Desert Love by Joan Conquest

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DESERT LOVE

BY

JOAN CONQUEST

Author of "Leonie of the Jungle"

NEW YORK

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1920

By THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO M. F.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE SEED

PART II

THE FLOWER

PART III

THE FRUIT

PART I

THE SEED

DESERT LOVE

CHAPTER I

Jill looked at the East!

At her feet sat huddled groups of women, just bundles of black robes,
some with discs about their necks, some with chains or golden crescents
upon the forehead, all wearing the _burko_ [yashmak or face veil]
covering the entire face with the exception of the eyes, and held in
position between the eyebrows by the quaint tube-shaped _selva_,
fastening it to the _tarhah_, the flowing black veil which nearly
touches the ground behind, covers the head, and pulled down to the
eyebrows leaves just the beautiful dark eyes to be seen, glancing up
timidly--in this case--at the golden-haired, blue-eyed girl above them.

Men of different classes stood around, or squatted on their heels upon
the ground, all in flowing robes of different colouring and various
stages of cleanliness, some with heads covered in turbans, some with
the tarboosh, others with the kahleelyah or head handkerchief, all
chattering with the exception of the higher classes and the Bedouins,
the latter clothed in white, with the distinctive thong of camel's hair
wound about the head covering, arms folded and face passively serene,
looking as though they had stepped right out of the Old Testament on to
the fly-ridden, sunbaked station of Ismailiah; whilst vendors of cakes,
sticky, melting sweets, and small oranges, wandered in and out of the
crowd screaming their wares. Shouts of laughter drew Jill's attention
to the other side of the station, where, with terms of endearment mixed
with blood-curdling threats, a detachment of British soldiers getting
ready to start en route for Suez were urging, coaxing, striving to make
that most obstinate of animals, the camel, get to its feet some time
before midnight.

From them she looked at a group of native dwellings made of sunbaked
clay. Small square buildings, looking in the distance like out-houses,
with scarcely perceptible windows, and flat roofs given over to
poultry. Near them the patient bullock did its monotonous round,
drawing the precious water from the well with which to moisten the arid
little patch of earth from which the fellah extracts the so very little
necessary to him in his life.

A clump of slender palms, like forgotten scaffolding, stood out clear
against the intense blue of the sky; the desert, that wonderful
magnetic plain, stretched away in mile upon mile of yellow nothingness,
until as minute as flies on a yellow floor, growing more distinct at
every step, with solemn and exceeding great dignity stalked a string of
camels, each animal fastened by a rope to the saddle of the one in
front, each apparently unconscious of its seemingly overwhelming
burden, as with heads swaying slightly from side to side with that air
of disdain which the dame of Belgravia unsuccessfully tries to imitate
when essaying to crush the inhabitant of Suburbia by means of
long-handled lorgnettes resting on the shiny arch of her aristocratic
nose, they responded without fail to the soft musical voice of the Arab
seated cross-legged on the leader.

Then her eyes turned to the West.

To the mixed mob which had rushed from the _Norddeutscher Lloyd_ at
Suez, leaving the great liner to the wise few, while perspiring and
querulous, and altogether unpleasant, they had filled the little train
which chuffs its way along the edge of the canal to Ismailiah, and
through the dust and fly-laden miles to Cairo, where it turns its
burden out to clamour and argue vociferously with the wily dragoman who
would take a herd of elephants to "do" the Pyramids in one hour if the
backsheesh proved substantial enough.

With absolute loathing she gazed at those with whom she had passed so
many weary days on the return journey from Australia.

There were of a certain type of English women not a few, sunburnt, loud
of voice, lean of breast and narrow of hip.

Their sisters, wiser and better endowed by nature, had remained on the
liner, taking advantage of the empty conditions of the boat to repair
the ravage done to complexion and wardrobe by the sizzling, salt-laden
wind which had tortured them since Colombo had been left behind.

Two daughters and a mother stood aloofly in the shade thrown by the
indescribable waiting-room; the mother still labouring under the
delusion that if you can't afford to send your girls properly wardrobed
on a visit to relations in India, the next best method of annexing
husbands for them is to take them hacking on a long sea voyage. For
has it not been known that many a man driven to the verge of madness by
the everlasting sight of flying fish, and the as enduring sound of the
soft plop of the little bull-board sandbag, has become engaged to "a
perfectly im-_poss_-ible person in the second class, you know," so as
to break the deadly monotony of his surroundings.

