Desert Love Part 22

Little ripples of laughter fell on the night air as Hahmed, letting himself down easily from one gigantic block to another, held out his arms and lifted Jill down, bending his head to kiss her each time he put her on her feet.

They were at the last step but one when, with a little scream, she swayed, and nearly fell to the step beneath.

"Hold me, Hahmed," she cried, "I'm dizzy, everything is going round!"

And Hahmed caught her and lifted her gently down the last steps to the sand, bending to kiss her on the mouth, and shifting her suddenly to his left arm so as to catch Jack Wetherbourne by the throat as he dashed shouting from the shadows upon them.

"Jill! Jill! It's I--Jack! don't let-----"

Until the grip tightening choked back his words, when with a surprising swiftness the Arab let go his hold, and getting one in on the point, sent the Englishman reeling backwards to fall in a heap against the base of the pyramid, and then to scramble to his feet, too dizzy to stop his adversary, who, flinging the veil over the woman's face, pa.s.sed swiftly to the place where awaited the camels.

And too slow was Jack Wetherbourne to gain the spot in time to stop the flight of the camel which with its double burden was already racing straight ahead into the desert; and too bemused by the blow to recognise the fact when he did get there that the hired brute he was staggering too was built for speed in the image of the tortoise compared to the hare-like-for-swiftness contour of the abandoned beauty who had strolled to the spot from the other side of the pyramid, and quite undisturbed was watching her sister's hurried departure into the unknown.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

All our lives we all chase wraiths in the moonshine! Be the wraiths the outcome of proximity in the garden under the silvery moon rays, which so often snap the trap about our unwary feet by rounding off the physical angles of our momentary heart's desires, or lending point to the stub ends of their undeveloped mentality; or the wraiths of the midnight soul, otherwise disarranged nervous or digested system, which float invitingly, distractingly, tantalisingly in front of our clogged-by-sleep vision at night; turning out, however, in the early light heralding the early cup of tea, to be nothing more soul distracting than the good old bra.s.s k.n.o.b adorning the end of the bedstead.

But Jack Wetherbourne's wraiths, which he was chasing in the moonlight, were good honest humans with the requisite number of legs and arms wrapped in good, white raiment; one of which humans with the other in his arms sat astride a camel, who made up by her muscular development whatever she might lack in goodness of heart and honesty of purpose; she too being wrapped in the silvery drapery which the moon throws pell-mell around pyramid and mud hut, humble fellah, descendant maybe of some long dead Pharaoh, and the jocular, jubilant millionaire, who with luck can trace a grandfather.

But chase he ever so eagerly, Jack Wetherbourne could barely keep his quarry in sight as on and on sped the racing camel with that curious slithering gait which denotes great speed, whilst the wind caught at Jill's veil, blowing it this way and that until she impatiently tore it from before her face, and struggling against the arm which held her like a vice, managed to screw herself round to look behind, whereupon the Arab jerked her suddenly back, looking down into her white face with eyes ablaze with jealousy.

"Hast thou no circ.u.mspection, O! wife of mine?" he cried, the wind carrying the words from his lips almost before they were uttered.

"Mine, all mine thou art, and yet thou strivest to look upon the countenance of that madman who would have outraged my honour by looking upon thy face!"

"Oh, but Hahmed! you don't understand--that was Jack Wetherbourne, my neighbour and brother and friend, and do for pity's sake make the camel go slower, I am being b.u.mped to bits!"

Which of all foolish utterances was the most foolish she could have uttered, fanning the man's jealousy to a pitch where it burned right through the barrier of self-restraint, making him desire to stop her foolish words with kisses, and long to strangle her as she lay in his arms, and cast her on to the sands for the vultures to pick at.

"Thy friend and brother! How could any man unborn of thy parents be anything but the would-be lover and husband of thy beautiful self!

Verily, woman, could I beat thee for such words until thy shoulders ran blood. I know of him and his foolish futile searchings for thee, yet it is _I_ who hold thee, and in very truth can call thee wife; nor will I stay this my camel so that thou mayest have speech with him; this pale faced yearling, who dared to look upon thy shadow; but by the grace of Allah, I will so bewilder him who blundereth after thee astride the product of the bazaar, that his sightless skull shall stare blindly at the moon to-morrow night, whilst I shall feast my eyes upon the whiteness of thy satin skin."

And Jill lay still, knowing that she was up against something with which she could not cope, noticing not at all that the camel began a wide circle to the left, therefore being excessively surprised when an hour before the dawn, upon the very outskirts of Cairo itself, the man caused his camel to kneel, and placing the girl like a bundle of hay upon the ground, turned towards Mecca; and the time of prayer being pa.s.sed, came to her suddenly and held her to him, raining kisses upon the fairness of her face, shining pale and shadowed in the light of the coming day.

