Immediately after their marriage at a registrar's office, Nigel and his
wife, with a maid, and a great many trunks of varying shapes and sizes,
travelled to Naples and embarked on the _Hohenzollern_ for Egypt, where
Nigel had rented for the winter the Villa Androud, on the bank of the
Nile near Luxor.
Nigel was happy, but he was not wholly free from anxiety, although he
was careful to keep that anxiety from his wife, and desired even
sometimes to deny that it existed to himself. In making this marriage he
had obeyed the cry of two voices within him, the voice of the senses and
the voice of the soul. He did not know which had sounded most clearly;
he did not know which inclination had prevailed over him most strongly,
the longing for a personal joy, or the pitiful desire to shed happiness
and peace on a darkened and soiled existence. The future perhaps would
tell him. Meanwhile he put before him one worthy aim, to be the perfect
husband.
Although the month was November, and the rush for the Nile had not
begun, the _Hohenzollern_ was crowded with passengers, and when the
Armines came into the dining-room for lunch, as the vessel was leaving
Naples, every place was already taken.
"Give us a table upstairs alone," said Nigel to the head-steward,
putting something into his hand. "We shall like that ever so much
better."
He had caught sight of a number of staring English faces, on some of
which there seemed to be more than the dawning of a recognition of Mrs.
Armine.
As if mechanically the rosy Prussian retained the something, and
replied, with a strong German accent:
"I must give you the table at the top of the staircase, sir, but I
cannot promise that you will be alone. If there are any more to come,
they will have to sit with you."
"Anyhow, put us there."
"Pray that we have this to ourselves for the voyage, Ruby," said Nigel,
a moment later, as they sat side by side on a white settee close to the
open door which led out on to the deck at the top of the main companion.
As he finished speaking, a steward appeared, quickly conducting to their
table a tall and broad young man, who made them a formal bow, and
composedly sat down opposite to them.
He was remarkably well dressed in clothes which must have been cut by an
English tailor, and which he wore with a carelessness almost English,
but also with an easy grace that was utterly foreign. Thin, with mighty
shoulders and an exceptionally deep chest, it was obvious that his
strength must be enormous. His neck looked as powerful as a bull's, and
his rather small head was poised upon it with a sort of triumphant
boldness. His hair was black and curly, his forehead very broad, his
nose short, straight, and determined, with wide and ardent nostrils.
Under a small but dense moustache his lips were thick and rather
pouting. His chin, thrust slightly forward in a manner almost
aggressive, showed the dusk of close-shaven hair. The tint of his skin,
though dark, was clear--had even something of delicacy. His hands,
broad, brown, and muscular, had very strong-looking fingers which
narrowed slightly at the tips. His eyes were large and black, were set
in his head with an almost singular straightness, and were surmounted by
brows which, depressed towards the nose, sloped upwards towards the
temples. These brows gave to the eyes beneath them, even to the whole
face, a curiously distinctive look of open resolution, which was
seizing, and attractive or unattractive according to the temperament of
the beholder.
He took up the _carte du jour_, studied it at length and with obvious
care, then gave an order in excellent French, which the steward hastened
away to carry out. This done, he twisted his moustaches and looked
calmly at his companions, not curiously, but rather as if he regarded
them with a polite indifference, and merely because they were near him.
Mrs. Armine seemed quite unaware of his scrutiny, but Nigel spoke to him
almost immediately, making some remark about the ship in English. The
stranger answered in the same language, but with a strong foreign
accent. He seemed quite willing to talk. He apologized for interrupting
their tete-a-tete, but said he had no choice, as the saloon was
completely full. They declared they were quite ready for company, Nigel
with his usual sympathetic geniality, Mrs. Armine with a sort of
graceful formality beneath which--or so her husband fancied--there was
just a suspicion of reluctance. He guessed that she would have much
preferred a private table, but when he said so to her, as they were
taking their coffee on deck, she answered:
"No, what does it matter? We shall so soon be in our own house. Tell me
about the villa, Nigel, and Luxor. You know I have never seen it."
