A week later Mrs. Armine received a telegram from Cairo:
"Starting to-night, arrive to-morrow morning. Love--Nigel."
She had been expecting such a message; she had known that it must come;
yet when Hassan brought it into the garden, where she was sitting at the
moment, she felt as if she had been struck. Hassan waited calmly beside
her till, with an almost violent gesture, she showed him there was no
answer. When he had gone she sat for a moment with the telegram on her
knees; then she cried out for Ibrahim. He heard her voice, and came,
with his sauntering gait, moving slowly among the rose-trees.
"I've a telegram from Cairo," she said.
She took up the paper and showed it to him.
"My lord Arminigel--he is comin' back?"
"Yes."
"That is very good noos, very nice noos indeed," said Ibrahim, with an
air of sleepy satisfaction.
"He starts to-night, and will be here with the express to-morrow
morning."
"This is a most bootiful business!" said Ibrahim, blandly. "My lord he
has been away so long he will be glad to see us again."
She looked at him, but he did not look at her. Turning a flower in his
white teeth, he was gazing towards the river, with an unruffled
composure which she felt almost as a rebuke. But why should it matter to
him? Baroudi had paid him. Nigel paid him. He had no reason to be upset.
"When he comes," she said, "he will take me away to the Fayyum."
"Yes. The Fayyum is very nice place, very good place indeed. There is
everythin' there; there is jackal, pidgin, duck, lots and lots of
sugar-cane; there is water, there is palm-trees; there is everythin'
what any one him want."
"Ah!" she said.
She got up, with a nervously violent movement.
"What's the good of all that to you?" she said. "You're not going with
us to the Fayyum, I suppose."
He said nothing.
"Are you?" she exclaimed.
"Suttinly."
"You are coming. How do you know? Has Mr. Armine told you?"
"My lord, he tell me nothin', but I comin' with you, and Hamza him
comin' too."
"Hamza is coming?"
"Suttinly."
She was conscious of a sensation of relief that was yet mingled with a
faint feeling of dread.
"Why--why should Hamza come with us?" she asked.
"To be your donkey-boy. Hamza he very good donkey-boy."
"I don't know--I am not sure whether I shall want Hamza in the Fayyum."
Ibrahim looked at her with a smiling face.
"In the Fayyum you will never find good donkey-boy, my lady, but you
will do always what you like. If you not like to take Hamza, Hamza very
sad, very cryin' indeed, but Hamza he stay here. You do always what you
think."
When he had finished speaking, she knew that Hamza would accompany
them; she knew that Baroudi had ordered that Hamza was to come.
"We will see later on," she said, as if she had a will in this matter.
She looked at her watch.
"It's time to start."
"The felucca him ready," remarked Ibrahim. "This night the _Loulia_
sailin'; this night the _Loulia_ he go to Armant."
Mrs. Armine frowned. Armant--Esneh--Kom Ombos--and then Aswan! The
arbitrariness of her nature was going to be scourged with scorpions by
fate, it seemed. How was she to endure that scourging? But--there was
to-day. When was she going to learn really to live for the day? What a
fool she was! Still frowning, and without saying another word, she went
upstairs quickly to dress.
It was past midnight when she returned to the villa. There was no moon;
wind was blowing fiercely, lashing the Nile into waves that were edged
with foam, and whirling grains of sand stripped away from the desert
over the prairies and gardens of Luxor. The stars were blotted out, and
the night was cold and intensely dark. She held on tightly to Ibrahim's
arm as she struggled up the bank from the river, and almost felt her way
to the house, from which only two lights gleamed faintly. The French
windows of the drawing-room were locked, and they went round the house
to the front door. As Ibrahim put up his hand to ring the bell, a sudden
fear came to Mrs. Armine. Suppose Nigel had started earlier from Cairo
than he had intended? Suppose he had returned and was then in the house?
She caught Ibrahim's hand. He said something which was carried away and
lost to her in the wind. She dropped his hand; he rang, and in a moment
the door was opened by Hassan.
"Ask him if--if anything has happened, if there is any message, anything
for me!" she said to Ibrahim directly she was in the house.
Ibrahim spoke to Hassan in Arabic.
"My lady, he says there is nothin'."
