AT BAY
Voices sounded below; footsteps hurried; a door slammed. Then feet
upon the stairs, and a hand at the door. Arlee struggled to her feet
in sudden terror; the candle was out and the room was in darkness.
Outside a gale was blowing. The door opened, but the figure which
hurried in was not the one her fright anticipated.
It was the old woman again, bustling with haste. She brought more
candles for the table, and then a tray with a bottle and glasses and
dishes covered with napkins. Then she bestowed her attention to
Arlee, bringing her a mirror and a comb from the hamper she had left
upon the floor, and a cloth thick with powder. Then Arlee was sure.
She stood rigid a moment, listening to that low buzz of voices from
below, then desperately she shook out her tangled hair and combed it
back from her hot face. It was still damp from the water that had
been dashed upon her, and as she knotted it swiftly, soft strands of
it broke away and hung in wet, childish tendrils. She brushed some
powder on her face; she bit her bloodless lips, and stared into the
glass, to see a wan and big-eyed girl staring back affrighted.
Then the door opened, and desperately calling on her courage, Arlee
heard the Captain speaking her name and saw his smiling face
advancing through the shadows.
"A thousand greetings, Mademoiselle. Ah, I am glad to see you." A
strained emotion quivered through the false assurance of his tone.
She stood very straight and tense before him, a childishly small
figure there in the dusk, the blowing candles making strange play of
light and shadow over her. Steadily she answered, "And I am very
glad to see you, Captain Kerissen."
"And I am glad that you are glad." But his ear had caught the
hardness of her voice, for answering irony was in his. Some devil of
delay and disappointment seemed to enter into him, for his face, as
she saw it now in his advancing, struck fright into her. The four
fingers of his right hand were wrapped in a bandage and he extended
his left to her, murmuring an apology. "A slight accident, you see."
"There is so much I do not see that I do not feel like shaking
hands," gave back Arlee. "Captain Kerissen, this is too strange a
situation to be maintained. You must end it."
"It is a very delightful situation," he returned blandly, looking
about with dancing eyes. "To be again your host, even in so poor a
place as this old house of the Sheik--and the place has its
possibilities, Mademoiselle. It is romantic. Your window overlooks
that desert you were so anxious to see. The sunsets----"
"Captain Kerissen, I must say that you use a very strange way to
keep me your guest!"
"I might respond that any way was justifiable so that it kept you a
guest.... But you wrong me. Did I not bring you safely out from that
quarantine, as you besought me?" His smile was mockery itself.
"But you did not bring me to my friends. I do not like your sending
me here, without explanation," she returned, trying to be very wise
and speak quietly and not rouse him to anger. "We passed a city
where the American flags were flying over a house, and I could have
gone there."
"I am sorry you do not care for my hospitality. I did not know that
I was displeasing to you."
"It is those ways that are displeasing to me. I----"
"Then you shall change them," he laughed. "That will give me
pleasure.... But I did not come in the dead of this night, half sick
and fatigued, to find such welcome. Come, you must smile a little
and sit down at the table with me. Here are delicacies I sent from
Cairo."
Smilingly he seated himself at the divan by the table and lifted the
covers from the plates, nodded satisfaction at the food, and began
to help himself, while she stood there, motionless.
Without looking up, "Will you not help me to the Apollinaris,
Mademoiselle?" he suggested. "My right hand, you see, is not as it
should be. There is a bottle opener on the tray."
Feeling a fool, but unwilling to provoke a crisis, Arlee tugged at
the cork and poured him a glass of the sparkling water and then a
glass for herself, which she thirstily drank. "How did you hurt your
hand?" it occurred to her to say.
"By playing with fire--the single pastime of entertainment!" He
spoke gaily, but his lips twitched. "But will you not sit down and
join me? This caviar I recommend."
"I do not care to eat."
"No?" He finished his sandwich and drained his glass, talking
banteringly the while to her. She did not answer. Something told her
that the time of explanation between them was coming fast; he had
ceased to play with his good fortune, ceased to feel he could afford
to wait and look and fancy. He had come urgent, in the dead of
night. His mood was teasing, mocking, but imperative.... Slowly she
moved toward the unlatched door.
Alertly he was before her; the bolts shot home. "Ah, pardon, but I
was negligent! We might be interrupted--and also," he laughed, as if
deprecatingly, "I have foolish fears that you are so dream-like that
you will vanish like a dream without those earthly bars. Locks are
for treasures.... And now where is that welcome for me? I came in
that door on fire to see you, and your eyes froze me. I came to
love--you made me mock. Shall we begin again? Will you be nice now,
little one, be kind and sweet----"
"Captain Kerissen, you make it impossible for me to like you at all!
