That evening, when Mrs. Armine stepped out of the felucca at the foot of
the garden of the Villa Androud, she did not wait for Ibrahim to help
her up the bank, but hurried away alone, crossed the garden and the
terrace, went to her bedroom, shut and locked the door, lit the candles
on either side of the long mirror that stood in the dressing-room,
pushed up her veil, and anxiously looked at her "undone" face in the
glass.
Had her action been very unwise? Several times that day, while with
Baroudi, she had felt something that was almost like panic invade her at
the thought of what she had done. Now, quite alone and safe, she asked
herself whether she had been a fool to obey Nigel's injunction and to
trust her own beauty.
She gazed; she took off her hat and she gazed again, hard, critically,
almost cruelly.
There came a sharp knock against the door.
"Who is it?"
"_C'est moi, madame!_"
Mrs. Armine went to the door and opened it.
"Come here, Marie!" she said, almost roughly, "and tell me the truth. I
don't want any flattering or any palavering from you. Do you think I
look younger, better looking, with something on my face, or like this?"
She put her face close to the light of the candles and stood quite
still. Marie examined her with sharp attention.
"Madame has got to look much younger here," she said, at length. "Madame
has changed very much since we have been in Egypt. I do not know, but I
think, perhaps, here madame can go without anything, unless, of course,
she is going to be with Frenchmen. But if madame is much in the sun, at
night she should be careful to put--"
And the maid ran on, happy in a subject that appealed to her whole
nature.
Mrs. Armine dined alone and quickly. It was past nine o'clock when she
finished, and went out to sit on the terrace and to smoke her cigarette
and drink her coffee. In returning from the mountains she had scarcely
spoken to Ibrahim, and had not spoken to Hamza except to wish him
good-night upon the bank of the Nile. She remembered now the expression
in his almond-shaped eyes when he had returned her salutation--an
unfathomable expression of ruthless understanding that stripped her
nature bare of all disguises, and seemed to leave it as it was for all
the men of this land to see.
Ibrahim's eyes never could look like Hamza's. And yet between Ibrahim
and Hamza what essential difference was there!
Suddenly she said to herself: "Why should I bother my head about these
people, a servant and a donkey-boy?"
In England she would never have cared in the least what the people in
her service thought about her. But out here things seemed to be
different. And Ibrahim and Hamza had brought her to the place where
Baroudi had been waiting to meet her. They were in Baroudi's pay. That
was the crude fact. She considered it now as she sat alone, sipping the
Turkish coffee that Hassan had carried out to her, and smoking her
cigarette. She said to herself that she ought to be angry, but she knew
that she was not angry. She knew that she was pleased that Ibrahim and
Hamza had been bought by Baroudi. Easterns are born with an appetite for
intrigue, with a love of walking in hidden ways and creeping along
devious paths. Why should those by whom she happened to be surrounded
discard their natures?
And then she thought of Nigel.
How much more at her ease she was with Baroudi than she could ever be
with Nigel! What Nigel desired she could never give him. She might seem
to give it, but the bread would be really a stone, even if he were
deceived. And he would be deceived. But what Baroudi desired she could
give. It seemed to her to-night indeed that she was born to give just
what he desired. She made no mistake about herself. And he could give to
her exactly what she wanted. So she thought now. For, since the long day
in the mountains, her old ambition seemed to have died, to have been
slain, and, with its death, had suddenly grown more fierce within her
the governing love, or governing greed, for material things-for money,
jewels, lovely bibelots, for all that is summed up in the one word
_luxe_. And Baroudi was immensely rich, and would grow continually
richer. She knew how to weigh a man in the balance, and though, even for
her, there was mystery in him, she could form a perfectly right judgment
of his practical capacity, of his power of acquirement.
But he could give her more than _luxe_, much, more than _luxe_.
And as she acknowledged that to herself, there came into Mrs. Armine's
heart a new inhabitant.
That inhabitant was fear.
