Читать книгу There was a King in Egypt - Norma Lorimer - Страница 12

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The ballroom at Assuan was a wonderful sight. Margaret had never been to a more brilliant dance. The dresses of the women amazed her; they were so costly and beautiful. The air of Egypt is so dry that their delicacy of texture had been uninjured by travel. The gay uniforms of the English officers, the Orders of the officials, looked their best in the vast room, whose architecture and decorations were a fine reproduction of ancient Egyptian art.

Margaret was radiantly happy; she loved beauty and the dignity of vast surroundings. In Egypt it seemed to her that everything was done on an imposing and noble scale, everything except the little mud villages of the desert, her "dear little brown homes in the East." Happiness made her appear very lovely—indeed, she was beautiful that night and many people asked who the charming girl was, who danced so well and who looked so happy.

She danced very often with Freddy, so naturally people began to say that at last Lampton had been "caught." She had danced very often, too, with Michael, and even Freddy's step had not suited hers so well. With Michael there was something more than mere perfection of dancing; there was the added sympathy of mind as well as body. When his arms encircled her for the first time and Margaret felt him steering her gently but firmly through the well-filled room, such a perfect sense of rest pervaded her senses that a sudden desire to cry, just softly and happily, came to her. Happy Margaret!

Neither of them cared to speak while they were dancing; they remained as silent as they had done when they stood together in the vast stretch of the great Sahara, but they were conscious—and happily so—of each other's enjoyment. Could two young people be so close to each other, two people so greatly in sympathy with one another, and not know something of the thought in each other's minds?

"Will you let me take you in to supper?" was all that Michael said, at the end of the last dance which they were to have together. He handed her reluctantly over to her waiting partner as he spoke.

Meg nodded her assent and smiled radiantly over her partner's shoulder as she whirled off.

Her beautiful white shoulders showed up the duskiness of her hair; her head was distinguished and arrestive. As Michael was watching her and waiting for her to come round the room again to where he was standing, so that their eyes might meet, a gentle, caressing hand was laid on his own and a voice said:

"Ah! now I know why you have not looked for me. Who is she?"

Michael started. The low, tender voice instantly thrilled every nerve in his body, while at the same moment an overwhelming desire to slip away and lose himself amongst the dancers came over him.

"She is a fine-looking creature," the voice went on, "but that type gets coarse at forty, don't you think?"

Michael swung round quickly and faced the lovely woman who had spoken to him. Her figure, in spite of its childish slimness, suggested not youthful purity but a sensuous grace. In her soft, flesh-tinted gown of chiffon, which left her arms and neck quite bare, a dress which merely suggested a veiled covering for her tiny body, she was temptingly feminine. To most men she would have been irresistible, for she was as supple and straight as a child of thirteen.

Her eyes gazed familiarly into Michael's; they were inviting and exquisitely lovely. Even Mrs. Mervill's bitterest enemies had to admit the charm of her eyes. Hard and cruel they could be, just like the uncut amethysts which in colour they resembled—eyes of a deep, bluish purple. They had looked their cruellest a moment ago, for envy had crossed her path. Every inch of her tiny person was envious of the girl who had smiled over her partner's shoulder to Michael Amory. She was envious because she could see at a glance that Margaret was all that was fine and clean and noble in womanhood. The girl whom Michael Amory had been looking at would always get what was best in men, while she could only get what was worst.

"My partner has had to leave me," she said to Michael, for he had paid no attention to her remarks about Margaret. "He had a touch of fever; it came on quite suddenly. Will you take me out of the ball-room?"

They had moved off together, Michael unable to help himself; he could not allow her to go alone.

"If you aren't dancing, let us go and sit out on the balcony—it's too lovely to be indoors. Now, isn't it?" she said, as they reached the wide covered loggia, dotted with palms and basket-chairs and small tables, which looked over the black rocks of the first cataract on the Nile, a scene which in all Egypt has no equal, for it is unique and extraordinary.

Beyond the river, with its black rocks, which showed in the water like the indefinite forms of seals or shoals of swirling porpoises, there was the bright yellow sand of the desert, which led into a world of primitive silence, while above them and all around them there were the stars and the night of Egypt.

Mrs. Mervill had left the ball-room early, because she knew that the balcony would be almost empty during the first part of the evening.

"Isn't having this all to ourselves better than dancing in that crowd?

This is Egypt."

"It's beautiful," Michael said, as he arranged the cushions in her chair to suit her taste, which was scarcely in keeping with the views of a dignified woman. When he had finished, Mrs. Mervill let her hand slip down his coat-sleeve—she had laid it there as she spoke to him—until it rested on his wrist; her fingers were caressing.

