by Pamela Kent
There was one other bad moment before the moon rose, after the light had vanished from the sky abruptly, when she would have welcomed his touch on her arm again, because the darkness was like a solid wall in front of her. But he had returned to his seat beside Jacqueline, and it was only the sudden sound of his voice that stemmed her rising feeling of panic as he shouted to Ibrahim to get the lanterns lighted that were to make it possible for them to dine in comfort at the well-laid trestle table set up firmly in the sand.
Ibrahim fairly leapt to obey his request, and in the flickering light of the first lantern Susan could see Raoul looking at her, and she realized that once more he had understood. Although he had returned to Jacqueline, he had known exactly how she was feeling, and how ridiculously terrified she had been for a few moments.
They all retired to their tents very early that night, for once more there was to be an early start, and possibly only Susan, who had slept so well during the afternoon, lay awake for a long time staring out through the open tent-flap at the stars burning in the velvet night above her. She told herself that it was the novelty of attempting to sleep in a tent that kept her awake, because Ayse, to whom it was no novelty, slept peacefully, and she refused to admit that the persistent thought that Raoul was not many yards away from her, while Jacqueline Dupont was not so many yards away from either of them, was what caused her to toss restlessly.
If only they had been able to undertake this trip without Jacqueline!
If only it was not she who had thought of it, and therefore, of course, insisted on being a member of the party! Possibly the only important member so far as Mehmet Bey was concerned!...
The following day was almost exactly the same as the first day, save that the stars were still shining in the sky when the horses were saddled and they started off, and they also rode for a short while between tea and sunset.
Also Jacqueline managed to ride for many hours beside Raoul, after discovering that there was something wrong with her stirrup, and getting him to readjust it, by which time Susan had overtaken Ayse and the doctor, and as the two seemed to welcome her, and she hadn’t the courage to drop back, it was in their company that she finally reached the oasis where they were to pass that night.
The evening meal passed much as the evening meal had passed the night before, with a good deal of light conversation and laughter—rather more sparkling, however, tonight, because Jacqueline was plainly in a much more contented mood than she had been before—and, with the rising moon, Ayse and her doctor vanished, as they had now formed a habit of vanishing together. Ayse had confessed to Susan before dinner that Nick had asked her to marry him, and that she had agreed, and her brother had given his consent. She was in the seventh heaven of happiness, but there was to be no announcement of the engagement until the desert trip was over, and then she was going to think about preparations for an early wedding.
Susan had given little thought to her own position if Ayse consented to marry her old friend, but the realisation that in a few weeks her services as companion would be needed no longer took her almost completely aback. Although her congratulations were sincere enough, Ayse sensed at once that something had struck her that didn’t please her and, guessing what it was, she put out a hand and took Susan’s to reassure her.
“I shall go to Paris to collect my trousseau,” she said, “and you will come with me. And afterwards Nicholas wishes me to visit relatives of his in England, and perhaps you can come with me there, too. In any case, I shall want you with me for some time yet, Susan dear,” she assured her. “And, perhaps by the time I am to be married...”
“Yes?” Susan asked, feeling as if her world had begun to disintegrate, and the desert trip no longer had any charms. For where would Raoul be while she and Ayse were shopping in Paris, and staying together in England? And would she ever see him again after that?
“Perhaps by the time I am married.” Ayse repeated, “some solution for your future may have been arrived at!”
But Susan was too conscious of a slowly spreading sea of misery, and too swamped by the thought of the emptiness of her own future extending drearily before her, to be capable of reading anything comforting into an oblique speech of that sort.
She stood in the doorway of her own tent and watched Ayse and Arnwood disappear, and then, because she couldn’t bear the thought of trying to seek sleep in the darkness of the tent or even of meeting anyone face-to-face who would be likely to want to speak to her just then, she turned and wandered away into the moonlight night herself, no longer afraid of the desert’s immensity because the moon was so bright that one couldn’t possibly lose sight of the tents, or become swallowed up in such an expanse—not while that light lasted, anyway.
She had the feeling that Ayse and her lover, once they were screened by a clump of palms, lost no time in falling into one another’s arms, and for them this trip must be a kind of long-drawn-out ecstasy, because they were together all the time, and the absolute quiet of a desert night was a perfect place in which to make plans for the future—a future that would also be a long-drawn-out happiness because they would be together.
At least, Susan thought, they had every chance of finding happiness together. They were two of the nicest people she knew, and she wished them well with all her heart. She was only a little inclined to wish that this romance that had budded so unexpectedly had not blossomed quite so quickly.
If only she had been given a few months!...
She had no idea where the others were, although she had seen Nick Carlton striding off alone into the moonlight. Which probably meant that Jacqueline and Raoul were together somewhere, and probably they were occupied in the same way that Ayse and the doctor were occupied ... With making plans for their future, and taking advantage of the magic of the moment.
