XXII

The Fayyum is a great and superb oasis situated upon a plateau of the

desert of Libya, wonderfully fertile, rich, and bland, with a splendid

climate, and springs of sweet waters which, carefully directed into a

network of channels, spreading like wrinkles over the face of the land,

carry life and a smiling of joy through the crowding palms, the olive

and fruit trees, the corn and the brakes of the sugar-cane. The

Egyptians often call it "the country of the roses," and they say that

everything grows there. The fellah thinks of it as of a Paradise where

man can only be happy. Every Egyptian who has ever set the butt end of a

gun against his shoulder sighs to be among its multitudinous game. The

fisherman longs to let down his net into the depths of its sacred lake.

The land-owner would rather have a few acres between Sennoures and Beni

Suwef than many in the other parts of Egypt. The man who is amorous

yearns after the legendary beauty of its unveiled women, with their

delicately tattooed chins, their huge eyes, and their slim and sinuous

bodies. And scarcely is there upon the Nile a brown boy whose face will

not gleam and grow expressive with desire at the sound of the words

"El-Fayyum."

It is a land of Goshen, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of

the heart's desire, this green tract of sweet and gracious fertility to

which the Bahr-Yusuf is kind.

But to Mrs. Armine it was from the very first a hateful land.

Their camp was pitched on a piece of brown waste ground, close to a

runlet of water, near a palm-grove that shut out from them the native

houses of the great village or country town of Sennoures. The land which

Nigel's fellahin were reclaiming and had reclaimed--for much of it was

already green with luxuriant crops--was farther away, where the oasis

runs flush with the pale yellow, or honey-coloured, or sometimes

spectral grey sands of the desert of Libya. But Nigel, when he first

came to the Fayyum, had first gone into camp among the palms of

Sennoures, and there had heard the Egyptian Pan in the night; and he

wanted to renew certain impressions, to feel them decked out, as it

were, with novel graces now that he was no longer lonely; so he had

ordered the camp to be pitched by the little stream that he knew, in

order to savour fully the great change in his life.

The railway from Cairo goes to Sennoures, so they came by train, and

arrived rather late in the afternoon. Three days later the Sacred Carpet

was to depart from Cairo on its journey to Mecca, and at

Madinat-al-Fayyum, and at other stations along the route, there were

throngs of natives assembled to bid farewell to the pilgrims who were

departing to accompany it and to worship at the Holy Places. Small and

cheap flags of red edged with a crude yellow fluttered over the doors or

beneath the hanging shutters of many dwellings, and the mild and limpid

atmosphere was full of the chanting of the songs of pilgrimage in high

and nasal voices. Once at a roadside station there was for some

unexplained reason a long delay, during which Mrs. Armine sat at the

window and looked out upon the crowd, while Nigel got down to stretch

his legs and see the people at closer quarters. Loud and almost angry

hymns rose up not only from some of the starting pilgrims, but also from

many envious ones who would never be "hajjee." Presently, just before

the carriage door, a strange little group was formed; a broad, sturdy

man with a brutal, almost white-skinned face garnished with a bristling

black beard but no moustache, who wore the green turban, an elderly man

with staring, sightless eyes, carrying a long staff, and three heavily

veiled women, in thin robes partially covered with black, loose-sleeved

cloaks, whose eyelids were thickly adorned with kohl, whose hands were

dyed a deep orange-colour with the henna, and who rattled and clinked as

they moved and the barbaric ornaments of silver and gold which circled

their arms and ankles shifted upon their small-boned limbs. The blind

man was singing loudly. The women, staring vacantly, held the corners of

their cloaks mechanically to their already covered faces. The man with

the bristling beard talked violently with friends, and occasionally,

interrupting himself abruptly, joined almost furiously in the blind

man's hymn. On the platform lay a few bundles wrapped in gaudy cloths

and handkerchiefs. From outside the station came the perpetual

twittering of women.

As Mrs. Armine looked at these people Nigel came up.

"They are going to Mecca," he said. "You see those bundles? The poor

things will be away for months, and that is all they are taking."

The blind man shouted his hymn. Fixing his small and vicious eyes upon

Mrs. Armine, the man with the beard joined in. A horn sounded. Nigel got

into the carriage, and the train moved slowly out of the station. Mrs.

Armine stared at the man with the beard, who kept his eyes upon her,

always roaring his hymn, until he was out of sight. His expression was

actively wicked. Yet he was starting at great expense with infinite

hardships before him, to visit and pray at the Holy Places. She

remembered how Baroudi had stared at her while he sang.

"What strange people they are!" said Nigel.

"Yes, they are very strange."

"One can never really know them. There is an eternal barrier between us,

the great stone wall of their faith. To-day all the world seems going on

pilgrimage. We too, Ruby!"

