"Ruby," Nigel said, as he stood with her on the deck of the _Loulia_ and
looked up at the Arabic letters of gold inscribed above the doorway
through which they were going to pass, "what is the exact meaning of
those words? Baroudi told us that day at Luxor, but I've forgotten. It
was some lesson of fate, something from the Koran. D'you remember?"
She turned up her veil over the brim of her burnt-straw hat. "Let me
see!" she said.
She seemed to make an effort of memory, and lines came on her generally
smooth forehead.
"I fancy it was 'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,' or
something very like that."
"Yes, that was it. We discussed it, and I said I wasn't a fatalist."
"Did you? Come along. Let's explore."
"Our floating home--yes."
He took hold of her arm.
"If my fate is bound about my neck, it's a happy fate," he said--"a fate
I can wear as a jewel instead of bearing as a burden."
They went down the steps together, and vanished through the doorway into
the shadows beyond.
The _Loulia_ was moored at Keneh, not far from the temple of Denderah.
She had been sent up the river from Assiout, where Baroudi had left her
when he had finished his business affairs and was ready to start for
Cairo. It was Nigel's wish that he and his wife should join her there.
"Denderah was the first temple you and I saw together," he said. "Let's
see it more at our leisure. And let us ask Aphrodite to bless our
voyage."
"Hathor! What, are you turning pagan?" she said.
He laughed as he looked into her blue eyes.
"Scarcely; but she was the Egyptian Goddess of Beauty, and I don't think
she could deny her blessing to you."
Then she was looking radiant!
That cold which had made her shudder in the night by the sacred lake had
been left in the desolation of Libya. Surely, it could never come to her
here in the golden warmth of Upper Egypt. She said to herself that she
would not shudder again now that she had escaped from that blanched end
of the world where desperation had seized her.
The day of departure for the Nile journey had come, and Nigel and she
set foot upon the _Loulia_ for the first time as proprietors.
They passed the doors of the servants' cabins, and came into their own
quarters. Ibrahim followed softly behind with a smiling face, and Hamza,
standing still in the sunshine beneath the golden letters, looked after
them imperturbably.
Baroudi's "den" had been swept and garnished. Flowers and small branches
of mimosa decorated it, as if this day were festal. The writing-table,
which had been loaded with papers, was now neat and almost bare. But
all, or nearly all, Baroudi's books were still in their places. The
marvellous prayer rugs strewed the floor. Ibrahim had set sticks of
incense burning in silver holders. Upon the dining-room table, beyond
the screen of mashrebeeyah work, still stood the tawdry Japanese vase.
And the absurd cuckoo clock uttered its foolish sound to greet them.
"The eastern house!" said Nigel. "You little thought you would ever be
mistress of it, did you, Ruby? How wonderful these prayer rugs are! But
we must get rid of that vase."
"Why?" she said hastily, almost sharply.
He looked at her in surprise.
"You don't mean to say you like it? Besides, it doesn't belong to the
room. It's a false note."
"Of course. But it appeals to my sense of humour--like that ridiculous
cuckoo clock. Don't let's change anything. The incongruities are too
delicious."
"You are a regular baby!" he said. "All right. Shall we make Baroudi's
'den' your boudoir?"
She nodded, smiling.
"And you shall use it whenever you like. And now for the bedrooms!"
"More incongruities," he said. "But never mind. They looked delightfully
clean and cosy."
"Clean and cosy!" she repeated, with a sort of light irony in her
beautiful voice. "Is that all?"
"Well, I mean--"
"I know. Come along."
They opened the doors and looked into each gay and luxurious little
room. And as Mrs. Armine went from one to another, she was aware of the
soft and warm sensation that steals over a woman returning to the
atmosphere which thoroughly suits her, and from which she has long been
exiled. Here she could be in her element, for here money had been
lavishly spent to create something unique. She felt certain that no
dahabeeyah on the Nile was so perfect as the _Loulia_. Every traveller
upon the river would be obliged to envy her. For a moment she secretly
revelled in that thought; then she remembered something; her face
clouded, her lips tightened, and she strove to chase from her mind that
desire to be envied by other women.
