Rapture of the desert

by Violet Winspear

  "I — might travel." It was then that she made up her mind on this issue which Dove had raised. "I don't like the idea of working in an office, nor do I think I'd be much good at it, so I shall loan myself out as a travelling companion. My sister knows someone who is going abroad very soon and if I am not in the vicinity of theatres and the people I know in ballet, then I might avoid the temptation to return to the stage before it is wise for me to do so."

  "So you have decided to spend twelve long months with the 'dotty aunt', eh? Are you not afraid that she will send you dotty?" The words were interposed with such suavity from the occupant of the other divan that Chrys was wildly tempted to aim a cushion at his head.

  "Ignore him," smiled Madame, "and tell me to which part of the world you expect to travel."

  "Somewhere in the East, I think. Anyway, I must first persuade my sister's fiancé's aunt that I'm capable of making a good companion." Chrys smiled a little, and kept her gaze from that other divan. "I've always been so independent, and I've heard that companions are rather at the beck and call of their employers."

  "I am sure you will cope admirably, pussinka. Ballet teaches one the art of patience even as it portrays the most emotional aspects of life, such as desire, suffering, and love. A great maitre de ballet, who was himself a Russian, once said to me long ago that a dancer can be anything that she chooses to be, a sword, a chalice, or a rose. You will be very patient, Chrysdova, and enjoy your travels, and prepare yourself to return to danc-

  ing with a fine strong backbone again."

  "My fear is that I shall be less of a dancer." Chrys sighed. "I worked so hard to become a soloist, and there are so many young and talented dancers ready to step into your shoes. It was such a bad stroke of luck to have that fall . . ."

  "These things, my child, are sent to test our strength of character." Miroslava took her hand, the left one, and gazed into the palm of it. "You have a long lifeline, Chrysdova, so there is plenty of time for you to become the ballerina of your dreams. But tell me, have you no other dreams ?"

  "Of romance?" Chrys spoke a trifle scornfully, and was very much aware that Anton was listening with arrogant laziness to their conversation. "It was something I never allowed to interfere with my career."

  "But we must all be madly in love just once in a lifetime," said Miroslava whimsically, while her rings pressed into the slenderness of Chrys's hand. "Art has an imperious voice, but love has a seductive one. When you hear it —"

  "No," Chrys broke in. "I don't intend to hear it, or to listen to its unreason. So few marriages survive the career of the wife; so many obstacles are put in her way that her career is sacrificed. Perhaps I'm selfish —"

  "No." Miroslava spoke firmly. "You have not the lips that express self-love and self-interest alone. There is a fine sensitivity to their outline, which means you are capable of stradan. The selfish are incapable of this in its acutest sense."

  "Stradan." Chrys murmured the Russian word for suffering, even as she recalled with a shudder that crashing fall and the pain like claws in her spine. Yet it wasn't this kind of suffering which the word signified; it went deeper and embodied the soul of a person. Larne slave. It meant that she was complicated, self-tormenting as these people with whom she drank Russian tea.

  "Yes, it is all there, the temperament of the artiste."

  Miroslava patted her hand and smiled in her worldly way tempered by her warmth of heart. "Rebellion, and innocence, with a dash of cynicism learned on the ladder to solo dancing. The cast-iron fragility. The determination that you need no one — no one but yourself to reach the stars. Pussinka, do you think I don't know? But I also know that when love came along with its voice like no other voice I had to listen. You too —"

  "No! " Again Chrys shook her head. "I'm not like my sister. She longs for the chains —"

  "Chains, you call them?"

  "Can you deny that they aren't?" Chrys looked steadily at the Russian woman who had loved, and borne a child, and found herself finished as a dancer because of love's chains.

  "Velvet chains, perhaps." Miroslava looked deeply into Chrys's blue eyes. "This coming year will be your testing time, Chrysdova. If you come through it without an entanglement, then you will become the mistress of the dance instead of the wife of a man. I predict this — but I also say to you — beware! We have the choice to begin love, but not always to end it. If we slay it, then we pay with the coin of loneliness."

