Bella Donna Part 27

"Of our marriage?"

"Yes. Do you suppose it will surprise him?"

"I--no, I hardly think it will."

"You didn't hint it to him, did you?"

"I said nothing about any marriage, but he knew something of my feeling for you."

"All the same, I think he'll be surprised. When shall we get the first post from England telling us the opinion of the dear, kind, generous-hearted world?"

"Ruby, who cares what any one thinks or says?"

"Men often don't credit us with it, but we women, as a rule, are horribly sensitive, more sensitive than you can imagine. I--how I wish that some day your people would try to like me!"

He took one of her hands in his.

"Why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't they? But this winter we'll keep to ourselves, learn to know each other, learn to trust each other, learn to--to love each other in the very best and finest way. Ruby, I took this villa because I thought you would like it, that it would not be so bad as our first home. But presently I want you to come with me to Sennoures. When we've had our fortnight's honeymoon here, I'll go off for a few nights, and look into the work, and arrange something for you.

I'll get a first-rate tent from Cairo. I want you in camp with me. And it's farther away there, wilder, less civilized; one gets right down to Nature. When I was in London, before I asked you to marry me, I thought of you at Sennoures. My camp used to be pitched near water, and at night, when the men slept covered up in their rugs and bits of sacking, and the camels lay in a line, with their faces towards the men's tent, eating, I used to come out, alone and listen to the frogs singing. It's like the note of a flute, and they keep it up all night, the beggars.

You shall come out beside that water, and you shall hear it with me.

It's odd how a little thing like that stirs up one's imagination. Why, even just thinking of that flute of the Egyptian Pan in the night--" He broke off with a sound that was not quite a laugh, but that held laughter and something else. "We've got, please G.o.d, a grand winter ahead of us, Ruby," he finished. "And far away from the world."

"Far--far away from the world!"

She repeated his words rather slowly.

"I must have some more coffee," she added, with a change of tone.

"Take care. You mayn't be able to sleep."

"Nigel--do you want me to sleep to-night?"

He looked at her, but he did not answer.

"Even if I don't sleep I must have it. Besides I always sit up late."

"But to-night you're tired."

"Never mind. I must have the coffee."

She poured it out and drank it.

"I believe you live very much in the present," he said.

"Well--you live very much in the future."

"Do I? What makes you think so?"

"My instinct informs me of the fact, and of other facts about you."

"You'll make me feel as if I were made of gla.s.s if you don't take care."

"Live a little more in the present. Live in the present to-night."

There was a sound of insistence in her voice, a look of insistence in her bright blue eyes which shone out from their painted shadows, a feeling of insistence in the thin and warm white hand which now she laid upon his. "Don't worry about the future."

He smiled.

"I wasn't worrying. I was looking forward."

"Why? We are here to-night, Nigel, to live as if we had only to-night to live. You talk of Sennoures. But who knows whether we shall ever see Sennoures, ever hear the Egyptian Pan by the water? I don't. You don't.

But we do know we are here to-night by the Nile."

With all her force, but secretly, she was trying to destroy in him the spiritual aspiration which was essential in his nature, through which she had won him as her husband, but which now could only irritate and confuse her, and stand in the way of her desires, keeping the path against them.

"Yes," he said, drawing in his breath. "We are here to-night by the Nile, and we hear the boatmen singing."

The distant singers had been silent for some minutes; now their voices were heard again, and sounded nearer to the garden, as if they were on some vessel that was drifting down the river under the brilliant stars.

So much nearer was the music that Mrs. Armine could hear a word cried out by a solo voice, "Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!" The voice was accompanied by a deep and monotonous murmur. The singer was beating a _daraboukkeh_ held loosely between his knees. The chorus of nasal voices joined in with the rough and artless vehemence which had in it something that was sad, and something that, though pitiless, seemed at moments to thrill with yearning, like the cruelty of the world, which is mingled with the eternal longing for the healing of its wounds.

"We hear the boatmen singing," he repeated, "about Allah, and always Allah, Allah, the G.o.d of the Nile, and of us two on the Nile."

"Sh--sh! There's that dog again! I do wish--"

She had begun to speak with an abrupt and almost fierce nervous irritation, but she recovered herself immediately.

"Couldn't the gardener keep him out?" she said, quietly.

"Perhaps he belongs to the gardener. I'll go and see. I won't be a minute."

He sprang up and followed the dog, which crept away into the garden, looking around with its desolate, yellow eyes to see if danger were near it.

Allah--Allah--Allah in the night!

Mrs. Armine did not know that this song of the boatmen of Nubia was presently, in later days she did not dream of, to become almost an integral part of her existence on the Nile; but although she did not know this, she listened to it with an attention that was strained and almost painful.

"Al-lah--Al-lah--"

"And probably there is no G.o.d," she thought. "How can there be? I am sure there is none."

Abruptly Meyer Isaacson seemed to come before her in the darkness, looking into her eyes as he had looked in his consulting-room when she had put up her veil and turned her face towards the light. She shut her eyes. Why should she think about him now? Why should she call him up before her?

She heard a slight rustle near her, and she started and opened her eyes.

By one of the French windows the dragoman Ibrahim was standing, perfectly still now, and looking steadily at her. He held a flower between his teeth, and when he saw that she had seen him, he came gracefully forward, smiling and almost hanging his head, as if in half-roguish deprecation.

"What did you say your name was?" Mrs. Armine asked him.

He took the flower from his teeth, handed it to her, then took her hand, kissed it, bent his forehead quite low, and pressed her hand against it.