Desert Doorway

by Pamela Kent

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  presssion of sympathy as she saw how colorless from heat the girl looked, and that there werebeads of perspiration on her upper lip.

  "You do look hot," she said�perhaps because she knew she looked so cool herself she felt she could afford to extend her sympathy�"and I think you'd better let me have these two," indicatingthe children. "Max's car is larger than this one, and they won't be so restless if I keep my eye upon them. And, in any case, they can have the entire back of the car to themselves."

  Although Jenny protested the children were whisked away from her, and just before he climbed back into his driving-seat Max looked

  across at her and smiled. There was no doubt about it, it was a friendly smile, but it won no response from Jenny. She felt that never again would she smile at Max Daintry, and never again did she want to exchange even a few words of conversation with him.

  This time, when they started off, she had theback s'eat to herself, and at least she was free from the necessity of constantly watching the children. She must have dozed for a short while, for when she opened her eyes there was no sign of the other car, but they were still high up in the mountains. In fact, they even seemed to her to be climbing, which struck her as odd, because what they really should be doing was descending. On, the outward journey they had climbed steeply, but the road back to Marrakesh should be downhill almost all the way.

  But there was no doubt about it, they were

  climbing. Jenny leant forward and addressed the

  . impassive chauffeur's back, but at first he ignored her halting Arabic, and then when she addressed him in French he slightly shrugged his shoulders. But Jenny persisted in Arabic. "Were are we going? This doesn't seem to be the right way! Where is the other car?"

  The chauffeur answered at last, in. a surly

  "The other car is much faster than this. But soon we catch up with it." "I don't believe we're on the right road," Jenny said.

  Again the chauffeur shrugged. "The lower road is blocked by a fall of stone. It was necessary to take the upper road."

  Jenny lay back against the seat, but she was puzzled by the strangeness of the light. She must have slept for much longer than she thought, for unless she was very much mistaken this wasafternoon light, and the morning was well behind them. When she looked at her watch she discovered that it had stopped, but the heat of the car was insufferable, and that meant they had been

  travelling for hours.

  She watched the road still winding upwards, and then all at once it dipped down steeply into a valley. Jenny could recognize none of the scenery, but the loneliness was like a living thing pressingin on them, and uneasiness began to throb in her veins. For the first time the fact that Celestine had relieved her of the children struck her as odd, for. is. the weeks that she had worked for the Comtesse she had never known her display somuch consideration before. Unless it was Max who had insisted that she be relieved of them when she had slept scarcely a wink the night before! But somehow she could not believe that it was Max, although before they started off he had suggested that they might be too much for her.

  She wished she could make the chauffeur talk

  but he resisted all further attempts to extract

  information from him. And as the sharp descent

  continued it was not long before they were out

  on an open, dusty plain. It was not so much desert

  as a wilderness of sandy ground, with somethwarted-looking vegetation breaking its surface

  here and there, and occasional stunted groups of

  palms.

  Jenny's heart began to fail her when she realized that, although they were travelling at terrific

  speed in spite of the appalling surface of the..

  road, the light that she had known to be afternoon

  light began to be tinged with the red-gold of early

  evening. And it was evident that they were miles from Marrakesh. The type of scenery she was viewing on either hand had nothing in common with the way back to Marrakesh, and where there

  were groups of palms there were occasionally

  little clusters of mud hovels like primitive kas"

  bahs, and white painted wells. The landscape was

  sun-parched, monotonous and austere, and the

  skyline recided indefinitely.

  Jenny gave up speaking with exasperated sharpness to the driver, but inside herself she knew that some thing was very, very wrong. Forty-eight hours before she might have been considerably more alarmed than she was, but physical weariness, amounting almost to exhaustionsickness of heart�in some way kept even acute curiosity at bay. She only knew that wherever she was being taken someone had planned it all beforehand, and since it was the Comtesse's car in which she was travelling, and her chauffeur who was at the wheel, she was still in some sort of contact with the St. Alais family,

  Even when the sun went down, and the night closed in, and instead of being fiercely warm it began to grow bitterly cold, she still refused to allow herself to think of Max Daintry. One side of her brain felt almost numb about him, and the other half shrunk from the thought of him. Whatever fate was in store for her she had no desire at all that he should ever learn of it.