Nigel and she must avoid the crowds that gather on the Nile in the
spring. They must tie up in the unfrequented places. Had she not
reiterated to him her wish to "get away from people," to see only the
native life on the river? Those "other women" must wait to be envious,
and she, too, must wait. She stifled an impatient sigh, and opened
another door. After one swift glance within, she said:
"I will have this cabin, Nigel."
"All right, darling. Anything you like. But let's have a look."
For a moment she did not move.
"Don't be selfish, Ruby!"
She felt fingers touching her waist at the back, gripping her with a
sort of tender strongness; and she closed her eyes, and tried to force
herself to believe they were Baroudi's fingers of iron.
"Or I shall pick you up and lift you out of the way."
When Nigel spoke again, she opened her eyes. It was no use. She was not
to have that illusion. She set her teeth and put her hands behind her,
feeling for his fingers. Their hands met, clasped. She fell back, and
let him look in.
"Why, this must be Baroudi's cabin!" he said.
"I dare say. But what I want it for is the size. Don't you see, it's
double the size of the others," she said, carelessly.
"So it is. But they are ever so much gayer. This is quite Oriental, and
the bed's awfully low."
He bent down and felt it.
"It's a good one, though. Trust Baroudi for that. Well, dear, take it;
I'll turn in next door. We can easily talk through the partition"--he
paused, then added in a lower voice--"when we are not together. Now
there's the other sitting-room to see and then shall we be off to
Denderah with Hamza, while Ibrahim sees to the arrangement of
everything?"
"Yes. Or--shall we leave the other room till we come back, till it's
getting twilight? I don't think I want to see quite everything just at
once."
"You're becoming a regular child, saving up your pleasure. Then we'll
start for Denderah now."
"Yes."
She drew her veil over her face rather quickly, and walked down the
passage, through the arch in the screen, and out to the brilliant
sunshine that flooded the sailors' deck. For though the Nubians had
spread an awning over their heads, they had not let down canvas as yet
to meet the white and gold of the bulwarks forward. And there was a
strong sparkle of light about them. In the midst of that sparkle Hamza
stood, a little away from the crew, who were tall, stalwart, black men,
evidently picked men, for not one was mean or ugly, not one lacked an
eye or was pitted with smallpox.
As Mrs. Armine came up the three steps from the cabins, walking rather
hurriedly, as if in haste to get to the sunshine, Hamza sent her a
steady look that was like a quiet but determined rebuke. His eyes seemed
to say to her, "Why do you rush out of the shadows like this?" And she
felt as if they were adding, "You who must learn to love the shadows."
His look affected her nerves, even affected her limbs. At the top of the
steps she stood still, then looked round, with a slight gesture as if
she would return.
"What is it, Ruby?" asked Nigel. "Have you forgotten anything?"
"No, no. Is it this side? Or must we have the felucca? I forget."
"It's this side. The _Loulia_ is tied up here on purpose. The donkeys,
Hamza!"
He spoke kindly, but in the authoritative voice of the young Englishman
addressing a native. Without changing his expression, Hamza went softly
and swiftly over the gangway to the shore, climbed the steep brown bank,
and was gone--a flash of white through the gold.
"He's a useful fellow, that!" said Nigel. "And now, Ruby, to seek the
blessing of the Egyptian Aphrodite. It will be easily won, for Aphrodite
could never turn her face from you."
As their tripping donkeys drew near to that lonely temple, where a sad
Hathor gazes in loneliness upon the courts that are no longer thronged
with worshippers, Mrs. Armine fell into silence. The disagreeable
impression she had received here on her first visit was returning. But
on her first visit she had been tired, worn with travel. Now she was
strong, in remarkable health. She would not be the victim of her nerves.
Nevertheless, as the donkeys covered the rough ground, as she saw the
pale facade of the temple confronting her in the pale sands, backed by
the almost purple sky, she remembered the carven face of the goddess,
and a fear that was superstitious stirred in her heart. Why had Nigel
suggested that they should seek the blessing of this tragic Aphrodite?
No blessing, surely, could emanate from this dark dwelling in the sands,
from this goddess long outraged by desertion.