They did not want to see Cairo or any other part of Egypt, for the East
said nothing to them, even a rush view of the Pyramids failing to stir
their shallow hearts; but they knew to a shade the effect on their less
fortunate friends when in course of time they should murmur, "You
remember, dear, the winter we were in Cairo."

Added to these there were raucous Australians, clumsily built guttural
Germans, in fact the usual omnium gatherum, unavoidable, alas! on a sea
voyage, clothed in short skirts, shirt waists, squash hats, and thick
boots as "they were going tramping about the sands," and each, of
_course_, loaded with the inevitable camera which gives dire offence to
many an eastern of higher rank, who hates being photographed
willy-nilly along with all the other "only a native" habits of the
westerner, who with the one word "nigger" describes the Rajah of India,
the Sheik of Arabia, the Hottentot and the Christy Minstrel.

Free for one day from the restraining manners of those others who at
that very moment were doubtless returning thanks on deck to Allah for
his manifold blessings in the shape of some few hours of perfect peace,
a few men of different nationalities were either boisterously chaffing
the less plain of their companions, or ogling the shrinking Eastern
women, crouching on the edge of the platform. Mr. Billings in fact, in
unclean canvas shoes and a frantic endeavour to find favour in the
bistre enlarged eyes of a certain slim black figure, was executing the
very double shuffle which had "brought down" the second class dining
saloon honoured for the nonce by the presence of the first class, on
the occasion of one of the purgatorial concerts habitual to sea life as
known on board a liner.

CHAPTER II

Jill stood by herself!

Personally I consider as infinitely boring those descriptions written
at length anent the past lives of the characters, male and female,
which go to the building of a novel, so in as few words as possible
will try to outline the years which had brought Jill Carden to the
dreary task of waiting hand and foot upon the whimsies of a neurotic
German woman of great wealth, and still greater disinclination to part
with the smallest coin of any realm she might be travelling through.

Jill, an only child and motherless, had led a glorious care-free
existence.

Adored by her father and her two friends, Moll, otherwise the
Honourable Mary Bingham pronounced Beam, of the neighbouring estate,
and Jack, otherwise Sir John Wetherbourne, Baronet, of the next county,
big brother to Jill and worshipper at the shrine of Moll. Jill was
also loved by all who waited on her, and sought after by not a few on
account of her great wealth, and had laughed her way through seventeen
years of life, to find herself suddenly minus father and money, with
nothing left in fact but an estate mortgaged to the smallest pebble,
and a heart-whole proposition from her chum Moll to "just come over the
wall" and restart laughing her way as her adopted sister through the
bit of life which might stretch from the moment of disaster to such
time that she should find a life companion with whom she could settle
down and live happily ever after!

But although Jill's head was outwardly covered with great plaits of
auburn hair, through which broke riotous, frivolous curls, the inside
held a distinctly active and developed brain, which had acquired the
habit of thinking deeply upon such subjects as woman, wife and
motherhood.

Added to this, which is already quite enough to put out of gear the
life of any girl brought up in convention bound England, she had a
heart as big as her outrageous longing for, and love of adventure,
neither of which bignesses she had so far been able to satisfy.

As I have said this was quite bad enough, but through and above all,
her whole rather exceptional being was desirous of love. Not the shape
which clothes its diseased body in soiled robes of imitation something
at one and elevenpence three farthings per yard, and under ferns in
conservatories, in punts up back-waters, in stifling tea-rooms, hotels,
theatres and night-clubs, exchanges sly look for sly look and soiled
mouth for soiled kisses, in its endeavours to pass itself off as that
wonder figure which, radiant of brow and humorous of mouth, deep of
breast and profound of thought, stands motionless in high and by-ways
with hands outstretched to those futile figures, blindly hurrying past
the Love they fondly imagine is to be found in the front row of the
chorus, the last row of the cinema, or the unrestrained licence of the
country house.

Jill had never flirted and therefore had known no kiss excepting her
father's matutinal and nocturnal peck. She looked upon her beautiful
body as some jewel to be placed in the hands of the man she loved upon
her wedding-night, so it was as unsoiled and as untainted as her mind,
although she knew that once she loved she would go down before that
mighty force as a tree before a storm. Dull, you will say all this.
May be! but mighty refreshing in these days when amourette follows
amourette as surely as Monday follows Sunday, the only difference in
the stock being the trade mark, which stamps the one with the outline
of a perfect limousine, and the other with the front seat on the top of
an omnibus; though believe me the Mondays and Sundays differ not at all.

