The beating heart

They were coming up in a closed carriage from Jerico, a jolly, merry, roystering crowd. Melisande whose real name was Eliza, late of the Gaiety theatre, now married to a millionaire, Lord and Lady Hillingford on their honeymoon, an old bachelor Major keen on reckless adventure, and Miss Smith.

To pass the time they were singing comic songs with resounding chorus, which floated out of the open windows and echoed strangely from the stony hills of the wide stretching barren wilderness that lies between Jerico and Jerusalem.

It was a brilliant night with a huge silver moon at the full hanging in the sky above sending its floods of light down upon the lonely waste, in which there was no tree nor flower nor bird: yet something moved at intervals, a curious low four-footed shape with sloping spine and coat so cunningly contrived in spots and lines of brown and white that it matched exactly the patchy, stony hills and clefts and crannies amongst the rocks through which the creatures flitted with their elusive movements.

The exhilarated crowd within the carriage took no notice except one, Miss Smith who was always an exception to whatever the rest might do or be.

The supper at the Jerico Inn before their start had been good with copious libations of the rich Greek wine and now Melisande’s golden head was leaning on Hillingford’s shoulder while she shrilled out the chorus from her coral mouth and the millionaire’s arm was round Lady Hillingford’s neck and the Greek wine no doubt was to blame if she was too confused to notice it wasn’t her husband’s arm. The old Major was frankly overcome and curled up in a quiescent ball in his corner of the great roomy old carriage, only Miss Smith sat quiet and sedate in her grey travelling dress watching the shapes flitting among the rocks in the moonlight. They were hyaenas Miss Smith knew what they were. She was not intoxicated, she was not sleepy. She was not singing comic songs. She sat up straight, alert and watchful.

Her companions did not heed her. They generally left her alone recognizing that while with them she was not of them. At the same time they did not object to her. No one ever objected to Miss Smith. They teased her goodnaturedly because she never drank, smoked, flirted nor swore as they did and used to read and study dingy brown books in the queer languages of the country and she as goodnaturedly smiled and continued to pursue her own quiet way. Among other women she was generally passed over and ignored and considered unattractive because she was generally termed “good” and in these days to be a good woman, is not attractive. A beautiful woman, a fast woman, a fascinating woman, a wicked woman, any adjective almost, sounds interesting but good no. So once having dubbed her good everyone let her alone and she was allowed to wear her crown of Virtue unchallenged and undisturbed.

In person she was rather tall and slender and affected quiet well-fitting tailor made clothes. Her hair was of a warm brown shade and very thick but so quietly done, pressed close to her small head that no one looked twice at it while the frizzed out golden curls, now getting thin from over much dying that flared in a halo round Melisande’s head drew every eye. Miss Smith’s skin was cool and pale, her eye grave and grey a different thing altogether from the sunny saucy laughing blue beloved by man. Yet the eye had beauty in its calm repose like a clear deep pool in a shady wood. She was 36 though she looked only about 26 and her present and future had been kindly settled for her as old maid by her friends. When she had first joined the touring party, both the married men had attempted to flirt with her after the way of married men but Miss Smith did not care for flirtations with married men and did not want the attentions of the old bachelor Major Mitchell who gallantly offered them. What she did want was locked up in her own soul.

She had been proposed to at 16 and had accepted. He was a young man her father’s secretary. The engagement had pursued a tranquil and as Miss Smith privately thought a disappointing course until one evening when as he was leaving her after much long and as she thought boring conversation, she ventured to whisper softly as he took her hand in farewell “Kiss me.”

Instantly she was enfolded in his arms and a kiss pressed upon her lips, not an irreverent one but one full of force and electric fire and pressed down so hard that her lips were painfully crushed upon her teeth, under it. When he let her go suddenly she was absolutely white dazed and breathless and involuntarily sank down on the chair nearest her.

The young man’s face was white too as they stared for a moment at each other in silence. Not a word was spoken. He retreated silently, swiftly to the door and vanished through it. She sat still where she was until the beating of her heart grew calmer and allowed her to get up. Then as the sense of physical shock passed she smiled. That had been delightful! That was Life! That was Love! That moment compensated her for the preceding boring weeks of her engagement. In that moment she had had her first insight into that stupendous joy that we share with the animals and primitive man alike. Perverted, degraded, chained and beaten down out of sight, as the sexual instinct is by civilization, there are still moments like these of innocent youthful joy in which we see the face of Nature for an instant and realise her tremendous power.

Little Christine Smith went to bed that night profoundly happy. Engagements were not stupid after all. Life was not all dullness. Poets and novelists were right. There was something in existence which was marvelous and golden and glowing and it was love. She adored her fiance now. Had he not in that electric wonderful kiss shown her the majestic Force that he represented? It was overaweing, inspiring. All night she dreamt innocently happily of the kiss that had lifted her to heaven. In the morning there was a letter from him.

