In the lodge in the garden of oranges, when the noon-tide was past and
the land lay in the very centre of the gaze of the sun, Baroudi offered
to Mrs. Armine an Egyptian dinner, or El-Ghada, served on a round tray
of shining gold, which was set upon a low stool cased with
tortoise-shell and ornamented with many small squares of
mother-of-pearl. When she and Baroudi came into the room where they were
to eat, the tray was already in its place, set out with white silk
napkins, with rounds of yellow bread, and with limes cut into slices.
The walls were hung with silks of shimmering green, and dull gold, and
deep and sultry red. Upon the floor were strewn some more of the
marvellous rugs, of which Baroudi seemed to have an unlimited supply.
Round the room was the usual deep divan. Incense burned in a corner.
Through a large window space, from which the hanging shutters were
partially pushed back, Mrs. Armine saw a vista of motionless
orange-trees.
She sat down on a pile of silken cushions which had been laid for her on
the rugs. As she arranged her skirt and settled herself, from an earthen
drum just outside the house and an arghool there came a crude sound of
native music, to which almost immediately added itself a high and
quavering voice, singing:
"_Doos ya' lellee! Doos ya' lellee!_"
At the same moment Aiyoub came into the room, without noise, and handed
to Baroudi, who was sitting opposite to Mrs. Armine, with his left knee
touching the rug and his right knee raised with his napkin laid over it,
a basin of hammered brass with a cover, and a brass jug. Baroudi held
forth his hands, and Aiyoub poured water upon them, which disappeared
into the basin through holes pierced in the cover. Then, making a cup of
his hands turned upwards, Baroudi received more water into it, conveyed
it to his mouth, rinsed his mouth elaborately, and spat out the water
upon the cover of the basin. Aiyoub carried away the basin and jug,
Baroudi dried his hands on his napkin, and then muttered a word. It was
"Bi-smi-llah!" but Mrs. Armine did not know that. She sat quite still,
for a moment unseen, unthought of; she listened to the quavering voice,
to the beaten drum and arghool, she smelt the incense, and she felt like
one at a doorway peering in at an unknown world.
Almost immediately Aiyoub came back, and they began the meal, which was
perpetually accompanied by the music. Aiyoub offered a red soup, a
Kaw-ur-meh--meat stewed in a rich gravy with little onions--leaves of
the vine containing a delicious sort of forcemeat, cucumbers in milk,
some small birds pierced with silver skewers, spinach, and fried wheat
flour mingled with honey. She was given a knife and fork and a spoon,
all made of silver, and the plates were of silver, which did not
harmonize well with the golden tray. Baroudi used only his fingers and
pieces of bread in eating.
Mrs. Armine was hungry, and ate heartily. She knew nothing about Eastern
cooking, but she was a gourmet, and realized that Baroudi's cook was an
accomplished artist in his own line. During the meal she was offered
nothing to drink, but directly it was over Aiyoub brought to her a
beautiful cup of gold or gilded silver--she did not know which--and
poured into it with ceremonial solemnity a small quantity of some
liquid.
"What is it?" she asked Baroudi.
"Drink!" he replied.
She lifted the cup to her lips and drank a draught of water.
"Oh!" she said, with an intonation of surprised disappointment.
"_Lish rub el Moyeh en Nil awadeh!_" he said.
"What does that mean?"
"'Who drinks Nile water must return.'"
She smiled, lifted the cup again to her lips, and drank the last drop of
water.
"Nile water! I understand."
"And now you will have some sherbet."
He spoke to Aiyoub in Arabic. Aiyoub took away the cup, brought a tall,
delicate glass, and having thrown over his right arm an elaborately
embroidered napkin, poured into it from a narrow vase of china a liquid
the colour of which was a soft and velvety green.
"Is this really sherbet?" Mrs. Armine asked.
"Sherbet made of violets."
"How is it made?"
By crushing the flowers of violets, making them into a preserve with
sugar, and boiling them for a long time.
