Desert Love Part 3

The well-corseted wife of a Can-King, flanked on one side by her thin, leather-skinned, neat daughter, and on the other by the inevitable Italian marquis, whose tailor had evidently been a sartorial futurist, pointed to a cushion on the n.o.bleman's off side, on which perplexed Jill squatted in imitation of the others. The party consisted of the aforementioned trio, two flash-looking English women, who had in tow a certain type of man who is only to be found on board ship, an obese German, a French widow whose weeds grew more from utility than necessity, and a dapper little Frenchman who twinkled his over-manicured fingers for the benefit of a healthy, jolly looking Australian girl sitting uncomfortably on the adjacent cushion. The party's dragoman proffered a cup of coffee and a cigarette. The former was excellent, the latter, after one puff, Jill extinguished on the floor, for she knew tobacco when she smoked it, and guessed at hasheesh without having to look at the slightly brightened eyes of those who sat smoking the same brand around her.

Then she glanced curiously round the room. Long, low, with four tawdry gla.s.s and gilt chandeliers hanging from the not over-clean ceiling, cushions spreading all over the floor excepting in the middle where lay an exquisite Persian carpet, long mirrors on all sides, little inlaid tables, and at the far end, built into the wall with steps leading up to it, a bed behind gilt bars, the door in which was fastened by a gilt padlock.

It seemed that their dragoman had brought them to the house so as to add yet more perquisites to his daily remuneration by regaling them with an exhibition of Eastern dancing.

"What kind of dancing?" asked Jill with a slight frown, as the twinkling music suddenly stopped.

"Guess we can't tell you!" replied the American mother, whose corsets were not in exact accord with the cushions upon which she sat, breathing heavily from her upper whaleboned register.

"_Nous esperons le mieux_," said the Frenchman, winking at the dragoman.

And that moment they were enlightened.

The two English women emitted each a little screech, the American mother caught convulsively at her daughter, who coldly raised her long-handled lorgnettes the more fully to survey the picture before her. The Australian girl sat quiet, as did the Englishman who had been there before; the Italian e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "_Per dio_," and the Frenchman "_Mon Dieu_," as the widow, pulling one side of her veil across her face, hid her over-crimson mouth, but in no way impeded her view, whilst Jill looked round hastily for a way of escape, but suddenly remembering the certain peril in the street decided, as she edged as far as possible from the marchese, to sit out the difficulties of the moment.

CHAPTER VIII

To natives, a dressed or undressed dancer is nothing more than a plaything, or something to help pa.s.s the hour; he will look at and criticise her with much less enthusiasm than he would a she-camel, and remunerate her or her owner according to the measure of pleasure he has found in her posturing.

But it is difficult, wellnigh impossible, to describe the feeling of the occidental women when three orientals of their own s.e.x, without a vestige of clothing, suddenly one after the other, like ducks, sidled into the room.

They were none of them in their first youth, and the dragoman, after watching their movements, decided once and for all to withdraw his patronage from the house, and sat wondering how much he dared try to extract from his patron's pockets for such an exhibition, while Jill, who felt as though she had been suddenly struck between the eyes, sat hypnotised by the undulating forms before her, until she was overcome by a frantic desire to bury her face in a cushion and to give way to unrestrained hysterical laughter. This same feeling has been known to overcome one in Church when a hen, side-tracking through the open door, takes a const.i.tutional up the aisle on a Sunday morning in the country; also it has been known to seize you in its grip at a levee, when your predecessor's shoe-buckles, not having been properly adjusted, flip up and down like shutters as their owner, in solitary state, stalks up the audience chamber; worse and stronger still is it when your revered bishop uncle, of whom you have great expectations, insists at morning prayers upon those things which have been left undone, when before your earthly eyes gapes the cotton dress of Eliza the cook, whose comfortable dorsal proportions have forbidden the matutinal union of a couple or so of b.u.t.tons and b.u.t.tonholes.

