A DESPERATE GAME
Very slowly the black night grayed down into a wan, spectral
morning, and slowly the gray morning paled into a dim
mother-of-pearl dawn. And then suddenly the mother-of-pearliness
brightened into a shimmering opal, and the ray of pale gold light
slanted through the barred window and the bright face of new day
peeped over the sill, staring out of countenance the lurking shadows
of the night.
And then Arlee's eyes closed, and the heart which had been beating
like a frightened rabbit's at every sound and shadow steadied into a
rhythm as regular as a clock. She slept like a tired baby; while the
light grew brighter and higher, and reached in over the shining
dressing table, over the white piano, to rest upon the oblivious
face upon the couch and to play with the bright, tangled hair.
The first knocking upon the door did not disturb that sleep, and it
was a long time before the knock was again sounded. Then Arlee heard
and sprang to her feet in a lightning rush of consciousness. It was
Mariayah again, and the water jars which already looked familiar to
her, and after the water jars appeared more roses and with the roses
a letter.
Those roses came, the letter explained, to droop their heads before
her loveliness, which put theirs to shame. They would greet her as
humbler sisters greet a fairer. For they were roses of a day, but
she was the Rose of Life. The capitals were Kerissen's own. And then
abruptly the letter demanded:
Did I frighten you last night? Is it so strange to you
that you have magic to make a man forget all the barriers
of your convention? Do you not know you have an
enchantment which distills in the blood and changes it to
wine? You are the Rose of Life, the Rose of Desire, and
no man can look upon you without longing. But you must
not be angry at me for that, for I am your slave, and
would strew roses always to soften the world for your
little feet.... Fortune has made you my guest. Will you
not smile upon me while Fortune smiles? Luncheon will be
in the garden, for it is cool and fresh today.
The mask was slipping. Only a flimsy veil of sentiment now over his
rash will. Only a light pretense of her freedom, of his courtesy. He
was beginning to declare himself....
But she must not let him suspect that she knew. She must _not_.
Her spirit responded fiercely to this tense demand upon it. The
dread, the panic of the night was gone. The fear that had shaken her
was beaten down like a cowardly dog. Excitement burned in her blood.
Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look,
perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was
passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her,
nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. She would play
her rôle with every breath she drew.
* * * * *
She crossed the room at the luncheon summons in the nervous tensity
of mood that an actress might go to play a part in which her career
would live or die. Every half hour with Kerissen was now a duel,
every minute was a stroke to be parried, and she flung herself into
that duel with the desperate exhilaration of such daring. Her hands
were icy, and her cheeks were flaming with the excitement which
consumed her, but she revealed no other trace of it, and she
wondered to herself at the inscrutable fairness of the face which,
looked back at her from the glass.
None of the record of those frightened, sleepless hours was written
there, none of her furious pride, her fixed intensity. Only the soft
shadows under the blue eyes gave her face a look of added delicacy
for all the unnatural flare of brilliant color, and a faint
wistfulness in those eyes seemed to overlay the smiles she
practiced, like a cloud shadow on a brook. And never, never, in all
her glad, care-free days, had she been as distractingly pretty as
she was that moment. With an angry little pang she recognized it,
pinning on the lace hat with its enchanting rose, and then
desperately she resolved to employ it and added two of Kerissen's
pink roses to the costume.
She thought the scene was very like a stage, when she came out
through the narrow door which the old woman unlocked from a key she
carried on a girdle, and slowly descended the stone steps. Beneath
the wide-spreading lebbek a low table was laid for luncheon with two
wicker chairs beside it. The green of the fresh turf was as vivid as
stage grass; the lilies loomed unreally large and white; the
poinsettias flaunted like red paper flowers behind the vivid picture
that the Captain made in a dazzling buff and green uniform picked
out with gold. His bow was theatric, so was the deep look of
exaggerated admiration he bent upon her--it was strange to remember
that her danger was not theatric also. But that was deadly real, and
real, too, was the sudden surge of color into the young man's sallow
face.
"You are kind to my roses--if not to me," he said quickly, and held
out his hand for the brief little clasp she accorded.
"Your roses are dumb and have said nothing to make me cross," she
laughed lightly, and looked swiftly about her. "How lovely this is,"
she ran on, "and how charming to feel a breeze. That room is rather
warm and close.... Is you sister still too ill to come?"
And scarcely waiting for the assent which he began to frame with his
searching eyes upon her, she added, "I am afraid I made her angry
last night by intruding upon her. But I heard her voice and ran back
to her room to ask after her. She wouldn't let me stay at all."