They dismounted, and went into the temple. No one was there except the
chocolate-coloured guardian, who greeted them with a smile of welcome
that showed his broken teeth.
"May your day be happy!" he said to them in Arabic.
"He ought to say, 'May all your days on the Nile be happy,' Ruby," said
Nigel.
"He only wants the day on which we pay him to be happy. On any other day
we might die like dogs, and he wouldn't care."
She stood still in the first court, and looked up at the face of Hathor,
which seemed to regard the distant spaces with an eternal sorrow.
"I think you count too much on happiness, Nigel," she added. She felt
almost impelled by the face to say it. "I believe it's a mistake to
count upon things," she added.
"You think it's a mistake to look forward, as I am doing, to our Nile
journey?"
"Perhaps."
She walked on slowly into the lofty dimness of the temple.
"One never knows what is going to happen," she added. And there was
almost a grimness in her voice.
"And it all passes away so fast, whatever it is," he said. "But that is
no reason why we should not take our happiness and enjoy it to the
utmost. Why do you try to damp my enthusiasm to-day?"
"I don't try. But it is dangerous to be too sure of happiness
beforehand."
She was speaking superstitiously, and she was really speaking to
herself. At first she had been thinking of, speaking to, him as if for
his own good, moved by a sort of dim pity that surely belonged rather to
the girl she had been than to the woman she actually was. Now the
darkness of this lonely temple and the knowledge that it was
Aphrodite's--she thought always of Hathor as Aphrodite--preyed again
upon her spirit as when she first came to it. She felt the dreadful
brevity of a woman's, of any woman's triumph over the world of men. She
felt the ghastly shortness of the life of physical beauty. She seemed to
hear the sound of the movement of Time rushing away, to see the darkness
of the End closing about her, as now the dimness of this desolate shrine
of beauty and love grew deeper round her.
Far up, near the forbidding gloom of the mighty roof, there rose a
fiercely petulant sound, a chorus of angry cries. Large shadows with
beating wings came and went rapidly through the forest of heavy columns.
The monstrous bats of Hathor were disturbed in their brooding reveries.
A heavy smell, like the odour of a long-decaying past, lifted itself, as
if with a slow, determined effort, to Mrs. Armine's nostrils. And ever
the light of day failed slowly as she and Nigel went onward, drawn in
despite of themselves by the power of the darkness, and by the
mysterious perfumes that swept up from the breast of death.
At last they came into the sanctuary, the "Holy of Holies" of Denderah,
where once were treasured images of the gods of Egypt, where only the
King or his high priest might venture to come, at the fete of the New
Year. They stood in its darkness, this woman who was longing to return
to the unbridled life of her sensual and disordered past, and this man
who, quite without vanity, believed that he had been permitted to redeem
her from it.
The guardian of the temple, who had followed them softly, now lit a
ribbon of magnesium, and there sprang into a vague and momentary life
reliefs of the King performing ceremonies and accomplishing sacrifices.
Then the darkness closed again. And the fragmentary and short vision
seemed to Mrs. Armine like the vision of her little life as a beautiful
woman, and the coming of the darkness to blot it out like the coming of
the darkness of death to cover her for ever with its impenetrable
mantle.
What she had told Meyer Isaacson in his consulting-room was true. When
she thought sincerely, she believed in no future life. She could not
conceive of a spirit life. Nor could she conceive of the skeletons of
the dead in some strange resurrection being reclothed with the flesh
which she adored, being inhabited again by the vitality which makes
skeleton and flesh living man or woman. This life was all to her. And
when the light in which it existed and was perceived died away and was
consumed, she believed that the vision could never reappear.
