Desert Love Part 2

So that when the Arab spoke a light of understanding dawned upon Jill, for, touching his forehead, mouth, and a spot on his raiment just above his heart with his right hand, and murmuring the customary salutation, "May peace be upon you," he paused for a moment, and then continued, "But it pleases Madame to jest with me. She awaits the train to take her to the boat, how therefore could she come into the desert to-night?"

But Jill was absolutely unafraid! Having known no master, she cared not one _sou_ for any son of man, or any untoward position she might find herself in, so opening wide her very beautiful eyes she simply smiled back into the angry ones which looked down upon her from some considerable height, and, with a little shrug of her shoulders, a habit acquired from one of a succession of foreign governesses, she made reply in her turn, and in words which though absolutely common-place served as the golden key with which to unlock the bejewelled, golden casket of this man's love.

In any Western country the situation would have been _absurd_! An English girl, minus scenery and every accessory due to a book heroine, capable in five brief minutes of smiting the heart of one of Egypt's most renowned men!

Ridiculous!

Perhaps in the lands of fogs and fires, grey skies and east winds, but not in Egypt, where the sun, sky, winds, and memories serve rather to force the growth of the love-plant and hasten the budding of the pa.s.sion-flower.

Studiously b.u.t.toning up the last b.u.t.ton which she always left undone on her last pair of suede gloves, smooth as a newly born whippet puppy, and as yet unruffled from the cleaner's manipulations, she spoke with a ripple of laughter which made it impossible to decide if she was speaking seriously or not.

"Madame permits herself to do just as she pleases. If by some unforeseen circ.u.mstances she were to miss the train, would she be taken to see the oasis, and the horses, and the stars?"

And let it be understood that, in her utter ignorance of deserts, she imagined the oasis could be reached after a journey of a few hours.

For one moment there was dead silence between these two, the strings of whose lives Fate was inextricably mixing in her fingers, palsied by age, and fretted by the constant tugging and straining of those other threads which, in moments of senile anger or childishness, she gets into such hopeless tangles.

Then as the shriek of an engine whistle shrilled faintly in the distance the man spoke, his voice sinking to that deep note which no other nation attains, resembling in no way the Russian ba.s.s, and which in the Arab upon rare occasions alone betrays some emotional upheaval.

"Listen, woman of the West, who even at this moment stands in my shadow, between that faint engine whistle and the grinding of the brakes as the train comes to a standstill, you must make your choice.

A few moments ago I saw you toss a silver coin and decide quickly that which had been decided already for you since the beginning of all time.

"Once more you shall cast your die. The table is the sand of Egypt, the dice-cup is your hand, the dice are your life and my life, the stakes our happiness. Decide again and quickly for I hear the rumbling of wheels. Make known your choice, for although we travellers through the desert of life lie down to sleep, and rise again to live, to fight, to hate, and above all to love, in obedience to the will which counteth and heapeth the particles of sand upon this station, yet are we allowed, to voice our desires, being mouth-pieces of Fate. Nay! wait one moment until I make clear the way, so that you may not put down your beautiful feet blindly upon a trackless waste of doubt and mistrust. If you come with me to-night, you come alone. I have no woman in my desert home, excepting one old hunchback slave, a withered bough but faithful. No woman has set foot within the belt of palms surrounding my house, and without the sand stretches! Mile upon mile of pathless sand!

"You will come into the desert alone with me, and the sand will close in upon you and keep you in the desert alone--with me!

"If you come, be at the gate of yonder pink house at nine to-night; if you are not there I shall know that your heart has failed."

But the soul of the desert glinted for one moment in the English girl's eyes.

"There may be no woman there, but there will be a man--a man indeed!"

she whispered, as though communing with herself.

And the eyes so soft and blue looked up, and then down, down into the soul of Hahmed the Arab, so deeply indeed that a s.h.i.+ver ran from her brain to her finger-ends, causing her to draw herself together sharply and to turn and walk away.

So it came about as it was written that she had decided when the brakes grinded, and that after retrieving her employer for the last time, and placing her in a dusty corner of the stifling carriage, she slipped away on the excuse of finding her dressing-case, which she did, taking it with her into a corner of the deserted waiting-room just as the engine announced its immediate departure.

Without a qualm she watched "her crowd" jostle and push their way into the small carriages, and the train, move out, leaving her alone--alone in the desert town, alone with the dweller of that desert.

A wave of exultation rushed through her as she thought of this her great adventure, of this her freedom for at least a short while, and of the unknown quant.i.ty she was mixing into her portion of daily bread which, up to this moment, had consisted of the plainest, wholesomest, most uninteresting bun-loaf, not even resembling that extremely dull and unappetising cake named, I believe, Swiss roll, which hides its staleness under the gla.s.s case of Life's shop window, lying fly-blown on the plate and heavily and unimaginatively on the digestive powers of those who consume it for the thin layer of jam to be discovered between its wedges of sullen dough. A soul-stifling mess to be found in the drab sideboards of most English households along with its sister made of a pastry so flimsy that it chokes, filled with a cream that is merely froth, the whole hiding its cheapness under an application of highly coloured paint essence, the consuming of which will prove as fatal as the Swiss roll.

