Part 20

"I meant that your advice on Egyptian agriculture might be valuable to my husband," she retorted, with composure.

Something in his glance, in his tone, seemed suddenly to brace her, to restore her.

"Ah! that is true. Mr. Armeen would take my advice. In some ways he is not so very English."

"Then it would be kind to come to the Fayyum and to give him the benefit of your advice."

He leaned towards her, and said:

"Bella Donna is not so very subtle!"

"You think subtlety so necessary?" she asked, with a light tinge of irony. "I really don't see why."

His eyes narrowed till they were only slits through which gleamed a yellowish light.

"When is your French maid going?" he asked.

She moved, and sat looking at him for a minute without replying. Had he read her thought of the morning?

"My maid!" she said at length. "What do you mean? Why should she go?"

"When is she going?" he repeated.

The brigand had suddenly reappeared in him.

"What an absurd idea! I can't possibly get on without a maid."

She still acted a careless surprise. An obscure voice within her--a voice that she scarcely recognized, whispered to her, "Resist!"

"When is she going?" he said once more, as if he had not heard her.

The man who was working by the shaduf cried out no more. No more did Mrs. Armine see, at the end of the long and narrow alley, behind the fretwork of shining, pointed leaves, the lateen sails go by. And the withdrawal of the crying voices and of the gliding sails seemed to leave this orange-garden at the very end of the world. The golden peace of the noon wrapped it as in a garment, the hem of which was wrought in geranium-red, in shining green, and in yellow turning to gold. But in this peace she was conscious of the need to struggle if she would dwell in safety. Soft seemed this garment that was falling gently about her. But was it not really deadly as a shirt of Nessus, the poison of which would penetrate her limbs, would creep into her very soul?

It was, perhaps, a little thing, this question of the going, or not, of her maid, but she felt that if she resisted his will in this matter she would win a decisive battle, obtain security from a danger impending, whereas if she yielded in this she would be yielding the whole of her will to his.

"I won't yield!" she said to herself.

And then she looked at the brigand beside her, and something within her, that seemed to be the core of her womanhood, longed intensely to yield.

She had wished to get rid of Marie. Quite without prompting she had decided that very morning to send Marie away. Then how unreasonable it would be to refuse to do it just because he, too, wished the girl to go!

"Why do you want her to go?" she asked slowly, with her eyes upon him. "How can it matter to you whether my maid goes or stays?"

He only looked at her, opened his eyes widely, and laughed. He took another cigarette, lit it, and laughed again quietly, but with surely a real enjoyment of her pretence of ignorance, of her transparent hypocrisy. Nevertheless, she persisted.

"I can't see what such a thing can possibly have to do with you, or why it should interest you at all."

"I will find you a better maid."

"Hamza--perhaps?" she said.

"And why not Hamza?"

He looked at her, and was silent. And again she felt a sensation of fear. There was something deadly about the praying donkey-boy.

"When is that girl going?"

Mrs. Armine opened her lips to say, "She is not going at all." They said:

"I intend to get rid of her within the next few days. I always intended to get rid of her."

"Yes?"

"She isn't really a good maid. She doesn't understand my ways."

"Or she understands them too well," said Baroudi calmly, "When she is gone, I shall burn the alum upon the coals and give it to be eaten by a dog that is black. That girl has the evil eye."

XX

In the lodge in the garden of oranges, when the noon-tide was past and the land lay in the very centre of the gaze of the sun, Baroudi offered to Mrs. Armine an Egyptian dinner, or El-Ghada, served on a round tray of shining gold, which was set upon a low stool cased with tortoise-shell and ornamented with many small squares of mother-of-pearl. When she and Baroudi came into the room where they were to eat, the tray was already in its place, set out with white silk napkins, with rounds of yellow bread, and with limes cut into slices. The walls were hung with silks of shimmering green, and dull gold, and deep and sultry red. Upon the floor were strewn some more of the marvellous rugs, of which Baroudi seemed to have an unlimited supply. Round the room was the usual deep divan. Incense burned in a corner. Through a large window space, from which the hanging shutters were

## partially pushed back, Mrs. Armine saw a vista of motionless

orange-trees.

