As the voice of the Diviner fainted away on the wind, and the vision of
his wounded face and piercing eyes was lost in the whirling sand grains,
Androvsky stretched out his hand and drew together the heavy curtains
of the palanquin. The world was shut out. They were alone for the first
time as man and wife; moving deliberately on this beast they could not
see, but whose slow and monotonous gait swung them gently to and fro,
out from the last traces of civilisation into the life of the sands.
With each soft step the camel took they went a little farther from
Beni-Mora, came a little nearer to that liberty of which Domini
sometimes dreamed, to the smiling eyes and the lifted spheres of fire.
She shut her eyes now. She did not want to see her husband or to touch
his hand. She did not want to speak. She only wanted to feel in the
uttermost depths of her spirit this movement, steady and persistent,
towards the goal of her earthly desires, to realise absolutely the
marvellous truth that after years of lovelessness, and a dreaminess more
benumbing than acute misery, happiness more intense than any she had
been able to conceive of in her moments of greatest yearning was being
poured into her heart, that she was being taken to the place where she
would be with the one human being whose presence blotted out even the
memory of the false world and gave to her the true. And whereas in
the dead years she had sometimes been afraid of feeling too much the
emptiness and the desolation of her life, she was now afraid of feeling
too little its fulness and its splendour, was afraid of some day looking
back to this superb moment of her earthly fate, and being conscious that
she had not grasped its meaning till it was gone, that she had done that
most terrible of all things--realised that she had been happy to
the limits of her capacity for happiness only when her happiness was
numbered with the past.
But could that ever be? Was Time, such Time as this, not Eternity? Could
such earthly things as this intense joy ever have been and no longer
be? It seemed to her that it could not be so. She felt like one who held
Eternity’s hand, and went out with that great guide into the endlessness
of supreme perfection. For her, just then, the Creator’s scheme was
rounded to a flawless circle. All things fell into order, stars and men,
the silent growing things, the seas, the mountains and the plains,
fell into order like a vast choir to obey the command of the canticle:
“Benedicite, omnia opera!”
“Bless ye the Lord!” The roaring of the wind about the palanquin became
the dominant voice of this choir in Domini’s ears.
“Bless ye the Lord!” It was obedient, not as the slave, but as the free
will is obedient, as her heart, which joined its voice with this wind
of the desert was obedient, because it gloriously chose with all its
powers, passions, aspirations to be so. The real obedience is only love
fulfilling its last desire, and this great song was the fulfilling of
the last desire of all created things. Domini knew that she did not
realise the joy of this moment of her life now when she felt no longer
that she was a woman, but only that she was a living praise winging
upward to God.
A warm, strong hand clasped hers. She opened her eyes. In the dim
twilight of the palanquin she saw the darkness of Androvsky’s tall
figure sitting in the crouched attitude rendered necessary by the
peculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the movement of the camel. The
light was so obscure that she could not see his eyes or clearly discern
his features, but she felt that he was gazing at her shadowy figure,
that his mind was passionately at work. Had he, too, been silently
praising God for his happiness, and was he now wishing the body to join
in the soul’s delight?
She left her hand in his passively. The sense of her womanhood, lost for
a moment in the ecstasy of worship, had returned to her, but with a
new and tremendous meaning which seemed to change her nature. Androvsky
forcibly pressed her hand with his, let it go, then pressed it again,
repeating the action with a regularity that seemed suggested by some
guidance. She imagined him pressing her hand each time his heart pulsed.
She did not want to return the pressure. As she felt his hand thus
closing and unclosing over hers, she was conscious that she, who in
their intercourse had played a dominant part, who had even deliberately
brought about that intercourse by her action on the tower, now longed to
be passive and, forgetting her own power and the strength and force of
her nature, to lose herself in the greater strength and force of this
man to whom she had given herself. Never before had she wished to be
anything but strong. Nor did she desire weakness now, but only that his
nature should rise above hers with eagle’s wings, that when she looked
up she should see him, never when she looked down. She thought that to
see him below her would kill her, and she opened her lips to say so. But
something in the windy darkness kept her silent. The heavy curtains of
the palanquin shook perpetually, and the tall wooden rods on which they
were slung creaked, making a small, incessant noise like a complaining,
which joined itself with the more distant but louder noise made by the
leaves of the thousands of palm trees dashed furiously together. From
behind came the groaning of one of the camels, borne on the gusts of
the wind, and faint sounds of the calling voices of the Arabs who
accompanied them. It was not a time to speak.
