Desert Doorway

by Pamela Kent

  --'no-�"' she was beginning, feeling this would be taking rather a lot on himself, when they both caught the sound of footsteps crossing the flawed floor of the hall at the same time, and as

  they looked round expectantly the door that was also set in an arched aperture was flung open and a tall and very beautiful woman stood looking critically m at them.

  Jenny realized at once that this was the Comtese deSt Alais�the "Celestine" whose hair was

  familiar to her own-and she stood up auto

  matically to greet her, to acknowledge herself in the presence of one who had undertaken to pay her a large salary. ,

  Daintry with a return of his casual

  mocking manner, strolled towards her and the

  Somtesle'?eyes, 'after resting for a brief moment

  with Jenny seemed to become glued to his face.

  There was Something vivid and almost fierce about the way those huge brown eyes,gold brown rather like amber, with

  in teem-under spectacular eyelashes, hung

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  as if compelled upon the cool, grey glance of the Englishman. She said softly, in English, but with a very noticeable accent:

  "Max, you annoying man! Why did you not let me know you would be here this afternoon?"

  "Because I wasn't certain I would be here." He returned her look with a strangely inscrutable little smile and a brief, flickering glance at her superbly graceful figure, clothed in something cool and green like lime-blossom, while the contrast afforded by shoes, gloves and an enormous cartwheel hat, all in speckless white, was most effective. And under the cartwheel hat the bronzegold hair�several tones more brilliant than Jenny s, because it received the constant attention of experts�formed soft little tendrils that lay like golden feathers on her white brow and the smooth perfection of; her cheek.

  "If only you had telephoned!" "There was nothing much to telephone about! Jenny, feeling acutely uncomfortable, was quite sure her eyes reproached him,

  Then, as if all at once it struck her that Jenny could no longer be completely ignored, the Comtesse walked across the room to her. She s'aid m a tone of almost icy reserve and aloofness;

  "Miss Armitage?" Jenny admitted her identity at once, and felt her heart sink at the same time.

  "I'm sorry I was not here when you arrived. Miss Armitage, but I trust you have been properly looked after?" Her eyes dropped to the untastpd pastries on the tray. "Perhaps you have not been here very long?"

  "I don't know, I�not very long��" Jenny was a little confused, because she felt there was an implication in that suggesti'on, and she had no real idea how long it was since she had arrived. But Max Daintry came up behind her employer and contributed the information that they had been getting to know one another, but he had no idea a governess was expected today. And as

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  yet he had not been formally introduced to Miss Armitage, who, after all, was a fellow country woman of his. , Celestine looked at him with a strange, brooding look.

  "And yet you have admitted that you have beengetting to know one another," she said. "Is itnecessary after that to be formally introduced? "I think so," Max murmured back, and the Comtesse responded in her clipped, attractive, and

  slightly husky English , "Miss Armitage, this is Mr. Daintry, a near neighbor of ours. Max, this is Miss Jenny Armitage. But as she has come out here from England

  to look after the children, and for no other purpose, it is scarcely likely that you will see agreat deal of one another," with the coolest of smiles curving the lovely lips. . ,

  "Dear me!" the Englishman exclaimed with a wry look. "I hope that doesn't mean you aregoing to shut Miss Armitage up in the nurserysuite and starve her of all other companionship? Sf you do that you'll have her running back to her country vicarage."

  The Comtesse looked at Jenny as if she wastrying to decide whether she really had all the simplicity a clergyman's daughter should have, orwhether the ingenue look was a mere facade. And then Daintry's smooth voice cut in more decisively:

  "And I think it would be a good plan if you allowed Miss Armitage to be shown to her room. She has admitted to me that she's a bit tired, and one never feels too bright after a journey." "Of course." ,, . �,

  The Comtesse touched a bell on a small table

  near to her, and then more or less turned her back on Jenny. "You will dine with us tomghfc, Max?" she asked eagerly.

  "I don't know whether I ought to��

  Jenny turned away and stared first at the viewof southern France on the wall, and then at the

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  photograph of the beautiful woman on the desk It was easy enough now to recognize in the photo graph the perfect features of her new employer and if anything it barely did Celestine justice. Only a colored mezzotint could do absolute justice

  . to her ivory and gold loveliness, and even that

  : would have none of the living, breathing perfection of the original�or so Jenny decided, as she tried to shut her ears to the conversation of the other two, which certainly concerned her not at all.

  The Berber servant appeared, and his mistress directed him to take Jenny to her room, and to see that she had everything she wanted. And she

  added condescendingly to the girl herself:

  "Perhaps when you have had an opportunity to rest and change you will like to meet the children? They are eagerly looking forward to meet- ting you, but a visit to their grandmother this| afternoon has put them into a state of rather wild

  excitement. You may find them a little unruly. Bufc -they arc-not normally difficult to manage." "I'm quite sure they're not," Jenny managed | awkwardly, and then caught the eyes of MaxI Daintry upon her again, with that amused, half- derisive look in them that was so oddly confusing. She answered his "Au revoir, Miss Armitage� don't let those little horrors make rings round you!" with an unintelligible murmur, and then made her escape as quickly as she could, following in the wake of the servant.

