Charles Somerville

“ Taking the saddle like a lamb, Sunstroke nevertheless hopped forth as of a piece of cyclone.
On the Sahara even a horse is granted rubber heels.
Noiseless the departure.
“Fare well, well, well, Verbeena!” shunted the Sheik Amut softly to the handsome stars.
The stars are really very handsome on the Sahara. And so close. One feels like picking them. On some kinds of drinks one often tries. ”

“ CHAPTER XII It was a Monday morning about two months later and the Sheik was helping Hulda hang out the wash in the back of the Big Tent, his soul pondering in trepidation, even worry as one might say, regarding what Verbeena was contemplating, what she was ruminating with such open evidences of liking it, in her masterful, little, red-capped noodle.
Fear suddenly clutched him clamorously by the heart. ”

“ Verbeena, not knowing the signals, smacked her helmet hard against the desert of Sahara, matted her curls and stretched motionless, a lighted cigarette in her hand.
One could read a symbol in its curling smoke of the fiery spirit yet existent in the lithe, young, prone, boyish body as well as the indubitable indication of an unbreakable habit. ”

“ Dawn couldn’t begin on the desert without the Sheik Amut being turned out with a slim cup of coffee to break horses. Or direct the currying of camels. And camels require infinite currying. If you want to live around the same oasis with them it has long been decided that this is quite essential.
And in all his former experiences he had never known that a camel could laugh. But now he knew they all did whenever he passed by.
Besides he was losing money, for in breaking horses he’d acquired a habit of killing them while thinking of Verbeena. ”

“ No, Spaghetti thought not. It was very hard to keep one these days. Especially when your business had you out on the desert running an ambling horse farm. You were so likely to return to Biscuit or Orange or Ammonia and find the harem had run out on you, bobbed its hair and got jobs as manicure girls in Constantinople.
“That will be all,” then had remarked Verbeena and had further taken a tuck in Amut’s devoted servant by saying:
“It is absurd; don’t you think, for you to call yourself Spaghetti? You’re much too fat. Macaroni would be infinitely more suitable.” ”

“ Thus amid a magnificent display of good-wishes, Verbeena Mayonnaise set out to satisfy her soul longings upon the somewhat dusty Sahara, under the capable guidance of Musty Ale and his equally musty camels and his mustard colored men. ”

“ At dawn Musty Ale sent ahead the procession of baggage bearers, the lumbering camels, all of them Verbeena thought showing great facial resemblance to Lady Speedway and hoped some day to tell her so.
But otherwise she just adored them.
“See,” said she to Lord Tawdry who had surprised her by getting up, “the darling camels how they chew and chew and chew and are never satisfied!” ”

“ She was just wondering if she could go so far as to appoint Hulda policewoman of the tent and entrust her with a sand-club when there came loud yells without of “Hip hoy, hip hoy, hip, hip, hip! Allah, Allah, Allah! AMUT!”
Three more “Allahs” were being heartily given still yet without when the Sheik Amut Ben Butler strode haughtily into the tent, threw off his creamy cloak and with a careless motion tossed his bejeweled classy turban among the old gold and silver cushions, thus displaying his shock of Sahara colored hair above his stick licorice black chin muff. ”

“ She pinned it on him. They grow freely in the desert.
But she said emphatically:
“The story, sir, is wholly unworthy of you.”
“Good heavens!” said Mr. Hitchings in ineffable alarm. “This isn’t my stuff! How could you think it? How ridiculous of me to have permitted myself to be persuaded by Amut to try and put this over! I regret the attempt abysmally. Right now, hear me, fair lady: I wash my hands of the Hull thing!”
“Friendship may excuse this conduct of yours,” said Verbeena coldly. “But how, if you are also English, is it that Amut makes a friend of you?” ”

“ In the company at the Hotel Biscuit dance all the men dropped their partners, even if they weren’t their wives, and trooped toward Verbeena, an international galaxy of adorers comprising Scotch, Irish, Spanish, Scandinavians, Malays, Canadians, Moabites and—well, that will be about enough—but toward all of them who pleaded, some with twanging guitars, others with ukeleles and one with a harmonica for a chance to clasp her boyish beauty in the ardor of a kicky dance, Miss Mayonnaise had but one insouciant, petulant reply:
“Aw, g’wan. Fade!” ”

