by Harold Lamb
“I didn’t think this would break. Didn’t they understand it was just a picture? See here, Bevan, let me square up for the damage.”
Three men wounded and a blood feud with Ali Khan—money would not remedy that. “No,” said Bevan. He glanced at his wrist watch. “You’ll just have time to get Miss Anderson to Aragh before dark. Follow the tire tracks and don’t pick up any volunteer guides this time.”
He went down to help Hassan fill the radiator of the new brown car, and to pour a tin of gasoline into the tank. Macalister arrived with his camera and thanked him. But Shirley stood by the open door, looking at him.
“Won’t you have trouble with the Lurs?” she asked.
He had not thought it would hurt him, physically, to watch her go off in that unfamiliar car—to have her head turn away from him for the last time, leaving the camp desolate and his work meaningless. “Nothing to worry about, thanks," he said stiffly.
Still the dark eyes held his. “Please come in to Aragh with us.”
“No,” his lips said, “I can’t leave Kangavar, you know.” (It would be less than ever a safe place for a woman now. If she would only go quickly and not look back.) “Will you kindly go now?” he said.
Macalister’s brows went up. The starter buzzed, and Shirley turned away from him, sitting down and closing the door very quickly. He had not meant to say that—but the car was gone in dust, and Hassan was asking him to look at a wounded man. The car was speeding away with its unearthly magic, its untouched happiness. All this, he told himself, would be just another briefly exciting moment for a girl like Shirley.
AN HOUR later Macalister pulled up to light a cigarette. He thought Shirley was not saying much, but she was humming to herself. "I don't get that fellow Bevan at all," he confided. “I think he's cracked.”
“'There’s a pleasure in being mad’”—the words bubbled out of Shirley unexpectedly—“‘that only madmen know.’” She smiled brightly and stopped her humming presently to watch the kilometers click by on the speedometer. “You're driving very fast, my lad."
“Feeling nervous? Well, we’re almost there—our troubles will soon be over."
Affably she nodded. “Do go very fast. Only—don’t let’s blow a tire because then we would have to stop.” When they roared under fruit trees and through a gray wall into the grounds of the British consulate, Shirley became very animated in relating her adventures to the surprised but matter-of-fact Mrs. Allardyce, the wife of the consul. She sang cheerily in the luxury of a tin bathtub, and came down to dinner in a talkative mood that somehow did not permit her to eat much.
The consul and Mrs. Allardyce, who had heard of Hewland Macalister’s motion pictures, reproached the adventurer for taking risks when he was escorting a young lady.
“Shirley’s game,” Macalister, comfortable in a borrowed dinner coat, assured them. “After all, the public’s to blame. When you have a reputation they expect it of you.”
Shirley turned questing eyes upon the ruddy consul. “Isn’t Mr. Bevan very stodgy and old-fashioned? Does he ever do anything but dig up pots?”
“At present he does not," Allardyce assured her. “You see, he was let down by the university that financed his excavation of the site. Since then he has been carrying on with his own money and what he could raise out here. He’s had dysentery, too,”
As Shirley looked inquisitive, he continued: “We newcomers can’t do anything with him, of course. He’s a law to himself, and he has helped us out of trouble too often. During the second Kurd rebellion, he turned up in the air service until the mess was settled. He’ll never admit that he settled the Afghan frontier dispute. But I know he was with the second Mount Everest expedition in the twenty-four-thousand-foot camp with the bearers.”
For a moment Shirley pondered the nice Swiss Jungfrau, with tourists going up and down, aided by hired guides, and then the lonely, unsealed peak of Everest above the clouds.
“Then," she observed slowly, “isn’t he really an adventurer?”
“Why, no.” Allardyce seemed surprised. “He rather belongs out here. It's all part of his work, and he would not shirk it, of course.”
“No,” Shirley nodded, and she smiled so suddenly upon the unimaginative consul that Allardyce fancied he had said something very pat. Perhaps because of that smile he invited Shirley into his study after the coffee.
