Bella Donna Part 41

She began to wonder, to wonder intensely, why Baroudi was stirring up Nigel's enthusiasm for work. It seemed as if, for the moment, the two men had entirely forgotten that she was there, had forgotten that in the world there was such a phenomenon as woman. She had a pleasant sensation of listening securely at a key-hole. Usually she desired to attract to herself the attention of every man who was near her. To-day she wished that the conversation between her husband and Baroudi might be indefinitely prolonged; for a strange sense of well-being, of calmness, indeed of panacea, was beginning to steal at last upon her, after the excitement, the bitter anger that had upset her spirit. It seemed to her as if in that moment of utter repose in the darkness of the chamber near the fountain a hypnotic hand had been laid upon her, as if it had not yet been removed. Really she was already captured by the dahabeeyah spell, although she did not know it. A dahabeeyah is the home of dreams, and of a deeply quiet physical well-being. Mrs. Armine was a very sensuous woman, and sensitive to all sensuous impressions; so now, while her husband talked eagerly, enthusiastically, of the life of activity and work, she received from the Nile its curious gift of bodily indolence and stillness. Her body never moved, never wished to move, in the deep and cushioned chair, was almost like a body morphia-stricken; but her mind was alert, and judging the capacities of these two men. And still it was seeking secretly the answer to a "Why?" when Nigel at length exclaimed:

"Anyhow, I meant to get off by the train to-morrow night. And you? When are you starting up the river?"

"I have a tug. I go away to-night."

"To Armant?"

"To Armant for some days. Then I go farther up the river. I have interests near Kom Ombos. I shall be away some time, and then drop down to a.s.siout. I have nothing more to do here."

"Interests in a.s.siout, too?"

"Oh, yes; at a.s.siout I have a great many. And just beyond here I have some--a little way up the river on the western bank."

"Lands?"

"I have orange-gardens there."

"I wonder you can manage to look after it all--sugar, cotton, quarries, house property, works, factories. Phew! It almost makes one's head spin.

And you see into everything yourself!"

"Where the master's eye does not look, the servant's is turned away. Do you not find it so in the Fayyum?"

"I shall know in two or three days."

Nigel suddenly looked round at his wife.

"I hear you," she said, slowly. "You had forgotten all about me, but I was listening to you."

She moved, and sat straight up, putting her hands on the broad cushioned arms of the chair.

"I was receiving a lesson," she added.

"A lesson, Ruby?" said Nigel.

"A lesson in humility."

Both men tried to make her explain exactly what she meant, but she would not satisfy their curiosity.

"You have brains enough to guess," was all she said.

"We must be going, Nigel. Look! it is nearly sunset. Soon the river will be turning golden."

As she said the last word, she looked at Baroudi, and her voice seemed to linger on the word as on a word beloved.

"Won't you stay and see the sunset from here, madame?" he said.

"I am sure you have lots to do. I have been listening to some purpose, and I know you are a man of affairs, and can have very little time for social nonsense, such as occupies the thoughts of women. I feel almost guilty at having taken up even one of your hours."

Nigel thought there was in her voice a faint sound as if she were secretly aggrieved.

Baroudi made a polite rejoinder, in his curiously careless and calmly detached way, but he did not press them again to stay any longer, and Nigel felt certain that he had many things to do--preparations, perhaps, to make for his departure that evening. He was decidedly not a "woman's man," but was a keen and pertinacious man of affairs, who liked the activities of life and knew how to deal with men.

He bade them good-bye on the deck of the sailors.

Just before she stepped down into the waiting felucca, Mrs. Armine, as if moved by an impulse she could not resist, turned her head and gazed at the strange Arabic Letters of gold that were carved above the doorway through which she had once more pa.s.sed.

"The fate of every man have we bound about his neck."

Baroudi followed her eyes, and a smile, that had no brightness in it, flickered over his full lips, then died, leaving behind it an impa.s.sible serenity.

That night, just when the moon was coming, the _Loulia_, gleaming with many lights, pa.s.sed the garden of the Villa Androud, and soon was lost in the night, going towards the south.

On the following evening, by the express that went to Cairo, Nigel started for the Fayyum.