Jill's ideas on franchise and suffrage, and a "good time" as seen from
the standpoint of the average society girl or woman were absolutely nil.

She wanted first of all a master, then a home, and then children, many
of them.

Her idea of love was utter submission to the man she should love. Her
ideal of happiness his happiness, and although she had no fixed idea of
her home, she was positively certain she did not want lodge gates and
forelock-pulling peasantry, nor tame deer inside elaborate palings, nor
the white-capped nurse stiff with starch trundling a perambulator with
a fat, ordinary, rosy heir to the palings, deer, and pullers of locks.

So she sweetly but very definitely said no to a certain millionaire,
who had earned his banking account and the thanks of many thousands by
his invention of a non-popping champagne cork, and who, adoring the
girl, had hastened the very day the news of the smash had spread
through the country, like fire on a windy day, to lay his portly self
and all that thereunto adhered at her beautiful feet. The disgust of
her relatives upon her want of common sense was outspoken; for having
overstocked their respective quivers with commonplace female arrows,
they quite naturally looked with dismay upon an almost beautiful and
_quite_ penniless and homeless girl about whom, _after_ having read the
will they referred to as "poor Jill, for whom I _suppose_ we _must_ do
_something_ don't you know?" with a quavering inflection at the end of
the phrase.

But Jill did not stop on refusing the eligible owner of an unmortgaged
estate. No! she set out to look for work off her own bat, and actually
found it in that occupation which, far less paid than more, opens up a
perfect vista of possible adventures under the guise of a travelling
companion.

She spoke French, German, and Italian like natives, which was all to
the good. She danced like a Vernon Castle, knew almost as much about
fencing as a Saviolo, shot like a George V., and rode like a cowboy,
all of which qualifications she erased from her list on the termination
of the freezing half-hour of her first interview with her first
would-be employer, who, until the enumeration of the above sporting
qualifications, had seemed desirous of taking her along with a
bronchitic pug to winter in Bath.

Since then she had done Europe and Africa pretty well with never the
suspicion of an adventure, and, when you meet her on the station of
Ismailiah, where you change for Port Said, she was returning from
Australia, with a wardrobe at last beginning to fret about the hem, and
shine around the seams, a condition accounted for by the emaciated
condition of her purse; a memory of good things and hours worn thin by
the constant nerve-wracking routine of capsules, hot drinks, hot water
bottles, moods and shawls; and a fully developed rebellion in her whole
being against the never-ending vista which stretched far into the
future, of other such hours, days, months, yea! even years!

But everything was capped by a still more fully developed decision to
brave it out, and out, and out, rather than return to ask the help of
those whose hand-clasp had weakened in ratio to the dwindling of the
gold in her coffers.

CHAPTER III

And why did she stand by herself?

This is no riddle, the answer being too easy. Men would have answered,
"Guessed in once, she was pretty!" And the women would guess in once
too, but would keep silent, the pretty ones merely smiling, having
sampled the Coventry-sending powers of plain women in the majority on
board, and the plain ones from that unwillingness inborn or inherited
in every woman to admit good looks, or good anything for that matter,
in a member of her own sex.

And she _was_ pretty, with the prettiness of youth allied to genuine
red-gold hair, and the bluest of blue eyes, which looked at you in
disconcertingly straight manner from between the longest black lashes
you ever saw.

She sounds very much like a "Dainty Novel heroine," but I have met her
and I know, and she also had a mouth turned up at the corners, and the
loveliest teeth, a nose which also turned up, not unduly, and a skin on
which lay the merest suspicion of powder like dust on a butterfly's
wings, also two jet black _grains de beaute_, one at the corner of her
mouth and the other on top of the left cheek, just under the outside
corner of the eye.

_Ravissante_! Her beauty was nature's own, and she had the loveliest,
longest, narrowest feet ever shod and silken hosed by Audet, and as
lovely out of the silken hose as in.

But all that, though it pleased the eye, did not really constitute her
real charm. It was more the idea of strength, and buoyancy, and the
love of humanity she gave out, that attracted young and old, rich and
poor, dogs, children, and the sick of soul and body to her.

The type of woman who owns the husband of a roaming disposition and has
not got accustomed to the disposition, or the woman eager to acquire a
husband of any disposition whatever, liked her not at all, failing to
see that she was genuinely uninterested in other people's male
belongings.