  "It's a chance I'm willing to take," said Chrys, with the bravado of her youth, and the untroubled coolness of the girl who only felt fully alive when she danced. She was confident, sitting there in the firelight of Miroslava's castle room, with the lamplight gleaming softly on her fair hair. She even dared to look at Anton de Casenove, who reclined at his ease, with his dark head against a cushion, and a cheroot between his lips. His eyelids drooped over his grey eyes, so the lashes concealed their expression. He didn't speak, and yet he seemed to challenge her statement with that lazy look.

  "I mean it," she said. "It won't bother me to be a bachelor girl."

  "But it might bother the bachelors." Miroslava glanced at her grandson. "Do you find Chrysdova a pretty creature, mon ami?"

  "She is an ice-wich left by the frost when it sculptures its way across the steppes," he drawled. "If the matushka goes to the East then she might be in danger of melting a little in that ardent sunlight. A rich sheik might see her and snatch her for his harem — see, Miroslava, how scornful she looks! She doesn't yet know that the East is the most unchanging place left on earth, where harems still exist within secluded courts to which no man is admitted except the sheik himself."

  "Nothing is decided," said Chrys, who didn't argue with him about his own knowledge of the ardent side of Eastern life. "I may not suit as a companion, so then it will mean a nine-to-five job in a city office."

  "Most unexciting," he rejoined, "and most unlikely for you. I think the desert is on the cards for you .

  le destin."

  "Which is all very well," said Madame, "but we will not get ourselves involved in a discussion about destiny at this time of the night. Look at Chrysdova! She has the look of a child who is trying hard to keep her eyes from closing, and I am an old woman who needs her dreams. No doubt, mon ami, you are well used to staying awake all night at the card table, not to mention your night riding in the desert."

  "Talk not of things desired and distant as the stars," he jested, rising to his feet, tall in the lamplight, which cast strange shadows across the distinction and the devilry of his lean face. Chrys could imagine him both as a gambler, and a desert rider, a cloak billowing out from those wide shoulders like the wings of a hawk.

  He came to Miroslava and assisted her to her feet, and he held her frail but still graceful figure close to him for a moment. "I owe to you, dushechka, the good that is in me. But remember also what you taught me when I was a boy. 'Make yourself a lamb and the wolf will eat you.' Come, do you recall that you said it to me?"

  She laughed a little and pressed her cheek against his dark jacket. "I remember, and I would have you no dif-

  ferent, son of my son."

  He bent his head and kissed his grandmother's forehead, and as he did so his eyes flicked across the face of Chrys, as if he were curious about her reaction to his affection for Miroslava. She was caught by his eyes, held by his gaze, and she saw deep in his eyes laughter like a tiny flame. She knew he laughed at her because she had believed he meant to seduce her . . . it was awful that he should know her thoughts . . . mortifying that he should be in a position to be amused by her naivety.

  Chrys jumped to her feet. "I am ready for bed," she said, and instantly the dark eyebrow was peaking above the grey eyes, and her cheeks flamed as she realized how he interpreted her remark. His pleasure in her confusion was diabolical, and she only wished that she might get her own back with him.

  But tomorrow they would part... she to go and see this aunt of Jeremy's . . . he to ride, or play cards, or find some
other woman to tease.

  "Come," said Miroslava, taking her arm. "I will show you to your room."

  "Bon soir, Miss Devrel," drawled the prince.

  "Goodnight, m'sieur," she replied, and was glad to escape from his mocking face, his lean elegance, his slightly sadistic treatment of all women but Miroslava.

  A little winding staircase led to her bedroom. A secret stairway in days gone by, she was told. "A lover's stairway, perhaps," murmured Miroslava, as she led Chrys into a turret bedroom, with cupboards deep in the walls, bowed glass windows, and an icon affixed to the wall, with a silver lamp lighting it.

  "Sleep well, pussinka moiya." Miroslava patted Chrys's cheek, pale now the flush had left it. "I am pleased that Anton brought you to see me. On the bed you will find a nightdress and a robe, and the bathroom is at the turn of the corridor. You will be all right?"

  "I shall be fine, madame. You have been very kind to me."

  "Kinder than Anton, eh ?" There was a knowing

  gleam in the dark eyes that regarded Chrys by the soft light of the lamp. "He is not like other men you have met, I think. He is subtle, and appears to say what is in his mind without really saying it at all, which I know can be very confusing and infuriating for a woman. Ivanyi was the same, and in the way of heredity Anton is so much like him. The same pride and self-will; same daring and defiance of the conventions laid down by others. When I first met Ivanyi I was a little terrified, but I was also a Tartar and so I fought with him every inch of the way into love."

  Miroslava smiled a little, and moved her hands in a very foreign way. "Destiny does weave the pattern of one's life, and it will be intriguing, eh, if you should meet Anton again in surroundings a little wilder than the apple orchards of Kent? Had you thought that this might happen, if you go East with this woman as her companion?"

  "I don't want to meet him —" Chrys bit her lip. "What I mean to say, madame, is that Prince Anton and I have nothing in common, not really, although I found him a marvellous dancer. It would be better if we didn't see each other again —"

  "Safer, do you mean?" Miroslava gave a soft laugh and turned to the door. "Be warned, pussinka, that if you play for safety you will find the game of life a rather dull one. It may be what you want, to be safe, but it will be such a waste. Bon soir, Chrysdova. Sleep and dream."

  "Goodnight, madame, and thank you again for your kindness to me."

  "Your blue eyes invite kindness, my child, but I speak as a woman." Miroslava again laughed softly as she closed the door of the bedroom behind her, and like her grandson left a subtle insinuation in the air that was faintly perfumed by the oil that burned in the lampada.

  Chrys breathed it, and it seemed redolent of the distant East . . . a strange and beckoning scent, like that of

  hidden courtyards and jasmine gardens.

  Her pulses quickened . . . she would go tomorrow and see the woman who desired a companion for her travels in the East. It was a vast place and her path might never cross again the path of Anton de Casenove.

  But if it did . ? The question stole into her mind and played there like an imp of the devil. She wondered what she would do, and gazed as if for future protection at the wall icon lit by the silver lamp.

  There was, however, one thing she was very sure of

  Dove must be dissuaded from inviting the prince to her wedding. Chrys had made up her mind that when she parted from him the following day, the parting would be as definite as she could make it.

  It would be a goodbye, not do svidania!

  CHAPTER VI

  IT was a wonderful old tree, rich with foliage and with a broad trunk which had divided to form almost the shape of a heart, as depicted on playing cards. So ancient was the tree that the names carved upon it dated back to Norman times and the tribulations of lovers at the cruel courts of the old kings.

  Chrys had woken early in the bedroom with the cool pale walls and the golden icon, and not hearing a sound from the other rooms she glanced from the window near her bed, and the old tree on the lawn below seemed to beckon to her. She decided at once to take a stroll round the castle grounds, and after taking a shower she slipped into the white shantung dress which Vera had brought to her last night, with the kind suggestion that she might have need of it. It was delightfully reminiscent of the Thirties, and the sleeveless jacket in crochet-work reached to Chrys's hips. She loved the outfit, and could hardly appear in daylight in a silver

  dance dress. Such an apparition on the lawn might be taken for a ghost in the early morning mist.

  Mist in the morning at this time of the year was invariably a sign of a glorious day to come, and as Chrys wandered about the velvet lawns, she breathed the drifting sea air and felt rather like a very young girl on holiday again. She was hungry for a large breakfast, and felt a longing to drive to the edge of the sea and to swim in the joyous water.

  She paused where a thick cluster of honeysuckle covered a grey stone wall and she had a certain feeling that Miroslava and her son would expect her to stay for the day. She touched the flowers, and the dew was on her fingertips and she wondered if she would be wise to surrender to this holiday feeling; to stay a while longer in the dangerous company of Anton de Casenove. He had a flair for making life exciting and expectant, and Chrys knew that she ought not to yield to the charming peril of the man.

  She wanted above all to remain the well-balanced dancer, admired for her coolness and the way she had of keeping the men at bay. She wanted to dance in the cool halls of career, without the turmoil of desire in her life.