XVI

The _Loulia_ gone from the reach of the river which was visible from the garden of the Villa Androud; Nigel gone from the house which was surrounded by that garden; a complete solitude, a complete emptiness of golden days stretching out before Mrs. Armine! When she woke to that little bit of truth, fitted in to the puzzle of the truths of her life, she looked into vacancy, and asked of herself some questions.

Presently she came down to the drawing-room, dressed in a thin coat and skirt that were suitable for riding, for walking, for sitting among ruins, for gardening, for any active occupation. Yet she had no plan in her head; only she was absolutely free to-day, and if it occurred to her to want to do anything, why, she was completely ready for the doing of it. Meanwhile she sat down on the terrace and she looked about the garden.

No one was to be seen in it from where she was sitting. The Egyptian gardener was at work, or at rest in some hidden place, and all the garden was at peace.

It was a golden day, almost incredibly clear and radiant, quivering with brightness and life, and surely with ecstasy. She was set free, in a pa.s.sionate wonder of gold. That was the first fact of which she was sharply conscious. By this time Nigel must be in Cairo; by the evening he would be in that fabled Fayyum of which she had heard so much, which had become to her almost as a moral symbol. In the Fayyum fluted the Egyptian Pan by the water; in the Fayyum, as in an ample and fruitful bosom, dwelt untrammelled Nature, loosed from all shackles of civilization. And there, perhaps to-morrow, Nigel would begin making his eager preparations for her reception and housing--his ardent preparations for the taking of her "right down to Nature," as he had once phrased it to her. She touched her whitened cheek with her carefully manicured fingers, and she wondered, not without irony, at the strange chances of human life. What imp had taken her by the hand to lead her to a tent in the Fayyum, in which she would dwell with a man full of an almost sacred moral enthusiasm? She would surely be more at home lying on embroideries and heaped-up cushions, with her nostrils full of a faint but heavy perfume of the East, and her ears of the murmur of dancing waters, and her mind, or spirit, or soul, or whatever it was, in contact with another "whatever it was," unlit, unheated, by fires that might possibly scorch her, but that could never purify her.

What a marvellous golden day it was! This morning she felt the beneficent influence of the exquisite climate in a much more intimate way than she had ever felt it before. Why was that? Because of Nigel's absence, or because of some other reason? Although she asked herself the question, she did not seek for an answer; the weather was subtly showering into her an exquisite indifference--the golden peace of "never mind!" In the Eastern house of Baroudi, as she squeezed the silken cushions with her fingers, something within her had said, "I must squeeze dry of their golden juices every one of the fleeting years." In this day there were some drops of the golden juices--some drops that she must squeeze out, that her thirsty lips must drink. For the years were fleeting away, and then there would come the black, eternal nothingness.

She must turn all her attention towards the joys that might still be hers in the short time that was left her for joy--the short time, for she was a woman, and over forty.

A tent in the Fayyum with Nigel! n.o.body else but Nigel! Days and days in complete isolation with Nigel! With the man who had "let her in"! And life, not stealing but clamorously rushing away from her!

She thought of this, she faced it; the soul of her condemned it as a fate almost ludicrously unsuited to her. And yet she was undisturbed in the depths of her, although, perhaps, the surface was ruffled. For the weather would not be gainsaid, the climate would have its way; the blue, and the gold, and the warmth, combining with the knowledge of freedom, could not be conquered by any thought that was black, or by any fear. It seemed to her for a moment as if she were almost struggling to be angry, to be unhappy, and as if the struggle were vain.

She was quite free in this world of gold. What was she going to do with her freedom?

In the golden stillness of the garden she heard the faint rustle of a robe, and she looked round and saw Ibrahim coming slowly towards her, smiling, with his curly head drooping a little to the left side. Behind both his ears there were roses, and he held a rose in his hand with an unlighted cigarette.

"What are we going to do to-day, Ibrahim?" said Mrs. Armine, lazily.

Ibrahim came up and stood beside her, looking down in his very gentle and individual way. He smoothed the front of his djelabieh, lifted his rose, smelt it, and said in his low contralto voice:

"We are goin' across the river, my lady."

"Are we?"

"We are goin' to take our lunchin'; we are goin' to be out all day."