UPON THE PYLON
Two miles of Sphinxes in the moonlight—a double row of them on each side of the way from the temple of Luxor—and then a towering pylon overhead. Karnak was reached.
Out of the victoria jumped two young men in evening clothes, one sandy-haired with a slight moustache, the other black-haired and clean shaven, and handed out three ladies. The first lady was middle-aged and haughty featured, in a black evening gown overhung with a black and gold Assiout shawl; the second was a tall girl in a rose cloak, the third was a small girl, and her cloak was a delicate blue.
There was a pause at the pylon for the presentation of the little red entrance books, and then the gate closed behind them, and the five moved cautiously forward into the shadowy dark of the confusion of the ruins. Beside the blue-cloaked girl bent the sandy-haired young man; the black-haired young man was between the rose-cloaked girl and the lady with the Roman nose.
"You must be our dragoman, Mr. Hill; I understand you are up on all this," said the lady, adhering closely to his side. "Where are we now?"
"Temple of Khonsu," said Billy with bitter brevity. Ahead of them Arlee's blonde head was uptilted toward Falconer's remarks.
"Khonsu? I never heard of him! Or is it her?" Lady Claire laughingly demanded.
"Khonsu is the son of the god, Amon, or Amon-Ra, and the goddess, Mut, and so is the third person of the trinity of Thebes," Billy pedagogically recited, his eyes on the little white shoes ahead picking their delicate way over the fallen stones. "This temple at Karnak is the temple of the god Amon, and so it was natural for old Rameses the third to put the temple to Khonsu under the father's wing like this—but it spoils the effect of the entrance from this pylon. You don't get Karnak's bigness at a burst—but wait till you reach the court ahead. Then you'll see Karnak."
And then they did see it—as much as one view can give of that vast desolation. Ahead of them, shadowy and mysterious in the velvet dark and silver pallor of the stars, loomed the columns of the great court, huge monoliths that dwarfed to pigmies the tiny groups of people dotting the ground about them, trying to say something appropriate.
The place had been made for dead and gone gods, giants of gods, and their spirits stalked now through its waste spaces, dominating and ironic. There was an air about the place that seemed to scorn the facile awe it woke in the breasts of the beholders and that fleered at the human banalities upon their lips.
"There are no words for a spot like this," said a voice near them.
"Silence is fittest," corroborated a second voice.
"Thomas Hardy once said, speaking of the heavens," said the first voice again, "'There is a size at which dignity begins; farther on there is a size at which grandeur begins; farther on there is a size at which solemnity begins; farther on a size at which awfulness begins; farther on a size at which ghastliness begins.' Surely that was written unknowingly for this temple of Karnak?"
A fluttering murmur from the group confirmed this thought.
"Nice little speech," said Falconer in an undertone.
The second voice was raised a trifle resentfully. "Yet was not the very pith of it spoken by Ruskin when he stood upon this identical spot? His words were these, 'At last size tells!'"
Another murmur agreed that it was indeed the pith.
"That's Clara Eversham," said Arlee under her breath. "They came over early with some people from the boat."
"She must be frightfully up on the guide books," muttered Falconer.
"She's a miner in them," Arlee laughed, as they made their way over the rubbishy ground where great beams of stone and fallen statues lay half-buried in the sands.
"They must be very glad to have you back again with them," Falconer told her, trying hard to keep their progress ahead of the others.
"Oh, I don't know!" Honest dubiety spoke in Arlee's tone. "They have mentioned twice how convenient it was to use my stateroom!"
"They felt very badly when you ran away from them in Cairo."
"I was shockingly sudden about that," owned the girl lightly, "but the chance came—Are we going to climb the great pylon now?"
"It will be a jolly high place to see the moon rise."
It was a jolly high place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy cliffs of Thebes beyond. It gave Arlee the dizzying sensation of being suspended between heaven and earth, so high was she above those far-reaching plains, so high above the giant columns beneath her, the vast beamed roofs, the pointing obelisks. It made her breath quicken and her pulses beat.
"Watch the moon," said Falconer in a low tone.
Blood-red it rose behind the dark pile, throwing into sinister relief a gallows-like angle of stone beams, then higher and higher it soared till its resplendent light poured unchecked into the wide courts and broken temples, the unroofed altars and the empty shrines.
"A dead world lighting a dead world," said Arlee under her breath.
"I could read by it," stated Miss Falconer impressively.
Lady Claire glanced up at Billy with a touch of mischief. "Would you like to paint it?" she suggested.
"Heaven forbid!" said Billy soberly.
Falconer said nothing at all, except to Arlee. He was very shrewdly drawing her to the other end of the pylon, seeing that the time of descent was nearly upon them. And when the time arrived, and the English ladies and their stoic escort started down the steep steps, Falconer made no motion of following them. He stood still, his hands in his pockets, and chuckled softly at the sound of his sister's voice, floating lesseningly up to them.
"How Emma is dragoning that William Whatdycallit Hill," he said appreciatively.
"Why do you call him that?" questioned Arlee.
"Oh, that chap is so deuced odd about that name of his. I asked him what the B. stood for, and he looked me in the eye like a fighting cock and said for his middle name.... Queer chap—" Suddenly Falconer looked sidewise at Arlee and stopped.
"He is—unusual," she agreed, moving toward the steps.
The curious expression upon Falconer's face deepened. "Let 'em go on," he said jerkily. "I don't want to leave this yet, do you?"
Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.
In silence she looked out over the temple. The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars. She felt very strange and unreal—a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....
"We never have a chance for a word together," Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.
Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds.... Her own was upon her. She turned and laughed at him. "We've talked for three whole days!"
"Have we? But always in some group.... I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?" Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.
But Arlee's smile was very sweet. It made the sandy-haired young man's heart quicken mysteriously. "He told me," she said. "I think it was fine of you."
"Fine? It was lunacy.... He'd got worked up over some horrible story he'd heard," went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarrassment, "and nothing for it but that you'd gone the same way. And if you'll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off—and served us jolly well right! He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch."
"A scratch—? You mean—you don't mean——?"
"He didn't tell you that?" Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy's narration had led romantically to Billy's wound. He made the American a silent apology. "He was shot in the arm."
"Badly?"
"Of course not badly—he's all right now, isn't he? He said it was a scratch."
Arlee was silent. He had been hurt all the time that he had been riding with her over the desert ... he had been hurt all through those horrible hot hours. And he had said nothing....
"When I think of what that chap got me in for—scaling a man's walls, smashing in his locks, letting myself down the front of his house like a monkey on a rope! I might have been a dashed school kid again." Resentment and reluctant humor struggled in the young man's speech. "Why, the fellow has the imagination of a detective ... and of course he had some reason." Falconer's thoughts touched on the fair-haired girl of Fritzi's report. "I'll admit he had me worried—until I heard from the Evershams that you were all O.K. You see what bally nonsense you put into young men's heads," he added with a look of meaning.
"He's a very—chivalrous—young man," said Arlee.
"He's a very unbalanced young idiot," contradicted Falconer. "I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare—but no ballast. He might have set all Cairo talking of you." His voice hardened; "I told him that. I told him you wouldn't thank him for it."
"I do thank him. I thank him with all my heart."
"Well, you've no reason to," Falconer returned in blunt belief. "Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace—he might have started a lot of rotten rumor!"
"What's—rumor?" said the girl in a breathless voice. "He was thinking of—my safety!"
"Well, your safety didn't depend on him, did it?" Sharp jealousy of her defense of the American intruder drove Falconer to unseemly curtness. He gave a short laugh. "You and I," he said, "seem to be always tilting over some chap or other."
A faint smile touched the girl's lips, a sorry little smile, edged with rueful reminiscence ... and strange comparisons. In silence she looked down into the shadowy temple courts where absurdly small-looking people were strolling to and fro, while Falconer stood looking down at her, with something akin to angry wonder in his adoring eyes.
"Why didn't you write to a chap?" he abruptly demanded.
"Why should I?"
"Then you meant to let it go at that?" He drew a sharp breath. "Just the way you flared off from that table—not a word more?"
"Why didn't you write?" the girl parried.
