Slave Woman

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Jan wanted to be more than just another possession to a man whose cruelty and indifference had long since taken over from the first flush of marriage. On a bittersweet holiday in Tangier she found a man who could give her the love and passion she wanted. Dacre Chenniston. But Dacre had to forfeit his profession for his illicit love; he was struck off the medical register. And suddenly it seemed that he would have to forfeit his love too...

Release date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 208

Sample

“I WISH,” said Mrs. Royter, “that we’d never come to this place.”

Janet Royter—better known to her intimates as Jan—shook her head at her mother-in-law.

“I think it’s wonderful,” she said.

“Humph!” said Mrs. Royter. “I don’t agree.”

That was nothing new for Jan. Her mother-in-law never agreed with her on any subject. It seemed an unfortunate thing that their temperaments clashed like this, and they must spend a holiday together. But Jan had felt it her duty to come. Mrs. Royter was recuperating from a long illness, and her doctor had warned her that a hard winter in England might be her end.

So here they were in Morocco. Jan’s husband, Guy, had suggested Tangier because of its perfect climate, and he had sent Jan out with his mother. But Jan fully realised that she had been given this holiday not so much for her pleasure as for the fact that she would be of assistance to the old lady. Guy’s mother came first with him. Jan had discovered that at the very beginning of her marriage, two years ago. At first she had resented it bitterly. But she had long since ceased to resent anything with Guy. She just knew that she had made a mistake in marrying him, and now she was doing her best to abide by the contract which she had so rashly made.

This was her second day in Tangier, and to Jan it had been forty-eight hours of wonder. She forgot that she was a slave to a fretful, tiresome, exacting woman who saw beauty in nothing, and evil everywhere. Jan, by nature an intense lover of beauty and of romance, was finding sufficient in Tangier to satisfy her—an outlet for all her repressions.

Mrs. Royter sat in a basket chair on the white terrace of the Hôtel Continental, and complained that the sun was too hot. Yesterday she had groused because the wind was too cold. Nothing was ever right for her! But Jan stood looking down the hill, enraptured by the scenery. This was her first trip abroad, and North Africa seemed to her wildly exciting.

Before her lay the harbour, the water smooth and like blue glass under the sunlight. By the little pier-head one or two boats, orange and red, made a vivid splash of colour against the blue.

On her left lay the Moorish part of the town, white buildings with narrow slits of windows; here and there a tall green palm to relieve the monotony of the whiteness, or a tall lemon-coloured villa, and a gay scarlet roof.

Oh, those white terraces of Tangier, the minarets and the mosaics, the crazy narrow alleyways, the steep winding steps, and burning sunlight drenching everything!

Jan never got tired of looking at the town. It seemed to her like an illustration of The Arabian Nights. She felt that for hours she could watch the picturesque Arabs, the veiled women with their black, mysterious eyes; the bearded men in burnouses of green or brown or white. Here and there, a chocolate-faced Moor; an insolently handsome guide with a red fez on his head; an olive-skinned Spaniard or Algerian; men of every nationality swarming through the gay white town.

Mrs. Royter had already decided that the place was infested with disease. She was sure that smallpox was raging and that typhoid prevailed; and she had not yet recovered from the jostling she had received from a swarm of Arabs, on the quay, when she had arrived two days ago.

Jan knew she would have trouble with her mother-in-law, but landing at Tangier had been a little worse than she had expected. But Mrs. Royter’s groans had not succeeded in damping Jan’s young and ardent enthusiasm.

All the same, she had been thankful for that nice, attentive Spaniard, Chief of the Police, who had looked at their passports, when they came over on the boat from Gibraltar, and who had given them much good advice.

And then there was the young English doctor who was staying in the same hotel. Mrs. Royter had a penchant for doctors, because she loved to enumerate her ills and describe her various operations. The moment that somebody had told her last night in the dining-room that the tall, good-looking man who sat alone at one of the tables was a specialist from Great Court Street, Mrs. Royter had introduced herself to him.

Jan had not been sorry for this. Dacre Cheniston entertained them royally on the subject of Morocco. He was by no means an inexperienced tourist, and Jan had found him a most charming personality. But the elder Mrs. Royter was not so interested in. his charm as the fact that he was one of the most brilliant young ophthalmic surgeons in London at the moment. He was not yet-thirty years of age but was already a distinguished oculist.

This morning he had asked Jan to walk through the town with him, but Mrs. Royter, incurably selfish, wanted Jan to attend to her, and so Jan had had to refuse the young doctor’s invitation.