  THE house, she was to discover later, was huge, with corridors branching off in all directions, and much evidence of a great deal of tastefully expended wealth. It was furnished with a mixture of Moorish art and European luxury, and many of the pictures and the carpets, the wall tapestries and the examples of period furniture collected from a good many corners of the globe, were, she realized, probably almost priceless.

  But on this first night of her arrival, after she had left the library behind her, she was suddenly go conscious of a dispiriting tiredness that the impressions she gained were vague in the extreme. Not only did weariness seem all at once to drag at her limbs, but a curious mental flatness had taken the place of her earlier high hopes and optimism. She attributed the latter in part to the acute dislike she had taken to Max Daiatry� a man who dropped kisses on to the head of a married woman (or that was what he had imagined he was doing when he had taken her. Jenny, by surprise!) and had mocking, disparaging eyes, was hardly the type to inspire confidence in a newly-arrived governess�and also the Comtesse de St. Alais herself was something in the nature of a rather pronounced disappointment.

  She was too beautiful and too hostile�barely concealing contempt for a girl who had to earn her own living behind the thinnest veneer of very

  distant politeness. Unless it was that, coming upon Jenny apparently cosily closeted with a man whom she herself regarded as a very particular friend, she had been vexed and put out.

  In which case, what were the sentiments of the

  Comte de St. Alais, and how soon would he make

  his appearance on Jenny's immediate horizon?

  Which reminded her that very soon now she would be making the acquaintance of her two future

  charges.

  Her rooms, when they reached them�and shewas surprised to discover that she had been allocated something in the nature of a suite�were so pleasant that for a few minutes, as she lookedabout her, she was conscious of nothing but asudden uprising of pleasure. There was a verylarge bedroom
with a balcony overlooking one of the central courtyards, with cool colonades supported by marble pillars, and a rectangular pool on which water-lilies floated; and separated from it by an archway hung with striped Moorish curtains was a sitting-room with several restfullooking chairs, and a divan piled high with cushions. Jenny's appreciative eyes lighted upon a beautiful little Empire writing-table at which she could write her letters, and here again the outlook was over the courtyard. French windowsadmitted to both balconies, and there were long wicker lounging chairs, and striped sun-blinds tobe drawn against the heat of the day.

  She was delighted to discover that she had her own bathroom, with a deep and wonderfully luxurious bath, and unlimited quantities of boiling water when she turned on the chromium taps.

  She was quick to take advantage of the bathroom, and was slipping into one of the coolestfrocks her somewhat limited wardrobe contained

  � a flowered chiffon with a background of lavender-blue, and a wide white puritan collarlike a white cape about her slender shoulders� when without even a knock the door opened, and the Comtesse came into the room. She had made no alteration to her own appear" ance as yet, but she cast an openly critical glance at Jenny, and surprised the latter by expressing approval of what she was wearing.

  "You'll find the nights here are very cold," she said, "so if you do have occasion to go out afterdinner remember that it's advisable to wear a wrap. And I shall expect you always to dine with us�unless, of course," with a smile, "someone invites you out to dinner�and my husband likes to see the children at luncheon, so I shall expect

  you and them to lunch with us. And now I suggest that you come along with me to the children's quarters."

  Jenny followed at once, and as the wing which housed the children was not very far from her

  own she was soon gravely shaking hands with a couple of precocious infants who were sitting

  up side by side in exactly similar beds in a large,

  airy room beautifully decorated in pastel tints.

  Simone, who was four, had a mass of jet ringlets, and enormous dark eyes that were capable of staring with deceptive solemnity for astonishingly long periods; but Louis, the boy�two years his sister's senior�had his mother's fair coloring, and looked like an angel with his longish hair that twisted into soft curls, and eyes of clear, pale, honey-gold. Both children wore expensive nightwear of heavy silk, and their bed sheets and pillow-cases were of crepe-de-chine. A Moorish girl who was introduced to Jenny as Nerida was keeping them entertained with picture books until the moment arrived when they were expected to lie down and go to sleep, and after a brief, interested exchange of glances Jenny decided that she and this sixteen-year-old girl would probably get on very well, since, although she looked delicate and pretty as a shy mountain doe, she also looked intelligent, and spoke excellent Missionschool English.

  Celestme allowed the children to make a! con

  siderable fuss of her before she finally said goodnight to them, but when they started to get a little

  out of hand she spoke to them sharply. They

  chorused "Yes, Mamma," when she told them to

  lie down and shut their eyes, but Louis kept his

  open long enough to observe that Jenny was

  watching him with amusement, and he grinned at

  her engagingly. "Mademoiselle Armitage stay

  with us," he said m French, as if he half hoped

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  the demand would be acceded to. But the Comtesse replied crisply:

  "Certainly not. Mademoiselle Armitage is coming downstairs to dinner, and in any case you are to speak English with her and not French. You understand?"

  "Oui, Maman," came the reply�and then was quickly changed to "Yes, Mamma."

  As they went out of the nursery door the Comtesse explained to the new governess;

  "I wish the children to speak English perfectly as quick as possible. Their grandmother�my husband's mother�is English, and that is one reason why I want them to become thoroughly accustomed to her language. I would like you to concentrate on improving their idiom."

