In the lodge in the garden of oranges, when the noon-tide was past and the land lay in the very centre of the gaze of the sun, Baroudi offered to Mrs. Armine an Egyptian dinner, or El-Ghada, served on a round tray of shining gold, which was set upon a low stool cased with tortoise-shell and ornamented with many small squares of mother-of-pearl. When she and Baroudi came into the room where they were to eat, the tray was already in its place, set out with white silk napkins, with rounds of yellow bread, and with limes cut into slices. The walls were hung with silks of shimmering green, and dull gold, and deep and sultry red. Upon the floor were strewn some more of the marvellous rugs, of which Baroudi seemed to have an unlimited supply. Round the room was the usual deep divan. Incense burned in a corner. Through a large window space, from which the hanging shutters were partially pushed back, Mrs. Armine saw a vista of motionless orange-trees.
She sat down on a pile of silken cushions which had been laid for her on the rugs. As she arranged her skirt and settled herself, from an earthen drum just outside the house and an arghool there came a crude sound of native music, to which almost immediately added itself a high and quavering voice, singing:
"Doos ya' lellee! Doos ya' lellee!"
At the same moment Aïyoub came into the room, without noise, and handed to Baroudi, who was sitting opposite to Mrs. Armine, with his left knee touching the rug and his right knee raised with his napkin laid over it, a basin of hammered brass with a cover, and a brass jug. Baroudi held forth his hands, and Aïyoub poured water upon them, which disappeared into the basin through holes pierced in the cover. Then, making a cup of his hands turned upwards, Baroudi received more water into it, conveyed it to his mouth, rinsed his mouth elaborately, and spat out the water upon the cover of the basin. Aïyoub carried away the basin and jug, Baroudi dried his hands on his napkin, and then muttered a word. It was "Bi-smi-llah!" but Mrs. Armine did not know that. She sat quite still, for a moment unseen, unthought of; she listened to the quavering voice, to the beaten drum and arghool, she smelt the incense, and she felt like one at a doorway peering in at an unknown world.
Almost immediately Aïyoub came back, and they began the meal, which was perpetually accompanied by the music. Aïyoub offered a red soup, a Kaw-ur-meh—meat stewed in a rich gravy with little onions—leaves of the vine containing a delicious sort of forcemeat, cucumbers in milk, some small birds pierced with silver skewers, spinach, and fried wheat flour mingled with honey. She was given a knife and fork and a spoon, all made of silver, and the plates were of silver, which did not harmonize well with the golden tray. Baroudi used only his fingers and pieces of bread in eating.
Mrs. Armine was hungry, and ate heartily. She knew nothing about Eastern cooking, but she was a gourmet, and realized that Baroudi's cook was an accomplished artist in his own line. During the meal she was offered nothing to drink, but directly it was over Aïyoub brought to her a beautiful cup of gold or gilded silver—she did not know which—and poured into it with ceremonial solemnity a small quantity of some liquid.
"What is it?" she asked Baroudi.
"Drink!" he replied.
She lifted the cup to her lips and drank a draught of water.
"Oh!" she said, with an intonation of surprised disappointment.
"Lish rub el Moyeh en Nil awadeh!" he said.
"What does that mean?"
"'Who drinks Nile water must return.'"
She smiled, lifted the cup again to her lips, and drank the last drop of water.
"Nile water! I understand."
"And now you will have some sherbet."
He spoke to Aïyoub in Arabic. Aïyoub took away the cup, brought a tall, delicate glass, and having thrown over his right arm an elaborately embroidered napkin, poured into it from a narrow vase of china a liquid the colour of which was a soft and velvety green.
"Is this really sherbet?" Mrs. Armine asked.
"Sherbet made of violets."
"How is it made?"
"By crushing the flowers of violets, making them into a preserve with sugar, and boiling them for a long time.
Aïyoub stayed by her while she drank, and when she had finished he offered her the embroidered napkin. She touched it with her lips.
"Do you like it?"
"It is very strange. But everything here is strange."
Aïyoub brought once more to his master the basin with the cover and the jug, and Baroudi washed his hands and rinsed his mouth as at the beginning of the meal. After this ceremony he again muttered a word or words, rose to his feet, took Mrs. Armine's left hand with his right, and led her to the divan. Aïyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the orange-trees. It was answered by another bird.
"They are singing the praises of God," said Baroudi, in a deep and slow voice, and as if he were speaking to himself.
"Those birds!"
She gazed at him in wonder. He looked at her with sombre eyes.
"You do not know these things."
Suddenly she felt like an ignorant and stupid child, like one unworthy of knowledge.
He sipped his coffee. He was now sitting in European fashion beside her on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head his appearance was not unmistakably Eastern.
And this man, evidently quite seriously, talked to her about the birds singing to each other the praises of God.
"You ought to be differently dressed," she said.
"How?"
"In Egyptian clothes, not English flannels."
"Some day you shall see me like that," he said, reassuringly. "I often wear the kuftàn at night upon theLoulia."
"At night upon theLoulia! Then how on earth can I see you in it?"
She spoke with a sudden sharp irritation. To-day her marriage with Nigel seemed to her like a sword suspended above her, which would presently descend upon her, striking her to earth with all her capacity for happiness unused.
"You will see me with the drawers of linen, the sudeyree, the kuftàn, the gibbeh—or, as says my father, jubbeh—and the turban on my head. Only you must wait a little. But women do not like to wait for a pleasure. They are always in a hurry."
The cool egoism with which he accepted and commented on her admiration roused in her, not anger, but a sort of almost wondering respect. It seemed part of his strength. He lifted his eyebrows, threw back his head, showing his magnificent throat, and with the gesture that she had noticed in the garden of the Villa Androud thrust two fingers inside his low, soft collar, and kept them there while he added:
"They are like children, and must be treated as children. But they can be very clever, too, when they want to trick. I know that. They can be as cunning as foxes, and as light-footed and swift as gazelles. But all that they do and all that they are is just for men. Women are made for men, and they know it so well that it is only about men that they think. I tell you that."
