THE CAPTAIN CALLS
Now, when the card of Captain Kerissen was handed to Miss Arlee
Beecher the next afternoon, when she sauntered in from the sunny
out-of-doors and paused at the desk for the voluminous harvest of
letters the last mail had brought, and furthermore the information
was added that the Captain was waiting, little Miss Beecher's first
thought was the resentful appreciation that the Captain was
overdoing it.
She hesitated, then, with her hands full of letters and parasol, she
crossed the hall into the reception room. She intended to let her
caller see his mistake, so with her burdened hands avoiding a
handclasp, she greeted him and stood waiting, with eyes of inquiry
upon him.
The young man smiled secretly to himself. He was a young man not
without experience in ladies' moods and he had a very shrewd idea
that somebody had been making remarks, but he did not permit a hint
of any perception of the coolness of her manner to impair the
impeccable suavity of his.
"Will you accord me two moments of your time that I may give you
two messages?" he inquired, and Arlee felt suddenly ill-bred before
his gentle courtesy and she sat down abruptly upon the edge of the
nearest chair.
The Captain placed one near her and seated himself, with a clank of
his dangling scabbard. He was really a very handsome young man,
though his features were too finely finished to please a robust
taste, and there was a hint of insolence and cruelty about the nose
and mouth--though this an inexperienced and light-hearted young
tourist of one and twenty did not more than vaguely perceive.
"They are, the both, of the ball of the Khedive," he continued in
his English, which was, though amazingly fluent and ready, a literal
sounding translation of the French, which was in reality his mother
tongue. "My sister thinks she can arrange that invitation. You are
sure that you will be returned at Cairo, then?"
"Oh, dear, yes! I would come back by train," Arlee declared eagerly,
"rather than miss that wonderful ball!"
She thought how astonished a certain red-headed young Englishman
would be to see her at that ball, and how fortunate she was compared
to his haughty and disappointed friend, the Lady Claire, and the
chill of her resentment against the Captain's intrusion vanished
like snow in the warmth of her gratitude.
"Good!" He smiled at her with a flash of white teeth. "Then my
sister herself will see one of the household of the Khedive and
request the invitation for you and for your chaperon, the
Madame----"
"Eversham."
"Eversham. She will be included for you, but not the daughter--no?"
"Is that asking too much?" said Arlee hesitantly. "Miss Eversham
would feel badly to be left out.... But, anyway, I'm not sure that I
shall be with them then," she reflected.
"Not with them?" The young man leaned forward, his eyes curiously
intent upon her.
"No, I may be with some other friends. You see, it's this way--I
didn't come abroad with the Evershams in the first place. I came in
the fall with a school friend and her mother to see Italy. The
Evershams were friends of theirs and were stopping at the same
hotel, and since my friends were called back very suddenly, the
Evershams asked me to go on to Egypt with them. It was very nice of
them, for I'm a dreadful bother," said Arlee, dimpling.
"But you speak of leaving them?" he said.
"Oh, yes, I may do that as soon as some other friends of mine, the
Maynards, reach here. They are coming here on their way to the Holy
Land and I want to take that trip with them. And then I'll probably
go back to America with them."
The Turkish captain stared at her, his dark eyes rather inscrutable,
though a certain wonder was permitted to be felt in them.
"You American girls--your ways are absolute like the decrees of
Allah!" he laughed softly. "But tell me--what will your father and
your mother say to this so rapidly changing from the one chaperon to
the other?"
"I haven't any father or mother," said the girl. "I have a big,
grown-up, married brother, and he knows I wouldn't change from one
party unless it was all right." She laughed amusedly at the young
man's comic gesture of bewilderment. "You think we American girls
are terribly independent."
"I do, indeed," he avowed, "but," and he inclined his dark head in
graceful gallantry, "it is the independence of the princess of the
blood royal."
A really nice way of putting it, Arlee thought, contrasting the
chivalrous homage of this Oriental with the dreadful "American
goose!" of the Anglo-Saxon.
"But tell me," he went on, studying her face with an oddly intent
look, "do these friends now, the Evershams, know these others,
the--the----"
"Maynards," she supplied. "Oh, no, they have never met each other.
The Maynards are friends I made at school. And Brother has never met
them either," she added, enjoying his humorous mystification.
"The decrees of Allah!" he murmured again. "But I will promise you
an invitation for your chaperon and arrange for the name of the lady
later--_n'est-ce-pas?_"
"Yes, I will know as soon as I return from the Nile. You are going
to a lot of bother, you and your sister," declared Arlee gratefully.
"I go to ask you to take a little trouble, then, for that sister,"
said the Captain slowly. "She is a widow and alone. Her life is--is
_triste_--melancholy is your English word. Not much of brightness,
of new things, of what you call pleasure, enters into that life, and
she enjoys to meet foreign ladies who are not--what shall I
say?--seekers after curiosities, who think our ladies are strange
sights behind the bars. You know that the Europeans come uninvited
to our wedding receptions and make the strange questions!"
Arlee had the grace to blush, remembering her own avid desire to
make her way into one of those receptions, where the doors of the
Moslem harem are thrown open to the feminine world in widespread
hospitality.
