to be done?
Directions were vague. They had come south on the edge of the desert, and the Nile lay somewhere to the east of them, and to the east, therefore lay breakfast and trains and telegraph lines and all the outposts of civilization.
To the east they rode then, straight toward the tinted dawn, and as they went they laughed out at each other on their strange mounts like two children on a holiday. Their spirits lifted with the beauty of the morning, and with that strange primitive exhilaration of the desert, that wild joy in vast, lonely reaches, in far horizons and illimitable space. The air intoxicated them; the leaping light and the free winds fired them, and with laughing shouts and challenges they urged their camels forward in a wild race that sent the desert hares scattering to right and left. Like runaways they tore over the level wastes and through the rolling dunes, and at last, spent and breathless, they pulled back into a walk their excited beasts that squealed and tossed their tasseled heads.
Their eyes met in a gaiety of the spirit that no words could express. When Arlee spoke she merely cried out, "I've read the camel had four paces, but mine has forty-four," and Billy gave back, "And forty-three are sudden death!" and their ringing laughter made a worried little jackal draw back his cautious nose into his rocky lair.
They were in broken ground now, more and more rocky, leading through the low hills ahead of them, and great clumps of grayish mit minan and bright green hyssop dotted the amber of the sands. Here and there the fork-like helga showed its purple blossom, and sometimes a scarlet ice-plant gleamed at them from a rocky crack. Across their path two great butterflies strayed, as gold and jeweled as the day. High overhead, black against the stainless blue, hung a far hawk.
At last the way entered a narrow defile among the rocky hills, and a sharp curve led them finally out upon the other side, looking down into green fields, as straight and trim as a checker board in their varying tints, and off over the far Nile. The fertile lands were wide here, and fed with broad canals that offered the surprise of boats' white wings between the fields of grain. Not far ahead, before the desert sands reached that magic green rose a group of palms, and near them some mud houses and a pigeon tower.
"Breakfast," said Billy triumphantly, and gaily they rode down on the sleeping village.
Back toward the Libyan hills runs the canal El-Souhagich, and as it curves to the north a reach of sand sweeps down from the higher ground, interrupting the succession of green fields. Several jagged rocks have tumbled from the limestone plateaus above and increased the grateful bit of shade which the half dozen picturesque palms do not sufficiently bestow.
Here the runaways breakfasted upon the roast pigeon, dates and tangerines they had bought from the curious villagers, and here Billy, his back against a rock, was smoking a meditative cigar over the situation. Beside him, tied to a palm, knelt the camels, and before him, nibbling a last tangerine, Arlee was sitting.
"We have to rest the beasts a bit." This from Billy, suggestive of a conscience pricking at this holiday delay. "And then——"
"Then—?" echoed Arlee cheerfully.
"Then, what in the world am I going to do with you?"
"With me?"
"Yes. It's simple enough, I suppose, getting back to the city—-but if you don't want your friends to know——"
The quick shadow in her eyes distressed him. "I don't," she cried sharply. "At first—I might have made a lark out of it—but afterwards.... No, I don't want to go explaining and explaining forever and ever. Can't I just reappear?"
"You can reappear from Alexandria," he said. "He, himself," his tone changed as he reluctantly brought Kerissen into the beauty of that morning, "has arranged it very neatly for you. You can just have been camping in the desert—and true enough that is!—with those friends of yours whom the Evershams don't know. Only your reappearance has to be—managed a bit."
Very carefully she tore the tangerine skin into very little bits, her head bent over it. Then she flung the fragments far from her with a gesture of rebellion. "I hate fibs," she said explosively. And then, "But I hate explanations more!" She hesitated, stealing a quick glance under her lashes at his frowning face.
"And some people," she stammered, "might—might not—understand—they would feel that—some people would——"
"Some people are great fools, undoubtedly," Billy promptly agreed. But back of the some people he saw Falconer in her mind, and Falconer's instinctive distaste of all strangeness and sensation.
"I have a perfect right to keep it from—them," she went on argumentatively, and then with an upward glance, "Haven't I?"
"Good Lord, yes! It was your adventure; it doesn't concern another soul in this wide world."
"You know," said Arlee, locking and unlocking her fingers, "you know, some people wouldn't take it all for granted the way—you do.... And it was very horrid."
"It's over," said he crisply, "except I'd like to pound him to a jelly."
"I couldn't bear to speak of him before," said the girl, "but now it seems all far away and nightmarish.... And I'd like to tell you how it was—a little."
"You needn't."
