THE BETTER MAN
Down in the court of Rameses, Lady Claire and Hill were straying. A
most opportune old bachelor, passing with a party of acquaintances,
had diverted even Emma Falconer from her dragoning, and the young
English girl and her American escort were left for the time to their
own devices.
Not much was said. Claire, who had been fitfully gay all afternoon,
grew still as a church mouse now as they paced back and forth in the
shadows, stealing a slant glance from time to time at Billy's set
and silent face. She wondered a little at his absorption. But
chiefly she was thinking that she had never seen him look so
handsome ... with his brows knitted and his clear-cut lips pressed
sharply together ... but the boy of him somehow kept by that wilful
lock of black hair over his forehead.
To Billy it seemed that the bitterest drop of the cup was at his
lips. Those two--upon the pylon--were they never coming down? He was
waiting for them in every nerve, and yet he shrank from the look he
might read upon their faces. He thought, very grimly, that this
could mean but one thing, and that thing was the end forever and
ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most
desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of
talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could
have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his
heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements of
torture which civilization imposes.
But the game had to be played. He was no quitter, he told himself
fiercely; he could stand up and take his punishment like a man. She
was not for him. He had loved her from the first, he had loved her
so that he had been clairvoyant to her peril, he had risked his neck
for her a dozen times and snatched her from a life that was a
death-in-life--and yet she was not for him. She was for a man who
had not believed in her danger, had not bestirred himself.... Black,
seething bitterness was boiling in Billy B. Hill. Darkly, through a
fog, he heard the outer man replying to some speech from the girl
beside him.
He understood, he told himself in a burst of despairing anguish, how
Kerissen could have plotted for her. Almost he longed to be a
scrupleless Oriental and carry her off across his saddle bow.... And
then he brought himself up short.
Was that all she meant to him, he asked himself with the sweat of
pain on his forehead beneath that black lock which was finding such
favor in Lady Claire's eyes--was that all she meant to him?--a prize
to be won? One man had tried to steal her; he had wished to _earn_
her--but she was a gift beyond all price and the giving lay in her
own heart alone.... And if Falconer was the man for her, then at
least he, Billy B. Hill, was man enough to stand up and be glad for
her and be humbly grateful to the end of his days that he had been
able to save her ... and give her her happiness. For it was really
he who had given it to her. And in that thought Billy Hill's young
heart expanded, and his soul stretched itself to such unwonted
heights that it seemed to push among the stars.
* * * * *
"It is an unforgettable night," said the girl in the rose cloak.
He thought that was just the word for it, and a wryly humorous glint
was in the look he gave her. And he thought that she, too, was
playing the game mighty stanchly, and had been playing it bravely
these three days, since her conquering little rival had made her
reappearance. His heart warmed toward her in understanding and
compassion. They were comrades in affliction. He was not the only
one in the world who was not getting the heart's desire.
Aloud he answered, "And the last night for me."
Lady Claire looked up quickly. Her voice showed her struck with
sudden surprise. "You are going--so soon?"
"To-morrow."
"To Assouan?" Odd sharpness edged the question.
He waited a perceptible moment, though his resolution had been
taken. "Back to Cairo."
"Oh ... How long shall you be there?"
"Just till I get sailings. It's time for me to be off. I'm really a
working person, you know, not a playing one."
"You make bridges--and dams--and things, don't you?" she questioned
vaguely.
"Bridges--and dams--and things."
"Why don't you wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally
after another pause. "It's so _much_ more attractive here than
Cairo."
"I'd like to." He thought of next Friday--and Arlee's return--and
the masked ball. For a moment temptation urged. Then he threw back
his head with a gesture of decision. "But I can't. It's impossible."
Now Lady Claire did not know that he was thinking of next
Friday--and Arlee's return--and the masked ball. She only knew that
he spoke with a curious fierceness, and that his eyes were very
bright. And something in the girl, something strange and
acknowledged that had been so fitfully gay and light these three
days, quickened in mysterious excitement.
"Nothing is impossible," she gave back, "to a _man_!"
Billy thought she was resenting the conventions of the restricted
sex. She could not make any open advance toward Falconer while he,
as man, could make all the open advances to Arlee he was willing
to--but in this case his hands were tied. A man cannot inflict
himself upon a girl who may not feel herself free to reject him. He
laughed, with sorry ruefulness.
