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 Saturday
morning, that same Saturday on which Arlee was essaying her daring
rôle, 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 rôle 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 façade
of the old palace and alertly interested in the little groups his
occupation transiently attracted. But these little groups were all
of passers-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 document, 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 Saturday, 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.
Nothing continued to happen.
Travelers were few. Occasionally a carriage passed; once a couple of
young Englishmen on polo ponies galloped by; once a poor native came
down the road, moving his harem--a donkey-cart load of black
shrouded women, with three half-naked children bouncing on a long
tailboard.
Several groups of veiled women on foot proceeded to the cemetery and
back again.
The one-eyed man sauntered by in vain.
In the heat of the afternoon the wide door suddenly opened and
Captain Kerissen himself appeared on his black horse. He spurred off
at a gallop, intending apparently to ride down the artist on the
way, but changed his mind at the last and dashed past, showering him
with dust from his horse's hoofs. The little donkey-boy, lolling
down the road, started to follow him, crying out for alms in the
name of Allah.
Billy stared up at the windows. Not a handkerchief there, not a
signal, not a note flung into the street! In great derision he
squirted half a tube of cerulean blue upon his canvas.
This, he reflected, was zero in detective work. It was also minus in
adventure.
But one never knows when events are upon the wing. Almost
immediately there came into the flatness of his bored existence a
victoria containing those two English ladies he had met--in the
unconventional way which characterized his meetings with ladies in
Cairo--two days before.
The recognition was mutual. The curiosity appeared upon their side.
To his horror he saw that they had stopped their carriage and were
descending.
"How interesting!" said Miss Falconer, with more cordiality than she
had shown on the previous occasion. "How very interesting! So you
are an artist--I do a little sketching myself, you know."
"You do happen in the most unexpected places," smiled Lady Claire.
The English girl looked very cool and sweet and fresh to the heated
painter. His impression of her as a nice girl and a pretty girl was
speedily reinforced, and he remembered that dark-haired girls with
gray-blue eyes under dusky lashes had been his favorite type not so
long ago ... before he had seen Arlee's fairy gold.
"We've just been driving through the old cemetery--such interesting
tombs," said the elder lady, and Lady Claire added, "I should think
you could get better views there than here."
By this time they had reached the easel and stood back of it in
observation.
Blue, intensely blue, and thickly blue was the sky that Billy had
lavished. Green and rigid were the palms. Purple was the palace.
Very black lay the shadows like planks across the orange road.
Miss Falconer looked as if she doubted her own eyes. Hurriedly she
unfolded her lorgnette.
"It--it's just blocked in," said Billy, speaking with a peculiar
diffidence.
"Quite so--quite so," murmured the lady, bending closer, as if
fascinated.
Lady Claire said nothing. Stealing a look at her, Billy saw that she
was looking it instead.
Miss Falconer tried another angle. The sight of that lorgnette had a
stiffening effect upon Billy B. Hill.
"You get it?" he said pleasantly. "You get the--ah--symphonic chord
I'm striking?"
"Chord?" said Miss Falconer. "Striking," she murmured in a peculiar
voice.
"It's all in thirds, you see," he continued.
"Thirds!" came the echo.
"Perhaps you're of the old school?" he observed.
"Really--I must be!" agreed the lady.
"Ah!" said Billy softly, commiseratingly. He cocked his head at an
angle opposite from the slant of the lorgnette and stared his own
amazing canvas out of countenance.
"Then, of course," he said, "this hardly conveys----"
"What are you?" she demanded. "Is this a--a school?"
"I?" He seemed surprised that there could be any doubt about it. "I
am a Post-Cubist."
Miss Falconer turned the lorgnette upon him. "Oh, really," she said
vaguely. "I fancy I've heard something of that--you're quite new and
radical, aren't you?"
"Oh, we're old," he said gently, "very, very old. We have returned
to Nature--but not the nature of mere academicians. We paint, not
the world of the camera, but the world of the brain. We paint, not
the thing you think you see, but the way you think you see it--its
vibrations of your inner mentality. To paint the apple ripening on
the bough one should reproduce the gentle swelling of the maturing
fruit in your perception.... Now, you see, I am not trying to
reproduce the precise carving of that door; I do not fix the wavings
of that palm. I give you the cerebellic----"
"Quite so," said Miss Falconer, dropping her lorgnette and giving
the canvas the fixity of her unobstructed gaze. "It's most
interesting," she said, a little faintly. "Are there many of you?"
"I don't know," said Billy. "We do not communicate with one another.
That always influences, you know, and it is better to work out
thought alone."
"I should think it would be." Something in her tone suggested that
the inviolated solitude of the asylum suggested itself to her as a
fitting spot. "Well, we won't interrupt you any longer. You've been
most interesting.... The sun is quite hot, isn't it?" and with one
long, lingering look at the picture, a look convinced against its
will, she went her way toward the victoria.
But Lady Claire stood still. Billy had fairly forgotten all about
her, and now as he turned suddenly from the clowning with her
chaperon, he found her gaze being transferred from his picture to
himself. It was a very steady gaze, calm-eyed and deliberate.