Now, in this once so sacred place, she seemed for a moment to plunge
into the depths of herself, to penetrate into the inmost recesses of her
nature. In London, before Nigel came into her life, had she not been
like Hathor in her temple, hearing the sound of the departing feet of
those who had been her worshippers? And with Nigel had come a wild hope
of worldly eminence, of great riches, of a triumph over enemies. And
that hope had faded abruptly. Yet through her association with Nigel she
had come to another hope. And this hope must be fulfilled, before the
inevitable darkness that would fall about her beauty. Nigel would never
be the means to the end she had originally had in view. Yet his destiny
was to serve her. He had his destiny, and she hers. And hers was not a
great worldly position, or any ultimate respectability. She could not
have the first, and so she would not have the second. Perhaps she was
born for other things--born to be a votary of Venus, but not to content
any man as his lawful wife. The very word "lawful" sent a chill through
her blood now. She was meant for lawlessness, it seemed. Then she would
fulfil her destiny, without pity, without fear, but not without
discretion. And her destiny was to emerge from the trap in which she was
confined. So she believed.
Yet would she emerge? In the darkness of Hathor's sanctuary, haunted by
the face of the goddess and by the sad thoughts of deserted womanhood
which it suggested to her self-centred mind, she resolved that she would
emerge, that nothing should stop her, that she would crush down any
weakening sentiments and thoughts if they came to heart or mind. Egypt,
in which one desire had been rendered useless and finally killed in her,
had given to her another, had brought to her a last chance--she seemed
to know it was that--of happiness, of ugly yet intense joy. In Egypt she
had blossomed, fading woman though she had been. She had renewed her
powers of physical fascination. Then she must emerge from the trap and
go to fulfil her destiny. She would do so. Silently, and as if making
the vow to the Egyptian Aphrodite in the darkness of her temple, she
swore to do so. Nigel had brought her there--had he not?--that Hathor
might bless her voyage. Moved by a fierce impulse, and casting away
pity, doubt, fear, everything but flamelike desire, she called upon
Hathor to bless her voyage--not their voyage, but only hers. She called
upon the goddess of beauty, the pagan goddess of the love that was not
spiritual.
And she almost felt as if she was answered.
Yet only the enormous bats cried fiercely to her from far up in the
dimness. She only heard their voices and the beating of their wings.
"Let's go, Ruby. I don't know why, but to-day I hate this place."
She started at the sound of his voice close to her. But she controlled
herself immediately, and replied, quietly:
"Yes, let us go. We are only disturbing the bats."
As they went out, she looked up to the column from which Hathor gazed as
if seeking for her worshippers, and she whispered adieu to the goddess.
As soon as they were on board of the _Loulia_ Nigel gave the order to
cast off. He seemed unusually restless, and in a hurry to be _en route_.
With eagerness he spoke to the impassive Reis, whose handsome head was
swathed in a shawl, and who listened imperturbably. He went about on the
sailors' deck watching the preparations, seeing the ropes hauled in, the
huge poles brought out to fend them from off the bank, the gigantic sail
unfurled to catch the evening breeze, which was blowing from the north,
and which would take them up against the strong set of the current. And
when the water curled and eddied about the _Loulia's_ prow, and the
shores seemed slipping away and falling back into the primrose light of
the north, and into the great dahabeeyah there came that mysterious
feeling of life which thrills through the moving vessel, he flung up his
arms, and uttered an exclamation that was like a mingled sigh and
half-suppressed shout. Then he laughed at himself, and turned to look
for Ruby.
She was alone on the upper deck, standing among some big palms in pots,
with her hands on the rail, and gazing towards him. She had taken off
her hat and veil, and the breeze stirred, and the gold of the departing
sun lit up the strands of her curiously pale yet shining hair. He sprang
up the companion to stand beside her.
"We're off!" he said.
"How glad you seem! You called me a child. But you're like a mad
boy--mad to be moving. One would think you had--No, that wouldn't be
like a boy."
"What do you mean?"
"I was going to say one would think you had an enemy in Keneh and were
escaping from him."
"Him! Her, you should say."
"Her?"
"Hathor. That temple of Denderah seemed haunted to-day."
He pulled off his hat to let the breeze get at his hair, too.
"When we were standing in the sanctuary I seemed to be smelling death
and corruption. Ugh!"
His face changed at the memory.
"And the cries of those bats! They sounded like menacing spirits. I was
a fool to go to such a place to ask a blessing on our voyage. My attempt
at paganism was punished, and no wonder, Ruby. For I don't think I'm
really a bit of a pagan; I don't think I see much joy in the pagan life,
that is so much cracked up by some people. I don't see how the short
life and the merry one can ever be really merry at all. How can a man be
merry with a darkness always in front of him?"