"No doubt it is true," she said, smilingly accepting his assertions.
"Women will run even after the Chinese shadow of a man if they are not shut close behind the grilles."
Mrs. Armine laughed outright.
"And so you Easterns generally keep them there."
"Well, and are we not wise? Are we not much wiser than the Mr. Armeens of Europe?"
His unexpected introduction of Nigel's name gave her a little shock, and the bad taste of it for an instant distressed even her tarnished breeding. But the sensation vanished directly as she remembered his Eastern birth.
"And you?" she said. "Would you never trust a woman?"
"Never," he calmly returned. "All women are alike. If they see the Chinese shadow, they must run after it. They cannot help themselves."
"You seem to forget that men are for ever running after the Chinese shadows of women," she retorted.
"She thought of her own life, of how she had been worshipped and pursued, notpour le bon motif, but still—"
She would like him to know about all that.
"Men do that to please women, as to please a child you give it a sand lizard tied to a string. Put the string into its hand and the child is happy. So it is with a woman. Only she wants not the string, but the edge of a kuftàn."
It seemed to Mrs. Armine, as she listened to Baroudi, that she was permanently deposed from the place she had for long been accustomed to occupy. He tacitly demanded and accepted her admiration instead of giving her his. And yet—he had serenaded her on the Nile that first evening of her coming. He had bought Hamza and Ibrahim. He had desired and tried to effect the swift departure of Nigel. He had decreed that Marie must go. And the Nile water—with how much intention he had given it her to drink! And he had plans for the future. They seemed gathering about her silently, softly, like clouds changing the aspect of her world.
She had not turned that glove inside out yet.
She felt that she must alter her tactics, assert herself more strongly, escape from the modest position he seemed to be deliberately placing her in. Where was her pride, even of a courtesan?
She lifted her coffee-cup, emptied it, put it down, and began to pull on one of her long white gloves. Baroudi went on calmly smoking. She picked up the second glove. He sharply clapped his hands. Aïyoub entered, Baroudi spoke to him in Nubian, and he swiftly disappeared. Mrs. Armine pulled on the second glove.
"Now I must go home," she said.
She moved to get up, but her movement was arrested by the furtive entrance of a thin man clad in what looked to her like a bit of sacking, with naked arms, chest, legs, and feet, and a narrow, pointed head, completely shaved in front and garnished at the back with a mane of greasy black hair, which fell down upon his shoulders. In his hand, which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent upon his inexplicable occupation.
After moving several times in this manner round the room, he stopped short, almost like a dog pointing, then drew from inside his coarse garment a wrinkled receptacle of discoloured leather with a widely-opened mouth, cried out some words in a loud, fierce voice, leaped upwards, and succeeded in striking the ceiling with his stick.
A long serpent fell down into the bag.
Mrs. Armine uttered a cry of surprise, but not of alarm. She was not afraid of snakes. The darweesh went creeping about as before, presently called out some more words, and struck at the wall. A second serpent fell into the bag, or seemed to fall into it, from some concealed place among the silken draperies. Again he crept about, called, struck, and received another reptile. Then a little dark-eyed boy ran in, salaaming, and the darweesh and the boy, to the accompaniment of wild music played outside, went through a performance of snake-charming and jugglery familiar enough in the East, yet, it seems, eternally interesting to Easterns, and fascinating to many travellers. When it was over the little boy salaamed and ran out, but the music, which was whining and intense, still went on, and the darweesh advanced, holding his bag of snakes, and stood still before Mrs. Armine. For the first time he fixed his cunning and ferocious eyes, which were suffused with blood, steadily upon her, as if he desired to hypnotize her, or to inspire her with deadly fear. She returned his gaze steadily and calmly, and held out her hand towards the bag, indicating by a gesture that she wished to handle the serpents. The darweesh, still staring at her, and very slowly, put the bag close to her, holding it under her breast. A curious musty smell, like the scent of something terribly old, came to her nostrils. She hesitated for a moment, then deliberately pulled off her gloves, put them on the divan, stood up, and plunged her right hand into the bag, at the same time shutting her eyes. She shut them to enjoy with the utmost keenness a sensation entirely new.
Her hand encountered a dry and writhing life, closed upon it firmly but gently, drew it out and towards her. Then she opened her eyes, and saw that she had taken from the dark a serpent that was black with markings of a dull orange colour. It twisted itself in her hand, as if trying to escape, but as she held it firmly it presently became quieter, lifted itself, reared up its flat head, and seemed to regard her with its feverish and guilty eyes, which were like the eyes of something consciously criminal that must always be unrepentant. She looked at those eyes, and she felt a strong sympathy for the creature, and no sense of fear at all. Slowly she brought it nearer to her, nearer, nearer, till it wavered out from her hand and attained her body.
The darweesh always stood before her, but the expression in his eyes had changed, was no longer hypnotic and terrible, but rather deeply observant. Baroudi sat quite still upon the divan. He looked from Mrs. Armine to the serpent, then looked again at her. And she, feeling these two men absolutely concentrated upon her, was happy and at ease. Swiftly the serpent wound itself about her, and, clinging to her waist, thrust forth the upper part of its body towards the darweesh, shooting out its ribbon of a tongue, which quivered like something frail in a draught of wind. It lowered and raised itself several times, rhythmically, as if in an effort to obey the whining music and to indulge in a dancing movement. Then, as a long shrill note was held, it again reared itself up, till its head was level with Mrs. Armine's ear, and remained there quivering, and turning itself slowly from side to side with a flexibility that was abominable and sickening. The music ceased. There was a moment's pause. Then, with a fierce movement that seemed expressive of a jealousy which could no longer be contained, the darweesh seized the snake about two inches below its head, and tore it away from Mrs. Armine. The terrible look had returned to his face with an added fire that beaconed a revengeful intention. Pressing his thumb hard upon the reptile's back, he seemed to fall into a frenzy. He several times growled on a deep note, bowed back and forth, tossing his mane of greasy hair over his face and away from it, depressed his body, then violently drew it up to its full height, while his bare feet executed a sort of crude dance. Then, wrought up apparently to a pitch of fanatical fury, he bent his head, opened his mouth, from which came beads of foam, and bit off the serpent's head. Casting away its body, which still seemed writhing with life, he made a sound of munching, working his jaws extravagantly, shot forth his head towards Mrs. Armine, gaped to show her his mouth was empty, lifted his bag from the floor and rushed noiselessly from the room. She stood looking at the headless body of the reptile which lay on the rug at her feet.