Try as she would she could not overcome it, neither could she remove her gaze from the three females who, poor things, were but doing their best to add to the family coffers. Up and down, and round and round they went, the string band tw.a.n.ging an accompaniment, until the gauze scarf of the middle lady catching in the hanging chandelier put an end to their rhythmical swayings, while like hens with a suspended cherry they hopped in turn off the ground in their effort to disentangle their one and only bit of covering.

Everyone sat still until the disentanglement had taken place, upon which event the dancers once more advanced in force, each selecting a special man victim, until Jill, absolutely helpless and afraid of raising native wrath by allowing even a glimmer of a smile to appear, buried her pretty head on the marchese's over-padded shoulder, which action he of course took for a sign of encouragement, responding to it by slipping his arm round the girl's waist, but circ.u.mspectly enough so that it should not be seen by the Can-King's relations, while Jill prayed for strength to resist until the end.

The end came in a positive Catherine-wheel exhibition of posturing, and a deathly silence on the part of the audience; the men not daring to make any comment, the women not daring to look at each other, until the widow, suddenly seizing upon the situation, clapped her little hands roguishly, and avowed in a babyish voice that "_C'etait bien gentil et original, n'est ce pas_," which she didn't think at all really.

Anyway her opinion served as a break, so that on the exit of the dancers in single file, which was ten-fold more trying to the spectators than their entry, with stretching of cramped limbs and stereotyped utterances such as "how very Eastern," "so unexpected," the entire party rose to their feet, the dragoman holding a hurried whispered conversation with the men who each, and successively, and vehemently, shook their heads, leaving the women asking of themselves how on earth they were to continue existing relations with the men during the interminable weeks to Australia.

Jill, feeling almost faint from suppressed emotion and a revival of hunger, stood a little on one side watching them. An Eastern dancing house is a strange place in which to make the final decision of one's life, but in just such a spot she made hers. She knew that she had only to make up the tale of a lost boat, and something would be done for her; in fact she could probably go as lady's maid to the Americans on their _tour de monde_, having overheard them complaining bitterly of their own French maid who had not been retrieved at Algiers. But her whole soul suddenly rising in mutiny against the stultifying civilisation of the West, she finally made up her mind to stay with the strangers until the hour came when she could slip out of the hotel where they were staying the night, into oriental liberty, and glamour, and unknown possibilities. So she sat next the marchese at dinner, whose love-making was on exactly the same line as his clothes, and having found out from the maid in the ladies' room just how to get to the end of the town in which was situated the Camel King's house, she waited for a desirable opportunity, and slipped out of the hotel on the pretence of looking at the stars, knowing that her unwitting hosts would think she had simply gone to bed.

CHAPTER IX

Jill's memory being of the kind which retains only the pleasant word and act, the disagreeable episode of the afternoon had completely evacuated that cell which in one second can raise us through the bluest ether to the heaven as understood by the prayer-book, or send us diving to the mud flats of the ocean bed to co-habit for a time with wingless and non-temperamental oddities.

Having stopped several times to discover by ear and eye if she was being followed from the hotel, and being satisfied that the sight of her dressing-case had in no wise aroused the hall porter's curiosity, she propped her luggage against the base of a palm tree growing casually in the middle of a small street and proceeded to take her bearings.

"Somehow it seemed quite easy to find when the maid was explaining,"

she communed to herself as she dug a hatpin afresh into her hat as is the way of woman when at a loss. "How stupid of me to try a short cut, because she distinctly said I was to stick to the main street until I came to two mosques side by side, and then to turn off sharply to the right. Oh! well, I turned off too soon and am lost--and I don't like these little streets--no! not one little bit, but that big red star hangs right over the house so I can but follow it--here goes!"

She picked up her case, and then drew back quickly behind the tree as a white-robed figure slowly crossed the street, turned up another and disappeared.

"Oh! Moll and Jack, what on earth would you think if you knew I was alone in Egypt. Alone! but free! free! at last, quite, _quite_ free!"

And stretching out her arms on each side and giving herself a little shake, Jill laughed ever so softly in pure exuberance of that feeling of freedom, which seems to make an air pocket all about you and in the middle of which you float contentedly, oblivious of the winds raging on the outside.

So glancing up at the red star, and once more picking up her bag, she too crossed the street and disappeared up a narrower one, halting for a moment at the sight of a man standing with bent head in the att.i.tude of prayer and the beads of Allah hanging from the hands crossed upon the breast.

Jilt's intuition was intense, and never once in all her life had it failed her, and though to her all Eastern men seemed exactly alike in the moonlight, yet her inner consciousness began to tap ont a message of warning, and the bristles of her self-protection to rise at the threatenings of danger.

"Bother!" however, was her only comment as, keeping the star ahead, she walked steadily onward.

But she made a silent, strenuous, but unavailing struggle when something white and soft was slipped over her head and a hand placed firmly upon her mouth, as she felt herself lifted in a pair of strong arms and carried some considerable distance until she heard the click of a key, the opening and shutting of a door, and her captor's soft footfall through what seemed to be a deserted house.

She stood perfectly still when planted on her feet, and looked around her when the cloth had been removed from about her head.

White was her face indeed, but a little smile twisted the corner of her mouth as she noted the oriental luxury of the room in which she stood.

Ornate could hardly describe it so offensive was it in its mult.i.tudinous hangings, mirrors, lamps, and clutter of stools, tables, divans, and couches, inlaid or plastered with glittering sequins, bits of gla.s.s, and coloured imitation jewels.

But scorn simply blazed in the great blue eyes as she looked into those of a man standing in front of the one and only door to the whole apartment.

"You brute!" she said undiplomatically and in French as he moved a few steps nearer and salaamed deeply. "Why, you're the man who followed me from the restaurant to-day! What do you want? Backsheesh? I haven't any so you had better let me go at once unless you want the police after you! You can't treat English women in this off-hand way with impunity, I can a.s.sure you. Open the door immediately if you please!"

Poor little Jill, who by involuntarily harking back to the insular belief that the veriest heathen will quake in unison with the British culprit at the mere threat of British law, showed the absolute yarborough she held in this game, the stakes of which she guessed were something more precious than life itself, and in which she held not a single winning card.

"Let not Madame cause herself worry," answered the oriental also in French, as he approached nearer still, his eyes ablaze with pa.s.sion of sorts as be looked the girl up and down from head to foot. "The police--the law--you are in Egypt, Madame, or I should say Mademoiselle I think. Money! when a man holds heaven itself within his grasp, does he open his hand to grasp a pa.s.sing cloud?"

"I should advise you to let me go _at_ once," repeated Jill, "if you don't want my friends to raise trouble!"

But her bluff was of no avail as she was soon aware when once more the man salaamed with a world of mockery in the action.

"But Mademoiselle has but now run away from her friends! No?--she has but little--oh! _very_ little money!--yes?--and nowhere to go--it is for that that I have thrown my protection around her!"

Jill thought hard for a moment, wondering how much the man knew of her escapade.

"How do you know? _Who_ told you I had no money? I _have_ a friend as it happens------!"

"Mademoiselle has no friend but me," interrupted the man; "she left them at the hotel when she went to take a walk."

And Jill retreated step by step before him as he came closer still, his voice sinking to a whisper, his hand within an inch of her wrist.

"I will not harm you because you are oh, _very_ beautiful! You are a feast of loveliness and I--I am hungry!"

But still the little smile twisted the corner of Jill's red mouth as she looked unflinchingly into the brown eyes in the depths of which smouldered a something which was not good to look upon.

"I suppose you have stolen my dressing-case too," was her next, somewhat irrelevant remark. "Men of _your_ type I dare say can find a use for everything from women to hair-pins. You black _dog_, who _are_ you?"

Red murder flared in the room for one moment and then died down, leaving a little smoke cloud of uncertainty in the man's mind.

He was used--oh, _very_ used to the breaking in of women, for was not his name notorious in Northern Egypt and were there not whispers of many young and beautiful who had mysteriously disappeared.