  She was old enough, and woman enough, to have felt it tingling in her veins when she had danced in his arms last night. He would have that effect on anyone, and it would be sheer madness to fall in love with him.

  She stroked the honeysuckle and the soft salty air stroked the skin of her arms and her neck and moved her hair with its caress. She tilted her chin. Was she such an innocent that she had to run away in order to protect herself from a mere man? If she returned to London today it would be to an empty flat. Dove would be at work, and after cooking her lunch there would be little for Chrys to do, except to go and see a film or sit in the park with a book.

  No, she wouldn't run away! If Miroslava asked her

  to stay here in Kent for the day she would do so, and take Anton's attentions for what they really were, a mixture of charm and deliberate enticement, with not a bit of heart behind them.

  With a smile on her lips she returned across the lawn, which was now fingered by the sun that was breaking golden and bright through the mist that veiled the blue sky. She entered the archway that led to the winding stairs and upwards to Miroslava's apartment. Suddenly she gave a gasp as someone came round the curve of the narrow stairway — long-legged, wearing a white shirt open at the throat, and a sardonic smile about his lips.

  'Bonjour," he greeted her. "You are an early riser — though we did wonder if you had taken fright and plunged off in search of the nearest railway depot."

  "Bonjour, milor." She gave him a smile that hid a certain turbulence of her nerves. He mustn't know that she had thought of making a bolt for it; he was the type who liked too much to give chase. "I looked from my window and saw that grand old tree on the lawn and just had to go and read the initials. So strange and sad, somehow, that they still linger while the owners of them have long since gone to dust."

  "You are a romantic, Chrysdova, though you delight in denying it. I have come to fetch you to the breakfast table, and I hope you have an enormous appetite, because Vera always cooks French-fried potatoes with the ham and eggs when I am staying here with Grand’Mere."

  "I am ravenous," Chrys admitted. "It must be the sea air, because I never feel all that hungry in London."

  "Come! " He held out a hand to her, but she ignored it and raced past him, slim enough not to brush too closely against him. But his soft laughter was even more effective than actual contact would have been this early in the morning; it mocked her, and it knew all about
her fear of his fascination. It told her in more

  than words that he was delighted that she wasn't unafraid of him. She bit her lip as she entered the morning-room where Vera was laying the table. She wished to goodness she could be ice-cool with him, and delicately she moved out of the doorway as he entered the room behind her.

  Vera turned to give her a smile. "Ah, I see that the dress fits you, mademoiselle, and it looks much nicer on you than it ever did on me. How grand to be young and pretty, eh? On such a day as this will be, and with the barin to show you this Kent which Madame and I have grown to love."

  Vera bustled away to bring in the food, and Chrys cast a glance at Anton which couldn't help but reflect her curiosity.

  "You are staying." It was a statement, not a question. "You are not basically a city girl, so what has the city to offer you on a summer's day? Here we have the orchards and the sea - do you like to bathe?"

  "Yes -" The word came to her lips involuntarily. "But I have no bathing suit, milor."

  "That is no problem." He lounged on the deep windowseat and with his arms stretched at either side of him, the collar of his shirt was thus opened against the smooth brown skin of his throat and chest. Chrys picked up a goblet from the oak sideboard and studied that in order to keep her gaze from the man, who in all conscience was devastatingly good to look at.

  "That goblet is a hundred years old," he informed her. "It is made from real Bohemian glass and it is for a bride and her groom to drink from on their wedding day. A romantic notion, eh? First he drinks, and then the bride follows suit, and the wine is an old Russian wine which has been blessed. When Miroslava fled from Russia there were few things she could take with her, but the goblet she could not leave behind. She wrapped it in her chemise so it would not get broken - hold it to the light and see it sparkle like a ruby."

  Chrys obeyed him and caught her breath at the

  beauty of the thing, perfectly oval and balanced on a long jewelled stem. "How gorgeous are really old things! One can see at once that they are fashioned by dedicated craftsmen and not turned out on a conveyor belt in some high-rise factory with plate-glass windows."