So she raised her hands to the grimy ceiling of the dirty waiting-room and whispered to the dust, the buzzing flies, and vivid ray of sunlight,

"Verily, and indeed I have burned my boats behind, or perhaps I should say my liner before me!"

CHAPTER VI

Jill, very fair indeed to look upon, and with seven-and-sixpence in odd money in her bag, stepped out bravely on to the road, scorched by the midday sun, with a curl at the corner of her mouth, a medley of disconnected thoughts in her madcap head, and a feeling of unromantic emptiness somewhere in the vicinity of her white leather waist belt.

A wisp of a boy, clad in very dirty garments, shrilled the equivalent of "Carry your bag, miss," in the Egyptian tongue, calling down the displeasure of Allah upon the foreign woman when she shook her head, and changed the heavy dressing-case to the other hand.

Ismailiah is no place for a beautiful English girl to wander in unchaperoned, especially when out of respect to the slenderness of her purse she gets off the beaten track in search of a cheap restaurant.

Indeed Jill was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable at the way the natives stared and even turned to look after her as she plodded on, so that it was with a feeling of relief that she espied "Cuisine Francaise" written across the window of a fairly clean-looking restaurant in a small street, into which place she turned, to be confronted by a fat, oily individual hailing from the Levant, who looked as though his business was anything but that of the kitchen.

Unsophisticated Jill, however, saw nothing wrong in the person who bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger, neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a half-open door, where he had been hurriedly summoned by the man who advertised his skill in "_la cuisine Francaise_."

To pa.s.s away the time Jill lingered over her meal until she was alone in the place save for the waiter, who was aching to get away to smoke a cigarette, and the native who had noiselessly entered and slipped into a seat in the far corner.

Once Jill, inadvertently looking straight into his eyes, and hurriedly looking away, had picked up a paper lying on the chair beside her; glanced at the first page, and dropped it like a hot plate, whilst a wave of scorching red rushed over her neck and face.

"Allah!" she thought, "what an awful place, and what on earth am I to do with two s.h.i.+llings in my pocket, and not a cinema handy!" And feeling the native's eyes still fixed on her, she beckoned to the waiter, paid her bill, and once out in the street turned sharply up the first on the right just as the native and the Levantine came to the restaurant door in time to see the last inch of her disappearing skirt.

And yet through all her haste and her annoyance the inner membrane of Jill's mind, that delicate fabric woven of intuition and divination, which gives women the pull on so many occasions, and on certain courses get her past the post lengths ahead of man, whispered to her that it had not failed her earlier in the day, and that if she could but stick out the next few hours she would find a sure reward for her present distress.

But she stopped short and clicked her teeth angrily when she met the native of the restaurant face to face in a narrow street, and turned and walked in the opposite direction as quickly as her dignity would allow.

But after the same thing had happened three times, and that it had suddenly struck her that she was being headed in the direction of a quarter where unveiled women peered from windows with great eyes made larger by the rims of kohl smeared on the lid, and the cheeks rendered dead white with the powder that proves so strangely attractive to the eastern prost.i.tute, she suddenly made up her mind to get herself out of the danger and difficulty. She was utterly lost, and walking at a pace that was almost a run, turned into the street she found nearest.

Not one open door did she see; at least, not one that was not congested with women sitting smoking or eating sticky sweetmeats, or drying their heads plastered in the henna clay which would eventually dye their hair the red favoured of man.

She was wellnigh breathless and wondering for how long she could continue when the man suddenly appeared at the top of the street into which she had just turned, and seeing her salaamed deeply.

Back she twisted like a hunted hare and raced up the street through which she had just pa.s.sed.

It was empty, but on her left standing ajar was a door painted bright blue.

CHAPTER VII

Without pausing to think she entered, closing it behind her just as the man relentlessly pursuing her pa.s.sed in ignorance on the other side.

In the middle of the courtyard two Eastern women in the domestic act of disembowelling a kid looked up lazily, and one smiling, pointed to the upper storey of the house, through the small windows of which came the sound of stringed instruments, and seeing that the stranger did not understand, explained her gesture in broken French:

"_Au premiez etase--voz amieze--les anglaiseez."

No idea of any further possible danger entering her head, and at a complete loss to understand, but thankful for her present safety, Jill crossed the court, slipping unromantically on a piece of the animal's entrails which lay about, and entering a low door mounted the stairs.

Through a curtained archway the distinct tw.a.n.g of an American voice came to her as a message of peace, so pus.h.i.+ng back the stuff she entered to find herself confronted by ten pairs of eyes of different nationality.

"Come right in," tw.a.n.ged the same voice, "guess you're from the same boat! Cute of you to find your way here all by your lonesome!"