Why do you treat me like this? You shut me in this house like a
prisoner. If you--if you care for me at all," stammered Arlee, "you
would not treat me so!"
"And how, then, would I treat you?" he inquired slowly.
"You would--you would take me to my own people and give me back my
independence, my dignity. Then there would be honor in your--your
courtship. I----"
"Would you come back to me?"
"I----"
The lie choked her. And the passion of anger which had flared in her
that afternoon sprang up in flame again; the candlelight showed the
hot blood in her cheeks. "I shall not come to you if you keep me
here!" she gave back fearlessly.
"But here I can come to you. And the preliminaries are always
stupid--I have no desire to reënact them. I am well content with
where we have arrived. Be content, also."
She stared back at his smiling face. And all she thought was, "Shall
I defy him now, or try to hold him off a little longer?" She had
ceased to feel afraid; her blood was on fire; it was battle now
between them; perhaps a battle of the wits a little longer, then----
"In America men do not make love by force," she flung at him. "You
are mad, Captain Kerissen! You will be sorry if you go on like this.
If you wish to marry me you must give me the freedom of choice. You
must give me time. I must have a minister of my own faith. Do you
think I will submit to this? You make me hate you!"
"Hate is often love with a mask," he laughed, his eyes fixed on the
spirited, flushed face, the flashing eyes, the defiant mouth. "And
do not quote your America to me. You are done with America."
"You say that? You forget who I am! My brother--I tell you my
brother will----"
"Do I not know the risks?" His eyes narrowed. "But your brother will
ask in vain. He will not see you--until we reappear as husband and
wife. I will take you to the Continent, then I will give you
everything a woman wants, luxury and jewels--the pearls of my
ancestors I will hang on you. These have no woman of mine worn. You
shall be my adored, my dearest---- Oh, you must not turn from me," he
pleaded, his voice sinking softer and softer as he stole closer to
her. "You know that I am mad for you. You have bewitched me, little
Rose, you have made me strong and weak in a breath. I am clay in
your hands. Be sweet, be kind, be wife to me----" His hot hand
gripped her arm. He bent over her, and she sprang back, her hands
flung out before her.
"Oh, wait!" she cried beseechingly. "Wait--please wait."
"Wait? I have waited too long!" His voice was a snarl now. The mask
of indolent mockery was gone; his face was stamped with cruelty and
greed. "_Nom d'un nom_, I am through with this waiting!"
She sprang back before his approach, then whirled about to face him,
trying to beat him back with words, with reason, with appeal.
Insanely he laughed and clutched at her as she flew past his
outstretched arms; in the corner he pinioned her against the wall
and gripped her to him.
Terror gave her the strength of two--and his hand was bandaged.
Desperately she attacked it, and as his laughter changed to curses,
she wrenched free once more and flew across the room. With both
hands she seized the candles and flung them into the pillowed divan;
holding the last two to the draperies. Like magic the little flames
zigzagged up the cotton hangings.
He threw himself upon the fire, dragging down the hangings, beating
on the cushions, but the corner was ablaze. Overhead the flames
seized cracklingly on the dry wood and darted little red tongues
over the dry surface and a scarlet snake ran out over the carved
ceiling.
In utter wildness Arlee had carried the last candle to the open
hamper and the garments there caught instant fire. She was oblivious
of the sparks falling about her, oblivious of the increasing peril.
When Kerissen ran to the door, tearing open the bolts, furiously
cursing her, she gave him back the ghost of his earlier mocking
laughter and threatened him with a blazing cloth as he turned to
drag her from the room.
But the fire reached her fingers and she flung the cloth at him, to
have him trample it under foot as he sprang toward her again.
"Would you be burned--be marred?" he shouted at her. "You are mad,
you----"
Behind him the door opened. Behind him a tall figure appeared
through the thickening smoke. She saw a face she knew; a voice she
knew cried out her name:
"Arlee!"
"Oh, here!" she cried and flung herself toward him.
"Not unless you want another?" said Billy B. Hill to the Captain,
turning his gun suggestively.
One tense instant the three faced each other in that flaming room,
then with a sound of impotent fury, Kerissen turned and darted out
the door. But as Billy turned to follow, his hand on Arlee's, there
was a sound of sliding bolts.
"Burn, burn, then! Burn together!" called a hoarse voice through the
wood.
Hill flung himself against the door; it was unyielding. On the other
side the taunts continued. He ran to the window, catching up the
little table as he ran, and rained a fury of blows with the table
against the close-carved screen. The wood splintered and broke; he
wrenched a side away, and dropping his gun in his pocket he crashed
through the hole and hung on the outside by his hands.