"Tell me," she said, looking up into his face with a winning and soft expression, "what have you been doing with yourself since we parted? You have been much in my thoughts—never out of them, indeed."

"My usual work in the camp," Michael said. "Its interest always increases, and although it seems pretty much the same every day to ordinary people, to us it is full of variety."

"Lucky man! We poor women have no such distractions. I want to live in the desert," she said eagerly. "I want to sleep in the open under these stars."

Anyone might have made the same remark with no arrière pensée in their words. Mrs. Mervill could not. Her remark contained an invitation; Michael knew it.

"Can you never get away?" she asked. "It would be my expedition, if you would run it for me."

Michael moved from her side, with the pretence of drawing a chair to within speaking distance of her. She had reluctantly to let his wrist slip from her fingers.

"Say you will arrange it," she pleaded. "For weeks I have felt the call of the desert and you know you'd love to come."

"I can't do it," Michael said, almost sternly. "Please don't tempt me

… I have work to do."

"Oh, but I will tempt you!" She laughed the soft, low laugh of passion. "By every means in my power. With you it is so difficult to know what will tempt you most. Am I to appeal to the mystic side of you, or to the human? I think the human Michael will suit me best, the Michael who longs to let himself go and enjoy the fullness of Egypt and the wonders of the desert!"

"Don't appeal to any part of me," he said quickly. "Leave me to do my work in the best possible way—try not to act as a disturbing influence."

"Then I have been a disturbing influence?" Michael's voice had betrayed the fact that his work had not been accomplished without difficulty.

"Yes," he said, for the spirit of truth was always uppermost in Michael. "For some days after I left you the last time I found great difficulty in concentrating my mind on my work. … I was dissatisfied."

"Then I succeeded!" The amethyst eyes, devoid of all hardness now, caressed Michael and disturbed his nerves. The woman was very beautiful, and he was conscious that her mind was set on her desire to win him. He knew that it was not love; he knew that their intimacy was not one of wholesome friendship. He was becoming more and more awake to the fact that this wealthy woman, who looked like a child but for the expression of her eyes, had taken an unreasoning desire to have him for her lover. In a measure he could not but feel flattered, for with her beauty and wealth she could have had the attention of better men than himself. He was too generous in his judgment of women to attribute her desire to the lowest motives, the prospect of enjoying through another the innocence which she had lost herself so long ago.

"I tried to reach you, Mike. I used every effort of my will-power, or mind-power, or whatever power you like to call it. I insisted on your feeling me. I sent myself out of myself to you."

"Why did you do it?" he said. He had leaned forward and had laid his hand on the cushions of her chair, at the back of her head. His distressed voice was less harsh.

"Why did I do it? Because, dear, I want you." Her voice was low and wooing; it was one of her charms.

Michael did not answer. His senses were beginning to throb. The sound of a native earthen drum, with its sensual thud, thud, thudding, and the watery note of a key striking a glass bottle, as an accompaniment to the slow measures of bare feet on the deck of a Nile boat, added an undefinable touch, of Oriental passion to the scene.

Michael tried to draw away his hand, but she caught it and pulled his arm round her neck and held his long fingers imprisoned under her chin.

He protested. The thud, thud, thud of the darabukkeh below kept time with the throbbing of his pulses, while the subconscious visualizing of the body-movements of the Sudanese dancers aided and abetted the woman in her designs.

"You know, dear, you are behaving very foolishly. I must never see you again if you do this sort of thing. It can only lead to terrible unhappiness for us both."

She gently kissed his fingers, pressing her teeth against his knuckles—with all her education and fashionable clothes, a creature as primitive as any tent-dweller in the desert.

"Don't say you won't see me again. I won't be foolish, I promise. But

I am very lonely, you don't know how lonely, Michael."

"Poor little woman!" he said breathlessly; he was genuinely sorry for her. If her nature craved for love and affection, it was hard for her to live as she did, without it.

"It's Egypt," she said, "Egypt and the desert. I want you all alone, Michael, in the loneliest part of the loneliest desert in the world, and I want as many kisses as there are stars in the heavens—kisses that only my love and Egypt can teach you how to give!"

"I must leave you," Michael said again, "if you will speak like that."

He got up to go. Mrs. Mervill also rose from her reclining position on her long deck-chair, and sat upright.

"I do, I do!" she said, while she held up her beautiful lips to his face. "There is no one to see, there is no one to care! I want a kiss for every star there is in the heavens."

The man could bear it no longer; all Egypt was tempting him. He bent his head and kissed her lips.