"Take it away!" she said to Baroudi.
He picked it up, went to the window, and threw it out into the orange-garden. Then he came back and stood beside her.
"Horrible brute!" she said.
She spoke angrily. When the darweesh had attacked the serpent she had felt herself attacked, and the killing of it had seemed to her an outrage committed upon herself. Even now that he was gone and the headless body was flung away, she could not rid herself of this sensation. She was full of an intimate sense of fury that longed to be assuaged.
"How could you let the brute do that?" she exclaimed, turning upon Baroudi. "How could you sit there and allow such a hateful thing?"
"But he came here to do it. He is one of the Saadeeyeh."
"He was going to do it even if I hadn't taken the serpent?"
"Of course."
"I don't believe that. He did it because he was angry with the serpent for not hurting me, for letting me take it."
"As you please," he said. "What does it matter?"
She glanced at him, and sat down. The expression in his eyes soothed her, the new look that she could read. Had it been called up by her courage with the serpent? She wondered if, by her impulsive action, she had grasped something in him which till now had seemed to elude her. Nevertheless, although her mood was changing, the sense of personal outrage had not completely died out of her.
"There really are other serpent eaters?" she asked.
"Of course. Saadees."
"And that man is one? But he hated my taking the serpent."
"But I did not hate it."
"No."
More strongly she felt that she had grasped something in him which had eluded her till now.
"Sit there for a minute quietly," he said, with a gentleness that, though far less boyish, recalled to her mind the smiling gentleness of Ibrahim. "And I will give you a new pleasure, and all your anger will go from you as the waves go from the Nile when the breeze has died away."
"What is it?"
His eyes were full of a sort of happy cunning like a child's.
"Sit there and you will know."
He went out of the room, and came back in a moment carrying a good-sized box carefully wrapped in silver paper. She began to think that he was going to give her another present, perhaps some wonderful jewel. But he undid the silver paper cautiously, opened a red-leather case, and displayed a musical box. After placing it tenderly upon the coffee-table, he bent down and set it going. There was a click, a slight buzzing, and then upon Mrs. Armine's enraptured ears there fell the strains of an old air from a forgotten opera of Auber's, "Come o'er the Moonlit Sea!"
The change from the Saadee's atmosphere of savage fanaticism to this mild and tinkling insipidity threw Mrs. Armine's nerves off their balance.
"Oh, Baroudi!" she said.
Her lips began to tremble. She turned away her head. The effort not to betray her almost hysterical amusement, which was combined with an intense desire to pet this great, robust child, almost suffocated her. There was a click. The music stopped.
"Wait a moment!" she heard him say.
And his voice sounded grave, like an intensely appreciative child's.
Click! "Parigi, O Cara!"
Mrs. Armine governed herself, drew breath, and once more turned towards Baroudi. On his strong, bold face there was the delighted expression of a boy. She looked, looked at him, and all her half-tender amusement died away, and again, as in the Villa Androud, she was encompassed by fear. The immense contrasts in this man, combined with his superb physique, made him to her irresistibly fascinating. In him there was a complete novelty to appeal to her jaded appetites, rendered capricious and uneasy by years of so-called pleasure. A few minutes ago, when he had spoken of death, he had been a mysterious and cruel fatalist. Now he was a deliciously absurd child, but a child with the frame of a splendid man.
The musical box clicked. "Salve Dimora."
"Do you feel better?" he asked her.
She nodded.
"I bought it in Naples."
He lifted the box in his strong brown hands, and held it nearer to her. Nothing in his face betrayed any suspicion that she could be amused in an ironical sense. It was obvious that he supposed her to be as happily impressed as he was.
"You hear it better now."
She nodded again. Then:
"Hold it close to my ear," she said, in a whisper, keeping her eyes upon him.
He obeyed. Once his hand touched her ear, and she felt its warm dryness, and she sighed.
"Salve Dimora" ceased.
"Another!" she said.
And she said, "Another!" and "Another!" until the box's repertoire was finished, and then she made him turn on once more, "Come o'er the Moonlit Sea!"
Her gloves lay on the divan beside her, and she did not draw them on again. She did not even pick them up till the heat of the sun's rays was declining, and the musical box had long been silent.
"I must go," she said at last.
She put her hands up to her disordered hair.
"Indeed I must."
She looked at her watch and started up.
"It's horribly late. Where is Ibrahim?"
Ibrahim's smiling face was seen at the window.
"The donkey, Ibrahim! I want the donkey at once!"
"All what you want you must have."
He nodded his head, as if agreeing passively with himself, and looked on the ground.
"Hamza he ready. Hamza very good donkey-boy."
"That's right. I am coming," she said.
Ibrahim saluted, still smiling, and disappeared. Mrs. Armine walked to the window and looked out.
It was already the time of sunset, and the unearthly radiance of the magical hour in this land of atmospheric magic began to fall upon the little isolated house, upon the great garden of oranges by which it was encircled. The dry earth of the alleys glowed gently; the narrow trunks of the trees became delicately mysterious; the leaves and the treasure they guarded seemed, in their perfect stillness, to be full of secret promises. Still the birds that dwelled among them were singing to each other softly the praises of God.
Mrs. Armine looked out, listened to the birds, while the sun went down in the west she could not see. And now Magrib was over, and the first time of the Moslem's prayer was come.
