"All the way up the Nile we shall hear the old shaduf songs," Nigel had
said, when the _Loulia_ set sail from Keneh.
As Mrs. Armine went down to meet Hamza, she was aware of the loud voices
of the shaduf men. They came from both banks of the Nile--powerfully
from the eastern, faintly from the western bank soon to be drowned in
the showers of gold from the sinking sun. Yet she could hear that even
those distant voices were calling loudly, that in their faintness there
was violence. And she thought of the fellah's voice that cried to her in
the orange-garden, and how for a moment she had thought of flight before
she had found herself in a prison of prayer. Now she was in another
prison. But even then the inexorable hands had closed upon her, and the
final cry of the fellah had thrilled with a savage triumph. She had
remembered "Aida" that day. She remembered it again now. Then, in her
youth, she had believed that the passion which had wrecked her was the
passion of her life, a madness of the senses, a delirium of the body
which could never be repeated in later years for another object. How
little she had known herself or life! How little she had known the cruel
forces of mature age. That passion of her girlhood seemed to her like an
anaemic shadow of the wolfish truth that was alive in her now. In those
days the power to feel, the power to crave, to shudder with jealousy, to
go almost mad in the face of a menacing imagination, was not full-grown.
Now it was full-grown, and it was a giant. Yet in those days she had
allowed the shadow to ruin her. In these she meant to be more wary. But
now she was tortured by a nature that she feared.
The die was cast. She had no more thought of escape or of resistance.
The supreme selfishness of the materialist, which is like no other
selfishness, was fully alive within her. Believing not at all in any
future for her soul, she desired present joy for her clamorous body as
no one not a materialist could ever desire. If she failed in having what
she longed for now, while she still retained the glow of her Indian
summer, she believed she would have nothing more at all, that all would
be finally over for her, that the black gulf would gape for her and that
she would vanish into it for ever. She was a desperate woman, beneath
her mask of smiling calm, when the _Loulia_ set sail and glided into the
path of the golden evening.
Nevertheless, directly she had descended the shallow steps, and come
into the luxurious cabin that was to be her boudoir, she was conscious
of a feeling of relief that was almost joy. The comfort, the perfect
arrangements of the _Loulia_ gave her courage. She was able to look
forward. The soul of her purred with a sensual satisfaction. She went on
down the passage to the room of the fountain and of the gilded ball. But
today the fountain was not playing, and the little ball floated upon the
water in the marble basin like a thing that had lost its life. She felt
a slight shock of disappointment. Then she remembered that they were
moving. Probably the fountain only played when the dahabeeyah was at
rest. The grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, which she
had seen on her first visit, looked down on her from its bracket. And
she felt as if it welcomed her. The mashrebeeyeh lattices were closed
over the windows, but the sliding doors that gave on to the balcony were
pushed back, and let in the light of evening, and a sound of water, and
of voices along the Nile. She sat down on the divan, and almost
immediately Hamza came in.
"You are going to show me how to make Turkish coffee, Hamza?" she said,
in her lazy and careless voice.
"Yes," he replied.
"Where shall we do it?"
He pointed towards the raised balcony in the stern.
"Out there!" she said.
She seemed disappointed, but she got up slowly and followed him out. The
awning was spread so that the upper deck was not visible. When she saw
that, the cloud passed away from her face, and as she sat down to
receive her lesson, there was a bright and hard eagerness and attention
in her eyes and about her lips.
Hamza had already brought a brazier with iron legs, which was protected
from the wind by a screen of canvas. On the polished wood close to it
there were a shining saucepan containing water, a brass bowl of freshly
roasted and pounded coffee, two small open coffee-pots with handles that
stuck straight out, two coffee-cups, a tiny bowl of powdered sugar, and
some paper parcels which held sticks of mastic, ambergris, and seed of
cardamom. As soon as Mrs. Armine was seated by the brazier Hamza, whose
face looked as if he were quite alone, with slow and almost dainty
delicacy and precision proceeded with his task. Squatting down upon his
haunches, with his thin brown legs well under his reed-like body, he
poured the water from the saucepan into one of the copper pots, set the
pot on the brazier, and seemed to sink into a reverie, with his
enigmatic eyes, that took all and gave nothing, fixed on the burning
coals. Mrs. Armine was motionless, watching him, but he never looked at
her. There was something animal in his abstraction. Presently there came
from the pot a murmur. Instantly Hamza stretched out his hand, took the
pot from the brazier and the bowl of coffee from the ground, let some of
the coffee slip into the water, stirred it with a silver spoon which he
produced from a carefully folded square of linen, and set the pot once
more on the brazier. Then he unfolded the paper which held the
ambergris, put a carat weight of it into the second pot and set that,
too, on the brazier. The coffee began to simmer. He lit a stick of
mastic, fumigated with its smoke the two little coffee-cups, took the
coffee-pot, and gently poured the fragrant coffee into the pot
containing the melted ambergris, let it simmer for a moment there,
poured it out into the coffee-cups, creaming and now sending forth with
its own warm perfume the enticing perfume of ambergris, added a dash of
the cardamom seed, and then, at last, looked towards Mrs. Armine.
