Part 9

She wore a rose-coloured dress, cut very high at the throat, with tight sleeves that came partly over her hands, emphasizing their attractive delicacy. The dress was very plainly made and seemed moulded to her beautiful figure. She had no hat on, but Isaacson had never before been so much struck by her height. As she came in, she looked immensely tall. And there was some marked change in her appearance. For an instant he did not know what it was. Then he saw that she had given to her cheeks an ethereal flush of red. This altered her extraordinarily. It made her look younger, more brilliant, but also much less refined. She smiled gaily as she took his hand. She enveloped him at once with a definite cheerfulness which came to him as a shock. As she held his hand, she touched the bell. Then she drew him down on the sofa, with a sort of coaxing cordiality.

"This shall be better than Bank Holiday," she said. "I know you pitied me then. You wondered how I could bear it. Now I've shut out the river. I'm glad you never came again till I could have the lights and the fire. I love the English winters, don't you, because one has to do such delicious things to keep all thought of them out. Now, in the hot places abroad, that people are always raving about, all the year round one can never have a room like this, an hour like this by a clear fire, with thick curtains drawn--and a friend."

As she said the last three words, her voice had a really beautiful sound in it, and a sound that was surely beautiful because of some moral quality it contained or suggested. More than a whole essay of Emerson's did this mere sound suggest friendship. The leaves of the book of this woman's attractions were being turned one by one for Isaacson. And of all her attractions her voice perhaps was the greatest.

The waiter came in with tea. When he had gone, the Doctor could speak.

But he scarcely knew what to say. Very seldom was his self-possession disturbed. To-day he felt at a disadvantage. The depression, perhaps chiefly physical, which had lately been brooding over him, and which had become acute at the concert, deepened about him to-day, made him feel morally small. Mrs. Chepstow's cheerfulness seemed like height. For a moment in all ways she towered above him, and even her bodily height seemed like a mental triumph, or a triumph of her will over his.

"But this is only autumn," he said.

"We can pretend it is winter."

She gave him his cup of tea, with the same gesture that had charmed Nigel on the day when he first visited her. Then she handed him a plate with little bits of lemon on it.

"I've found out your tastes, you see. I know you never take milk."

He was obliged to feel grateful. Yet something in him longed to refuse the lemon, the something that never ceased from denouncing her. He uttered the right banality:

"How good of you to bother about me!"

"But you bother about me, and on your only free day! Don't you think I am grateful to you?"

There was no mockery in her voice. Today her irony was concealed, but, like a carefully-covered fire, he knew it was burning still. And because it was covered he resented it. He resented this comedy they were playing, the insincerity into which she was smilingly leading him. She could not imagine that she deceived him. She was far too clever for that. Then what was the good of it all?--that she had put him, that she kept him, at a disadvantage.

She handed him the muffins. She ministered to him as if she wanted to pet him. Again he had to feel grateful. Even in acute dislike men must be conscious of real charm in a woman. And Isaacson did not know how to ignore anything that was beautiful. Had the Devil come to him--with a grace, he must have thought, "How graceful is the Devil!" Now he was charmed by her gesture. Nevertheless, being a man of will, and, in the main, a man who was very sincere, he called up his hard resolutions, and said:

"No, I don't think you are grateful. I don't think you are the woman to be grateful without a cause."

"Or with one," he mentally added.

"But here is the cause!"

She touched his sleeve. And suddenly, with that touch, all her charm for him vanished, and he was angry with her for daring to treat him like those boys by whom she had been surrounded, for daring to think that she could play upon the worst in him.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," he said. "I am no cause for your gratitude."

She looked more cordial and natural even than before.

"But I think you are. For you don't really like me, and yet you come to see me. That is unselfishness."

"Only supposing what you say were true, and that you did like me."

"I do like you."

She said it quite simply, without emphasis. And even to him it sounded true.

"Some day perhaps you will know it."

"But--I do not believe it."

He had recovered from the stroke of her greatest weapon, her voice.

"That does not matter. What is matters, not what some one thinks is, or is not."

"Yes," he said. "What is matters. I have come here, not to pay a formal call, or even a friendly visit, but, perhaps, to commit an impertinence."

She smilingly moved her head, and handed him her cigarette-case.

"No, you would never do that."

He hesitated to take a cigarette--and now her bright eyes frankly mocked him, and said, "A cigarette commits you to nothing!" Certainly she knew how to make him feel almost like an absurd and awkward boy; or was it his feeling of overwork, of physical depression, that was disarming him today?

"Thank you."

He lighted a cigarette, and she lighted another, still with a happy air.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"I feel it."