  "Of course, if that is what you wish," Jenny replied, and then was allowed to return to her own apartments until a musical-toned gong throbbed through the house and warned her that it was

  time to go downstairs.

  She had been secretly filled with a kind of dread of meeting Max Daintry again that night, but he had evidently decided against accepting the Comtesse's invitation, for he was not in the diningroom when she entered it. But the Comte de St. Alais was standing at the head of a long table loaded with silver and cut-glass and flowers, and as soon as Jenny entered the room he moved towards her and held out a welcoming hand.

  "How do you do, Miss Armitage?" he said, and

  his English was without any trace of an accent� which was not, perhaps, so surprising, if his mother was English.

  He was a slenderly built man of middle height, and although his hair was very dark there were a few betraying touches of white at the temples. He had dark, gentle, kindly eyes�in fact, they were beautiful eyes, a little like his small daughter's, but much more capable of revealing every passing emotion, and very thickly lashed. Jenny

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  thought he was quite strikingly handsome, and she also thought he looked particularly well in a white dinner-jacket, and the manner in which he waved her to the table and saw that she was comfortably seated was distinctly the manner of a grand seigneur.

  And once she was seated, although his wife wag seated facing him at the bottom of the table, and was looking like a remote golden goddess in a gown of gold brocade that caught every brilliant ray of the light from the swinging chandelier above their heads, he directed all his conversation at Jenny, and asked her considerately about

  her iourney and how much of the world she had already seen. When she confessed that this was her first trip abroad he smiled�a smile that warmed her heart a little�and then observed that since she was obviously very young she had plenty of time ahead of her to see more of the globe if she wished.

  Celestine, whose face was so void of expression that it might have been carved out of alabaster, flickered her eyelashes for a moment as she looked across at Jenny. ,

  "Miss Armitage is twenty-four," she remarked coolly, deliberately, "and at twenty-four I had already been married for six years! But in France we mature more quickly than you do in England. Even so at twenty-four you should be thoroughly capable of looking after yourself, Miss Armitage.

  "I'll hope so," Jenny found herself stammering, in faint confusion. The Comte's eyes continued to dwell on her,

  "Perhaps they made a mistake on your birth. certificate when you were born," he suggested, smiling again. "You do not look to me as if you are yet out of your 'teens."

  "There is nothing more deceptive than looks, his wife interposed, with an edge to her voice hke a sliver of ice. "The important thing is that Miss Armitage is capable of doing all the things we expect her to do now that she has arrived, and

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  amongst those things I hope you are capable of maintaining discipline. Miss Armitage? Louis must be taught to recognize authority before he is sent away to school, and as he is nearly six that will not be long now. Another six months�or a year at the outside."

  "But he is only a baby!" Jenny found herself exclaiming, in a shocked voice.

  "Babies quickly develop into men," Celestine remarked, and stared�once more without any expression on her face�at the portion of breast of chicken cooked in a wine sauce that had been placed in front of her by a white-robed servant.

  Stealing a quick glance at the Comte, Jenny thought that the line of his lips tightened, but she could not be sure of this. She only knew that after that, although he continued to talk to her smoothly, there was no longer very much expression in his eyes, and they looked darker, and much deeper, than they had done before.

  After dinner Celestine was carried away in a

  large an
d glittering car to some evening function which she was attending without her husband, and the Comte withdrew to his library, after making sure that Jenny really preferred to be granted permission to retire upstairs to her own rooms.

  Jenny, as a matter of fact, wag glad to regain the freedom and the isolation of her own apartments, for the long-drawn-out dinner in the superbly appointed dining-room, with its French tapestries, and its all too revealing crystal chandeliers, had, on top of her exhausting day, sapped the few remnants of her strength and energy.

  She had felt, while the dinner progressed, that she had acted as a kind of buffer between two people ,who were constantly�if not, perhaps, openly�at war, and the feeling had been a bigger strain than anything she had ever experienced before.

  In her sitting-room she threw open the french window and stepped out on to the balcony. It was

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  bitterly cold�so cold that she gasped for a moment, and then quickly withdrew in search of 'a wrap�and when she returned to the balcony rail she was huddled in a warm overcoat.

  She looked upwards at the sky�so brilliantly blue, even though the light had long since faded, that she knew she had never seen anything quite like it before. It had a strange quality of depth and luminosity, and the stars that hung in it like lamps looked as if they could be snatched out of it if the invisible threads by which they were suspended in space could be severed. Then "she looked

  downwards at the rectangular pool on which the water-lilies floated, and she saw the stars reflected there, too, like lamps that were maintaining their brilliance under water.

  A keen wind blew against her face and stirred her hair, and although it had the coolness of melting snows it was perfumed by the breath of the golden oranges that were growing all around her under the curtain of the night. There was something vaguely exciting about the perfume, and she drew it in in deep breaths.

  Then, just before she decided that if she was not to catch a chill on her first night in Morocco she had better return to her sitting-room, she thought she saw someone moving in the white marble colonnade facing her. It was a black and white figure, slenderly graceful, and as it moved