With little more than a word she had deftly flicked the intruding
stranger out of their lives, she had concentrated herself on Nigel. He
felt that all her force, like a strong and ardent stream, was flowing
into the new channel which he had cut for her. He obeyed her. He told
her about Egypt. And as he talked, and watched her listening, he began
to feel thoroughly for the first time the vital change in his life, and
something within him rejoiced, that was surely his manhood singing.
The voyage passed swiftly by, attended by perfect weather, calm,
radiant, blue--weather that releases humanity from any bonds of
depression into a joyous world. Yet for the Armines it was not without
an unpleasant incident. Among the passengers were a Lord and Lady
Hayman, whom Nigel Armine knew, and whom Mrs. Armine had known in the
days when London had loved her. It was impossible not to meet them,
equally impossible not to perceive their cold confusion at each
encounter, shown by a sudden interest in empty seas and unpopulated
horizons. That they mistook the situation was so evident to Nigel that
one day he managed to confront Lord Hayman in the smoke-room and to
have it out with him.
"Congratulate you, I'm sure, congratulate you!" murmured that gentleman,
whose practical brown eyes became suddenly wells full of ironical
amazement. "Tell my wife at once. Knew nothing at all about it."
He got away, with a moribund cigar between his teeth, and no doubt
informed Lady Hayman, who thereafter bowed to Nigel, but with a
reluctant muscular movement that adequately expressed an inward moral
surprise mingled with condemnation. Mrs. Armine seemed totally
undisturbed by these demonstrations, her only comment upon the lady
being that it was really strange that "in these days" any one could be
found to wear magenta and red together, especially any one with a
complexion like Lady Hayman's. And her astonishment at the triple
combination of colours seemed so simple, so sincere, that it had to be
believed in as merely an emanation from an artistic temperament. It was
probable that the Haymans told other English on the _Hohenzollern_ the
news of Nigel's marriage, for several of the faces that had stared from
the luncheon-tables continued to stare on the deck, but with a slightly
different expression; the sheer, dull curiosity being exchanged for that
half-satirical interest with which the average person of British blood
regards a newly-married couple.
This contemplation of them made Nigel secretly angry, and awoke in him a
great and peculiar tenderness for his wife, founded on a suddenly more
acute understanding of the brutality of the ostracism, combined with
notoriety, which she had endured in recent years. Now at last she had
some one to protect her. His heart enfolded her with ample wings. But he
longed to be free from this crowd, from which on a ship they could not
escape, and they spoke to no one during the voyage except to their
companion at meals.
With him they were soon on the intimate terms of shipboard--terms that
commit one to nothing in the future when land is reached. Although he
was dressed like an Englishman, and on deck wore a straw hat with the
word "Scott" inside it, he soon let them know that his name was Mahmoud
Baroudi, that his native place was Alexandria, that he was of mixed
Greek and Egyptian blood, and that he was a man of great energy and
will, interested in many schemes, pulling the strings of many
enterprises.
He spoke always with a certain polite but bold indifference, as if he
cared very little what impression he made on others; and all the
information that he gave about himself was dropped out in a careless,
casual way that seemed expressive of his character. The high rank, the
great riches of his father he rather implied than definitely mentioned.
