Bella Donna Part 69

"And it all pa.s.ses away so fast, whatever it is," he said. "But that is no reason why we should not take our happiness and enjoy it to the utmost. Why do you try to damp my enthusiasm to-day?"

"I don't try. But it is dangerous to be too sure of happiness beforehand."

She was speaking superst.i.tiously, and she was really speaking to herself. At first she had been thinking of, speaking to, him as if for his own good, moved by a sort of dim pity that surely belonged rather to the girl she had been than to the woman she actually was. Now the darkness of this lonely temple and the knowledge that it was Aphrodite's--she thought always of Hathor as Aphrodite--preyed again upon her spirit as when she first came to it. She felt the dreadful brevity of a woman's, of any woman's triumph over the world of men. She felt the ghastly shortness of the life of physical beauty. She seemed to hear the sound of the movement of Time rus.h.i.+ng away, to see the darkness of the End closing about her, as now the dimness of this desolate shrine of beauty and love grew deeper round her.

Far up, near the forbidding gloom of the mighty roof, there rose a fiercely petulant sound, a chorus of angry cries. Large shadows with beating wings came and went rapidly through the forest of heavy columns.

The monstrous bats of Hathor were disturbed in their brooding reveries.

A heavy smell, like the odour of a long-decaying past, lifted itself, as if with a slow, determined effort, to Mrs. Armine's nostrils. And ever the light of day failed slowly as she and Nigel went onward, drawn in despite of themselves by the power of the darkness, and by the mysterious perfumes that swept up from the breast of death.

At last they came into the sanctuary, the "Holy of Holies" of Denderah, where once were treasured images of the G.o.ds of Egypt, where only the King or his high priest might venture to come, at the fete of the New Year. They stood in its darkness, this woman who was longing to return to the unbridled life of her sensual and disordered past, and this man who, quite without vanity, believed that he had been permitted to redeem her from it.

The guardian of the temple, who had followed them softly, now lit a ribbon of magnesium, and there sprang into a vague and momentary life reliefs of the King performing ceremonies and accomplis.h.i.+ng sacrifices.

Then the darkness closed again. And the fragmentary and short vision seemed to Mrs. Armine like the vision of her little life as a beautiful woman, and the coming of the darkness to blot it out like the coming of the darkness of death to cover her for ever with its impenetrable mantle.

What she had told Meyer Isaacson in his consulting-room was true. When she thought sincerely, she believed in no future life. She could not conceive of a spirit life. Nor could she conceive of the skeletons of the dead in some strange resurrection being reclothed with the flesh which she adored, being inhabited again by the vitality which makes skeleton and flesh living man or woman. This life was all to her. And when the light in which it existed and was perceived died away and was consumed, she believed that the vision could never reappear.

Now, in this once so sacred place, she seemed for a moment to plunge into the depths of herself, to penetrate into the inmost recesses of her nature. In London, before Nigel came into her life, had she not been like Hathor in her temple, hearing the sound of the departing feet of those who had been her wors.h.i.+ppers? And with Nigel had come a wild hope of worldly eminence, of great riches, of a triumph over enemies. And that hope had faded abruptly. Yet through her a.s.sociation with Nigel she had come to another hope. And this hope must be fulfilled, before the inevitable darkness that would fall about her beauty. Nigel would never be the means to the end she had originally had in view. Yet his destiny was to serve her. He had his destiny, and she hers. And hers was not a great worldly position, or any ultimate respectability. She could not have the first, and so she would not have the second. Perhaps she was born for other things--born to be a votary of Venus, but not to content any man as his lawful wife. The very word "lawful" sent a chill through her blood now. She was meant for lawlessness, it seemed. Then she would fulfil her destiny, without pity, without fear, but not without discretion. And her destiny was to emerge from the trap in which she was confined. So she believed.

Yet would she emerge? In the darkness of Hathor's sanctuary, haunted by the face of the G.o.ddess and by the sad thoughts of deserted womanhood which it suggested to her self-centred mind, she resolved that she would emerge, that nothing should stop her, that she would crush down any weakening sentiments and thoughts if they came to heart or mind. Egypt, in which one desire had been rendered useless and finally killed in her, had given to her another, had brought to her a last chance--she seemed to know it was that--of happiness, of ugly yet intense joy. In Egypt she had blossomed, fading woman though she had been. She had renewed her powers of physical fascination. Then she must emerge from the trap and go to fulfil her destiny. She would do so. Silently, and as if making the vow to the Egyptian Aphrodite in the darkness of her temple, she swore to do so. Nigel had brought her there--had he not?--that Hathor might bless her voyage. Moved by a fierce impulse, and casting away pity, doubt, fear, everything but flamelike desire, she called upon Hathor to bless her voyage--not their voyage, but only hers. She called upon the G.o.ddess of beauty, the pagan G.o.ddess of the love that was not spiritual.

And she almost felt as if she was answered.