"There's a whole lot," he observed, "that is impossible to a man who
tries to be one," and then, oblivious of any construction she might
choose to put upon this cryptic utterance, he strolled moodily on,
in brooding silence.
After a pause, "Of course," said Lady Claire in so gentle a little
voice that it seemed to glide undisturbingly among his silent
meditations, "of course, a man has his--pride."
"I hope so," said the young man briefly. He understood her to be
probing for his reason for abandoning the chase; he understood that
for her own sake she would like to see him successful with Arlee,
and he was queerly sorry to be failing to help her there. But he had
done all that he could....
The girl spoke again, her face straight ahead, her shadowy eyes
staring out into the moonlight. "Is it--money?" she said in the same
little breath of a voice.
"Money!" Billy threw back the words in surprise, half contemptuous,
"Oh, Lord, no, it's not _money_! I haven't much of it _now_, but I'm
going to make a bunch of the stuff--if I want to." He spoke with
naïve and amazing confidence which somehow struck astounded belief
into the listener. "There's enough of it there, waiting to be
made--no, it's not money--though perhaps one might well think it
ought to be. I suppose my work might strike a girl as hard for her,"
he went on, considering aloud these problems of existence, "for it's
here to-day and there to-morrow--now doing a building in a roaring
city and now damming up some reservoir deep in the mountains--but it
always seemed to me that the girl who would like me would like that,
too. It's seeing so much of life--and such real life! Oh, no," he
said, and though a trace of doubt had struck into his voice, "that
in itself wouldn't be what I'd call impossible--not for the right
girl."
"But your work--would it always be in America?" said Lady Claire.
"Oh, always. It has to be, of course."
"Oh.... And--and--you--have to have--that work?"
"Why, of course, I have to have it!" Billy was bewildered, but
entirely positive. "That's _my_ work--the thing I'm made to do. _I_
couldn't earn my salt selling apartment houses."
"Oh, no, no," the girl hurriedly agreed.
A long, long silence followed, a silence in which he was entirely
oblivious to her imaginings. The moonlight lay heavy as dreams about
them; her thoughts went darting to and fro like fluttering
swallows.... She felt herself a stranger to herself.... She looked
up at him with a sudden deer-like lift of her head, and then looked
swiftly away.
"Don't go," she said in a quick, low voice. "Don't go--yet. Even
things that look impossible--can be made to come right."
He understood that she was pleading with him, partly for the sake of
her own chance with Falconer, but the sympathy flicked him on the
raw. He was sorry for her, sorry for the queer, strained look in her
face, sorry for the voice so full of feeling, but he couldn't do
anything to help her.
In silence he shook his head and was astounded at the look of sudden
proud anger she darted at him.
"You're a mighty real friend to take such an interest in my luck,"
he said quickly, with warm liking in his voice, "and I only wish you
could play fairy godmother and give me my wish--but you can't, Lady
Claire, and apparently _she_ won't, and that is the end of the
matter. I have to take off my hat to the Better Man."
Lady Claire did not gasp or stammer or question. She did none of the
dismayedly enlightening things into which a lesser poise might have
tottered. After an inconsiderable moment of silence she merely
uttered her familiar, "Oh!" and uttered it in a voice in which so
many things were blended that their elements could hardly be
perceived.
She added hurriedly, "I'm sorry if I've seemed to--to intrude into
your affairs."
"My affairs are on my sleeve," answered Billy and wondered at the
quick look she gave him.
"Oh, no--not at all," she answered a little breathlessly. "I'm sure
they haven't seemed so to me--but then I'm stupid." She stopped for
a moment of hot wonder at that stupidity. She had not believed Miss
Falconer--had thought her prejudiced ... maneuvering.... Like
lightning she reviewed the baffling interchange of sentences, then
glanced up at Billy's silent absorption. She felt queerly grateful
for his innocent density. "And perhaps _she's_ stupid, too," she
told him. "You'd better make sure. You'd better make absolutely
_sure_."
He looked down on her with sorry humor in his face. "Do I need to
make _surer_?" He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway.
"They've had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there."
"Oh, yes, they've had time!" She seemed speaking at sudden laughing
random. "But _we've_ had the same time and you see we haven't
settled anything with it--not even that you're to stay. Yes, you'd
better make _sure_, Mr. Hill."
Billy was hardly heeding. A laugh had caught his ears, a light high
laugh like the tinkle of a little silver bell through the darkness.
