"Raoul is not the son of the Sultan Casim Ammeh," the faint handwriting declared. "He is the son of my murdered husband, Colonel Raoul Le Breton. I know, for every day he grows more like his dear, dead father. Yet he imagines the Sultan to be his father. And I dare not tell him the truth. For if the Sultan learnt the boy was not his, he would kill him. For Raoul's sake I must let the deception go on. For the sake of my son who is all I have to live for. And my heart breaks, for daily my boy grows more and more to love that savage chief who murdered his real father."
Pansy read of Annette's dreary years in the harem of her captor.
"Years that have no light in them, save my son. Years that I should not have endured except for my child, my boy, the son of my brave Raoul."
It was a heart-breaking story of love and sacrifice, of a mother tortured to save her child from the fate that had befallen his father.
"The Sultan will make my boy like himself," the letter went on. "For there is no one at hand to stop him. Daily my influence grows less, and his stronger. The boy admires and copies the man he deems his father. He is too young to know the Sultan for what he really is. He sees only a man, bold and picturesque. And the Sultan spoils him utterly, he encourages him to be cruel and arrogant, he fosters all that is bad in the boy. It is useless for me to try and check him, for my own son laughs at me now."
The writing grew more feeble as the letter went on; the wild entreaty of a mother who had no life outside of her son, and who saw him being ruined by his own father's murderer.
"Whoever finds this be kind to my boy, my Raoul, for the sake of a woman who has suffered much, for the sake of his martyred father, Colonel Raoul Le Breton. Do not judge my son by what he is, but by what he might have been. In the Sultan Casim he has a bad example, a savage teacher, a wild, profligate, cruel man, who would make the boy as barbarous as he is himself."
The writing grew even more feeble, a faint scrawl on the yellow paper.
"I am dying, and my son is far away. I shall not live until my boy returns. And he will be left with no influence but the Sultan's. O Fate, deal kindly with my boy, my Raoul, left alone with savages in this barbaric city. I have only endured these dreadful years for the sake of my son. In the name of pity be kind to him. He will have no chance in the hands of his present teacher. Have mercy for the sake of his tortured mother, and his father, that brave soldier who gave his life for France.
ANNETTE LE BRETON."
Pansy read the sheets through without once raising her eyes. She was ravenous for the contents.
At that moment it seemed as if the dim, gilded room were full of tears and sorrows; the faint, sweet fragrance of the girl who had lived there long years ago, suffering and enduring for the sake of her boy.
It was not in Pansy's kind heart to refuse that tragic mother pleading for her son.
Then she remembered that Colonel Le Breton's son was out there fighting against his own people. If, indeed, he were still left alive to fight.
Her lips moved in silent prayer.
She kissed the faded, scented sheets and tucked them against her heart. She was not going to fail Annette. All she wanted now was to be at the side of the dead girl's son, to help him to build up a new character according to the best white codes and standards.
Then she sat on, listening to the battle that raged around the desert city.
If Raoul Le Breton were spared, there was another battle before her—a battle with two governments for his life. But she had not many qualms about the result, with Annette's letter, her own wealth, and her father on her side; as he would be, once she had explained the situation.
Morning dragged on into afternoon, and the sound of the conflict died down somewhat.
All at once, as if muffled by distance, she heard her lover's voice calling hoarsely:
"Pansy."
She started to her feet.
Before she could answer, there was a sound of fighting just beyond her quarters.
Then she heard her father's voice, strained and anxious:
"Pansy, are you in there?"
"Oh, father," she called back frantically. "Don't let them kill the Sultan."
There came more muffled voices. Then the sound of masonry being shifted, as the men outside her prison started clearing away the debris that blocked the door.
Evening shadows were settling over El-Ammeh; deep, grey shadows that, for all their gloomy darkness, were not as dark and gloomy as the thoughts of a man who was a prisoner in one of the rooms of his own palace.
Against a fluted column the Sultan stood watching night settle on the lake; a night that would soon settle on him for ever.
The day had gone against him. Outmatched, he had been driven back to his city walls. Even then he could have escaped with a handful of his following, and have started life afresh as a desert marauder, but there was one treasure in his palace—the greatest treasure of his life—that he wanted to take with him. In a vain effort to secure Pansy before he fled, he had been captured.
With his enemies close at his heels, he had made a dash for the palace, to fetch the girl. On arriving outside of her prison, he found a fall of masonry had blocked the doorway. Before he could retrace his steps and try another entrance, his pursuers were upon him.