She wished she need not go, wished it so keenly, so fiercely, that she was startled by her own desire almost as if it had been a spectre rising suddenly to confront her. She longed to remain in this lodge in the wilderness, to be overtaken by the night of the African stars in the Villa of the Night of Gold. Now she heard again the far-away voice of the fellah by the shadûf, warning her surely to go. Or was it not, perhaps, telling her to stay? It was strange how that old, dead passion, which had metamorphosed her life, returned to her mind in this land. In its shackles at first she had struggled. But at last she had abandoned herself, she had become its prisoner. She had become its slave. Then she was young. She was able to realize how far more terrible must be the fate of such a slave who is young no longer. Again the fellah cried to her from the Nile, and now it seemed to her that his voice was certainly warning her that she must withdraw herself, while yet there was time, from the hands of El-Islâm—while yet there was time!
She had been so concentrated upon herself and her own fears and desires that, though part of her had been surely thinking of Baroudi, part of her had forgotten his existence near her. As a factor in her life she had been, perhaps, considering him, but not as a man in the room behind her. The outside world, with its garden of dreaming trees, its gleaming and dying lights, its voices of birds, and more distant voice from the Nile, had subtly possessed her, though it had not given her peace. For when passion, even of no high and ideal kind, begins to stir in a nature, it rouses not only the bodily powers, but powers more strange and remote—powers perhaps seldom used, or for long quite disregarded; faculties connected with beauty that is not of man; with odours, with lights, and with voices that have no yearning for man, but that man takes to his inner sanctuary, as his special possession, in those moments when he is most completely alive.
But now into this outer world came an intruder to break a spell, yet to heighten for the watcher at the window fascination and terror. As the fellah's voice died away, and Mrs. Armine moved, with an intention surely of flight from dangerous and inexorable hands, Hamza appeared at a short distance from her among the orange-trees. He spread a garment upon the earth, folded his hands before him, then placed them upon his thighs, inclined himself, and prayed. And as he made his first inclination of humble worship in the little room behind her Mrs. Armine heard a low murmuring, almost like the sound of bees in sultry weather. She turned, and saw Baroudi praying, on a prayer-rug with a niche woven in it, which was duly set towards Mecca.
She, the unbeliever, was encompassed by prayer. And something within her told her that the moment for flight already lay behind her, that she had let it go by unheeded, that the hands which already had touched her would not relax their grasp until—what?
She did not answer that question.
But when the fellah cried out once more in the distance, it seemed to her that she heard a savage triumph in his voice.
A week later Mrs. Armine received a telegram from Cairo:
"Starting to-night, arrive to-morrow morning. Love—Nigel."
She had been expecting such a message; she had known that it must come; yet when Hassan brought it into the garden, where she was sitting at the moment, she felt as if she had been struck. Hassan waited calmly beside her till, with an almost violent gesture, she showed him there was no answer. When he had gone she sat for a moment with the telegram on her knees; then she cried out for Ibrahim. He heard her voice, and came, with his sauntering gait, moving slowly among the rose-trees.
"I've a telegram from Cairo," she said.
She took up the paper and showed it to him.
"My lord Arminigel—he is comin' back?"
"Yes."
"That is very good noos, very nice noos indeed," said Ibrahim, with an air of sleepy satisfaction.
"He starts to-night, and will be here with the express to-morrow morning."
"This is a most bootiful business!" said Ibrahim, blandly. "My lord he has been away so long he will be glad to see us again."
She looked at him, but he did not look at her. Turning a flower in his white teeth, he was gazing towards the river, with an unruffled composure which she felt almost as a rebuke. But why should it matter to him? Baroudi had paid him. Nigel paid him. He had no reason to be upset.
"When he comes," she said, "he will take me away to the Fayyûm."
"Yes. The Fayyûm is very nice place, very good place indeed. There is everythin' there; there is jackal, pidgin, duck, lots and lots of sugar-cane; there is water, there is palm-trees; there is everythin' what any one him want."
"Ah!" she said.
She got up, with a nervously violent movement.
"What's the good of all that to you?" she said. "You're not going with us to the Fayyūm, I suppose."
He said nothing.
"Are you?" she exclaimed.
"Suttinly."
"You are coming. How do you know? Has Mr. Armine told you?"
"My lord, he tell me nothin', but I comin' with you, and Hamza him comin' too."
"Hamza is coming?"
"Suttinly."
She was conscious of a sensation of relief that was yet mingled with a faint feeling of dread.
"Why—why should Hamza come with us?" she asked.
"To be your donkey-boy. Hamza he very good donkey-boy."
"I don't know—I am not sure whether I shall want Hamza in the Fayyūm."
Ibrahim looked at her with a smiling face.
"In the Fayyūm you will never find good donkey-boy, my lady, but you will do always what you like. If you not like to take Hamza, Hamza very sad, very cryin' indeed, but Hamza he stay here. You do always what you think."
When he had finished speaking, she knew that Hamza would accompany them; she knew that Baroudi had ordered that Hamza was to come.
"We will see later on," she said, as if she had a will in this matter.
She looked at her watch.
"It's time to start."
"The felucca him ready," remarked Ibrahim. "This night theLouliasailin'; this night theLouliahe go to Armant."
Mrs. Armine frowned. Armant—Esneh—Kom Ombos—and then Aswàn! The arbitrariness of her nature was going to be scourged with scorpions by fate, it seemed. How was she to endure that scourging? But—there was to-day. When was she going to learn really to live for the day? What a fool she was! Still frowning, and without saying another word, she went upstairs quickly to dress.
It was past midnight when she returned to the villa. There was no moon; wind was blowing fiercely, lashing the Nile into waves that were edged with foam, and whirling grains of sand stripped away from the desert over the prairies and gardens of Luxor. The stars were blotted out, and the night was cold and intensely dark. She held on tightly to Ibrahim's arm as she struggled up the bank from the river, and almost felt her way to the house, from which only two lights gleamed faintly. The French windows of the drawing-room were locked, and they went round the house to the front door. As Ibrahim put up his hand to ring the bell, a sudden fear came to Mrs. Armine. Suppose Nigel had started earlier from Cairo than he had intended? Suppose he had returned and was then in the house? She caught Ibrahim's hand. He said something which was carried away and lost to her in the wind. She dropped his hand; he rang, and in a moment the door was opened by Hassan.