She sat down on a pile of silken cushions which had been laid for her on the rugs. As she arranged her skirt and settled herself, from an earthen drum just outside the house and an arghool there came a crude sound of native music, to which almost immediately added itself a high and quavering voice, singing:

"_Doos ya' lellee! Doos ya' lellee!_"

At the same moment Aiyoub came into the room, without noise, and handed to Baroudi, who was sitting opposite to Mrs. Armine, with his left knee touching the rug and his right knee raised with his napkin laid over it, a basin of hammered brass with a cover, and a brass jug. Baroudi held forth his hands, and Aiyoub poured water upon them, which disappeared into the basin through holes pierced in the cover. Then, making a cup of his hands turned upwards, Baroudi received more water into it, conveyed it to his mouth, rinsed his mouth elaborately, and spat out the water upon the cover of the basin. Aiyoub carried away the basin and jug, Baroudi dried his hands on his napkin, and then muttered a word. It was "Bi-smi-llah!" but Mrs. Armine did not know that. She sat quite still, for a moment unseen, unthought of; she listened to the quavering voice, to the beaten drum and arghool, she smelt the incense, and she felt like one at a doorway peering in at an unknown world.

Almost immediately Aiyoub came back, and they began the meal, which was perpetually accompanied by the music. Aiyoub offered a red soup, a Kaw-ur-meh--meat stewed in a rich gravy with little onions--leaves of the vine containing a delicious sort of forcemeat, cucumbers in milk, some small birds pierced with silver skewers, spinach, and fried wheat flour mingled with honey. She was given a knife and fork and a spoon, all made of silver, and the plates were of silver, which did not harmonize well with the golden tray. Baroudi used only his fingers and pieces of bread in eating.

Mrs. Armine was hungry, and ate heartily. She knew nothing about Eastern cooking, but she was a gourmet, and realized that Baroudi's cook was an accomplished artist in his own line. During the meal she was offered nothing to drink, but directly it was over Aiyoub brought to her a beautiful cup of gold or gilded silver--she did not know which--and poured into it with ceremonial solemnity a small quantity of some liquid.

"What is it?" she asked Baroudi.

"Drink!" he replied.

She lifted the cup to her lips and drank a draught of water.

"Oh!" she said, with an intonation of surprised disappointment.

"_Lish rub el Moyeh en Nil awadeh!_" he said.

"What does that mean?"

"'Who drinks Nile water must return.'"

She smiled, lifted the cup again to her lips, and drank the last drop of water.

"Nile water! I understand."

"And now you will have some sherbet."

He spoke to Aiyoub in Arabic. Aiyoub took away the cup, brought a tall, delicate glass, and having thrown over his right arm an elaborately embroidered napkin, poured into it from a narrow vase of china a liquid the colour of which was a soft and velvety green.

"Is this really sherbet?" Mrs. Armine asked.

"Sherbet made of violets."

"How is it made?"

By crushing the flowers of violets, making them into a preserve with sugar, and boiling them for a long time.

Aiyoub stayed by her while she drank, and when she had finished he offered her the embroidered napkin. She touched it with her lips.

"Do you like it?"

"It is very strange. But everything here is strange."

Aiyoub brought once more to his master the basin with the cover and the jug, and Baroudi washed his hands and rinsed his mouth as at the beginning of the meal. After this ceremony he again muttered a word or words, rose to his feet, took Mrs. Armine's left hand with his right, and led her to the divan. Aiyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the orange-trees. It was answered by another bird.

"They are singing the praises of God," said Baroudi, in a deep and slow voice, and as if he were speaking to himself.

"Those birds!"

She gazed at him in wonder. He looked at her with sombre eyes.

"You do not know these things."

Suddenly she felt like an ignorant and stupid child, like one unworthy of knowledge.

He sipped his coffee. He was now sitting in European fashion beside her on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head his appearance was not unmistakably Eastern.

And this man, evidently quite seriously, talked to her about the birds singing to each other the praises of God.

"You ought to be differently dressed," she said.

"How?"

"In Egyptian clothes, not English flannels."

"Some day you shall see me like that," he said, reassuringly. "I often wear the kuftan at night upon the _Loulia_."

"At night upon the _Loulia_! Then how on earth can I see you in it?"

She spoke with a sudden sharp irritation. To-day her marriage with Nigel seemed to her like a sword suspended above her, which would presently descend upon her, striking her to earth with all her capacity for happiness unused.

"You will see me with the drawers of linen, the sudeyree, the kuftan, the gibbeh--or, as says my father, jubbeh--and the turban on my head. Only you must wait a little. But women do not like to wait for a pleasure. They are always in a hurry."