"Very well. I'll go to bed. Good night, Ibrahim."
And she went upstairs.
When she was in her bedroom she shut the door and sat down just as she
was, with a veil over her face, the collar of her dust-coat turned up,
her shining hair dishevelled by the angry hands of the gale. A lamp was
burning on the dressing-table, upon which, very oddly arranged, stood a
number of silver things, brushes, bottles, boxes, which were usually in
the dressing-room. They were set out in a sort of elaborate and very
fantastic pattern, which recalled to her sharply a fact. She had no
longer a maid. She had got rid of Marie, who had left Luxor on the
previous day, neither tearful nor, apparently, angry, but looking sharp,
greedy, and half-admiringly inquisitive to the very last. Mrs. Armine
had come to her two days before holding an open letter from Nigel, and
had announced to her his decision that a lady's maid in the Fayyum would
be an impossibility, and that Marie would have to be left behind, for
the time, at Luxor. And then had followed a little scene admirably
played by the two women; Mrs. Armine deploring the apparent necessity of
their separation, but without undue feeling or any exaggeration; Marie
regretting "monsieur's" determination to carry "une dame si delicate, si
fine" into "un monde si terrible, si sauvage," but at the same time
indicating, with a sly intention and the most admirably submissive
_nuances_, the impossibility of her keeping house in the villa alone
with a group of Nubians. Both women had really enjoyed themselves, as
talent must when exercising itself with perfect adroitness. Mrs. Armine
had regretted Marie's decision, while at the same time applauding her
maidenly _delicatesse_, and had presently, by chance, discovered that
several charming purchases from Paris were no good to her, that two or
three remarkably attractive gowns made her look "like nothing at all,"
and that, as she was going to the Fayyum, she "couldn't be bothered
with" some hats that were, as Marie had often said, _"plus chic que le
diable_!" Then a wonderful "character" had been written out, signed, and
had changed hands, with an exceedingly generous cheque. Certain
carelessly delivered promises had been made which Marie knew would be
kept. She had given a permanent address in France, and the curtain had
slowly fallen. Ah, the pity of it that there had been no audience! But
talent, like genius, should be its own consolation and reward.
So now Hassan arranged Mrs. Armine's "things." She was thankful that
Marie had gone, yet she felt utterly lost without a maid. Never, since
she was a young girl, had she been accustomed to do anything for herself
that a good maid could do for her. And there was not a woman-servant in
the house. She was tired, she was terribly strung up; her nerves were
all on edge; her heart was aflame with a jealousy which, she knew too
well, was destined to be fanned and not to be assuaged in the days that
lay before her. And she felt profoundly depressed. It was awful to come
home in such a condition in the dead of the night, and to be deprived of
all one's comforts. When she saw those silver things all laid out
wrongly, the brushes pointing this way and that, the combs fixed in them
with the teeth upwards, the bottles of perfume laid on their sides
instead of standing erect, the powder-boxes upside down, she felt ready
to cry her eyes out. And no one to take away her hat, to loosen and
brush her hair, to get her out of her gown, to unlace her shoes! And
Nigel at nine o'clock to-morrow!
The wind roared outside. One of the hanging wooden shutters that
protected the windows had got loose, and was now, at short intervals,
striking against the wall with a violent sound that suggested to her a
malefactor trying to break in. She knew what caused the reiterated
noise; she knew she could probably stop it by opening the window for a
moment and putting out her hand. And yet she felt afraid to do this,
afraid to put out her hand into the windy darkness, lest it should be
grasped by another hand. She was full of nervous fears.
As she sat there, she could scarcely believe she was in Egypt. The
roaring of the wind suggested some bleak and Northern clime. The shutter
crashed against the wall. At last she could bear the noise no longer,
and she got up, went out on to the landing, and called out: "Ibrahim!"
There was no answer. The lights were out. She felt afraid of the yawning
darkness.
"Ibrahim! Ibrahim!" she cried.
She heard the sough of drapery, and a soft and striding step. Somebody
was coming quickly. She drew back into her room, and Ibrahim appeared.
"My lady, what you want?"
She pointed to the window.
"The shutter--it's got loose. Can you fasten it? It's making such an
awful noise. I shan't be able to sleep all night."