Even at Sennoures, when they got down, the station was crowded, and the

air was alive with hymns. Ibrahim met them, and Hamza was outside the

fence with the donkey for Mrs. Armine. He was joining in the singing,

and his long eyes held a flame. But when he saw Mrs. Armine, his voice

ceased, and he looked at her in silence. As she greeted him, she felt an

odd mingled sensation of fear and of relief. He was a link between her

and Baroudi, yet he looked a fatal figure, and she could never rid

herself of the idea that some harm, or threatening of great danger,

would come to her through him.

As they left the station and rode towards the palm-trees, the noise of

the hymns grew less, but even when they came in sight of the tents the

voices of the pilgrims were still faintly audible, stealing among the

wrinkled trunks, through the rich, rankly growing herbage, over the

running waters, to make a faint music of religion about their nomad's

home.

But after sunset the voices died away. The train had carried the

pilgrims towards Cairo, and, trooping among the palm-trees, or along the

alleys of Sennoures, the crowd dispersed to their homes.

And a silence fell over this opulent land, which already Mrs. Armine

hated.

She hated it as a woman hates the place which in her life is substituted

for the place where is the man who has grasped her and holds her fast,

whatever the dividing distance between them.

That night, as she sat in the tent, she saw before her the orange garden

that bordered the Nile, the wild geraniums making a hedge about the

pavilion of bamboo, she heard the loud voice of the fellah by the

shaduf. Was it raised in protest or warning? Did she care? Could she

care? Could any voice stop her from following the voice that called her

on? And what was it in Baroudi that made his summons to her so intense,

so arbitrary? What was it in him that governed her so completely? Now

that he was far away she could ask herself a question that she could not

ask when she was near him.

He was splendid in physique, but so were other men whom she had known

and ruled, not been ruled by. He was bold, perhaps indifferent at

bottom, though sometimes, in certain moments, on the surface far from

indifferent. Others had been like that, and she had not loved them. He

was intensely passionate. (But Nigel was passionate, though he kept a

strong hand upon the straining life of his nature.) He was very strange.

He was very strange. She understood and could not understand him. He was

very strange, and full of secret violence in which religion and vice

went hand in hand. And his religion was not canting, nor was his vice

ashamed. The one was as bold and as determined as the other. She seemed

to grasp him, and did not grasp him. Such a failure piques a woman, and

out of feminine pique often rises feminine passion. He was intent upon

her. Yet part of him escaped her. Did he love her? She did not know. She

knew he drove her perpetually on towards greater desire of him. Yet even

that driving action might not be deliberate on his part. He seemed too

careless to plot, and yet she knew that he plotted. Was he now at Aswan

with some dancing-girl of his own people? Not one word had she heard of

him since the day which had preceded the night of the storm when the

ginnee had come in the wind. Abruptly he had gone out of her life. At

their last meeting he had said nothing about any further intercourse.

Yet she knew that he meant to meet her again, that he meant--what? His

deep silence did not tell her. She could only wonder and suspect, and

govern herself to preserve the bloom of her beauty, and, looking at

Ibrahim and Hamza, trust to his intriguing cleverness to "manage things

somehow." Yet how could they be managed? She looked at the future and

felt hopeless. What was to come? She knew that even if, driven by

passion, she were ready to take some mad, decisive step, Baroudi would

not permit her to take it. He had never told her so, but instinctively

she knew it. If he meant anything, it was something quite different from

that. He must mean something, he must mean much; or why was Hamza out

here in the green depths of the Fayyum?

Nigel had gone to Sennoures to order provisions, leaving her to rest

after the journey from Cairo. She got up from the sofa in the

sitting-room tent, which was comfortable in a very simple way but not at

all luxurious, went to the opening, and looked out.

Night had fallen, the stars were out, and a small moon, round which was

a luminous ring of vapour, lit up the sky, which was partially veiled by

thin wreaths of cloud. The densely growing palms looked like dark wands

tufted with enormous bunches of feathers. Among them she saw a light. It

came from a tent pitched at some distance, and occupied by a middle-aged

German lady who was travelling with a handsome young Arab. They had

passed on the road close by the camp when the Armines were having tea,

and Nigel had asked Ibrahim about them. Mrs. Armine remembered the look

on his face when, having heard their history, he had said to her, "Those

are the women who ruin the Europeans' prestige out here." She had

answered, "_That_ is a thing I could never understand!" and had begun to

talk of other matters, but she had not forgotten his look. If--certain

things--she might be afraid of Nigel.