The cool egoism with which he accepted and commented on her admiration roused in her, not anger, but a sort of almost wondering respect. It seemed part of his strength. He lifted his eyebrows, threw back his head, showing his magnificent throat, and with the gesture that she had noticed in the garden of the Villa Androud thrust two fingers inside his low, soft collar, and kept them there while he added:

"They are like children, and must be treated as children. But they can be very clever, too, when they want to trick. I know that. They can be as cunning as foxes, and as light-footed and swift as gazelles. But all that they do and all that they are is just for men. Women are made for men, and they know it so well that it is only about men that they think. I tell you that."

"No doubt it is true," she said, smilingly accepting his assertions.

"Women will run even after the Chinese shadow of a man if they are not shut close behind the grilles."

Mrs. Armine laughed outright.

"And so you Easterns generally keep them there."

"Well, and are we not wise? Are we not much wiser than the Mr. Armeens of Europe?"

His unexpected introduction of Nigel's name gave her a little shock, and the bad taste of it for an instant distressed even her tarnished breeding. But the sensation vanished directly as she remembered his Eastern birth.

"And you?" she said. "Would you never trust a woman?"

"Never," he calmly returned. "All women are alike. If they see the Chinese shadow, they must run after it. They cannot help themselves."

"You seem to forget that men are for ever running after the Chinese shadows of women," she retorted.

"She thought of her own life, of how she had been worshipped and pursued, not _pour le bon motif_, but still--"

She would like him to know about all that.

"Men do that to please women, as to please a child you give it a sand lizard tied to a string. Put the string into its hand and the child is happy. So it is with a woman. Only she wants not the string, but the edge of a kuftan."

It seemed to Mrs. Armine, as she listened to Baroudi, that she was permanently deposed from the place she had for long been accustomed to occupy. He tacitly demanded and accepted her admiration instead of giving her his. And yet--he had serenaded her on the Nile that first evening of her coming. He had bought Hamza and Ibrahim. He had desired and tried to effect the swift departure of Nigel. He had decreed that Marie must go. And the Nile water--with how much intention he had given it her to drink! And he had plans for the future. They seemed gathering about her silently, softly, like clouds changing the aspect of her world.

She had not turned that glove inside out yet.

She felt that she must alter her tactics, assert herself more strongly, escape from the modest position he seemed to be deliberately placing her in. Where was her pride, even of a courtesan?

She lifted her coffee-cup, emptied it, put it down, and began to pull on one of her long white gloves. Baroudi went on calmly smoking. She picked up the second glove. He sharply clapped his hands. Aiyoub entered, Baroudi spoke to him in Nubian, and he swiftly disappeared. Mrs. Armine pulled on the second glove.

"Now I must go home," she said.

She moved to get up, but her movement was arrested by the furtive entrance of a thin man clad in what looked to her like a bit of sacking, with naked arms, chest, legs, and feet, and a narrow, pointed head, completely shaved in front and garnished at the back with a mane of greasy black hair, which fell down upon his shoulders. In his hand, which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent upon his inexplicable occupation.

After moving several times in this manner round the room, he stopped short, almost like a dog pointing, then drew from inside his coarse garment a wrinkled receptacle of discoloured leather with a widely-opened mouth, cried out some words in a loud, fierce voice, leaped upwards, and succeeded in striking the ceiling with his stick.

A long serpent fell down into the bag.

Mrs. Armine uttered a cry of surprise, but not of alarm. She was not afraid of snakes. The darweesh went creeping about as before, presently called out some more words, and struck at the wall. A second serpent fell into the bag, or seemed to fall into it, from some concealed place among the silken draperies. Again he crept about, called, struck, and received another reptile. Then a little dark-eyed boy ran in, salaaming, and the darweesh and the boy, to the accompaniment of wild music played outside, went through a performance of snake-charming and jugglery familiar enough in the East, yet, it seems, eternally interesting to Easterns, and fascinating to many travellers. When it was over the little boy salaamed and ran out, but the music, which was whining and intense, still went on, and the darweesh advanced, holding his bag of snakes, and stood still before Mrs. Armine. For the first time he fixed his cunning and ferocious eyes, which were suffused with blood, steadily upon her, as if he desired to hypnotize her, or to inspire her with deadly fear. She returned his gaze steadily and calmly, and held out her hand towards the bag, indicating by a gesture that she wished to handle the serpents. The darweesh, still staring at her, and very slowly, put the bag close to her, holding it under her breast. A curious musty smell, like the scent of something terribly old, came to her nostrils. She hesitated for a moment, then deliberately pulled off her gloves, put them on the divan, stood up, and plunged her right hand into the bag, at the same time shutting her eyes. She shut them to enjoy with the utmost keenness a sensation entirely new.

