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.