She was quite thankful when her mother-in-law decided to go to her room and rest for an hour before tea, and seized the opportunity to go out alone.

Although this was January, when at home there would be icy winds and frosts, it was like summer in Tangier. Jan went out in a cotton frock which had a scarlet belt, and a scarlet straw hat on her smooth dark head.

The sun beat down warmly upon her, but she loved it. She could stand any amount of heat. She strolled down the narrow cobbled way which led from the hotel entrance to the main street. She found herself one of a stream of people passing up and down. Donkeys, with panniers laden with fruit; Moorish gypsies, carrying their burdens slung on poles across their shoulders; Arabs, Spaniards, English and American tourists—a motley gathering. And with it the queer unmistakable odour of the East.

Jan was stared at, all the way along. But she had already learnt that the Arabs stare like inquisitive children and mean no harm. Mrs. Royter had told her on no account to leave the main street, certain that death lurked in every dark alley, or under those quaint arches where one could see a solitary Arab lounging in the shadows, smoking a cigarette.

But Jan, unafraid and curious, made her way down this cobbled alley and that. Inevitably, she lost herself, and went on wandering. She was now in the Arab quarter of the town. It was dirty, and smelt vile. Jan felt a sudden longing to get back to her hotel. But she could not ask her way. None of these people spoke English or French.

A few moments later, with a feeling of great relief, Jan saw a tall figure in grey flannels—unmistakably British—coming towards her. Dacre Cheniston!

After the lounging, unwashed Arabs she felt a sudden thrill of pride in the appearance of her countryman. He looked so fresh, so very good-looking, and extraordinarily young for a man in his position. His eyes were amazingly blue against the light tan of his face, and he had crisp brown hair with just a crinkle of gold in it.

“Oh, Mr. Cheniston! I’m so glad to have met you—I can’t find my way back to the hotel,” she greeted him.

Dacre Cheniston took off his hat.

“Hullo, Miss Royter, I didn’t expect to meet you in this unsavoury spot.”

“I lost myself. But isn’t it all fascinating?”

“Very—especially when you know these fellows as I do. I had two years in Egypt, you know, and can speak their lingo a little.”

“Well, I wish that I could,” said Jan with a little laugh. “Especially when these boys crowd round and try to make you take them on as guides.”

“Shall I see you back to the hotel?” he said. “Or would you like me to show you the Kasbah? That’s the Sultan’s palace—and quite a good specimen of Moorish architecture, if you’re interested.”

“I should be thrilled!” said Jan.

“You’ve left your mother at home?”

Jan felt herself suddenly blushing.

“Mrs. Royter is my mother-in-law.”

Dacre Cheniston apologised, not without a slight feeling of regret. Of course; how foolish of him; and he had just addressed her as “Miss Royter.” So unobservant not to have noticed the wedding-ring on her finger. The only thing that had struck him was the beauty of those small slender hands and the exquisite shape of her nails. He loved a woman to have pretty hands.

So she was married! She looked a mere child! It was damned difficult to judge a woman’s age these days, he thought. But this girl looked particularly young, and, as he stood there looking down at her, he thought how very attractive she was. Out of the common—that dark graceful head, those wide brown eyes with upcurled lashes, and that short red upper lip which just showed a gleam of pearly teeth.

“My husband sent me out to look after his mother—she is recovering from an illness,” Jan explained as Cheniston led her towards the Kasbah.

“I know all about the illness,” he said, with a whimsical smile, “I got it all from her last night, you know.”

“Isn’t she awful about her maladies!” said Jan frankly.

“Awful!” he agreed, and they both laughed.

A FEW moments later, Jan found herself telling him about Guy and the life she led at home.

Dacre Cheniston listened, and understood … he was a very understanding person, and it was part of his job to know and to sympathise with women.

Here was just another of those little tragedies that one met with every day of one’s life. A girl with charm, with beauty, who had never had a chance … brought up in an English suburb … her father, a bank clerk, never able to give her any real opportunities of seeing life and meeting people … then the inevitable plunge into matrimony as soon as a presentable man in a decent position came along.

Jan was essentially loyal, and she spoke bravely of her husband, who was a chartered accountant, and of the flat in Gloucester Road which she had to share with an unsympathetic mother-in-law. But it was obvious to Dacre Cheniston that she was not happy.

It did not take him long to discover that there were unplumbed depths in this girl—passionate reserve in those soft dark eyes and in the curve of the red mouth. And he could just imagine Guy Royter, a prosaic accountant, older than Jan by ten years, with a dry mind, with no imagination—nothing, in fact, that this pretty child had ever really wanted.