“Mr. Macalister,” he explained, “requested me to have this cable sent off immediately. But as it appears to be in the nature of a public announcement, and as your name is mentioned, I feel that I must have your permission to dispatch it.”
He handed her a sheet of notepaper with the following scrawled upon it, after a New York cable address:
Release news story Hewland Macalister kidnapped with Miss Shirley Anderson of New York by Lur tribesmen bandits robbed and stripped by raiders escaped into desert half starved after armed affray six wounded. Stop. Have pictures. Sending full story from Teheran. Negotiate same with Mentorix syndicate for ten thousand or more. Try to get more. Hewland Macalister.
“Gosh!” muttered Shirley.
“Unquestionably,” Allardyce coughed gently, “you have a right to insist that your name be withheld, since, in a way, your reputation— I mean, this publicity—”
“Will it make trouble for Ali Khan? Mr. Bevan promised that we would not mention it officially.”
“That must depend on the attitude of the Persian government. It may.”
Shirley tossed the cable to the desk. “Let it go as is,” she said cheerfully. “My reputation’s in the mud anyhow, and it’s no affair of mine, is it?"
Allardyce felt a bit bewildered. And Mrs. Allardyce thought she had never known such a young girl to appear so lovely as when Shirley sat down at the piano and played the accompaniment to Mandalay, while Macalister sang:
“Ship me somewheres east of Suez,
where the best is like the worst,
Where there ain't no Ten Commandments
An' a man can raise a thirst . . ."
Macalister thought very much the same. He had partaken of cordials and he felt some misgivings, along with a new consciousness of Shirley's charm. When she disappeared into the dark veranda to curl up alone on a settee, he followed her, and she listened absently until she caught some familiar phrases.
“No,” she said all at once. “Hew Macalister, you needn’t ask me to marry you. It—it would ruin your reputation, wouldn’t it? To have a wife, I mean. Besides, I’m not going on to Teheran with you.”
“What's the point of staying on here?”
“I'm going back to Kangavar.”
MACALISTER shook his head. “Look here, you’re hysterical, and I'm responsible for you. Shirley, you can’t do that.”
“I’m not hysterical, and I’m responsible for myself. And if I can’t—” something checked her voice and she was silent so long that he glanced anxiously into the white, still face—“I don’t think it would matter then,” she said softly, “where I go.”
“Suppose he doesn’t marry you?”
“I’m afraid," Shirley decided gravely, “this is one woman Alexander will have to marry.”
“Alexander! Confound it, you know his name is Andy Bevan. Alexander has been in his tomb for twenty-two centuries.”
Shirley laughed a little to herself. “I’m not so sure.”
Behind the Veil
THEY sent me down to Isfahan that time to stop a war. The Khan, that old scoundrel, wanted a war, and the government didn’t mind letting him have it, so I had my work cut out for me.
I was knocking around the bazaar there talking to spies when I ran into John Royce.
You've heard of him probably. By now I suppose everybody has. But at that time he was just a stranger in the Orient—he had only been in Isfahan a week. As a matter of fact, he was lost in the labyrinth of covered passages in the bazaar, and we got to talking while I guided him out. He was slender and nervous, with app
ealing eyes and a mane of tawny hair. He proved to be a painter, a portrait painter. He confessed that he had gone stale in the States—disgusted with his chances during that notorious year 1932—and had come out to delve into the Orient, to sketch the picturesque East and all that. He was looking for dancing girls and temple gongs in southern Persia!
What he might have done in the ordinary course of things I don’t know. Things never happen just as you’d expect out there. For instance, he saw Lalli’s face for a second in the alley of the silversmiths where women always gather to finger bracelets by the hour. A second later she had turned away her head and lifted the edge of her head veil,
I caught only a glimpse of gray eyes that could have shamed a movie star’s. Then Lalli was moving away in the throng, her slight body wrapped up in the black street robe, with a woman servant jealously at her elbow. But Royce had seen more than that.