CHAPTER XL

You have only to stare long enough at it to get the image of some distinct object imprinted upon your retina, then you need but stare again at some s.p.a.ce of indistinct colouring and you will see the impression of your distinct object reprinted a hundred times upside down.

Who has not tried the experiment in their youth with the aid of the ceiling and red-lettered advertis.e.m.e.nt of chocolate or soap, and later in years upbraided the reflected blobs of sun which usually choose a critical moment in which to obscure your vision when you have turned your back upon the sunset.

Jack Wetherbourne distinctly saw the fleeing camel in front of him, when he at last got his own to its feet, and being eager to keep his quarry well within his vision, continued to stare and strain his eyes, whilst he raced for hour after hour over mile after mile of sand, until in the end he saw the fleeing camel ahead of him when in reality it was well on its way back to Cairo; and continued, with eyes staring out of a white, dust-covered face, to pursue the phantom until the first ray of the sun hitting him fiercely, caused him to cover his eyes a while, and after, to look about him with refreshed sight, which showed him in the midst of the desert, alone, with a cloud of sand rising before the wind some miles behind him--an infant sandstorm, but strong enough to hide the distant peaks of the pyramids from him, and to send his terrified, idiotic camel fleeing straight ahead through hours of increasing heat, without a drop of water upon its foolish back or in its master's pocket flask, until with a sudden silly chuckle the man jerked the reins and tumbled headlong from the saddle, laughing stupidly with sudden sunstroke.

CHAPTER XLI

The midday sun of the same day blazed down upon a picture which for ghastliness surpa.s.sed even the horrors painted by the madman Werth, which, if your mind is steeped in morbidness, you can see for a franc, or for nothing, I really forget which, when next you visit Brussels.

Upon a hillock of sand, the summit of which continually trickled to the base in fine golden streams, a little mound built with the aid of a pair of pumps, sat Jack Wetherbourne, laughing sickeningly, just as he had sat since the moment he had waved a delirious adieu to the quickly disappearing camel. His dress coat, trousers, white waistcoat, shirt, undergarments, socks and shoes, lay upon the sand arranged by the disordered mind in the fantastic design of a scarecrow.

As I have said, the man himself, naked save for a vest twisted round his waist, sat upon the mound gesticulating violently, whilst keeping up a one-sided, unanswered conversation with the figure on the sand.

His bronzed face, burnt almost black even in the few hours of sun beating down upon his unshaded head, turned restlessly to the right and left; his long fingers plucked without ceasing at the great blisters which the heat drew up upon his body, bursting them, so that the fluid mingled with the sand blown upon him by the light wind, and upon which flies, thousands of them, settled, to buzz away when he rose to run this way and that in an effort to stay the awful irritation.

Two o'clock by the clocks in Cairo, the hour when workers and idlers, rich and poor, seek the coolest spot in their vicinity in which to lay them down and sleep a while--the hour when Mary Bingham drove up to Shepherds, having raced here, there, and everywhere during the morning in a vain endeavour to awaken a little interest in the minds of those who listened, and shrugged, and looked at each other significantly, at the tale of a man who had got lost in Cairo for a night and a morning--a tale told agitatedly by a charming woman who could give no reason for her agitation.

Also she had tried, desperately hard, with the aid of the hotel porter, to make head or tail out of the narrative as recounted by the hirer of camels--a woebegone tale in which the undercurrent was a dismal foreboding as to the fate of the priceless quadruped; the fate of an Englishman seemingly being of small account when compared to that of the snarling, unpleasant brute who represented the native's entire fortune--at least so he said. "Yes, the n.o.bleman had hired the camel as he so often did, and being acquainted with the ways of the animal had gone alone as he always did. No! upon the beard of his grandfather he had no idea in which direction he had gone, though verily upon the outskirts of Cairo there had been a festival in which La Belle, the well-known dancer, was to dance--who knows------" And the Hon. Mary had flung out of the place in disgust, knowing with a woman's intuition, sharpened love, in comparison with which a _kukri_ is blunt, that no such place hid the man she had been searching for so desperately ever since she had suddenly wakened and sprung out of her bed the night before, for no reason whatever, and, having rung up Shepherds and ascertained the fact that Sir John Wetherbourne was not in the hotel, had paced her room until she could with reason arouse her maid, and, having bathed and breakfasted, had started out on the seemingly mad pursuit of someone who had failed to return to his habitat during the night--and in Cairo too!

