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Page 20
The maid indicated a pitcher of hot water in the bathroom--evidently
pipes and faucets played no part with the shining tub--and then
stepped outside, closing the door.
After an instant's hesitation, Arlee took off her hat and bathed her
face and hands, then moved slowly to the dressing table to glance at
her hair. Hesitantly she picked up the shining brush and stared at
the flourish of an unintelligible monogram upon the back. Whose
brush was this? Whose room was she in? The place, vivid, silken,
scented, was fairly breathing with occupancy.
She laid down the brush without using it, touched her hair with
absent fingers, and crossed to the windows. She looked down into a
garden, a deep tangle of a garden, presided over by a huge lebbek
tree that threw a pall of shadow upon the faintly moving flowers
beneath.
The place seemed a riot in neglect, for across the white sanded
paths thick creepers had flung their arms, and vines and climbers
were scaling the gnarled limbs of the acacia trees and covering the
high walls beyond. She was looking to the west where the rose and
gold of sunset still hung breathless on the painted air, though the
sun was hidden below the fringe of palms which rose above the wall,
and for a moment that still brilliance of the sky above the sharply
silhouetted palms made her heart quicken in forgetfulness.
And then her hands became aware of the bars she had been
unconsciously clasping, white-painted bars extending across the
window. They were of iron.
Not even here was there freedom, she thought with a throb of dread,
not even here where one faced dark gardens and blank walls and the
empty west.
* * * * *
Somehow that dinner had passed, that queer dinner in the candle
light between the silent, painted woman and the politely talkative
young man, and passed without a word from outside for the girl whose
nerves were fraying with the suspense. The old woman and the little
girl had served them with a meal which would have been judged
delicious in any European hotel and though Arlee's nerves were
tricky her young appetite was not and she ate and talked with a
determined little air of trying to dissipate the strangeness of the
situation.
And with the coffee came inspiration. She began to plan ... half
listening to the Captain's amiable efforts to entertain her with an
account of the palace, and of its history under Ismail, the Mad
Khedive, who had occupied it for some months, tearing down and
building in his feverish way, only to weary at the first hint of
completion. She was wondering why in the world the inspiration had
not arrived at once. Perhaps something in this fatalistic air, this
stupid acceptance of authority had numbed her.
With alacrity she accepted the Captain's suggestion of a stroll in
the garden, and was relieved when the silent sister did not rise to
accompany them, but remained in the candle-light with her coffee and
cigarette. She found the woman's lightly mocking, watchful eyes, the
enigmatic smile upon the carmined lips, increasingly hard to bear.
That woman didn't like her--she had failed, somehow, to propitiate
her hostile curiosities.
Back through the old empty rooms of the past, the Captain led her,
and passing by the screened alcove from which Arlee had looked down
into the ancient banquet hall he came to a small dark painted door
which he unlocked. The door opened upon a flight of worn and narrow
stone steps descending into the garden.
* * * * *
It had been night in the palace of darkened windows but in the
garden it was yet day, although the rose and gold of sunset had
faded to paling pinks and translucent ambers and in the east the
stars were shining in the deepening blue. It was the same garden on
which her windows opened; Arlee recognized the huge lebbek tree in
the center, the row of acacias, and the palms against the farthest
wall. It was a very old garden. Those trees must have seen many,
many years, she thought, and felt again that sense of vague
oppression and melancholy which the lonely rooms of the palace had
given her; that row of acacias which cast such crooked shadows over
the path had been planted by very long-ago hands.
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