It was droll how natural her voice sounded, she thought. His eyes
held their fixed scrutiny in an instant, then dropped carelessly
away, as he drew forward the wicker chairs. "She is a _nerveuse_,
you understand," he said with an air of indolent resignation, "and
one can do nothing for that sort of thing. A crisis comes--one must
wait for it to pass.... She regrets that condition.... And she
wished me to present her regrets to you," he added suavely, "for
that reception of you last night. She was ill and did not expect
you--and she did not wish you to see her in that condition."
"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I
heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see
her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any
English, so I cannot send any messages."
"But you can write them."
"My French spelling is worse than my pronunciation!" She laughed
amusedly. "I wish you would find me an interpreter to put my polite
remarks into polite sounding phrases. I know I put things like a
First Reader!"
He smiled. "You do not put them like a First Reader to me. _We_ do
not need an interpreter.... Unless I need one to speak to you?"
"Oh, no, your English is wonderful!" She waited an instant, then
took a breathless plunge. "Have you any more news for me?" she
demanded, forcing the note of expectancy. It would be suspicious,
indeed, if she did not ask that. But what if he had decided to throw
the pretense aside----
"Not one word of news more," he said slowly.
She felt him watching her as she looked down on her plate. The
pretty little girl was passing a platter of pigeon: Arlee did not
speak until she had helped herself, then she said in a voice touched
faintly with chagrin, "Well, the English are not very gallant toward
ladies in misfortune, are they? I feel furiously snubbed.... Of
course Mrs. Eversham never was much of a writer, but they might send
over my letters from the hotel. The last mail ought to have brought
a lot from that big brother of mine."
"Ah, yes, that big, grown-up, married brother who is so satisfied
with all you do!"
She felt she had been unfortunate in her rash confidences.
"He won't be so pleased when he learns how I wasted a perfectly good
Nile ticket," she remarked. "And Big Brother is rather fierce when
he isn't pleased."
His eyes smiled, as if he understood and despised her suggestion.
"Cairo and your America are not so near," he observed negligently,
"that an incident here is a matter of immediate knowledge there."
She felt the danger of seeming to threaten him. "Oh, I'd 'fess up,"
she said lightly, playing with her food. "There--shoo--go away!" she
cried suddenly, with a militant gesture about her plate. "That's one
thing I hate about Egypt--the flies!"
"I hope that is the only thing you hate," said the young man
blandly.
"Isn't that enough? There are so many of them!"
He laughed with real amusement at her petulance. "Is there netting
enough in your room?" he inquired. "Would you like more for your
bed?"
"Oh, no, I'm all right, thank you. The flies are chiefly bothersome
at meals. This is certainly their paradise."
"But is there anything you would like--to make you happy here? I
will get it for you. Would you not like some books, some music, some
new clothes----"
"I don't wonder you ask! But really this white gown will last a
little longer--Cairo is so clean. No, thank you, there is nothing I
need bother you about--Oh, yes, there really is one book that I
would like--a Turkish or an Arabic dictionary. I have always meant
to learn a little of the language and this would seem the
opportunity."
In the pause in which he appeared to be consuming pigeon she could
feel him weighing her request, foreseeing its results.
"I shall be most happy to teach you," was what he said, but she knew
she would never have that dictionary. And so one plan of the morning
went flying to the winds. But she snatched at the next opening she
saw and plunged into interested questions about the Turkish
language, asking the words for such things as seemed spontaneously
to occur to her--wall, palace, table--numbers--days of the
week--repeating the pronunciation with the earnestness of a diligent
young pupil, until she felt that her memory had all it could hold.
And distrust, always ready now like a prompter in the box, suggested
most upsettingly that perhaps he was not giving the right words. She
resolved to experiment upon Mariayah.
He reverted, with increasing emphasis, upon his desire to make her
happy in the palace, to surround her with whatever she desired, and
swiftly she availed herself of this second opening.
"Yes, indeed, there is something that would make me happier, if you
don't mind, please," she added with a droll assumption of meekness.
"You don't know how horrid it is for me to be caged in one room and
not be out of doors, and I would love to come down into the garden
when I want to. Won't you give me a key to that door? That is, if it
is always locked."
"Generally it is not," he said readily, "but now with the soldiers
about it is safer. You see, the soldiers can approach the garden
through the open banquet hall"--and he nodded to the colonnade
behind them--"and though it is forbidden, one cannot foretell their
obedience."
To one who knew those soldiers were chimerical acquiescence was
maddening.
"But, dear me, can't you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo
the soldiers away?" Arlee argued persuasively. "Since the rest of
the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the
ladies have the garden for their airing."