"It's ready? Then--then shall I put the sugar in?" she said.
"Yes," said Hamza, looking steadily at her.
She stretched out her hand, but not to the sugar bowl. Just as she did
so a voice from over their heads called out:
"Ruby! Ruby!"
"Come down here!" she called, in answer.
"But I want you to come up and see the sunset and the afterglow with
me."
"Come down here first," she called.
"Right!"
The coffee-making was finished. Hamza got up from his haunches, lifted
up the brazier, and went softly away, carrying it with a nonchalant ease
almost as if it were a cardboard counterfeit weighing nothing.
In a moment Nigel came into the dim room of the fountain.
"Where are you? Oh, there! We mustn't miss our first sunset."
"Coffee!" she said, smiling.
He came out on to the balcony, and she gave him one of the little cups.
"Did you make it yourself?"
"No. But I will to-morrow. Hamza has been showing me how to."
He took the cup.
"It smells delicious, as enticing as perfumes from Paradise. I think you
must have made it."
"Drink it, and believe so--you absurd person!" she said, gently.
He sipped, and she did likewise.
"It's perfect, simply perfect. But what has been put into it to give it
this peculiar, delicious flavour, Ruby?"
"Ah, that's my secret."
She sipped from her little cup.
"It is extraordinarily good," she said.
She pointed to the small paper packets, which Hamza had not yet carried
off.
"The preparation is almost like some sacred rite," she said. "We put in
a little something from this packet, and a little something from that.
And we smoke the cups with one of those burning sticks of mastic. And
then, at the very end, when the coffee is frothing and creaming, we dust
it with sugar. This is the result."
"Simply perfect."
He put his cup down empty.
"Look at that light!" he said, pointing over the rail to the yellow
water which they were leaving behind them. "Have you finished?"
"Quite."
"Then let's go on deck--coffee-maker."
They were quite alone. He put his arm around her as she stood up.
"Everything you give me seems to me different from other things," he
said--"different, and so much better."
"Your imagination is kind to me--too kind. You are foolish about me."
"Am I?"
He looked into her eyes, and his kind and enthusiastic eyes became
almost piercing for an instant.
"And you, Ruby?"
"I?"
"Could you ever be foolish about me?"
For a moment his joy seemed to be clouded by a faint and creeping doubt,
as if he were mentally comparing her condition of heart with his, and as
if the comparison were beginning--only just beginning--dimly to distress
him. She knew just how he was feeling, and she leaned against him,
making her body feel weak.
"I don't want to," she said.
"Why not?"
Already the cloud was evaporating.
"I don't want to suffer. I want to be happy now in the short time I have
left for happiness."
"Why do you say 'the short time'?"
"I'm not young any more. And I've suffered enough in my life."
"But through me! How could you suffer? Don't you trust me completely
even yet?"
"It isn't that. But--it's dangerous for a woman to be foolish about any
man. It's a folly to care too much."
She spoke with a sincerity there was no mistaking, for she was thinking
about Baroudi.
"Only sometimes. Only when one cares for the weak, or the insincere.
We--needn't count the cost, and hesitate."
She let him close her lips, which were opening for a reply, and while he
kissed her she listened to the voices of the shaduf men ever calling on
the banks of the river.
When they were on the upper deck those voices seemed to her louder. That
evening it was a sunset of sheer gold. The cloudless sky--so it
seemed--would brook no other colour; the hills would receive no gift
that was not a gift of gold. A pageant of gold that was almost barbaric
was offered to Mrs. Armine. Out of the gold the voices cried from banks
that were turning black. Always, in Egypt, the gold turns the barques on
the Nile, its banks, the palm-trees that sometimes crown them, the
houses of the native villages, black. And so it was that evening, but
Nigel only saw and thought of the gold.
"At last we are sailing into the gold," he said. "This makes me think of
a picture that I love."
"What picture?"
"A picture by Watts, called 'Progress.' In it there is a wonderful glow.
I remember I spoke of it to Meyer Isaacson on the evening when I
introduced him to you."
She had been leaning over the rail on the starboard side of the boat.
Now she lifted her arms, stood straight up, then sat down in a beehive
chair, and leaned back against the basket-work, which creaked as if
protesting.
"To Meyer Isaacson!" she said. "What did you say about it?"
He turned, set his back against the rail, and looked at her in her
hooded shelter.