The French were already in possession of that part of the city where the Englishmen had been imprisoned. Immediately they were released, Sir George Barclay and his officers, supplemented by a few Senegalese soldiers, had gone hot-foot to the palace, to Pansy's rescue.
There they had found the Sultan. A brief struggle against overpowering odds ensued, and once more the so-called Casim Ammeh was a prisoner in the hands of George Barclay.
With the shadows gathering round him, the Sultan stood, in white burnoose, a bitter expression on his arrogant face.
He had nothing now, neither wealth, nor power, nor his kingdom, nor the girl he had risked all for in a vain attempt to win. To-morrow he would have even less.
There was short shrift for such as he. To-morrow his life would have been taken from him. A life that had become empty as he had grown older and pleasures palled, until Pansy had come into it, filling it with freshness and innocence.
The battle between them was over at last. Death would end it. His death.
A European entered. A man he knew. George Barclay. The man he hated more than ever; the man responsible for his capture.
Barclay ordered one of the soldiers to light the lamp. Then he dismissed his escort.
There were half a dozen Senegalese soldiers mounting guard over the Sultan. The Englishman dismissed them also, leaving himself alone with the prisoner.
"You're doing a bold thing, Barclay, leaving the two of us together like this," the Sultan remarked. "It will give me great pleasure to wring your neck, before I'm sent the way of my father."
As if to carry out this design, he took a step towards the Governor.
From his pocket, Barclay drew out a few sheets of faded, scented paper.
"Read this," he said quietly, handing them to the prisoner.
With some surprise, the Sultan took them.
On opening the letter, he started, for he recognised his mother's writing.
As he read on, his bronzed face whitened, and a dazed look came to his eyes, like a man reeling under a tremendous blow.
In a critical, but not unfriendly manner, Barclay studied his companion. He knew now why the Sultan of El-Ammeh differed so in appearance from the wild people he ruled.
On reaching Pansy, he had had Annette Le Breton's letter thrust into his hands. His daughter had had no greeting for him, only wild entreaties for him to save the Sultan. When Barclay read the tragic confession he was quite ready to do his best.
Then Pansy had told him more.
How Raoul Le Breton was the man she loved. But she did not say that Lucille Lemesurier was responsible for their parting. She led her father to believe that the discovery of the supposed black blood in her lover had been her "hole in the floor of heaven."
Barclay did not trouble his daughter with many questions. It was enough that she was safe. What was more, he knew she would marry the man of her choice, no matter what obstacles were put in her way, as the first Pansy had married him—with the world against her.
All he wanted now was to save the man his daughter had set her heart on; that death should not blight her life as it had blighted his.
When the conflict was over, and the French and English officers met again, Barclay had shown the letter to the commander of the expeditionary force—the man who held the Sultan's life in his hand.
The officer had read Annette Le Breton's statement through in silence. Considering the contents, it did not need Pansy's lovely, anxious face or her father's pleadings to make him promise them life and liberty for Colonel Le Breton's son. More he could not promise. The two governments would want an indemnity that would swallow up most of the kingdom of El-Ammeh.
But his life was all Pansy wanted.
His life, and to be at his side when the blow fell. For a blow it was bound to be, to a man as proud and fierce as her lover. A shock and then a relief.
As Raoul Le Breton read the letter, his old world crashed in ruins about him.
Now he understood his dead mother's hatred of the Sultan Casim. Her endeavours to mould him on European lines. Her pleadings and entreaties for him not to forget the white side. That poor, frail, tortured little mother who had suffered so much for his sake!
His hand went across his anguished face.
He had not forgotten the white side. He had done worse. He had just ignored it. Knowing good, he had preferred evil. He had gone his way as barbaric and licentious as the savage who had murdered his father.
With tortured eyes he glanced at Barclay.
This man whom he had hated so bitterly for sixteen years and more was his best friend, not his enemy. For Barclay had shot the savage chief who had murdered his father and outraged his mother.
Like a whisper through the chaos surrounding him, Le Breton heard Barclay talking, telling him Pansy had found the letter. On account of its contents the French commander was not going to push the case against him. He would be given his life and freedom, but an indemnity would have to be paid, and the price would leave him only a shadow of his wealth.
Le Breton knew that again Pansy had saved his worthless life. For worthless it seemed, judging from his new standpoint.
"I owe you thanks, not hatred," he said to Barclay, his voice hoarse with suffering.
"And I owe you thanks too," the governor replied. "My daughter tells me you treated her with every kindness and consideration."
