Isaacson had asked himself at night the meaning of his victory. When the
morning dawned, when once more he had to go to his work, the work which
was his life, although sometimes he was inclined to decry it secretly in
moments of fatigue, he asked no further questions. His business was
plain before him, and it was business into which he could put his heart.
Although he was not an insensitive man, he was a man of generous nature.
He pushed away with an almost careless energy those small annoyances,
those little injuries of life, which more petty people make much of and
cannot easily forgive. The querulous man who was ready, out of his
bodily weakness and his mis-directed love, to make little of his
friendship, even to thrust away his proffered help, he disregarded as
man, regarded as so much nearly destroyed material which he had to
repair, to bring back to its former flawlessness. He knew the real
nature, the real soul of the man; he understood why they were warped,
and he put himself aside, put his pride into his pocket, which he
considered the proper place for it at that moment. But though he had
gained his point by a daring half-avowal of what his intuition had
whispered to him, he presently realized that if he were to win through
with Nigel into the sunshine, he must act with determination; perhaps,
too, with a cunning which the Eastern drops in his blood made not so
unnatural to him as it might have been to most men as honest living as
he was.
Mrs. Armine had been dominated for the moment. She had obeyed. She had
done the thing she hated to do. But she was not the woman to run
straight on any path that led away from her wishes; she now loathed as
well as feared Meyer Isaacson, and she had a cruelly complete influence
over her husband. And even any secret fear could not hold her animus
against the man who understood her wholly in check. Like the mole, she
must work in the dark. She could not help it.
What she had said of him to Nigel, between his first and his second
visits to the _Loulia_, Isaacson did not know. Indeed, he scarcely cared
to know. It was not difficult to divine how she had used her influence.
Isaacson could almost hear her reciting the catalogue of his misdeeds
against herself, could almost see her eyes as she murmured the
insinuations which doubtless the sick man had believed--because in his
condition he must believe almost anything she persistently told him.
Yet at a word from her he had agreed to accept all the ministrations of
his friend, which at another word he had been willing to repel.
The fact was that secretly he was crying out for the powerful hand to
save him from the abyss. And he believed in Isaacson as a doctor,
however much he now resented Isaacson's mistrust, no longer to be
doubted, of the woman his chivalry had lifted to a throne.
He received Isaacson with an odd mixture of thankfulness and reserve,
put himself into the doctor's hands with almost a boy's confidence, but
kept himself free, with a determination that in the circumstances was
touching, however pitiful, from the stretched-out hands of the friend.
And Isaacson felt swiftly that though one contest was ended, and ended
as he desired, another contest was at its beginning, a silent battle of
influences about this good fellow, who, by his very virtue, had fallen
so low.
But the doctor must come first. That coming might clear the ground for
the friend. And so Isaacson, in the beginning, met Nigel's new reserve
with another reserve, very unself-conscious apparently, very
businesslike, practical, and, above all things, very calm.
Isaacson radiated calm.
He found his patient that first morning weary after another bad night,
induced partly by the draught which had sent him to sleep in daylight,
and this very conscious and physical misery, acting upon the mind,
played into the Doctor's hands. He was able without difficulty to make a
minute examination of the case. The patient, though so reserved at first
in his manner, putting a barrier between himself and Isaacson, was
almost pathetically talkative directly the conversation became
definitely medical. But that conversation finished, he relapsed into his
former almost stiff reserve, a reserve which seemed so strangely foreign
to his real nature that Isaacson felt as if the man he knew and cared
for had got up and left the room.
Mrs. Armine was waiting to hear the result of the interview. Doctor
Hartley had taken his departure--fled, perhaps, is the word--at an early
hour. In daylight her face looked even more ravaged than it had on the
previous night. But her manner was coldly calm.
"What is the verdict?" she asked.
"I'm afraid I am not prepared to give a verdict. Your husband is in a
very weak, low state. If it had been allowed to continue indefinitely,
the mischief might have become irreparable."
"But you can put him right?"
"Let's hope so."
She stood as if she were waiting for more definite information. But none
came. After a silence Isaacson said:
"The first thing to be done is to get him away from here."
"Get him away! Where to?"
"You've still got your villa at Luxor, I believe?"
"Oh, yes."
"I suppose it is comfortable, well arranged?"
"Pretty well."
"And it's quiet and has a garden, I know."
"You've seen it?"