He opened the window. The wind rushed in. The lamp flared up and went
out.
For two or three minutes Mrs. Armine heard nothing but the noise of the
wind, which seemed to have taken entire possession of the chamber, and
she felt as if she were its prey and the prey of the darkness. Something
that was like hysteria seized upon her, a desperate terror of fate and
the unknown. In the wind and in the darkness she had a grievous
sensation of helplessness and of doom, of being lost for ever to
happiness and light. And when the wind was shut out, when a match
grated, a little glow leaped up, and Ibrahim, looking strangely tall and
vast in the black woollen abayeh which he had put on as a protection
against the cold, was partially revealed, she sprang towards him with a
feeling of unutterable relief.
"Oh, Ibrahim, what an awful night! I'm afraid of it!" she said.
Deftly he lit the lamp; then he turned to her and stared.
"My lady, you are all white, like the lotus what Rameses him carry."
She had laid her hand on his arm. Now she let it drop, sat down on the
sofa, unpinned her hat and veil, and threw them down on the floor.
"It's the storm. I hate the sound of wind at night."
"The ginnee him ride in the wind," said Ibrahim, very seriously.
"The ginnee! What is that?"
"Bad spirit. Him come to do harm. Him bin in the room to-night."
They looked at each other in silence. Then Mrs. Armine said:
"Is the shutter quite safe now?"
"Suttinly."
"Then good night, Ibrahim."
"Good night, my lady."
He went over to the door.
"Suttinly the ginnee him bin in the room to-night," he said, solemnly.
She tried to smile at this absurdity, but her lips refused to obey her
will.
"Who should he come for?" she asked.
"I dunno. P'raps he come to meet my Lord Arminigel. It is bad night
to-night. Mohammed him die to-night. Him die on the night from Sunday
Monday."
He drooped morosely and went out, softly closing the door behind him.
As soon as he had gone Mrs. Armine undressed, leaving her clothes
scattered pell-mell all over the room, and got into her bed. She kept
the lamp burning. She was afraid of the dark, and she knew she would not
sleep. Although she laughed at Egyptian superstition, as she glanced
about the room she was half unconsciously looking for the shadowy form
of a ginnee. All night the wind roared, and all night she lay awake,
wondering, fearing, planning, imagining, in terror of the future, yet
calling upon her adroitness, her strong fund of resolution, to shape it
as she willed.
And she would have helpers--Baroudi, Ibrahim, Hamza.
When at dawn the wind died down, and at last slumber, like a soft wave,
came stealing over her, the last thing she saw with her imagination was
Hamza, straight, enigmatic, grave, holding an upright wand in his hand.
Or was it the ginnee, who had come in out of the night to meet "my lord
Arminigel"?
* * * * *
What was that? Was it the ginnee moving, speaking?
Was it--? There had surely been a movement in the room, a sound. She
opened her eyes, and saw sunshine and some one by the bed.
"Ruby!"
She blinked, stared, lying perfectly still.
"Ruby!"
She felt a hand on one of her hands. The touch finally recalled her from
sleep, and she knew the morning and Nigel. He stood beside the bed in
loose travelling clothes, dusty, with short, untidy hair, and a radiant
brown face, looking down on her, holding her hand.
"Did I frighten you? I didn't mean to. But I thought you must be awake
by now."
There was no sound of reproach in his voice, but there was perhaps just
a touch of disappointment. She sat up, leaning against the big pillow.
"And I meant to be at the station to meet you!" she said.
He sat down close to the bed, still keeping his hand on hers.
"You did?"
"Of course. It's this horrid habit I've got into of lying awake at night
and sleeping in the morning. And there was such a storm last night."
"I know. The ginnee were abroad."
He spoke laughingly, but she said:
"How did you know that?"
"How? Why, in Egypt--but what do you mean?"
But she had recovered herself, was now fully awake, fully herself,
entirely freed from the thrall of the night.
"How well you look!" she said.
"Work!" he replied. "Sun--life under the tent! It's glorious! How I want
you to love it! But, I say, shan't we have some tea together? And then
I'll jump into a bath. It's too cold for the Nile this morning. And I'm
all full of dust. I'll ring for Marie."