Only when he talked of his occupations was he more definite, more
strongly personal. Nigel gathered that he was essentially a man of
affairs, had nothing in common with the typical lazy Eastern, who loves
to sit in the sun, to suffer the will of Allah, and to fill the years
with dreams; that he was cool, clear-headed, and full of the marked
commercial ability characteristic of the modern Greek. Whether this
aptitude was combined with the sinuous cunning that is essentially
Oriental Nigel did not know. He certainly could not perceive it. All
that Baroudi said was said with clearness, and a sort of acute
precision, whether he discussed the land question, the irrigation works
on the Nile, the great boom of 1906, in which such gigantic fortunes
were made, or the cotton and sugar industries, in both of which he was
interested. The impression he conveyed to Nigel was that he was born to
"get on" in whatever he undertook, and that in almost any form of
activity he could be a fine ally, or an equally fine opponent. That he
was fond of sport was soon apparent. He spoke with an enthusiasm that
was always mingled with a certain serene _insouciance_ of the horses he
had bred and of the races he had won in Alexandria and Cairo, of
yachting, of big-game shooting up the Nile beyond Khartum in the country
of the Shillouks, and of duck, pigeon, and jackal shooting in the Fayyum
and on the sacred Lake of Kurun.
Nigel found him an excellent fellow, the most sympathetic and energetic
man of Eastern blood whom he had ever encountered. Mrs. Armine spoke of
him more temperately; he did not seem to interest her, and Nigel was
confirmed by her lack of appreciation in an idea that had already
occurred to him. He believed that Baroudi was a man who did not care for
women, except, no doubt, as the occasional and servile distractions of
an unoccupied hour in the harem. He was always very polite to Mrs.
Armine, but when he talked he soon, as if almost instinctively,
addressed himself to Nigel; and once or twice, when Mrs. Armine left
them alone together over their coffee and cigars, he seemed to Nigel to
become another man, to expand almost into geniality, to be not merely
self-possessed--that faculty never failed him--but to be more happily at
his ease, more racy, more ready for intimacy. Probably he was governed
by the Oriental's conception of woman as an inferior sex, and was unable
to be quite at home in the complete equality and ease of the English
relation with women.
When the _Hohenzollern_ sighted Alexandria, Baroudi went below for a
moment. He reappeared wearing the fez. They bade each other good-bye in
the harbour, with the usual vague hopes of a further meeting that do
duty on such occasions, and that generally end in nothing.
Mrs. Armine seemed glad to be rid of him and to be alone with her
husband.
"Don't let us stay in Cairo," she said. "I want to go up the river. I
want to be in the Villa Androud."
After one night at Shepheard's they started for Luxor, or rather for
Keneh, where they got out in the early morning to visit the temple of
Denderah, taking a later train which brought them to Luxor towards
evening, just as the gold of the sunset was beginning to steal into the
sky and to cover the river with glory.
Mrs. Armine was fatigued by the journey, and by the long day at
Denderah, which had secretly depressed her. She looked out of the window
of their compartment at the green plains of doura, at the almost naked
brown men bending rhythmically by the shadufs, at the children passing
on donkeys, and the women standing at gaze with corners of their dingy
garments held fast between their teeth; and she felt as if she still saw
the dark courts of Hathor's dwelling, as if she still heard the cries of
the enormous bats that inhabit them. When the train stopped, she got up
slowly, and let Nigel help her down to the platform.
"Is the villa far away?" she said, looking round on the crowd of staring
Egyptians.
"No, I want you to walk to it. Do you mind?"
His eyes demanded a "no," and she gave it him with a good grace that
ought to have been written down to her credit by the pen of the
recording angel. They set out to walk to the villa. As they went through
the little town, Nigel pointed out the various "objects of interest":
the antiquity shops, where may be purchased rings, necklaces, and
amulets, blue and green "servants of the dead," scarabs, winged discs,
and mummy-cases; the mosque, a Coptic church, cafes, the garden of the
Hotel de Luxor. He greeted several friends of humble origin: the black
barber who called himself "Mr. White"; Ahri Achmed, the Folly of Luxor,
who danced and gibbered at Mrs. Armine and cried out a welcome in many
languages; Hassan, the one-eyed pipe-player; and Hamza, the praying
donkey-boy, who in winter stole all the millionaires from his protesting
comrades and in summer sat with the dervishes in the deep shadows of the
mosques.
"You seem to be as much at home here as in London," said Mrs. Armine, in
a voice that was rather vague.
