Bella Donna Part 55

"You are coming. How do you know? Has Mr. Armine told you?"

"My lord, he tell me nothin', but I comin' with you, and Hamza him comin' too."

"Hamza is coming?"

"Suttinly."

She was conscious of a sensation of relief that was yet mingled with a faint feeling of dread.

"Why--why should Hamza come with us?" she asked.

"To be your donkey-boy. Hamza he very good donkey-boy."

"I don't know--I am not sure whether I shall want Hamza in the Fayyum."

Ibrahim looked at her with a smiling face.

"In the Fayyum you will never find good donkey-boy, my lady, but you will do always what you like. If you not like to take Hamza, Hamza very sad, very cryin' indeed, but Hamza he stay here. You do always what you think."

When he had finished speaking, she knew that Hamza would accompany them; she knew that Baroudi had ordered that Hamza was to come.

"We will see later on," she said, as if she had a will in this matter.

She looked at her watch.

"It's time to start."

"The felucca him ready," remarked Ibrahim. "This night the _Loulia_ sailin'; this night the _Loulia_ he go to Armant."

Mrs. Armine frowned. Armant--Esneh--Kom Ombos--and then Aswan! The arbitrariness of her nature was going to be scourged with scorpions by fate, it seemed. How was she to endure that scourging? But--there was to-day. When was she going to learn really to live for the day? What a fool she was! Still frowning, and without saying another word, she went upstairs quickly to dress.

It was past midnight when she returned to the villa. There was no moon; wind was blowing fiercely, las.h.i.+ng the Nile into waves that were edged with foam, and whirling grains of sand stripped away from the desert over the prairies and gardens of Luxor. The stars were blotted out, and the night was cold and intensely dark. She held on tightly to Ibrahim's arm as she struggled up the bank from the river, and almost felt her way to the house, from which only two lights gleamed faintly. The French windows of the drawing-room were locked, and they went round the house to the front door. As Ibrahim put up his hand to ring the bell, a sudden fear came to Mrs. Armine. Suppose Nigel had started earlier from Cairo than he had intended? Suppose he had returned and was then in the house?

She caught Ibrahim's hand. He said something which was carried away and lost to her in the wind. She dropped his hand; he rang, and in a moment the door was opened by Ha.s.san.

"Ask him if--if anything has happened, if there is any message, anything for me!" she said to Ibrahim directly she was in the house.

Ibrahim spoke to Ha.s.san in Arabic.

"My lady, he says there is nothin'."

"Very well. I'll go to bed. Good night, Ibrahim."

And she went upstairs.

When she was in her bedroom she shut the door and sat down just as she was, with a veil over her face, the collar of her dust-coat turned up, her s.h.i.+ning hair dishevelled by the angry hands of the gale. A lamp was burning on the dressing-table, upon which, very oddly arranged, stood a number of silver things, brushes, bottles, boxes, which were usually in the dressing-room. They were set out in a sort of elaborate and very fantastic pattern, which recalled to her sharply a fact. She had no longer a maid. She had got rid of Marie, who had left Luxor on the previous day, neither tearful nor, apparently, angry, but looking sharp, greedy, and half-admiringly inquisitive to the very last. Mrs. Armine had come to her two days before holding an open letter from Nigel, and had announced to her his decision that a lady's maid in the Fayyum would be an impossibility, and that Marie would have to be left behind, for the time, at Luxor. And then had followed a little scene admirably played by the two women; Mrs. Armine deploring the apparent necessity of their separation, but without undue feeling or any exaggeration; Marie regretting "monsieur's" determination to carry "une dame si delicate, si fine" into "un monde si terrible, si sauvage," but at the same time indicating, with a sly intention and the most admirably submissive _nuances_, the impossibility of her keeping house in the villa alone with a group of Nubians. Both women had really enjoyed themselves, as talent must when exercising itself with perfect adroitness. Mrs. Armine had regretted Marie's decision, while at the same time applauding her maidenly _delicatesse_, and had presently, by chance, discovered that several charming purchases from Paris were no good to her, that two or three remarkably attractive gowns made her look "like nothing at all,"

and that, as she was going to the Fayyum, she "couldn't be bothered with" some hats that were, as Marie had often said, _"plus chic que le diable_!" Then a wonderful "character" had been written out, signed, and had changed hands, with an exceedingly generous cheque. Certain carelessly delivered promises had been made which Marie knew would be kept. She had given a permanent address in France, and the curtain had slowly fallen. Ah, the pity of it that there had been no audience! But talent, like genius, should be its own consolation and reward.