“What a head!” he whispered. “Good heavens—if I could get her to pose!”
HIS artist’s eye followed the girl in the mass of black shrouded forms, out to the Maiden gate of the bazaar, where she got into one of the waiting carriages. Royce got into the next one and begged so hard that I had our droshky driver follow the other one—Royce knew only a few words of Persian then—to its destination, which turned out to be the usual blind wooden door in the usual gray courtyard wall, down an alley of the old part of the city near the Jami Masjid.
There the two women disappeared. We didn’t even know the girl’s name then, and the two drivers knew nothing about her. I invited Royce to dinner at what answers for the Grand Hotel of Isfahan, and since he was new to Asia I explained how impossible it would be to get a veiled Moslem woman of good birth to pose for him. Their houses are guarded castles; the women are not supposed to be seen by strangers; and the last thing a good Moslem will allow is to have his picture made, whether by camera or brush.
My explanation was wasted on Royce’s childish insistence. He only said that if I didn’t go back with him to the house behind the Jami the next day at the same hour, he would go alone. So I had to go.
The courtyard door was closed, of course—they’re always closed. Royce investigated the side alley behind the house and was rewarded. It looked like the merest chance. There was a garden behind the house and a barred window in the garden wall. Someone had drawn the shutters back and Lalli, in a white house garment, without a veil, was playing with a cat. Apparently she took not the least notice of us, although the cat stared.
“She must pose for me, Kendall,” Royce whispered. “Tell her she is so beautiful that I want to paint her portrait,”
I did not tell him she was posing then. She might have been mischievous youth incarnate. When I delivered Royce’s message in Persian, Lalli went on stroking the cat. It did not seem to surprise her in the least that two foreigners should admire her. But suddenly she laughed and ran away.
“Damn!” said my companion. He felt in his pocket and produced something wrapped in white paper. He tossed it through the bars. When we had left the street—there was nothing else we could do—he explained that this something had been a silver bracelet, and that his address was written in Persian on the paper.
The next day I was occupied with Karim Khan’s agents, and it was the day after when I visited Royce in his house for the first time. He had rented a little place with a miniature garden, and he called it the House of the Cypress.
I found him with two lamps lit, sketching furiously. Lalli was sitting before him, motionless, and an old woman servant squatted in the corner. Royce explained absently that another visit to the alley behind the Jami Masjid and a gift to the servant had worked this miracle.
But I suspected Lalli had meant to come all along. After that she came to the House of the Cypress every evening, always on foot and always with that same old servant. You see, if the older Moslems had found out she was posing for a foreigner, she might have been knifed on the way back to her place.
Oh, yes, they were quite capable of that. You never can tell exactly what they will do until it’s too late.
LALLI, however, posed beautifully—curled up like a drowsy kitten. She wore barbaric red satin things, which did not dim the cream-white of her skin or that flood of night-black hair. The only beautifier she used was a lipstick that she carried with gilt nail scissors and an assortment of prayer charms in a French beaded bag. I watched, as it were, from off the stage, while she sunned herself in Royce’s admiration.
I noticed that she disliked posing for her portrait, from some vague superstition. She never objected, because Royce’s wish was law to her.
Royce had become the one object of her life. When a girl like Lalli falls in love, there is no middle ground—nothing platonic about it. A lot of nonsense has been written about oriental charmers and romance. Lalli was an utter realist, as simple as Eve and as unfaltering as the Ten Commandments. She loved Royce, and so she wanted him.
Think for a moment of her background. I could only piece it out a little at a time, when she chose to answer my questions. She admitted to eighteen years, which she thought very old. Her education consisted of endless superstitions, mixed with snatches from the Koran, and servants’ gossip—she could not read or write. She had been taught that she had no soul and that for her there would be no afterlife with the male Mohammedans.