She wondered where they were, in what part of the oasis, whether
they had yet gained the beginning of the great route which had always
fascinated her, and which was now the road to the goal of all her
earthly desires. But there was nothing to tell her. She travelled in a
world of dimness and the roar of wind, and in this obscurity and uproar,
combined with perpetual though slight motion, she lost all count of
time. She had no idea how long it was since she had come out of the
church door with Androvsky. At first she thought it was only a few
minutes, and that the camels must be just coming to the statue of the
Cardinal. Then she thought that it might be an hour, even more; that
Count Anteoni’s garden was long since left behind, and that they
were passing, perhaps, along the narrow streets of the village of old
Beni-Mora, and nearing the edge of the oasis. But even in this confusion
of mind she felt that something would tell her when the last palms had
vanished in the sand mist and the caravan came out into the desert.
The sound of the wind would surely be different when they met it on the
immense flats, where there was nothing to break its fury. Or even if it
were not different, she felt that she would know, that the desert would
surely speak to her in the moment when, at last, it took her to itself.
It could not be that they would be taken by the desert and she not
know it. But she wanted Androvsky to know it too. For she felt that the
moment when the desert took them, man and wife, would be a great moment
in their lives, greater even than that in which they met as they came
into the blue country. And she set herself to listen, with a passionate
expectation, with an attention so close and determined that it thrilled
her body, and even affected her muscles.
What she was listening for was a rising of the wind, a crescendo of its
voice. She was anticipating a triumphant cry from the Sahara, unlimited
power made audible in a sound like the blowing of the clarion of the
sands.
Androvsky’s hand was still on hers, but now it did not move as if
obeying the pulsations of his heart. It held hers closely, warmly, and
sent his strength to her, and presently, for an instant, taking her mind
from the desert, she lost herself in the mystery and the wonder of human
companionship. She realised that the touch of Androvsky’s hand on hers
altered for her herself, and the whole universe as it was presented to
her, as she observed and felt it. Nothing remained as it was when he did
not touch her. There was something stupefying in the thought, something
almost terrible. The wonder that is alive in the tiny things of love,
and that makes tremendously important their presence in, or absence
from, a woman’s life, took hold on her completely for the first time,
and set her forever in a changed world, a world in which a great
knowledge ruled instead of a great ignorance. With the consciousness
of exactly what Androvsky’s touch meant to her came a multiple
consciousness of a thousand other things, all connected with him and her
consecrated relation to him. She quivered with understanding. All
the gates of her soul were being opened, and the white light of
comprehension of those things which make life splendid and fruitful was
pouring in upon her. Within the dim, contained space of the palanquin,
that was slowly carried onward through the passion of the storm, there
was an effulgence of unseen glory that grew in splendour moment by
moment. A woman was being born of a woman, woman who knew herself of
woman who did not know herself, woman who henceforth would divinely love
her womanhood of woman who had often wondered why she had been created
woman.
The words muttered by the man of the sand in Count Anteoni’s garden were
coming true. In the church of Beni-Mora the life of Domini had begun
more really than when her mother strove in the pains of childbirth and
her first faint cry answered the voice of the world’s light when it
spoke to her.
Slowly the caravan moved on. The camel-drivers sang low under the folds
of their haiks those mysterious songs of the East that seem the songs
of heat and solitude. Batouch, smothered in his burnous, his large head
sunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares of
State. Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished. Ali, perched
behind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady and
remote as those of a vulture of the desert. The houses of Beni-Mora
faded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding the
double cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of Count
Anteoni’s garden. Along the white blue which was the road the camels
painfully advanced, urged by the cries and the sticks of the running
drivers. Presently the brown buildings of old Beni-Mora came partially
into sight, peeping here and there through the flying sands and the
frantic palm leaves. The desert was at hand.
Ali began to sing, breathing his song into the back of Batouch’s hood.
“The love of women is like the holiday song that the boy sings
gaily
In the sunny garden--
The love of women is like the little moon, the little happy moon
In the last night of Ramadan.
The love of women is like the great silence that steals at dusk
To kiss the scented blossoms of the orange tree.
Sit thee down beneath the orange tree, O loving man!
That thou mayst know the kiss that tells the love of women.
“Janat! Janat! Janat!”
Batouch stirred uneasily, pulled his hood from his eyes and looked into
the storm gravely. Then he shifted on the camel’s hump and said to Ali:
“How shall we get to Arba? The wind is like all the Touaregs going to
battle. And when we leave the oasis----”
“The wind is going down, Batouch-ben-Brahim,” responded Ali, calmly.
