Mrs. Bradley

“ Bradley began to smile. "Experience is the very best teacher, you know."
"That's all right, but you don't seem to realize that she will be learning at my expense," groaned Chet, adding as a horrible thought struck him: "Billie won't have to cook anything, will she?"
"Of course not," laughed Mrs. Bradley, and Chet sighed with relief. "Debbie will be here as usual to do the cooking. And, of course," she added to Billie, putting an arm about her and drawing her close, "Debbie will help you with anything you want to know. We probably won't be gone more than a week, anyway." ”

“ Bradley, while Billie and Chet crowded closer to her chair.
"Aunt Beatrice Powerson is dead," Mrs. Bradley announced with a look more of shocked surprise than of grief. "She died in Canada quite suddenly, and this is from her attorney asking us," she looked across at her husband, "to be present at the reading of the will."
"Well, well," said Mr. Bradley slowly, "poor Beatrice Powerson dead at last. I suppose she got as much out of life as any of us, though, in her eccentric way." ”

“ For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to exchange a word with him—but her young anger darted through her discretion.
"They are not abominations!" she gave back proudly.
"But I know—I know—have I not been at marriages in England?" he declared, with startling fierceness. "Men and women crowd about the bride; they press in line and kiss her; bearded mouths and shaven lips, young and old, they brush off that exquisite bloom of innocence which a husband delights to discover. ”

“ The general was below and begged to be announced to madame.
"We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped with the guests. ”

“ Bradley was turned thirty years of age, but he was as capable of a grande passion as a boy of twenty—as romantic, as high-flown, as full of the fervour of youth and the brightness of dream. With him, to love a woman was to love her with all his faith and all his life; he was far too earnest to trifle for a moment with the most sacred of all human sentiments. ”

“ To me your sister Americans are like big, bright flowers which grow by the wayside where every wind blows hard upon them. And each receives the dust of the footsteps of many men till comes the one who shall possess her. But he does not bear her away. He puts his name upon her, but leaves her out in the same field where every passerby may look and handle——"
"You are dreadfully rude," said Arlee clearly. "You don't understand at all. I thought you knew better."
"Ah, I know! Was I not in England and did I not hear men talk—yes, of sisters and wives with bold words and laughter? ”

“ As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam of panic.
"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time is a—a very sudden thing!"
Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as life? ”

“ His smile was not quite pleasant.
"You cannot blame them for feeling a real—interest," said Arlee hesitantly.
"Their interest—pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband till to-day! How strange—how strange! Has he not written to you? Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles—whose own marriages are abominations!" ”

“ A tacit apology, thought Arlee, pondering the dull letter a moment, then dropping it to touch the roses with light fingers. The young man's wits had evidently returned with the sun. He had utterly lost them last night with the starshine and the shadows and his Oriental conception of the intimacy of the situation—but, after all, he had too much good sense not to be aware of the folly of annoying her. Her cheeks flushed a little warmer at the memory of the bold words and the lordly hand on her arm, and her heart quickened in its beating. ”

“ Marybelle had never met Bradley until he came here to see me. From the moment she saw him she planned to steal him away from me. For a time Bradley resisted her charm and was true to me, laughing with me over the wiles and snares she laid for him. But no man could long hold out against such a woman. She flattered him, she teased him, she tempted him, she lured him with all the powers of her siren nature. She made herself beautiful for him, and wove an enchantment that succeeded at last. He came and told me. He was manly and frank. ”

“ And suddenly it didn't matter—whatever they thought. It was enough that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling of strange, heady delight.
The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head.
He bent a little closer.
"Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" ”

“ It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, that one could find love.
But it was not her world! It was an alien world, enforced, imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup.
"There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our house."
"I could wish," said Aimée, "that I had been permitted to bring my old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange—"
"No old nurses—I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down his drained cup with a wavering hand. ”

“ By the time they had reached Miss Arbuckle and the finding of her album in the woods they were feeling delightfully thrilly and farther away from sleep than ever.
“It really must be a mystery,” Connie was saying, snuggling deeper into the covers and staring at Billie’s pretty face and tousled hair weirdly illumined by the pale moonlight that sifted through the window, when there came a tap on the door. And right upon the tap came Mrs. Bradley, wearing a loose robe that made her look mysteriously lovely in the dim light. She sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded the girls smilingly. ”