It seemed to Le Breton that he had been anything but kind and considerate; that no woman could forgive such dealings as his had been with her.
He had taken a girl used to a free and active life and had shut her up in a scented, sensual prison, trying to make her fall a victim to himself and her own senses; until she had grown morbid and hysterical, seeking death in preference to himself and the sort of life he had forced her to lead.
"I don't know that I should call myself exactly kind or considerate to your daughter," he remarked. "Not after reading this letter. Or to you either," he finished.
"I wouldn't worry too much about the past, if I were you," Barclay replied. "You've plenty of time ahead of you to 'make good' in."
Le Breton said nothing. He stayed brooding on the ruins around him, hating himself and the savage chief who had been his teacher.
All his old world had been swept away from him. Lost and alone, he would have to start afresh, according to new lights and new ideals, and without a hand to guide him.
He had nothing, neither wealth nor kingdom. Not his pride even. Unknowingly he had been a renegade, fighting against his own nation.
He was utterly broken. But he did not look it—only unutterably dreary.
As he pondered on his past life, he realised to the fullest what he must look like to Pansy. No wonder she had fought against her love for him! Any decent woman would.
He did not hear Barclay go, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the deepening shadows. He was aware of nothing except his own wild career, and how he had run foul of all white ideals.
The door opened, but he did not hear that either. He was too full of suffering and repentance.
Then another whisper penetrated the whirl in which he moved.
"Raoul," a girl's voice said gently.
He looked at Pansy as a man dying of thirst in a desert would look at a mirage of lakes and fountains—a vision of torturing desire that he knew was not for him.
No apologies could condone for his behaviour. Love he dared not mention; not with a past like his; not to this innocent, high-principled girl.
Pansy came to his side.
"Stoop down a bit, Raoul," she said. "I want to say something."
He bent his dark head.
Into his ear "I love you" was whispered shyly, as it had been that night months ago in a moonlit garden in Grand Canary.
At her whispered words his face started working strangely.
"I don't deserve such love, such forgiveness," he said in a broken voice.
She laughed—the laughter that kept tears at bay—and slipping her arms about his neck, tip-toed, and kissed the lips that dared not touch her now.
"And I want to marry you at once. I want to be with you always."
At her words his arms went round her in their old possessive manner.
Then he remembered that all his wealth had been swept from him; that now he had the girl, he had nothing left to give her.
"I've nothing to offer you," he said, his voice bitter, "except a love that's not worth having."
With soft, gentle hands Pansy stroked the lines of bitterness from the proud face that watched her with such love and longing.
"You can have all that's mine. I don't want anything but you."
He kissed the lips that were held up to his so willingly.
"My darling, help me to grope back to your white ways," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
"You won't have to grope. You got there last night when you 'remembered my reputation' and 'went nicely and quietly like a good boy.'"
He laughed, but there was a slight catch in his laughter, and pressed the girl closer to the heart she could always ease.
There were no shadows now, no ruins. For the greatest treasure of his life was left to him.
THE END.
Another tremendous success bythe author of "DESERT LOVE"
THE HAWK OF EGYPT
Joan Conquest's exotic story of the love-madness with which mysterious Egypt drugs the souls of men and women.
Its realism willthrill you
You will see:
Cairo, the native quarter, the bazaars, the flaming desert, the love tryst in the temple of Ammon, Zulannah, the dancing girl—the jewelled siren of the Nile, Damaris, the beautiful English heroine, Kelham, the lion hunter and Hugh Carden Ali, the man who sold his life for
One Hour of Love
Here are two pages selected at random, fromTHE HAWK OF EGYPTa love story without asterisks
Damaris bowed her head so that the curls danced and glistened in the light, as the torrent of his words, in the Egyptian tongue, swept about her like a flood.
"Hast thou come to me in love, thou dove from the nest? Nay, what knowest thou of love? I ask it not of thee—yet—but the seed I shall plant within thee shall grow in the passing of the days and the nights and the months and the years, until it is as a grove of perfumed flowers which shall change to golden fruit ready to the plucking of my hand."
He pressed her little hands back against her breast so that the light fell full upon her face, and he held her thuswise, watching the colour rise and fade.
"Allah!" he whispered. "Allah! God of all, what have I done to deserve such signs of Thy great goodness? Wilt thou love me?" He laughed gently. "Canst thou look into mine eyes and shake thy golden head which shall be pillowed upon my heart—my wife—the mother of my children? Look at me! Look at me! Ah! thine eyes, which were as the pools of Lebanon at night, are as a sun-kissed sea of love. Thou know'st it not, but love is within thee—for me, thy master."
