The Lighted Match Part 7

Von Ritz had told the truth. He was not disguised. He stood, his arms folded on his breast, towering above the Fiji Islander, possibly a quarter of an inch taller than the Bedouin. A half-amused smile lurked in his steady eyes--the smile of unwavering brows and dispa.s.sionately steady mouth-line.

The cannibal chief waved his hand. "Bright the lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men!" he declaimed, in a disguised voice; then scowled about him villainously, remembering that an affable quoting of Lord Byron is incompatible with the qualities of a man-eating savage.

The Bedouin gravely inclined his head. "_Allahu Akbar!_" he responded, in a soft voice.

Suddenly the caravan driver commenced a hurried and zigzag course across the crowded floor. The eyes of Colonel Von Ritz indolently followed.

Through a low-silled window a girl had just entered, carrying herself with the untrammeled freedom of some wild thing, erect, poised from the waist, rhythmic in motion. Her walk was like the scansion of good verse.

The Bedouin caught the grace before the ensemble of costume met his eye.

It was in harmony.

She wore a silk skirt to the ankles, and about her waist and hips was bound the yellow and red sash of the Spanish gipsy, tightly knotted, and falling at its ta.s.seled ends. Her arms were bare to the elbows, and gay with bracelets; her hair fell from her forehead and temples, dropping over her shoulders in two ribbon bound braids. A tall, gray-cowled monk, whose military bearing gave the lie to his ca.s.sock, a Spanish grandee, and a fool in motley saw her at the same moment and hurried to intercept her, but with a slide which carried him a quarter of the way across the floor the Bedouin arrived first, and before the others had come up he was drifting away with her in the tide of the dancers.

"Allah is good to me--Flamencine," whispered the camel-driver as he drew her close to avoid a careless dancer.

"Why, Flamencine?" demanded a carefully altered voice, from which, however, the music had not been eliminated.

"Don't you remember?" The Arab stole a covert, identifying glance down at the tip of one ear which showed under its masking of brown hair--an ear that looked as though it were chiseled from the pink coral of Capri. He quoted:

"'There was a gipsy maiden within the forest green, There was a gipsy maiden who shook a tambourine.

The stars of night had not the face, The woodland wind had not the grace, Of Flamencine.'"

Then the music stopped, and with its silencing came the monk, the clown, the grandee, and others.

In the insistent demand of the many the Arab had too few dances with the Spanish girl. There were Comanches, Samurai, policemen, Zulus and courtiers, who, seeing her dance, discovered that their immediate avocation was dancing with her.

Yet it wanted an hour of unmasking time when a Bedouin led a gipsy maiden from Andalusia into the deserted library, where the darkness was broken only by blazing logs on an open hearth.

When they were alone he turned to her anxiously. His voice was freighted with appeal. Her face, now unmasked, wore an expression of stunned misery.

"Dear," he asked, "how are you?"

She gazed at the flickering logs. "I should think you would know," she answered wearily. Then, with a mirthless laugh, she spread both hands toward the blaze. "I'm looking ahead--I can see it all there in the fire." Her fingers convulsively clenched themselves until blue marks showed against the pink palms.

He pushed a chair forward for her, but with a shake of her head she declined it.

"Whoever heard of a gipsy girl sitting in a leather chair?" she demanded. "It's more like--like some effete princess."

She dropped to the Persian rug and, gathering her knees between her clasped hands, sat looking into the dying blaze. "For a few brief minutes I am the gipsy girl," she added.

"And," he said, dropping cross-legged to the rug at her side, "when the caravan halts at evening, and prayers have been said facing Mecca, and the grunting camels kneel, to be unloaded, neither do we, the gipsies of the desert, sit in chairs." He swayed slightly toward her, lowering his voice to a whisper. As the soft touch of her shoulder brushed him and electrified him, his cashmere-draped arms closed around her and held her hungrily to him. The vagrant maiden of Andalusia and the caravan-driver of Africa sat gazing together at the glowing pictures in the logs as they turned slowly to ashes.

"Cara," he went on in a voice of pent-up earnestness, "we be nomads--we two. 'The scarlet of the maples can shake us like the cry of bugles going by.' Come away with me while there is time. Let us follow out our destinies where gipsy blood calls us; in the desert, the jungle, wherever you say. Let your fancy be our guide--your heart our compa.s.s.

Suppose"--he paused and, with one outstretched arm, pointed to the fire--"suppose that to be a camp-fire--what do you see in the coals?"

"I have already told you," she said wearily. "I see a throne, a life with all the confining littleness of a prison, with none of the breadth of an empire. I see the sacrifice of all I love. I see year upon year of purple desolation.... Purple is the color of mourning and royalty."

She fell silent, and he spoke slowly.

