Bella Donna Part 67

"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 s.h.i.+vering, though heavy blankets covered her.

Just at dawn Nigel came back.

Then she shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.

Always she was s.h.i.+vering.

XXV

"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 pa.s.s, "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 a.s.siout, 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 G.o.ddess 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 pa.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne beneath the golden letters, looked after them imperturbably.