“ But there would be no cats in the desert. Only nice, gentle, cute little, wriggly sandworms. No big boob brother, Tawdry. No Knitting Needle Hussars.
Out there, beyond, swallowed up in that dear black smudge she had seen from the balcony her soul would wave its Stars and Stripes of freedom and move grandly in the palpitant sunlight upon the yellow linoleum of the mighty desert! ”

“ And I was to tell her how sensitive you were about money—about ever being left without any.”
“Bright chap, you are, Verbeena! It was a jolly plan. But when Butternut and his five thousand pun’ a year came along I was willing to sacrifice myself, was I not?
“I was willing,” said Lord Tawdry, “to postpone America and stick to bridge until you’d a chance to snap the bally, wedding manacles on the pretty youth. And everything seemed moving perfectly until late last night. His eyes were then shining like a pair of motor car lamps with love for you.
“I saw him beg you to go out upon the balcony. ”

“ But true enterprise, real enterprise, enterprise in the magnificent, was incarnated in the person of the celebrated Mr. Cyril Gristmille for on that very instant he descended grandly in person in an aeroplane. Slightly on his ear but soon readjusted himself. He had faced this small accident without turning a hair. He hadn’t any.
“See here,” cried the Sheik Amut, “what the hellah do you mean by swooping down this way on these grounds? Don’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve scared the horses and camels and scattered them all over the desert! ”

“ CHAPTER VIII Never was any girl in all her life so grateful for a good, stiff boyish training as in that moment found herself Verbeena Mayonnaise!
She thought of all the swimmin’, rowin’, ridin’, boxin’, runnin’, fightin’, wrestlin’ she had done in the past with exultation. She even conjured up the long, sad face of Lord Tawdry with its sable curtains and experienced a wave of gratitude. In the nomenclature of Fate she felt that at this moment she had come Seven. ”

“ Young Butternut stood nearby with his heart in his eyes. He was nodding joyfully and murmuring softly for her ear alone:
“’Attaboy!”
“I say, chappie, what are you cooing about?” finally demanded Miss Mayonnaise.
“Please, old thing, a word alone out on the balcony,” Butternut abjectly amplified.
“You’ve a jolly cheek,” retorted Verbeena lighting another cigarette. “And yet?” she suddenly arose and knocked the pleasing young man for a few feet with a merry clap on the ear. [Pg 13] “I’ll take you on. I like you, Butternut. You remind me so much of your sister.” ”

“ By Allah, stand aside and don’t make the sandworms laugh! Where’s Queen Verbeena?”
“By the same Allah,” returned the Sheik with a show of spirit, “unless your business is of prime importance I would not disturb her now. She is at her daily exercise within and cares never then to be interrupted.” ”

“ I’m not against cigarettes. All heroes and vamps smoke yards of ’em on orders. But in this scene you’re a sweet thing—just a sweet thing—though God knows if I’ll be able to prove it to the camera eye or anybody else.
“Here—take this rose—smell it.”
“It doesn’t smell at all,” said Verbeena.
“They don’t when made of paper,” said the great Gristmille. And for some reason she saw that he suddenly gently smiled. He regarded Verbeena with a new light in his eye—one nearly of approval. “Just about the right intelligence,” he was murmuring to himself, “out of which to mold a great star. ”

“ Every little trick of ingenuous girlhood was in everything that little Verbeena did and the wondering Amut, Spaghetti and Hulda and Yusef and Hamandaigs ran around telling the tribe about it. And they all agreed they just simply couldn’t believe it was Verbeena. ”

“ Don’t you know that you are to be a girl in the first reel?”
“I—I,” hot shame mantled Verbeena’s cheek. Why was it she did not step straight forward and punch him in the nose? But somehow, he made her so acutely conscious of her sex, or, rather, of what sex he wanted of her.
“You are to be a girl in this first reel I tell you. Get back into your tent and take that football suit off and put on something close, clinging, and when you get it on work up a good, hippy walk—hippy and a bit slouchy. Go on instantly, and get him off and put her on.” ”

“ Out on the desert with her wild heart, her strangely stirring impulses, her uncharted passions, the mad caprices of her swift reactions from pants to skirts, from skirts to pants, though nothing like vice-versa had even touched her. ”