"Yes. My boat was tied up just opposite to it the night before I started
up river."
"Oh!"
"Perhaps you'll be kind enough to give the order to the Reis to start
for Luxor as soon as possible?"
"Very well," she said, indifferently.
Her whole look and manner now were curiously indolent and indifferent.
Before she had been full of fiercely nervous life. To-day it seemed as
if that life was withdrawn from her.
"I'll tell him now," she said.
And without any more questions she went away to the deck.
Soon afterwards there was a stir. Cries were heard from the sailors, and
the _Loulia_ began to move, floating northwards with the tide. When
Nigel asked the reason, Isaacson said to him:
"This place is too isolated for an invalid. One can get at nothing here.
You will be much more at your ease in your own home, and I can take
better care of you there."
"We are going back to the villa?"
"Yes."
"I'm glad," Nigel said, slowly. "I never told her, but I was beginning
to hate this boat; all this trouble has come upon me here.
Sometimes--sometimes I have felt almost as if--"
He broke off.
"Yes?" Isaacson said, quietly.
"As if there were something that was fatal to me on board the _Loulia_."
"In the villa I shall get you back to your original health and
strength."
The thin, lead-coloured face drooped forward, and the eyes that were
full of a horrible malaise held for a moment the fires of hope.
"Do you really think I can ever get well?"
Isaacson did not reply for a moment. Then he said, "Will you make me a
promise?"
"What is it?"
"Will you promise me to obey implicitly everything I order you to do?"
"Do you mean--as a doctor?"
"I do."
"I promise."
"Very well. If you carry out that promise, I think I can undertake to
cure you. I think I can undertake that some day you will be once more
the strong man who rejoices in his strength."
Tears came into Nigel's eyes.
"I wonder," he said. "I wonder."
"But remember," Isaacson said, almost with solemnity, "I shall expect
from you implicit obedience to my medical orders. And the first of them
is this: you are to swallow nothing which is not given to you by me with
my own hand."
"Medicine, you mean?"
"I mean what I say--nothing; not a morsel of food, not a drop of
liquid."
"Then my wife and Hamza--"
"Will you obey me?" Isaacson interrupted, almost sternly.
"Yes," Nigel said, in a weak voice.
"And now just lie quiet, and remember you are going towards your home,
in which I intend to get you quite well."
And the _Loulia_ floated down with the tide, slowly, and broadside to
the great river, for there was no wind at all, and the weather was hot
almost as a furnace. The _Fatma_ untied, and followed her down. And the
night came, and still they floated on broadside under the stars.
Nigel was now sleeping, and Meyer Isaacson was watching.
And in a cabin close by a woman was staring at her face in a little
glass set in the lid of a gilded box, was staring, with desperation at
her heart.
Hartley had said he believed she knew of the sudden collapse of her
beauty. Believed! Before he had noticed it, she had perceived it, with a
cold horror which, gathering strength, grew into a bitter despair. And
with the despair came hatred, hatred of the man who by keeping her back
from happiness had led her to this collapse. This man was Nigel. He
thought he had saved her from her worst self. But really he had stirred
this worst self from sleep. In London she had been almost a good woman,
compared to the woman she was now. His bungling search after nobility of
spirit had roused the devil within her. She longed to let him know what
she really was. Often and often, while they two had been isolated
together on the _Loulia_, she had been on the edge of telling him at
least some fragments of the truth. Her nerves had nearly betrayed her
when through the long and shining hours the dahabeeyah lay still on the
glassy river, far away from the haunts of men, and she, sick with ennui,
nearly mad because of the dulness of her life, had been forced to play
at love with the man whose former strength and beauty diminished day by
day.
Would it never end? Each day seemed to her an eternity, each hour almost
a year. But she knew that she must be patient, though patience was no
part of her character. All through her life she had been an impatient
and greedy woman, seizing on what she wanted and holding to it
tenaciously. She had hidden her impatience with her charm, and so she
had gained successes. But now, with so little time left to her for
possible enjoyment, gnawed by desire and jealousy, she found her powers
reluctant in their coming. Formerly she had exercised her influence
almost without effort. Now she had to be stubborn in endeavour. And she
knew, with the frightful certainty of the middle-aged woman, that the
cruel exertions of her mind must soon tell upon her body.