"Ask him if—if anything has happened, if there is any message, anything for me!" she said to Ibrahim directly she was in the house.
Ibrahim spoke to Hassan in Arabic.
"My lady, he says there is nothin'."
"Very well. I'll go to bed. Good night, Ibrahim."
And she went upstairs.
When she was in her bedroom she shut the door and sat down just as she was, with a veil over her face, the collar of her dust-coat turned up, her shining hair dishevelled by the angry hands of the gale. A lamp was burning on the dressing-table, upon which, very oddly arranged, stood a number of silver things, brushes, bottles, boxes, which were usually in the dressing-room. They were set out in a sort of elaborate and very fantastic pattern, which recalled to her sharply a fact. She had no longer a maid. She had got rid of Marie, who had left Luxor on the previous day, neither tearful nor, apparently, angry, but looking sharp, greedy, and half-admiringly inquisitive to the very last. Mrs. Armine had come to her two days before holding an open letter from Nigel, and had announced to her his decision that a lady's maid in the Fayyūm would be an impossibility, and that Marie would have to be left behind, for the time, at Luxor. And then had followed a little scene admirably played by the two women; Mrs. Armine deploring the apparent necessity of their separation, but without undue feeling or any exaggeration; Marie regretting "monsieur's" determination to carry "une dame si délicate, si fine" into "un monde si terrible, si sauvage," but at the same time indicating, with a sly intention and the most admirably submissivenuances, the impossibility of her keeping house in the villa alone with a group of Nubians. Both women had really enjoyed themselves, as talent must when exercising itself with perfect adroitness. Mrs. Armine had regretted Marie's decision, while at the same time applauding her maidenlydélicatesse, and had presently, by chance, discovered that several charming purchases from Paris were no good to her, that two or three remarkably attractive gowns made her look "like nothing at all," and that, as she was going to the Fayyūm, she "couldn't be bothered with" some hats that were, as Marie had often said,"plus chic que le diable!" Then a wonderful "character" had been written out, signed, and had changed hands, with an exceedingly generous cheque. Certain carelessly delivered promises had been made which Marie knew would be kept. She had given a permanent address in France, and the curtain had slowly fallen. Ah, the pity of it that there had been no audience! But talent, like genius, should be its own consolation and reward.
So now Hassan arranged Mrs. Armine's "things." She was thankful that Marie had gone, yet she felt utterly lost without a maid. Never, since she was a young girl, had she been accustomed to do anything for herself that a good maid could do for her. And there was not a woman-servant in the house. She was tired, she was terribly strung up; her nerves were all on edge; her heart was aflame with a jealousy which, she knew too well, was destined to be fanned and not to be assuaged in the days that lay before her. And she felt profoundly depressed. It was awful to come home in such a condition in the dead of the night, and to be deprived of all one's comforts. When she saw those silver things all laid out wrongly, the brushes pointing this way and that, the combs fixed in them with the teeth upwards, the bottles of perfume laid on their sides instead of standing erect, the powder-boxes upside down, she felt ready to cry her eyes out. And no one to take away her hat, to loosen and brush her hair, to get her out of her gown, to unlace her shoes! And Nigel at nine o'clock to-morrow!
The wind roared outside. One of the hanging wooden shutters that protected the windows had got loose, and was now, at short intervals, striking against the wall with a violent sound that suggested to her a malefactor trying to break in. She knew what caused the reiterated noise; she knew she could probably stop it by opening the window for a moment and putting out her hand. And yet she felt afraid to do this, afraid to put out her hand into the windy darkness, lest it should be grasped by another hand. She was full of nervous fears.
As she sat there, she could scarcely believe she was in Egypt. The roaring of the wind suggested some bleak and Northern clime. The shutter crashed against the wall. At last she could bear the noise no longer, and she got up, went out on to the landing, and called out: "Ibrahim!"
There was no answer. The lights were out. She felt afraid of the yawning darkness.
"Ibrahim! Ibrahim!" she cried.
She heard the sough of drapery, and a soft and striding step. Somebody was coming quickly. She drew back into her room, and Ibrahim appeared.
"My lady, what you want?"
She pointed to the window.
"The shutter—it's got loose. Can you fasten it? It's making such an awful noise. I shan't be able to sleep all night."
He opened the window. The wind rushed in. The lamp flared up and went out.
For two or three minutes Mrs. Armine heard nothing but the noise of the wind, which seemed to have taken entire possession of the chamber, and she felt as if she were its prey and the prey of the darkness. Something that was like hysteria seized upon her, a desperate terror of fate and the unknown. In the wind and in the darkness she had a grievous sensation of helplessness and of doom, of being lost for ever to happiness and light. And when the wind was shut out, when a match grated, a little glow leaped up, and Ibrahim, looking strangely tall and vast in the black woollen abâyeh which he had put on as a protection against the cold, was partially revealed, she sprang towards him with a feeling of unutterable relief.
"Oh, Ibrahim, what an awful night! I'm afraid of it!" she said.
Deftly he lit the lamp; then he turned to her and stared.
"My lady, you are all white, like the lotus what Rameses him carry."
She had laid her hand on his arm. Now she let it drop, sat down on the sofa, unpinned her hat and veil, and threw them down on the floor.
"It's the storm. I hate the sound of wind at night."
"The ginnee him ride in the wind," said Ibrahim, very seriously.
"The ginnee! What is that?"
"Bad spirit. Him come to do harm. Him bin in the room to-night."
They looked at each other in silence. Then Mrs. Armine said:
"Is the shutter quite safe now?"
"Suttinly."
"Then good night, Ibrahim."
"Good night, my lady."
He went over to the door.
"Suttinly the ginnee him bin in the room to-night," he said, solemnly.
She tried to smile at this absurdity, but her lips refused to obey her will.
"Who should he come for?" she asked.
"I dunno. P'raps he come to meet my Lord Arminigel. It is bad night to-night. Mohammed him die to-night. Him die on the night from Sunday Monday."
He drooped morosely and went out, softly closing the door behind him.