Is it surprising that men winked secretly at one another, and that their wives, sharers of their joys and sorrows, scandal and gossip inclusive, jingled their bracelets and pursed their lips, and did all those things which jealous women--not necessarily love jealous--are feign to do when the object responsible for the conception of the green-eyed monster within their being is bent on making a fool of herself?

"Come now, dearie," mumbled Lady Sarah Gruntham, who insisted on keeping Lancashire meal hours to the consternation of the hotel staff, native and otherwise, as she mopped her heated brow with her handkerchief and with the other hand patted the dark head leaning wearily upon the row of scarab b.u.t.tons adorning her tussore front, from which she had forgotten to remove her finger napkin when the girl had entered. "Come now--come now. Don't 'ee take on an' fret so. The lad'll coom back to ye, never ye fear now. Well I remember when yon Tim of mine was down t' mine in t' big explosion--I took on just as ye are takin' on, love, but down in me heart, la.s.s, I never really feared me, because I knew that me love for me lad was that great, la.s.s, that I'd pull him out of danger--and sure and I did, la.s.s, black as a sweep and with a broken arm, but alive, and a champion tea of shrimps and cress we had, jest as ye'll have with yer lad when he comes back, la.s.s!"

Which motherly comfort served to lighten the heavy heart, but brought not the faintest shadow of a smile to the steadfast eyes. For even the vision of watercress, shrimps and tea on the verandah at Shepherds will not force a light to the windows of the soul when they are blinded with anxiety.

So Mary Bingham, in her cool white dress, lay back in the long chair, with a gla.s.s of iced lemonade on a table by her side in a room darkened so as to induce slumber, whilst out in the desert with choked cries of "Good dog! At it! Good dog!" a man began scratching the sand as a ratting terrier does the earth, until he had excavated a hole big enough in which to curl himself, where he lay until desert things that creep and crawl drove him out again, shrieking for water.

CHAPTER XLII

And the full force of the storm crashed about Jill's defenceless head at the midday hour also of the same day, when she ought to have been searching the coolness of her midday sleeping chamber, and forgetfulness of the last few hours in sleep.

Not quite defenceless was she, however, as she sat back in the chair, her eyes ablaze and her veil torn to shreds at her feet, ripping the moral atmosphere with words which seemed to have been dipped in some corrosive verbal fluid. She was angry, hurt, and deathly tired, and was doing her best to pa.s.s some of her mental suffering anyway on to the man who leant with folded arms against the cedar wall.

The inevitable crisis had come!

The independence of Western womanhood had clashed with the Eastern ideas on the privacy and seclusion of the gentler s.e.x. Jill simply could _not_ understand that there was any cause for the terrible jealousy which had suddenly blazed up in the Arab when she had innocently repeated her request to be allowed to see her old friend; Hahmed was as incapable of understanding the request, having failed in his sojourn in the West to fully realise the everyday kind of jolly, good, frank camaraderie which can exist between certain types of English man and woman.

Half a word of tenderness, half a gesture of love, and she would have been sobbing or laughing happily in his arms, but like a prairie fire before the wind, the terrible Eastern rage was blazing through the man, too fierce, too terrific to allow him to a.n.a.lyse the situation, or remember that the upbringing of his girl-wife had been totally different to that of the women of his country.

Jill suddenly sat forward, clasping one slim ankle across her knee in a slim hand, a position she knew perfectly well would rouse Hahmed to a frenzy, and spoke slowly and mockingly in English instead of the pretty lisping Arabic which always entranced him.

"You may lecture, and remonstrate, and admonish, which all comes to the same thing, until night falls, but you will never make me see eye to eye with you in _this_. It is simply _absurd_ to threaten that you will shut me in my apartments until I learn reason. If you lock me in, or place guards about me, I will jump from the roof and gain my freedom by breaking my neck. Why Jack Wetherbourne--oh------"

Hahmed had leant forward, and gripping her by the shoulders had very suddenly, and not over gently, jerked her to her feet, holding her by the strength of his hands alone, as she desperately tried to liberate herself.

"Let me go, Hahmed! let me go! You are hurting me dreadfully. You must _not_ hurt me--you must _not_ bruise me. Oh! you don't understand!"

She struggled furiously and unavailingly, resorting at last to cruelty to gain her end.

"Let me go, Hahmed! Take your hands away--I--I _hate to feel them upon me_!"

He let her go, pushing her away from him ever so slightly, so that she stumbled against the chair, cracking her ankle-bone, that tenderest bit of anatomical scaffolding, against a projecting piece of ornamental wood.