Dogs barked in the distance. She heard a faint noise from the runlet of

water in front of the camp. From the heavily-cumbered ground, smothered

with growing things except just where the tents were pitched, rose a

smell that seemed to her autumnal. Along the narrow road that led

between the palms and the crops to the town, came two of their men

leading in riding camels. A moment later a bitter snarling rose up,

mingling with the barking of the dogs and the sound of the water. The

camels were being picketed for the night's repose. The atmosphere was

not actually cold, but there was no golden warmth in the air, and the

wonderful and exquisitely clean dryness of Upper Egypt was replaced by a

sort of rich humidity, now that the sun was gone. The vapour around the

moon, the smell of the earth, the distant sound of the dogs and the

near sound of the water, the feeling of dew which hung wetly about her,

and the gleam of the light from that tent distant among the palm-trees,

made Mrs. Armine feel almost unbearably depressed. She longed with all

her soul to be back at Luxor. And it seemed to her incredible that any

one could be happy here. Yet Nigel was perfectly happy and every

Egyptian longed to be in the Fayyum.

The sound of the name seemed to her desolate and sad.

But Baroudi meant something. Even now she saw Hamza, straight as a reed,

coming down the shadowy track from the town. She must make Nigel

happy--and wait. She must make Nigel very happy, lest she should fall

below Baroudi's estimate of her, lest she should prove herself less

clever, less subtle, than she felt him to be.

Hamza's shadowy figure crossed a little bridge of palm-wood that spanned

the runlet of water, turned and came over the waste ground noiselessly

into the camp. He was walking with naked feet. He came to the men's

tent, where, in a row, with their faces towards the tent door, the

camels were lying, eating barley that had been spread out for them on

bits of sacking. When he reached it he stood still. He was shrouded in a

black abayeh.

"Hamza!"

Mrs. Armine had called to him softly from the tent-door.

"Hamza!"

He flitted across the open space that divided the tents, and stood

beside her.

She had never had any conversation with Hamza. She had never heard him

say any English word yet but "yes." But to-night she had an uneasy

longing to get upon terms with him. For he was Baroudi's emissary in the

camp of the Fayyum.

"Are you glad to be in my service, Hamza?" she said. "Are you glad to

come with us to the Fayyum?"

"Yes," he said.

She hesitated. There was always something in his appearance, in his

manner, which seemed to fend her off from him. She always felt as if

with his mind and soul he was pushing her away. At last she said:

"Do you like me, Hamza?"

"Yes," he replied.

"You have been to Mecca, haven't you, with Mahmoud Baroudi?"

"Yes."

He muttered the word this time. His hands had been hanging at his sides,

concealed in his loose sleeves, but now they were moved, and one went

quickly up to his breast, and stayed there.

"What are you doing?" Mrs. Armine said, with a sudden sharpness; and,

moved by an impulse she could not have explained, she seized the hand at

his heart, and pulled it towards her. By the light of the young moon she

saw that it was grasping tightly a sort of tassel made of cowries which

hung round his neck by a string. He covered the shells with his fingers,

and showed his teeth. She let his hand go.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

She turned and went into the tent, and he flitted away like a shadow.

That night, when Nigel came in from Sennoures, she said to him:

"What is the meaning of those tassels made of shells that Egyptians

sometimes wear round their necks?"

"What sort of shells?" he asked.

"Cowries."

"Cowries--oh, they're supposed to be a charm against the evil eye and

bad spirits. Where have you seen one?"

"On a donkey-boy up the Nile, at Luxor."

She changed the conversation.

They were sitting at dinner on either side of a folding table that

rested on iron legs. Beneath their feet was a gaudy carpet, very thick

and of a woolly texture, and so large that it completely concealed the

hard earth within the circle of the canvas, which had a lining of deep

red, covered with an elaborate pattern in black, white, yellow, blue,

and green. The tent was lit up by an oil-lamp, round which several night

moths revolved, occasionally striking against the globe of glass. The

tent-door was open, and just outside stood Ibrahim, with his head and

face wrapped up in a shawl with flowing fringes, to see that the native

waiter did his duty properly. Through the opening came the faint sound

of running water and the distant noise of the persistent barking of

dogs. The opulent smell of the rich and humid land penetrated into the

tent and mingled with the smell from the dishes.

Nigel's face was radiant. They had got right away from modern

civilization into the wilds, and, manlike, he felt perfectly happy. He

looked at Ruby, seeking a reflection of his joy, yet a little doubtful,

too, realizing that this was an experiment for her, while to him it was

an old story to which she was supplying the beautiful interest of love.

She answered his look with one that set his mind at rest, which thrilled

him, yet which only drew from him the prosaic remark:

"The cook isn't so bad, is he, Ruby?"

"Excellent," she said. "I don't know when I've had such a capital

dinner. How can he do it all in a tent?"

She moved her chair.

"This table's a little bit low," she said. "But I've no business to be

so tall. In camp one ought to be the regulation size."

"Have you been uncomfortable?" he exclaimed, anxiously.

"No, no--not really. It doesn't matter."

"I'll have it altered, made higher somehow, to-morrow. We must have

everything right, as we're going to live in camp for some time."