“This evening the Roumis can lie in the tents.”
Batouch’s thick lips curled with sarcasm. He spat into the wind, blew
his nose in his burnous, and answered:
“You are a child, and can sing a pretty song, but--”
Ali pointed with his delicate hand towards the south.
“Do you not see the light in the sky?”
Batouch stared before him, and perceived that there was in truth a
lifting of the darkness beyond, a whiteness growing where the desert
lay.
“As we come into the desert the wind will fall,” said Ali; and again he
began to sing to himself:
“Janat! Janat! Janat!”
Domini could not see the light in the south, and no premonition warned
her of any coming abatement of the storm. Once more she had begun to
listen to the roaring of the wind and to wait for the larger voice of
the desert, for the triumphant clarion of the sands that would announce
to her her entry with Androvsky into the life of the wastes. Again she
personified the Sahara, but now more vividly than ever before. In the
obscurity she seemed to see it far away, like a great heroic figure,
waiting for her and her passion, waiting in a region of gold and silken
airs at the back of the tempest to crown her life with a joy wide as its
dreamlike spaces, to teach her mind the inner truths that lie beyond the
crowded ways of men and to open her heart to the most profound messages
of Nature.
She listened, holding Androvsky’s hand, and she felt that he was
listening too, with an intensity strong as her own, or stronger.
Presently his hand closed upon hers more tightly, almost hurting her
physically. As it did so she glanced up, but not at him, and noticed
that the curtains of the palanquin were fluttering less fiercely. Once,
for an instant, they were almost still. Then again they moved as if
tugged by invisible hands; then were almost still once more. At the same
time the wind’s voice sank in her ears like a music dropping downward
in a hollow place. It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softer
hush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly growing
light which enabled her to see, for the first time since she had left
the church, her husband’s features. He was looking at her with an
expression of anticipation in which there was awe, and she realised that
in her expectation of the welcome of the desert she had been mistaken.
She had listened for the sounding of a clarion, but she was to be
greeted by a still, small voice. She understood the awe in her husband’s
eyes and shared it. And she knew at once, with a sudden thrill of
rapture, that in the scheme of things there are blessings and nobilities
undreamed of by man and that must always come upon him with a glorious
shock of surprise, showing him the poor faultiness of what he had
thought perhaps his most magnificent imaginings. Elisha sought for the
Lord in the fire and in the whirlwind; but in the still, small voice
onward came the Lord.
Incomparably more wonderful than what she had waited for seemed to her
now this sudden falling of the storm, this mystical voice that came to
them out of the heart of the sands telling them that they were passing
at last into the arms of the Sahara. The wind sank rapidly. The light
grew in the palanquin. From without the voices of the camel-drivers and
of Batouch and Ali talking together reached their ears distinctly. Yet
they remained silent. It seemed as if they feared by speech to break
the spell of the calm that was flowing around them, as if they feared to
interrupt the murmur of the desert. Domini now returned the gaze of her
husband. She could not take her eyes from his, for she wished him to
read all the joy that was in her heart; she wished him to penetrate her
thoughts, to understand her desires, to be at one with the woman who had
been born on the eve of the passing of the wind. With the coming of this
mystic calm was coming surely something else. The silence was bringing
with it the fusing of two natures. The desert in this moment was drawing
together two souls into a union which Time and Death would have no power
to destroy. Presently the wind completely died away, only a faint breeze
fluttered the curtains of the palanquin, and the light that penetrated
between them here and there was no longer white, but sparkled with a
tiny dust of gold. Then Androvsky moved to open the curtains, and Domini
spoke for the first time since their marriage.
“Wait,” she said in a low voice.
He dropped his hand obediently, and looked at her with inquiry in his
eyes.
“Don’t let us look till we are far out,” she said, “far away from
Beni-Mora.”
He made no answer, but she saw that he understood all that was in her
heart. He leaned a little nearer to her and stretched out his arm as if
to put it round her. But he did not put it round her, and she knew why.
He was husbanding his great joy as she had husbanded the dark hours of
the previous night that to her were golden. And that unfinished action,
that impulse unfulfilled, showed her more clearly the depths of his
passion for her even than had the desperate clasp of his hands about
her knees in the garden. That which he did not do now was the greatest
assertion possible of all that he would do in the life that was before
them, and made her feel how entirely she belonged to him. Something
within her trembled like a poor child before whom is suddenly set the
prospect of a day of perfect happiness. She thought of the ending of
this day, of the coming of the evening. Always the darkness had parted
them; at the ending of this day it would unite them. In Androvsky’s
eyes she read her thought of the darkness reflected, reflected and yet
changed, transmuted by sex. It was as if at that moment she read the
same story written in two ways--by a woman and by a man, as if she saw
Eden, not only as Eve saw it, but as Adam.