He moved, but she caught his hand.
"Nigel!"
"Yes?"
"Don't ring for Marie."
"Why not?"
"It wouldn't be any use."
"What--is she ill!"
"She's gone."
"Gone!"
He looked at the confusion of the room, at the clothes strewn on the
furniture and the floor.
"Now I understand all that," he said. "But what was the matter? Did she
steal something, or--perhaps I ought to have had another woman in the
house."
"No, no; it wasn't that. I sent her away quite amicably; because I
thought she'd be in our way in the Fayyum. What could we do with her in
a tent?"
"You're going to manage without a maid?"
A radiant look of pleasure came into his face.
"You're a trump!" he said.
He bent down, put his hands gently on her shoulders, and gave her a long
kiss.
"And this is how you're managing!" he added, lifting himself up, and
speaking with a sort of tender humour as again he looked at the room. "I
must learn to maid you."
And he went about rather clumsily getting the things together, picking
them up by the wrong end, and laying them in a heap on the sofa.
"Ill do better another time," he said, when he had finished, rather
ruefully surveying his handiwork. "And now I'll call Hassan and get tea,
and while we're having it I'll tell you about our camp in the Fayyum. To
think of your giving up your maid!"
He kissed her again, with a lingering tenderness, and went out.
As soon as he was gone she got up. She had to search for a wrapper. She
did not know where any of her things were. How maddening it was to be
without a maid! More than once, now that Nigel was back and she could
not go to Baroudi, she almost wished that she had kept Marie. Would it
have been very unwise to keep her? She pulled out drawer after drawer.
She was quite hot and tired before she had found what she wanted. What
would life be like in a tent? She almost sickened at the thought of all
that was before her. Ah! here was the wrapper at last. She tore it out
from where it was lying with reckless violence, and put it on anyhow;
then suddenly her real nature, the continuous part of her, asserted
itself. She went to the mirror and adjusted it very carefully, very
deftly. Then she twisted up her hair simply, and considered herself for
a moment.
Had the new truth stamped itself yet upon her face, her body?
She saw before her a woman strongly, strikingly alive, thrilling with
life. The eyes, released from sleep, were ardent, were full of the
promises of passion; the lips were fresh, surely, and humid; the figure
was alluring and splendid; the wonderful line of the neck had kept all
its beauty. She had grown younger in Egypt, and she knew very well why.
For her the new truth was clearly stamped, but not for Nigel. He would
read it wrongly; he would take it for himself, as so many deceived men
from the beginning of time have taken the truths of women, thinking "All
this is for me." She looked long at herself, and she rejoiced in the
vital change that had come over her, and, rejoicing, she came to the
resolve of a vain woman. She must exert all her will to keep with her
this Indian summer. She must school her nature, govern her passions,
drill her mind to accept with serenity what was to come--dulness, delay,
the long fatigues of playing a part, the ennui of tent life, of this
_solitude a deux_ in the Fayyum. She must not permit this opulence of
beauty to be tarnished by the ravages of jealousy; for jealousy often
destroys the beauty of women, turns them into haggard witches. But she
would not succumb; for, in her creed beauty was everything to a woman,
and the woman who had lost her beauty had ceased to count, was scarcely
any more to be numbered among the living. This sight and appreciation
of herself suddenly seemed to arm her at all points. Her depression,
which had peopled the night with horrors and the morning with
apprehensions, departed from her. She was able to believe that the
future held golden things, because she was able to believe in her own
still immense attraction.
That day she contented Nigel, she fascinated him, she charmed him with
her flow of animal spirits. He could deny her nothing. And when,
laughingly, she begged him, as she had dispensed with a maid, to let her
have her own special donkey-boy and donkey in the Fayyum, he was ready
to acquiesce.
"We'll take Mohammed, of course, if you wish," he said, heartily,
"though there are lots of donkey-boys to be got where we are going."
"I've given up Mohammed," she said.
He looked surprised.
"Have you? What's he done?"
"Nothing specially. But I prefer Hamza."
"The praying donkey-boy!"
"Yes."