She knew that in Baroudi she had found a man by whom she could be
governed, by whom, perhaps, she could be destroyed, because in him she
had found a man whom she could love, in no high, eternal way-she was not
capable of loving any man like that--but with the dangerous force, the
jealous physical passion and desire, the almost bitter concentration,
that seem to come to life in a certain type of woman only when youth is
left behind.
She knew that, and she was afraid as she had never been afraid before.
That night she slept very little. Two or three times, as she lay awake
in the dark, she heard distant voices singing somewhere on the Nile, and
she turned upon the bed, and she longed to be out in the night, nearer
to the voices. They seemed to be there for her, to be calling her, and
they brought back to her memory the sound of Baroudi's voice, when he
raised himself up, stared into her face, and sang the song about Allah,
the song of the Nubian boatmen. And then she saw him before her in the
darkness with a painful clearness, as if he were lit up by the burning
rays of the sun. Why had she met this man immediately after she had
taken the vital step into another marriage? For years she had been free,
free as only the social outcast can be who is forcibly driven out into
an almost terrible liberty, and through all those years of freedom she
had used men without really loving any man. And then, at last, she had
once more bound herself, she had taken what seemed to be a decisive step
towards an ultimate respectability, perhaps an ultimate social position,
and no sooner had she done this than chance threw in her way a man who
could grip her, rouse her, appeal to all the chief wants in her nature.
Those words in the Koran, were they not true for her? Her fate had
surely been bound about her neck. By whom? If she asked Baroudi she knew
what he would tell her. Strangely, even his faith fascinated her,
although at Nigel's faith she secretly laughed; for in Baroudi's faith
there seemed to be a strength that was hard, that was fierce and cruel.
Even in his religion she felt him to be a brigand, trying to seize with
greedy hands upon the promises and the joys of another world. He was
determined not to be denied anything that he really desired.
She turned again on her pillows, and she put her arms outside the sheet,
then she put her hands up to her face and felt that her cheeks were
burning. And she remembered how, long ago, when she was a young married
woman, one night she had lain awake and had felt her burning cheeks with
her hands.
That was soon after she had met the man for whom she had been divorced,
the man who had ruined her social life. Does life return upon its steps?
She remembered the violent joys of that secret love which had ultimately
been thrown down in the dust for all the world to stare at. Was she to
know such joys again? Was it possible that she could know them, had she
the capacity to know them after all she had passed through?
She knew she had that capacity, and with her fear was mingled a sense
of triumph; for she felt that with the years the capacity within her for
that which to her was joy had not diminished, but increased. And this
sense of increase gave her a vital sense of youth. Even Nigel had said,
"You are blossoming here!" Even he, whom she had so easily and so
completely deceived, had seen that truth of her clearly.
And when he came back from the Fayyum to stay again with her, or, more
probably, to fetch her away?
The voices that had come to her from far away on the Nile were hushed.
The night at last had imposed herself on the singers, and they had sunk
down to sleep under the mantle of her silence. But Mrs. Armine still lay
awake, felt as if the cessation of the singing had made her less capable
of sleeping.
When Nigel came to fetch her away to the tent in the Fayyum, what then?
She would not think about that, but she would obey her temperament. She
had two weeks of freedom before her, she who had had so many years of
freedom. She had only two weeks. Then she would use them, enjoy them to
the uttermost. She would think of nothing but the moment. She would
squeeze, squeeze out the golden juices that these moments contained
which lay immediately before her. The tent in the Fayyum--perhaps she
would never see it, would never come out in the night with Nigel to hear
the Egyptian Pan by the water. But--she would surely hear Baroudi sing
again to-morrow, she would surely, to-morrow, watch him while he sang.
She put her arms inside the bed, and feverishly drew the sheet up
underneath her chin. She must sleep, or to-morrow her face would show
that she had not slept. And Baroudi stared at her while he sang.
Again she was seized by fear.