She got up.

"I won't take coffee to-night," she said. "It would be too horrid to

sleep badly in a tent."

"You'll see, you'll sleep splendidly out here. Every one does in camp.

One is always in the air, and one gets thoroughly done by the evening."

"Yes, but I shan't be working so hard as you do."

She went to the tent-door.

"How long shall we be in the Fayyum?" she asked, carelessly. "How long

were you in it last year?"

"Off and on for nearly six months."

She said nothing. He struck a match and lit a cigar.

"But of course now it's different," he said. "If you like it, we can

stay on, and if you don't we can go back presently to the villa."

"And your work?"

"I ought to be here, so I hope you will like it, Ruby."

He joined her at the tent-door.

"But this winter I mean to live for you, and to try to make you happy.

We'll just see how you like being here. Do you think you will like it?

Do you feel, as I do, the joy of being in such perfect freedom?"

He put his arm inside hers.

"It's a tremendous change for you, but is it a happy change?" he asked.

"It's wonderful here," she answered; "but it's so strange that I shall

have to get accustomed to it."

As she spoke, she was longing, till her soul seemed to ache, to take the

early morning train to Cairo. Accustomed for years to have all her

caprices obeyed, all her whims indulged by men, she did not know how she

was going to endure this situation, which a passionate love alone could

have made tolerable. And the man by her side had that passionate love

which made the dreary Fayyum his Heaven. She could almost have struck

him because he was so happy.

"There's one thing I must say I should love to do before we go away from

Egypt," she said, slowly.

She seemed to be led or even forced to say it.

"What's that?"

"I should love to go up the Nile on a dahabeeyah."

"Then you shall. When we leave here and pass through Cairo, I'll pick

out a boat, and we'll send it up to Luxor, go on board there, and then

sail for Assouan. But you mustn't think we shall get a _Loulia_."

He laughed.

"Millionaires like Baroudi don't hire out their boats," he added. "And

if they did, I couldn't pay their price while Etchingham's so badly

let."

Her forehead was wrinkled by a frown. She hated to hear a man who loved

her speak of his poverty. It had become a habit of her mind to think

that no man had a right to love her unless he could give her exactly

what she wanted.

"Shall we go out, Ruby?"

"Very well."

They stepped out on to the waste ground. His hand was still on her arm,

and he led her down to the stream. The young moon was already setting.

The starry sky was flecked here and there with gossamer veils of cloud.

A heavy dew was falling upon the dense growths of the oasis, and in the

distance of the palm-grove, where gleamed the lamp from the tent of the

German lady and the young Arab, a faint and pearly mist was rising.

Nigel drew in his breath, then let it out. It went in vapour from his

lips.

"We've left the dryness of Upper Egypt," he said. "This is the country

of fertility, the country where things grow. The dews at night are

splendid. But wait a moment. I'll get you a cloak. I'm your maid,

remember."

He fetched a cloak and wrapped it round her.

"I suppose the _Loulia_ is far up the river," he said. "Perhaps at

Assouan. I wonder if we shall see Baroudi some day again. I think he's a

good sort of fellow; but after all, one can never get really quite in

touch with an Eastern. I used to think one could. I used to swear it,

but--"

He shook his head and puffed at his cigar. Quite unconsciously he had

taken the husband's tone. There was something in the very timbre of his

voice which seemed to assume Ruby's agreement. She longed to startle

him, to say she was far more in touch with an Eastern than she could

ever be with him, but she thought of the dahabeeyah, the Nile, the

getting away from here.

"To tell the truth," she said, "I have always felt that. There is an

impassable barrier between East and West."

She looked at the distant light among the palm-trees. Then, with

contempt, she added:

"Those who try to overleap it must be mad, or worse."

Nigel's face grew stern.

"Yes," he said. "I loathe condemnation. But there are some things which

really are unforgivable."

He swung out his arm towards the light.

"And that is one of them. I hate to see that light so near us. It is the

only blot on perfection."

"Don't look at it," she murmured.

His unusual expression of vigorous, sane disgust, and almost of

indignation, partly fascinated and partly alarmed her.

"Don't think of it. It has nothing to do with us. Hark! What's that?"

A clear note, like the note of a little flute, sounded from the farther

side of the stream, was reiterated many times. Nigel's face relaxed. The

sternness vanished from it, and was replaced by an ardent expression

that made it look almost like the face of a romantic boy.

"It's--it's the Egyptian Pan by the water," he whispered.

His arm stole round her waist.

"Come a little nearer--gently. That's it! Now listen!"

The little, clear, frail sound was repeated again and again.

The young moon went down behind the palm-trees. Its departure, making

the night more dark, made the distant light in the grove seem more

clear, more definite, more brilliant.

It drew the eyes, it held the eyes of Bella Donna as the Egyptian Pan

piped on.