THE SIRDAR'S BALL

Biddy, radiating joy, walked beside me with wide-open, eager eyes, taking in every detail of the historic house. She admired the immense hall, whose archways opened into dim, fragrant gardens. She was entranced with the Sudanese band, ink-black giants uniformed in white, playing wild native music in the moonlight. She wanted to stop and make friends with the Shoebill, a super-stork, apparently carved in shining metal, with a bill like an enormous slipper, eyes like the hundredth- part-of-a-second stop in a Kodak, and feet that tested each new tuft of grass on the lawn, as if it were a specimen of some hitherto undiscovered thing.

No question but she was happy! I was proud of her, and proud of myself because my love had power to give her happiness. What matter now if I were being robbed at the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, by some unknown thief? Neither he nor any one could steal Biddy.

Even Cleopatra seemed pleased to be coming to the Sirdar's ball, though gloom lay heavy upon her. She wanted to look her best. She wanted to be admired by the officers she was to meet, and to have as many partners as she could split dances for. To be admired by some one was essential to her just now, a soothing medicine to heal the smart of hurt vanity. Monny, I felt, had made herself look beautiful only because she thought that Antoun, unseen, would see her. As we entered the ballroom, her eyes were wistful, searching, yet not expecting to find. He had said that she would never see Antoun again.

I found friends in the ballroom: men I knew at home, and a few pretty women I had met in England or abroad: but there was no more than time to be received by the Aide-de-Camp, and to introduce a few officers to my three ladies, when the moment came for the formal entry of our host and hostess, the soldier-Sirdar and his graceful wife, the Royalties of the Sudan. We were presented: and I guessed at once that the Sirdar had been prepared in advance to take a special interest in Rosamond Gilder.

"Anthony has told him the whole thing, and asked his help," was my thought. From the instant of his kindly greeting for the girl, I found myself suddenly, excitedly assuming the attitude of a spectator in a theatre, on the night of a new play. I knew the plot of the play, but not how it would be presented, nor how it would work out. I saw that the Sirdar had made up his mind to a certain line of action where Monny was concerned. And by and by, when he had time to spare from his general duties as host, I heard him ask if she would like to go on the roof, where Gordon used to stand watching for the English soldiers to come.

"I will take you," he said. "And if you like to stay longer than I can stop away from our guests, I'll give you another guide."

He turned to Biddy and me. (Cleopatra was dancing with Baron Rudolph von Slatin Pasha, gorgeous in medals and stars: Brigit and I had just stopped.)

"Would you like to come, too?" the Sirdar asked.

I answered for Biddy, knowing what she would want me to say. And still the sense of being a spectator in a wonderful theatre was dreamily upon me. Stronger and stronger the impression grew, as the Sirdar led us out onto a wide loggia white with moonlight, and up a flight of stairs to a flat roof. Overhead a sky of milk was spangled with flashing stars. Beneath our eyes lay the palace gardens, where the torches of the Sudanese band glowed like transfixed fireflies, in the pale moon-rays. Palms and acacias and jewelled flower-beds, were cut out sharply in vivid colour by the lights which streamed from open windows. Beyond —past the zone of violet shadow so like a stage background—was the sheen of the river, bright as spilt mercury under the moon. And beyond again, on the other side of the Nile, the tawny flame of that desert across which came the Khalifa's fierce army. "This is where Gordon used to stand," the Sirdar stopped us near the parapet. "Only the roof was one story lower then. He climbed up here every day, till the last, to look out across the desert, saying: 'The English will come!' There's a black gardener I have, who thinks he meets him now, on moonlight nights like this, walking in the garden. It wasn't much of a garden in his day; only palms and orange trees: but a rose-bush he planted and loved is alive still. I've just asked one of my officers —one whom I particularly want you to meet, Miss Gilder—to pluck a rose from Gordon's bush and bring it to you here. He knows where to find us; and when he comes, I must go back to the ballroom and leave you—all three—to his guidance. Lord Ernest and he used to be friends as boys, I believe. Perhaps you've heard him speak of Captain Anthony Fenton?"

"Perhaps. I don't remember," Monny answered, apologetically. She, so self-confident and self-possessed, was charmingly shy with this great soldier who had made history in the Sudan.

"If you don't remember, Lord Ernest can't have done justice to the subject. Fenton's one of the finest young officers in Egypt, or indeed, in the service. We're rather proud of him. Lately he's been employed on a special mission, which he has carried out extremely well. Few others could have done it, for a man of great audacity and self-restraint was needed: a combination hard to find. He has been in the Balkans. And since, has had a particularly delicate task intrusted to him, to be conducted with absolute secrecy. No 'kudos' to be got out of it in case of success. And failure would almost certainly have cost his life. It was a question of disguise, and getting at the native heart."

