The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Mrs. Robinson looked up quickly. 'No,' she answered very deliberately, and Downing thought her oddly indifferent. 'I do not think David Winfrith will have the slightest sympathy with me—with us. He is exceedingly conventional.'

All at once a discussion, provoked by her, seemed to make the future intimately near, especially to the man who suddenly found himself answering questions, some childish and very frank in their expression, about the life led by Europeans in Persia. Penelope, for the moment, seemed to be looking forward to their joint existence as to a series of exciting and romantic adventures.

'Boxes not too large to go on mules? I thought camels always carried one's luggage!' There was a touch of disappointment in her voice, but before he could answer with the promise that she should have camels and to spare—in fact, anything and everything she wanted, she had added: 'Two good English saddles,' and made a pencil note.

'Nay, I will see to that!' said Downing quickly.

Some of her questions were difficult to answer, for the questioner seemed to forget—and, seeing this, Downing's heart grew heavy within him—that her position among the other women of her own kind and race out there would be one full of ambiguity.

Not even his great power, the fear with which he was regarded, could save her, were she to put herself in the way of it, from miserable and petty insult.

Hastily he turned the talk to his own house in Teheran. He had made no attempt, as do so many Europeans, to alter the essentially Persian character of his dwelling, and he lingered over the description of his beautiful garden, fragrant with roses and violets, traversed by flowing rivulets, cooled by leaping fountains. Penelope's face darkened when a word was said concerning Mrs. Mote, or, rather, of the native badgee, or ayah, who would, for a while at least, take her old nurse's place. 'I am sure,' said he, rather awkwardly, 'that in time you will want an English maid, especially at Laar'; and then he told her, not for the first time, of the life they would lead when summer came, in tents, Persian fashion, far above the pleasant hill villages, always avoided by Downing, where the British, Russian, and French colonies have their gossip-haunted retreats near the city.

The thought of her old nurse reminded Mrs. Robinson that it was growing late. She explained that at Burcombe she would be able to hire some kind of conveyance to take her back to Monk's Eype, and as she watched Downing preparing for the two-mile walk, she said solicitously: 'I wonder if I ought to let you come with me? The rain may keep off till we get down there, but you may have a terribly wet walk back, and, if you fall ill here, I cannot come and be with you as I was at Pol les Thermes.'

As she spoke she looked at him, and her look, even more than her words, moved Downing as a man is wont to be moved when the woman he loves becomes suddenly and unexpectedly tender. 'Is it likely that I should let you go alone?' he said, rather gruffly. 'You told me once you are afraid of thunder. Well, I think we are going to have thunder, and very soon.'

But now his visitor seemed in no hurry to leave the curious, rather dark room, with its old-fashioned furnishings. 'I wonder when we shall meet again,' she said a little plaintively.