"We spoke of progress. The picture's an allegory, of course, an
allegory of the spiritual progress of the world, and of each one of us.
I remember telling Isaacson how firmly I believed in the triumph of good
in the world and the individual."
"And what did he say?"
"Isaacson? I don't know that he quite took my view."
"He's a tiny bit of a suspicious man, I think."
"Perhaps he wants more solid proof--proof you could point to and say,
'Look there! I rely on that!' than I should."
"He's ever so much more _terre a terre_ than you are."
"Oh, Ruby, I don't know that!"
"Yes, he is. He's a delightfully clever and a very interesting man, but,
though he mayn't think it he's _terre a terre_. He sees with
extraordinary clearness, but only a very little way, and he would never
believe anything important existed beyond the range of his vision. You
are not like that!"
"He's a thousand times cleverer than I am."
"Yes, he's so clever that he's distrustful. Now, for instance, he'd
never believe in a woman like me."
"Oh--" he began, in a tone of energetic protest.
"No, he wouldn't," she interrupted, quietly. "To the end of time he
would judge me by the past. He would label me 'woman to beware of' and
my most innocent actions, my most impulsive attempts to show forth my
true and better self he would entirely misinterpret, brilliant man
though he is. Nigel, believe me, we women know!"
"But, then, surely you must dislike Isaacson very much!"
"On the contrary, I like him."
"I can't understand that."
"I don't require of him any of the splendid things that--well, that I do
require of you, because I could never care for him. If he were to play
me false, even if he were to hate me a thousand times more than he does,
it wouldn't upset me, because I could never care for him."
"You think Isaacson hates you!" he exclaimed.
He had forgotten the gold of the sunset, the liquid gold of the river.
He saw only her, thought only of what she was saying, thinking.
"Nigel, tell me the truth. Do you think he likes me?"
He looked down.
"He doesn't know you. If he did--"
"If he did, it would make not a bit of difference."
"I think it would; all the difference."
She smilingly shook her head.
"I should always wear my label, 'woman to beware of.' But what does it
matter? I'm not married to him. If I were, ah, then I should be the most
miserable woman on earth--now!"
He sat down close to her in another beehive chair.
"Ruby, why did you say 'now' like that?"
"Oh," she spoke in a tone of lightness that sounded assumed, "because
now I've lived in an atmosphere not of mistrust. And it's spoilt me
completely."
He felt within him a glow strong and golden as the glow of the sunset.
At last she had forgotten their painful scene in the garden. He had
fought for and had won her soul's forgetfulness.
"I'm glad," he said, with the Englishman's almost blunt simplicity--"I'm
glad. I wish Isaacson knew."
She felt as if she frowned, but not a wrinkle came on her forehead.
"I didn't tell you," he added, "but I wrote to Isaacson the other day."
"Did you?"
Her hands met in her lap, and her fingers clasped.
"Yes, I sent him quite a good letter. I told him we were going up the
Nile in Baroudi's boat, and how splendid you were looking, and how
immensely happy we were. I told him we were going to cut all the
travellers, and just live for our two selves in the quiet places where
there are no steamers and no other dahabeeyahs. And I told him how
magnificently well I was."
"Oh, treating him as the great Doctor, I suppose!"
She unclasped her hands, and took hold of the rudimentary arms of her
chair.
"No. But I felt expansive--riotously well--when I was writing, and I
just stuck it down with all the rest."
"And the rest?"
She leaned forward a little, as if she wanted to see the sunset better,
but soon she looked at him.
"Oh, I let him understand just how it is between you and me. And I told
him about the dahabeeyah, what a marvel it is, and about Baroudi, and
how Ibrahim put Baroudi up to the idea of letting it to us."
"I see."
"How these chairs creak!" he said. "Yours is making a regular row."
She got up.
"You aren't going down again?"
"No. Let us walk about."
"All right."
He joined her and they began slowly to pace up and down, while the gold
grew fainter in the sky, fainter upon the river. She kept silence, and
perhaps communicated her wish for silence to him, for he did not speak
until the sunset had faded away, and the world of water, green flats,
desert, and arid hills grew pale in the pause before the afterglow. Then
at last he said:
"What is it, Ruby? What are you thinking about so seriously?"
"I don't know."
She looked at him, and seemed to take a resolve.
"Yes, I do."
"Have I said something that has vexed you? Are you vexed at my writing
to Isaacson to tell him about our happiness?"
"Not vexed, no. But somehow it seems to take off the edge of it a
little. But men don't understand such things, so it's no use talking of
it."
"But I want to understand everything. You see, Isaacson is my friend.
Isn't it natural that I should let him know of my happiness?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so. Never mind. What does it matter?"
"You dislike my having written to him?"