“ And then the man and woman go away together into a public hotel or a train, and the people laugh and shout after them, and hurl shoes and rice, with a great din of noise. I have heard!" He stopped, looked a moment at the flushed curve of Arlee's averted face, the droop of her shadowy lashes which veiled the confusion and anger of her spirit, and then, leaning forward, his eyes still upon her, he spoke in a lower, softer tone, caressing in its inflections.
"With us it is not so," he said. "We have dignity in our rejoicing, and delicacy in our love. ”

“ She slept like a tired baby; while the light grew brighter and higher, and reached in over the shining dressing table, over the white piano, to rest upon the oblivious face upon the couch and to play with the bright, tangled hair.
The first knocking upon the door did not disturb that sleep, and it was a long time before the knock was again sounded. Then Arlee heard and sprang to her feet in a lightning rush of consciousness. It was Mariayah again, and the water jars which already looked familiar to her, and after the water jars appeared more roses and with the roses a letter. ”

“ Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck.
She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his place at the table.
Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive the precipitateness—of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your own beauty. ”

“ Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely. ”

“ Down the street, on a black horse that arched his curving neck and danced on light, fleet feet, rode a man in a uniform of green and gold. He sat erect, his clear-cut profile toward her. The next instant his horse, side-stepping at a blowing paper, turned his face into view. It was Captain Kerissen.
Some one was stirring in the anteroom, and Arlee darted to the left of the throne-chair and through the door there which stood ajar. She was in a dim salon, like the one that she had left, but smaller, and across from her was another door. ”

“ She seemed to have an idea, but Billy was certain it was not his idea.
He hastened to clarify the light he had tried to cast upon his upsetting little countrywoman. "All life, you know, is an adventure to the American girl," he generalized. "She is a little bit more on her own than I imagine your girls are," and for the fraction of a second his eyes wandered to the listening countenance of Lady Claire, "and that rather exhilarates her. And she doesn't want things cut and dried—she wants them spontaneous and unexpected—and people, just as people, interest her tremendously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like runaways they tore over the level wastes and through the rolling dunes, and at last, spent and breathless, they pulled back into a walk their excited beasts that squealed and tossed their tasseled heads.
Their eyes met in a gaiety of the spirit that no words could express. When Arlee spoke she merely cried out, "I've read the camel had four paces, but mine has forty-four," and Billy gave back, "And forty-three are sudden death!" and their ringing laughter made a worried little jackal draw back his cautious nose into his rocky lair. ”

“ He must know he will be found out—he cannot play like this with an American girl! I shall face him to-morrow. I shall demand my freedom. I shall tell him that I did tell people at the hotel—that he will be discovered. I will make him afraid!"
"You cannot. He watches what happens on the outside—he knows."
After a pause, "Oh, why did I come!" said Arlee in choking bitterness.
The little dancer turned, and, sitting there cross-legged on the couch like a squat little idol, her chin sunk in her palm, her dark eyes staring unwinkingly at Arlee, gave the girl a long, strange scrutiny. ”

“ At her question Laura whirled suddenly about and poked the blood-stained handkerchief directly beneath Vi’s startled nose.
“There,” she said. “Want it?”
Vi gave one look, screamed, and fled down the stairs. She had gone only halfway, however, when Laura overtook her and dragged her back.
“None of that,” she cried. “You can’t back out now. Besides, we’re only beginning to have some fun.”
“Fun!” groaned Vi, keeping a wary eye on the handkerchief that Laura still held. “Well, I’m glad I know what to call it.”
“Come on,” said Billie, jingling her rusty keys and starting up the ladder. ”

“ Lady Claire laughed mischievously, in a flight of daring so foreign to her usual reticence that Miss Falconer grimly perceived that she was changed indeed. She thought helplessly that it was a great pity that young people couldn't be treated as the children they were—smacked and made to do what was best for them.
"And after all this dreadful gossiping how can we face our guests at tea?" the girl continued in mock chiding.
"If they are much later we shall not be facing them at all," the older woman declared. "I shall certainly have my tea at the proper time." ”

“ After the first shock of scattering amazement, Arlee became intensely aware of a pair of yellow-brown eyes confronting her with a faintly smiling and rather mocking interrogation. The dark of kohl about the eyes emphasized a certain slant diablérie of line and a faint penciling connected with the high and supercilious arch of the brows. Henna flamed on the pointed tips of the fingers blazoned with glittering rings, and Arlee fancied the brilliance of the hair was due to this same generous assistance of nature.
"My soul!" thought the girl swiftly, "they do get themselves up!" ”