She paused; then, looking away from him, she said slowly:
"There's something strange to me and interesting about him. I think it
comes, perhaps, from his intense belief in his religion, his intense
devotion to the Moslem's faith. I--I can't help admiring that, and I
should like to take Hamza with us. He's so different from all the
others."
Then, with a changed and lighter tone, she added:
"Besides, his donkey is the best on the river. It comes from Syria, and
is a perfect marvel. Give me Hamza, his donkey, and Ibrahim as my suite,
and you shall never hear a complaint from me, I promise you."
"Of course you shall have them," he said. "I like the man to whom his
beliefs mean something, even if they're not mine and could never be
mine."
So the fate of Hamza and Ibrahim was very easily settled.
But when Nigel called Ibrahim, and told him that he had decided on
taking him and Hamza to the Fayyum, and that he was to tell Hamza at
once, Ibrahim looked a little doubtful.
"All what my gentleman want I do," he said. "But Hamza do much business
in Luxor; I dunno if him come to the Fayyum."
He glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Armine.
"I very glad to come, but about Hamza I dunno."
He spoke with such apparent sincerity that she was almost deceived, and
thought that perhaps some difficulty had really arisen.
"Offer him his own terms," exclaimed Nigel, "and I'll bet he'll be glad
to come."
"I go to see, my gentleman."
"You shall have him, Ruby, whatever his price," said Nigel.
Ibrahim, with great difficulty, he said, made a bargain with Hamza, and
on the following day the Villa Androud was left in Hassan's charge, and
the Armines went north by the evening express to Cairo, where they were
to stay two days and nights, in order that Mrs. Armine might see the
Pyramids and the Sphinx. Nigel had already taken rooms at the Mena
House, with a terrace exactly opposite to the Great Pyramid, and giving
on to the sand of the desert.
They breakfasted at Shepheard's, then hired a victoria to drive up
Ismail's road under the meeting lebbek-trees. Nigel was in glorious
spirits. It seemed to him that morning as if his life were culminating,
as if he were destined to a joy of which he was scarcely worthy. An
unworldly man, and never specially fond of society or anxious about its
edicts and its opinions, he did not suffer, as many men might have done,
under his knowledge of its surprised pity for him, or even contempt. But
in his secret heart he was glad that he was cut out of the succession to
his family's title and the estates. Had he succeeded to them, his
position would at once have become more difficult, his situation with
Ruby far more complicated. As things were, they two were free as the
wind. His soul leaped up to their freedom.
"I feel like a nomad to-day!" he exclaimed. "By Jove, though! isn't the
wind cold? It always blows in the winter over these flats. Wrap yourself
well up, darling."
He put up his hand to draw the furs more closely round her. When with
her now he so easily felt protective that he was perpetually doing
little things for her, and he did them with a gentleness of touch that,
coming from a man of his healthy strength and vigour, revealed the
progress made by the inner man in absence.
"I must be your maid," he added.
"But you'll be working and shooting," she said, speaking out of the
depths of her furs in a low voice.
Her face was shrouded in a veil which seemed to muffle her words, and he
only just heard them.
"You come first. I am going to look after you before anything else," he
said.
She pulled up her veil till her lips were free of it.
"But I want your work to come first," she said, speaking with more
energy. "I hate the woman who marries a man because she admires his
character, and who then seeks by every means to change it, to reduce him
from a real man to--well, to a sort of male lady's maid. No, Nigel;
stick to your work, and I'll manage all right."
She felt just then that she could not endure it if he were always intent
on her in the Fayyum. And yet she wished him to be her slave, and she
always wished to be adored by men. But now there was something within
her which might, perhaps, in the fulness of time even get the upper hand
of her vanity.
"We'll see," he answered. "It'll be all right about the work, Ruby. You
see the Pyramids well now."
She looked across the flats to those great tombs which draw the world to
their feet.
"I wish it wasn't so horribly cold," she said.
And Baroudi was away in the gold of the south, and perhaps with the
"Full Moon."
"It won't be half so bad when we get to Mena House. There's always a
wind on this road in winter."
"And in the Fayyum? Will it be cold there?"
"No, not like this. Only at nights it gets cold sometimes, and there's
often a thick mist."
"A thick mist!"
"But we shall be warm and cosy in our tent, and we shall know nothing
about it."