"I know I needn't." Arlee's tone was suddenly proud. Then she melted again. "But I want you to know. He was—he was trying to make me care for him.... He wasn't really as dreadful as you might think him, only just insane—about me—and utterly unscrupulous. But he did want me to like him and so, when I found out, when Fritzi told me I was in a trap, I tried to play his game. I flirted one day in the garden, at lunch, and made him think—— You see, I had to gain time and try to get word to people. But I hated him so I——" She broke off, the pupils of her fixed eyes big and black with the memory.
"You know I can't—I can't think of you—alone there," came huskily from the young man.
"He never dared to touch me—really—till last night," she said fiercely. "He tried, but I—I held him off. Only he talked to me—Oh, how he talked. Like a river of words.... I hate all those words.... If ever again a man asks me to marry him I don't ever want him to talk about it. I want him just to say two words, Will you?" Her laugh caught quiveringly in her throat.
It taxed all the young man's control to keep his tongue off the echo.
"He just raved," she went on after a pause, "and I had to listen—but last night he was horrible. I could never have got to the candles if his hand hadn't been hurt."
"I wish I'd shot his hand off," said Billy bitterly.
"Oh! Was it you who——?"
"When we were in the palace." He told her again about the raid and she nodded delightedly over it.
"It's so wonderful for you to have done all this," she said with sudden shyness. "You had just met me——"
The things on Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. "You were my countrywoman—and alone."
"So are the Evershams," said Arlee, with sudden bubbling laughter, and then as suddenly checked herself. Her fleet glance at him was half-scared. "You—you are very good to your countrywomen in distress," she got out stammeringly.
Billy contemplated his cigar. It was safer.
Presently she reverted to the topic of discovery. "But about Mr. Falconer? Are you sure his suspicions are over now?"
"Perfectly sure. Or they will be the moment he sees you. You'll have to laugh at him if he mentions them, of course;" Billy spoke with heartiness.
"He'd hate it," the girl said musingly. "The talk and all—about me—Oh, after being such a fool I'd never be the same to them!" she broke out passionately.
The furtive pain was bolder now; Billy felt it worming deeper and deeper into his sorry consciousness. It mattered so much to her what Falconer thought—so much....
"But I'll do anything you say," she said meekly, looking up at her rescuer with those big eyes whose blueness always startled him like unsuspected lakes. He saw then that she meant to be very grateful to him. Somehow that deepened the pang. He didn't want that kind of bond....
"Then you will bury even the memory of this time and never whisper a word of it," he told her stoutly. "The talk and explanation will be over five minutes after your return. The thing is, to manage that return. Now the Evershams left Friday and this is Wednesday—six days."
"Only six days," she echoed with a ghost of a sigh.
"Now let me see where were we on the sixth day? When I was on the Nile?" He knitted his brows over it. "Why, the steamer leaves Assiout at noon of the fifth day—that was yesterday."
"Oh! I must have passed them on the Nile," cried Arlee.
"Maragha is where they stopped last night. To-day they'll be steaming along steadily and stop to-night at Desneh. To-morrow night they'll be at Luxor."
"And they stay three days at Luxor?"
"The steamer does, I believe. I left the steamer there and went to the hotel for a while and spent another while at Thebes with a friend of mine."
"The excavator!" cried Arlee quickly.
"Then you do remember," said Billy with a direct look, "that dance and——"
"And our talk," she finished gaily. "And your being Phi Beta Kappa. Oh, I was properly impressed! And I didn't know then that you were a regular Sherlock Holmes as well."
"I didn't know it either," said Billy grinning. But he knew that she didn't know now how much of a Sherlock Holmes he had managed to be for her.
"That seems ages ago," she declared, "and in an altogether different world. The only real world seems to be this desert——"
"Bedouin breakfast and camel races," finished Billy. "And it's so much of a lark for me that I can't keep my mind on the problem of the future. But I have to get you to Luxor by to-morrow night——"
"And I can't arrive in the rags and tatters of a white silk calling gown," mentioned Arlee cheerfully, surveying her disreputable and most delightful disarray. "I must have trunks and a respectable air—and a chaperon, I suppose."
"And I won't do at that. But if you get to Luxor you'll be all right. You can go to the hotel and to-morrow night the Evershams' boat will get in about seven in the evening."
"Did you say my trunks were sent to Cook's?"
He repeated the story of the telegram to the Evershams. Over the arrival of the boy with money for her hotel bill she wrinkled her brows in perplexity. "I suppose he thought there would be less discussion about me if my bills were paid," she said finally. "But I'd like to get that money back to him."
"I'll see he gets it—with interest," responded Billy.