A long time passed, but they did not feel it to be long. When their
camel halted they unclasped their hands slowly like sleepers reluctantly
awaking.
They heard Batouch’s voice outside the palanquin.
“Madame!” he called. “Madame!”
“What is it?” asked Domini, stifling a sigh.
“Madame should draw the curtains. We are halfway to Arba. It is time for
_dejeuner_. I will make the camel of Madame lie down.”
A loud “A-a-ah!” rose up, followed by a fierce groaning from the camel,
and a lethargic, yet violent, movement that threw them forward and
backward. They sank. A hand from without pulled back the curtains and
light streamed over them. They set their feet in sand, stood up, and
looked about them.
Already they were far out in the desert, though not yet beyond the limit
of the range of red mountains, which stretched forward upon their left
but at no great distance beyond them ended in the sands. The camels were
lying down in a faintly defined track which was bordered upon either
side by the plain covered with little humps of sandy soil on which grew
dusty shrub. Above them was a sky of faint blue, heavy with banks of
clouds towards the east, and over their heads dressed in wispy veils
of vaporous white, through which the blue peered in sections that grew
larger as they looked. Towards the south, where Arba lay on a low hill
of earth, without grass or trees, beyond a mound covered thickly with
tamarisk bushes, which was a feeding-place for immense herds of camels,
the blue was clear and the light of the sun intense. A delicate breeze
travelled about them, stirring the bushes and the robes of the Arabs,
who were throwing back their hoods, and uncovering their mouths, and
smiling at them, but seriously, as Arabs alone can smile. Beside them
stood two white and yellow guard dogs, blinking and looking weary.
For a moment they stood still, blinking too, almost like the dogs.
The change to this immensity and light from the narrow darkness of the
palanquin overwhelmed their senses. They said nothing, but only stared
silently. Then Domini, with a large gesture, stretched her arms above
her head, drawing a deep breath which ended in a little, almost sobbing,
laugh of exultation.
“Out of prison,” she said disconnectedly. “Out of prison--into this!”
Suddenly she turned upon Androvsky and caught his arm, and twined both
of her arms round it with a strong confidence that was careless of
everything in the intensity of its happiness.
“All my life I’ve been in prison,” she said. “You’ve unlocked the
door!” And then, as suddenly as she had caught his arm, she let it go.
Something surged up in her, making her almost afraid; or, if not that,
confused. It was as if her nature were a horse taking the bit between
its teeth preparatory to a tremendous gallop. Whither? She did not know.
She was intoxicated by the growing light, the sharp, delicious air, the
huge spaces around her, the solitude with this man who held her soul
surely in his hands. She had always connected him with the desert. Now
he was hers into the desert, and the desert was hers with him. But was
it possible? Could such a fate have been held in reserve for her? She
scarcely dared even to try to realise the meaning of her situation,
lest at a breath it should be changed. Just then she felt that if she
ventured to weigh and measure her wonderful gift Androvsky would fall
dead at her feet and the desert be folded together like a scroll.
“There is Beni-Mora, Madame,” said Batouch.
She was glad he spoke to her, turned and followed with her eyes his
pointing hand. Far off she saw a green darkness of palms, and above it a
white tower, small, from here, as the tower of a castle of dolls.
“The tower!” she said to Androvsky. “We first spoke in it. We must bid
it good-bye.”
She made a gesture of farewell towards it. Androvsky watched the
movement of her hand. She noticed now that she made no movement that he
did not observe with a sort of passionate attention. The desert did not
exist for him. She saw that in his eyes. He did not look towards the
tower even when she repeated:
“We must--we owe it that.”
Batouch and Ali were busy spreading a cloth upon the sand, making it
firm with little stones, taking out food, plates, knives, glasses,
bottles from a great basket slung on one of the camels. They moved
deftly, seriously intent upon their task. The camel-drivers were
loosening the cords that bound the loads upon their beasts, who roared
venomously, opening their mouths, showing long decayed teeth, and
turning their heads from side to side with a serpentine movement. Domini
and Androvsky were not watched for a moment.
“Why won’t you look? Why won’t you say good-bye?” she asked, coming
nearer to him on the sand softly, with a woman’s longing to hear him
explain what she understood.
“What do I care for it, or the palms, or the sky, or the desert?” he
answered almost savagely. “What can I care? If you were mine behind
iron bars in that prison you spoke of--don’t you think it’s enough for
me--too much--a cup running over?”
And he added some words under his breath, words she could not hear.
“Not even the desert!” she said with a catch in her voice.
“It’s all in you. Everything’s in you--everything that brought us
together, that we’ve watched and wanted together.”
“But then,” she said, and now her voice was very quiet, “am I peace for
you?”
“Peace!” said Androvsky.
“Yes. Don’t you remember once I said that there must be peace in the
desert. Then is it in me--for you?”
“Peace!” he repeated. “To-day I can’t think of peace, or want it. Don’t
you ask too much of me! Let me live to-day, live as only a man can
who--let me live with all that is in me to-day--Domini. Men ask to die
in peace. Oh, Domini--Domini!”
His expression was like arms that crushed her, lips that pressed her
mouth, a heart that beat on hers.
“Madame est servie!” cried Batouch in a merry voice.
His mistress did not seem to hear him. He cried again:
“Madame est servie!”
Then Domini turned round and came to the first meal in the sand. Two
cushions lay beside the cloth upon an Arab quilt of white, red, and
orange colour. Upon the cloth, in vases of rough pottery, stained with
designs in purple, were arranged the roses brought by Smain from Count
Anteoni’s garden.
“Our wedding breakfast!” Domini said under her breath.
She felt just then as if she were living in a wonderful romance.
They sat down side by side and ate with a good appetite, served by
Batouch and Ali. Now and then a pale yellow butterfly, yellow as the
sand, flitted by them. Small yellow birds with crested heads ran swiftly
among the scrub, or flew low over the flats. In the sky the vapours
gathered themselves together and moved slowly away towards the east,
leaving the blue above their heads unflecked with white. With each
moment the heat of the sun grew more intense. The wind had gone. It was
difficult to believe that it had ever roared over the desert. A little
way from them the camel-drivers squatted beside the beasts, eating flat
loaves of yellow bread, and talking together in low, guttural voices.
The guard dogs roamed round them, uneasily hungry. In the distance,
before a tent of patched rags, a woman, scantily clad in bright red
cotton, was suckling a child and staring at the caravan.
Domini and Androvsky scarcely spoke as they ate. Once she said:
“Do you realise that this is a wedding breakfast?”
She was thinking of the many wedding receptions she had attended in
London, of crowds of smartly-dressed women staring enviously at
tiaras, and sets of jewels arranged in cases upon tables, of brides and
bridegrooms, looking flushed and anxious, standing under canopies of
flowers and forcing their tired lips into smiles as they replied to
stereotyped congratulations, while detectives--poorly disguised as
gentlemen--hovered in the back-ground to see that none of the presents
mysteriously disappeared. Her presents were the velvety roses in the
earthen vases, the breezes of the desert, the sand humps, the yellow
butterflies, the silence that lay around like a blessing pronounced
by the God who made the still places where souls can learn to know
themselves and their great destiny.
“A wedding breakfast,” Androvsky said.
“Yes. But perhaps you have never been to one.”
“Never.”
“Then you can’t love this one as much as I do.”
“Much more,” he answered.
She looked at him, remembering how often in the past, when she had been
feeling intensely, she had it borne in upon her that he was feeling even
more intensely than herself. But could that be possible now?
“Do you think,” she said, “that it is possible for you, who have never
lived in cities, to love this land as I love it?”
Androvsky moved on his cushion and leaned down till his elbow touched
the sand. Lying thus, with his chin in his hand, and his eyes fixed upon
her, he answered:
“But it is not the land I am loving.”
His absolute concentration upon her made her think that, perhaps, he
misunderstood her meaning in speaking of the desert, her joy in it.
She longed to explain how he and the desert were linked together in
her heart, and she dropped her hand upon his left hand, which lay palm
downwards in the warm sand.
“I love this land,” she began, “because I found you in it, because I
feel----”
She stopped.
“Yes, Domini?” he said.
“No, not now. I can’t tell you. There’s too much light.”
“Domini,” he repeated.
Then they were silent once more, thinking of how the darkness would come
to them at Arba.
