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 pa.s.sion.
"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 navete, "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 a.s.senting 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 role 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 subst.i.tuted 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!
CHAPTER X
A MAID AND A MESSAGE
The March hare would have been a feeble comparison for Billy Hill"s madness if Robert Falconer could have seen him that Sat.u.r.day morning, that same Sat.u.r.day on which Arlee was essaying her daring role, for Billy Hill was sitting in the sun upon a camp stool, a white helmet upon his head, an easel before him, and upon the easel a square of blank canvas, and in Billy"s left hand was a box of oils and in his right a brush. And the camp stool upon which Billy was stationed was planted directly before the small, high-arched door of the Kerissen palace and in plain view of the larger door a few feet to the right.
It had all followed upon acquaintance with the one-eyed man.
Taciturn in the beginning and suspicious of Billy"s questionings, that dark-skinned individual had at first betrayed abyssmal ignorance of all save the virtues of stuffed crocodiles, but convinced at last that this was no trap, but a genuine situation from which he could profit, his greed overcame his native caution, and through the aid of his jerky English and Billy"s jagged Arabic a certain measure of confidence was exchanged.
The one-eyed man then recollected that he had noticed a Turkish officer and an American girl returning together to the hotel upon that Wednesday afternoon. He had stared, because truly it was amazing, even for American madness--and also the young girl was beautiful. "A wild gazelle," was his word for her. The man was Captain Kerissen. He was known to all the city--well known, he was--in a certain way. It was not a good way for the ladies. Yes, he had a motor car--a grand, gray car. (Billy remembered that the fatal limousine had been gray.) It was well known that he had bought it for a foreign woman whom he had brought from over-seas and installed in the palace of his fathers. Yes, he knew well where that palace was. His brother"s wife"s uncle was a eunuch there, but he was a hard man who held his own counsel and that of his master.
Could a girl be shut up in that palace and the world be no wiser?
The one-eyed man stared scathingly at such ignorance. Why not? The underworld might know, but native gossip never reached white ears.
What was the best way of finding out, then? The one-eyed man had no hesitation about his answer.
A native must use his eyes and ears for the American. Through his subtle skill and the American"s money the discovery could be made.
The women servants would talk.
That was the way, Billy agreed, and quoted to the Arab his own proverb, "A saint will weary of well-doing and a braggart of his boasts, but a woman"s tongue will never stop of itself," and the one-eyed man had nodded, with an air of resigned understanding, and quoted in answer, "There is nothing so great and nothing so small, nothing so precious and nothing so foul, but that a woman will put her tongue to it," and an understanding appeared to have been reached.
The one-eyed man was to loiter about the palace, calling upon the brother"s wife"s uncle if possible, and discover all that he could without arousing suspicion. And Billy determined to do a little loitering himself and quicken the one-eyed man"s investigations and keep watch of Kerissen"s comings and goings, and a donkey boy was hired by the one-eyed man to follow the Captain when he appeared in the street and report the places to which he went.
It was all very ridiculous, of course, Billy cheerfully agreed with himself, but by proving its own folly it would serve to allay that extraordinarily nagging uneasiness of his. If he could just be _sure_ that little Miss Beecher wasn"t tucked out of sight somewhere in the power of that barbaric scamp with his Continental veneer!
Meanwhile the Oriental methods to be employed in the finding out appealed to the young American"s humor and his rash love of adventure. He was grinning as he sat there on that stool and stared at the blank canvas before him. He had felt the role of artist would be an excellent screen for his loitering, but he had done no painting for a little matter of twenty years, not since he was a tiny lad, flat upon his stomach in his home library, industriously tinting the robes and beards of Bible characters and the backgrounds of the Holy Land--this work of art being one of the few permitted diversions of the family Sabbath. Now he reflected that the scenes for his brush were decidedly similar.
With humorous interest he fell to work, scaling off the palace on his left, blocking off the cemetery ahead, and trying to draw a palm without emphasizing the thought of a feather duster. His engineering training made him critical of his lines and outlines, but when it came to the introduction of color he had the sensation of a shipwrecked mariner afloat upon uncharted seas.
The color that his eyes perceived was not the color which his stubborn memory persisted in reminding him was the actual hue of the events, and the color that he produced upon canvas was no kin to any of them. But it sufficed for an excuse, and he worked away, whistling cheerily, warily observant of the dark and silent facade of the old palace and alertly interested in the little groups his occupation transiently attracted. But these little groups were all of pa.s.sers-by, shawl-venders, package-deliverers, beggars, veiled desert women with children astride their shoulders, and the live hens they were selling beneath their mantles, and these groups dissolved and drew away from him without his being able to attract any observation from the palace.
But at least, he thought doggedly, any girl behind those latticed windows up there could see him in the street, and if Arlee were there she would understand his presence and plan to get word down to him. But he began to feel extraordinarily foolish.
At length his patience was rewarded. The small door opened and the stalwart doorkeeper, in blue robes and yellow English shoes, marched pompously out to him and ordered him to be off.
Haughtily Billy responded that this was permitted, and displayed a self-prepared doc.u.ment, gorgeous with red seals, which made the man scowl, mutter, and shake his head and retire surlily to his door, and finding a black-veiled girl peering out of it at Billy, he thrust her violently within. But Billy had caught her eyes and tried to look all the significance into them of which he was capable.
Nothing, however, appeared to develop. The door remained closed, save for brief admissions of bread and market stuff from little boys on donkey-back or on a bicycle, all of whom were led willingly into conservation, but none of whom had been into the palace, and though Billy pressed as close to the door as possible when the boys knocked, he was only rewarded with a glimpse of the tiled vestibule and inner court.
To the irate doorkeeper he protested that he was yearning to paint a palace court, but though he held up gold pieces, the man ordered him away in fury and spoke menacingly of a stick for such fellows.
Now, however cool and fresh it was in the garden that Sat.u.r.day, it was distinctly hot in the dusty street, and by noon, as Billy sat in the shade beside the palace door, eating the lunch he had brought and drinking out of a thermos bottle, he reflected that for a man to cook himself upon a camp stool, feigning to paint and observing an uneventful door, was the height of Matteawan. He despised himself--but he returned to the camp stool.