"I did," indignantly. "Twice—to Alexandria."
"Oh.... I didn't get them."
"I wrote, all right. I was so stirred up over that alarm of Hill's that I urged you to answer me at once. And when you didn't, and when I heard you had written the Evershams, well, I thought I knew what I had to think.... When I met you here Friday I half expected you to cut me, upon my word!"
"But I didn't!" She laughed softly. "I remembered you—perfectly."
"Oh, you did, did you?... You've acted as if that was about all you did remember."
"I've been very, very nice to you!"
"But with a difference," he insisted resentfully. "Didn't you know I must have written? You didn't think I wanted to let it stop there, did you? You didn't think I meant that nonsense at tea——"
"Please don't go back to that," said the girl hurriedly. "We've been good friends these three days without bringing it up—don't let us do it now."
"Well, I don't enjoy thinking about it." His voice was sharp with feeling. "You gave me the most miserable time of my life."
"I was very horrid."
"You told me you didn't give a piastre for what I thought!"
"I said I didn't give half a piastre!" murmured Arlee irrepressibly, with a wicked dimple.
Reluctantly he grinned. "Well?" he put to her questioningly.
"Well?"
Their eyes met, sparkling, combative.
"You do, don't you?"
"What?"
"You do give a piastre for what I——"
"I'm afraid I do. I'm afraid I give a good many piastres for what everyone thinks." The girl's smile had suddenly faded; her eyes lowered and sought the far horizons.
In the silence he came a little closer to her. "Then Arlee—Arlee, dear——"
She started, and turned hurriedly. "We must go down——"
"Why must we?"
"They'll be waiting."
"Let 'em. They'll be glad of the chance if they can get away from Emma.... I want to talk to you."
"I think Mr. Hill is quite as nice as Lady Claire," flashed Arlee in a childish voice.
"Claire seems to agree with you." Falconer spoke lightly, but underneath sounded the note of the disgruntled male ... resentful of the defection of even the girls he left behind him. He added, with his fatal gift of truculent expression, "But that's perfectly absurd."
"Why absurd?" Arlee's voice held careful calm. The flash in her eyes was hidden.
Falconer made a gesture of extreme exasperation. To waste these precious moonlight moments in trifling debate was the very height of maddening futility.
"Oh, the chap's a feather-headed adventurer. What's the use of talking about him?... But that's aside the mark. I want——"
"You mustn't call him an adventurer!" The flash was far from hidden now. Her wide eyes blazed challenge at the disconcerted young man. "It's not fair. It's not true."
"Oh, I don't mean it in any—any financial sense," the harassed Falconer gave back. "But you can't expect me to take him seriously after his exploits in Cairo? He's flighty. He goes off like a rocket. He has illusions—but——"
"If you are going to slander him because of what he did for me—" Arlee's voice was shaking.
"Oh, can't you see that's the key to his character!"
"Yes, I do see it." She sounded triumphant now. For a moment her eves met his full of bright defiance; she hung fire, half scared, then blazed into her revelation.
"For I was in that palace."
"What? What?" Falconer questioned in sheer vacancy of shock.
"I said—I was in that palace, Kerissen's palace."
"What!" came from him again, but now in twenty different intonations, with absolute incredulity struggling for dominance.
Desperately she rushed on, her voice shaken but passionate.
"I tell you it is so. He got me there by a trick, a call upon his sister. And he kept me by another trick, pretending a quarantine. I was trapped there. The messages and all the Alexandria story were Kerissen's frauds. He wanted to marry me. I'd have been there to-night if it hadn't been for Billy Hill—that adventurer, as you call him!"
It was impossible. It was unthinkable. Falconer stood staring down at this girl whose white, upturned face, so amazingly ethereal and childish, met his astounded gaze with unfaltering fixity, and from his stiff lips dropped disjointed words and phrases, ejaculations of denial, of disbelief.
She swept them utterly aside in her complete affirmation. "It's all true—every bit."
"You—in that man's palace!" He was very pale, but into her white face there surged a sudden flood of color, crimsoning it from brow to throat.
"He didn't—hurt me," she stammered. "He was—quite mad—but he didn't—hurt me."