"It sounds like something in a story book," said Monny, while Brigit and I kept mum, drinking in gulps of moonlight.

"Yes," the Sirdar agreed, "or the autobiography of Sir Richard Burton. Fenton has the same extraordinary gift of language and dialect that Burton had: the art of 'make-up,' too; and he's been to Mecca; a great adventure I believe he had. Perhaps you can get him to talk of it: though he's not fond of talking about himself. Altogether he's what I sometimes hear the ladies call 'a romantic figure.' His father was a famous soldier. If you were English you would have heard of him. He broke off a brilliant career in Egypt by running away with a beautiful princess. She was practically all Greek and Italian, though her father called himself a Turk: no Egyptian blood whatever. But there was a great row, of course, and Charles Fenton left the Army. Now Anthony Fenton's grandfather, who lives in Constantinople, would like to adopt his grandson: but the young man is in every sense of the word an Englishman, devoted to his career, and doesn't want a fortune or a Turkish title."

"Why, that sounds—" Monny faltered.

"Like a man of character, and a born soldier, doesn't it? Here he comes now."

There was a sound of quick, light footsteps on the stairs. In silence we turned to see a tall young officer in uniform walk out upon the flat roof. The moon shone straight into a face grave, yet eager, so deeply sunburned as to be brown even in that pale light: long eyebrows sketched sharply as if in ink—the black lines running down toward the temples; large, sad eyes; a slight upward hitch of the mouth on one side; clear cut Roman nose; aggressive chin.

"Miss Gilder, let me introduce Captain Anthony Fenton," the Sirdar said.

"I've brought you a rose," said Anthony.

They stood looking at one another for a long moment, the sun-browned British officer, and the pale girl. We, Biddy and I, stared at them both from our distance; and when the spell of the instant had broken, we saw that the Sirdar had gone.

We, too, would have gone, though the man and the girl were between us and the stairway, and we should have had to push past them. But Anthony, seeing our hesitation, spoke quietly. "Don't go," he said. "I may want you."

Never until to-night had Monny Gilder heard him speak English.

"You see," he said to her, "why I told you yesterday you would never see Antoun again. I had to tell you that, to make sure you would trust me—fully, through everything. You have trusted me, and so you've made it possible for me to keep my vow—a wrong and stupid vow, but it had to be kept. When I was angry because you treated me like a servant, I swore that never, no matter how I might be tempted, would I tell you with my own lips who I was—or let Borrow tell. I was going to make myself of importance in your life as Ahmed Antoun, if I could, not as Anthony Fenton. But long before that night at Philae I was ashamed. I —but you said then, you would forgive me. Now, when you understand what you didn't understand then, can you still say the same?"

"I—hardly know what to say," she answered. "I don't know how I feel —about anything."

"Well, I know, you goose!" exclaimed Biddy, rushing to the rescue, where angels who haven't learned to think with their hearts might have feared to tread. "You feel so happy you're afraid you're going to howl. Why, it's all perfectly wonderful! And only the silliest, earliest Victorian girls would sulk because they'd been 'deceived.' If anybody deceived you, you deceived yourself. I knew who he was from the first! So did your Aunt Clara. We'd kept our ears open, and heard the Duffer talk about his friend Anthony Fenton who was coming to meet us. You were mooning I suppose, and didn't listen. We didn't give him away partly because it wasn't our business, and partly because each of us was up to another game, never mind what. Captain Fenton never tried to play you a trick. You threw yourself at his head, you know you did, from Shepheard's terrace. He had his mission to think of, and you'd be very conceited if you thought he ought to have let you interfere with it. As it happened, you worked in quite well with the mission at first. Then Fate stepped in, and made the band play a different dance tune; no military march, but a love-waltz. That wasn't his fault. And I have to remind you of all this, because you're glaring at Captain Fenton now as if he'd done something wrong instead of fine, and he can't praise himself."

As she finished, out of breath, having dashed on without a single comma, the giant black musicians in the garden began to sing a strange African love song, in deep rich voices, their instruments, which had played with precision European airs, suddenly pouring out their primitive, passionate souls.

"Biddy dear," said the girl in a small, meek voice, "thank you very much, and you're just sweet. But I didn't need even you to defend him to me. I was only just stopping to breathe, for fear my heart would burst, because I was dizzy with too much joy. I worship him! And —and you can both go away now, please. We don't want you."

We went. Biddy would have fallen downstairs, if I hadn't caught her round the waist. Needless to say, I didn't look back; but Biddy did, and should by rights have been turned into a pillar of salt.