"Climb out on my shoulders," he commanded, and Arlee climbed--how,
she never knew. For one instant she had an impression of hanging out
over an abyss with fire crackling in her face; the next instant the
soles of her feet were smarting and her eyes still seemed to see
stars.
There was a run, stumbling, with Billy's hand sustaining her, and
then she was on a camel, clutching the saddle as the beast rose
swiftly in response to urgent whacks, and beside her Billy was on
another. Some one on foot goaded the beasts into a startled run, and
behind them yells and screeches were growing louder and louder.
Over her lurching shoulder she had one last glimpse of a burning
building and saw flames pouring from the roof, and the room where
she had been an open furnace, and then she turned her face toward
the dark ahead.
"Hang tight," Billy was calling to her, and she saw him lean over
and lash both camels into furious speed. "Some one is riding after,"
and then he turned and shot his gun warningly into the air.
The yells behind them stopped. But after some moments they heard a
camel snarl, and knew that some one was still back there in the
darkness, hanging on their trail. So they rode hard ahead, into the
enveloping night, over the rolling dunes, with the wind leaping and
tearing and hurling the sand in their faces, as if the very elements
were fighting against them.
It was a strange chase and a hot one, pounding on and on, racked
with the wild, lurching flight, deeper and deeper into the
yellow-gray night that welcomed them with more strident blasts and
more stinging particles of sand.
"It's a storm," Billy shouted at her, raising his voice above the
wind. "It's been blowing up this way for an hour now--they won't
follow long in the face of it. Can you hang on a little longer?"
"Forever," she cried back, gripping the pommel tight and bending her
head before the whirling particles. There was sand in her hair, sand
on her lashes and in her eyes, sand on her face and down her neck,
and sand in her mouth when she wet her lips, but she heard herself
laughing in the night.
"By and by we'll get off," he called back, and by and by when the
hot, stifling, stinging, choking, whirling gale was too blinding to
be borne, he checked the camels in one of the hollows of the desert
dunes from which the wind was skimming ammunition for its peppery
assaults, and the beasts knelt with a haste that spoke of gladness.
"It's the backbone of it now; cover your head and lie down," Billy
commanded, and Arlee covered it with what he thrust into her
hands--his overcoat, she found--and tucked herself down against him
as he crouched beside the camels.
"I should think--it was--the backbone," she gasped, unheard, into
her muffling coat. For the wind howled now like a rampaging demon;
it tore at them in hot anger; it dragged at the coat about her head,
and when her clutch resisted, it flung the sand over and over her
till she lay half buried and choking. And then, very slowly and
sulkily, it retreated, blowing fainter and fainter, but slipping
back for a last spiteful gust whenever she thought it finally gone,
but at last her head came out from its burrow, and she began
cautiously to wipe the sand crust off her face and lashes.
"In your eyes?" said a sympathetic voice.
In the darkness beside her Billy Hill was sitting up, digging at his
countenance.
"Not now--I've cried--that all gone," she panted back.
He chuckled. "I'll try it--swearing's no use."
She sat up suddenly. "Are they coming?"
"Not a bit. No use, if they did. You're safe now."
"Oh, my _soul_!" She drew a long, long breath. "I can't believe
it." Then she whirled about on him. "How--why--why is it _you_?"
He looked suddenly embarrassed, but the darkness hid it from her. He
became oddly intent on brushing his clothes. "Oh, I guessed," he
said in a casual tone.
"You guessed? Don't they know? What did they think? Oh, where did
everyone think I was?"
He told her, dwelling upon the misleading details; the hasty message
of farewell from the station, the directions about luggage, the
money to pay the hotel bill. "You see, his wits and luck were just
playing together," he said.
"Then the Evershams _are_ up the Nile?"
"Of course. They never dreamed----"
"They wouldn't." Arlee was silent. She wondered confusedly--she
wanted to ask a question--she wanted to ask two questions.
"But--but--no one else----?" she stammered.
There was a particularly large lump of sand in Billy B. Hill's
throat just then; he cleared it heavily. "Oh, yes, some one else
guessed, too," he said then. "That English friend of yours, Robert
Falconer, he and I had a regular old shooting party in the palace
last Sunday evening. If you'd been there then he would certainly
have had you out."
"So he knows." She said it a little faintly, Billy thought, as if
she was disappointed and troubled. She would know, of course, by
intuition, how the Englishman would think about a scrape of that
sort.
"But he doesn't know now," he said eagerly. "He is sure you are all
right in Alexandria, because the Evershams received another fake
telegram from you from Alexandria. The Captain was stalling them
along, apparently, keeping everything under cover as long as
possible. And when Falconer heard about that, his suspicions were
over. He thought we'd made fools of ourselves in going to the
palace."