She could sing prettily enough, and embroider her dresses, and she would listen endlessly to stories. All this had prepared her for only one thing, to be loved by a man and to keep him from tiring of her. Already she had been married to an older man who had gone away somehow, leaving her to get along as best she could with another wife who was rich and hated her. Lalli would only speak vaguely of “those others” of her household. But I could imagine what it was like to live pent up within walls, beside that other wife or widow.
While she posed, she questioned me in low, fluent Persian that Royce could not follow—she used to speak to him in French, and he answered in his broken Persian which she managed to understand by an instinct that came close to mind-reading. She asked if Royce had really loved anyone, or if he had only had mistresses. And why did he work all the time and look so worried?
Now I knew next to nothing about Royce. Except that he was conceited, self-centered, and outwardly likable as any chap you’d run into at the Beaux Arts or Players’ Club. I told Lalli that his heart was sick because he was afraid the people in his country did not like his work. Then she said a strange thing:
“No, his soul is sick.”
Well, there was Royce, intent on his canvas, yet disturbed by Lalli’s loveliness—even beginning to be jealous of her long conversations with me.
“You’re her favorite, Kendall," he observed. And then, irritably— “She’s such a child.”
“Lalli’s shy now,” I warned him, “but if she gets over it, she’s quite capable of ruling either you or me.”
“That kitten!” He laughed.
NOW Royce was sentimental and he had been only three weeks in Persia. There were a lot of things I wanted to explain to him. But after half a lifetime east of Suez you lose faith in explanations—you begin to think that when a man’s fate is written it is not to be changed. So I said nothing, and about that time Lalli decided that I ought to leave Isfahan. She asked me why I didn’t go up to Karun Khan’s country and talk to him instead of wasting my time with his agents in the city.
Karun Khan was chief of the Ghashgai tribes, eager to begin the war that the oil company had sent me down to prevent at any cost. I had not mentioned him to Lalli, but she had heard the gossip of Isfahan. And she was right.
“There might be harm,” I suggested. “Yes,” she assented politely, “those hillmen would tie Your Honor up on a wall and cut out your bowels, if the whim came to them.”
I went, because by now there was nothing else to do—although my servant Hussayn swore that I was going to my grave, and General Sadik did everything but imprison me to keep me f
rom going. And it turned out to be a near thing for both Hussayn and me. . . .
In the end it was no argument of mine that persuaded the old Ghashgai to peace. It was fate—kismet. A party of his young horsemen decided to raid the nearest army post, which happened to be commanded by General Sadik at the edge of the oil fields. Sadik happened to have not only a new machine-gun but a new airplane. These wrought havoc among the raiding tribesmen, and aroused the superstitious fear of the Khan, who believed this first encounter had been an omen. So the old scoundrel gave me that blue shawl embroidered with the peacocks and that painted shield, swearing that I had been God’s instrument in averting calamity from his head. He made quite a ceremony of giving me his submission to take down the river to General Sadik, along with a cartload of rifles that were too old for use, and the promise of a million gold pieces, tribute to H. M. the Shah—tribute that he never meant to pay . . . but if that raid of the Ghashgai had succeeded!
Probably Sadik was not pleased with the peace or my interference. However, he accepted the useless rifles and the promises with a good grace. And Lalli welcomed me delightfully. I had been away from Isfahan for six weeks, which was what she wanted. “It was your kismet/’ she said approvingly.
I FOUND a difference in the House of the Cypress. Lalli had taken possession. Her prayer rug was spread by the pool under the tree and her sleeping mattress stood, rolled up in its yellow silk cover, by the brass-rimmed chest that served her for furniture. A royal Ferghana rose carpet lay in the sitting-room, with a strange assortment of pillows. Zobeida, her old nurse, had taken charge of the kitchen and its servants.
Lalli had laid away the enveloping black street gown in the chest. Indoors she went about unveiled in a white house robe and she was unspeakably happy. At sunset she would leave us and go off to wash, then to spread her amulets at the head of the rug and chant the evening prayer. The house had become her castle, and Royce belonged to her. She never even mentioned “those others” of the home she had left.