DESERT MAGIC
He had meant but forty winks, but it had been dark when his eyes
closed and he opened them to the unreal half-lights of early dawn.
The sky was pearl; the sands were fawn-colored; the crest of a low
hill to the east shone as if it were living gold, and the next
instant it seemed as if a fire were kindled upon it. It was the sun
surging up into the heavens, and great waves of color, like a sea of
flame, mounted higher and higher with it.
Impulsively Billy bent over the little figure sleeping so soundly at
his side, speaking her name gently. And Arlee, waking with a start
and a catch of her breath that went to his heart, opened her eyes on
a wild splendor of morning that seemed the outer aspect of the
radiant joy within her.
They looked and looked while the east flamed like a burning Rome,
and then the glow softened and paled and dissolved in mysteries and
miracles of color, in tender rose and exquisite shell pinks, in
amethysts and violets and limpid, delicate, fair greens. All about
them the sands were turning to gold, and the rim of the distant
horizon grew clearer and clearer against the brightening blue of the
sky, like a great circling tawny sea lapping on every side the arch
of the heavens.
As they looked their hearts stirred and quickened with that
incommunicable thrill of the desert, and their eyes turned and
sought each other in silence. The gold of the sun was on Arlee's
hanging hair and the morning-blue of the sky in her eyes; her face
was flushed from sleep and a tiny tendril still clung to the pink
cheek on which she had been sleeping. Somehow that inconsequent
small tendril roused in Billy a thrill of absurd tenderness and
delight.... She was so very small and childish, sitting there in the
Libyan desert with him, looking up at him with such adorable
simplicity.... In her eyes he seemed to see something of the wonder
and the joy in his. It was a moment of magic. It brought a lump into
his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a
strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch the sandy little
hands....
Somehow he managed not to. The moment of longing and of glamor
passed.
"It's exactly as if we'd been shipwrecked!" said Arlee, looking
about with an air of childish delight.
"On a very large island," he smiled back, and felt a furtive pain
mingling with his joy. He was just her rescuer to her, of course;
she accepted him simply as a heaven-dropped deliverer; her thoughts
had not been going out to him in those long days as his had gone to
her.... Decisively he jumped to his feet and said breakfast. Where
was it? What was to be done?
Directions were vague. They had come south on the edge of the
desert, and the Nile lay somewhere to the east of them, and to the
east, therefore lay breakfast and trains and telegraph lines and all
the outposts of civilization.
To the east they rode then, straight toward the tinted dawn, and as
they went they laughed out at each other on their strange mounts
like two children on a holiday. Their spirits lifted with the beauty
of the morning, and with that strange primitive exhilaration of the
desert, that wild joy in vast, lonely reaches, in far horizons and
illimitable space. The air intoxicated them; the leaping light and
the free winds fired them, and with laughing shouts and challenges
they urged their camels forward in a wild race that sent the desert
hares scattering to right and left. Like runaways they tore over the
level wastes and through the rolling dunes, and at last, spent and
breathless, they pulled back into a walk their excited beasts that
squealed and tossed their tasseled heads.
Their eyes met in a gaiety of the spirit that no words could
express. When Arlee spoke she merely cried out, "I've read the camel
had four paces, but mine has forty-four," and Billy gave back, "And
forty-three are sudden death!" and their ringing laughter made a
worried little jackal draw back his cautious nose into his rocky
lair.
They were in broken ground now, more and more rocky, leading through
the low hills ahead of them, and great clumps of grayish _mit minan_
and bright green hyssop dotted the amber of the sands. Here and
there the fork-like helga showed its purple blossom, and sometimes
a scarlet ice-plant gleamed at them from a rocky crack. Across their
path two great butterflies strayed, as gold and jeweled as the day.
High overhead, black against the stainless blue, hung a far hawk.
At last the way entered a narrow defile among the rocky hills, and a
sharp curve led them finally out upon the other side, looking down
into green fields, as straight and trim as a checker board in their
varying tints, and off over the far Nile. The fertile lands were
wide here, and fed with broad canals that offered the surprise of
boats' white wings between the fields of grain. Not far ahead,
before the desert sands reached that magic green rose a group of
palms, and near them some mud houses and a pigeon tower.
