Bella Donna Part 85

Then Bella Donna had come down from her tower! Or had she never been there?

Isaacson looked at the long outline, and listened. His mind was full of that other music, the cry of Mohammedanism in the African night. This music of Europe seemed out of place, like a nothing masquerading beneath the stars. But in a moment he listened more closely; he moved a step nearer. He was searching in his memory, was asking himself what that music expressed, what it meant to him. No longer was it ba.n.a.l. There was a sound in it, even played upon a piano, even heard in this night and this desolate place between two deserts, of the elemental.

Bella Donna was playing that part of "The Dream of Gerontius" where the soul of man is dismissed to its Maker.

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!" (Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!)

She was playing that, and the stretched figure in the long chair was listening to it.

At that moment Isaacson felt glad that he had come to Egypt--glad in a new way.

"Go forth ... go from this world!"

Almost he heard the deep and irreparable voice of the priest, and in the music there was disintegration. In it the atoms parted. The temple crumbled to let the inmate come forth.

Presently the music ceased. The murmur of a voice was audible. Then one of the oblongs of light beyond the balcony was broken up by a darkness.

And the darkness came out, and bent above the stretched figure in the chair. An instant later the electric burner that gave light to the balcony was extinguished. Nigel and his wife were together in the dimness, with the lighted room beyond them.

When the light was turned out, the pariah dog got up stealthily and crept much nearer to the _Loulia_. Its secret movement, observed by Isaacson, made an unpleasant impression upon him. He drew a parallel between it and himself, and felt himself to be a pariah, because of what he was doing. But something within him that was much stronger than his sense of discretion, and of "the right thing" for a decently bred man to do, had taken him to this place in the night, kept him there, even prompted him to imitate the starving dog, and to move nearer to those two who believed themselves isolated in the dimness.

He was determined to hear the voice of the stretched figure in the long chair.

The light that issued from the room of the faskeeyeh faintly illuminated part of the balcony. Isaacson heard the murmuring voice of Mrs. Armine again. Then one of the oblongs was again obscured, and the room was abruptly plunged in darkness. As Mrs. Armine returned, Isaacson stole down the shelving bank and took up a position close to the last window of this room. The crew and the servants were all forward on the lower deck, which was shut in closely by canvas. On the upper deck of the boat there was no one. If Mrs. Armine had lingered after putting out the light, she would perhaps have seen the figure of a man. But she did not linger. Isaacson had felt that she would not linger. And he was out of range of the vision of any one on the balcony, although now so close to it that it was almost as if he stood upon it. The Nile flowed near his feet with a sucking murmur that was very faint in the night. There was no other sound to interfere between him and the two voices.

A dress rustled. He thought of the sanctuary in the temple of Edfou.

Then a faint and strangely toneless voice, that he did not recognize, said:

"That's ever so much better. I do hate that strong light."

"But who is that in the chair, then?" Isaacson asked himself, astonished. "Have they got some one on board with them?"

"Electric light tries a great many people."

Isaacson knew the voice which said that. It was Mrs. Armine's voice, gentle, melodious, and seductive. And he thought of the hoa.r.s.e and hideous sound which that morning he had heard in the temple.

"Do sit down by me," said the first voice.

Could it really be Nigel's? This time there was in it a sound that was faintly familiar to Isaacson--a sound to which he listened almost as a man may regard a shadow and say to himself, "Is that shadow cast by my friend?"

A dress rustled. And the tiny noise was followed by the creak of a basket chair.

"Don't you think you're a little better to-night?" said Mrs. Armine.

The other sighed.

"No."

"Doctor Baring Hartley said you would recover rapidly."

"Ruby, he doesn't understand my case. He can't understand it."

"But he seemed so certain. And he's got a great reputation in America."

"But he doesn't understand. To-night I feel--when you were playing 'Gerontius' I felt that--that I must soon go. 'Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo'--I felt as if somewhere that was being said to me."

"Nigel!"

"It's strange that I, who've always loved the sun, should be knocked over by the sun, isn't it? Strange that what one loves should destroy one!"

"But--but that's not true, Nigel. You are getting better, although you don't think so."

"Ruby"--the voice was almost stern, and now it was more like the voice that Isaacson knew--"Ruby, I'm getting worse. To-day I feel that I'm going to die."

"Let me telegraph for Doctor Hartley. At dawn to-morrow I shall send the boat to Edfou--"

"If only Isaacson were here!"

There was a silence. Then Mrs. Armine said:

"What could Doctor Isaacson do more than has been done?"

"He's a wonderful man. He sees what others don't see. I feel that he might find out what's the matter."

"Find out! But, Nigel, we know it's the sun. You yourself--"

"Yes, yes!"

"To-morrow I'll wire for Doctor Hartley to come down at once from a.s.souan."

"It's this awful insomnia that's doing for me. All my life I've slept so well--till now. And the rheumatic pains; how can the sun--Ruby, sometimes I think it's nothing to do with the sun."

"But, then, what can it be? You know you would expose yourself, though I begged and implored--"

"But the heat's nothing new to me. For months in the Fayyum I worked in the full glare of the sun. And it never hurt me."

"Nigel, it was the sun. One may do a thing ninety-nine times, and the hundredth time one pays for it."

A chair creaked.

"Do you want to turn, Nigel? Wait, I'll help you."

"Isn't it awful to lose all one's strength like this?"

"It'll come back. Wait! You're slipping. Let me put my arm behind you."

"Yes, give me your hand, dearest!"

After a pause he said: