Chapter 37

"And not even a maid to help you--although she did ring last night for Hamza, when we were here."

She looked down, and picked at the dim embroideries that covered the divan.

"I've nursed him till I've nearly made myself ill," she said, mechanically.

"I'm going to relieve you of that task."

She turned her face up towards him.

"No, you aren't!" she said. "I'm Nigel's wife, and that is my natural duty."

"Nevertheless, I'm going to relieve you of it."

The rock-like firmness of his tone evidently made upon her an immense impression.

"From to-night I take charge of this case."

Mrs. Armine stood up. She was taller than Isaacson, and now she stood looking down upon him.

"Nigel won't have you!" she said.

"He must."

"He won't--unless I wish it."

"You will never wish it."

"No."

"But you will pretend to wish it."

She continued to look down in silence. At last she breathed, "Why?"

"Because, if you don't, I shall not send for another doctor. I shall send for the police authorities."

She sank down again upon the divan. But her expression did not change. He believed that she succeeded in making her face a mere mask while she thought with a furious rapidity.

"You don't mean to say," she at length said, "that you think anything--that you suppose one of the servants--Ibrahim--Hamza--? I can't believe it! I could never believe it!"

"Do you wish me to cure your husband?"

"Of course I wish him to be cured."

"Then please go now and tell him that you have asked me to stay here for the night. I don't want him to see me to-night. I will see him as soon as he wakes to-morrow."

"But--he doesn't--"

"Just as you like! Either I stay here and take charge of this case, or I go back to the boat at Edfou and to-morrow I put myself into communication with the proper authorities."

She got up again slowly.

"Well, if you really believe you can pull Nigel round quickly!" she said.

She moved to the door.

"I'll see what he says!" she murmured.

Then she opened the door and went out.

That night Isaacson sent Hassan back to the _Fatma_ to fetch some necessary luggage. For Mrs. Armine succeeded in persuading her husband to submit to a doctor's visit the next morning.

Isaacson had not been worsted. But as he went into one of the smart little cabins to get some sleep if possible, he felt terribly, almost unbearably, depressed.

For what was--what must be--the meaning of this victory?

XL

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.

XLI

Nigel had come to hate the _Loulia_. They had no further need of her, and he begged his wife to telegraph to Baroudi in his name to take her away as soon as he liked.

"Ibrahim has his address, I know," he said.

The telegram was sent. In reply came one from Baroudi taking over the _Loulia_. The same day the Reis came up to the villa to receive backsheesh and to say farewell. He made no remark as to his own and his crew's immediate destiny, but soon after he had gone the _Loulia_ untied, crossed the Nile, and was tied up again nearly opposite to the garden against the western bank. And in the evening the sailors could be heard in the distance "making the fantasia."

Mrs. Armine heard them as she walked alone in the garden close to the promontory, and she saw the blue light at the mast-head. The cabin windows were dark.

So this was the end of their voyage to the South!

She stood still near the wall of earth which divided the garden from the partially waste and partially cultivated ground which lay beyond it.

She had not thought that they would come back--there.

This was the end of their voyage. But what was to be the end?

Baroudi made no sign. He had never written to her one word. She had never dared to write to him. He had not told her to write, and that meant he did not choose her to write. She was very much afraid of him, and her fear of him was part of the terrible fascination he held to govern her. She who had had so many slaves when she was young ended thus--in being herself a slave.

She sat down by the earth wall on the first stones of the promontory. The night was moonless; but in the clear nights of Egypt, even without the moon very near details can often be distinguished.

To the right of Mrs. Armine the brown earth bank shelved steeply to a shore that was like a sandy beach which an incoming tide had nearly covered. About it, in a sort of large basin of loose sand and earth, grew a quantity of bushes forming a not dense scrub. She had never been down to walk upon the sandy shore, though she had often descended to get into the felucca. But to-night, after sitting still for some time, she went down, and began to pace upon the sand close to the water's edge.

From here she could not see the house with its lighted windows, speaking to her of the life in which she was involved. She could see nothing except the darkness of the great river, the dark outline of the promontory, and of the top of the bank where the garden began, the dark and confused forms of the bushes tangled together. At her feet the silent water lay, like lake water almost, though farther out the current was strong.

"What am I going to do?" she kept on saying to herself, as she walked to and fro in this solitude. "What am I going to do?"

It was a strange thing, perhaps, that even at this moment Baroudi, the man at a distance, frightened her more than Isaacson, the man who was near. She did not know what either was going to do. She was the prey of a double uncertainty. Isaacson, she supposed, would bring her husband back to health, unless even now she found means to get rid of him. And Baroudi, what would he do? She looked across the river and saw the blue light. Why was the _Loulia_ tied up there? Was Baroudi coming up to join her?

If he did come! She walked faster, quite unconscious that she had quickened her pace. If he did come she felt now that she could no longer be obedient. She would have to see him, have to force him to come out from his deep mystery of the Eastern mind and take notice of what she was feeling. His magnificent selfishness had dominated hers. But she was becoming desperate. The thought of her wrecked beauty haunted her always, though she was perpetually thrusting it away from her. She was resolved to think that there was very little change in her appearance, and that such change as there was would only be temporary. A little, only a little of what she wanted, and surely the Indian summer would return.

And then, she thought of Meyer Isaacson up there in the house close to her, with his horribly acute eyes that proclaimed his horribly acute brain. That man could be pitiless, but not to Nigel. And could he ever be pitiless to her without being pitiless to Nigel?

She looked at the water, and now stood still.

If Baroudi were on board the _Loulia_ to-night, she would get a boat and go to him--would not she?--and say she could not stand her life any longer, that she must be with him. She would let him treat her as he chose. Thinking of Nigel's kindness at this moment she actually longed for cruelty from Baroudi.

But she must be with him.

If she could only be with Baroudi anywhere, anyhow, she would throw the memory of this hateful life with Nigel away for ever. She would never give Nigel another thought. There would be no time to waste over that.

"But what am I going to do? What am I going to do?"

That sentence came back to her mind. Flights of the imagination were useless. It was no use now to give the reins to imagination.

Baroudi must come up the river. He must be coming up, or the _Loulia_ would surely not be tied up against the western shore. But perhaps she was there only for the night. Perhaps she would sail on the morrow.

Mrs. Armine felt that if the next morning the _Loulia_ was gone she would be unable to remain in Luxor. She would have to take the train and go. Where? Anywhere! To Cairo. She could make some excuse; that she must get some clothes, mourning for Harwich. That would do. She would say she was going only for a couple of days. Nigel would let her go. And Meyer Isaacson?

What he wished and what he meant in regard to her Mrs. Armine did not know. And just at this moment she scarcely cared. The return to the villa and the departure of the _Loulia_ seemed to have fanned the fire within her. While she was on the _Loulia_, in an enclosed place, rather like a beautiful prison, she had succeeded in concentrating herself to a certain extent on matters in hand. She had had frightful hours of ennui and almost of despair, but she had got through them somehow. And she had been in command.