From the river below came the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted through the clear air. The tenor song was an outpouring of a lover's full heart. The passion of the night had triumphed.

At their feet lay the black rocks and the swirling waters of Egypt's Aegean and the buried city of Syene, and in the distance, yet surely affecting their senses with its tragedy and grace, was Philae, the fairy sanctuary of the Nile. In the submerged temple of Philae lies the bridal chamber of the beloved Osiris and his wife Isis.

None of all this was lost upon Michael, whose nature was ever tuned to the concert pitch of his surroundings. Assuan affected him as a gorgeous orchestra affects a lover of Wagner.

But the sound of the hotel band, bringing a waltz to a close, made Mrs. Mervill leave her lounge-chair and seat herself circumspectly on a more upright one. Michael did not sit down; he wandered about, speaking to her abruptly and unhappily at brief intervals.

She was answering one of his questions when Margaret Lampton, flushed and radiant with the excitement of dancing, came upon the scene; her partner was a little behind her. Mrs. Mervill neither saw her nor heard her footsteps; Michael had both seen and heard her. Margaret, thinking that he was alone, walked quickly towards him. Suddenly she heard a hidden voice say caressingly,

"I will promise you anything you like, Michael mine, and keep it, too, if you will try to see me as often as ever you can. Remember how lonely I am, and that I shall live for your visits."

Margaret stopped. Egypt had become as cold as the Arctic. She felt lost. Her intention had been to remind Michael that it was almost supper-time. Her partner was now by her side. He knew Michael Amory and spoke to him.

Mrs. Mervill had risen from her chair and as she came forward, Margaret hated her, even while she thought that she was the fairest and most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Michael introduced the two women to each other, excellent foils as they were in their beauty and type.

As Margaret gave one of her steadfast honest looks right into the eyes of the delicately-tinted woman in front of her, she was conscious of an appalling dislike and fear of her. She was equally conscious of the woman's antagonism to herself, although her words had been charming and friendly.

"If she wasn't beautiful and tiny, I'd like to wring her neck and throw her to the crocodiles below!"

This was what might be interpreted as Margaret's true feelings as she answered Mrs. Mervill's question and succeeded in making some banal remarks about the view and the magnificence of the hotel. When she had said all that politeness demanded of her, she turned away, a trifle disconsolately.

"Please wait one moment, Miss Lampton," Michael said. "I think this is the supper-interval. Mrs. Mervill," he said, "can I take you back to your partner? I am engaged to Miss Lampton for supper."

"No, thanks," she said, "I didn't engage myself to anyone for supper." Her eyes plainly expressed the fact that they had hitherto at these dances always enjoyed the supper-interval together. "Will you be very kind and send a waiter out here with a glass of champagne and some sandwiches? That is all I want."

Michael looked disturbed. "But I don't like leaving you alone."

"I prefer the company of the stars," she said, "to just anybody—really

I do. I never feel that one comes to Egypt for these hotel dances."

This was meant for Margaret, to make her feel frivolous and vulgar.

Margaret refused to accept it. "My brother and I have been dancing every dance and every extra and forgetting all about Egypt. Have you?" She turned to Mike.

"No, I have been sitting this last one out with Mrs. Mervill. She feels tired. And certainly Egypt is very much here." He pointed to the scene before them.

"Yes, quite another Egypt," Margaret said. "Egypt has so many souls."

"And I have to be a little careful," Mrs. Mervill said, "of over-fatigue."

"I am sorry," Margaret said, while she inwardly noted the woman's perfect health. The slender feminine appearance of her rival had nothing in common with ill-health; a blush-rose bud was not more softly and evenly tinted. She suggested to Margaret something good to eat—pink and white ice-creams mingled together in a crystal bowl.

Healthily devoid as Margaret was of sex-consciousness, it was curious that this first close inspection of Mrs. Mervill should have told her what she never dreamed of before, or even thought about—that she loved Michael Amory. This woman was going to come between herself and Michael; that there was great intimacy between them she felt certain, also that Michael, even though he might care for the woman, was not himself under her influence. She had never seen him look as he looked now.

The partner who had brought Margaret out on to the balcony constituted himself Mrs. Mervill's cavalier. He was immensely struck by her beauty and was inwardly overjoyed when Michael Amory introduced him to her. He had not engaged himself for supper because there had been no one with whom he cared to spend the time, except Margaret, and she was engaged to Michael. Now that he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. Mervill, he was delighted to attend to her wants.