In the shadows behind them he made out a man and a woman arm in arm.
"Just a moment," he begged of Lady Claire. "May I leave you here a
moment? I must see those--I think I know----" Without listening to
her automatic permission he was gone.
The next moment he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the
woman. Both spun quickly about. A babble of explanation broke out.
"_Ach, mein freund, mein freund_----"
"Oh, it is Billy----"
"How _gut_ to find you here----"
"Our American Billy."
The last voice, piquantly foreign, was the voice of Fritzi Baroff.
And the first voice gutterally foreign was the voice of Frederick
von Deigen. Arm in arm, flushed, happy, sentimental, the two began
talking in a breath, thanking Billy for the letter he had sent von
Deigen which had brought them together, and apologizing for their
hasty flight--"a honeymoon upon the Nile," the German joyfully
explained.
Discreetly Billy forbore to make any discoveries as to the exact
status of their "honeymoon." The German's face was very honestly
happy, and the little dancer was brimming with restless life and
vivacity.
"It was the picture in my watch--_hein_? The picture I carry night
and day," Frederick repeated in needless explanation, and was about
to draw out the picture when Billy restrained him.
He had a favor to ask. The American girl of Kerissen's palace had
escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of
all. She was this moment in the ruins. It would be a great shock to
her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her. On the morning she
would be gone. Would Fritzi----"
"Fritzi must disappear--for the night?" said the little Viennese
smiling wisely, but with a trace of cynicism. "The little American
must not be reminded--h'm? We will go.... For you have done so much
for me, you big, strange, platonic Mr. Billy!" Dazzlingly she smiled
on him, her dark eyes quizzically provocative.
"You're not at the Grand?"
"No, not that." She named another. "You come see me, when that girl
goes--h'm?"
Billy caught the German's eyes upon him, in their depths a faint
trouble, a vague appeal. He comprehended that the infatuated young
man had engaged in the tortuous business of keeping sparks from
tinder.
"I'm gone to-morrow," he replied.
"Maybe in Vienna?" went on the dancer. "We go soon--another day or
so maybe--and then back over the water to that life I left! Oh, my
God, how happy I am to go back to it all--to dance, to sing--Oh, I
could kiss you, Mr. Billy, if it would not make you so shock!" she
added with a malicious little laugh. "You know the news--about
_him_--h'm?"
"Him?"
"Kerissen--that devil fellow. He is in Cairo with a fever--in the
hospital there. A man who come from that hospital just tells
us--just by accident he tell us. A _bad_ fever, too!" She laughed in
satisfaction. "I hope he burn good and hard up," she added, with
energetic spite, "and teach him not to act like a wild man. That man
say he got a bad hand," she added, with a shrewd glance at Billy.
The young man merely grunted. "I hope he has," he replied. "It
matches the rest of him. Good night."
"Good night--for the now--h'm, Mr. Billy?" and with a quick little
clasp of his big hand and a gay little backward look the girl was
gone into the shadows upon the arm of her jealous cavalier.
Three people were waiting at the statue foot where he had left the
English girl.
"They've come at last, Mr. Hill," Lady Claire's voice struck very
gaily upon him, "and Miss Falconer has just come to tell us we must
see the colored lights in the great court--and then go home. So
hurry!"
She turned as she spoke and put her arm suddenly through Falconer's
who was standing next her. "Come on," she lightly commanded, and
promptly led the way.
That was something like a fairy godmother! Into Billy's eyes flashed
a warm light of gladness. Some moments out of that wretched evening
should yet be his own, bitter-sweet as they were in their sharp
finality.
He turned to the blue-cloaked figure at his side. "Do you like
colored fire?" he demanded. "Won't you come and see something
else--something I've wanted to see and to have you see with me? It's
near the way out. We can meet them at the pylon."
Of course she acquiesced. That was part of the cursed restraint
between them, he was reminded, to have her accept so obediently any
point-blank request of his. But for the nonce he was glad. He wanted
those few minutes desperately.
"What is it?" she murmured.
"I'll show you," and then, as he turned from the way they had come
and followed a winding path that dipped lower and lower between the
dune-like piles of sand, "It's the Sacred Lake," he explained.
"Perhaps you've seen it in the daytime--but I've been wanting to see
it at night."
"I think I just caught the glint of it from the pylon," she
observed.
