What his intention was she did not know, but he could not have said anything to her at that moment that would have struck more rudely upon her sensuous pleasure in the change one step had brought her. His words instantly put before her the necessity for going presently, very soon, back to the camp and Nigel, and they woke up in her the secret woman, the woman who still retained the instincts of a lady. This lady realized, almost as Eve realized her nakedness, the humiliation of that rush through the night from one camp to another, the humiliation that lay in the fact that it was she who sought the man, that he had her brought to him, did not trouble to come to her. She reddened beneath the paint on her face, turned swiftly round, bent down, and tried to undo the canvas flap of the tent. Her intention was to go out, to call Ibrahim, to leave the camp at once. But her hands trembled and she could not undo the canvas. Still bending, she struggled with it. She heard no movement behind her. Was Baroudi calmly waiting for her to go? Some one must have pegged the flap down after she had come in. She would have to kneel down on the carpet to get at the fastenings. It seemed to her, in her nervous anger and excitement, that to kneel in that tent would be a physical sign of humiliation; nevertheless, after an instant of hesitation, she sank to the ground and pushed her hands forcibly under the canvas, feeling almost frantically for the ropes. She grasped something, a rope, a peg--she did not know what--and pulled and tore at it with all her force.
Just then the night wind, which blew waywardly over the sands, now rising in a gust that was almost fierce, now dying away into a calm that was almost complete, failed suddenly, and she heard a frail sound which, by its very frailty, engaged all her attention. It was a reiteration of the sound which she thought she had heard as she waited outside the tent, and this time she was no longer in doubt. It was the cry of an instrument of music, a stringed instrument of some kind, plucked by demure fingers. The cry was repeated. A whimsical Eastern melody, very delicate and pathetic, crept to her from without.
It suggested to her--women.
Her hands became inert, and her fingers dropped from the tent-pegs. She thought of the other tent, of the smaller tent she had seen, standing apart near Baroudi"s. Who was living in that tent?
The melody went on, running a wayward course. It might almost be a bird"s song softly trilled in some desolate place of the sands, but--
It died away into the night, and the night wind rose again.
Mrs. Armine got up from her knees. Her hands were trembling no longer.
She no longer wished to go.
"Arrange some of those cushions for me, Baroudi," she said. "I am tired after my ride."
He had not moved from where he had been standing when she came in, but she noticed that his long pipe had dropped from his hand and was lying on the carpet.
"Where shall I put them?" he asked, gravely.
She pointed to the side of the tent which was nearest to the smaller tent.
"Against the silk, two or three cushions. Then I can lean back. That will do."
She unb.u.t.toned her fur jacket.
"Help me!" she said.
He drew it gently off. She sat down, and pulled off her gloves. She arranged the cushions with care behind her back. Her manner was that of a woman who meant to stay where she was for a long time. She was listening intently to hear the music again, but her face did not show that she was making any effort. Her self was restored to her, and her self was a woman who in a certain world, a world where women crudely, and sometimes quite openly, battle with other women for men, had for a long time resolutely, successfully, even cruelly, held her own.
Baroudi watched her with serious eyes. He picked up his pipe and let himself down on his haunches close to where she was leaning against her cushions. The night wind blew more strongly. There was no sound from the other tent. When Mrs. Armine knew that the wind must drown that strange, frail music, even if the hidden player still carelessly made it, she said, with a sort of brutality:
"And if my husband comes back to camp before my return there?"
"He will not."
"We can"t know."
"The dromedary will take you there in fifteen minutes."
"He may be there now. If he is there?"
"Do you wish him to be there?"
He had penetrated her thought, gone down to her desire. That sound of music, that little cry of some desert lute plucked by demure fingers, perhaps stained with the henna, the colour of joy, had rendered her reckless. At that moment she longed for a crisis. And yet, at his question, something within her recoiled. Could she be afraid of Nigel?
Could she cower before his goodness when it realized her evil? Marriage had surely subtly changed her, giving back to her desires, prejudices, even pruderies of feeling that she had thought she had got rid of for ever long ago. Some spectral instincts of the "straight" woman still feebly strove, it seemed, to lift their bowed heads within her.
"Things can"t go on like this," she said. "I don"t know what I wish. But I am not going to allow myself to be treated as you think you can treat me. Do you know that in Europe men have ruined themselves for me--ruined themselves?"
"You liked that!" he intercepted, with a smile of understanding. "You liked that very much. But I should never do that."
He shook his head.
"I would give you many things, but I am not one of those what the Englishman calls "dam fools.""
The practical side of his character, thus suddenly displayed, was like a cool hand laid upon her. It was like a medicine to her fever. It seemed for a moment to dominate a raging disease--the disease of her desire for him--which created, to be its perpetual companion, a furious jealousy involving her whole body, her whole spirit.
"Because you don"t care for me," she said, after a moment of hesitation, and again running, almost in despite of herself, to meet her humiliation. "Every man who cares for a woman can be a fool for her, even an Eastern man."
"Why do I come here," he said, "two days through the desert from the Sphinx?"
"It amuses you to pursue an Englishwoman. You are cruel, and it amuses you."
Her cruelty to Nigel understood Baroudi"s cruelty to her quite clearly at that moment, and she came very near to a knowledge of the law of compensation.
His eyes narrowed.
"Would you rather I did not pursue you?"
She was silent.
"Would you rather be left quietly to your life with Mr. Armeen?"
"Oh, I"m sick of my life with him!" she cried out, desperately. "It would be better if he were in camp tonight when I got back there; it would be much better!"
"And if he were in camp--would you tell him?"
Contempt crawled in his voice.
"You are not like one of our women," he said. "They know how to do what they want even behind the shutters of their husbands" houses. They are clever women when they walk in the ways of love."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
He had made her feel like a child. He had struck hard upon her pride of a successful demi-mondaine.
"Of course I shouldn"t tell him!" she said. "But perhaps it would be better if I did. For I"m tired of my life."
Again the horrible melancholy which so often comes to women of her type and age, and of which she was so almost angrily afraid, flowed over her.
She must live as she wished to live in these few remaining years. She must break out of prison quickly, or, when she did break out, there would be no freedom that she could enjoy. She had so little time to lose. She could tell nothing to Baroudi of all this, but perhaps she could make him feel the force of her desire in such a way that an equal force of answering desire would wake in him. Perhaps she had never really exerted herself enough to put forth, when with him, all the powers of her fascination, long tempered and tried in the blazing furnaces of life.
The gusty wind died down across the sands, and again she heard the frail sound of the desert lute. It wavered into her ears, like something supple, yielding, insinuating.
There was a woman in that tent.
And she, Bella Donna, must go back to camp almost directly, and leave Baroudi with that woman! She was being chastised with scorpions to-night.
"Why did you come to this place?" she said.
"To be with you for an hour."