Aiyoub stayed by her while she drank, and when she had finished he
offered her the embroidered napkin. She touched it with her lips.
"Do you like it?"
"It is very strange. But everything here is strange."
Aiyoub brought once more to his master the basin with the cover and the
jug, and Baroudi washed his hands and rinsed his mouth as at the
beginning of the meal. After this ceremony he again muttered a word or
words, rose to his feet, took Mrs. Armine's left hand with his right,
and led her to the divan. Aiyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray
from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to
the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he
vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of
finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling
silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the
orange-trees. It was answered by another bird.
"They are singing the praises of God," said Baroudi, in a deep and slow
voice, and as if he were speaking to himself.
"Those birds!"
She gazed at him in wonder. He looked at her with sombre eyes.
"You do not know these things."
Suddenly she felt like an ignorant and stupid child, like one unworthy
of knowledge.
He sipped his coffee. He was now sitting in European fashion beside her
on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept
his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet
very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might
belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head
his appearance was not unmistakably Eastern.
And this man, evidently quite seriously, talked to her about the birds
singing to each other the praises of God.
"You ought to be differently dressed," she said.
"How?"
"In Egyptian clothes, not English flannels."
"Some day you shall see me like that," he said, reassuringly. "I often
wear the kuftan at night upon the _Loulia_."
"At night upon the _Loulia_! Then how on earth can I see you in it?"
She spoke with a sudden sharp irritation. To-day her marriage with Nigel
seemed to her like a sword suspended above her, which would presently
descend upon her, striking her to earth with all her capacity for
happiness unused.
"You will see me with the drawers of linen, the sudeyree, the kuftan,
the gibbeh--or, as says my father, jubbeh--and the turban on my head.
Only you must wait a little. But women do not like to wait for a
pleasure. They are always in a hurry."
The cool egoism with which he accepted and commented on her admiration
roused in her, not anger, but a sort of almost wondering respect. It
seemed part of his strength. He lifted his eyebrows, threw back his
head, showing his magnificent throat, and with the gesture that she had
noticed in the garden of the Villa Androud thrust two fingers inside
his low, soft collar, and kept them there while he added:
"They are like children, and must be treated as children. But they can
be very clever, too, when they want to trick. I know that. They can be
as cunning as foxes, and as light-footed and swift as gazelles. But all
that they do and all that they are is just for men. Women are made for
men, and they know it so well that it is only about men that they think.
I tell you that."
"No doubt it is true," she said, smilingly accepting his assertions.
"Women will run even after the Chinese shadow of a man if they are not
shut close behind the grilles."
Mrs. Armine laughed outright.
"And so you Easterns generally keep them there."
"Well, and are we not wise? Are we not much wiser than the Mr. Armeens
of Europe?"
His unexpected introduction of Nigel's name gave her a little shock, and
the bad taste of it for an instant distressed even her tarnished
breeding. But the sensation vanished directly as she remembered his
Eastern birth.
"And you?" she said. "Would you never trust a woman?"
"Never," he calmly returned. "All women are alike. If they see the
Chinese shadow, they must run after it. They cannot help themselves."
"You seem to forget that men are for ever running after the Chinese
shadows of women," she retorted.
"She thought of her own life, of how she had been worshipped and
pursued, not _pour le bon motif_, but still--"
She would like him to know about all that.
"Men do that to please women, as to please a child you give it a sand
lizard tied to a string. Put the string into its hand and the child is
happy. So it is with a woman. Only she wants not the string, but the
edge of a kuftan."
It seemed to Mrs. Armine, as she listened to Baroudi, that she was
permanently deposed from the place she had for long been accustomed to
occupy. He tacitly demanded and accepted her admiration instead of
giving her his. And yet--he had serenaded her on the Nile that first
evening of her coming. He had bought Hamza and Ibrahim. He had desired
and tried to effect the swift departure of Nigel. He had decreed that
Marie must go. And the Nile water--with how much intention he had given
it her to drink! And he had plans for the future. They seemed gathering
about her silently, softly, like clouds changing the aspect of her
world.
She had not turned that glove inside out yet.
She felt that she must alter her tactics, assert herself more strongly,
escape from the modest position he seemed to be deliberately placing her
in. Where was her pride, even of a courtesan?
She lifted her coffee-cup, emptied it, put it down, and began to pull on
one of her long white gloves. Baroudi went on calmly smoking. She picked
up the second glove. He sharply clapped his hands. Aiyoub entered,
Baroudi spoke to him in Nubian, and he swiftly disappeared. Mrs. Armine
pulled on the second glove.
"Now I must go home," she said.
She moved to get up, but her movement was arrested by the furtive
entrance of a thin man clad in what looked to her like a bit of sacking,
with naked arms, chest, legs, and feet, and a narrow, pointed head,
completely shaved in front and garnished at the back with a mane of
greasy black hair, which fell down upon his shoulders. In his hand,
which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an
air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the
room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his
head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the
ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he
seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent upon his
inexplicable occupation.
After moving several times in this manner round the room, he stopped
short, almost like a dog pointing, then drew from inside his coarse
garment a wrinkled receptacle of discoloured leather with a
widely-opened mouth, cried out some words in a loud, fierce voice,
leaped upwards, and succeeded in striking the ceiling with his stick.
A long serpent fell down into the bag.
Mrs. Armine uttered a cry of surprise, but not of alarm. She was not
afraid of snakes. The darweesh went creeping about as before, presently
called out some more words, and struck at the wall. A second serpent
fell into the bag, or seemed to fall into it, from some concealed place
among the silken draperies. Again he crept about, called, struck, and
received another reptile. Then a little dark-eyed boy ran in, salaaming,
and the darweesh and the boy, to the accompaniment of wild music played
outside, went through a performance of snake-charming and jugglery
familiar enough in the East, yet, it seems, eternally interesting to
Easterns, and fascinating to many travellers. When it was over the
little boy salaamed and ran out, but the music, which was whining and
intense, still went on, and the darweesh advanced, holding his bag of
snakes, and stood still before Mrs. Armine. For the first time he fixed
his cunning and ferocious eyes, which were suffused with blood, steadily
upon her, as if he desired to hypnotize her, or to inspire her with
deadly fear. She returned his gaze steadily and calmly, and held out her
hand towards the bag, indicating by a gesture that she wished to handle
the serpents. The darweesh, still staring at her, and very slowly, put
the bag close to her, holding it under her breast. A curious musty
smell, like the scent of something terribly old, came to her nostrils.
She hesitated for a moment, then deliberately pulled off her gloves, put
them on the divan, stood up, and plunged her right hand into the bag, at
the same time shutting her eyes. She shut them to enjoy with the utmost
keenness a sensation entirely new.
Her hand encountered a dry and writhing life, closed upon it firmly but
gently, drew it out and towards her. Then she opened her eyes, and saw
that she had taken from the dark a serpent that was black with markings
of a dull orange colour. It twisted itself in her hand, as if trying to
escape, but as she held it firmly it presently became quieter, lifted
itself, reared up its flat head, and seemed to regard her with its
feverish and guilty eyes, which were like the eyes of something
consciously criminal that must always be unrepentant. She looked at
those eyes, and she felt a strong sympathy for the creature, and no
sense of fear at all. Slowly she brought it nearer to her, nearer,
nearer, till it wavered out from her hand and attained her body.
The darweesh always stood before her, but the expression in his eyes had
changed, was no longer hypnotic and terrible, but rather deeply
observant. Baroudi sat quite still upon the divan. He looked from Mrs.