  At last the car stopped in what appeared to be the very centre of a village, although in the white starlight there were only one or two vague, muffled shapes moving in the shelter of the palms. The chauffeur left his driving seat and came round and held open her door for her, but she was almost too stiff to alight. When at last she managed to do so her legs bent under her, and but for

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  the chauffeur's hand under her arm she would have fallen. , , ... ,

  She was faint with hunger, ravaged by thirstthat had been tormenting her for hours, and the bitter coldness of the night and her inadequate clothing set her teeth chattering violently. When she found herself inside a mud-walled building with only a light provided by a kind of primitive wick floating in a saucer of oil, and standing on a table with a brass tray on the top of it, the one thing she noticed and felt glad of was that therewas something like a divan in a corner, and all she craved to do was to sink down on it.

  The chauffeur departed, and a woman entered. She wore the usual shapeless haik of Arab women, but she was not veiled. She was also very pretty,

  or so she appeared in the light of the oil lamp, and she seemed quite friendly. She brought Jennya pitcher of water and a brass bowl in which to wash the dust and grime of the road from her hands and face if she wished, and a tray of thick, black heavily-sweetened coffee. She also indicatedthat the divan was to be her bed, and that she could make use of it as soon as she wished.

  Jenny never forgot that night�or, rather, she never forgot the odd, confused sensations that were all she was aware of. She had probably, as she realized afterwards, got a touch of sun, but instead of being greatly concerned at finding herself where she was, all she wanted to do was to sink into deep and dreamless slumber. She evenneglected to make use of the bowl of water, but she drank the coffee thirstily. Then she crawled to the divan and lay down on it, and within a matterof minutes a blanketing unawareness of anything

  was upon her.

  When she opened her eyes it was next day ana

  high noon. There were sounds of lazy activity outside the hut, and looking from the window she saw women drawing water at a well while menlounged in the shade. The sun struck down fiercely across the pleasantly meandering village street,

  and by contrast with its white-hot light the shadows cast by the palm trees were almost inkily black. There were several children playing a game which seemed to be hopscotch right outside the window, and Jenny watched them in a dazed state of unbelief.

  The woman who had brought her the water and the coffee the night before reappeared with further refreshments on a tray, and this time, to Jenny's infinite relief, instead of the sickly coffee there was mint tea. She had never formed a great partiality for mint tea, but now she draine
d the pot dry, and would have willingly drunk more if it had been available. But she found that she had

  absolutely no appetite for the highly spiced kus

  kus�a native dish�which accompanied the mint -tea, and indeed she was almost revolted by thethought of eating anything at all.

  This time the Arab girl was without her haik

  and her hair was dressed in dozens of little plaits intertwined with beads and ornaments. She had large and very beautiful eyes, and towards Jenny her manner was quite subservient. Jenny managed to make her understand that she would like more water to wash with, and when it was brought, together with a couple of small handembroidered towels, she started on the difficult task of trying to extract information, from the girl. But here again there was either no real knowledge, or the girl had been forbidden to talk bhe made expressive gestures with her shoulders and spread her hands, but that was all Jenny could get out of her, and she finally gave up the

  attempt to discover why she was where she was and by whose order she had been brought there! it it was the Comtesse�and it was the Com

  tesse s car that had brought her there, although

  both it and the chauffeur had now disappeared�

  then the reason for it was inexplicable. It was cer

  tainly not with the sanction of the Comte, even if

  he had returned from Paris. And that left Si Mo.

  hammed. But she preferred not to dwell upon the

  thought of Si Mohammed in connection with this

  extraordinary abduction to which she had beensubjected, because the possibilities arising out of such a thought were altogether too unpleasant.