As soon as he had gone Mrs. Armine undressed, leaving her clothes scattered pell-mell all over the room, and got into her bed. She kept the lamp burning. She was afraid of the dark, and she knew she would not sleep. Although she laughed at Egyptian superstition, as she glanced about the room she was half unconsciously looking for the shadowy form of a ginnee. All night the wind roared, and all night she lay awake, wondering, fearing, planning, imagining, in terror of the future, yet calling upon her adroitness, her strong fund of resolution, to shape it as she willed.
And she would have helpers—Baroudi, Ibrahim, Hamza.
When at dawn the wind died down, and at last slumber, like a soft wave, came stealing over her, the last thing she saw with her imagination was Hamza, straight, enigmatic, grave, holding an upright wand in his hand.
Or was it the ginnee, who had come in out of the night to meet "my lord Arminigel"?
What was that? Was it the ginnee moving, speaking?
Was it—? There had surely been a movement in the room, a sound. She opened her eyes, and saw sunshine and some one by the bed.
"Ruby!"
She blinked, stared, lying perfectly still.
"Ruby!"
She felt a hand on one of her hands. The touch finally recalled her from sleep, and she knew the morning and Nigel. He stood beside the bed in loose travelling clothes, dusty, with short, untidy hair, and a radiant brown face, looking down on her, holding her hand.
"Did I frighten you? I didn't mean to. But I thought you must be awake by now."
There was no sound of reproach in his voice, but there was perhaps just a touch of disappointment. She sat up, leaning against the big pillow.
"And I meant to be at the station to meet you!" she said.
He sat down close to the bed, still keeping his hand on hers.
"You did?"
"Of course. It's this horrid habit I've got into of lying awake at night and sleeping in the morning. And there was such a storm last night."
"I know. The ginnee were abroad."
He spoke laughingly, but she said:
"How did you know that?"
"How? Why, in Egypt—but what do you mean?"
But she had recovered herself, was now fully awake, fully herself, entirely freed from the thrall of the night.
"How well you look!" she said.
"Work!" he replied. "Sun—life under the tent! It's glorious! How I want you to love it! But, I say, shan't we have some tea together? And then I'll jump into a bath. It's too cold for the Nile this morning. And I'm all full of dust. I'll ring for Marie."
He moved, but she caught his hand.
"Nigel!"
"Yes?"
"Don't ring for Marie."
"Why not?"
"It wouldn't be any use."
"What—is she ill!"
"She's gone."
"Gone!"
He looked at the confusion of the room, at the clothes strewn on the furniture and the floor.
"Now I understand all that," he said. "But what was the matter? Did she steal something, or—perhaps I ought to have had another woman in the house."
"No, no; it wasn't that. I sent her away quite amicably; because I thought she'd be in our way in the Fayyūm. What could we do with her in a tent?"
"You're going to manage without a maid?"
A radiant look of pleasure came into his face.
"You're a trump!" he said.
He bent down, put his hands gently on her shoulders, and gave her a long kiss.
"And this is how you're managing!" he added, lifting himself up, and speaking with a sort of tender humour as again he looked at the room. "I must learn to maid you."
And he went about rather clumsily getting the things together, picking them up by the wrong end, and laying them in a heap on the sofa.
"Ill do better another time," he said, when he had finished, rather ruefully surveying his handiwork. "And now I'll call Hassan and get tea, and while we're having it I'll tell you about our camp in the Fayyûm. To think of your giving up your maid!"
He kissed her again, with a lingering tenderness, and went out.
As soon as he was gone she got up. She had to search for a wrapper. She did not know where any of her things were. How maddening it was to be without a maid! More than once, now that Nigel was back and she could not go to Baroudi, she almost wished that she had kept Marie. Would it have been very unwise to keep her? She pulled out drawer after drawer. She was quite hot and tired before she had found what she wanted. What would life be like in a tent? She almost sickened at the thought of all that was before her. Ah! here was the wrapper at last. She tore it out from where it was lying with reckless violence, and put it on anyhow; then suddenly her real nature, the continuous part of her, asserted itself. She went to the mirror and adjusted it very carefully, very deftly. Then she twisted up her hair simply, and considered herself for a moment.
Had the new truth stamped itself yet upon her face, her body?
She saw before her a woman strongly, strikingly alive, thrilling with life. The eyes, released from sleep, were ardent, were full of the promises of passion; the lips were fresh, surely, and humid; the figure was alluring and splendid; the wonderful line of the neck had kept all its beauty. She had grown younger in Egypt, and she knew very well why. For her the new truth was clearly stamped, but not for Nigel. He would read it wrongly; he would take it for himself, as so many deceived men from the beginning of time have taken the truths of women, thinking "All this is for me." She looked long at herself, and she rejoiced in the vital change that had come over her, and, rejoicing, she came to the resolve of a vain woman. She must exert all her will to keep with her this Indian summer. She must school her nature, govern her passions, drill her mind to accept with serenity what was to come—dulness, delay, the long fatigues of playing a part, the ennui of tent life, of thissolitude à deuxin the Fayyūm. She must not permit this opulence of beauty to be tarnished by the ravages of jealousy; for jealousy often destroys the beauty of women, turns them into haggard witches. But she would not succumb; for, in her creed beauty was everything to a woman, and the woman who had lost her beauty had ceased to count, was scarcely any more to be numbered among the living. This sight and appreciation of herself suddenly seemed to arm her at all points. Her depression, which had peopled the night with horrors and the morning with apprehensions, departed from her. She was able to believe that the future held golden things, because she was able to believe in her own still immense attraction.
That day she contented Nigel, she fascinated him, she charmed him with her flow of animal spirits. He could deny her nothing. And when, laughingly, she begged him, as she had dispensed with a maid, to let her have her own special donkey-boy and donkey in the Fayyûm, he was ready to acquiesce.
"We'll take Mohammed, of course, if you wish," he said, heartily, "though there are lots of donkey-boys to be got where we are going."
"I've given up Mohammed," she said.
He looked surprised.
"Have you? What's he done?"
"Nothing specially. But I prefer Hamza."
"The praying donkey-boy!"
"Yes."