"And you——?" She looked up at him with a startled, vivid blush that stained her soft skin from throat to brow. "You must have been to a great deal of expense——"
"Not a bit. Please don't——"
"But I must. When I get to a bank. I still have my letter of credit with me," she said thankfully, "but it didn't do me any good in that wretched palace. It was just paper to them. I showed it to the girl once and tried to make her understand."
"The first station we find we'd better wire for your trunks to be sent by express to Cook's at Luxor—or to the Grand Hotel. And then you can take the train straight to Luxor and buy some clothes there."
"But the train—I can't travel in this! And there would be people on it who would talk——"
"Had we better make it to Assiout then?" said Billy doubtfully. "Once in the city, of course, you'd be safe——"
"How far is Assiout from Luxor? Where are we now?"
"We're Alice in Wonderland about that. Somewhere about twenty-five or thirty miles south of Assiout, I should say. It must be nearly a hundred and twenty, as the crow flies, from Assiout to Thebes—that's right across from Luxor, you know."
Arlee was silent a moment. She lifted a handful of shining sands and let them run down from her fingers in fine dust. "It's such a pity," she mused, "when we've such a good start——"
Billy stared.
"And I never rode a camel," she went on. "I may never have such a chance again."
"You don't mean——?"
"It would make my story a little truer, too.... And wouldn't it be quicker?"
"Quicker? The quickest way is to go back to Assiout and catch the middle-of-the-night express there and get to Luxor to-morrow morning."
Arlee sighed. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she murmured regretfully, "and now I've begun it's such a pity to stop.... And I'm afraid to go back!" she cried, "They will be out looking for us—they are probably now on the way. And they'll shoot at you and carry me off—Oh, do let's go on! Don't go back to that city! We can catch the train another place. Oh, it's so much more sensible!"
"Sensible?" Billy repeated as if hypnotized.
"Why, of course it is. And safer. For all those people back there must be in that tribe of the sheik whose house I was in, and they are dangerous, dangerous. I want to get as far away from them as possible. I'd rather ride all the way to Thebes than run the risk of falling in their traps."
Billy was silent.
"And I'm sure the camels could make the trip in a couple of days," she continued, sounding assured now, and pleasantly argumentative. "I used to read about their speed in my First Reader.... That is, if you don't mind the trouble," she added apologetically, "and being with me that day more?"
Billy choked. She looked entirely unconscious, and his dumfounded gaze fell blankly away. "There isn't anything in the world I'd like better," he said slowly, sounding reluctance in the effort not to sound anything else, "but from your point of view—if we should meet——"
"Only fellaheen on the banks," she returned unconcernedly. "Not half as awkward as people on trains."
"But the—the chaperonless aspect of this picnic——?"
"Oh, that!" She was mildly scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel.... Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast à deux—What's a few meals more?"
There was truth in that—and truth in what she said about the danger of returning to the city. They were already lingering overlong and Billy jumped up and packed their supply of food in sudden haste. It was folly, of course, to dream of the entire trip to Thebes on camelback, but Girgeh was about fifty miles south, and it would be safer and almost as near to push on there or to the next town, wherever that was, and there get the train as to return to Assiout....
Oh, Billy, Billy! What specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously been turned. Billy was Big Brother—the American Big Brother with whom one might go safely adventuring for a day or a year.... And suddenly Billy felt a warm gladness within him. Not even her escapade with the unspeakable Turk had been able to shake her dear faith in her own countrymen.... He was not man to her; he was American. Billy waved the flag loyally in his grateful thoughts.
Aloud he said, "There's risk in trying to go back, of course. That's what they're expecting of us. But there will be uncertainty in going on——"
"I rather like it. It's the certainty that frightens," she gave back eagerly. "I want the way that puts the greatest distance between me and that man.... I don't care what else happens so he doesn't find us."
It is utterly astonishing how unastonishing the most astonishing situations become at the slightest wont.
Nothing on the face of it could have been more preposterous to Billy B. Hill's imagination than trotting along the banks of the Nile on a camel with a gossamer-haired girl trotting beside him, two lone strays in a dark-skinned land, and yet after a few hours of it, it was the most natural thing in the world!
It was all color and light and vivid, unforgettable impressions. It was all sparkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than that day.
Sometimes they rode low on paths between green dhurra fields, sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.
They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian mountains across the river and the first stars pricked through the lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms.... And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet farther south for their tired beasts.
Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.
But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy head on Billy's coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the moonlit world about him—and the awe and mystery of that little bit of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....
With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is the hardest mattress in the world and a camel's back not the softest pillow....