Armine to the serpent, then looked again at her. And she, feeling these
two men absolutely concentrated upon her, was happy and at ease. Swiftly
the serpent wound itself about her, and, clinging to her waist, thrust
forth the upper part of its body towards the darweesh, shooting out its
ribbon of a tongue, which quivered like something frail in a draught of
wind. It lowered and raised itself several times, rhythmically, as if in
an effort to obey the whining music and to indulge in a dancing
movement. Then, as a long shrill note was held, it again reared itself
up, till its head was level with Mrs. Armine's ear, and remained there
quivering, and turning itself slowly from side to side with a
flexibility that was abominable and sickening. The music ceased. There
was a moment's pause. Then, with a fierce movement that seemed
expressive of a jealousy which could no longer be contained, the
darweesh seized the snake about two inches below its head, and tore it
away from Mrs. Armine. The terrible look had returned to his face with
an added fire that beaconed a revengeful intention. Pressing his thumb
hard upon the reptile's back, he seemed to fall into a frenzy. He
several times growled on a deep note, bowed back and forth, tossing his
mane of greasy hair over his face and away from it, depressed his body,
then violently drew it up to its full height, while his bare feet
executed a sort of crude dance. Then, wrought up apparently to a pitch
of fanatical fury, he bent his head, opened his mouth, from which came
beads of foam, and bit off the serpent's head. Casting away its body,
which still seemed writhing with life, he made a sound of munching,
working his jaws extravagantly, shot forth his head towards Mrs. Armine,
gaped to show her his mouth was empty, lifted his bag from the floor and
rushed noiselessly from the room. She stood looking at the headless body
of the reptile which lay on the rug at her feet.
"Take it away!" she said to Baroudi.
He picked it up, went to the window, and threw it out into the
orange-garden. Then he came back and stood beside her.
"Horrible brute!" she said.
She spoke angrily. When the darweesh had attacked the serpent she had
felt herself attacked, and the killing of it had seemed to her an
outrage committed upon herself. Even now that he was gone and the
headless body was flung away, she could not rid herself of this
sensation. She was full of an intimate sense of fury that longed to be
assuaged.
"How could you let the brute do that?" she exclaimed, turning upon
Baroudi. "How could you sit there and allow such a hateful thing?"
"But he came here to do it. He is one of the Saadeeyeh."
"He was going to do it even if I hadn't taken the serpent?"
"Of course."
"I don't believe that. He did it because he was angry with the serpent
for not hurting me, for letting me take it."
"As you please," he said. "What does it matter?"
She glanced at him, and sat down. The expression in his eyes soothed
her, the new look that she could read. Had it been called up by her
courage with the serpent? She wondered if, by her impulsive action, she
had grasped something in him which till now had seemed to elude her.
Nevertheless, although her mood was changing, the sense of personal
outrage had not completely died out of her.
"There really are other serpent eaters?" she asked.
"Of course. Saadees."
"And that man is one? But he hated my taking the serpent."
"But I did not hate it."
"No."
More strongly she felt that she had grasped something in him which had
eluded her till now.
"Sit there for a minute quietly," he said, with a gentleness that,
though far less boyish, recalled to her mind the smiling gentleness of
Ibrahim. "And I will give you a new pleasure, and all your anger will go
from you as the waves go from the Nile when the breeze has died away."
"What is it?"
His eyes were full of a sort of happy cunning like a child's.
"Sit there and you will know."
He went out of the room, and came back in a moment carrying a good-sized
box carefully wrapped in silver paper. She began to think that he was
going to give her another present, perhaps some wonderful jewel. But he
undid the silver paper cautiously, opened a red-leather case, and
displayed a musical box. After placing it tenderly upon the
coffee-table, he bent down and set it going. There was a click, a slight
buzzing, and then upon Mrs. Armine's enraptured ears there fell the
strains of an old air from a forgotten opera of Auber's, "Come o'er the
Moonlit Sea!"
The change from the Saadee's atmosphere of savage fanaticism to this
mild and tinkling insipidity threw Mrs. Armine's nerves off their
balance.
"Oh, Baroudi!" she said.
Her lips began to tremble. She turned away her head. The effort not to
betray her almost hysterical amusement, which was combined with an
intense desire to pet this great, robust child, almost suffocated her.
There was a click. The music stopped.
"Wait a moment!" she heard him say.
And his voice sounded grave, like an intensely appreciative child's.