Susan wandered forlornly so far from the camp that at last she realized she would have to turn back, and it was just as she was nearing the shade cast by the tents that a man appeared from behind one and accosted her almost angrily.
“Where have you been, Susan? You mustn’t wander about alone at this time of night, and I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Everywhere!” he repeated.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SUSAN looked up into Raoul’s dark face, and the realization that although he looked almost angry, he also looked concerned, caused her heart to give a most peculiar little lurch, while her sudden meeting with him robbed her temporarily of the power to make a simple reply.
“Where have you been?” he demanded again, and took her almost roughly by the arm.
“Why, I—why, I haven’t been anywhere in particular. Only for a walk.”
“Then you’re not to do it again, do you hear? Not at this time of night, and in a spot like this!” He refused to let go her arm, and drew her behind the tents and to a kind of hummock of sand, where he invited her to sit down. When she was seated he sat down beside her and offered her a cigarette, but when she refused he lighted one himself, and then frowned as he threw away the match.
“I’m sorry I barked at you just now, Susan,” he said, “but you gave me a fright.”
“Why?” she asked, with widening eyes.
“Because I couldn’t find you.”
He looked down into her eyes, and she knew that she had to look away.
“Surely one doesn’t get lost in the desert quite as easily as that?” she murmured, rather huskily. “I mean, I only wandered away a few yards. I didn’t feel like going to bed.”
“Why not? You should be tired after so much exercise.”
“Yes, I—I suppose so. But, the fact remains, I’m not,” tracing a pattern in the sand with her finger.
Although the tents were in the full path of the moonlight, the spot to which he had conducted her was in deepest shadow, and she could hardly see the outlines of his face when she peeped round at him uneasily. His eyes seemed to be watching her, brooding over her, while his cigarette smouldered away unheeded between his fingers.
&
nbsp; “I saw Ayse and Arnwood together just now,” he told her abruptly. “Do you know they’re going to be married?”
“Yes. Ayse told me.”
“And what will you do when Ayse is married?”
“Go home, I suppose.” He was watching her intently, and her uneasiness grew. “I shall probably go home before she’s married.”
“As anxious as all that to get away?”
“I never said so!”
“But you are anxious to get away?”
Suddenly he stood up and drew her with him. His hands held her shoulders so strongly that he hurt her.
“Tell me something, Susan,” he said.
“Yes?” she whispered, not daring to lift her eyes to his.
“Will you be sorry, when the time comes, to go back to England?”
Because it was no more than the truth, she nodded, dumbly.
His eyes gleamed strangely, almost triumphantly, although she couldn’t see them.
“Then, in that case, if I find you another position out here—something that will offer you complete security, will you take it? Will you agree to stay for—an indefinite period?”
Susan looked up at him at last, and her eyes were bewildered.
“You mean a—a similar sort of position to the one with Ayse? A companion?”
“Yes, I think it will involve companionship.”
“And what else?”
“Oh, quite a lot of other things—a good many other things! And it will keep you here in Iraq, if you want to say. It will also involve your going to Paris for at least a part of each year—sometimes a considerable part. But you will always come back here to Iraq. And once you take it I think you can look upon it as permanent.”
Susan felt her heart sink. A permanent job, in Iraq and Paris—but away from him, of course! And—permanent...?
“I shall have to go to Mosul as soon as we get back from this trip,” he told her, “and discuss all the details with someone I know there, and because at the moment they haven’t been discussed I can’t give you any more information than I’ve already done; but as soon as I’ve been to Mosul you shall hear all about it. And now, although you look enchanting with the moonlight just finding its way round to your hair, and making it look like golden cobwebs imprisoning a lot of precious gems, I think you ought to find your way to your own tent, because tomorrow we hope to arrive at the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells.”
“D-do we?” But she didn’t sound as if the prospect filled her with any enthusiasm and, in fact, her voice sounded heavy and flat and colorless.
“What is it, Susan?” he asked, very softly. “Don’t you like the idea of this new job I’m going to find you? Have I proved such an irresistible employer that you don’t want to replace me with another?”
But at that her eyes lifted almost reproachfully to his face, for she felt certain he was mocking her.
“You have been very kind,” she told him stiffly. “It is very kind of you to put yourself to the trouble of finding me further employment, too.”
“Oh, very kind!” he agreed, and now she knew without any doubt that he was mocking her, for his eyes were dancing.
She drew herself away from his hands that still held her shoulders.
“Good night,” she said, even more stiffly than before. “If we’re making another early start tomorrow morning I’d better go to bed.”
But when she had left him he stood very still and watched her walk away across the sand, and there was no longer even a vestige of amusement in his eyes. And so intent was he on watching her reach her tent that he did not hear a movement near to him, or sense it, until Jacqueline Dupont stood at his side, and then when he turned he looked almost impatient.
Jacqueline recognized the impatience immediately, but she thought it wiser just then not to let him know that she did. She smiled in her usual seductive manner—the manner she reserved for him when they were alone.