With a little laugh, she reminded him of his saying about women.

"You are wrong. I am going to do it," he said.

"But--do you really think it an impertinence?"

He was beset by his sensitive dislike to mix in other people's affairs, but almost angrily he overcame it.

"I don't know. You may. Mrs. Chepstow, you were raving just now about the delights of the English winter--"

"Shut out!" she interpolated.

"Then why should you avoid them?"

"And who says I am going to?"

"Are not you going to Egypt?"

She settled herself in the angle of the sofa.

"Would it be the wrong climate for me, Doctor Isaacson?"

She put an emphasis on "Doctor."

"I am not talking as a doctor."

"Then as a friend--or as an enemy?"

"As a friend--of his."

"Of whom?"

"Of Nigel Armine."

"Because he is working in the Fayyum, may not I go up the Nile?"

"If you were on the Nile, Armine would not be in the Fayyum."

"You are anxious about his reclaiming of the desert? Have you put money into his land scheme?"

"You think I only care for money?" he said, nettled, despite himself, at the sound of knowledge in her voice.

"What do you know of me?"

"And you--of me?"

She still spoke lightly, smilingly. But he thought of the inexorable beating of that pulse of life--of life, and the will to live as her philosophy desired.

"I don't wish to speak of any knowledge I may have of you. But--leave Armine in the Fayyum."

"Did he say I was going to Egypt?"

"He spoke of it once only. Then he said you might go."

"Anything else?"

"He said that if you did go he would look after you."

She sat looking at him in silence.

"And--why not?" she said at last, as he said nothing more.

"Others have--looked after you."

Her face did not change.

"Doesn't he know it?" she said.

"And he isn't like--others."

"I know what he is like."

When she said that, Isaacson hated her, hated her for her woman's power of understanding, and, through her understanding, of governing men.

"What does he mean by--looking after you?" he said.

And now, almost without knowing it, he spoke sternly, and his dark face was full of condemnation.

"What did you mean when you said that 'others' have done it?"

"Then it is that!"

Isaacson had not meant to speak the words, but they escaped from his lips. No passing light in her eyes betrayed that she had caught the reflection of the thought that lay behind them.

"Men! Men!" his mind was saying. "And--even Armine!"

"You are afraid for the Fayyum?" she said.

"Oh, Mrs. Chepstow!" he began, with a sudden vehemence that suggested the unchaining of a nature. Then he stopped. Behind his silence there was a flood of words--words to describe her temperament and Armine's, her mode of life and Armine's, what she deserved--and he; words that would have painted for Mrs. Chepstow not only the good in Isaacson's friend, but also the secret good in Isaacson, shown in his love of it, his desire to keep it out of the mud. And it was just this secret good that prevented Isaacson from speaking. He could not bear to show it to this woman. Instinctively she knew, appreciated, what was, perhaps, not high-minded in him. Let her be content with that knowledge. He would not make her the gift of his goodness.

And--to do so would be useless.

"Yes?" she said.

She sat up on the sofa. She was looking lightly curious.

"If you do go to the Nile, let me wish you a happy winter."

He was once more the self-possessed Doctor so many women liked.

"If I go, I shall know how to make him happy," she replied, echoing his cool manner, despite her more earnest words.

He got up. Again he hated her for her knowledge of men. He hated her so much that he longed to be away from her. Why should she be allowed to take a life like Armine's into her soiled hands, even if she could make him happy for a time, being a mistress of deception?

"Good-bye."

He just touched her hand.

"Good-bye. I am grateful. You know why."

Again she sent him that cordial smile. He left her standing up by the hearth. The glow from the flames played over her rose-coloured gown. Her beautiful head was turned towards the door to watch him go. In one hand she held her cigarette. Its tiny wreath of smoke curled lightly about her, mounting up in the warm, bright room. Her figure, the shape of her head, her eyes--they looked really lovely. She was still the "Bella Donna" men had talked about so long. But as he went out, he saw the tiny wrinkles near her eyes, the slight hardness about her cheekbones, the cynical droop at the corners of her mouth.

Armine did not see them. He could not make Armine see them. Armine saw only the beauties she possessed. His concentration on them made for blindness.

And yet even he had his ugliness. For now Isaacson believed in the liaison between him and Mrs. Chepstow.

Only eight days later, after Mrs. Chepstow and Nigel had sailed for Alexandria, did he learn that they were married.

XI

Immediately after their marriage at a registrar's office, Nigel and his wife, with a maid, and a great many trunks of varying shapes and sizes, travelled to Naples and embarked on the _Hohenzollern_ for Egypt, where Nigel had rented for the winter the Villa Androud, on the bank of the Nile near Luxor.