Dozens of women of all types had passed through Cheniston’s hands, in the Eye hospitals and in his consulting-room; and, because he was young and attractive as well as successful, there were plenty of beautiful women ready and willing to accept him as a lover.

But up till the present his interest was centred solely in his work. He liked women in the abstract, but no one woman had ever held his attention or lured him from the pleasant path of bachelorhood.

He did not quite know why, but this brown-eyed girl, who was so inexperienced, so enthusiastic about everything that she saw, and so exquisitely patient with that tiresome old woman up in the hotel, attracted him more than anybody he had met for a long time.

He set himself out to amuse and interest her. Nobody could be more charming than Dacre, and it was not to be wondered at if Jan responded. She forgot how the time was flying by; forgot that Mrs. Royter would be waiting for her for tea; forgot everything but the fascination of the old Moorish palace which the young doctor was showing her.

She saw mysterious shadowy rooms where the sunlight never penetrated, and which were still full of the faint odour of perfume, of sandalwood, of spice. She saw rich-coloured mosaics, wine-coloured rugs, blue and green Moorish lamps swinging by their golden chains; silken-cushioned divans, cedarwood chests hundreds of years old. Then they passed through the harem, up winding circular stairways on to the roof.

They walked through wide sunlit patios, full of palms and flowers, enclosed in high white walls where the ladies of the harem used to take their fresh air and exercise. It was a queer atmosphere—holding a strange mixture of luxury, cruelty, and glamorous romance.

Cheniston knew about everything—could tell Jan the whole history of the palace. Finally he brought her to the wonderful carved arch which bore the sinister name of the Gate of Punishment!

“Here,” said Dacre, “echoed the groans of the slaves who were bastinadoed for some paltry crime.”

Jan shivered.

“It’s difficult to realise that such barbarous customs ever took place.”

“Less than thirty years ago they were taking place,” he told her. “And slavery still exists.”

“Slavery!” she echoed.

“Yes——”

He indicated a plump, olive-skinned girl, with a striped pink handkerchief over her head, who was passing by, carrying a pitcher on her hip. Jan watched her pad along on bare brown feet, and thought that she might have come out of Jerusalem thousands of years ago.

“See that child!” said Cheniston. “Thirteen or fourteen, perhaps, and one big earring. That’s a sign of slavery. She belongs, body and soul, to some brute of a Moor.”

“Poor little thing,” said Jan.

Cheniston gave his quick, humorous smile.

“Aren’t we all slaves in one way or another? There are hundreds of English girls just as much to be pitied as the little Arab girl.”

Jan drew a sigh. She had a sudden mental vision of her London flat; the daily round of duties; the monotonous grind; trying to keep the peace with Mrs. Royter; trying to keep the one daily who rarely stayed because of Mrs. Royter; trying to please Guy. Wasn’t she, Jan, a slave to Guy?

She could see him so plainly. He had been passably good-looking when she had married him, slightly built, hazel-eyed, curly-haired. But now his hair was thinning on the top, and his eyes had grown weak. He had taken to glasses. And he was developing a fretful, worried expression. He was not very successful, and business was bad. He gave people the impression that he was unhealthy and not very good-tempered.

It was Jan’s job to look after him and put up with his tempers. There was, perhaps, an excuse for the occasional violent outbursts which came from Guy. Jan tried to put most of the unpleasant scenes down to the accident which he had had a few months before they married. As a very young man, Guy had liked a motor-bike, but a nasty accident on a greasy road had put an end to his activities in that respect. The result had been a head wound, which healed and appeared to give him no trouble. Gradually, however, the fits of violent temper showed themselves, and his own mother had, on several occasions, admitted that it was that accident which caused the ill temper and excessive irritability.

Jan had, from the start, been given to understand, by her mother-in-law, that she must deal tactfully with Guy when he was in a bad mood. Tactful she was—and patient with every whim. A great fuss had to be made of Guy if he had a cold, a touch of lumbago, or one of the common ills which frequently attacked him.

She was sure he was fond of her—in a possessive and rather exacting fashion. But he was not a romantic man, and, once his honeymoon had ended, he had ceased even to pretend to be Jan’s lover. He had become merely a husband.

Jan, standing on the stone steps by the Gate of Punishment, looked down at the blue waters of the sea, at the white houses and green palms of Tangier, and wished she could stay here for ever. But Mr. Cheniston was right. They were all slaves—in a more civilised fashion than the little Arab girl, perhaps, but still they were slaves. They could not do what they wanted.