The Captain went on, slowly, his eyes upon her, "But she knows that
you are not one of those others and has requested that you do her
the grace to call upon her. I assured her that you would, for I know
that you are kind, and also," with an air of naïve pride which Arlee
found admirable in him, "it is not all the world who is invited to
the home of our--our _haut-monde_, you understand?... And then it
will interest you to see how our ladies live in that seclusion which
is so droll to you. Confess you have heard strange stories," and he
smiled in quizzical raillery upon her.
The girl's flush deepened with the memory of the confusing stories
her head was stuffed with; tales of the bloomers, the veils, the
cushions, the sweetmeats, the _nargueils_, the rose baths of the old
_régime_ were jostled by the stories of the French nurses and
English governesses and the Paris fashions of the new era. She had
listened breathlessly, with her eager young zest in life, to the
amazing and contradictory narrations of the tourists who were every
whit as ignorant as she was, and her curiosity was on fire to see
for herself. She felt that a chance in a thousand had come her lucky
way.
"I shall be very glad to call," she told him, "just as soon as I
return from the Nile."
His face showed his disappointment--and a certain surprise. "But not
before?"
"Why, I go to-morrow morning, you know," said Arlee. "And----"
"It would be better--because of the invitation," he said slowly,
hesitantly, with the air of one who does not wish to importune. "My
sister would like to ask for one who is known personally to herself.
She thought you could render her a few minutes this afternoon."
"This afternoon?" Arlee thought quickly. "I ought to be packing,"
she murmured, "my things aren't all ready.... And Mrs. Eversham is
at the bazaars again and dear knows when she will be back."
Just for an instant a spark burned in the black eyes watching the
girl, and then was gone, and when she raised her own eyes, perplexed
and considering, to him, she saw only the same courteously
attentive, but faintly indolent regard as before. Then the young man
smiled, with an air of frank amusement.
"That would seem to be a dispensation!" he laughed. "My sister and
the Madame Eversham--no, they would not be sympathetic!... But if
you can come," he went on quickly, leaning forward and speaking in a
hurried, lowered tone, "it can be arranged in an instant. I am to
telephone to my sister and she will send her car for you. It is not
far and it does not need but a few minutes for the visit--unless you
desire. I cannot escort you in the car--it is not _en règle_--but I
will come to the house and present you and then depart, that you
ladies may exchange the confidences.... Does that programme please
you?"
"I--I don't know your sister's name," said Arlee.
He smiled. "Nechedil Azade Seniha--she is the widow of Tewfik Pasha.
But say Madame simply to her--that will suffice. Shall I, then,
telephone her?"
Just an instant Arlee hesitated, while her imagination fluttered
about the thought like humming-birds about sweets. Already she was
thinking of the story she could have to tell to her fellow travelers
here and to the people at home. It was a chance, she repeated to
herself, in a thousand, and the familiar details of phones and
motors seemed to rob its suddenness of all strangeness.... Besides,
there was that matter of the Khedive's ball. It would be very
ungracious to refuse a few minutes' visit to a lady who was going to
so much trouble for her.
"I will be ready in ten minutes," she promised, springing to her
feet.
The forgotten letters scattered like a fall of snow and the Captain
stooped quickly for them, hiding the flash of exultation in his
face. He thrust the letters rather hurriedly upon her.
"Good!... But need you wait for a _toilette_ when you are so--so
_ravissante_ now?"
He gazed with frank appreciation at the linen suit she was wearing,
but she shook her head laughingly at him. "To be interesting to a
foreign lady I must have interesting clothes," she avowed. "I shan't
be ten minutes--really."
"Then the car will be in waiting. I will give your name to the
chauffeur and he will approach you." He thought a minute, and then
said, quickly, "And I will leave a note for Madame Eversham at the
desk to inform her of your destination and to express my regret that
she is not here to accept the invitation." His voice was flavored
with droll irony. "In ten minutes--_bien sûr_?"
She confirmed it most positively, and it really was not quite
eighteen when she stepped out on the veranda, a vision, a positively
devastating vision in soft and filmy white, with a soft and filmy
hat all white lace and a pink rose. It is to be hoped that she did
not know how she looked. Otherwise there would have been no excuse
for her and she should have been summarily haled to the nearest
justice, with all other breakers of the peace, and condemned to good
conduct and Shaker bonnets for the rest of her life. The rose on the
hat, with such a rose of a face beneath the hat, was sheer wanton
cruelty to mankind.
It brought the heart into the throat of one young man who was
reading his paper beneath the striped awning, when he was not
watching, cat-like, the streets and the hotel door. He dropped the
paper with an agitated rustle and half rose to his feet; his eyes,
alert and humorous gray-blue eyes, lighted with eagerness. His hand
flew up to his hat.
He did not need to take it off. She did not even see him. She was
hurrying forward to the steps, following a long, lean Arab, some
dragoman, apparently, in resplendent pongee robes, who opened the
door of a limousine for her. The next instant he slammed the door
upon her, mounted the front seat, and the car rolled away.