Читать книгу Desert Love - Joan Conquest - Страница 7

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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 beauté, 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 câchéd 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.