So now Ha.s.san arranged Mrs. Armine's "things." She was thankful that Marie had gone, yet she felt utterly lost without a maid. Never, since she was a young girl, had she been accustomed to do anything for herself that a good maid could do for her. And there was not a woman-servant in the house. She was tired, she was terribly strung up; her nerves were all on edge; her heart was aflame with a jealousy which, she knew too well, was destined to be fanned and not to be a.s.suaged in the days that lay before her. And she felt profoundly depressed. It was awful to come home in such a condition in the dead of the night, and to be deprived of all one's comforts. When she saw those silver things all laid out wrongly, the brushes pointing this way and that, the combs fixed in them with the teeth upwards, the bottles of perfume laid on their sides instead of standing erect, the powder-boxes upside down, she felt ready to cry her eyes out. And no one to take away her hat, to loosen and brush her hair, to get her out of her gown, to unlace her shoes! And Nigel at nine o'clock to-morrow!

The wind roared outside. One of the hanging wooden shutters that protected the windows had got loose, and was now, at short intervals, striking against the wall with a violent sound that suggested to her a malefactor trying to break in. She knew what caused the reiterated noise; she knew she could probably stop it by opening the window for a moment and putting out her hand. And yet she felt afraid to do this, afraid to put out her hand into the windy darkness, lest it should be grasped by another hand. She was full of nervous fears.

As she sat there, she could scarcely believe she was in Egypt. The roaring of the wind suggested some bleak and Northern clime. The shutter crashed against the wall. At last she could bear the noise no longer, and she got up, went out on to the landing, and called out: "Ibrahim!"

There was no answer. The lights were out. She felt afraid of the yawning darkness.

"Ibrahim! Ibrahim!" she cried.

She heard the sough of drapery, and a soft and striding step. Somebody was coming quickly. She drew back into her room, and Ibrahim appeared.

"My lady, what you want?"

She pointed to the window.

"The shutter--it's got loose. Can you fasten it? It's making such an awful noise. I shan't be able to sleep all night."

He opened the window. The wind rushed in. The lamp flared up and went out.

For two or three minutes Mrs. Armine heard nothing but the noise of the wind, which seemed to have taken entire possession of the chamber, and she felt as if she were its prey and the prey of the darkness. Something that was like hysteria seized upon her, a desperate terror of fate and the unknown. In the wind and in the darkness she had a grievous sensation of helplessness and of doom, of being lost for ever to happiness and light. And when the wind was shut out, when a match grated, a little glow leaped up, and Ibrahim, looking strangely tall and vast in the black woollen abayeh which he had put on as a protection against the cold, was partially revealed, she sprang towards him with a feeling of unutterable relief.

"Oh, Ibrahim, what an awful night! I'm afraid of it!" she said.

Deftly he lit the lamp; then he turned to her and stared.

"My lady, you are all white, like the lotus what Rameses him carry."

She had laid her hand on his arm. Now she let it drop, sat down on the sofa, unpinned her hat and veil, and threw them down on the floor.

"It's the storm. I hate the sound of wind at night."

"The ginnee him ride in the wind," said Ibrahim, very seriously.

"The ginnee! What is that?"

"Bad spirit. Him come to do harm. Him bin in the room to-night."

They looked at each other in silence. Then Mrs. Armine said:

"Is the shutter quite safe now?"

"Suttinly."

"Then good night, Ibrahim."

"Good night, my lady."

He went over to the door.

"Suttinly the ginnee him bin in the room to-night," he said, solemnly.