Those who think to lure men by the mystery of a tobacco cloud
permanently around the head, or to stimulate by the sight of a glass
which looks like lemonade but isn't, nestling among the everlasting
cards and cigarette debris, disliked her _intensely_, not so much
because she did not ally herself _with_ them, as for the fact that she
did not range herself _against_ them, having even been heard to remark
that the world would be a deadly dull place is everyone enjoyed the
same pleasure and the same wickedness. Just three more items to add to
the long list against her on this particular voyage.

Firstly, had she not one sizzling Red Sea day appeared with her hair
hanging in two great plaits reaching below her knees? Which escapade
might have escaped uncensured if accompanied by the whitish eye-lashes,
forceful freckles, and pungent aroma usually allied to reddish hair,
but as it was, the combination of the red-gold glory with blackest
curling lashes, skin like satin, and the faintest trace of Devonshire
lavender, created a perfect scandal among those whose locks were either
limply curtaining their owner's cheeks or blinding the eye, or cached
under some head covering were acquiring a wave which might with luck
last out the dinner and bridge hours.

Secondly, although a penniless companion, she allowed no familiarity
from the men and no condescension from the women; and thirdly, her
shoes gave reason for envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,
being on the day you met her exquisite champagne coloured things, her
critics little guessing that the reason she wore them was that she had
none thicker, and no money wherewith to buy any.

This last point sounds almost absurd, but those who know will any day
back the woman with dainty ankles, pretty feet, the glimpse of white
lace and a plain face, against the really beautiful countenance up
above the shapeless ankle-calf combine, and the foot that in two days
gives a shoe the shape of the bows of a dinghey.

So because of all these reasons, also because all the nice, wise people
who loved her having stayed behind, she stood alone, her heart
clamouring for life and adventure, which comes to about the same thing,
and which she sensed is to be found so much more easily in the East she
was leaving behind in the space of a few hours. The rest of her
rebelling against the West, the monotonous days on the boat racing her
back to England in November, with nothing to do, too much to eat, and
the trail of medicine glasses, cushions, gouty, dyspeptic, and neurotic
employers lengthening into the drab future.

"Allah! help me!" she whispered, and really meaning it, as she turned
to look again at the camels stalking on into the desert, and finding
herself instead looking straight into the eyes of an Arab standing
behind her.

And here, I hope, endeth the dullest part of the book.

CHAPTER 17

Arabs as a race are tall, most of them having a grave look of nobility,
all without exception, inheriting from their forefathers Ishmail or
Johtan that air of studied calm, that seldom smiling, never restless
attitude, which expresses the height of dignity and gravity. There
were many of them in this motley station crowd, also Bedouins, smaller
of stature, and the members of the many other tribes which go to
populating the great Egyptian desert. But not one of all the men,
magnificent though some of them were, could compare with Hahmed the
Camel King, who, standing alone and motionless with folded arms, let
his eyes rest upon this most fair woman from the West.

Jill was accustomed to being looked at, from the impudent stare of
Frenchmen, the open look of admiration, both male and female, of the
Italian, to the never-to-be-forgotten look of Berlin that had seemed to
undress and leave her naked in the street.

But now under grave scrutiny she felt the colour, which made her even
more lovely, rising from chin to brow, and longed to cover her face or
to run away and hide, though there was nothing but a wondering respect
in the Arab's eyes.

For one moment his eyes met hers, then she slowly lowered the heavy
white lids with their fringe of curling lashes, and, turning, stood
looking out over the desert, where she no longer saw the stretches of
yellow sand, nor the airing of camels stalking away into the distance,
nor the mud houses and patient bullocks. No! nothing of all these, but
instead, just one man's face, oval, lean-featured, eyes brilliantly
black and deep-set under thick eyebrows, an aquiline nose, the lower
part of the face covered in a sharp pointed beard, and the thick virile
hair by a snow-white kahleelyah, bound by a band to the well-shaped
head.

A man was he indeed with a width of shoulder rarely seen in an Arab,
standing well over six foot, in spotless white robes sweeping to his
feet, a cloak of finest black cloth falling over all in swinging folds,
failing, however, to hide that look of tremendous strength which
impresses one so in some of the long-limbed, lean, muscular inhabitants
of the desert.

Jill walked over to the edge of the platform which, as a rule is only
raised a few inches above the rail, and after a few seconds beckoned
her employer's special dragoman, who had annexed himself at Cairo and
presumably would only be shaken off on deck.

He came immediately, all smiles.

All the so-called lower classes smiled upon Jill, from the coster in
Whitechapel to the Kaffir at the Cape. And why? Why, because she
smiled when she asked a service.

