The Sheik Part 11

The voice came nearer and he swept in, still singing, and came to her.

_"Pale hands, pink tipped,"_ he sang, stopping in front of her and catching her fingers in his up to his lips, but she tore them away before he kissed them.

"You do know English?" she cried sharply, her eyes searching his.

He flung himself on the divan beside her with a laugh. "Because I sing an English song?" he replied in French. "_La! la!_ I heard a Spanish boy singing in 'Carmen' once in Paris who did not know a word of French beside the score. He learned it parrot-like, as I learn your English songs," he added, smiling.

She watched him light a cigarette, and her forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. "It was you who sang outside the hotel in Biskra that night?" she asked at last, more statement than question.

"One is mad sometimes, especially when the moon is high," he replied teasingly.

"And was it you who came into my bedroom and put the blank cartridges in my revolver?"

His arm stole round her, drawing her to him, and he lifted her head up so that he could look into her eyes. "Do you think that--I would have allowed anybody else to go to your room at night?--I, an Arab, when I meant you for myself?"

"You were so sure?"

He laughed softly, as if the suggestion that any plan of his could be liable to miscarriage amused him infinitely, and the smouldering pa.s.sion flamed up in his dark eyes. He strained her to him hungrily, as if her slim body lying against his had awakened the sleeping fires within him. She struggled against the pressure of his arm, averting her head.

"Always cold?" he chided. "Kiss me, little piece of ice."

She longed to, and it almost broke her heart to persevere in her efforts to repulse him. A wild desire seized her to tell him that she loved him, to make an end once and for all of the misery of doubt and fear that was sapping her strength from her, and abide by the issue.

But the spark of hope that lived in her heart gave her courage, and she fought down the burning words that sought utterance, forcing indifference into her eyes and a mutinous pout to her lips.

His black brows drew together slowly. "Still disobedient? You said you would obey me. I loathe the English, but I thought their word----"

She interrupted him with a quick gesture, and, turning her face to his, for the first time kissed him voluntarily, brushing his tanned cheek with swift, cold lips.

He laughed disdainfully. "_Bon Dieu_! Has the hot sun of the desert taught you no better than that? Have you learned so little from me? Has the vile climate of your detestable country frozen you so thoroughly that nothing can melt you? Or is there some man in England who has the power to turn you from a statue to a woman?" he added, with an angry snarl.

She clenched her hands with the pain of his words. "There is no one,"

she muttered, "but I--I don't feel like that."

"You had better learn," he said thickly. "I am tired of holding an icicle in my arms," and sweeping her completely into his masterful grasp he covered her face with fierce, burning kisses.

And for the first time she surrendered to him wholly, clinging to him pa.s.sionately, and giving him kiss for kiss with an absolute abandon of all resistance. At last he let her go, panting and breathless, and leaped up, drawing his hand across his eyes.

"You go to my head, Diane," he said, with a laugh that was half anger, and shrugging his shoulders moved across the tent to the chest where the spare arms were kept, and unlocking it took out a revolver and began to clean it.

She looked at him bewildered. What had he meant? How could she reconcile what he said with the advice that he had given her before?

Was he totally inconsistent? Did he, after all, want the satisfaction of knowing that he had made her love him--of flattering himself on the power he exercised over her? Did he care that he was able to torture her heart with a refinement of cruelty that took all and gave nothing?

Did he wish her to crawl abjectly to his feet to give him the pleasure of spurning her contemptuously, or was it only that he wanted her senses merely to respond to his ardent, Eastern temperament? Her face grew hot and shamed. She knew the fiery nature that was hidden under his impa.s.sive exterior and knew the control he exercised over himself, knew, too, that the strain he put upon himself was liable to be broken with unexpected suddenness. It was an easy thing to rule his wild followers, and she guessed that the relaxation that he looked for in the privacy of his own tent meant more to him than he would ever have admitted, than perhaps he even know. The hatred and defiance with which she had repelled him had provoked and amused him, but it had also at times angered him.

He was very human, and there must have been moments when he wanted a willing mate rather than a rebellious prisoner. She gave a quick sigh as she looked at him. He was so strong, so vigorous, so intensely alive. It was going to be very difficult to antic.i.p.ate his moods and be subservient to his temper. She sighed again wearily. If she could but make him and keep him happy. She ruffled her loose curls, tugging them with a puzzled frown, a trick that was a survival of her nursery days, when she clutched frantically at her red-gold mop to help her settle any childish difficulty.

She knelt up suddenly on the cushions of the divan. "Why do you hate the English so bitterly, Monseigneur?" She had dropped almost unconsciously into Gaston's mode of address for some time; it was often awkward to give him no name, and she shrank from using his own; and the t.i.tle fitted him.

He looked up from his work, and, gathering the materials together, brought them over to the divan. "Light me a cigarette, _cherie_, my hands are busy," he replied irrelevantly.

She complied with a little laugh. "You haven't answered my question."

He polished the gleaming little weapon in his hand for some time without speaking. "_Ma pet.i.te_ Diane, your lips are of an adorable redness and your voice is music in my ears, but--I detest questions.

They bore me to a point of exasperation," he said at last lightly, and started humming the Kashmiri song again.

She knew him well enough to know that all questions did not bore him, but that she must have touched some point connected with the past of which she was ignorant that affected him, and to prove her knowledge she asked another question. "Why do you sing? You have never sung before."

He looked at her with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt at her pertinacity.

"Inquisitive one! I sing because I am glad. Because my friend is coming."

"Your friend?"

"Yes, by Allah! The best friend a man ever had. Raoul de Saint Hubert."

She flashed a look at the bookcase with a jerk of her head, and he nodded. "Coming here?" she queried, and the dismay she felt sounded in her voice.

He frowned in quick annoyance at her tone. "Why not?" he said haughtily.

"No reason," she murmured, sinking down among the cushions again and picking up the magazine from the floor. The advent of a stranger--a European--was a shock, but she felt that the Sheik's eyes were on her and she determined to show no feeling in his presence. "What time will you be ready to ride?" she asked indifferently, with a simulated yawn, flirting over the pages.

"I can't ride with you to-day. I am going to meet Saint Hubert. His courier only came an hour ago. It is two years since I have seen him."

Diana slipped off the couch and went to the open doorway. A detachment of men were already waiting for him, and, close by the tent, Shaitan of the ugly temper was biting and fidgeting in the hands of the grooms.

She scowled at the beautiful, wicked creature's flat-laid ears and rolling eyes. She would have backed him fearlessly herself if the Sheik had let her, but she was nervous for him every time he rode the vicious beast. No one but the Sheik could manage him, and though she knew that he had perfect mastery over the horse, she never lost the feeling of nervousness, a sensation the old Diana had never, never experienced, and she wished to-day that it had been any other horse but Shaitan waiting for him.

She went back to him slowly. "It makes my head ache, to stay in all day. May Gaston not ride with me?" she asked diffidently, her eyes anywhere but on his face. He had not allowed her to ride with any one except himself since her attempted escape, and to her tentative suggestions that the rides with the valet might be resumed he had given a prompt refusal. He hesitated now, and she was afraid he was going to refuse again, and she looked up wistfully. "Please, Monseigneur," she whispered humbly.

He looked at her for a moment with his chin squarer than usual. "Are you going to run away again?" he asked bluntly.

Her eyes filled slowly with tears, and she turned her head away to hide them. "No, I am not going to run away again," she said very low.

"Very well, I will tell him. He will be delighted, _le bon_ Gaston. He is your very willing slave in spite of the trick you played him. He has a beautiful nature, _le pauvre diable_. He is not an Arab, eh, little Diane?" The mocking smile was back in his eyes as he turned her face up to his in the usual peremptory way. Then he held out the revolver he had been cleaning with sudden seriousness. "I want you to carry this always now when you ride. Ibraheim Omair is still in the neighbourhood."

She looked at it blankly.

"But----" she stammered.

He knew what was in her mind, and he stooped and kissed her lightly. "I trust you," he said quietly, and went out.

She followed him to the door, the revolver dangling from her hand, and watched him mount and ride away. His horsemanship was superb and her eyes glowed as they followed him. She went back into the tent and slipped the revolver into the holster he had left lying on a stool, and, tucking it and Saint Hubert's novel, which she took from the bookcase, under her arm, went into the bed-room and, calling to Zilah to pull off her riding-boots, threw herself on the bed to laze away the morning, and to try and picture the author from the book he had written.

She hated him in advance; she was jealous of him and of his coming. The Sheik's sudden new tenderness had given rise to a hope she hardly dared allow herself to dwell upon. Might not the power that she had exercised over other men be still extended to him in spite of the months that he had been indifferent to anything except the mere physical attraction she had for him? Was it not possible that out of that attraction might develop something finer and better than the primitive desire she had aroused? Oriental though he was, might he not be capable of a deep and lasting affection? He might have loved her if no outside influence had come to interrupt the routine that had become so intimately a part of his life. Those other episodes to which he had referred so lightly had been a matter of days or weeks, not months, as in her case. He might have cared but for the coming of this Frenchman. She hurled Saint Hubert's book across the room in a fit of girlish rage and buried her head in her arms. He would be odious--a smirking, conceited egotist!

She had met several French writers and she visualised him contemptuously. His books were undoubtedly clever. So much the worse; he would be correspondingly inflated. His novel revealed a pa.s.sionate, emotional temperament that promised to complicate the situation if he should be pleased to cast an eye of favour on her. She writhed at the very thought. And that he was to see her was evident; the Sheik had left no orders to the contrary. It was not to be the case of the Dutch traveller, when the fact that she belonged to an Arab had been brought home to her effectually by Ahmed Ben Ha.s.san's peremptory commands, and she had experienced for the first time the sensation of a woman kept in seclusion.

The emotions of the morning and the disappointment of the intended ride, together with the dismay produced by the unexpected visitor, all combined to agitate her powerfully, and she worked herself up into a fever of self-torture and unhappiness. She ended by falling asleep and slept heavily for some hours. Zilah waked her with a shy hand on her arm and a soft announcement of lunch, and Diana sat up, rubbing her eyes, flushed and drowsy. She stared uncomprehendingly for a moment at the Arab girl, and then waved her away imperiously and buried her head in the pillows again. Lunch, when her heart was breaking!

Mindful of her lord's deputy, who was waiting in the next room, and whom she regarded with awe, Zilah held her ground with a timid insistence until Diana started up wrathfully and bade her go in tones that she had never used before to the little waiting-girl. Zilah fled precipitately, and, thoroughly awakened, Diana swung her heels to the ground and with her elbows on her knees rested her hot head in her hands. She felt giddy, her head ached and her mouth was parched and dry. She got up languidly, and going to the table studied her face in the mirror intently. She frowned at the reflection. She had never been proud of her own beauty; she had lived with it always and it had seemed to her a thing of no consequence, and now that it had failed to arouse the love she wanted in Ahmed Ben Ha.s.san she almost hated it.

"Are you going to have fever or are you merely bad-tempered?" she asked out loud, and the sound of her own voice made her laugh in spite of her heavy heart. She went into the bathroom and soused her head in cold water. When she came back a frightened Zilah was putting a small tray on the bra.s.s-topped table by the bed.

"M'seiur Gaston," she stammered, almost crying.