"I'm afraid you're making game of us!" she said, in her musical,
high-bred tones, her clear eyes disconcertingly upon him. "Aren't
you?" she gently demanded.
"That's not fair." Billy was uncomfortable and looked away in haste.
He felt a grin coming.
Perhaps he was a shade too late, for Lady Claire laughed suddenly
and with a note of curious delight.
"You're _too_ amusing!" she said. "What made you?... How did you
think of it all?... Are you just beginning?"
"Oh, I began twenty years ago," he smiled back, "but I haven't done
anything in the meantime."
Again she laughed with that ring of mischievous delight. "However
you could think of it all! I shan't tell on you--but she'll _never_
be done wondering." She turned away, her pretty face still bright
with humor, and then she turned back hesitantly toward him.
"It _is_ hot here in this sun," she said. "It _can't_ be good for
you. Shall we drive you back?"
She had lovely eyes, dark, smoky-blue under black lashes, and when
they held a gentle, half-shy, half-proud invitation, as they did
then, they were very unsettling eyes.... And it was hot on that
infernal camp stool. And there was a crick in the back of his neck
and his errand was glaringly a fool's errand....
He half rose, and as he did so the door in the palace opened a crack
and a veiled face peered furtively out. Billy sat down again.
"No, thank you," he said, "I think I'd better do a little more of
this."
In such light ways is the gate of opportunity closed and opened.
Everything that happened afterwards with such appalling
startlingness hung on that instant's decision.
For the moment he felt himself a donkey as Lady Claire turned
quietly away and the victoria rattled off with brisk finality. Then
the door opened again, and again the girl peered out, and furtively,
stealthily slipped just outside.
Billy caught up a pad and a pencil and called out a request to
sketch her, holding up some silver. Instantly she assumed a fixed
pose, with a nervous giggle behind her veil, and he came quickly
near her, pretending to be drawing. Her dark, curious eyes met his
with questioning significance, and he threw all caution aside and
plunged into his demands.
Did she want to earn money, he said quickly, in the Arabic he had
been preparing for such an encounter, and on her eager assent, he
asked if there was a foreign lady in the palace, an American.
The flash of her eyes told him that he had struck the mark before
her half-frightened words came.
His heart quickened with excitement. He might have suspected this
thing--but he had not really believed it! He asked, stammering in
his haste, "Does she want to get away?"
Again that knowing nod and the quick assent. Then the girl burst
into low-toned speech, glancing back constantly through the door she
held nearly shut behind her. Billy was forced to shake his head. It
was one thing to have picked up a little casual Arabic, and another,
and horribly different, thing to comprehend the rapid outpourings
behind that muffling veil.
Baffled, he went hurriedly on with his own questionings. Was this
lady safe? Again the nod and murmur of assent. Did she want help?
Vehement the confirmation. He repeated, with careful emphasis, "I
will reward you well for your help," and this time the direct
simplicity of her reply was entirely intelligible:
"How much?"
"One pound.... Two," he added, as she shook her head.
"Four," she demanded.
It was maddening to haggle, but it would be worse to yield.
"Two--and this," said Billy, drawing out the gold and some silver
with it.
She gave a frightened upward glance at the windows over them and
stepped closer. "I take it," she said. "Listen--" and that was all
that Billy could understand of the swift words she whispered to him.
"Slower--slower," he begged. "Once more--slower."
She frowned, and then, very slowly and distinctly, she articulated,
"_T'âla lil genaina ... 'end eltura_."
He wrote down what he thought it sounded like. "Go on."
"_Allailade_," she continued.
"That's to-night," he repeated. "What else?"
"_Assâa 'ashara_," she added hurriedly, and then, intelligible
again, "Now, quick, the money."
"Hold on, hold on." He was in despair. "Go over that again, please,"
and hastily the girl whispered the words again and he wrote down his
corrections. Then with a flourish he appeared to finish the sketch
and held out the gold and silver to her, saying, "Thank you,"
carelessly.
Quick as a flash she seized the money, leaving a little crumpled
ball of white linen in his hand, and then, apparently by lightning,
she secreted the gold, and with the silver shining in her dark palm
she came closer to him, urging him for another shilling, another
shilling for having a picture made. In an undertone she demanded,
"Is it yes? Shall I say yes to the lady?"
"Yes, yes, yes," said Billy, desperately, to whatever the unknown
message might be. "Take a note to her for me?" he demanded, starting
to scribble one, but she drew back with a quick negation, and as a
sound came from the palace she slipped back through the door and was
gone like a shadow when a blind is thrown open.
Only the crumpled little ball of linen remained in Billy's hand. He
straightened it out. It was a lady's handkerchief, a dainty thing,
delicately scented. In the corners were marvels of sheer embroidery
and among the leaves he found the initial he was seeking. It was the
letter B.
As he stared down on it, that tiny, telltale initial, his face went
white under its tan and his mouth compressed till all the humor and
kindliness of it were lost in a line of stark grimness. And then he
swung on his heel and packed up his painting kit in a fury of haste,
and with one last, upturned look at those mocking windows, he was
off down the road like a shot.
There were just two things to do. The first was to discover the
message hidden in those unknown words.
The second was to do exactly as that message bade.