"You had time to," said Billy, trying to twinkle down at her in
friendly fashion.
She did not twinkle back. She looked as suddenly guilty as a kitten
in the cream, and Billy's heart smote him heavily. He did not speak
again till they had rounded a corner and their path had brought them
out upon the shore of the Sacred Lake.
Like a little horseshoe it circled about three sides of the ruined
temple of the goddess Mut, inky-black and motionless with the stars
looking up uncannily like drowned lights from its still waters, and
inky-black and motionless, like guardian spirits about it, sat a
hundred cat-headed women of grim granite. It was a spot of stark
loneliness and utter silence, of ancient terror and desolate
abandonment; the solitude and the blackness and the aching age smote
upon the imagination like a heavy hand upon harp strings.
"Who are--they?" Arlee spoke in a hushed voice, as if the cat-headed
women were straining their ears.
"They're mysteries," said Billy, speaking in the same low tone.
"Generally they're said to be statues of the Goddess Pasht or
Sehket--but it's a riddle why the Amen-hotep person who built this
temple to the goddess Mut should have put Sehket here. Sehket is in
the trinity of Memphis--and Mut in that of Thebes. And so some
people say that this is not Pasht at all, but Mut herself, who was
sometimes represented as lion-headed. Between a giant cat and a
lion, you know, there's not much of difference."
"I like Pasht better than Mut," said Arlee decidedly.
"There you agree with Baedecker."
"What did Pasht do?"
"She was goddess of girls," said Billy, "and young wives. She got
the girls husbands and the wives--er--their requests. Girls used to
come down here at night and make a prayer to her and cast an
offering into the waters."
"And then they had their prayer?"
"Infallibly."
"I'd like a guardian like that," said Arlee, with a sudden
mischievous wistfulness that played the dickens with Billy's forces
of reserve. "Do you think she'd grant _my_ prayer?"
"Have you one to make?" said Billy, staring very hard for safety at
the monstrous images.
"They look as if they were coming alive," he added.
The moon had come up over an obstructing roof and now flashed down
upon them; a ripple of light began to swim across the star-eyes in
the inky waters; a finger of quicksilver seemed to be playing over
the scarred faces of the granite goddesses.
"They never died," said Arlee positively. "They're just waiting
their time. Can't you see they know all about us?... They
particularly know that you are the most deceiving young man they
ever saw! Why didn't you tell me you were shot in the arm?" she
finished rapidly.
"What?... Where did you hear that?"
"Mr. Falconer enlightened me."
"I wish Falconer would keep his stories to himself," said Billy
ungratefully. "It's just a----"
"Scratch," said Arlee promptly. "That's always a hero's word for
it."
Billy turned scarlet. He felt hot back to his ears.
"And why did you tell me that you _happened_ to be painting outside
the palace?" went on the unsparing voice. "You let me think it was
all accident--and it was all you, just _you_!"
"Good Lord," groaned Billy, effecting merriment over his
discomfiture, "Is there anything else he told you?... Look here, you
shouldn't have been talking about it," he said with sudden anxiety.
Arlee smiled. "It's all over," she said. "I told him everything."
Billy's heart missed a beat, and then hurried painfully to make up
for it. He felt a curious constriction in his throat. He tried to
think of something congratulatory to say and was lamentably silent.
"Why did you deceive me so?" she continued mercilessly. "Because my
gratitude was so _obnoxious_ to you? Were you so afraid I would
insist upon flinging more upon you?"
"That's a horrid word, obnoxious," said Billy painfully.
"I thought so," thrust in a pointed voice.
"I only meant," he slowly made out, "that a sense of--of obligation
is a stupid burden--and I didn't want you to feel you had to be any
more friendly to me than your heart dictated. That is all. It was
enough for me to remember that I had once been privileged to help
you."
"You--funny--Billy B. Hill person," said the voice in a very serious
tone. Billy continued staring at the unwinking old goddess ahead of
him. "You take it all so for granted," laughed Arlee softly, "As if
it were part of any day's work! I go about like a girl in a
dream--or a girl _with_ a dream ... a dream of fear, of old palaces
and painted women and darkened windows. It comes over me at night
sometimes. And then I wake and could go down on my knees to you....
I suppose there isn't any more danger from him?" she broke off to
half-whisper quickly.
"He's sick in the Cairo hospital," Billy made haste to inform her.