Nigel was happy, but he was not wholly free from anxiety, although he was careful to keep that anxiety from his wife, and desired even sometimes to deny that it existed to himself. In making this marriage he had obeyed the cry of two voices within him, the voice of the senses and the voice of the soul. He did not know which had sounded most clearly; he did not know which inclination had prevailed over him most strongly, the longing for a personal joy, or the pitiful desire to shed happiness and peace on a darkened and soiled existence. The future perhaps would tell him. Meanwhile he put before him one worthy aim, to be the perfect husband.

Although the month was November, and the rush for the Nile had not begun, the _Hohenzollern_ was crowded with passengers, and when the Armines came into the dining-room for lunch, as the vessel was leaving Naples, every place was already taken.

"Give us a table upstairs alone," said Nigel to the head-steward, putting something into his hand. "We shall like that ever so much better."

He had caught sight of a number of staring English faces, on some of which there seemed to be more than the dawning of a recognition of Mrs. Armine.

As if mechanically the rosy Prussian retained the something, and replied, with a strong German accent:

"I must give you the table at the top of the staircase, sir, but I cannot promise that you will be alone. If there are any more to come, they will have to sit with you."

"Anyhow, put us there."

"Pray that we have this to ourselves for the voyage, Ruby," said Nigel, a moment later, as they sat side by side on a white settee close to the open door which led out on to the deck at the top of the main companion.

As he finished speaking, a steward appeared, quickly conducting to their table a tall and broad young man, who made them a formal bow, and composedly sat down opposite to them.

He was remarkably well dressed in clothes which must have been cut by an English tailor, and which he wore with a carelessness almost English, but also with an easy grace that was utterly foreign. Thin, with mighty shoulders and an exceptionally deep chest, it was obvious that his strength must be enormous. His neck looked as powerful as a bull's, and his rather small head was poised upon it with a sort of triumphant boldness. His hair was black and curly, his forehead very broad, his nose short, straight, and determined, with wide and ardent nostrils. Under a small but dense moustache his lips were thick and rather pouting. His chin, thrust slightly forward in a manner almost aggressive, showed the dusk of close-shaven hair. The tint of his skin, though dark, was clear--had even something of delicacy. His hands, broad, brown, and muscular, had very strong-looking fingers which narrowed slightly at the tips. His eyes were large and black, were set in his head with an almost singular straightness, and were surmounted by brows which, depressed towards the nose, sloped upwards towards the temples. These brows gave to the eyes beneath them, even to the whole face, a curiously distinctive look of open resolution, which was seizing, and attractive or unattractive according to the temperament of the beholder.

He took up the _carte du jour_, studied it at length and with obvious care, then gave an order in excellent French, which the steward hastened away to carry out. This done, he twisted his moustaches and looked calmly at his companions, not curiously, but rather as if he regarded them with a polite indifference, and merely because they were near him. Mrs. Armine seemed quite unaware of his scrutiny, but Nigel spoke to him almost immediately, making some remark about the ship in English. The stranger answered in the same language, but with a strong foreign accent. He seemed quite willing to talk. He apologized for interrupting their tete-a-tete, but said he had no choice, as the saloon was completely full. They declared they were quite ready for company, Nigel with his usual sympathetic geniality, Mrs. Armine with a sort of graceful formality beneath which--or so her husband fancied--there was just a suspicion of reluctance. He guessed that she would have much preferred a private table, but when he said so to her, as they were taking their coffee on deck, she answered:

"No, what does it matter? We shall so soon be in our own house. Tell me about the villa, Nigel, and Luxor. You know I have never seen it."

With little more than a word she had deftly flicked the intruding stranger out of their lives, she had concentrated herself on Nigel. He felt that all her force, like a strong and ardent stream, was flowing into the new channel which he had cut for her. He obeyed her. He told her about Egypt. And as he talked, and watched her listening, he began to feel thoroughly for the first time the vital change in his life, and something within him rejoiced, that was surely his manhood singing.

The voyage passed swiftly by, attended by perfect weather, calm, radiant, blue--weather that releases humanity from any bonds of depression into a joyous world. Yet for the Armines it was not without an unpleasant incident. Among the passengers were a Lord and Lady Hayman, whom Nigel Armine knew, and whom Mrs. Armine had known in the days when London had loved her. It was impossible not to meet them, equally impossible not to perceive their cold confusion at each encounter, shown by a sudden interest in empty seas and unpopulated horizons. That they mistook the situation was so evident to Nigel that one day he managed to confront Lord Hayman in the smoke-room and to have it out with him.