"Ten times more, Ruby. And so will you be soon. I love a little place."
"Yes?"
After a pause she added:
"Are there many villas here?"
"Only two on the bank of the Nile. One belongs to a Dutchman. Our villa
is the other."
"Only two--and one belongs to a Dutchman!" she thought.
And she wondered about their winter.
"When I've settled you in, I must run off to the Fayyum to see how the
work is going, and rig up something for you. I want to take you there
soon, but it's really in the wilds, and I didn't like to straight away.
Besides I was afraid you might be dull and unhappy without any of your
comforts. And I do want you to be happy."
There was an anxiety that was almost wistful in his voice.
"I do want you to like Egypt," he added, like an eager boy.
"I am sure I shall like it, Nigel. There's no Casino, I suppose!"
"Good heavens, no! What should one do with a Casino here!"
"Oh, they sometimes have one, even in places like this. A friend of mine
who went to Biskra told me there was one there."
"Look at that, Ruby! That's better than any Casino--don't you think?"
They had turned to the left and come to the river bank.
All the Nile was flooded with gold, in which there were eddies of pale
mauve and distant flushes of a red that resembled the red on the wing of
a flamingo. The clear and radiant sky was drowned in a quivering
radiance of gold, that was like a thing alive and sensitively
palpitating. The far-off palms, the lofty river banks that framed the
Nile's upper reaches, the birds that flew south, following the direction
of the breeze, the bats that wheeled about the great columns of the
temple, the boats that with wide-spread lateen sails went southward with
the birds, were like motionless and moving jewels of black against the
vibrant gold. And the crenellated mountains of Libya, beyond Thebes and
the tombs of the Kings, stood like spectral sentinels at their posts
till the pageant should be over.
"Isn't it wonderful, Ruby?"
"Yes," she said. "Quite wonderful."
She honestly thought it superb, but the dust in her hair and in her
skirts, the lassitude that seemed to hang, almost like spiders' webs
about wood, about the body which contained her tired spirit, restrained
her enthusiasm from being a match for his. Perhaps she knew this and
wished to come up with him, for she added, throwing a warm sound into
her voice:
"It is exquisite. It is the most magical thing I have ever seen."
She touched her veil, as she spoke, and put up her hand to her hair
behind. Two Frenchmen, talking with sonorous voices, were just then
passing them on the road.
"I didn't know any sunset could be so marvellous."
She was still touching her hair, and now she felt clothed in dust; and,
with the ardour of a fastidious woman who has not seen the inside of a
dressing-room for twenty-four hours, she longed to be rid both of the
sunset and of the man.
"Where is the villa, Nigel?"
"Not ten minutes away."
The spirit groaned within her, and she went resolutely forward, passing
the Winter Palace Hotel.
"What a huge hotel--but it isn't open!" she said.
"It will be almost directly. We turn to the right down here."
Some large rats were playing on the uneven stones close to the river;
from a little shed close by there came the dull puffing of an engine.
"Where on earth are we going, Nigel? This is only a donkey track."
"It's all right. Just wait a minute. There's the Dutchman's castle, and
we are just beyond it. Am I walking too fast for you, Ruby?"
"No, no."
She hurried on. Her whole body was clamouring for warm water with a
certain essence dissolved in it, for a change of stockings and shoes,
for a tea-gown, for a sofa with a tea-table beside it, for a hundred and
one things his manhood did not dream of.
"Here it is at last!" he said.
A tall and amiable-looking boy in a flowing gold-coloured robe suddenly
appeared before them, holding open a wooden gate, through which they
passed into a garden.
"Hulloh, Ibrahim!" cried Nigel.
"Hulloh, my gentleman!" returned the boy, inclining his body towards
Mrs. Armine and touching his fez with his hand. "I am Ibrahim Ahmed, my
lady, the special servant called a dragoman of my Lord Arminigel. I can
read the hieroglyphs, and I am always young and cheerful."