"I'm a fool, Nigel--that's the truth. I'm afraid of everything and
everybody."
"Afraid! You're surely not afraid of Isaacson?"
"I tell you I'm afraid of everybody."
She stopped by the rail, and looked towards the west.
"To me happiness seems such a brittle thing that any one might break it.
And men--forgive me!--men generally have such clumsy hands."
He leaned on the rail beside her, turning himself towards her.
"You don't mean to say that you think Isaacson could ever break our
happiness, even if he wished to?"
"Why not?"
"Don't you understand me at all?"
There was in his voice a tremor of deep feeling.
"Do you think," he went on, "that a man who is worth anything at all
would allow even his dearest friend to come between him and the woman
whom he loved and who was his? Do you think that I would allow any one,
woman or man, to come between me and you?"
"Are you sure you wouldn't?"
"What a tragedy it must be to be so distrustful of love as you are!" he
said, almost with violence.
"You haven't lived my life."
She, too, spoke almost with violence, and there was violence in her
eyes.
"You haven't lived for years in the midst of condemnation. Your friend,
Doctor Isaacson, secretly condemns me. I know it. And so I'm afraid of
him. I don't pretend to have any real reason--any reason that would
commend itself to a man. Women don't need such reasons for their fears."
"And yet you say that you like Isaacson!"
"So I do, in a way. At least, I thought I did, till you told me you'd
written to him to tell him about us and our life on the Nile."
He could not help smiling.
"Oh!" he said, moving nearer to her. "I shall never understand women.
What a reason for dislike of a man hundreds of miles away from us!"
"Hundreds of miles--yes! And if your letter brought him to us! Suppose
he took it into his head to run out and see for himself if what you
wrote was true?"
"Ruby! How wild you are in your suppositions!"
"They're not so wild as you think. Doctor Isaacson is just the man to do
such a thing."
"Well, even if he did--?"
"Do you want him to?" she interrupted.
He hesitated.
"You do want him to."
She said it bitterly.
"And I thought I was enough!" she exclaimed.
"It isn't that, Ruby--it isn't that at all. But I confess that I should
like Isaacson to see for himself how happy we are together."
"Did you say that in your letter?"
"No, not a word of it. But I did think it when I was writing. Wasn't it
a natural thought? Isaacson was almost my confidant--not quite, for
nobody was quite--about my feelings and intentions towards you before
our marriage."
"And if he could have prevented the marriage, he would have prevented
it."
"And because of that, if it's true, you wouldn't like him to see us
happy together?"
"I don't want him here. I don't want any one. I feel as if he might try
to separate us, even now."
"He might try till the Day of Judgment without succeeding. But you are
not quite fair to him."
"And he would never be fair to me. There's the after-glow coming at
last."
They watched it in silence giving magic to the western hills and to the
cloudless sky in the west. It was suggestive of peace and of remoteness,
suggestive of things clarified, purged, made very wonderfully pure, but
not coldly pure. When it died away into the breast of the softly
advancing night, Nigel felt as if it had purged him of all confusion of
thought and feeling, as if it had set him quite straight with himself.
"That makes me feel as if I understood everything just for a moment," he
said. "Ruby, don't let us get into any difficulties, make any
difficulties for ourselves out here. We are having such a chance for
peace, aren't we? We should be worse than mad if we didn't take it, I
think. But we will take it. I understand that your life has made you
suspicious of people. I believe I understand your fears a little, too.
But they are groundless as far as I am concerned. Nobody on earth could
ever come between you and me. Only one person could ever break our
union."
"Who?"
"Yourself. Hark! the sailors are singing. I expect we are going to tie
up."
That night, as Mrs. Armine lay awake in the cabin which was Baroudi's,
and which, in contrast to all the other bedrooms on the _Loulia_, was
sombre in its colouring and distinctively Oriental, she thought of the
conversation of the afternoon, and realized that she must keep a tighter
hold over her nerves, put a stronger guard upon her temper. Without
really intending to, she had let herself run loose, she had lost part of
her self-control. Not all, for as usual when she told some truth, she
had made it serve her very much as a lie might have served her. But by
speaking as she had about Meyer Isaacson she had made herself fully
realize something--that she was afraid of him, or that in the future she
might become afraid of him. Why had Nigel written just now? Why had he
drawn Isaacson's attention to them and their lives just now? It was
almost as if--and then she pulled herself up sharply. She was not going
to be a superstitious fool. It was, of course, perfectly natural for
Nigel to write to his friend. Nevertheless, she wished ardently that
Isaacson was not his friend, that those keen doctor's eyes, which seemed
to sum up the bodily and mental states of woman or man with one bright
and steady glance, had never looked upon her.
And most of all she wished that they might never look upon her again.