Her hand encountered a dry and writhing life, closed upon it firmly but gently, drew it out and towards her. Then she opened her eyes, and saw that she had taken from the dark a serpent that was black with markings of a dull orange colour. It twisted itself in her hand, as if trying to escape, but as she held it firmly it presently became quieter, lifted itself, reared up its flat head, and seemed to regard her with its feverish and guilty eyes, which were like the eyes of something consciously criminal that must always be unrepentant. She looked at those eyes, and she felt a strong sympathy for the creature, and no sense of fear at all. Slowly she brought it nearer to her, nearer, nearer, till it wavered out from her hand and attained her body.

The darweesh always stood before her, but the expression in his eyes had changed, was no longer hypnotic and terrible, but rather deeply observant. Baroudi sat quite still upon the divan. He looked from Mrs. Armine to the serpent, then looked again at her. And she, feeling these two men absolutely concentrated upon her, was happy and at ease. Swiftly the serpent wound itself about her, and, clinging to her waist, thrust forth the upper part of its body towards the darweesh, shooting out its ribbon of a tongue, which quivered like something frail in a draught of wind. It lowered and raised itself several times, rhythmically, as if in an effort to obey the whining music and to indulge in a dancing movement. Then, as a long shrill note was held, it again reared itself up, till its head was level with Mrs. Armine's ear, and remained there quivering, and turning itself slowly from side to side with a flexibility that was abominable and sickening. The music ceased. There was a moment's pause. Then, with a fierce movement that seemed expressive of a jealousy which could no longer be contained, the darweesh seized the snake about two inches below its head, and tore it away from Mrs. Armine. The terrible look had returned to his face with an added fire that beaconed a revengeful intention. Pressing his thumb hard upon the reptile's back, he seemed to fall into a frenzy. He several times growled on a deep note, bowed back and forth, tossing his mane of greasy hair over his face and away from it, depressed his body, then violently drew it up to its full height, while his bare feet executed a sort of crude dance. Then, wrought up apparently to a pitch of fanatical fury, he bent his head, opened his mouth, from which came beads of foam, and bit off the serpent's head. Casting away its body, which still seemed writhing with life, he made a sound of munching, working his jaws extravagantly, shot forth his head towards Mrs. Armine, gaped to show her his mouth was empty, lifted his bag from the floor and rushed noiselessly from the room. She stood looking at the headless body of the reptile which lay on the rug at her feet.

"Take it away!" she said to Baroudi.

He picked it up, went to the window, and threw it out into the orange-garden. Then he came back and stood beside her.

"Horrible brute!" she said.

She spoke angrily. When the darweesh had attacked the serpent she had felt herself attacked, and the killing of it had seemed to her an outrage committed upon herself. Even now that he was gone and the headless body was flung away, she could not rid herself of this sensation. She was full of an intimate sense of fury that longed to be assuaged.

"How could you let the brute do that?" she exclaimed, turning upon Baroudi. "How could you sit there and allow such a hateful thing?"

"But he came here to do it. He is one of the Saadeeyeh."

"He was going to do it even if I hadn't taken the serpent?"

"Of course."

"I don't believe that. He did it because he was angry with the serpent for not hurting me, for letting me take it."

"As you please," he said. "What does it matter?"

She glanced at him, and sat down. The expression in his eyes soothed her, the new look that she could read. Had it been called up by her courage with the serpent? She wondered if, by her impulsive action, she had grasped something in him which till now had seemed to elude her. Nevertheless, although her mood was changing, the sense of personal outrage had not completely died out of her.

"There really are other serpent eaters?" she asked.

"Of course. Saadees."

"And that man is one? But he hated my taking the serpent."

"But I did not hate it."

"No."

More strongly she felt that she had grasped something in him which had eluded her till now.

"Sit there for a minute quietly," he said, with a gentleness that, though far less boyish, recalled to her mind the smiling gentleness of Ibrahim. "And I will give you a new pleasure, and all your anger will go from you as the waves go from the Nile when the breeze has died away."

"What is it?"

His eyes were full of a sort of happy cunning like a child's.

"Sit there and you will know."