She paused; then, looking away from him, she said slowly:
"There's something strange to me and interesting about him. I think it comes, perhaps, from his intense belief in his religion, his intense devotion to the Moslem's faith. I—I can't help admiring that, and I should like to take Hamza with us. He's so different from all the others."
Then, with a changed and lighter tone, she added:
"Besides, his donkey is the best on the river. It comes from Syria, and is a perfect marvel. Give me Hamza, his donkey, and Ibrahim as my suite, and you shall never hear a complaint from me, I promise you."
"Of course you shall have them," he said. "I like the man to whom his beliefs mean something, even if they're not mine and could never be mine."
So the fate of Hamza and Ibrahim was very easily settled.
But when Nigel called Ibrahim, and told him that he had decided on taking him and Hamza to the Fayyūm, and that he was to tell Hamza at once, Ibrahim looked a little doubtful.
"All what my gentleman want I do," he said. "But Hamza do much business in Luxor; I dunno if him come to the Fayyūm."
He glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Armine.
"I very glad to come, but about Hamza I dunno."
He spoke with such apparent sincerity that she was almost deceived, and thought that perhaps some difficulty had really arisen.
"Offer him his own terms," exclaimed Nigel, "and I'll bet he'll be glad to come."
"I go to see, my gentleman."
"You shall have him, Ruby, whatever his price," said Nigel.
Ibrahim, with great difficulty, he said, made a bargain with Hamza, and on the following day the Villa Androud was left in Hassan's charge, and the Armines went north by the evening express to Cairo, where they were to stay two days and nights, in order that Mrs. Armine might see the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Nigel had already taken rooms at the Mena House, with a terrace exactly opposite to the Great Pyramid, and giving on to the sand of the desert.
They breakfasted at Shepheard's, then hired a victoria to drive up Ismail's road under the meeting lebbek-trees. Nigel was in glorious spirits. It seemed to him that morning as if his life were culminating, as if he were destined to a joy of which he was scarcely worthy. An unworldly man, and never specially fond of society or anxious about its edicts and its opinions, he did not suffer, as many men might have done, under his knowledge of its surprised pity for him, or even contempt. But in his secret heart he was glad that he was cut out of the succession to his family's title and the estates. Had he succeeded to them, his position would at once have become more difficult, his situation with Ruby far more complicated. As things were, they two were free as the wind. His soul leaped up to their freedom.
"I feel like a nomad to-day!" he exclaimed. "By Jove, though! isn't the wind cold? It always blows in the winter over these flats. Wrap yourself well up, darling."
He put up his hand to draw the furs more closely round her. When with her now he so easily felt protective that he was perpetually doing little things for her, and he did them with a gentleness of touch that, coming from a man of his healthy strength and vigour, revealed the progress made by the inner man in absence.
"I must be your maid," he added.
"But you'll be working and shooting," she said, speaking out of the depths of her furs in a low voice.
Her face was shrouded in a veil which seemed to muffle her words, and he only just heard them.
"You come first. I am going to look after you before anything else," he said.
She pulled up her veil till her lips were free of it.
"But I want your work to come first," she said, speaking with more energy. "I hate the woman who marries a man because she admires his character, and who then seeks by every means to change it, to reduce him from a real man to—well, to a sort of male lady's maid. No, Nigel; stick to your work, and I'll manage all right."
She felt just then that she could not endure it if he were always intent on her in the Fayyûm. And yet she wished him to be her slave, and she always wished to be adored by men. But now there was something within her which might, perhaps, in the fulness of time even get the upper hand of her vanity.
"We'll see," he answered. "It'll be all right about the work, Ruby. You see the Pyramids well now."
She looked across the flats to those great tombs which draw the world to their feet.
"I wish it wasn't so horribly cold," she said.
And Baroudi was away in the gold of the south, and perhaps with the "Full Moon."
"It won't be half so bad when we get to Mena House. There's always a wind on this road in winter."
"And in the Fayyūm? Will it be cold there?"
"No, not like this. Only at nights it gets cold sometimes, and there's often a thick mist."
"A thick mist!"
"But we shall be warm and cosy in our tent, and we shall know nothing about it."
And theLouliawas floating up the Nile into the heart of the gold! Her heart sank. But then she remembered her resolution in the villa. And her vanity, and that which a moment ago had seemed to be fighting against it, clasped hands in resistant friendship.
The victoria rolled smoothly; the horses trotted fast in the brisk air; the line of the desert, pale and vague in the windy morning, grew more distinct, more full of summons; the orifice that was the end of the avenue gaped like a mouth that opens more widely. A line of donkeys appeared, with here and there a white camel with tasselled trappings, surrounded by groups of shouting Egyptians, who stared at the carriage with avaricious eyes. "Ah—ah!" shouted the coachman. The horses broke into a gallop, turned into a garden on the right, and drew up before the Mena House.
A minute later Mrs. Armine was standing on a terrace that ended in a sea of pale yellow sand. Nigel followed her, but only after some minutes.
"You seem to know everybody here," she said to him, in a slightly constrained voice, as he came to stand beside her.
"Well, there are several fellows from Cairo come here to spend Sunday."
"With their wives apparently."
"Yes, some of them. Of course last winter I got to know a good many people. It's much warmer here. We get all the sun, and there's much less wind. And isn't the Great Pyramid grand?"
He took her gently by the arm.
"The Sphinx is beyond. I want you to see that for the first time just before nightfall, Ruby."
"Whatever you like," she said.
Her voice still sounded constrained. On the veranda and in the hall of the hotel she had had to run the gauntlet, and now that she was married again, and had abandoned the defiant life which she had led for so many years, somehow she had become less careless of opinion, of the hostility of women, than she had formerly been. She wished to be accepted again. As Lady Harwich she could have forced people to accept her.
As she looked at the Great Pyramid, she was saying that to herself, and Nigel's words about the Sphinx fell upon inattentive ears. Although he did not know it, in bringing her to Mena House just at this moment he had taken a step that was unwise. But he was walking in the dark.
