Bella Donna Part 34

She had chosen to put on a walking-dress instead of a tea-gown, because she believed that in it she would look younger, her splendid figure being still one of her greatest advantages. Yes, her figure was superb, and this gown showed it off superbly. The long quiet of her very dull life in London while she had known Nigel, followed by her comparative repose in the splendid climate of Egypt, had done wonders for her appearance. Certainly to-night, despite any ravages made by her injudicious yielding to anger, she looked years younger than she had looked in Isaacson's consulting-room. The wrinkles about her eyes showed scarcely at all, or--not at all. And she was marvellously fair.

Orientals delight in fairness, and always suppose Occidentals to be years younger than they really are, if they have succeeded in retaining any of the charms of youth.

Marie was not far wrong.

She turned to step out upon the terrace.

"Ah, Mahmoud Baroudi!" she said, with a sort of lazy but charming indifference, as the two men came to meet her. "So you have come up the river to look after--what is it? your something--your sugar?"

"My sugar; exactly, madame," he replied gravely, bowing over her hand.

"I hope you will forgive my intrusion. Your husband kindly insisted on bringing me over--and in flannels."

His apology was extremely composed, but Nigel was looking a little excited, a little anxious, was begging forgiveness with his eyes for all the trouble of the morning. She was not going to seem to give it him yet; a man on the tenter-hooks was a man in the perfectly right place.

So she was suave, and avoided his glance without seeming to avoid it.

They strolled about a little, talking lightly of nothing particular; then she said, speaking for the first time directly to her husband,

"Nigel, don't you think you'd better just go and tell Ha.s.san we shall be three at dinner, and have a little talk to the cook? Your Arabic will have more effect upon the servants than my English. Mahmoud Baroudi and I will sit on the terrace till you come back."

"Right you are!" he said.

And he went off at once, leaving them together.

As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Armine sat down on a basket chair. For a moment she said nothing. In the silence her face changed. The almost lazy naturalness and simplicity faded gradually out of it, revealing the alert and seductive woman of the world. Even her body seemed to change, to become more sensitive, more conscious, under the eyes of Baroudi; and all the woman in her, who till now, save for a few subtle and fleeting indications of life, had lain almost quiescent, rose suddenly and signalled boldly to attract the attention of this man, who sat down a little way from her, and gazed at her in silence with an Oriental directness and composure.

Although they had talked upon shipboard, this was the first time they had been _en tete-a-tete_.

To-night Mrs. Armine's eyes told Baroudi plainly that she admired him, told him more--that she wished him to know it; and he accepted her admiration, and now made a bold return. For soon the change in her was matched by the change in him. The open resolution of his face, which on the ship had often attracted Nigel, was now mingled with a something sharp, as of cunning, with a ruthlessness she could understand and appreciate. As she looked at him in the gathering darkness of the night, she realized that housed within him, no doubt with many companions, there was certainly a brigand, without any fear, without much pity. And she compared this brigand with Nigel.

"How do you find Egypt, madame? Do you like my country?"

He leaned a little forward as at last he broke their silence, and the movement, and his present att.i.tude, drew her attention to the breadth of his mighty shoulders and to the arresting poise of his head, a poise that, had it been only a shade less bold, would have been almost touchingly gallant.

"Have you seen all the interesting things in Thebes and Karnak?"

"Yes. We've been quite good tourists. We've been to the Colossi, the tombs, the temples. We've dined by moonlight on the top of the Pylon at Karnak. We've seen sunset from Deir-al-Bahari."

"And sunrise?"

"From nowhere. I prefer to sleep in the morning."

"And do you care about all these things, tombs, temples, mummies--madame? Have you enjoyed your Egyptian life?"

She paused before answering the question. As a fact, she had often enjoyed her expeditions with Nigel in the bright and shimmering gaiety of the exquisite climate of Luxor; the picnic lunches out in the open, or within the walls of some mighty ruin; the smart canters on the straight brown paths between the waving green prairies or crops, above which the larks sang and the wild pigeons flew up to form the only cloud in the triumph of gold and of blue; the long climbs upward into the mountains along the tiger-coloured ways, where the sun had made his empire since the beginning of the world; the descents when day was declining, when the fellahin went homewards under the black velvet of the palm-trees, and the dust stirred by their brown and naked feet rose up in spirals towards the almost livid light of the afterglow. And she had enjoyed the dinner at Karnak in the pale beams of a baby moon. For she still had the power to enjoy, and much of the physical energy of the average Englishwoman, who is at home in the open air and quite at her ease in the saddle. And Egypt was for her a complete novelty, and a novelty bringing health, and a feeling almost of youth.

Nevertheless, she paused before replying.

Secretly, during all these days she was now considering, she had been as one who walks in a triumph. She had been exulting in the _coup_ she had made just when her life seemed turning to greyness, exulting in the blow she had struck against a society which had despised her and cast her out. Exultation had coloured her days. Now suddenly, unexpectedly, she knew she had been living in a fool's paradise, into which Nigel had led her. And this knowledge fell, like a great shadow, over all the days in Egypt behind her, blotting out their sunshine, their gaiety, their glow.

"Pretty well," she said, at last. "Do you care about such things?"

He shrugged his mighty shoulders.

"Madame, I am not a tourist. What should I do in the temples among the bats, and in the tombs where one can almost smell the dead people? You must not come to us Egyptians for all that. You must go to the old English maidens--is that it?--maidens who wear helmets on their grey hair done so"--he put up his brown hands, and pretended to twist up a tiny top-knot at the back of his head--"and who stroke the heads of the dragomans sitting there at their feet, what they call their 'tootsic.u.ms,' and telling them thousands of lies. Or you must go to the thin antiquaries, with the red noses and the heads without any hair, who dig for mummies while their wives--ah, well I must not say that! But we Egyptians, we have other things to do than to go and stare at the Sphinx. We have always seen it. We know it is there, that it is not going to run away. So we prefer to enjoy our lives while we can, and not to trouble about it. Do you blame us?"

"No," she said. "I never blame any one for enjoying life."

There was in his look and manner, even in his att.i.tude, a something that was almost like a carelessly veiled insolence. In a European she would perhaps have resented it. In him not only did she not resent it, but she was attracted by it. For it seemed to belong as of right to his great strength, his bold and direct good looks, which sprang to the eyes, his youth, and his Eastern blood. Such a man must feel often insolent, however carefully he might hide it. Why should he not show some grains of his truth to her?

"Nor for any way of enjoying life, madame?" he said.

And he leaned still a little more forward, put up one big hand to his cheek, let it drop down to his splendid throat, and kept the fingers inside his soft turn-down collar while he looked into her eyes.

"I didn't say that."

"Would you care much what way it was if it gave the enjoyment?"

"Would you?"

"I! Certainly not. But--I am not like Mr. Armeen."

He slightly misp.r.o.nounced the name.

"Mr. Armine?" she said. "What about him?"

"Would he not think that some things one might do and many things one must not do? All the Englishmen are like that. Oh, dear, if one does the thing they think wrong! Oh, dear! Oh, Law!"

He took away his hand from his throat, held it up, then slapped it down upon his knee.

"My word!" he added, smiling, and always searching her eyes with his.

"It is worse than to eat pig by daylight in Ramadan would seem to an Egyptian."

"Do you dislike the English?"

"What must I say?"

"Say the truth."

"If it is the English ladies, I think them lovely."

"And the Englishmen?"

"Oh, they are all--good fellers."

He threw into the last two words an indescribable sound of half-laughing contempt.

"They are all--good fellers. Don't you think so?"

"But what does that mean?"