Bella Donna Part 121

"Come in! Come in, your importunate man!"

"Importunate! But I haven't seen you for three nights. And I can't get on without you, Ruby. Thank G.o.d, to-night we shall be alone together.

After dinner I want you to play to me."

Her face twitched.

"If I'm not too tired."

"We'll go to bed quite early."

He shut the door.

"I'll come and sit in here with you. I want to take your opinion about this cheque to Isaacson."

He sighed heavily.

He had a pencil and some paper in his hands, and he sat down by a table.

"I must get this off my mind. After what has happened, I must pay Isaacson, though otherwise I think we--" He sighed again. "Let me see, when did he first come on board to take care of me?"

That day went by slowly, slowly, with feet of lead. Whether she would endure to its end without some hysterical outburst of temper Mrs. Armine did not know. She seemed to herself to be clinging frantically to the last fragments of her self-control. For so long she had acted a part, that it would be tragic to break down feebly, contemptibly, now close to the end of the drama.

This night must see its end. For her powers were exhausted. She meant to tell Baroudi so. He must take her away now, or let her join him somewhere. But in any case she must get away from her life with Nigel.

She could no longer play the devoted wife, safe at last, after many trials, in the arms of respectability. It was only by making a cruel effort that she was able to get through the day without rousing suspicion in Nigel. And to-day he was curiously observant of her. His eyes seemed to be always upon her, watching her with a look she could not quite understand. He never left her for a moment, and sometimes she had a strange sensation that, like herself, he was on the verge of--what--some self-revelation? Some confession? Some perhaps emotional laying bare of his heart? She did not know. But she did know that he was not in a normal state. And once or twice she wondered what had been the exact truth of the quarrel with Isaacson. But, at any rate, it had not been the truth in which she was concerned. And she was too frightfully intent upon herself to-day to be very curious, even about Isaacson's relations with her husband.

He was gone, and gone without having tried to destroy her. That was enough. She would not bother about small things to-day.

At last the evening approached along the marvellous ways of gold. As she saw the sky beginning to change Mrs. Armine's fever of excitement and impatience increased. Now that the moment of her meeting with Baroudi was so near she felt as if she could not bear even another second's delay. How she was going to escape from her husband she did not know.

But she did not worry about that. She could always manage Nigel somehow, and she would not fail for the first time to-night.

When the moment came it would find her ready. Of that she was sure.

She made up her face elaborately that evening, put a delicate flush upon her cheeks, darkened her eyebrows more than usual, made her lips very red. She took infinite pains to give to her face an appearance of youth.

Her eyes burned out of the painted shadows about them. Her shining hair was perfectly arranged in the way that suited her best. She put on a very low-cut evening gown, that showed as much as possible of her still lovely figure. And she strove to think that she looked no older now than when Baroudi had seen her last. The mirror contradicted her cruelly. But she was determined not to believe what it said.

At last she was ready, and she went down to get through the last _supplice_, as she called it to herself, the tete-a-tete dinner with Nigel.

He was not yet down, and she was just going to step out upon the terrace when he came into the drawing-room in evening dress. This was the first evening since his illness that he had dressed for dinner, and the clothes he wore seemed to her a sign that soon he would resume his normal and active life. The look of illness which she had thought she saw in his face that morning had given place to an expression of intensity that must surely be the token of inward excitement.

As he came in, she thought to herself that she had never seen Nigel look so expressive, that she had never imagined he could look so expressive. Something in his face startled and gripped her.

He, too, gazed at her almost as if with new eyes, as he came towards her, looking resolute, like a man who had taken some big decision since she had last seen him an hour ago. All day he had seemed curiously watchful, uneasy, sometimes weak, sometimes lively with effort. Now, though intense, excited, he looked determined, and this determination, too, was like a new note of health.

His eyes went over her bare shoulders. Then he said:

"For me!"

His voice lingered over the words. But his eyes changed in expression as they looked at her face.

"I couldn't help it to-night Nigel," she said, coolly. "I knew I must be looking too frightful after all this journeying. You must forgive me to-night."

"Of course I do. It's good of you to take this trouble for me, even though I--Come! Dinner is ready."

He drew her arm through his, and led her in to the dining-room.

"Where's Ibrahim to-night?" she said carelessly, as they sat down.

"He asked if he might go to the village to see his mother, and I let him go."

"Oh!"

She felt relieved. Ibrahim had gone to fetch the felucca to take her across the Nile. A hot excitement surged through her. In a couple of hours, perhaps in less time, she would see Baroudi, be alone with Baroudi. How long she had waited! What torment she had endured! What danger, what failure she had undergone! But for a moment she forget everything in that thought which went like wine to her head, "To-night I shall be with Baroudi!" She did not just then go beyond that thought.

She did not ask herself what sort of reception he would give her. That wine from the mind brought a carelessness, almost a recklessness, with it, preventing a.n.a.lysis, sweeping away fears. A sort of spasm--was it the very last?--of youth seemed to leap up in her, like a brilliant flame from a heap of ashes. And she let the flame shoot out towards Nigel.

And again he was saying:

"For me!"

He was repeating it to himself, and he was reiterating silently those terrible words with which he had struck the man who had saved him from death.

"You liar! You d.a.m.nable liar!"

The dinner was not the _supplice_ Mrs. Armine had antic.i.p.ated. She talked, she laughed, she was gay, frivolous, gentle, careless, as in the days long past when she had charmed men by mental as much as by merely physical qualities. And Nigel responded with an almost boyish eagerness.

Her liveliness, her merriment, seemed not only to delight but to rea.s.sure something within him. She noticed that. And, noticing it, she was conscious that with his decision, beneath it as it were, there was something else, some far different quality, stranger to her, though faintly perceived, or perhaps, rather, obscurely divined by that sleepless intuition which lives in certain women. Her apparent joyousness gave helping hands to something in Nigel, leading it forward, onward--whither?

She was to know that night.

At length the dinner was over, and they got up to go into the drawing-room. And now, instantly, Mrs. Armine was seized by a frantic longing to escape. The felucca, she felt sure, was waiting on the still water just below the promontory. If only Nigel would remain behind over his cigarette in the dining-room for a moment, she would steal out to see. She would not start, of course, till he was safely upstairs. But she longed to be sure that the boat was there.

"Won't you have your cigarette in here?" she said, carelessly, as he followed her towards the door.

"Here? Alone?"

His voice sounded surprised.

"I thought perhaps you wanted another gla.s.s of wine," she murmured with a feigned indifference as she walked on.

"No," he said, "I am coming to the terrace with you."

"For a little while. But you must soon go to bed. Now that Doctor Isaacson has gone, I must play the sick nurse again, or you will be ill, and then I know he'll blame me."

"How do you know that?"

The sound of his voice startled her. She was just by the drawing-room door. She stood still and looked round.

"How?" she said. "Why, because Doctor Isaacson doesn't believe in me in any capacity."