Bella Donna Part 49

"But you make plans beforehand."

"Do I?"

"Yes. Have you made a plan about the _Loulia_?"

She felt now that he had, and she felt that, like a fly in a web, she was enmeshed in his plan.

Another orange-coloured sail! Would she ever sail to the south in the _Loulia_?

"Will you not taste this jelly made of rose-leaves?"

Without touching the ground with his hands, he rose to his feet and stood by the table.

"Yes. Give me a little, but only a little."

He drew from one of his pockets a small silver knife, and, with a gentle but strong precision, thrust it into the rose-coloured sweetmeat and carefully detached a piece. Then he took the piece in his brown fingers and handed it to Mrs. Armine--who had been watching him with a deep attention, the attention a woman gives only to all the actions, however slight, of a man whose body makes a tremendous appeal to hers. She took it from him and put it into her mouth.

As she ate it, she shut her eyes.

"And now tell me--have you made a plan about the _Loulia_?" she said.

His face, as he looked at her, was a refusal to reply, and so it was not a denial.

"Live for the day as it comes," he said, "and do not think about to-morrow."

"That is my philosophy. But when you are thinking about to-morrow?"

Again she thought of Hamza, and she seemed to see those two, Baroudi and Hamza, starting together on the great pilgrimage. From it, perhaps made more believing or more fanatical, they had returned--to step into her life.

"Do you know," she said, "that either you, or something in Egypt, is--is--"

"What?" he asked, with apparent indifference.

"Is having an absurd effect upon me."

She laughed, with difficulty, frowned, sighed, while he steadily watched her. At that moment something within her was struggling, like a little, anxious, active creature, striving fiercely, minute though it was, to escape out of a trap. It seemed to her that it was the introduction of Hamza into her life by Baroudi that was furtively distressing her.

"I always do live for the day as it comes," she continued. "In English there's a saying, 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow--'"

"To-morrow?"

"'To-morrow we die.'"

"Are you frightened of death?" he said.

There was an open contempt in his voice.

"You aren't?"

A light that she had never seen in them before shone in his eyes. Only from the torches of fatalism does such a light sometimes beacon out, showing an edge of the soul. It was gone almost before she had time to see it.

"Among men I may talk of such things," he said, "but not with women. Do you like the leaves of the roses?"

He held his knife ready above the sweetmeat.

"No; I don't want any more. I don't like it very much. The taste of it is rather sickly. Sit down, Baroudi."

She made a gesture towards the floor. He obeyed it, and squatted down.

She had meant to "get at" this man. Well, she had accidentally got at something in him. He was apparently of the type of those Moslems who are ready to rush upon cold steel in order to attain a sensual Paradise.

Her languor, her dreaming mood in the bright silence of this garden of oranges on the edge of the Nile--they were leaving her now. The shaduf man cried again, and again she remembered a night of her youth, again she remembered "Aida," and the uprising of her nature. She had been punished for that uprising--she did not believe by a G.o.d, who educates, but by the world, which despises. Could she be punished again? It was strange that though for years she had defied the world's opinion, since she had married again she had again begun, almost without being aware of it, to tend secretly towards desire of conciliating it. Perhaps that was ungovernable tradition returning to its work within her. To-day she felt, in her middle life, something of what she had felt then in her youth. When she had met for the first time at the opera the man for whom afterwards she had ruined herself, his fierce attraction had fallen upon her like a great blow struck by a determined hand. It had not stunned her to stupidity; it had roused her to feverish life. Now, after years, she was struck another blow, and again the feverish life leaped up within her. But between the two blows what great stretches of experience, and all the lost good opinion of the world! In the deep silence of the orange-garden just then premonition whispered to her. She longed for the renewed cry of the fellah to drown that sinister voice, but when it came, distant, yet loud, down the alley between the trees, it seemed to her like premonition's voice, suddenly raised in menace against her. And she seemed to hear behind it, and very far away, the world which had been her world once more crying shame upon her. Then for a moment she was afraid of herself, as if she stood away from her own evil, and looked at it, and saw, with a wonder mingled with horror, how capable it was.

Would she again set out to earn a punishment?

But how could she be punished again? The world had surely done its worst, and so lost its power over her. The arm that had wielded the lash had wielded it surely to the limit of strength. There could be nothing more to be afraid of.

And then--Nigel stood before the eyes of her mind.

In the exquisite peace of this garden at the edge of the Nile a storm was surging up within her. And Baroudi sat there at her feet, impa.s.sive, immobile, with his still, luminous eyes always steadily regarding her.

"My husband will soon be coming back!" she said, abruptly.

"And I shall soon be going up the river to Armant, and from Armant to Esneh, and from Esneh to Kom Ombos and Aswan."

She felt as if she heard life escaping from her into the regions of the south, and a coldness of dread encompa.s.sed her.

"There is a girl at Aswan who is like the full moon," murmured Baroudi.

She realized his absolute liberty, and a heat as of fire swept over the cold. But she only said, with a smile:

"Why don't you sail for Aswan to-night?"

"There is time," he answered. "She will not leave Aswan until I choose for her to go."

"And are there full moons at Armant, and Esneh, and Kom Ombos?"

She seemed to be lightly laughing at him.

"At Esneh--no; at Kom Ombos--no."

"And Armant?"

A sharpness had crept into her lazy voice.

"There are French at Armant, and where the French come the little women come."

She remembered the pretty little rooms on the _Loulia_. He possessed a floating house--a floating freedom. At that moment she hated the dahabeeyah. She wished it would strike on a rock in the Nile and go to pieces. But he would be floating up the river into the golden south, while she travelled northwards to a tent in the Fayyum! She could hardly keep her body still in her chair. She picked up one of the silver boxes, and tightened her fingers round it.