"It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the
garden is for the ladies. Whenever you wish to be in the garden you
have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court,
as is, indeed, the custom."
"It would not be so terrible, you know, if a gardener or a
donkey-boy did see my face!" laughed Arlee. "Plenty of them have had
that pleasure before this."
She saw that the young man's face changed. Every clear-cut line of
it was sharp with repugnance. "You need not remind me of that," he
said with muffled fierceness, staring down at his plate.
"The danger line!" she thought while shaking her head at him, with
the tense semblance of an amused little smile.... "You aren't the
least bit English," she rebuked, "and I thought you were."
"Not in that.... And some day England will see her folly."
"America is seeing her folly now," thought Arlee with secret
bitterness. But when she raised her eyes they were gently
contemplative. She spoke musingly.
"In things like that you aren't at all what I thought you
were--about our social customs, I mean. Yet fundamentally, I think
you are."
"That I am what?"
"What I thought you were."
He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine
with absorption, and the question had to come from him. He put it
with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest
in leash.
"And what did you think I was like, _chère petite mademoiselle_?"
"Very handsome for one thing, Monsieur! You see, I owe you a
compliment for calling me such a pretty name as this!" With a
mischievous smile she touched the roses nodding in her girdle. "And
very autocratic for another, with a very bad temper. If you can't
get your way you would be shockingly disagreeable!"
"But I always get my way," he assured her lazily, his teeth showing
under his small, black mustache.
"I believe you do!" Ingenuous admiration, simple and sustained, was
in the look she gave him. Her hands were not half so icy now, nor
her nerves so tense. She felt strangely surer of herself; the actual
presence of the danger calmed her. She must make good with this, she
thought simply, in strenuous American.
"And yet," she went on thoughtfully, the pretty picture of
fascinated absorption in this most feminine topic--the dissection of
a young man--"yet, you are chivalrous. And I think that is the
quality we American girls admire most of all."
"The quality--of indulgence?" he questioned, with a half-railing
air.
"The quality--of gentleness."
"But is there not another quality which you American girls would
admire more than that gentleness--if you ever had the chance in your
lives to see it? The quality of dominance? The courage of the man
who dares what he desires, and who takes what he wills? Is not
that----"
"Ah, yes, we love strong men," Arlee flung into the speech that was
bearing him on like a tide, "but we don't think them strong unless
they are strong enough to fight themselves. They may take what they
will--but they mustn't crush it.... There is a gentleness in great
strength--I can't explain what I mean----"
"Ah, I see, I see." He smiled subtly. "I am not to crush you, little
Rose of Desire," he said softly.
She met the sly significance of his gaze with a look of frank,
unfaltering candor. "Of course not," she said stoutly. "When
you--you make me afraid of you, you make me like you less. You seem
less like the friend I knew on the boat."
"Ah, that boat!... You were my friend, then!" he added suddenly,
with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she
answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach.
"Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen. And here in Cairo----"
"Yes, here in Cairo," he interrupted triumphantly, "in the face of
those eyes and tongues--I saw that red-headed dog of an Englishman
looking his anger at you! But you smiled on me before them
all--those fools, those tyrannic fools----"
"But you mustn't abuse my other friends! They were only--stupid!"
"Stupid as their blood brother, the ox!... But they are not in the
picture now--those other friends!" Disagreeably he laughed. "And you
do not grieve for them--no? The world has not touched you? There is
no one out there,"--he made a gesture over the guarding walls--"no
one who holds a fragment of your thought, of your heart in his
hands?"
She looked at him as if puzzled, then burst into a bubbling laugh.
"Why, of course not! I've just had a nice time with people. There
has never been a bit of sentiment about it!"
"Not on your side," he said meaningly, and because this was hitting
the truth smartly on the head she looked past him in some confusion.
"Oh--boys!" she said with a deprecating little laugh. "I've never
listened to them."
He leaned back in his chair, feeling for his cigarette case, and
the contentment of his look deepened. "You have been a child, asleep
to life," he murmured complacently. "I told you you were a
princess--let us say a sleeping princess waiting for the prince,
like that old fairy tale of the English." He was looking at his
cigarette as he tapped it on the arm of his chair, and slowly struck
a light, then, after the first breath, "But do you not hear his
footsteps in your sleep?" he added, and gave her a glance from the
corner of his eyes.
She looked up and then down; she stared out into the sun-flooded
garden and laughed softly. "Even princesses dream," she demurely
acknowledged, and thought the line and her fleet, meaning glance
went very well with this mad opera-bouffe which fate was forcing her
to play.