And the _Loulia_ was floating up the Nile into the heart of the gold!
Her heart sank. But then she remembered her resolution in the villa. And
her vanity, and that which a moment ago had seemed to be fighting
against it, clasped hands in resistant friendship.
The victoria rolled smoothly; the horses trotted fast in the brisk air;
the line of the desert, pale and vague in the windy morning, grew more
distinct, more full of summons; the orifice that was the end of the
avenue gaped like a mouth that opens more widely. A line of donkeys
appeared, with here and there a white camel with tasselled trappings,
surrounded by groups of shouting Egyptians, who stared at the carriage
with avaricious eyes. "Ah--ah!" shouted the coachman. The horses broke
into a gallop, turned into a garden on the right, and drew up before the
Mena House.
A minute later Mrs. Armine was standing on a terrace that ended in a sea
of pale yellow sand. Nigel followed her, but only after some minutes.
"You seem to know everybody here," she said to him, in a slightly
constrained voice, as he came to stand beside her.
"Well, there are several fellows from Cairo come here to spend Sunday."
"With their wives apparently."
"Yes, some of them. Of course last winter I got to know a good many
people. It's much warmer here. We get all the sun, and there's much less
wind. And isn't the Great Pyramid grand?"
He took her gently by the arm.
"The Sphinx is beyond. I want you to see that for the first time just
before nightfall, Ruby."
"Whatever you like," she said.
Her voice still sounded constrained. On the veranda and in the hall of
the hotel she had had to run the gauntlet, and now that she was married
again, and had abandoned the defiant life which she had led for so many
years, somehow she had become less careless of opinion, of the hostility
of women, than she had formerly been. She wished to be accepted again.
As Lady Harwich she could have forced people to accept her.
As she looked at the Great Pyramid, she was saying that to herself, and
Nigel's words about the Sphinx fell upon inattentive ears. Although he
did not know it, in bringing her to Mena House just at this moment he
had taken a step that was unwise. But he was walking in the dark.
At lunch in the great Arabic hall officers from the garrisons of Cairo
and Abbassieh, and their womenkind, were in great force. Acquaintances
of Nigel's sat at little tables to the right and left of them. In other
parts of the room were scattered various well-known English people, who
stared at Mrs. Armine when they chose to imagine she did not see them.
Not far off Lord and Lady Hayman and the Murchisons reappeared.
A more effective irritant to Mrs. Armine's temper and nerves at this
moment than this collection of people afforded could scarcely have been
devised by her most subtle enemy. But not by a glance or movement did
she betray the fact. She had had time to recover herself, to regain
perfect outward self-control. But within her a storm was raging. Into
the chamber of her soul, borne upon the wings of the wind, were flocking
the ginnees out of the dense darkness of night. And when the twilight
came, throwing its pale mystery over the desert, and the wonders the
desert kept, they had taken possession of her spirit.
The travellers who, during the day, had peopled the waste about the
Pyramids had gone back to Cairo by tram and carriage, or were at tea in
the hotel, when the Armines, mounted on donkeys, rode through the
twilight towards the Sphinx. They approached it from behind. The wind
had quite gone down, and though the evening was not warm, the sharpness
of the morning had given place to a more gentle briskness that was in
place among the sands. Far off, across the plains and the Nile, the
lights of Cairo gleamed against the ridges of the Mokattam. Through the
empty silence of this now deserted desert they rode in silence, till
before them, above the grey waste of the sand, a protuberance arose.
"Do you see that, Ruby?" Nigel said, pulling at his donkey's rein.
"That thing like a gigantic mushroom? Yes. What is it?"
"The Sphinx."
"That!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, but only the back of its head. All the body is concealed. Wait
till you've ridden round it and seen it from the front."
She said nothing, and they rode on till they came to the edge of the
deep basin in which the sacred monster lies with the sand and its
ceaseless fame about it, till they had skirted the basin's rim, and
faced it full on the farther bank. There they dismounted, and Nigel
ordered their donkey-boys to lead the beasts away till they were out of
earshot. The dry sound of their tripping feet, over the stones and hard
earth which edged the sand near by, soon died down into the twilight,
and the Armines were left alone.