Trembling and flushing she had carried it to her room to read alone. His prayer no doubt to her to hasten their marriage so that there might be more and more and more of those heavenly moments. But the letter was not that. It was an apology. A craving of pardon for that kiss. A promise that if forgiven he would never, never ever again. Christine could not understand. Grown cold and white she read that astounding letter over and over again and the more she read it the less she understood it. What did he mean? What was wrong? Why was the kiss wrong? It was not, her common sense told her that. It had been just the revelation of his love for her in all its splendid strength and ardour and she loved him for it, and now here was this stupid letter in which he painted himself as a sort of criminal. She was dumbfounded. But one thing was clear. He evidently thought the kiss was very wicked and if she did not agree then he would think her very wicked also. Christine sat very still and cold thinking, the gay mirage that Nature had flung all about her dissipated and gone. Her primitive instincts urged her to go to him and tell him he was mistaken. The kiss was Right and he must take her in his arms and kiss her again and again in exactly the same way give her again that wonderful glimpse of a golden and rose-coloured world of ecstasy. But civilised 16 is rather shy. Christine shrank from facing that cold condemnation that was in the letter, turned upon herself. It seemed so impossible to explain, to find the words to fit all those myriad feelings leaping within herself. She was afraid he would not understand.

At last after hours of thought she folded the letter and put it away. He had said he would come that evening to hear her say she forgave him. She decided she must say nothing but extend to him her pardon as he desired.

For months the engagement went on. Christine secretly hoped that once again his feelings might betray him and that glorious moment come again but it never did.

The engagement was finally broken off and not by him. Christine told him gently that she feared they hardly understood each other well enough for marriage.

The young man mournfully and humbly accepted her decree. To this day he believes that it was that fatal moment (to her so ecstatic) that was his undoing.

There had been several engagements since then on the same dull formal lines and terminated in the same way by her. They had not contained any whirling moments such as the one she had experienced and for the return of which she waited confidently as an astronomer for the return of a comet. This time when it came....

Meanwhile she was not unhappy. She was strong and fleet of foot and clear of eye. She had perfect health in a splendid well knit frame and life was sweet and all the days of this tour through Palestine had been very bright and fair.

She had enjoyed especially this just finished visit to Jerico, going down from Jerusalem in the early summer when the heat was so deadly that not a soul except their own reckless party would venture down there.

The Hotel keeper at Jerusalem had begged them not to go! The season for it was over the heat far too great but they had laughed at him. They had been so cooked they declared a temperature of 110° could not frighten them and the idea of going down down to the scorching plain of Jerico, to the borders of the Dead Sea beneath which lay the sinful Cities of the Plain had a delightful fascination in it.

The road the landlord urged was extremely dangerous. It lay through the wilderness and at this time the Bedouin Arabs were travelling up and down. Caravans and long lines of them fully armed might be met at any point. If go they must an escort of two armed soldiers would be provided for them by the Government. What would be the good of two soldiers against a band of robbers? Hillingford had asked and the landlord had explained “If you have Turkish soldiers with you, no matter how few, it shows you are under the protection of the Sultan of Turkey the head of their religion the Sheik-Islam: they will not lift a hand against their own chief. No one will touch you.”

The party consented to take the escort but at the last moment it did not arrive and they would not wait. Finally to the sound of lamentations from their host, they drove away, in the capacious vehicle with a good pair of horses and a single unarmed man as driver. They went by night to avoid the blinding heat of the sun and here they were returning by night by moonlight and the moonlight that falls on the plain of Jerico and on the stony wilderness around it is as hot as English sunlight. The party were well pleased with their visit they had enjoyed it especially Miss Smith. She had liked the journey down down into the simmering bowl of heat, at the bottom of which lay the rich verdant tree filled plain of Jerico and the sparkling blue Salt Lake called the Dead Sea.

The Jerico Inn kept by a Greek where they stayed was a low white building of immensely thick walls and almost hidden from view under the shade of a gigantic fig tree whose wide spreading massive thick leaved boughs filled the court yard with deep delicious shadow green and cool. Here, on their arrival after midnight they had sat and supped at a table neatly spread with bread and cheese and fruit and great jars of honey and the rich heady wines of Greece and while the others had rioted and jested and laughed and kissed Miss Smith had sat gazing up through the fig leaves to where between them here and there a great planet burned fiercely in the sky uneclipsed even by the silver light of the moon. She was enjoying it all in her deep calm soul. The next morning the rioters slept late in the cool stone chambers of the inn, but she was up while the larks were singing overhead and the whole fair plain of Jerico was smiling in fresh dew and early light. Alone and unafraid and unmolested she found her way down to the edge of the sparkling sea, undressed and bathed in its wonderful blue and limpid waters that would not let her sing and clung round her snowy throat and limbs like the heaviest thickest oil.