Kerissen seemed to think that went very well, too, for his flashing
teeth acknowledged his pleasure in her aptness; then his smile faded
and she felt him studying her over his cigarette, studying her
averted gaze, the bright color in her cheeks, the curves of her
lips, and he was puzzled and perturbed by the sweet, baffling beauty
of her. A wild elation began to swell his heart. His eyes glowed,
his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture
of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were
paying toward his personality alone. Wary as he was, cynical of
subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard. His monstrous vanity
whispered eager flattery in his ears.
And still he continued to stare at her, finding her unbelievably
lovely. "My grandfather would call you an _houri_ from paradise,"
he told her, the warmth of admiration deepening in his eyes.
"And your grandfather's grandson knows that I am only an _houri_
from America!... But that _is_ paradise for _houris_!"
"And not for men, no!... Sometimes I have wished that those English
would restore in me that young belief in the heaven of the Prophet,"
he continued, smiling, "and now that wish is granted. It is here,
that paradise," and his smile, flashing about the lonely garden,
came to dwell again upon the girl before him.
She laughed. "But does one _houri_ make a paradise?" she bantered,
while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till
she thought his ears would hear it. "We have a proverb--one swallow
does not make a summer."
"_Cela dépend_--that depends upon the _houri_.... When _you_ are
that one it is paradise indeed." He leaned toward her, speaking
softly, but with a voice that thrilled more and more in its own
eloquence.
She was the Rose of Desire, he reminded her, and beside her all
other flowers drooped in envy. She was as lovely as young Dawn to
the eyes of men. She was the ravishing embodiment of gaiety and
youth and delight. He quoted from the poets, not from his own
Oriental poets, but snatches from Campion and Wilde, vowing that
"There was a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow,"
and adding, with points of fire dancing in his heavy lidded eyes,
"Her neck is like white melilote,
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,"
and went on to add praise to praise and extravagance to
extravagance, till a sudden little imp of mirth caught Arlee by the
throat, hysterically choking her. "I shall never like praise or
poetry or--or men again," she thought, struggling between wild
laughter and hot disgust, while aloud she mocked, "Ah, you know too
much poetry, Captain Kerissen! I do not recognize myself at all! You
are laughing at me!"
"Laughing at you?... I am worshipping you," he said tensely, his
eyes on hers, and the fierce words shattered her light defenses to
confusion.
Silence gripped her. She tried to meet his look and smile in mock
reproof, but her eyes fled away affrighted, so full of desperate,
passionate things was the dark gaze they touched. She gripped her
cold little hands in her lap and looked out beyond the lebbek's
shade into the vivid garden. The hot sunshine lay orange on the
white-sanded paths; the shadows were purple and indigo. A little
lizard had come out from a crack in a stone and was sunning himself,
while one bright eye upon them, fixed, motionless, irridescent,
warned him of their least stir. She envied him the safety of his
crack.... She herself must meet this crisis--must turn this tide....
"It is--so soon," she faltered.
"Soon?" He had risen and was standing over her. "Soon? I was with
you on the boat--I walked by your side--I danced with you and held
you against my heart. And here in Cairo I walked and talked with
you.... And now for three days you have been under my roof, eating
at the table with me, alone within these walls, and you call it
soon! Truly, you are beyond belief! _Soon!_"
"But soon--for _me_!" she interrupted swiftly, and sprang to her
feet to face him with eyes and lips that smiled without a trace of
fear. Only her cheeks were no longer crimson but white as chalk.
"Too soon--for me to be sure--how _I_ feel! I hadn't realized--I
hadn't known--Oh, you mustn't hurry me! You mustn't hurry me!" She
broke off in a confusion he might well misconstrue, and moved
nervously away, her back to him.
He stood staring after her, a man not in two minds but in three and
four. Her broken words--her smiles--her emotion--these might well
arouse the most flattering surmise, and his vanity and his curiosity
were stirred to swift delight. He broke into a storm of words, of
protestations, of eager persuasion and honied flattery, drawing
nearer and nearer to her, while she slipped continually away from
him.
"You mustn't hurry me," she echoed defensively. "I am not like
you--you Southerners. I----"
"You are asleep--I have told you that you are that sleeping
princess," he broke in, and following after as she turned away from
him, he put a quick arm about her, and bending over her, tried to
turn her about toward him. "Do you know how that little sleeping
princess was awakened by her prince?" he murmured fatuously,
bending closer.
The hat saved her, that coquettish little hat with its jealously
guarding brim which bent obstinately lower and lower between them.
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 passion.
"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 naïveté, "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 assenting
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 rôle 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 substituted 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!