  Instead, having restored a certain amount of her personal freshness by washing in the inadequate bowl, she was glad to discover that she still had her handbag with her, and painstakingly made up her face and restored order to her hair. She did this with great care, largely to occupyherself, and because now at last a feeling of growing panic was doing its best to take possession of her, and she knew that she had to conquer it

  somehow or other.

  She spent the afternoon lying on the divan while the little room sweltered, and because the door to it was kept securely locked the only air that reached her was through the high, glassless barred window. She watched the golden light turnto the crimson of sunset, the deep, staring blue of the sky become dimmed, and the first stars appear, and as still no one came near to disturb her, her fears, instead of becoming lulled, began to

  � surge up in her like hysteria. It was bad enough to be captive, but it wasdreadful not to know anything at all about the reason why she was confined to a mud-walled room in the centre of a primitive African village where, at sunset, drums began to throb, and she heard the thin crying of a reed pipe which, even in the security and comfort of her room in Marrakesh, had filled her with nameless dislike and dread whenever she heard it.

  She began to think more and more of MaxDaintry. He had asked her to go back to England. She wished she knew now why he had wanted her to go back, and whether after all she had made a mistake in attributing his anxiety to be nd of her, or so it had seemed, to purely personal reasons. She tried to recall the picture of his face, with its strong jaw and utterly firm mouth and eyes thatsever wavered-. Surely it was not with any sane

  tion of his that she was where she was?�even

  though he had kissed her as if he despised her,

  and she sensed that for some reason he was irri

  tated by her.

  But he had kissed her! ... In the loneliness of her hut she recalled those two, quite dissimilar kisses he had given her, the feel of his arms while he held her, and for the first time she acknowledged how bitterly envious she was of Celestine, who could command his kisses as a kind of right, and who perhaps planned one day to be free of the Comte and marry Max.

  When darkness fell she was brought a light, and she was glad of it, because she no longer felt in the least sleepy, and to have lain staring into the darkness under such circumstances would have shaken her courage considerably. It was already beginning to crack a little�and she had a desperate fear that the crack might widen.

  But after a time the lamp burned itself' out, and she had to lie in darkness. She lay staring at the tiny square of her window, watching the stars blazing away up in the deep night sky, trying not to remember where she was, and wondering how soon it would be dawn, and then once more morning.

  If she had to endure another day like the/previous one she felt she would go mad.

  Long after midnight�or she felt certain it must be long after midnight�she heard a car stop outside the hut. The noise of it was unmistakable, for she had heard nothing like it all day, and the quick slam of the door was just as unmistakable. Someone was approaching the hut, and was engaging someone else in conversation. Jenny could follow none of it, and the voices were too low to be recognizable. But after a long-drawn-out agony, which was probably no more than a minute at most, a key grated in the lock of her door and it was flung open. Jenny crouched on the foot of her bed and waited in the darkness for the first sight of the one who entered. She had a vague

  -14S>

  impression of a tall white form, and eyes that peered towards her in the starlight, and then avoice spoke her name, sharply.

  "Jenny! , . . Jenny, are you there? Jenny! . . ."

  Jenny got slowly on to uncertain feet, and she felt herself swaying slightly as she did so. It couldn't be Max's voice!�it couldn'tl o o . And then she answered weakly s

  "I'm here! . . ."

  He took two strides towards her, and she felt arms reach out and catch at her, and she was supported by the very fierceness of that hold. For the first time she heard Max Daintry's voice shaken, in fact shattered, and quite unlike itself.

  "Oh, Jenny!" he exclaimed. "Thank heaven I've found you! I��" And then she hurled herself against his chest and burst into uncontrollable sobbing.

  / CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  WHEN later she managed to calm down sufficiently she found that she was seated on the side of thedivan bed, that Max Daintry was seated besideher, and that she was held comfortingly close in his arms and his hand was stroking her hair. She did not realize it, but it was not a particularly steady hand.

  "I'm so sorry!" she apologized, over and over again. "I'm so terribly sorry�I ought not to behave like this! . . ."

  "Darling, don't," he said at last, and she was not quite sure whether this was a kind of delirium� if it was, she hoped it would go on for ever and ever. "Jenny, my precious girl, I know you've had a ghastly time, but I'll soon have you out of this, and then you'll forget all about it. But don't keep saying you're sorry for shedding a few tears�I only wish I could have got here before and spared you some of them!"

  Jenny put back her head and looked up at him

  uncertainly. "It�it is you, isn't it?" she asked. "Tin notdreaming , . .?" "No, darling, you're not dreaming. It's me all right."

  She could see his eyes smiling down at her in the starlight, and it was a smile such aa she had sometimes imagined she might one day see inthem. It was a smile and a look that made her catch her breath.

  "How did you know where I was?" she asked. "We won't go into that now," he returned. "I've got to get you away from here as quickly as possible, and we mustn't waste any time. But you'll hear all about it at the first opportunity." He dried her wet face with his crisp pocket-handkerchief. "Shall I tell you something?" he askedhoarsely, "Something that can't wait?'"

  "Yes," she breathed, feeling as if her heart turned over. .

  "The past forty-eight hours have been the worst I've ever lived through. And if I hadn't found you I think I'd have gone stars, staring mad!

  "W-why?" she barely whispered, and although she was quite unaware of it her fingers were clinging to him.

  "Why?" He put his own-fingers under her chin and lifted it, and through the gloom he gazed at her as if he could never gaze hard and long enough. "Because I've had to live to
thirty-five to fall madly, desperately, hopelessly in love with

  a small girl who has always thought the worst of me' . . Because even if she does think the worst of me I still can't do anything about my love, and I'll just have to beg her to try and change her

  mind about me!" '

  "Oh!" Jenny exclaimed, and there was a sharpnote like anguish in her voice, because although she was quite sure now that this was delirium the undisquised hurt in his tone pierced her like a knife-thrust "Don't say that! Please!" she

  begged "I can't think why I�why I was so utterly stupid!�but I've loved you so much ev6r since I've known you, and been so hopelessly miserable that at least I've been punished!

  "Oh, Jenny my sweet, why didn t I realize it before!" For a few moments that last night in the patio of the Caid's kasbah was recalled as he strained her so fiercely to him that she found it difficult to breathe. "If only I had I might have saved you this horrible experience�and 1 was a brute to you only two nights ago! I wanted to hurt you, and I think I did, didn't I, darling? You looked so white and bewildered, and your lips gave you away�just a little!"

  He started to grope for them hungrily, and she turned them up to him eagerly. This time the kiss' was so utterly perfect that they were both shaking when they drew apart, and his eyes devoured

  her,

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  "Sweetheart, we must go!" He stood up and drew her with him. "Have you got anything in the nature of a wrap?"

  "No." She shook her head. "I'm just as I�a� I was when we started out the other day!" "Never mind. I've some rugs in the car, and I'll see that you're not cold." He seemed to stand listening for a few moments, and then he moved towards the door. "How did you get the girl to let you in?" Jenny whispered, keeping close to him.

  "Oh, that was comparatively easy. But don't say anything, darling." He opened the door, and for the first time in many hours Jenny stood upon the threshold of freedom, and the sweet, cool scents of the night came at her in an intoxicating rush. She saw the dark shape of a car standing near to them. Max swung open the nearest door and she climbed into the seat beside the drivingseat. He got in himself and handed her a rug to drape about her shoulders, and then he pressed the 'self-starter button and the car responded immediately. They crawled silently down the long village, street, with the light of the late rising moon bathing them in a flood of brilliant silver,