"Breakfast," said Billy triumphantly, and gaily they rode down on
the sleeping village.
* * * * *
Back toward the Libyan hills runs the canal El-Souhagich, and as it
curves to the north a reach of sand sweeps down from the higher
ground, interrupting the succession of green fields. Several jagged
rocks have tumbled from the limestone plateaus above and increased
the grateful bit of shade which the half dozen picturesque palms do
not sufficiently bestow.
Here the runaways breakfasted upon the roast pigeon, dates and
tangerines they had bought from the curious villagers, and here
Billy, his back against a rock, was smoking a meditative cigar over
the situation. Beside him, tied to a palm, knelt the camels, and
before him, nibbling a last tangerine, Arlee was sitting.
"We have to rest the beasts a bit." This from Billy, suggestive of
a conscience pricking at this holiday delay. "And then----"
"Then--?" echoed Arlee cheerfully.
"Then, what in the world am I going to do with you?"
"With me?"
"Yes. It's simple enough, I suppose, getting back to the city---but
if you don't want your friends to know----"
The quick shadow in her eyes distressed him. "I _don't_," she cried
sharply. "At first--I might have made a lark out of it--but
afterwards.... No, I don't want to go explaining and explaining
forever and ever. Can't I just reappear?"
"You can reappear from Alexandria," he said. "He, himself," his tone
changed as he reluctantly brought Kerissen into the beauty of that
morning, "has arranged it very neatly for you. You can just have
been camping in the desert--and true enough that is!--with those
friends of yours whom the Evershams don't know. Only your
reappearance has to be--managed a bit."
Very carefully she tore the tangerine skin into very little bits,
her head bent over it. Then she flung the fragments far from her
with a gesture of rebellion. "I hate fibs," she said explosively.
And then, "But I hate explanations more!" She hesitated, stealing a
quick glance under her lashes at his frowning face.
"And some people," she stammered, "might--might
not--understand--they would feel that--some people would----"
"Some people are great fools, undoubtedly," Billy promptly agreed.
But back of the some people he saw Falconer in her mind, and
Falconer's instinctive distaste of all strangeness and sensation.
"I have a perfect right to keep it from--them," she went on
argumentatively, and then with an upward glance, "Haven't I?"
"Good Lord, yes! It was your adventure; it doesn't concern another
soul in this wide world."
"You know," said Arlee, locking and unlocking her fingers, "you
know, some people wouldn't take it all for granted the way--you
do.... And it was very horrid."
"It's over," said he crisply, "except I'd like to pound him to a
jelly."
"I couldn't bear to _speak_ of him before," said the girl, "but now
it seems all far away and nightmarish.... And I'd like to tell you
how it was--a little."
"You needn't."
"I know I needn't." Arlee's tone was suddenly proud. Then she melted
again. "But I want you to know. He was--he was trying to make me
care for him.... He wasn't really as dreadful as you might think
him, only just insane--about me--and utterly unscrupulous. But he
did want me to like him and so, when I found out, when Fritzi told
me I was in a trap, I tried to play his game. I _flirted_ one day in
the garden, at lunch, and made him think---- You see, I _had_ to gain
time and try to get word to people. But I hated him so I----" She
broke off, the pupils of her fixed eyes big and black with the
memory.
"You know I can't--I can't think of you--alone there," came huskily
from the young man.
"He never _dared_ to touch me--really--till last night," she said
fiercely. "He tried, but I--I held him off. Only he talked to
me--Oh, how he talked. Like a river of words.... I hate all those
words.... If ever again a man asks me to marry him I don't ever want
him to _talk_ about it. I want him just to say two words, _Will
you?_" Her laugh caught quiveringly in her throat.
It taxed all the young man's control to keep his tongue off the
echo.
"He just raved," she went on after a pause, "and I had to
listen--but last night he was horrible. I could never have got to
the candles if his hand hadn't been hurt."
"I wish I'd shot his hand off," said Billy bitterly.
"Oh! Was it you who----?"
"When we were in the palace." He told her again about the raid and
she nodded delightedly over it.
"It's so wonderful for you to have done all this," she said with
sudden shyness. "You had just met me----"
The things on Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What
he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. "You were my
countrywoman--and alone."
"So are the Evershams," said Arlee, with sudden bubbling laughter,
and then as suddenly checked herself. Her fleet glance at him was
half-scared. "You--you are very good to your countrywomen in
distress," she got out stammeringly.
Billy contemplated his cigar. It was safer.
Presently she reverted to the topic of discovery. "But about Mr.
Falconer? Are you sure his suspicions are over now?"
"Perfectly sure. Or they will be the moment he sees you. You'll have
to laugh at him if he mentions them, of course;" Billy spoke with
heartiness.
"He'd hate it," the girl said musingly. "The talk and all--about
me--Oh, after being such a fool _I'd never be the same to them_!"
she broke out passionately.
The furtive pain was bolder now; Billy felt it worming deeper and
deeper into his sorry consciousness. It mattered so much to her what
Falconer thought--so much....
"But I'll do anything you say," she said meekly, looking up at her
rescuer with those big eyes whose blueness always startled him like
unsuspected lakes. He saw then that she meant to be very grateful to
him. Somehow that deepened the pang. He didn't want that kind of
bond....
"Then you will bury even the memory of this time and never whisper a
word of it," he told her stoutly. "The talk and explanation will be
over five minutes after your return. The thing is, to manage that
return. Now the Evershams left Friday and this is Wednesday--six
days."
"Only six days," she echoed with a ghost of a sigh.
"Now let me see where were we on the sixth day? When I was on the
Nile?" He knitted his brows over it. "Why, the steamer leaves
Assiout at noon of the fifth day--that was yesterday."
"Oh! I must have passed them on the Nile," cried Arlee.
"Maragha is where they stopped last night. To-day they'll be
steaming along steadily and stop to-night at Desneh. To-morrow night
they'll be at Luxor."
"And they stay three days at Luxor?"
"The steamer does, I believe. I left the steamer there and went to
the hotel for a while and spent another while at Thebes with a
friend of mine."
"The excavator!" cried Arlee quickly.
"Then you do remember," said Billy with a direct look, "that dance
and----"
"And our talk," she finished gaily. "And your being Phi Beta Kappa.
Oh, I was properly impressed! And I didn't know then that you were a
regular Sherlock Holmes as well."
"I didn't know it either," said Billy grinning. But he knew that she
didn't know now how much of a Sherlock Holmes he had managed to be
for her.
"That seems ages ago," she declared, "and in an altogether different
world. The only real world seems to be this desert----"
"Bedouin breakfast and camel races," finished Billy. "And it's so
much of a lark for me that I can't keep my mind on the problem of
the future. But I have to get you to Luxor by to-morrow night----"
"And I can't arrive in the rags and tatters of a white silk calling
gown," mentioned Arlee cheerfully, surveying her disreputable and
most delightful disarray. "I must have trunks and a respectable
air--and a chaperon, I suppose."
"And I won't do at that. But if you get to Luxor you'll be all
right. You can go to the hotel and to-morrow night the Evershams'
boat will get in about seven in the evening."
"Did you say my trunks were sent to Cook's?"
He repeated the story of the telegram to the Evershams. Over the
arrival of the boy with money for her hotel bill she wrinkled her
brows in perplexity. "I suppose he thought there would be less
discussion about me if my bills were paid," she said finally. "But
I'd like to get that money back to him."
"I'll see he gets it--with interest," responded Billy.
"And you----?" She looked up at him with a startled, vivid blush
that stained her soft skin from throat to brow. "You must have been
to a great deal of expense----"
"Not a bit. Please don't----"
"But I must. When I get to a bank. I still have my letter of credit
with me," she said thankfully, "but it didn't do me any good in that
wretched palace. It was just paper to them. I showed it to the girl
once and tried to make her understand."
"The first station we find we'd better wire for your trunks to be
sent by express to Cook's at Luxor--or to the Grand Hotel. And then
you can take the train straight to Luxor and buy some clothes
there."
"But the train--I can't travel in this! And there would be people on
it who would talk----"
"Had we better make it to Assiout then?" said Billy doubtfully.
"Once in the city, of course, you'd be safe----"
"How far is Assiout from Luxor? Where are we now?"
"We're Alice in Wonderland about that. Somewhere about twenty-five
or thirty miles south of Assiout, I should say. It must be
nearly a hundred and twenty, as the crow flies, from Assiout to
Thebes--that's right across from Luxor, you know."