"I see the desert, many-hued, like an opal with the setting of the sun.

I see the flickering of camp-fires and the palm-fringe of an oasis. I see the tapering minarets of a mosque, and the long booths of the bazaars. I smell the scent of the perfume-seller's stall, the heavy sweetness of attar of roses.... I hear the tinkle of camel bells....

There comes a change.... I see a mountain-pa.s.s and a mule-train crawling through the dust, I see the paths that go around the world. Which of our pictures do you prefer?"

She gave a pained, low cry, and buried her face pa.s.sionately on his shoulder. "Oh, you know, you know!" she cried, in a piteous voice. "And you love me, yet you tempt me to break my parole. If I could do it and be freed of the responsibility! If a miracle could work itself!"

"Cara," he whispered, resolutely steadying himself, "don't forget the gospel according to Jonesy. You can't dam up the tributaries of the heart. Some day you must come to me. That much is immutably written. For G.o.d's sake come now while the road is still clear. Otherwise we shall grope our ways to each other, even if it be through tragedy--through h.e.l.l itself."

For a moment she gazed at him with wide eyes.

"I know it--" she whispered in a frightened voice. "I know it--and yet I must go ahead."

He rose and lifted her; then as she stood clinging to him he said: "I ask your forgiveness if I've made it harder--and one boon. Slip away with me and give me an hour with you."

"They will find me. Pagratide and Von Ritz will find me," she objected helplessly. "They won't let us be alone for long."

"Listen," he replied. "It is not too cold and the moon is brilliant. It is the last real moon for me. Come with me in my car for a while."

"You must not make love to me," she stipulated. "I am going to try to get my face properly composed--and if you make love to me, I can't.

Besides, when you make love I'm rather afraid of you. So you mustn't."

Then, with a wild spasmodic gesture, she caught the edges of his cashmere cloak and gripped them tightly in both hands as she looked up into his eyes and impetuously contradicted herself.

"Yes, please do," she appealed.

He laughed. "Destiny says I must make love to you," he a.s.serted, "and who am I to disobey Destiny?"

Outside, she insisted upon waiting by the bridge while he went for his car. So he turned and started alone to the point on the driveway just around the angle of the house, where McGuire, pursuant to previous orders, was to be waiting with the machine. It had been only an hour since Benton had slipped away from the dancers and consulted with McGuire in the shadow of the wall, instructing him explicitly in his duties. McGuire was to wait with the machine ready upon call. The lamps were not to be lighted. When Benton came, the chauffeur was to run the car to the point where a lady should enter it. He was at that point to leave, without words. It had been impressed on McGuire that utter silence was imperative. The chauffeur was then to follow in the runabout, acting as a reserve in the event of need. Both cars were to take a certain circuitous route to a point on the sh.o.r.e thirty miles distant, the runabout keeping just close enough to hold the first car in sight. McGuire had listened and understood. Yet now McGuire was missing, together with one very necessary motor-car.

As Benton stood, boiling with wrath at the miscarriage of his plans, he fancied he heard the soft m.u.f.fled song of his motor just beyond the turn where the road circled the house. He bent and held a lighted match close to the gravel. On a muddied spot he found the easily recognizable tread of his tires. The car had been there. For the sake of speed he ran to the garage near by and took a swift look at the runabout. It was waiting, and, thanks to the G.o.d of Machines, would start on compression.

He flung himself to the driver's seat and gave it the spark. Far away--about as far as the bridge, he calculated--he heard one short, cautious blast of an automobile horn.

Just before the last turn brought him to the bridge, where he should meet Cara, he noticed a man hurrying toward him, on foot, and recognized McGuire. Totally mystified, he slowed down the machine.

"Get in, you infernal blockhead," he called. "Tell me about it as we go.

I'm in a hurry."

But McGuire performed strangely. He clapped one hand to his forehead and looked at his employer out of large, wild eyes. "Am I dippy? My G.o.d! Am I dippy?" he exclaimed, repeating the question over and over in a low, trembling voice.

"Apparently you are. Get in, d.a.m.n you!" Benton ordered.

"It's weird," declared McGuire. "It's d.a.m.ned weird."

"Why, sir," he ran on, talking fast, now that the first shock was over and his tongue again loosened. "Either I've made a fool mistake, or else I'm crazier than h.e.l.l. I waited at the place you said. You--or your ghost--came and took his seat, and waved his hand. I started the car for the bridge. He didn't say a word. At the bridge I jumped out. He was you--and yet you are here--same size--same costume--same beard--even the same beads around the neck."

They had almost reached the bridge and were slowing down when Benton, scanning the road, empty in the moonlight, grasped for the first time a definite suspicion of what had happened.

"Cara!" he shouted. "Good G.o.d, where is she?"