"I found out by accident. I understand he has a bad fever. So I
think he'll be up to no more tricks--and I'm out the satisfaction
of a little heart-to-heart talk."
"Oh, I told you you couldn't," she cried quickly. "You would make
him too angry. He isn't just--sane."
"Then all I have to do in Egypt is to hunt up my little Imp," said
Billy. "I must see the little chap again--before I go."
He waited--uselessly as he had foretold. She said nothing, and if
the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to
meet it. He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance.
There was a pause.
Then, "However were you able to think of it all?" said Arlee in slow
wonder. "However were you able to think such an impossible thought
as my imprisonment?"
"Because I was thinking about you," said Billy. Suddenly his tongue
ran away with him. "Incessantly," he added.
She looked up at him. Unguardedly he looked down at her. No one but
a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B.
Hill's young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire. The
heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous
accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like
mad.
Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him,
"Then what made you stop?"
"Stop?" he echoed. "Stop? I've never stopped! There hasn't been a
moment----"
"There have been three days. Three--horrible--days!"
"Arlee!"
"Do you think I _like_ being snubbed and ignored
and--and--obliterated?" she brought indignantly out. "Do you think I
call that--being friends?"
"I--I wanted to leave you free--not to force your friendship----" he
stammered wildly.
"You couldn't force _mine_," said Arlee Beecher.
"But--but there was Falconer," he protested. "You had to be free
to--to have a choice----"
"A choice? Do you call that a _choice_?"
"I thought you were making it. That first night----"
"I stayed up to dance with _you_," she cried hotly. "You never came
back!"
"But the next day----"
"I _wanted_ to go. But I couldn't keep up any more. I _had_ to
rest.... And you went with Lady Claire!"
"Why, I had to! We'd planned. But when we came back, he was on deck
with you----"
"Yes, and I was waiting up--to see _you_. And you only took two
dances that night----"
"You didn't seem to want me to----"
"I never guessed you wanted them! _I_ had my pride, too. I wasn't
going to be in the way--because you'd rescued me. I thought you
didn't want me in the way!"
"Arlee--my girl--my precious girl----"
"No, I'm not. I'm not."
"Yes, you are," he said fiercely. "I don't care if you are engaged
to Falconer or not, I'm going to tell you so."
"I'm not engaged to Falconer," she protested.
He blurted in bewilderment. "Then what in the world were you doing
up there on that pylon?"
Her elfish laughter disconcerted him. "Do you think one has to get
engaged if she stays on a pylon?... We were getting _not_ engaged."
"I thought--I thought you liked him," he said bewilderedly.
"I did. I do, I mean--but not that way. He--he--Oh, I really _like_
him," she cried tremulously, "but not--we've had it all out and
everything's all over. I'm sorry--sorry--but he'll be really glad
bye and bye. For my story shocked him terribly.... And then there's
Lady Claire. He didn't like to have her down with you even when he
was up with me." She laughed softly. "Oh, I shouldn't have let him
be so friendly here but I did like him and you--you were so--so
hateful."
The moon and stars whirled giddily around him as he put his arms
about her. Like a man in a dream he drew her to him.
"I love you--love you," he said huskily over the bright maze of
hair.
"You don't!" came with muffled intensity from the hidden lips. "You
said to that man--when I was in that cave--'Nothing doing!'"
"It wasn't his affair--I hadn't a hope.... Oh, my dear, my dear,
I've been breaking my heart----"
"And I've had such a perfectly h-hateful three days," sobbed the
voice.
His arms closed tighter about her, incredible of their happiness.
"Oh, Arlee, I can't tell you--I haven't words----"
"I've had _deeds_!" she whispered.
Through his rocking mind darted a memory of her earlier speech to
him. "You said you didn't want words. Arlee--_will you_?"
She flung back her head and looked up at him, her face a flower, her
eyes like stars tangled in the bright mist of her hair.
"Billy, what's your middle name?"
"Bunker.... I can't help it, dear. They wished it on me and asked me
not to let it go. But _Bunker Hill_----!"
"It's a wonderful name, Billy! A perfectly irresistible name!" Her
eyes laughed up at him through a dazzle of tears, and prankishly
over her curving lips hovered a mischievous dimple. "It's a
name--that--I--simply--can't--do--without--Billy Bunker Hill!"
The dimple deepened then fled before its just deserts. For if ever a
dimple deserved to be caught and kissed that was the one.