He took Nigel's right hand, kissed it and placed it against his forehead
rapidly three times in succession, smiled, and looked sideways on the
ground.
"I am always young and cheerful," he repeated, softly and dreamily. He
picked a red rose from a bush, placed it between his white teeth, and
turned to conduct them to the white house that stood in the midst of the
garden perhaps a hundred yards away.
"What a nice boy!" said Mrs. Armine.
"He's been my dragoman before. This is our little domain."
Mrs. Armine saw a flat expanse of brown and sun-dried earth, completely
devoid of grass, and divided roughly into sunken beds containing small
orange-trees, mimosas, rose-bushes, poinsettias, and geraniums. It was
bounded on three sides by earthen walls and on the fourth side by the
Nile.
"Is it not beautiful, mees?" said Ibrahim.
Mrs. Armine began to laugh.
"He takes me for a _vieille fille_!" she said. "Is it a compliment,
Nigel? Ibrahim,"--she touched the boy's robe--"won't you give me that
rose?"
"My lady, I will give you all what you want."
Already she had fascinated him. As she took the rose, which he offered
with a salaam, she began to look quite gay.
"All what you want you must have," continued Ibrahim, gravely.
"Ibrahim reads my thoughts like a true Eastern!" said Nigel.
"What I want now is a bath," remarked Mrs. Armine, smelling the rose.
"Directly we have had one more look at the Nile from our own garden,"
exclaimed Nigel.
But she had stopped before the house.
"I can't take my bath in the Nile. Good-bye, Nigel!"
Before he could say a word she had crossed a little terrace, disappeared
through a French window, and vanished into the villa.
Ibrahim smiled, hung his head, and then murmured in a deep contralto
voice:
"The wife of my Lord Arminigel, she does not want Ibrahim any more, she
does not want the Nile, she wants to be all alone."
He shook his head, which drooped on his long and gentle brown neck,
sighed, and repeated dreamily:
"She wants to be all alone."
"We'll leave her alone for a little and go and look at the gold."
Meanwhile within the house Mrs. Armine was calling impatiently for her
maid.
"For mercy's sake, undress me. I am a mass of dust, and looking
perfectly dreadful. Is the bath ready?" she asked, as the girl, who had
come running, showed her into a good-sized bedroom.
The maid, who was not the red-eyed maid Nigel had met at the Savoy,
shrugged up her small shoulders, and extended her little, greedy hands.
"It is ready, madame; but the water--oh, _la, la!_"
"What's the matter. What do you mean?"
"The water is the colour of madame's morning chocolate."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Armine, almost with a sound of despair.
She sank into a chair, taking in with a glance every detail of the
chamber, which had been furnished and arranged by a rich and consumptive
Frenchman who had lived there with his mistress and had recently died at
Cairo.
"Bring me the mirror from my dressing-case, and get me out of this
gown."
Marie hastened to fetch the mirror, into which, after unpinning and
removing her hat and veil, Mrs. Armine looked long and earnestly.
"There are no women servants, madame."
* * * * *
"All the servants here are men, madame, and all are as black as boots."
"Shut the door into monsieur's room, and don't chatter so much. My head
is simply splitting."
* * * * *
"What are you doing? One would think you had never seen a corset before.
Don't fumble! If you fumble, I shall pack you off to Paris by the first
train to-morrow morning. Now where's the bath?"
Marie, wrinkling up her nose, which looked like a note of interrogation,
led the way into the bathroom, and pointed to the water with a grimace.
"_Voila_, madame!"
"_Mon Dieu!_" said Mrs. Armine.
She stared at the water, and repeated her exclamation.
"That makes pity to think that madame--"
"Have you put in the _eau de paradis_?"
"But certainly, madame."
"Very well then--ugh!"
She shuddered with disgust as the rich brown water of the Nile came up
to her breast, to her chin.
"And to think that it looked golden," she murmured, "when we were
standing on the bank!"