"My gracious, but they're beautiful!" she gasped. "For goodness' sake, let's dash as fast as we can, down into the garden, and do the same thing!"

"What?" I floundered.

"Why, you duffer, kiss each other like mad!"

Boiling with excitement, when I met Cleopatra later in the ballroom, I told her what was going on above, in the moonlight, on the roof.

"At last your niece knows what I think you have guessed all along, but so wisely kept to yourself," I said. "About Fenton, I mean. It's all right between those two now. They will come downstairs engaged."

"Everybody is engaged!" Cleopatra stormily retorted.

"That's exactly what I remarked to Brigit, before I could persuade her to follow the general example. 'Everybody in the world is engaged except ourselves,' are the words I used."

"And except me," added Mrs. East. "You forgot me, didn't you?"

"Never!" I insisted. "You could be engaged to a dozen men any moment, if you wanted to."

"I think you're exaggerating a little, Lord Ernest," Cleopatra replied modestly and unsmilingly. But her countenance brightened faintly. "Of course there are a few men—there were some in New York—"

"You don't need to tell me that," I assured her.

"I feel as if I'd like to tell you something else," she went on, "if you can spare a few minutes."

"Will you sit out the next dance?" I asked. "It isn't a Bunny Hug or Tango, or anything distracting for lookers-on."

"Aren't you dancing with Brigit?"

"No such luck—I mean, fortunately not. She has grabbed Slatin Pasha, and forgotten that I exist. By jove, there come Miss Gilder and Fenton. What a couple! They're rather gorgeous, waltzing together—what?"

"Very nice," said Cleopatra, trying with all her over-amuleted heart, not to be acid. "But oh, Lord Ernest, that settles it! I must be engaged myself, before Monny brings him to show me, like a cat with a mouse it's caught. Otherwise I couldn't stand it; and afterward would be too late."

Hastily I rushed her out into the garden, where the Shoebill regarded her with one eye of prehistoric wisdom. If she really were a reincarnation, I'm sure he knew it: and had probably belonged to her in Alexandria, when she was Queen.

"There's a Mr. Talmadge in New York," she went on, wildly. "He said he would come to me from across the world, at a moment's notice, if I wired. Only it would be awkward if I announced our engagement to-night, and then found he'd changed his mind. Besides, he'd be a last resort: and Sayda Sabri said I ought—"

"Why not wire Sir Marcus?" I ventured. (If his telegram had not come yesterday, I would as soon have advised Cleopatra to adopt an asp.)

"Oh! well—I was thinking of it. That's one thing I wanted to ask your advice about. I believe he does love me."

"Idolizes is the word."

"And now and then in the night I've had a feeling, it was almost like wasting something Providential, to refuse a Marcus Antonius. Sayda Sabri warned me to wait for a man named Antony, whom I should meet in Egypt. That's why I—but no matter now. The 'Lark' is a dreadful obstacle, though. How could I live with a lark?"

"Lady Lark has quite a musical lilt."

"Do you think so? There's one thing, even if you're the wife of a marquis or an earl, you can only be called 'Lady' This or That. You might be anything. He's taller than Antoun—I mean, Captain Fenton. And his eyes are just as nice—in their way. They quite haunt me, since Philae. But Lord Ernest, he has some horrid, common little tricks! He scratches his hair when he's worried. If you look up his coat sleeves you catch glimpses of gray Jaeger, a thing I always felt I could never marry. And worst of all, when he finishes a meal and goes away from the table, he walks off eating!"

"I don't suppose," said I, "that your first Marcus Antonius ever went away from a table at all—on his feet; anyhow, while you were doing him so well in Egypt. He had to be carried. I call Sir Marcus (and I stole the Sirdar's epithet for the other Anthony) a Romantic Figure! His adoration for you is a—a sonnet. There's no 'h' in his name to bother you. And he fell in love at first sight, like a real sport—I mean, like the hero of a book. If he has ways you don't approve, you can cure them; redecorate and remodel him with the latest American improvements. Why, I believe he'd go so far as to give his Lark a tail if you asked him to spell it with an 'e'."

"Well—I suppose you're right about what I'd better do," she sighed. "A bird in the hand—oh, I'm not making a silly pun about a lark—is worth two in New York! Please tell every one you see I'm engaged to Sir Marcus, for he is my bird in the hand: and I'll send off a telegram the first thing to-morrow morning, for fear he hears the news that he's engaged to me, prematurely. Where is he—do you know?"

"By to-morrow he'll be at MerÖe Camp," I said: But I did not add: "So shall we!"