And was there not truth in what he said? May there not have been love in the heart of the girl?
Not, maybe, the love which stands sweet and sturdy like the stocky hyacinth, to bloom afresh, no matter how often the flowers be struck, or the leaves be bruised, from the humdrum bulb deep in the soil of quiet content. But the God-given, iridescent love of youth for youth, with its passion so swift, so sweet; a love like the rose-bud which hangs half-closed over the door in the dawn; which is wide-flung to the sun at noon; which scatters its petals at dusk.
The rose!
She has filled your days with the memory of her fragrance; her leaves still scent the night from out the sealed crystal vase which is your heart.
But an' you would attain the priceless boon of peace, see to it that a humdrum bulb be planted in the brown flower-pot which is your home.
And because of this God-given love of youth which was causing her heart to thud and the blood to race through her veins, she did not withdraw her hands when he held and kissed them and pressed his forehead upon them.
"Lotus-flower," he whispered so that she could scarcely hear. "Bud of innocence! ivory tower of womanhood! temple of love! Beloved, beloved, I am at thy feet." And he knelt and kissed the little feet in the heelless little slippers; then, rising, took both her hands and led her to the door; and his eyes were filled with a great sadness, in spite of the joy which sang in his heart as he took her into the shelter of his arms.
"I love thee too well," he said, as he bent and kissed the riotous curls so near his mouth. "Yes, I love thee too well to snatch thee even as a hungry dog snatches his food, though, verily, I be more near to starving than any hungry dog. What dost thou know of love, of life, in the strange countries of the East? For thy life will
They Were Alone....
The magic of the desert night had closed about them. Cairo, friends,—civilization as she knew it—were left far behind. She, an unbeliever, was in the heart of the trackless wastes with a man whose word was more than law.
And yet, he was her slave!
"I shall ask nothing of you until you shall love me," he promised. "You shall draw your curtains, and until you call, you shall go undisturbed."
And she believed him!
Do you want to see luxury beyond your imagination to conjure,—feel the softness of silks finer than the gossamer web of the spider—hear the night voices of the throbbing desert, or sway to the jolting of the clanking caravan?
Egypt, Arabia pass before your eyes. The impatient cursing of the camel men comes to your ears. Your nostrils quiver in the acrid smoke of the little fires of dung that flare in the darkness when the caravan halts. The night has shut off prying eyes. Yashmaks are lowered. White flesh gleams against burnished bands of gold. The children of Allah are at home.
And the promise he had given her? ... let Joan Conquest, who knows and loves the East, tell you in
DESERT LOVE
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A beautifully illustrated edition of
THREE WEEKS
The Famous Romantic Novel
By Elinor Glyn
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A flaming romance as only the author of "THREE WEEKS" could write it; as only Gloria Swanson, with dashing Rodolph Valentino playing the lover, could make it live in all its ardent splendor. The story of a passionate young heart bound by society's conventions, struggling and risking all for happiness.
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FAMOUS NOVELS BYVICTORIA CROSS
LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW
It tears the garments of conventionality from woman, presenting her as she must appear to the Divine Eye.
HILDA AGAINST THE WORLD
Fancy a married man, denied divorce by law, falling desperately in love with a charming maiden waiting for love.
A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
A stirring story of love, intrigue and adventure, woven about a proud, reckless heroine.
SIX WOMEN
A half-dozen of the most vivid love stories that ever lit up the dusk of a tired civilization.
THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION
The self-sacrifice of woman in love. Regina, the heroine, gives herself to a man for his own sake. The world, however, exacts a severe price for her unconventional conduct.
SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN'S LIFE
A bold, brilliant, defiant presentation of the relations of men and women who find themselves in situations never before conceived.
TO-MORROW
A daring innovation of great strength and almost photographic intensity, that appeals to the lovers of sensational fiction; wise, witty, yet touchingly pathetic.
DAUGHTERS OF HEAVEN
As life cannot be described, but must be lived, so this book cannot be revealed—it must be read. Its daring situations and tense moments will thrill you.
OVER LIFE'S EDGE
No one but Victoria Cross could have written this thrilling tale of a girl who left the gayeties of London to dwell in a lonely cavern until the man, who loved her with the passion of impetuous youth, found her.
THE LIFE SENTENCE
A beautifully written story, full of life, nature, passion and pathos. The weaknesses of a proud, cultured woman lead to a strange climax.
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