If Michael Amory had seen Millicent Mervill's attitude towards her companion, he might have felt—and very naturally—a certain amount of vanity. Born with little or no sense of honour or morals, she was extremely fastidious. No one could have been more selective. Ninety-nine per cent. of the men she met bored her not to tears, but to rudeness; for the hundredth she might feel an unbridled passion.

Margaret and her companion were seated at a little supper-table in the immense dining-room of the hotel, a room which been built after the proportions and decorated in the manner of an Egyptian temple. Their table was close to a column, which was decorated from pedestal to capital with the most familiar mythological figures of ancient Egypt. Tall lotus flowers with their green leaves decorated the lower portion of it. The whole thing certainly was an amazingly clever reproduction of one of the ancient columns of the famous hypostyle hall at Karnak. A gayer scene could hardly be imagined, for the bright colours of the ancient decorations had been faithfully copied.

Margaret had been talking rather more than was her wont to Michael, about things which neither really interested her nor were in sympathy with their mood. Their former intimate silence had given place to a banal conversation, which hurt them, one as much as the other, while they kept it up.

The nicest part of the evening, for so Meg had thought that it would be, was proving a failure, a dire and pitiful failure. The only thing to do was to accept Michael under the new conditions and get what pleasure she could out of the magnificent scene. The Egyptian servants, in their long white garments and high red tarbushes, the Nubians, in their full white drawers and bright green sashes and turbans, were moving silently about, administering as only native servants can administer to the wants of the fashionably-gowned women and brightly-uniformed men who filled the magnificent hall.

"How absurd that woman looks," Margaret said, "sitting with her back to that figure of Isis." She knew now at a glance the goddess Isis as she was most familiarly represented. "I do hope I don't look quite so grotesque!"

Michael looked at the woman, whose hair was decorated with an enormous egrette's crest, in the manner of a Red Indian's head-dress. Margaret knew quite well that she herself did not in any way look grotesque; since she had been in Egypt she had conceived a horror of the eccentricities of Western fashions, therefore her speech was insincere.

"Of course you don't," Michael said absently. "You look just awfully nice." He felt shy and blushed as he spoke, for he knew that he had severed himself from Margaret by an unspeakable gulf, that he had now no right to say anything intimate to her. Earlier in the evening he could have said with frank enthusiasm how beautiful he thought her, if an occasion like the present had offered itself.

They were now at the ice-creams, wonderful concoctions with glowing lights inside them, and their futile conversation had dribbled out, but the silence which had fallen upon them was constrained; it had nothing in common with the old happy silence of mental sympathy, the silence of united minds.

Margaret had still two dances to give Michael, and she wondered how they were to get through them. The supper had proved heavy and dragging. It seemed scarcely possible that they were the two people who had stood, delighting in each other's companionship, on the high ridge of the Sahara desert two evenings ago, that it was this man to whom she had told her wonderful dream. She wondered if he had forgotten it.

As she thought of her dream, their eyes met. Michael's dropped quickly. With Mrs. Mervill's kisses still burning into his soul, he banished the thought of the divine King. The seed of evil which she had planted in the garden of his soul many weeks ago had been watered and nourished to-night. It had sprung forth like the green blades on the banks of the Nile after the inundation.

As Michael's eyes dropped, Margaret took her courage in both hands and said as brightly as she could, "We're not enjoying ourselves particularly, are we? We seem to have lost each other. Shall we cut our two dances and try to find ourselves again in the valley? I hate this sort of thing."

"If you wish it." Michael's voice was reproachful.

"Do be honest—you know I'm boring you. You have lots of friends here, and I can get partners."

"Things do seem to have taken a wrong turn," he said, "but it was not of my willing." Inwardly he cursed the hour he had ever come. She would never believe that it had been to see her in her evening-dress and to enjoy the rapture of dancing with her.

"We are neither of us much good at pretending," Margaret said. "But never mind—better luck next time! And we had some lovely dances in the early part of the evening."

Her words, without meaning it, implied that before she had been introduced to Mrs. Mervill, they had been happy. They had risen at Margaret's instigation from their table and were wending their way out of the supper-room. Michael was drifting towards the wide balcony, towards the fresh cool air of the river.

"No," Meg said determinedly, "not there." A vision of Mrs. Mervill, pink and fair and seductive, had risen before her, the rose-leaf creature with the hard eyes, who had so abruptly broken her sympathy with Michael.

Michael, without speaking, quickly turned the other way. He let her through the big entrance to the front door of the hotel. The view was ugly and uninteresting, like the surroundings of any huge Western public offices or government buildings. The glory of the hotel was the view from the balcony, overlooking the Nile, and its superb interior decorations.