Arlee was silent a moment. She lifted a handful of shining sands and
let them run down from her fingers in fine dust. "It's such a pity,"
she mused, "when we've such a good start----"
Billy stared.
"And I never rode a camel," she went on. "I may never have such a
chance again."
"You don't mean----?"
"It would make my story a little truer, too.... And wouldn't it be
quicker?"
"Quicker? The quickest way is to go back to Assiout and catch the
middle-of-the-night express there and get to Luxor to-morrow
morning."
Arlee sighed. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she murmured
regretfully, "and now I've begun it's such a pity to stop.... And
I'm _afraid_ to go back!" she cried, "They will be out looking for
us--they are probably now on the way. And they'll shoot at you and
carry me off--Oh, do let's go on! Don't go back to that city! We can
catch the train another place. Oh, it's so much more _sensible_!"
"Sensible?" Billy repeated as if hypnotized.
"Why, of course it is. And safer. For all those people back there
must be in that tribe of the sheik whose house I was in, and they
are dangerous, dangerous. I want to get as far away from them as
possible. I'd rather ride all the way to Thebes than run the risk
of falling in their traps."
Billy was silent.
"And I'm sure the camels could make the trip in a couple of days,"
she continued, sounding assured now, and pleasantly argumentative.
"I used to read about their speed in my First Reader.... That is, if
you don't mind the trouble," she added apologetically, "and being
with me that day more?"
Billy choked. She looked entirely unconscious, and his dumfounded
gaze fell blankly away. "There isn't anything in the world I'd like
better," he said slowly, sounding reluctance in the effort not to
sound anything else, "but from your point of view--if we should
meet----"
"Only _fellaheen_ on the banks," she returned unconcernedly. "Not
half as awkward as people on trains."
"But the--the chaperonless aspect of this picnic----?"
"Oh, _that_!" She was mildly scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a
chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel....
Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing
me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast _à
deux_--What's a few meals more?"
There was truth in that--and truth in what she said about the danger
of returning to the city. They were already lingering overlong and
Billy jumped up and packed their supply of food in sudden haste. It
was folly, of course, to dream of the entire trip to Thebes on
camelback, but Girgeh was about fifty miles south, and it would be
safer and almost as near to push on there or to the next town,
wherever that was, and there get the train as to return to
Assiout....
Oh, Billy, Billy! What specious argument! And why must every bright
delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by
flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this
chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay,
random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing
but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously
been turned. Billy was Big Brother--the American Big Brother with
whom one might go safely adventuring for a day or a year.... And
suddenly Billy felt a warm gladness within him. Not even her
escapade with the unspeakable Turk had been able to shake her dear
faith in her own countrymen.... He was not man to her; he was
American. Billy waved the flag loyally in his grateful thoughts.
Aloud he said, "There's risk in trying to go back, of course. That's
what they're expecting of us. But there will be uncertainty in going
on----"
"I rather like it. It's the certainty that frightens," she gave back
eagerly. "I want the way that puts the greatest distance between me
and that man.... I don't care what else happens so he doesn't find
us."
* * * * *
It is utterly astonishing how unastonishing the most astonishing
situations become at the slightest wont.
Nothing on the face of it could have been more preposterous to Billy
B. Hill's imagination than trotting along the banks of the Nile on
a camel with a gossamer-haired girl trotting beside him, two lone
strays in a dark-skinned land, and yet after a few hours of it, it
was the most natural thing in the world!
It was all color and light and vivid, unforgettable impressions. It
was all sparkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a
world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than
that day.
Sometimes they rode low on paths between green _dhurra_ fields,
sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the
blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in
shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all
the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.
They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and
then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian
mountains across the river and the first stars pricked through the
lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest
that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms....
And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the
far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they
turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again
and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the
world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet
farther south for their tired beasts.
Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which
they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in
heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon
rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of
the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was
ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.
But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown
south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired
girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy
head on Billy's coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay
beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the
faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he
did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the
moonlit world about him--and the awe and mystery of that little bit
of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....
With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over
her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With
his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is
the hardest mattress in the world and a camel's back not the softest
pillow....