The Fortieth Door. Mary Hastings Bradley
Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!"
"Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. "I'm very careful what I say—"
"I wish I were."
"You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny—and you can't help that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude its consequences. … I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless Sahara for you?"
She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for you, Jack?"
"The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah."
"That's not right—"
"No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!"
"I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of life—like to-night—"
"To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?"
"Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real people—not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried out here for two years, ever since you left college—"
Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact!
Life? Living? … Thank you, he preferred the sane young English officials … the comradeship of his chief … the glamor of his desert tombs.
Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching out its shadowy hands for you. … Loneliness and restlessness. … These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the hot sands seemed breathing. … Loneliness and restlessness—but they gave a man dreams. … And were those dreams to be realized here?
The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a cigarette.
The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending audacity to mischief and high spirits.
Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands full of confetti and darted behind a palm.
It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him—oddly, he himself was strolling toward that nook—he found Harlequin circling with mock entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino.
"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the girl's averted face.
There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue.
"My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled arm.
His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight.
She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings. … The most lovely eyes that dreams could bring.
A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden confidence she turned to Ryder.
"Thank you. … My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey.
"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder.
Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her eye-lashes.
"It is—if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it is a waltz, perhaps—"
It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her young form. She was no more than a child. … No child, either, at a masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight. … She was a leaf blowing in the breeze. … She was the very breeze and the moonlight.
And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had seemed no more than one.
"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you had forgotten?"
"It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man."
"With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?"
She nodded.
"At a school?"
"At a—a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. "At a very dull sort of school."
"To which, I hope, you are not to return?"
She made no answer to that—unless it was a sigh that slipped out.
"At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night."
"To-night—yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her changing eyes.
Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering. … To look down into them produced the oddest of excitement.
He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things—he could see so much better without.
She, too, could see better—could see him better. Shyly, yet intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met hers so often and were so full of contradictory things … life … and humor … and frank simplicity … and subtle eagerness.
He looked so young and confident and handsome. …
"You are—a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak.
"Only in costume. I am an American."
She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an American young man." She added, "I have met old ones—yes, and middle-aged ones and the women—but a young one, no."
"A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. "You are French?"
"That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, monsieur, only a black domino!"
It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes.
He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot—alas!—Jinny Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense of well-being, and—at the music's beginning—of a small palm pressed again to his, a light form within his arm … of shy, enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black.
"Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. The others are almost all unmasked."
Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness.