The dinner in camp that night was quite a joyous festival. Nigel brought
back two duck, Ibrahim made a fine fire of brushwood to warm the eager
sportsman, and Ruby was in amazing spirits. She played to perfection the
part of ardent housewife. She came and went in the sand, presiding over
everything. She even penetrated into the cook's tent with Ibrahim to
give Mohammed some hints as to the preparation of the duck.
"This is your holiday," she said to Nigel. "I want it to be a happy one.
You must make the most of it, and go out shooting all the time. They say
there's any amount of jackals down there in the tamarisk bushes. Are you
going to have a shot at them to-night?"
Nigel stretched out his legs, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
"I don't know, Ruby. I should like to, but it's so jolly and cosy here."
He looked towards the fire, then back at her.
"I'm not sure that I'll go out again," he said.
"I dare say you're tired."
"No, that's not it. The truth is that I'm tremendously happy in camp
with you. And I love to think of the desolation all round us, and that
there isn't a soul about, except a few gipsies down there, and a few
wild, half-naked fishermen. We've brought our own oasis with us into the
Libyan Desert. And I think to-night I'll be a wise man and stick to the
oasis."
She smiled at him.
"Then do!"
In the midst of her smile she yawned.
"I shall go to bed directly," she said.
She seemed to suppress another yawn.
"You mean to go to bed early?" he asked.
"Almost directly. Do you mind? I'm dog tired with the long camel ride,
and I shall sleep like twenty tops."
She put her hand on his shoulder. Her whole face was looking sleepy.
"You old wretch," she said. "What do you mean by looking so horribly
wide awake?"
He put his hand over hers, and laughed.
"I seem to be made of iron in this glorious country. I'm not a bit
sleepy."
She stifled another yawn.
"Then I'll"--she put up her hand to her mouth--"I'll sit up a little to
keep you company."
"Indeed, you shan't. You shall go straight to bed, and when you're
safely tucked up I think perhaps I will just go down and have a look for
the jackals. If you're going to sleep, I might as well--"
He drew down her face to his and gave her a long kiss.
"I'll put you to bed first, and when you're quite safe and warm and
cosy, I'll make a start."
She returned his kiss.
"No, I'll see you off."
"But why?"
"Because I love to see you starting off in the night to the thing that
gives you pleasure. That's my pleasure. Not always, because I'm too
selfish. On the Nile you'll have to attend to me, to do everything I
want. But just for these few days I'm going to be like an Eastern woman,
at the beck of my lord and master. So I must see you start, and
then--oh, how I shall sleep!"
He got up.
"P'r'aps I'll be out till morning. I wonder if Hamdi's got a goat."
He went away for his gun. In a very few minutes he left the camp, gaily
calling to her, "Sleep well, Ruby! You look like a sorceress standing
there all lit up by the fire. The flames are flickering over you. Good
night--good night!"
His steps died away in the sands, his voice died away in the darkness.
She waited, standing perfectly still by the fire, for a long time. Her
soul seemed running, rushing over the sands towards the ridge that met
the sky, but her will kept her body standing beside the flames, until at
last the sportsmen were surely far enough away.
"Ibrahim!"
"My lady?"
"How are we going?"
She was whispering to him beside the fire.
"Does it matter the camel-men knowing? Are they to know? Am I to ride or
walk?"
"You leave everythin' to Ibrahim. You go in your tent, and presently I
come."
She went at once into the tent, and sat down on a folding chair. A
little round iron table stood before it. She leaned her arms on the
table and laid her face against the back of her hand. Her cheek was
burning. She sprang up, went to her dressing-case, unlocked it, drew out
the _boite de beaute_ which Baroudi had given her in the orange-garden,
and quickly made her face up, standing before the glass that was pinned
to the canvas. Then she put on a short fur coat. The wind would be cold
in the sands. She wondered how far they had to go.
And if Nigel should unexpectedly return, as nearly all husbands did on
such occasions?
She could not bother about that. She felt too desperate to care; she
felt in the grasp of fate. If the fate was to be untoward, so much the
worse for her--and for Nigel. She meant to go beyond that ridge of the
sand. That was all she knew. Quickly she buttoned the fur coat and put
on a hat and gloves.
"Now we goin' to start."
Ibrahim put his muffled head in at the door of the tent.
"Walking?" she asked.
"We goin' to start walkin'."
When she came out, she found that the brushwood fire had been pulled to
pieces.
"Down there they not see nothin'," said Ibrahim, pointing towards the
darkness before them.
"And the men? Does it matter about the men?" she asked perfunctorily.
She did not feel that she really cared.
"All the men sleepin', except Hamza. Him watchin'."
The tents of the men were at some distance. She looked, and saw no
movement, no figures except the faint and grotesque silhouettes of the
hobbled camels.
"I say that I follow my Lord Arminigel."
They started into the desert. As they left the camp, Mrs. Armine saw
Hamza behind her tent, patrolling with a matchlock over his shoulder.
The night was dark and starless; the breeze, though slight and wavering
over the sands, was penetrating and cold. The feet of Mrs. Armine sank
down at each step into the deep and yielding sands as she went on into
the blackness of the immeasurable desert. And as she gazed before her at
the hollow blackness and felt the immensity of the unpeopled spaces, it
seemed to her that Ibrahim was leading her into some crazy adventure,
that they were going only towards the winds, the desolate sands, and the
darkness that might be felt. He did not speak to her, nor she to him,
till she heard, apparently near them the angry snarl of a camel. Then
she stopped.
"Did you hear that? There's some one near us," she said.
"My lady come on! That is a very good dromedary for us."
"Ah!" she said.
She hastened forward again. In two or three seconds the camel snarled
furiously again.
"The Bedouin he make him do that to tell us where he is," said Ibrahim.
He cried out some words in Arabic. A violent guttural voice replied out
of the darkness. In a moment, under the lee of a sand dune, they came
upon two muffled figures holding two camels, which were lying down. Upon
one there was a sort of palanquin, in which Mrs. Armine took her seat,
with a Bedouin sitting in front. A stick was plied. The beast protested,
filling the hollow of the night with a complaint that at last became
almost leonine; then suddenly rose up, was silent, and started off at a
striding trot.
Mrs. Armine could not measure either the time that elapsed or the space
that was covered during that journey. She was filled with a sense of
excitement and adventure that she had never experienced before, and that
made her feel oddly young. The dark desert, swept by the chilling
breeze, became to her suddenly a place of strong hopes and of desires
leaping towards fulfilment. She was warmed through and through by
expectation, as she had not been warmed by the great camp fire that had
been kindled to greet Nigel. And when at last in the distance there
shone out a light, like an earth-bound star, to her all the desert
seemed glowing with an almost exultant radiance.
But the light was surely far away, for though the dromedary swung on
over the desert, it did not seem to her to grow clearer or brighter, but
like a distant eye it regarded her with an almost cruel steadiness, as
if it calmly read her soul.
And she thought of Baroudi's eyes, and looking again at the yellow
light, she felt as if he were watching her calmly from some fastness of
the sands to which she could not draw near.
In the desert it is difficult to measure distances. Just as Mrs. Armine
was thinking that she could never gain that light, it broadened, broke
up into forms, the forms of leaping flames blown this way and that by
the stealthy wind of the waste, became abruptly a fire revealing vague
silhouettes of camels, of crouching men, of tents, of guard dogs, of
hobbled horses. She was in the midst of a camp pitched far out in a
lonely place of the sands within sight of no oasis.
The dromedary knelt. She was on her feet with Ibrahim standing beside
her.
For a moment she felt dazed. She stood still, consciously pressing her
feet down against the sand which glowed in the light from the flames.
She saw eyes--the marvellous, birdlike eyes of Bedouins--steadily
regarding her beneath the darkness of peaked hoods. She heard the
crackle of flames in the windy silence, a soft grating sound that came
from the jaws of feeding camels. Dogs snuffed about her ankles.
"My lady, you comin' with me!"
Mechanically she followed Ibrahim away from the fire, across a strip of
sand to a large tent that stood apart. As she drew near to it her heart
began to beat violently and irregularly, and she felt almost like a
girl. For years she had not felt so young as she felt to-night. In this
dark desert, among these men of Africa, all her worldly knowledge, all
her experience of men in civilized countries seemed of no use to her.
It was as if she shed it, cast it as a snake casts its skin, and stood
there in a new ignorance that was akin to the wondering ignorance of
youth. The canvas flap that was the door of the tent was fastened down.
Ibrahim went up to it and called out something. For a moment there was
no answer. During that moment Mrs. Armine had time to notice a second
smaller tent standing, with Baroudi's, apart from all the others. And
she fancied, but was not certain, that as for an instant the breeze died
down, she heard within it a thin sound like the plucked strings of some
instrument of music. Then the canvas of the big tent was lifted, light
shone out from within, and she saw the strong outline of a man. He
looked into the night, drew back, and she entered quickly and stood
before Baroudi. Then the canvas fell down behind her, shutting out the
night and the desert.
Baroudi was dressed in Arab costume. His head was covered with a white
turban spangled with gold, his face was framed in snowy white, and his
great neck was hidden by drapery. He wore a kuftan of striped and
flowered silk with long sleeves, fastened round his waist with lengths
of muslin. Over this was a robe of scarlet cloth. His legs were bare of
socks, and on his feet were native slippers of scarlet morocco leather.
In his left hand he held an immensely long pipe with an ivory
mouthpiece.
Mrs. Armine looked from him to his tent, to the thick, bright-coloured
silks which entirely concealed the canvas walls, to the magnificent
carpets which blotted out the desert sands, to the great hanging lamp of
silver, which was fastened by a silver chain to the peaked roof, to the
masses of silk cushions of various hues that were strewn about the
floor. Once again her nostrils drew in the faint but heavy perfume which
she always associated with Baroudi, and now with the whole of the East,
and with all Eastern things.
That racing dromedary had surely carried her through the night from one
world to another. Suddenly she felt tired; she felt that she longed to
lie down upon those great silk cushions, between those coloured walls
of silk that shut out the windy darkness and the sad spaces of the
sands, and to stay there for a long time. The courtesan's lazy,
luxurious instinct drowsed within her soul, and her whole body responded
to this perfumed warmth, to this atmosphere of riches created by the man
before her in the core of desolation.
She sighed, and looked at his eyes.
"And how is Mr. Armeen?" he said, with the faintly ironic inflection
which she had noticed in their first interview alone. "Has he gone out
after the jackal?"
What his intention was she did not know, but he could not have said
anything to her at that moment that would have struck more rudely upon
her sensuous pleasure in the change one step had brought her. His words
instantly put before her the necessity for going presently, very soon,
back to the camp and Nigel, and they woke up in her the secret woman,
the woman who still retained the instincts of a lady. This lady
realized, almost as Eve realized her nakedness, the humiliation of that
rush through the night from one camp to another, the humiliation that
lay in the fact that it was she who sought the man, that he had her
brought to him, did not trouble to come to her. She reddened beneath the
paint on her face, turned swiftly round, bent down, and tried to undo
the canvas flap of the tent. Her intention was to go out, to call
Ibrahim, to leave the camp at once. But her hands trembled and she could
not undo the canvas. Still bending, she struggled with it. She heard no
movement behind her. Was Baroudi calmly waiting for her to go? Some one
must have pegged the flap down after she had come in. She would have to
kneel down on the carpet to get at the fastenings. It seemed to her, in
her nervous anger and excitement, that to kneel in that tent would be a
physical sign of humiliation; nevertheless, after an instant of
hesitation, she sank to the ground and pushed her hands forcibly under
the canvas, feeling almost frantically for the ropes. She grasped
something, a rope, a peg--she did not know what--and pulled and tore at
it with all her force.
Just then the night wind, which blew waywardly over the sands, now
rising in a gust that was almost fierce, now dying away into a calm that
was almost complete, failed suddenly, and she heard a frail sound which,
by its very frailty, engaged all her attention. It was a reiteration of
the sound which she thought she had heard as she waited outside the
tent, and this time she was no longer in doubt. It was the cry of an
instrument of music, a stringed instrument of some kind, plucked by
demure fingers. The cry was repeated. A whimsical Eastern melody, very
delicate and pathetic, crept to her from without.
It suggested to her--women.
Her hands became inert, and her fingers dropped from the tent-pegs. She
thought of the other tent, of the smaller tent she had seen, standing
apart near Baroudi's. Who was living in that tent?
The melody went on, running a wayward course. It might almost be a
bird's song softly trilled in some desolate place of the sands, but--
It died away into the night, and the night wind rose again.
Mrs. Armine got up from her knees. Her hands were trembling no longer.
She no longer wished to go.
"Arrange some of those cushions for me, Baroudi," she said. "I am tired
after my ride."
He had not moved from where he had been standing when she came in, but
she noticed that his long pipe had dropped from his hand and was lying
on the carpet.
"Where shall I put them?" he asked, gravely.
She pointed to the side of the tent which was nearest to the smaller
tent.
"Against the silk, two or three cushions. Then I can lean back. That
will do."
She unbuttoned her fur jacket.
"Help me!" she said.
He drew it gently off. She sat down, and pulled off her gloves. She
arranged the cushions with care behind her back. Her manner was that of
a woman who meant to stay where she was for a long time. She was
listening intently to hear the music again, but her face did not show
that she was making any effort. Her self was restored to her, and her
self was a woman who in a certain world, a world where women crudely,
and sometimes quite openly, battle with other women for men, had for a
long time resolutely, successfully, even cruelly, held her own.
Baroudi watched her with serious eyes. He picked up his pipe and let
himself down on his haunches close to where she was leaning against her
cushions. The night wind blew more strongly. There was no sound from the
other tent. When Mrs. Armine knew that the wind must drown that strange,
frail music, even if the hidden player still carelessly made it, she
said, with a sort of brutality:
"And if my husband comes back to camp before my return there?"
"He will not."
"We can't know."
"The dromedary will take you there in fifteen minutes."
"He may be there now. If he is there?"
"Do you wish him to be there?"
He had penetrated her thought, gone down to her desire. That sound of
music, that little cry of some desert lute plucked by demure fingers,
perhaps stained with the henna, the colour of joy, had rendered her
reckless. At that moment she longed for a crisis. And yet, at his
question, something within her recoiled. Could she be afraid of Nigel?
Could she cower before his goodness when it realized her evil? Marriage
had surely subtly changed her, giving back to her desires, prejudices,
even pruderies of feeling that she had thought she had got rid of for
ever long ago. Some spectral instincts of the "straight" woman still
feebly strove, it seemed, to lift their bowed heads within her.
"Things can't go on like this," she said. "I don't know what I wish. But
I am not going to allow myself to be treated as you think you can treat
me. Do you know that in Europe men have ruined themselves for
me--ruined themselves?"
"You liked that!" he intercepted, with a smile of understanding. "You
liked that very much. But I should never do that."
He shook his head.
"I would give you many things, but I am not one of those what the
Englishman calls 'dam fools.'"
The practical side of his character, thus suddenly displayed, was like a
cool hand laid upon her. It was like a medicine to her fever. It seemed
for a moment to dominate a raging disease--the disease of her desire for
him--which created, to be its perpetual companion, a furious jealousy
involving her whole body, her whole spirit.
"Because you don't care for me," she said, after a moment of hesitation,
and again running, almost in despite of herself, to meet her
humiliation. "Every man who cares for a woman can be a fool for her,
even an Eastern man."
"Why do I come here," he said, "two days through the desert from the
Sphinx?"
"It amuses you to pursue an Englishwoman. You are cruel, and it amuses
you."
Her cruelty to Nigel understood Baroudi's cruelty to her quite clearly
at that moment, and she came very near to a knowledge of the law of
compensation.
His eyes narrowed.
"Would you rather I did not pursue you?"
She was silent.
"Would you rather be left quietly to your life with Mr. Armeen?"
"Oh, I'm sick of my life with him!" she cried out, desperately. "It
would be better if he were in camp tonight when I got back there; it
would be much better!"
"And if he were in camp--would you tell him?"
Contempt crawled in his voice.
"You are not like one of our women," he said. "They know how to do what
they want even behind the shutters of their husbands' houses. They are
clever women when they walk in the ways of love."
[Illustration]
He had made her feel like a child. He had struck hard upon her pride of
a successful demi-mondaine.
"Of course I shouldn't tell him!" she said. "But perhaps it would be
better if I did. For I'm tired of my life."
Again the horrible melancholy which so often comes to women of her type
and age, and of which she was so almost angrily afraid, flowed over her.
She must live as she wished to live in these few remaining years. She
must break out of prison quickly, or, when she did break out, there
would be no freedom that she could enjoy. She had so little time to
lose. She could tell nothing to Baroudi of all this, but perhaps she
could make him feel the force of her desire in such a way that an equal
force of answering desire would wake in him. Perhaps she had never
really exerted herself enough to put forth, when with him, all the
powers of her fascination, long tempered and tried in the blazing
furnaces of life.
The gusty wind died down across the sands, and again she heard the frail
sound of the desert lute. It wavered into her ears, like something
supple, yielding, insinuating.
There was a woman in that tent.
And she, Bella Donna, must go back to camp almost directly, and leave
Baroudi with that woman! She was being chastised with scorpions
to-night.
"Why did you come to this place?" she said.
"To be with you for an hour."
The irony, the gravity, that seemed almost cold in its calm, died out of
his eyes, and was replaced by a shining that changed his whole aspect.
There was the divine madness in him too, then. Or was it only the
madness that is not divine? She did not ask or care to know.
The night wind rose again, drowning the little notes of the desert lute.
* * * * *
That night, without being aware of it, Mrs. Armine crossed a Rubicon.
She crossed it when she came out of the big tent into the sands to go
back to the camp by the lake. While she had been with Baroudi the sky
had partially cleared. Above the tents and the blazing fire some stars
shone out benignly. A stillness and a pellucid clearness that were full
of remote romance were making the vast desert their sacred possession.
The aspect of the camp had changed. It was no longer a lurid and
mysterious assemblage of men, animals, and tents, half revealed in the
light of blown flames, half concealed by the black mantle of night, but
a tranquil and restful picture of comfort and of repose, full of the
quiet detail of feeding beasts, and men smoking, sleeping, or huddling
together to tell the everlasting stories and play the games of draughts
that the Arabs love so well.
But blackness and gusty storm were within her, and made the vision of
this desert place, governed by the huge calm of the immersing night in
this deep hour of rest, almost stupefying by its contrast with herself.
Baroudi had gone out first to speak with Ibrahim. She saw him, made
unusually large and imposing by the ample robes he wore, the innumerable
folds of muslin round his head, stride slowly across the sand and mingle
with his attendants, who all rose up as he joined them. For a moment she
stood quite still just beyond the shadow of the tent.
The exquisitely cool air touched her, to make her know that she was on
fire. The exquisite clearness fell around her, to make her realize the
misty confusion of her soul. She trembled as she stood there. Not only
her body, but her whole nature was quivering.
And then she heard again the player upon the lute, and she saw a faint
ray of light upon the sand by the tent she had not entered. She buttoned
her fur jacket, twisted her gloves in her hands, and looked towards the
ray. There was a hard throbbing in her temples, and just beneath her
shoulders there came a sudden shock of cold, that was like the cold of
menthol. She looked again at the camp fire; then she stole over the
sand, set her feet on the ray, and waited.
For the first time she realized that she was afraid of Baroudi, that she
would shrink from offending him almost as a dog shrinks from offending
its master. But would it anger him if she saw the lute-player? He had
not taken the trouble to silence that music. He treated women _de haut
en bas_. That was part of his fascination for them--at any rate, for
her. What would he care if she knew he had a woman with him in the camp,
if she saw the woman?
And even if he were angry? She thought of his anger, and knew that at
this moment she would risk it--she would risk anything--to see the woman
in that tent. Thinking with great rapidity in her nervous excitement and
bitter jealousy, become tenfold more bitter now that the moment had
arrived for her departure, she imagined what the woman must be: probably
some exquisite, fair Circassian, young, very young, fifteen or sixteen
years old, or perhaps a maiden from the Fayyum, the region of lovely
dark maidens with broad brows, oval faces, and long and melting black
eyes. Her fancy drew and painted marvellous girls in the night. Then, as
a louder note, almost like a sigh, came from the tent, she moved
forward, lifted the canvas, and looked in.
The interior was unlike the interior of Baroudi's tent. Here nothing was
beautiful, though nearly everything was gaudy. The canvas was covered
with coarse striped stuff, bright red and yellow, with alternate red and
yellow rosettes all round the edge near the sand, which was strewn with
bits of carpet on which enormous flowers seemed to be writhing in a
wilderness of crude green and yellow leaves. Fastened to the walls, in
tarnished frames, were many little pictures--oleographs of the most
blatant type, chalk drawings of personages such as might people an ugly
dream; men in uniforms with red noses and bulbous cheeks; dogs, cats,
and sand-lizards, and coloured plates cut out of picture papers. Mingled
with these were several objects that Mrs. Armine guessed to be charms, a
mus-haf, or copy of the Koran, enclosed in a silver case which hung from
a string of yellow silk; one or two small scrolls and bits of paper
covered with Arab writing; two tooth-sticks in a wooden tube, open at
one end; a child's shoe tied with string, to which were attached bits of
coral and withered flowers; several tassels of shells mingled with
bright blue and white beads; a glass bottle of blessed storax; and a
quantity of Fatma hands, some very large and made of silver gilt, set
with stones and lumps of a red material that looked like sealing-wax,
others of silver and brass, small and practically worthless. There was
also the foot of some small animal set in a battered silver holder. On a
deal table stood a smoking oil lamp of mean design and cheap material.
Underneath it was a large wooden chest or coffer, studded with huge
brass nails, clamped with brass, and painted a brilliant green. Near it,
touching the canvas wall, was a mattress covered with gaudy rugs that
served as a bed.
In the tent there were two people. Although the thin sound of the music
had suggested a woman to Mrs. Armine, the player was not a woman, but a
tall and large young man, dressed in a bright yellow jacket cut like a
"Zouave," wide drawers of white linen, yellow slippers, and the tarbush.
Round his waist there was a girdle, made of a long and narrow red and
yellow shawl with fringes and tassels. He was squatting cross-legged on
the hideous carpet, holding in his large, pale hands, artificially
marked with blue spots and tinted at the nails with the henna, a strange
little instrument of sand-tortoise, goat-skin, wood, and catgut, with
four strings from which he was drawing the plaintive and wavering tune.
He wore a moustache and a small, blue-black beard. His eyes were half
shut, his head drooped to one side, his mouth was partly open, and the
expression upon his face was one of weak and sickly contentment. Now and
then he sang a few notes in a withdrawn and unnatural voice, slightly
shook his large and flaccid body, and allowed his head to tremble almost
as if he were seized with palsy. Despite his breadth, his large limbs,
and his beard, there was about his whole person an indescribable
effeminacy, which seemed heightened, rather than diminished, by his bulk
and his virile contours. A little way from him on the mattress a girl
was sitting straight up, like an idol, with her legs and feet tucked
away and completely concealed by her draperies.
Mrs. Armine looked from the man to her with the almost ferocious
eagerness of the bitterly jealous woman. For she guessed at once that
the man was no lover of this girl, but merely an attendant, perhaps a
eunuch, who ministered to her pleasure. This was Baroudi's woman, who
would stay here in the tent beside him, while she, the fettered,
European woman, would ride back in the night to Kurun. Yet could this be
Baroudi's woman, this painted, jewelled, bedizened creature, almost
macawlike in her bright-coloured finery, who remained quite still upon
her rugs--like the macaw upon its perch--indifferent, somnolent surely,
or perhaps steadily, enigmatically watchful, with a cigarette between
her painted lips, above the chin, on which was tattooed a pattern
resembling a little, indigo-coloured beard or "imperial"? Could he be
attracted by this face, which, though it seemed young under its thick
vesture of paint and collyrium, would surely not be thought pretty by
any man who was familiar with the beauties of Europe and America, this
face with its heavy features, its sultry, sullen eyes, its plump cheeks,
and sensual lips?
Yes, he could. As she looked, with the horrible intuition of a
feverishly strung up and excited woman Mrs. Armine felt the fascination
such a creature held to tug at a man like Baroudi. Here was surely no
mind, but only a body containing the will, inherited from how many
Ghawazee ancestors, to be the plaything of man; a well-made body, yes,
even beautifully made, with no heaviness such as showed in the face, a
body that could move lightly, take supple attitudes, dance, posture,
bend, or sit up straight, as now, with the perfect rigidity of an idol;
a body that could wear rightly cascades of wonderfully tinted draperies,
and spangled, vaporous tissues, and barbaric jewels, that do not shine
brightly as if reflecting the modern, restless spirit, but that are
somnolent and heavy and deep, like the eyes of the Eastern women of
pleasure.
The player upon the desert lute had not seen that some one stood in the
tent door. With half-shut eyes he continued playing and singing, lost in
a sickly ecstasy. The woman on the gaudy rug sat quite still and stared
at Mrs. Armine. She showed no surprise, no anger, no curiosity. Her
expression did not change. Her motionless, painted mouth was set like a
mouth carved in some hard material. Only her bosom stirred with a
regular movement beneath her coloured tissues, her jewels and strings of
coins.
Mrs. Armine stepped into the tent and dropped the flap behind her. She
did not know what she was going to do, but she was filled with a bitter
curiosity that she could not resist, with an intense desire to force her
way into this woman's life, a life so strangely different from her own,
yet linked with it by Baroudi. She hated this woman, yet with her hatred
was mingled a subtle admiration, a desire to touch this painted toy that
gave him pleasure, a longing to prove its attraction, to plumb the depth
of its fascination, to learn from it a lesson in the strange lore of the
East. She came close up to the woman and stood beside her.
Instantly one of the painted hands went up to her jacket, and gently,
very delicately, touched its fur. Then the other hand followed, and the
jacket was felt with wondering fingers, was stroked softly, first
downwards, then upwards, while the dark and heavy eyes solemnly noted
the thin shine of the shifting skin. The curiosity of Mrs. Armine was
met by another but childlike curiosity, and suddenly, out of the cloud
of mystery broke a ray of light that was naive.
This naivete confused Mrs. Armine. For a moment it seemed to be pushing
away her anger, to be drawing the sting from her curiosity. But then the
childishness of this strange rival stirred up in her a more acrid
bitterness than she had known till now. And the wondering touch became
intolerable to her. Why should such a creature be perfectly happy, while
she with her knowledge, her experience, her tempered and perfected
powers, lived in a turmoil of misery? She looked down into the
Ghawazee's eyes, and suddenly the painted hands dropped from the fur,
and she was confronted by a woman who was no longer naive, who
understood her, and whom she could understand.
The voice of the lute-player died away, the thin cry of the strings
failed. He had seen. He rose to his feet, and said something in a
language Mrs. Armine could not understand. The girl replied in a voice
that sounded ironic, and suddenly began to laugh. At the same moment
Baroudi came into the tent. The girl called out to him, pointed at Mrs.
Armine, and went on laughing. He smiled at her, and answered.
"What are you saying to her?" said Mrs. Armine, fiercely. "How dare you
speak to her about me? How dare you discuss me with her?"
"P'f! She is a child. She knows nothing. The camel is ready."
The girl spoke to him again with great rapidity, and an air of
half-impudent familiarity that sickened Mrs. Armine. Something seemed to
have roused within her a sense of boisterous humour. She gesticulated
with her painted hands, and rocked on her mattress with an abandon
almost negroid. Holding his lute in one pale hand, and stroking his
blue-black beard with the other, her huge and flaccid attendant looked
calmly on without smiling.
Mrs. Armine turned and went quickly out of the tent. Baroudi spoke again
to the girl, joined in her merriment, then followed Mrs. Armine. She
turned upon him and took hold of his cloak with both her hands, and her
hands were trembling violently.
"How dared you bring me here?" she said. "How dared you?"
"I wanted you. You know it."
"That's not true."
"It is true."
"It is not true. How could you want me when you had that dancing-girl
with you?"
He shrugged his shoulders, almost like one of the Frenchmen whom he had
met ever since he was a child.
"You do not understand the men of the East, or you forget that I am an
Oriental," he said.
A sudden idea struck her.
"Perhaps you are married, too?" she exclaimed.
"Of course I am married!"
His eyes narrowed, and his face began to look hard and repellent.
"It is not in our habits to discuss these things," he said.
She felt afraid of his anger.
"I didn't mean--"
She dropped her hands from his cloak.
"But haven't I a right?" she began.
She stopped. What was the use of making any claim upon such a man? What
was the use of wasting upon him any feeling either of desire or of
anger? What was the use? And yet she could not go without some
understanding. She could not ride back into the camp by the lake and
settle down to virtue, to domesticity with Nigel. Her whole nature cried
out for this man imperiously. His strangeness lured her. His splendid
physique appealed to her with a power she could not resist. He dominated
her by his indifference as well as by his passion. He fascinated her by
his wealth, and by his almost Jewish faculty of acquiring. His irony
whipped her, his contempt of morality answered to her contempt. His
complete knowledge of what she was warmed, soothed, reposed her.
But the thought of his infidelity to her as soon as she was away from
him roused in her a sort of madness.
"How am I to see you again?" she said.
And all that she felt for him went naked in her voice.
"How am I to see you again?"
He stood and looked at her.
"And what is to happen to me if he has found out that I have been away
from the camp?"
"Hamza will make an explanation."
"And if he doesn't believe the explanation?"
"You will make one. You will never tell him the truth."
It was a cold command laid like a yoke upon her.
"He can never know I have been here. To-night, directly you are gone, I
strike my tents and go back to Cairo. I do not choose to have any bad
affairs with the English so long as the English rule in Egypt. I am well
looked upon by the English, and so it must continue. Otherwise my
affairs might suffer. And that I will not have. Do you understand?"
She looked at him, and said nothing.
"We have to do what we want in the world without losing anything by it.
Thus it has always been with me in my life."
She thought of all she had lost long ago by doing the thing she desired,
and again she felt herself inferior to him.
"And this, too, we shall do without losing anything by it," he said.
"This? What?"
"Go back to Kurun. Tell me. Will you not presently need to have a
dahabeeyah?"
"And if we do?"
"You shall have the _Loulia_."
"You mean to come with us?"
"Are you a child? I shall let it to your husband at a price that will
suit his purse, so that you may be housed as you ought to be. I shall
let it with my crew, my servants, my cook. Then you must take your
husband away with you quietly up the Nile."
Again Mrs. Armine was conscious of a shock of cold.
"Quietly up the Nile?" she repeated.
"Yes."
"What is the use of that?"
"Perhaps he will like the Nile so much that he will not come back."
He looked into her eyes. She heard the snarl of a camel.
"Your camel is ready," he said.
They walked towards the fire where Ibrahim was awaiting them. Before
Mrs. Armine had settled herself in the palanquin Baroudi moved away
without another word, and as the camel rose, complaining in the night,
she saw him lift the canvas of the Ghawazee's tent and disappear within
it.
When she reached the camp by the lake, Nigel had not returned. She
undressed quickly, got into bed, and lay there shivering, though heavy
blankets covered her.
Just at dawn Nigel came back.
Then she shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.
Always she was shivering.