At lunch in the great Arabic hall officers from the garrisons of Cairo and Abbassieh, and their womenkind, were in great force. Acquaintances of Nigel's sat at little tables to the right and left of them. In other parts of the room were scattered various well-known English people, who stared at Mrs. Armine when they chose to imagine she did not see them. Not far off Lord and Lady Hayman and the Murchisons reappeared.
A more effective irritant to Mrs. Armine's temper and nerves at this moment than this collection of people afforded could scarcely have been devised by her most subtle enemy. But not by a glance or movement did she betray the fact. She had had time to recover herself, to regain perfect outward self-control. But within her a storm was raging. Into the chamber of her soul, borne upon the wings of the wind, were flocking the ginnees out of the dense darkness of night. And when the twilight came, throwing its pale mystery over the desert, and the wonders the desert kept, they had taken possession of her spirit.
The travellers who, during the day, had peopled the waste about the Pyramids had gone back to Cairo by tram and carriage, or were at tea in the hotel, when the Armines, mounted on donkeys, rode through the twilight towards the Sphinx. They approached it from behind. The wind had quite gone down, and though the evening was not warm, the sharpness of the morning had given place to a more gentle briskness that was in place among the sands. Far off, across the plains and the Nile, the lights of Cairo gleamed against the ridges of the Mokattam. Through the empty silence of this now deserted desert they rode in silence, till before them, above the grey waste of the sand, a protuberance arose.
"Do you see that, Ruby?" Nigel said, pulling at his donkey's rein.
"That thing like a gigantic mushroom? Yes. What is it?"
"The Sphinx."
"That!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, but only the back of its head. All the body is concealed. Wait till you've ridden round it and seen it from the front."
She said nothing, and they rode on till they came to the edge of the deep basin in which the sacred monster lies with the sand and its ceaseless fame about it, till they had skirted the basin's rim, and faced it full on the farther bank. There they dismounted, and Nigel ordered their donkey-boys to lead the beasts away till they were out of earshot. The dry sound of their tripping feet, over the stones and hard earth which edged the sand near by, soon died down into the twilight, and the Armines were left alone.
Although the light of day was rapidly failing, it had not entirely gone; day and night joined hands in a twilight mystery which seemed not only to fall from the sky, so soon to be peopled with stars, but also to rise from the pallor of the sands, and to float about the Sphinx. In the distance the Great Pyramid was black against the void.
Mrs. Armine at first stood perfectly still looking at the monster. Then she made Nigel a sign to spread her dust-cloak upon the ridge of the sand, and she sat down on it, and looked again. She did not speak. The pallor of the twilight began to grow dusky, as if into its yellow grey and grey white, from some invisible source a shadowy black was filtering. A cool air stirred, coming from far away where the sands stretch out towards the Gold Coast. It failed, then came again, with a slightly greater force, a more definite intention.
Nigel was standing, but presently, as Ruby did not move, he sat down beside her, and clasped his brown hands round his knees so tightly that they went white at the knuckles. He stole a glance at her, and thought that her face looked strangely fixed and stern, almost cruel in its repose, and he turned his eyes once more towards the Sphinx.
And then he forgot Ruby, he forgot Egypt, he forgot everything except that greatest creation which man has ever accomplished; that creation which by its inexorable calm and prodigious power rouses in some hearts terror and sets peace in some, stirs some natures to aspiration, and crushes others to the ground with an overwhelming sense of their impotence, their smallness, their fugitive existence, and their dark and mysterious fate.
Upon Mrs. Armine the effect of the Sphinx, whatever it might have been at a less critical moment in her life, at this moment was cruel. The storm had broken upon her and she faced the uttermost calm. She was the prey of conflicting forces, wild beasts of which herself was the cage. And she was confronted by the beast of the living rock which, in its almost ironic composure, its power purged of passion, did it deign to be aware of her she felt could only, with a strange stillness, mock her. She was a believer only in the little life, and here lay the conception of Eternity, struck out of the stone of the waste by man, to say to her with its motionless lips, "Thou fool!" And as she had within her resolution, will, and an unsleeping vanity, this power which confronted her not only dimly distressed, but angered her. She felt angry with Nigel. She forgot, or chose not to remember, that the Sphinx was the wonder of the world, and she said to herself that she knew very well why Nigel had brought her by night to see it. He had brought her to be chastened, he had brought her to be rebuked. In the heat of her nervous fancy it almost seemed to her for a moment as if he had divined something of the truth that was in her, truth that struck hard at him, and his hopes of happiness, and all his moral designs, and as if he had brought her to be punished by the Sphinx. In the grasp of the monster she writhed, and she hated herself for writhing. Once in her presence Baroudi had sneered at the Sphinx. Now she remembered his very words: "We Egyptians, we have other things to do than to go and stare at the Sphinx. We prefer to enjoy our lives while we can, and not to trouble about it." She remembered the shrug of his mighty shoulders that had accompanied the words. Almost she could see them and their disdainful movement before her. Yes, the Sphinx was fading away in the night, and Baroudi was there in front of her. His strong outline blotted out from her the outline of the Sphinx. The evening star came out, and the breeze arose again from its distant place in the sands, and whispered round the Sphinx.
She shivered, and got up.
"Let us go; I want to go," she said.
"Isn't it wonderful, Ruby?"
"Yes. Where are the Arabs?"
She could no longer quite conceal her secret agitation, but Nigel attributed it to a wrong cause, and respected it. The Sphinx always stirred powerfully the spiritual part of him, made him feel in every fibre of his being that man is created not for time, but for Eternity. He believed that it had produced a similar effect in Ruby. That this effect should distress her did not surprise him, but roused in his heart a great tenderness towards her, not unlike the tenderness of a parent who sees the tears of a child flow after a punishment the justice of which is realized. The Sphinx had made her understand intensely the hatefulness of certain things.
When he had helped her on to her donkey he kept his arm about her.
"Do you realize what it has been to me to see the Sphinx with you?" he whispered.
The night had fallen. In the darkness they went away across the desert.
And the Sphinx lay looking towards the East, where the lights of Cairo shone across the flats under the ridges of the Mokattam.