Yet only the enormous bats cried fiercely to her from far up in the dimness. She only heard their voices and the beating of their wings.

"Let's go, Ruby. I don't know why, but to-day I hate this place."

She started at the sound of his voice close to her. But she controlled herself immediately, and replied, quietly:

"Yes, let us go. We are only disturbing the bats."

As they went out, she looked up to the column from which Hathor gazed as if seeking for her wors.h.i.+ppers, and she whispered adieu to the G.o.ddess.

As soon as they were on board of the _Loulia_ Nigel gave the order to cast off. He seemed unusually restless, and in a hurry to be _en route_.

With eagerness he spoke to the impa.s.sive Reis, whose handsome head was swathed in a shawl, and who listened imperturbably. He went about on the sailors' deck watching the preparations, seeing the ropes hauled in, the huge poles brought out to fend them from off the bank, the gigantic sail unfurled to catch the evening breeze, which was blowing from the north, and which would take them up against the strong set of the current. And when the water curled and eddied about the _Loulia's_ prow, and the sh.o.r.es seemed slipping away and falling back into the primrose light of the north, and into the great dahabeeyah there came that mysterious feeling of life which thrills through the moving vessel, he flung up his arms, and uttered an exclamation that was like a mingled sigh and half-suppressed shout. Then he laughed at himself, and turned to look for Ruby.

She was alone on the upper deck, standing among some big palms in pots, with her hands on the rail, and gazing towards him. She had taken off her hat and veil, and the breeze stirred, and the gold of the departing sun lit up the strands of her curiously pale yet s.h.i.+ning hair. He sprang up the companion to stand beside her.

"We're off!" he said.

"How glad you seem! You called me a child. But you're like a mad boy--mad to be moving. One would think you had--No, that wouldn't be like a boy."

"What do you mean?"

"I was going to say one would think you had an enemy in Keneh and were escaping from him."

"Him! Her, you should say."

"Her?"

"Hathor. That temple of Denderah seemed haunted to-day."

He pulled off his hat to let the breeze get at his hair, too.

"When we were standing in the sanctuary I seemed to be smelling death and corruption. Ugh!"

His face changed at the memory.

"And the cries of those bats! They sounded like menacing spirits. I was a fool to go to such a place to ask a blessing on our voyage. My attempt at paganism was punished, and no wonder, Ruby. For I don't think I'm really a bit of a pagan; I don't think I see much joy in the pagan life, that is so much cracked up by some people. I don't see how the short life and the merry one can ever be really merry at all. How can a man be merry with a darkness always in front of him?"

"What darkness?"

"Death--without immortality."

She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked him:

"Do you look upon death merely as a door into another life?"

"I believe it is. Don't you?"

"Yes. Then you don't dread death?"

"Don't I--now? It would be leaving so much now. And besides, I love this life; I revel in it. Who wouldn't, with health like mine? Feel that arm!"

She did not move. He took her hand and pressed her fingers against his muscles.

"It's like iron," she said, taking away her hand. "But muscle and health are not exactly the same thing, are they?"

"No; of course not. But did you ever see a man look more perfectly well than I do?"

As he stood beside her, radiant now, upright, with the breeze ruffling his short, fair hair, his enthusiastic blue eyes s.h.i.+ning with happiness, he did look like a young G.o.d of health and years younger than his age.

"Oh, you look all right," she said; "just like lots of other men who go in for sport and keep themselves fit."

He laughed.

"You won't pay me the compliment I want. Look at those barges loaded with pottery! All those thousands of little vases--_koulal_, as the natives call them--are made in Keneh. I've seen the men doing it--boys too--the wet clay spinning round the brown finger that makes the orifice. How good it is to see the life of the river! There's always something new, always something interesting, humanity at work in the suns.h.i.+ne and the open air. Who wouldn't be a fellah rather than a toiler in any English town? Here are the shadufs! All the way up the Nile we shall see them, and we shall hear the old shaduf songs, that sound as if they came down from the days when they cut the Sphinx out of the living rock, and we shall hear the drowsy song of the water-wheels, as the sleepy oxen go round and round in the suns.h.i.+ne; and we shall see the women coming in lines from the inland villages with the water-jars poised on their heads. If only we were back in the days when there were no steamers and the Nile must have been like a perpetual dream! But never mind. At least we refused Baroudi's steam-tug. So we shall just go up with the wind, or be poled up when there is none, if we aren't tied up under the bank. That's the only way to travel on the Nile, but of course Baroudi uses it, as one uses the railway, to go to business."

He stopped, as if his mind had taken a turn towards some other line of thought; then he said:

"Isn't it odd that you and I should be established in Baroudi's boat, when we've never seen him again since the day we had tea on it? I almost thought--"

"What?"

"I almost thought perhaps he'd run up by train to give us a sort of send-off."

"Why should he?"

"Of course it wasn't necessary. Still, it would have been an act of pretty politeness to you."