“What about a stroll before turning in?” she suggested, and linked her arm in his.
The next morning Susan attached herself at once to Ayse and Arnwood when the party moved off, and behind them Jacqueline, Raoul, and Carlton formed another threesome.
Later most of them separated, but for some reason Carlton never found it impossible to range himself alongside Susan, and Ayse took it into her head to ride beside her brother for quite a considerable distance, so that Jacqueline—quickly bored because she had to share his attention—dropped back on Carlton. Carlton, apparently, didn’t mind in the least if she deserted him for Raoul, but he was always ready to welcome her with an inexplicable smile when she sought him out once more.
Susan, for the greater part of that morning ride, which eventually brought them to the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells, trotted quietly beside Arnwood, and while he talked to her of his own and Ayse’s plans for the future, she tried to stop dwelling on the picture that had become photographed on her brain the night before of Raoul and Jacqueline making off into the moonlight. Although she had lain awake for hours, or so it had seemed to her, she had heard no sound of their return, and to complete her misery there had been the prospect of a new and unfamiliar job—found for her by Raoul himself!—looming ahead of her in a barren future.
And not merely a barren future—a future she could hardly bear to contemplate!
She was looking pale and rather heavy-eyed as she rode beside Arnwood, and more than once he glanced at her sideways as if he would like to comment on her looks. And when they drew near to the oasis he did say that the following day they would be returning, for he thought she had had more than enough of the saddle.
Susan allowed him to think that her noticeable loss of spirit was saddle weariness, but not even when they reached the oasis was she able to display very much interest. For one thing, it looked to her very much like any other oasis she had so far seen, and none of them saw the sparkling wells, or the luxuriant vegetation—perhaps because it was only at certain seasons of the year that the mirage, or optical illusion, was apt to deceive travellers.
But there was an air of desertion about the place, with its few mud-walled houses and dejected palms that overhung them and bordered a dusty village street. None of the houses was occupied and, in fact, they saw no sign of human life as they cantered between the houses and finally came to a halt in a kind of open space where there was at least water for the horses, and shade for a picnic meal.
As Jacqueline swung herself from her saddle without waiting for anyone to help her alight, she looked at Susan, who was gazing at the depressing mud houses as if fascinated by them, and remarked, with one of her odd little smiles:
“It’s an eerie spot, isn’t it? And, as a matter of fact, it’s got a very bad name amongst the Bedouin, and you never find any of them camping near here. Although the water’s excellent, you’ll never find any of these houses lived in, either, and the last time we were here there was a certain amount of evidence that the people had vacated them hurriedly, and left even their cooking pots behind.”
“That’s because the local gentry believe in jinns,” Carlton remarked, coming up and joining them with his slightly languid smile. “You know, ghosties and ghoulies”—as Susan didn’t immediately comprehend. “The oasis has a reputation for being haunted, and so the living keep away.”
“And if you’re simple enough to believe in that sort of thing, you won’t want to remain here very long, either,” Jacqueline told her, displaying that faint air of contempt she always wore when addressing any sort of conversation to Susan.
But after being served with lunch in the shelter of the palms, the whole party decided to have a look inside the houses before leaving the oasis behind them again, for it was not part of the plan to remain there for the night. Although recalling Jacqueline’s expressed sentiments concerning the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells, its link with her recently deceased husband, and, her obvious disinclination to believe any of the “nonsense”, as she had afterwards described it, that had given the place a bad nam
e, Susan was a little surprised that she didn’t insist on remaining there for the night.
But, as Ayse voiced her opinion during lunch that it was a depressing spot, and Raoul declared that owing to the declivity in which it lay it was a dank spot after the sun had gone down, these were no doubt considered excellent reasons why it was decided not to remain there after dark.
“And although it’s been a delightful trip, I shall be glad to think we’re heading homewards before sunset tonight,” Arnwood remarked. “I’ve got to be in London by the beginning of next week!”
Whereupon Ayse looked utterly downcast and slid her hand into his, and Jacqueline laughed in rather a harsh and brittle way.
“You love-birds!” she exclaimed. “What a thing it is to be young, and in love, and on the very verge of marriage!” And she slid her eyes round to Raoul’s face, and they hung there as if waiting for him—or perhaps willing him—to look up at her. But he appeared to be intent on the portion of ripe melon that had just been placed in front of him by his servant, and he didn’t even flicker an eyelid as she watched him.
But if it was dank in the oasis after night swept down over it, it was burningly hot during the afternoon hours, and there was a certain amount of relief to be gained from inspecting the insides of the uninviting-looking houses once lunch was over. Their mud walls kept them cool—uncannily cool, Susan thought as she wandered through them with the others—and the few disintegrating items of household furniture and rugs that remained in one or two of them emphasized their desolation and forlornness. There was something that looked like a crude divan bed in the corner of one, and a pile of abandoned cooking utensils in another looked as if they had been flung down hastily just before their owner fled.