She heard Falconer draw his breath with a queer, whistling sound. He pushed back his hat and drew his hand over his forehead.
"It's—impossible," he persisted thickly, but there was bitter relief in his voice. "The blackguard—the filthy blackguard!"
"Don't, don't, please don't! I can't bear to think of him. I've done with even the thought of him.... He was trying to make me marry him. I told you he was quite mad."
Sharply Falconer pulled himself together, in the tense effort to meet this horrible astonishment like a man.
"And Hill got you out?"
"Yes.... He got me out."
"But the Evershams—they don't know——?"
"No, no, I've told no one. I'm not going to tell anyone. No one knows of it but you and me—and Billy Hill."
"That's right." He drew another long breath, this time in sharp relief. The color was coming back to his face, splotching it unevenly. "You mustn't tell anyone. You don't know how a beastly thing like that would spread. You mustn't let anyone have a hint. Not even my sister."
Arlee's eyes were in shadow. Her voice came slowly. "They would think so badly of me?"
"No—not of you—but it's the kind of thing, the impossible things—A girl simply can't afford——"
"She can't afford to have even speculation against her," Arlee finished quietly, but a little pulse in her throat was beating away like mad. She knew he spoke the simple truth, but the taste of it was bitter as gall to her mouth. However she had humbled herself in secret self-communion, she had known no such shame as this.... She felt cheapened ... tarnished....
"It's beastly—but she can't," he jerkily agreed, but with evident relief at her sensible understanding. Perhaps he had remembered Billy's fearful prophecy of the conversation with which the adventure would supply her. "But of course nobody has a notion——"
"Not a notion. And I shan't give them any—not till I'm a white-haired old lady in Mechlin caps, and then I shall make up for lost time by boring all my world with the story of my romantic youth and the wild deeds done for me!" She laughed airily, pride high in her face, hiding her secret hurts.
"And Hill got you out," Falconer repeated, with a sudden twinge of jealous envy in his young voice. "He—he's a lucky one."
"I'm the lucky one," Arlee flashed. "Think of the glorious luck for me that sent him to paint there, outside the palace, where a maid mistook him, and so gave a message. Why, it was a chance in a million, in ten million—and it happened!"
"Happened?" Falconer looked at her a minute before continuing. Then he asked quietly, "He told you that he just—happened—there?"
"Yes, he said by accident. He was painting——"
Now Falconer was an honest young man—and a gentleman. Deliberately he brushed away his rival's generous subterfuge. "He doesn't paint," he told her. "He did that for an excuse—for a reason to stay outside the palace. No chance directed it."
"Why, how—how did he know? Before——"
"He guessed. He was uneasy from the beginning—he made conjectures and set himself to verify them."
After a moment, "I never knew—that!" said Arlee in slow wonder.
"Well, you know now," returned Falconer with a sense of grim justice to the man he had belittled.
In the silence the girl moved toward the steps. He made a gesture to stay her.
"You're not going—yet?"
"Yet?" she echoed, faintly mocking. "It's hours."
"But—but we can never see this again," he argued, weakly, parrying with himself.
"We won't—forget it."
The words held a too-keen prophecy for him. He looked at her in heart-beating uncertainty, and it seemed to him that all his future was waiting on that moment. Should he speak? Should he utter that which had been so near utterance when her astounding revelation had stopped him?... After all, he knew nothing of her—but that she was lovely and wilful and enchanting—with a capacity for risk—and a dire disregard of consequences.... She was volatile, unstable, bewildering—so he thought stiffeningly as he looked at her, but he looked too long.
She was the very spirit of loveliness in the silver moon, her hair a crown of light, her eyes deep with shadowy wistfulness, her lips half sad, half tender.... He felt the blood burn hot in his face, and took a quick step to bar the way.
"You must wait to hear what I was saying," he said, with a ring of new command.
She gave him a sudden, startled look, and moved as if to pass him.
"You were saying—nothing," she answered proudly.
"I was saying—everything," he gave back incoherently. "Oh, Arlee, do you think that story stops me! Don't you know—how much I want you?" and with sudden vehemence he bent to clasp her in his arms.