She was silent. Looking at her, after a while, Billy saw her staring
out obliviously into the darkness; her hair was hanging all about
her.
His glance seemed to recall her thoughts. She started and then
brushed back her hair; the sand fell from it and she took hold of
one soft strand. "Look out, I'm going to shake this!" she warned,
and he half shut his eyes and underneath the lids he saw her shaking
her head as vigorously as a little terrier after a bath.
"Isn't it awful?" she appealed.
"I could scratch a match on my face," he confirmed.
"But tell me," she began again, "how did you know I was in that
palace? And I must tell you how I happened to go and how I was kept
there."
"You were told there was a quarantine, weren't you?" Billy supplied,
as she hesitated.
Her astonishment found quick speech. "Why, how did you know _that_?"
"The Baroff told me--that Viennese girl who came into your room."
"Why, you know _everything_! How did you?"
"Oh, I carried her over a wall, thinking it was you."
"But how could you think it was _I_? And what were you doing at the
wall? I don't see how----"
"Oh, one of the palace maids gave me a message in Arabic and I
thought it was from you. You see, I suspected--I had seen you drive
off in that motor----"
"But how could the maid bring you a message? Where were you? Where
did she see you?"
"I was painting out in front of the palace." Billy sounded more and
more casual.
"You said you were an engineer," said Arlee. His heart jumped. At
least she had remembered that!
"So I am--the painting was just a joke."
"And you happened there," she began, wondering, and after he had
opened his mouth to correct her, he closed it silently again.
Gratitude was an unwieldy bond. He did not want to burden her with
obligation. And he suspected, with a rankling sort of pang, that he
was not the rescuer she had expected. So he made as light as
possible of his entrance into the affair, telling her nothing at all
of his first uneasiness and his interview with the one-eyed man
which had confirmed his suspicions against the Captain's character,
and the masquerade he had adopted so he could hang about the palace.
Instead he let her think him there by chance; he ascribed the
delivery of Fritzi's message to sheer miracle, and his presence
under the walls that night to wanton adventure, with only a
half-thought that she was involved.
Stoutly he dwelt upon Falconer's part in the attack the next night,
and upon the entire reasonableness of his abandonment of the trail.
He put it down to his own mulishness that he had hung on and had
learned through the little boy of her removal from the palace.
He interrupted himself then with questions, and she told him of her
strange trip down the Nile in the _dahabiyeh_, under guard of the
old woman and the Nubian. "But how did you come?" she demanded.
"Well, I just swung on to the same train he was in," said Billy.
"And I got out at Assiout because he'd bought a ticket there, but I
couldn't see a thing of him in the darkness and confusion of the
station, and I had a horrid feeling that he'd gone somewhere else,
the Lord knew where, to you. But the Imp--that's the little Arab boy
who adopted me and my cause--went racing up and down, and he got a
glimpse of the Captain tearing off on a horse and behind him a man
loping along with a bundle on a donkey, and the Imp raced behind him
and yelled he'd dropped something. The man went back to look, and
the Imp ran alongside him, asking him for work as a donkey boy. The
fellow shook him off, but that had delayed him, and though we lost
the horseman we kept the donkey-man in sight and followed him on to
the village. I reconnoitered while the Imp stole these two
camels--jolly good ones they are--and while I was trying to make out
where you were, for there were lights in several windows, I suddenly
heard your voice and then I saw a glare of fire. Well, my revolver
was a passport.... Now, how about that fire? What started it?"
"I did; he--he was trying to make love to me," she answered
breathlessly, "and I just got to the candles."
"Are you burned at all? Truthfully now? I never stopped to ask."
"If I am, I don't know it," she laughed tremulously. Then, "Isn't
this _crazy_!" she burst forth with.
"It's--it's off the beaten track," Billy B. Hill admitted. "It's a
jump back into the Middle Ages." His note of laughter joined hers as
they sat staring owlishly at each other through the dark of the
after-storm.
A little longer they talked, their questions and answers flitting
back and forth over those six strange days; then, as the excitement
waned, Billy heard a sleepy little sigh and saw a small hand
covering a yawn. The girl's slender shoulders were wilting with
incalculable fatigue.
Instantly he commanded sleep, and obediently she curled down into
the little nest he prepared, pillowing her head upon his coat, and
almost instantly he heard her rhythmic breathing, slow and unhurried
as a little child. His heart swelled with a feeling for which he had
no name, as he sat there, his back against a camel, staring out into
the night, an unknown feeling in which joy was very deep and triumph
was merged into a holy thankfulness.