Her terror, a terror which had never left her during these days and
nights on the dahabeeyah, was that her beauty might fade before she was
free to go to Baroudi. She knew now how strongly she had fascinated him,
despite his seeming, almost cruel imperturbability. By her lowest
powers, the powers that Nigel ignored and thought that he hated--though
perhaps he too had been partially subject to them--she had grasped the
sensual nature of the Egyptian. As Starnworth had told Isaacson, Baroudi
had within him the madness for women. He had within him the madness for
Bella Donna. But he knew how to wait for what he wanted. He was waiting
now. The question that had presented itself to Mrs. Armine again and
again during her exile with Nigel was this: "Will he wait too long?" She
knew how fleeting is the Indian summer of women. And she knew, though
she denied it to herself, that if she brought to Baroudi not an Indian
summer as her gift, but a fading autumn, she would run the risk of being
confronted by the blank cruelty that is so often the offspring of the
Eastern conception of women.
Yet in her terror she had always been supported by a fierce energy of
hope, until in the holy of holies of Horus she had come face to face
with Isaacson.
And now!
Now she sat alone in her cabin, and she stared into the little mirror
which Baroudi had given her in the garden of oranges.
And Isaacson watched over her husband.
"The fate of every man have we bound about his neck."
The Arabic letters of gold seemed to be pressing down upon her, to crush
her body and spirit. She put down the box, and, almost savagely shut
down the lid upon it.
And now that she no longer saw herself, she seemed to see Hamza praying,
as he had prayed that day in the orange garden when she looked out of
the window. Then she had felt that the hands of the East had grasped
her, that they would never let her go, and something within her had
recoiled, though something else had desired only that--to be grasped by
Baroudi's hands.
The praying men had frightened her. Yet she believed in no God.
If there really was a God! If He looked upon her now!
She sprang up, and turned out the light.
* * * * *
The next day the _Loulia_ tied up under the garden of the Villa Androud,
just beyond the stone promontory that diverted the strong current of the
river. Nigel, too weak to walk up the bank to the house, was carefully
carried by the Nubians. The surprised servants of the villa, who had had
no notice of their master's arrival, hastened to throw back the
shutters, to open the windows, letting in light and air. And Ibrahim
once more began to look authoritative, for it seemed that Hamza's reign
was over. From henceforth only Meyer Isaacson gave food and drink and
"sick-food" to "my Lord Arminigel."
The change from dahabeeyah life to life on shore seemed at once to make
a difference to the patient. When he was put carefully down in the white
and yellow drawing-room, and, looking out through the French windows
across the terrace, saw the roses blowing in the sandy garden, he heaved
a sigh that was like a deep breathing of relief.
"I'm thankful to be out of the _Loulia_, Ruby," he said to his wife, who
was standing beside the sofa on which he was resting.
"Are you, Nigel. Why?"
"I don't know. It seemed to oppress me. And you know that writing?"
"What writing?"
"Over the door as you went in."
"Oh, yes."
"I used to think of it in the night when I felt so awful, and it was
like a weight coming down to crush me."
"That was fanciful of you," she said.
But she sent him a strange look of half-frightened suspicion.
He did not see it. He was looking out to the garden. From the Nile rose
the voices of the sailors singing their song. He listened to it for a
moment.
"What a strange time it's been since we first heard that song together,
Ruby," he said.
"Yes."
"When we first heard it, I was so strong, so happy--strong to protect
you, happy to have you to protect, and--and it's ended in your having to
protect and take care of me."
She moved.
"Yes," she said again, in a dry voice.
"I--I think I'm glad we can't look into the future. One wants a lot of
courage in life."
She said nothing.
"But I feel a little courage now. I never quite told you how it was with
me on the _Loulia_. If I had stayed on her much longer, as we were, I
should have died. I should have died very soon."
"No, no, Nigel."
"Yes, I should. But here"--he moved, stretched out his arms, sighed--"I
feel that I shall get better, perhaps get well, even. How--how splendid
if I do!"
"Well, I must go and look after things," she said.
"You're tired, aren't you?"
"No. Why should you think so?"
"Your voice sounds tired."
"It isn't that."
"What is it?"
"You know that for your sake I am enduring a companionship that is
odious to me," she said, in a low voice.
At that moment, Meyer Isaacson came into the room.
"We must get the patient to bed as soon as possible," he said, in his
quiet, practical, and strong voice.
"I'll go and see about the room," said Mrs. Armine.
She went away quickly.
When she got upstairs there were drops of blood on her lower lip.