Bella Donna: A Novel

by Robert Hichens

She acted her part well, though day by day, in the acting of it, her nervous desperation increased; but when, now and then, her self-control was for a moment shaken, she succeeded in leading Nigel to attribute any momentary sharpness, cynicism, or even bitterness, to some failure in himself which had awakened the doubts of the woman long trampled on. Subtly she recalled to him the night after the scene in the garden of the Villa Androud; she reminded him—without words—of the words she had spoken then. He seemed to hear her saying: "After this morning you will have to prove your belief in me to me, thoroughly prove it, or else I shall not believe it. It will take a little time to make me feel quite safe with you, as one can only feel when the little bit of sincerity in one is believed in and trusted." And he remembered the resolve he had taken on that night of crisis, to restore this woman's confidence in goodness by having a firm faith in the goodness existing in her. And he condemned himself and braced himself for new efforts. Those efforts were not difficult for him to make now that he had Ruby all to himself, now that he saw her utterly divorced from her old life and companions, now that he held her in the breast of Nature, now that he knew—as how could he not know?—that she was living virtuously, sanely, simply, and, as he thought, splendidly and happily, despite the lingering backward glances she sometimes cast at the old luxury foregone. It is very difficult for the human being who finds perfect happiness in a life to realize that such a life to another may be a torment.

And Ruby made few mistakes. When she was with her husband, her now unpainted face was serene. She worked bravely to earn her release from a life that was unsuited to her whole temperament, and that was utterly odious to her.

But had not Hamza and Ibrahim been in the camp with her, she often said to herself that she could not have endured this period. That they were there meant that she was not forgotten, that while she was being patient, in a distant place, somewhere upon the great river, in the golden climate of Upper Egypt, some one else was being patient too.

Surely it meant, it must mean, that!

But she was haunted by a jealousy that, instead of being diminished by time and absence, increased with each passing day, even waking up in her a vital force of imagination she had not suspected she possessed. She knew men as a race au fond—knew their fickleness, swift forgetfulness, readiness to be content with the second best, so different from the far greater Epicureanism of women; knew their uneasy appetites, their lack of self-restraint; and, adding to this sum of knowledge her personal knowledge of Baroudi as a young, strong, and untrammelled man of the East, she was confronted with visions which tortured her cruelly. There were times when her mind ran riot, throwing him among all the sensual pleasures which he loved. And then she was more than heart-sick; she was actually body-sick. She felt ill; she felt that she ached with jealousy, as another may ache with some physical disease. She had a longing to perform some frantic physical act.

And then she remembered her beauty, and that, at all costs, she must preserve it as long as possible, and she secretly cursed the unbridled nature within her. But the climate of the Fayyūm was very kind to her, and this life in the open, in the unvitiated air that blew through the palms from the virgin deserts of Libya, gave to her health such as she had never known till now, despite her mental torture. And that body-sickness which came from her jealousy was like a fit which seized her and passed away.

Egypt brought back her youth, or, at the least, prolonged and increased steadily the shining and warmth of her Indian summer. And with that shining and warmth the desire to live fully, to use her present powers in the way that would bring her happiness, grew perpetually in strength and ardour. She longed for the man who suited her, and for the luxe that he could give her. With her genuine physical passion for Baroudi there woke the ugly greed that was an essential part of her nature, the greed of the true materialist who cares nothing for a simplicity that has not cost the eyes out of somebody's head. She was a woman who loved to know that some one was ruining himself for her. She took an almost physical pleasure in the spending of money. And often her mind echoed the words of Hassan, when he looked across the Nile to the tapering mast of the Loulia and murmured, "Mahmoud Baroudi is rich! Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!" And she yearned to go, not only to Baroudi, but to his gold, and she remembered her fancy when she sat by the Nile, that the gleaming gold on the water was showered towards her by him to comfort her in her solitude.

At last a crisis came.

After staying for a short time at Sennoures, the camp had been moved from the village to the outskirts of the oasis, so that Nigel might be close to his land. Here the rich fertility, the green abundance of growing things, trailed away into the aridity of the desert, and at night, from the door of the tent, Mrs. Armine could look out upon the pale and vague desolation of the illimitable sands stretching away into the illimitable darkness. Just at first the vision fascinated her, and she lent an ear to the call of the East, but very soon she was distressed by the sight of the still and unpeopled country, which suggested to her the nameless solitudes into which many women are driven out when the time of their triumph is over. She did not speak of this to Nigel, but, pretending that the wind at night from the desert chilled her even between the canvas walls of the tent, she had the tent turned round with its orifice towards the oasis. And she strove to ignore the desert.

Nevertheless, despite what was indeed almost a horror of its spaces, she now found that she felt more strongly their fascination, which seemed calling her, but to danger or sorrow rather than to any pleasure or permanent satisfaction. She often felt an uneasy desire to be more intimate with the thing which she feared, and which woke up in her a prophetic dread of the future when the Indian summer would have faded for ever. And when one day Nigel suggested that he should take two or three days' holiday, and that they should remove the camp into the wilds at the north-eastern end of the sacred lake of Kurûn, where Ibrahim and Hamza said he could get some first-rate duck-shooting, and Ruby could come to close quarters with the reality of the Libyan desert, she assented almost eagerly. Any movement, any change, was welcome to her; and—she had to be more intimate with the thing which she feared.