She tried to see the humour of things, and to picture herself wearing one earring, belonging, body and soul, to Guy.

Cheniston watched the changing expressions flit across her face. He smiled.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

The colour rushed to her cheeks.

“I was just thinking—about what you said.”

“About slavery?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a slave to the telephone,” he laughed. “Every time it rings it means work for me at home. And we’re all slaves of this,” he pointed to his wrist-watch.

For an instant Jan thought what wonderful hands Dacre Cheniston possessed—slim, yet powerful, with long sensitive fingers. She could just visualise the tenderness of those fingers when they were examining a patient … or their skill when he was operating. She had been feeling the strength of this man’s personality the whole afternoon, and she no longer wondered why his patients adored him … why so many people were willing to trust him with that most delicate of all operations … on the eye.

Then her eyes focused on his watch, and her heart gave a guilty throb. Heavens! It was half past five, and she had told Mrs. Royter that she would be back for tea at 4.30.

“I must rush!” she gasped. “I had no idea it was so late—I was enjoying myself so much.”

“More slavery,” he laughed.

“I’m afraid so.”

He took her arm, and led her down the steps away from the Sultan’s palace, through a labyrinth of crowded, odorous alleys into the main street. At the door of the Hôtel Continental she stopped to thank him for her afternoon.

“It’s been my pleasure as well as yours,” said Cheniston. “You must let me show you some more of Tangier.”

“I’d simply love it!” she said.

She hastened in. He followed the slim young figure with his gaze as he lit a cigarette and smoked thoughtfully.

If it were a question of comparison, perhaps he pitied Jan Royter more than the little Arab girl. For the latter had been born into bondage, and her uneducated brain knew nothing better. But Jan was the product of civilisation. She had intelligence and fire and imagination. He had found that out during these few hours that he had been with her. He could imagine how she must kick against the goad in her home life, in spite of her loyalty. And he felt curiously annoyed because she was not happy, because she had so much less than dozens of selfish, self-centred women whom he had met.

Jan had to pay for her afternoon’s pleasure with Mr. Cheniston. She found Mrs. Royter in a furious temper—that ill temper that Guy had inherited—and she was not allowed to forget that she was an hour late for tea. She was harangued for the rest of the evening. Added to this, there were scarcely veiled insinuations that Guy would not like her to go out alone with “strange men.”

“But we met Mr. Cheniston last night—he is not exactly a stranger,” argued Jan.

“All the same, I don’t see why you should go out with him … and poor Guy slaving away at home in the office. … I’m sure he’d be upset.”

And so on, until Jan’s patience wore thin and she snapped back—a thing which rarely happened, because she had sworn, months ago, to try to keep the peace with her difficult mother-in-law.

“I can’t see what all the fuss is about—Mr. Cheniston only showed me the Sultan’s palace.”

Mrs. Royter’s sour face tightened. She put up her lorgnettes to look at Jan—a sure signal of her complete and utter disapproval.

“Do as you like, Janet—I don’t intend to constitute myself your keeper. But, while you are on holiday with me, pray do nothing that would upset my boy.”

Jan retired to her own room, most of her pleasure in her day evaporating. Oh, that tiresome old woman … and nothing but “my boy and his wishes” all day long. Jan felt that she was being made almost to hate Guy. As if spending an hour or two with Mr. Cheniston were a crime!

Mrs. Royter had spoilt all the joy of those hours. But Jan, thinking things over further, came to the sorry conclusion that Guy would have objected to that innocent afternoon. He paid little attention to her, himself, but he was bitterly jealous of her and would not allow any other man to pay her any attention.

There were times when Jan wondered how she was going to stand the rest of life as Guy’s wife. She was only twenty-three—on the very threshold of things—and there was so much that she wanted to do, and would never do, as Mrs. Guy Royter. She adored books and music, and talking to people who were interested in something more than “business” (or clocks!). The collecting of antique clocks was Guy’s hobby, and the only thing he knew anything about. The flat was already full of chiming grandfathers which Guy meticulously wound up and attended to. They got on Jan’s nerves.

She wondered why she had ever been in love with Guy. Yet he had seemed different in those early days when he had first become a visitor at her home, introduced by her brother, who had then been articled to Guy and his partner. Of course, at that time, he had put himself out to be charming, and he had seemed madly in love with her.

She wondered if all men paraded in their best colours before marriage, and afterwards made no further effort to keep a woman’s love. That was what Guy had done. He had just taken her for granted these last two years, and never asked himself whether she was happy or not.

Jan found her. . .