"Be more dignified!" she would indignantly reply when remonstrated with
about the native. "They certainly show a varied degree of blackness in
their skin, and have less brains than some of us, but they are human,
so I shall continue to smile if I like," and smile she did, and they
smiled too and ran to do her bidding.

Not that she indulged in the "our dear black brother" views of those
people who, from utter lack of knowledge upon the subject, believe that
with the exception of a certain difference in the pigment which
embellishes the skin, the lowest type of Hottentot has the same ideals,
desires, and outlook on life as the highest born, or, as I think to be
more correct, I should say, the cleanest living individual in the
Western Hemisphere.

She did not approve of the promiscuous mingling of the white and black
as is so often and so unhappily seen in London, where a servant girl
maybe, will ecstatically spend her evening out under the protection of
some ebony hued product of Africa and, labouring under the delusion
that the dusky swain is the direct descendant of Cetewayo, also totally
lacking all knowledge of African history, will fondly imagine herself a
queen in embryo, instead of which she is merely the means to feed the
lustful longing for the white in some Cape boy, who believes he hides
the roll of his native walk under an exaggerated skirt to his
over-padded coat.

And she equally hated to see the social butterfly smile upon the
high-born native of India, angling for his lakhs with the bait of a
fair white skin upon which to fasten a string of priceless pearls,
gathering her fastidious skirts about her at the sign of any feeling
more human than that which she would allow from a respectable bank
manager, recoiling disdainfully from a man whose ancestors were mighty
in the land, when hers were just beginning to break through the crust
of serfdom, as a toad will crack and throw back the caked mud under
which it has blissfully slept.

As a preventative to social and racial mishaps she thoroughly endorsed
the theory that "East is East and West is West, etc." But in her
heart, or rather in her somewhat searching brain, she had often
wondered if there could be no exception to the ruling, if half of the
East and half of West could never combine to make a perfect whole.

All smiles the dragoman ran forward, saluting her with hands to
forehead, mouth, and breast.

"Do you know who that man is?" she asked, indicating with a scarcely
perceptible movement of the head the Arab who had not moved a muscle
since she had turned away from him to look at his homeland, the desert.

"'Im! My lady!" replied the native, eyes and white teeth flashing as
he essayed in his best Anglo-French to please the beautiful foreigner
who so graciously spoke to him. "'Im? Oh, 'im! is Hahmed the Camel
King. 'Im provide the camels for Government 'Camels Corpse,'" pointing
to the Camelry Corps, where perspiring Tommies and a seething mass of
brown beasts were literally raising the dust on the other side of the
railroad. "'Im," he continued, "is ze great man, from far away over ze
Canal from ze greates' and best part of South Arabia. Is rich, oh!
rich! Oh! so very rich--_riche comme le diable, Madame_. Is master of
many villages, many peoples, but is 'ow say, my lady--_est
etrange_--and feared. 'Is word is ze law and 'is arm is ze iron and 'e
can also shoot ze fly on ze top of Cheops!"

The man paused, literally from want of breath.

"He is evidently a very fine man," said Jill, it must be confessed a
little disappointedly, having expected something a little less ordinary
in the way of history, "but I can't say I see anything strange about it
all!"

The dragoman, slightly downcast by the lack of enthusiasm on the part
of his audience, took in a huge quantity of the absolutely stifling air
and started afresh.

"Oh! _mais, Madame_, ze strange zing is zat wiz all 'is rich, all 'is
camel, all 'is 'ouse--ah! I forgot zat is 'is Ismailiah 'ouse,"
pointing a long, brown finger to a huge pink edifice, standing like a
huge pink birthday cake under the blazing sun on the edge of the
town--"'e 'as no woman--no not an one--not wife--not lady--zere is
tales of one wife long ago over zere," pointing vaguely in the
direction he imagined South Arabia might be, "but feared, we say and
ask nozing--no! ze great Hahmed live alone--not zere------" Once more
pointing contemptuously to the pink abode. "Zat but a business
'ouse--ze most beautiful place in one oasis! Ze Flat Oasis! Ah
Madame! _comme c'est 'belle_--I who 'ave been on camel business can
tell, ze 'ouse, ze shade, ze water--but no lady, no children, no son,
no one--'e go and sleep and live all by self alone--_triste_, Madame,
because 'e is ze great, ze just, but go always alone in ze night to 'is
oasis _bien aimee_ and------"

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