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Page 16
He had straightened himself and salaamed almost to the ground--which
had delighted Jane Coop--and had offered the bunch to her.
"Oh, no, my man!" she had said, bridling, "you don't come over me that
way. Just you take that trash back to where it came from. My young
lady ain't that kind," and had shaken her fist in his face and flounced
downstairs to lay a complaint.
What with the militant maids, the parrot and the dog, the ducal party
was continually breaking out in some direction or another, but the
ma�tre d'h�tel, who simply worshipped the old lady, merely smiled and
poured the oil of soothing words upon the troubled waters.
The girl had quite casually recounted the fight in the bazaar, and the
wise old woman had made no comment; but, all the same, next day she
indifferently asked a few questions of Lady Thistleton, who had a big
heart, narrow mind, an ever-wagging tongue and two daughters.
"Oh, that's the son of the Arab and the English girl. You must
remember the fuse there was in England over the runaway marriage--what
was her name?--how she could, you know----"
"Ah! yes. You must be talking of Jill Carden. I knew her very well.
Naughty girl, she refused the invitation I sent them asking them to
come to England and stay with me, and gave up writing to me after a
while. Does she live in Cairo?"
It seemed that Jill, the wife of the Sheikh el-Umbar, lived in the Flat
Oasis t'other side of the Canal, in Arabia proper, but, according to
current gossip, was at the moment upon a visit to her son at the House
'an Mahabbha, which had been built for the elder branch of the House
el-Umbar on a verdant patch watered by the springs, from the limestone
hills which stretch on the desert side of the Oasis of Khargegh.
"He's not in Cairo, then?"
"No; he left to-day," replied the gossip. "You see, his mother is
expected any time at his home, if she isn't already there. My maid
will chatter so, there's absolutely no stopping her. Funnily enough, I
arrived at the station as he was leaving in a special train. Such a
handsome man, educated in England, millionaire too. Of course it's a
case of a touch of the tarbrush--such a pity, too!"
The duchess suddenly shivered.
"Little Jill!" she said gently. "Little Jill! I must go and see her
if she will let me. Ah! General, what about a hand at �cart� before
dinner?"--and she rose with a stormy rustling of her softly-scented
silks, leaving the gossip wondering in what way she had put her foot in
it.
That night, as she lay like a little brown mouse under the
mosquito-net, watching the stars through the open window, the old lady
suddenly decided to bestir herself.
"It's too risky! She's too beautiful, too young and unsophisticated,"
she murmured as she lit a cigarette under the curtains, which is
strictly against the rules. "I'd bet my last _piastre_ that Jill
Carden's son's all right, but, all the same, one has to reckon with the
glamour of the East. Love's all very well in a cool climate, but it's
the dickens out here. Must get her anchored in safe waters. What
d'you think, Dekko old friend? What course shall I set? Shall we go
home, or to Heliopolis?"
The bird scrambled awkwardly on to the dressing-table.
"Well, old man, how about it?"
"Steer a straight course for hell, old dear," came the muffled reply,
as the bird twisted its head under its wing, then untucked it to murmur
sleepily: "T'hell!"
So she made up her mind to move on the very day after the girl's
birthday, which fell in a fortnights time. She would, indeed, have
left at once if it had not been that she had issued invitations on a
gigantic scale for a fancy-dress ball in honour of the anniversary.
Inwardly Damaris rebelled at the suggestion of moving on to Heliopolis;
outwardly she acquiesced without enthusiasm.
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