"Oh, no--she just thought of it as a lark on our part," Billy went on. "I didn"t let her in for the horrible details--I don"t think she"s likely to mention it to you. Or you to her," he added.
"Rather not." The young Englishman was emphatic. "I"m sorry you said anything about it." Then he looked at Billy, a crinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes. "Rather a sell, you know--what?"
"I should say so!" returned Billy, with a hearty appearance of chagrin, and a laugh cemented the understanding.
That was all between them concerning the escapade.
Billy had raced back to the boat, and secured an earnest fifteen minutes with Arlee, who promised unlimited care, and then forced upon him the wretched sovereigns that she owed. She was feeling desperately spent and tired after her day of excitement, and declared herself unequal to the dance upon the boat that evening.
Anxiously Billy had urged her to rest, and he spent a drifting and distracted evening roaming alone in the temple of Luxor listening to the distant music from the boat--thinking of Arlee.... Later he had learned that she remained up for at least two dances with Falconer.
So much for Friday. Sat.u.r.day had been worse. Arlee had said on Friday night that she would join the pa.s.sengers in the all-day excursion to the Tombs of the Kings, and Billy had somehow found himself in an arrangement with Lady Claire and Falconer to go with them. Then Arlee had not gone. Mrs. Eversham reported that she had a headache, and Falconer had very promptly dropped out of the party, leaving Billy with Lady Claire upon his hands, and so he went, and he and Lady Claire and the Evershams and about sixty other pa.s.sengers had a brisk and busy day of it. When he returned just before dinner he saw Arlee, apparently headacheless, upon the deck of the steamer, chatting to Falconer.
That night she had attended the dance at the hotel under Miss Falconer"s wing. Billy had danced with her twice, and between times his pride had kept him aloof--she might just have made one sign! But though her bright friendliness was ever responsive; though she was instantly, submissively, ready to accept his invitations or fulfill his requests, he felt that there was something strangely lacking.
The gay spark of her coquetry was gone; she did not tease or play with him; animated as she was in company, when they were alone together a constraint fell upon her.
Miserably he felt that he reminded her of unhappy scenes and that she would be secretly relieved when he was gone.
So now he was absurdly glad to hear her declare, in answer to Lady Claire"s questionings, "Oh, but the desert is wonderful! I loved it in spite of----"
"In spite of--?" Lady Claire echoed.
"The sand," said Arlee promptly. But under her lashes, her eyes came, at last, half-scared, to Billy"s face.
"But the sand _is_ the desert," Lady Claire was murmuring.
"It"s only part of it," Billy took it upon himself to answer. "s.p.a.ce is the biggest part--and then color. And sometimes--heat."
"You spent quite a time on the desert edge with some excavators, didn"t you?" said the English girl, and Billy fell into talk with her about his friend"s work, and Falconer and his sister engrossed Arlee.
And to-night was the very last night of her stay at Luxor. To-morrow the boat would take her on out of his life--unless he pursued her along the Nile, a foolish, unwanted intruder.... The three days here had all slipped from his clumsy grasp--they seemed to have put a widening distance between them.... He heard Falconer calculating that the boat would touch again at Luxor for the next Friday night.
There seemed to be talk of a masked ball....
Billy leaned suddenly across the table.
"You have forgotten it"s the best of the moon to-night?" he asked.
"You must let me take you to see it on Karnak."
Falconer gave him a very blank look.
"We"ve already planned for that," said he.
"We"ll all go," cried Arlee, with instant pleasantness. "We mustn"t miss it for anything."
"You haven"t seen the moon on the temple yet?" Billy inquired of Lady Claire in the pause that ensued.
"Only once--four nights ago. But it wasn"t full then."
Billy remembered that moon acutely. It had lighted two fugitives across a waste of sand. He saw a little figure swaying rhythmically high upon a camel, a quaint, old-world figure in misty white, with a shimmering silver veil--like Rebecca coming across the desert, he thought oddly. Then he looked up and saw a most modern figure in white across the table, nibbling a cress sandwich, and laughing at some jest of the Englishman"s....
With a start he realized that Lady Claire was waiting for an answer.
"I beg your pardon. You asked----?"
"If _you_ had seen the temple in moonlight, Mr. Hill."
"Not Karnak--only Luxor--night before last."
"Only Luxor!" The girl beside him laughed. "How spoiled you are, Mr.
Hill! _Only_ Luxor!"
It came to Billy, with the force of revelation, that it was going to be _only_ a great many things for him after this.... Those wild days in the desert had seen to that, with devastating completeness....
Girls were only other girls--and delight in them a lost word. This charming one beside him, with the friendly eyes where a faint shadow of wistfulness underlay the surface brightness, was only Lady Claire....
He wondered if he was going on like this forever. He wondered if he was everlastingly to carry this memory about with him, like a bullet.... Suddenly he felt enraged at himself, at his dumb pain and useless longings, and with a stanch semblance of animation he flung himself into the flow of talk which this pretty English girl was so ready to offer him.
CHAPTER XXII
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 a.s.siout 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 G.o.d, Amon, or Amon-Ra, and the G.o.ddess, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds, giants of G.o.ds, and their spirits stalked now through its waste s.p.a.ces, dominating and ironic. There was an air about the place that seemed to scorn the facile awe it woke in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the beholders and that fleered at the human ba.n.a.lities 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.