“ Verbeena gulped grandiloquently.
The Sheik sneered at her violently.
“See here,” he said, “you’d have made a fine chorus boy but it was not as a chorus boy or any other kind I saw you in Biscuit. So shake those Reginald fixings and get yourself into something with fancy trimmings, something decolleté and dashy. I’m surprised to find you so prone to forget that you are a lady.”
“In Biscuit—in Biscuit? You saw me in Biscuit, you underbred loafer?” gasped Verbeena.
“That cat you chased off the balcony fell on a brand new, very natty turban I was wearing as I passed the hotel.” ”

“ After all it will be nicer when we meet—will it not—just to shake hands?
“‘Brokenly,
“‘Bertie.’”
“O, but I say, you know,” said Lord Tawdry, “this could be patched up.”
“Only Bertie.”
“Rot. You could hold him.”
“Not if he saw me coming. The boy is the best sprinter at Oxford. Anyway——”
Verbeena regarded her brother through the sweeping black lashes of her impenetrably palpable orbs, considering carefully that the fulminations between them had reached a clangorous climax of the neurotically nepotic. ”

“ We who have witnessed the scene of tragic treachery against her on the part of Musty Ale in conspiracy with the hard rider now abaft the oasis in the rapidly diminishing offing, must tremble now for Verbeena Mayonnaise. ”

“ Also she seemed to have had just then a glimpse of her moral stamina and the vision was as of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a high wind.
Her face ached, her left ear ached and more awfully than either her peculiar temperament ached. ”

“ Suddenly Verbeena vamoosed from the palm trees, fell thirty feet with a happy turn which landed her directly on the shampoo bandage which was the Sheik’s native headgear.
“My dear, your exuberance fascinates as well as flattens me,” said the august Amut in his fall. “May I ask the cause? Mind you, I do not insist. You well know, I am too proud to fight.”
“You will learn in time, my dear,” laughed Verbeena airily, her thoughts running ragingly in the line of movie contracts, of a day soon [Pg 119] when she would excel the gilded harvestings of Queen Mary herself. ”

“ Once home in the tent the Sheik Amut Ben Butler dared to put his arms out to her. He was no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. You had to hit him first.
But having experienced the metallic obstinacy of Verbeena Mayonnaise, the inflexibility of her character and seeing, as he ecstatically had, the flight of his powerful and avowed enemy, Abraham O’Mara, he was fraught with the realization that love had become a force in his life which might drive him to anything where [Pg 122] Verbeena was concerned, predominantly and irresistibly.
He’d be trimming her curls for her next. ”

“ Montrose, her brother’s valet, an unexpectedly, entirely unusual perfect servant, came along the Sahara bearing two plates of soup. It was the appointed dining hour for Lord Tawdry. Regardless of what he might do as to debts, he insisted on prompt feeding.
“Drop that soup,” said Verbeena sternly. “Your master isn’t staying to dinner and the soup will not stain the sand. ”

“ She scuffled her britches for a match. She lighted up. She took a deep inhale. It was tonic. She filled her lungs again.
A “V” now formed between her black eyebrows.
Verbeena was coming back!
She hopped into her pants. She began to stir about looking for other things to put on. Just then a swarthy, black-haired young creature, a slip of a girl about six feet tall, entered.
“Look here——” began Verbeena.
“Ay bane Hulda, the maid,” said this little Arab girl. “You could have a wash for yourself back of that curtain over there. It’s a bath in it. And your trunks bane come.” ”

“ In fact, there’s no particular reason that you should know what you are doing. But,” he grasped her chin sharply and threw her head back with an artistic touch that jarred her teeth, “it is important that you do what I say. And don’t you try to do anything else unless you are ambitious to end your life as a canned chicken.”
“But——” stammered Verbeena who was beginning to suspect deep down after all she perhaps was really a girl. ”

“ The foreign correspondents would soon get going on the cable regarding the missing young, daring, delightful, ingenuous, adventurous, amazing, remarkable, willful, bewitching bobbed haired beauty of Mayfair who had recklessly essayed to navigate the Sahara without a male rudder of her own, to journey far and alone save for an escort of wicked and lowering Arabs! ”

“ And yet you see, she goes alone! What in the world her idea is I’m sure I—look—there’s young Butternut after her now! A good lad but not, I think, quite clear above. Really you know he can’t be. For surely must he know that all Verbeena inherited from her father was the pistol Sir John shot himself with. Although, of course, she shares with her brother, Tawdry, the same damned haughty luck at bridge. These two things and a sterling uppercut is all she owns and yet he would marry her! ”