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Updated: May 12, 2025
Him got one dahabeeyah at Luxor." "Gone to Luxor! When did he go?" "We know last night." "Did he get a note I sent him yesterday morning?" The Arab shook his head. "Not bin back heeyah at all." Mrs. Armine telegraphed to the villa, and took the night train back to Luxor. She arrived in the morning about nine, after another sleepless night.
The change from dahabeeyah life to life on shore seemed at once to make a difference to the patient. When he was put carefully down in the white and yellow drawing-room, and, looking out through the French windows across the terrace, saw the roses blowing in the sandy garden, he heaved a sigh that was like a deep breathing of relief.
"You are blossoming here in Egypt, but you hardly let one know it when you put things on your face." She gazed again into the glass in silence. "Any letters for me?" she said, at last. "I haven't looked yet. I walked with Baroudi on the bank. He's joined his dahabeeyah, and is going up to Armant to see to his affairs in the sugar business up there." "Oh!"
For an instant she followed its course beyond the leaves of the orange-trees. How many boats were going southwards! "All the boats are going southwards to-day," she said. "The breeze is from the north," he answered, prosaically. "I want to go further up the Nile." "If you go, you should take a dahabeeyah." "Like the Loulia. But I am sure there is not a second Loulia on the Nile."
Towards the end of the letter, perhaps made frolicsome by confession, she broke into gossip, related several little scandals of various hotels, and concluded with this paragraph: "Quite an excitement has been caused here by the arrival of a marvellous dahabeeyah called the Loulia. She is the most lovely boat on the Nile, I am told, and every one is longing to go over her.
Perhaps that was his fault, though, for he had been reserved with her, had not said to her all he was thinking, or indeed anything he was thinking. "Ruby! I say, Ruby!" Following a strong impulse, he hastened after her, and came up with her on the bank of the Nile. "Look!" she said. "What? Oh, Baroudi's dahabeeyah tied up over there! Yes, I knew that. It's to get out of the noise of Luxor.
I knew she was naturally anxious to see something of the wonders of Egypt, and the end of it was that we decided to take a dahabeeyah trip on the Nile, and are on the eve of starting. You should see our boat, the Loulia! she's a perfect beauty, and, apart from a few absurd details which I haven't the time to describe, would delight you.
She longed to startle him, to say she was far more in touch with an Eastern than she could ever be with him, but she thought of the dahabeeyah, the Nile, the getting away from here. "To tell the truth," she said, "I have always felt that. There is an impassable barrier between East and West." She looked at the distant light among the palm-trees.
He did not know at all how long a time had passed since Mrs. Armine had left him, and when he came on board, he enquired of Hassan whether any message had come for him, any note from the dahabeeyah that lay over there to the south of them, drowned in the quivering gold. "No, my nice gentlemans," was the reply, accompanied by a glance of intense curiosity. Questions immediately followed.
When at last she slowly vanished in the direction of the temple of Luxor, accompanied by a villainous-looking dragoman who was "the most intelligent, simple-minded old dear" in Upper Egypt, Isaacson, with decision, descended the steps and stood on the sand by Hassan. "Where's that dahabeeyah you spoke about?" he said. "I'll go and have a look at her."
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