Although the light of day was rapidly failing, it had not entirely gone;
day and night joined hands in a twilight mystery which seemed not only
to fall from the sky, so soon to be peopled with stars, but also to rise
from the pallor of the sands, and to float about the Sphinx. In the
distance the Great Pyramid was black against the void.
Mrs. Armine at first stood perfectly still looking at the monster. Then
she made Nigel a sign to spread her dust-cloak upon the ridge of the
sand, and she sat down on it, and looked again. She did not speak. The
pallor of the twilight began to grow dusky, as if into its yellow grey
and grey white, from some invisible source a shadowy black was
filtering. A cool air stirred, coming from far away where the sands
stretch out towards the Gold Coast. It failed, then came again, with a
slightly greater force, a more definite intention.
Nigel was standing, but presently, as Ruby did not move, he sat down
beside her, and clasped his brown hands round his knees so tightly that
they went white at the knuckles. He stole a glance at her, and thought
that her face looked strangely fixed and stern, almost cruel in its
repose, and he turned his eyes once more towards the Sphinx.
And then he forgot Ruby, he forgot Egypt, he forgot everything except
that greatest creation which man has ever accomplished; that creation
which by its inexorable calm and prodigious power rouses in some hearts
terror and sets peace in some, stirs some natures to aspiration, and
crushes others to the ground with an overwhelming sense of their
impotence, their smallness, their fugitive existence, and their dark and
mysterious fate.
Upon Mrs. Armine the effect of the Sphinx, whatever it might have been
at a less critical moment in her life, at this moment was cruel. The
storm had broken upon her and she faced the uttermost calm. She was the
prey of conflicting forces, wild beasts of which herself was the cage.
And she was confronted by the beast of the living rock which, in its
almost ironic composure, its power purged of passion, did it deign to be
aware of her she felt could only, with a strange stillness, mock her.
She was a believer only in the little life, and here lay the conception
of Eternity, struck out of the stone of the waste by man, to say to her
with its motionless lips, "Thou fool!" And as she had within her
resolution, will, and an unsleeping vanity, this power which confronted
her not only dimly distressed, but angered her. She felt angry with
Nigel. She forgot, or chose not to remember, that the Sphinx was the
wonder of the world, and she said to herself that she knew very well why
Nigel had brought her by night to see it. He had brought her to be
chastened, he had brought her to be rebuked. In the heat of her nervous
fancy it almost seemed to her for a moment as if he had divined
something of the truth that was in her, truth that struck hard at him,
and his hopes of happiness, and all his moral designs, and as if he had
brought her to be punished by the Sphinx. In the grasp of the monster
she writhed, and she hated herself for writhing. Once in her presence
Baroudi had sneered at the Sphinx. Now she remembered his very words:
"We Egyptians, we have other things to do than to go and stare at the
Sphinx. We prefer to enjoy our lives while we can, and not to trouble
about it." She remembered the shrug of his mighty shoulders that had
accompanied the words. Almost she could see them and their disdainful
movement before her. Yes, the Sphinx was fading away in the night, and
Baroudi was there in front of her. His strong outline blotted out from
her the outline of the Sphinx. The evening star came out, and the breeze
arose again from its distant place in the sands, and whispered round the
Sphinx.
She shivered, and got up.
"Let us go; I want to go," she said.
"Isn't it wonderful, Ruby?"
"Yes. Where are the Arabs?"
She could no longer quite conceal her secret agitation, but Nigel
attributed it to a wrong cause, and respected it. The Sphinx always
stirred powerfully the spiritual part of him, made him feel in every
fibre of his being that man is created not for time, but for Eternity.
He believed that it had produced a similar effect in Ruby. That this
effect should distress her did not surprise him, but roused in his heart
a great tenderness towards her, not unlike the tenderness of a parent
who sees the tears of a child flow after a punishment the justice of
which is realized. The Sphinx had made her understand intensely the
hatefulness of certain things.
When he had helped her on to her donkey he kept his arm about her.
"Do you realize what it has been to me to see the Sphinx with you?" he
whispered.
The night had fallen. In the darkness they went away across the desert.
And the Sphinx lay looking towards the East, where the lights of Cairo
shone across the flats under the ridges of the Mokattam.