"What darkness?"
"Death--without immortality."
She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked him:
"Do you look upon death merely as a door into another life?"
"I believe it is. Don't you?"
"Yes. Then you don't dread death?"
"Don't I--now? It would be leaving so much now. And besides, I love this
life; I revel in it. Who wouldn't, with health like mine? Feel that
arm!"
She did not move. He took her hand and pressed her fingers against his
muscles.
"It's like iron," she said, taking away her hand. "But muscle and health
are not exactly the same thing, are they?"
"No; of course not. But did you ever see a man look more perfectly well
than I do?"
As he stood beside her, radiant now, upright, with the breeze ruffling
his short, fair hair, his enthusiastic blue eyes shining with happiness,
he did look like a young god of health and years younger than his age.
"Oh, you look all right," she said; "just like lots of other men who go
in for sport and keep themselves fit."
He laughed.
"You won't pay me the compliment I want. Look at those barges loaded
with pottery! All those thousands of little vases--_koulal_, as the
natives call them--are made in Keneh. I've seen the men doing it--boys
too--the wet clay spinning round the brown finger that makes the
orifice. How good it is to see the life of the river! There's always
something new, always something interesting, humanity at work in the
sunshine and the open air. Who wouldn't be a fellah rather than a toiler
in any English town? Here are the shadufs! All the way up the Nile we
shall see them, and we shall hear the old shaduf songs, that sound as if
they came down from the days when they cut the Sphinx out of the living
rock, and we shall hear the drowsy song of the water-wheels, as the
sleepy oxen go round and round in the sunshine; and we shall see the
women coming in lines from the inland villages with the water-jars
poised on their heads. If only we were back in the days when there were
no steamers and the Nile must have been like a perpetual dream! But
never mind. At least we refused Baroudi's steam-tug. So we shall just go
up with the wind, or be poled up when there is none, if we aren't tied
up under the bank. That's the only way to travel on the Nile, but of
course Baroudi uses it, as one uses the railway, to go to business."
He stopped, as if his mind had taken a turn towards some other line of
thought; then he said:
"Isn't it odd that you and I should be established in Baroudi's boat,
when we've never seen him again since the day we had tea on it? I almost
thought--"
"What?"
"I almost thought perhaps he'd run up by train to give us a sort of
send-off."
"Why should he?"
"Of course it wasn't necessary. Still, it would have been an act of
pretty politeness to you."
"Oh, I think the less pretty politeness European women have from these
Orientals the better!" she said, almost with a sneer.
"You're thinking of that horrible German woman in the Fayyum. But
Baroudi's very well looked on by the English in Egypt. I found that out
in Cairo, when I left you to go to the Fayyum. He's quite a _persona
grata_ for an Egyptian. Everybody seems ready to do him a good turn.
That's partly why he's been so successful in all he's undertaken."
"I dare say he's not bad in his way, but as long as we've got his lovely
boat I can do quite well without him" she said, smiling. "Where are we
going to tie up tonight, and when?"
"When it gets dark. The Reis knows where. Isn't it glorious to be quite
free and independent? We can stop wherever we like, in the lonely
places, where there'll be no tourists to bother us."
"Yes," she said, echoing his enthusiasm, while she looked at him with
smiling eyes. "Let's avoid the tourists and stop in the lonely places.
Well, I'm going down now."
"Why? What are you going to do? The sun will soon be setting. We ought
to see the first afterglow from the _Loulia_ together."
"Call me, then, when it comes. But I'm going to take a lesson in
coffee-making as they do it out here. It will amuse me to make our
coffee after lunch. Besides, it will be something to do. And I want to
take an interest in everything, in all the trifles of this odd new
life."
He put his arm around her shoulder.
"Splendid!" he said.
His hand tightened upon her.
"But you must come for the afterglow."
"Call me, and I'll come."
As she went down the companion, he leaned over the rail and asked her:
"Who's going to give you your lesson in coffee-making?"
"Hamza," she answered.
And she disappeared.