"Congratulate you, I'm sure, congratulate you!" murmured that gentleman, whose practical brown eyes became suddenly wells full of ironical amazement. "Tell my wife at once. Knew nothing at all about it."

He got away, with a moribund cigar between his teeth, and no doubt informed Lady Hayman, who thereafter bowed to Nigel, but with a reluctant muscular movement that adequately expressed an inward moral surprise mingled with condemnation. Mrs. Armine seemed totally undisturbed by these demonstrations, her only comment upon the lady being that it was really strange that "in these days" any one could be found to wear magenta and red together, especially any one with a complexion like Lady Hayman's. And her astonishment at the triple combination of colours seemed so simple, so sincere, that it had to be believed in as merely an emanation from an artistic temperament. It was probable that the Haymans told other English on the _Hohenzollern_ the news of Nigel's marriage, for several of the faces that had stared from the luncheon-tables continued to stare on the deck, but with a slightly different expression; the sheer, dull curiosity being exchanged for that half-satirical interest with which the average person of British blood regards a newly-married couple.

This contemplation of them made Nigel secretly angry, and awoke in him a great and peculiar tenderness for his wife, founded on a suddenly more acute understanding of the brutality of the ostracism, combined with notoriety, which she had endured in recent years. Now at last she had some one to protect her. His heart enfolded her with ample wings. But he longed to be free from this crowd, from which on a ship they could not escape, and they spoke to no one during the voyage except to their companion at meals.

With him they were soon on the intimate terms of shipboard--terms that commit one to nothing in the future when land is reached. Although he was dressed like an Englishman, and on deck wore a straw hat with the word "Scott" inside it, he soon let them know that his name was Mahmoud Baroudi, that his native place was Alexandria, that he was of mixed Greek and Egyptian blood, and that he was a man of great energy and will, interested in many schemes, pulling the strings of many enterprises.

He spoke always with a certain polite but bold indifference, as if he cared very little what impression he made on others; and all the information that he gave about himself was dropped out in a careless, casual way that seemed expressive of his character. The high rank, the great riches of his father he rather implied than definitely mentioned. Only when he talked of his occupations was he more definite, more strongly personal. Nigel gathered that he was essentially a man of affairs, had nothing in common with the typical lazy Eastern, who loves to sit in the sun, to suffer the will of Allah, and to fill the years with dreams; that he was cool, clear-headed, and full of the marked commercial ability characteristic of the modern Greek. Whether this aptitude was combined with the sinuous cunning that is essentially Oriental Nigel did not know. He certainly could not perceive it. All that Baroudi said was said with clearness, and a sort of acute precision, whether he discussed the land question, the irrigation works on the Nile, the great boom of 1906, in which such gigantic fortunes were made, or the cotton and sugar industries, in both of which he was interested. The impression he conveyed to Nigel was that he was born to "get on" in whatever he undertook, and that in almost any form of

## activity he could be a fine ally, or an equally fine opponent. That he

was fond of sport was soon apparent. He spoke with an enthusiasm that was always mingled with a certain serene _insouciance_ of the horses he had bred and of the races he had won in Alexandria and Cairo, of yachting, of big-game shooting up the Nile beyond Khartum in the country of the Shillouks, and of duck, pigeon, and jackal shooting in the Fayyum and on the sacred Lake of Kurun.

Nigel found him an excellent fellow, the most sympathetic and energetic man of Eastern blood whom he had ever encountered. Mrs. Armine spoke of him more temperately; he did not seem to interest her, and Nigel was confirmed by her lack of appreciation in an idea that had already occurred to him. He believed that Baroudi was a man who did not care for women, except, no doubt, as the occasional and servile distractions of an unoccupied hour in the harem. He was always very polite to Mrs. Armine, but when he talked he soon, as if almost instinctively, addressed himself to Nigel; and once or twice, when Mrs. Armine left them alone together over their coffee and cigars, he seemed to Nigel to become another man, to expand almost into geniality, to be not merely self-possessed--that faculty never failed him--but to be more happily at his ease, more racy, more ready for intimacy. Probably he was governed by the Oriental's conception of woman as an inferior sex, and was unable to be quite at home in the complete equality and ease of the English relation with women.

When the _Hohenzollern_ sighted Alexandria, Baroudi went below for a moment. He reappeared wearing the fez. They bade each other good-bye in the harbour, with the usual vague hopes of a further meeting that do duty on such occasions, and that generally end in nothing.

Mrs. Armine seemed glad to be rid of him and to be alone with her husband.

"Don't let us stay in Cairo," she said. "I want to go up the river. I want to be in the Villa Androud."