In the late afternoon they drew near to the Bordj, moving along a
difficult route full of deep ruts and holes, and bordered on either side
by bushes so tall that they looked almost like trees. Here, tended by
Arabs who stared gravely at the strangers in the palanquin, were grazing
immense herds of camels. Above the bushes to the horizon on either side
of the way appeared the serpentine necks flexibly moving to and fro,
now bending deliberately towards the dusty twigs, now stretched straight
forward as if in patient search for some solace of the camel’s fate that
lay in the remoteness of the desert. Baby camels, many of them only
a few days old, yet already vowed to the eternal pilgrimages of the
wastes, with mild faces and long, disobedient-looking legs, ran from
the caravan, nervously seeking their morose mothers, who cast upon them
glances that seemed expressive of a disdainful pity. In front, beyond a
watercourse, now dried up, rose the low hill on which stood the Bordj,
a huge, square building, with two square towers pierced with loopholes.
From a distance it resembled a fort threatening the desert in
magnificent isolation. Its towers were black against the clear lemon of
the failing sunlight. Pigeons, that looked also black, flew perpetually
about them, and the telegraph posts, that bordered the way at regular
intervals on the left, made a diminishing series of black vertical lines
sharply cutting the yellow till they were lost to sight in the south.
To Domini these posts were like pointing fingers beckoning her onward to
the farthest distances of the sun. Drugged by the long journey over the
flats, and the unceasing caress of the air, that was like an importunate
lover ever unsatisfied, she watched from the height on which she was
perched this evening scene of roaming, feeding animals, staring nomads,
monotonous herbage and vague, surely-retreating mountains, with quiet,
dreamy eyes. Everything which she saw seemed to her beautiful, a little
remote and a little fantastic. The slow movement of the camels, the
swifter movements of the circling pigeons about the square towers on
the hill, the motionless, or gently-gliding, Arabs with their clubs held
slantwise, the telegraph poles, one smaller than the other, diminishing
till--as if magically--they disappeared in the lemon that was growing
into gold, were woven together for her by the shuttle of the desert
into a softly brilliant tapestry--one of those tapestries that is like
a legend struck to sleep as the Beauty in her palace. As they began to
mount the hill, and the radiance of the sky increased, this impression
faded, for the life that centred round the Bordj was vivid, though
sparse in comparison with the eddying life of towns, and had that air
of peculiar concentration which may be noted in pictures representing a
halt in the desert.
No longer did the strongly-built Bordj seem to Domini like a fort
threatening the oncomer, but like a stalwart host welcoming him, a host
who kept open house in this treeless desolation that yet had, for her,
no feature that was desolate. It was earth-coloured, built of stone, and
had in the middle of the facade that faced them an immense hospitable
doorway with a white arch above it. This doorway gave a partial view of
a vast courtyard, in which animals and people were moving to and fro.
Round about, under the sheltering shadow of the windowless wall, were
many Arabs, some squatting on their haunches, some standing upright with
their backs against the stone, some moving from one group to another,
gesticulating and talking vivaciously. Boys were playing a game with
stones set in an ordered series of small holes scooped by their fingers
in the dust. A negro crossed the flat space before the Bordj carrying on
his head a huge earthen vase to the well near by, where a crowd of black
donkeys, just relieved of their loads of brushwood, was being watered.
From the south two Spahis were riding in on white horses, their scarlet
cloaks floating out over their saddles; and from the west, moving slowly
to a wailing sound of indistinct music, a faint beating of tomtoms, was
approaching a large caravan in a cloud of dust which floated back from
it and melted away into the radiance of the sunset.
When they gained the great open space before the building they were
bathed in the soft golden light, in which all these figures of Africans,
and all these animals, looked mysterious and beautiful, and full of that
immeasurable significance which the desert sheds upon those who move in
it, specially at dawn or at sundown. From the plateau they dominated the
whole of the plain they had traversed as far as Beni-Mora, which on the
morrow would fade into the blue horizon. Its thousands of palms made
a darkness in the gold, and still the tower of the hotel was faintly
visible, pointing like a needle towards the sky. The range of mountains
showed their rosy flanks in the distance. They, too, on the morrow would
be lost in the desert spaces, the last outposts of the world of hill
and valley, of stream and sea. Only in the deceptive dream of the mirage
would they appear once more, looming in a pearl-coloured shaking veil
like a fluid on the edge of some visionary lagune.
Domini was glad that on this first night of their journey they could
still see Beni-Mora, the place where they had found each other and been
given to each other by the Church. As the camel stopped before the great
doorway of the Bordj she turned in the palanquin and looked down upon
the desert, motioning to the camel-driver to leave the beast for a
moment. She put her arm through Androvsky’s and made his eyes follow
hers across the vast spaces made magical by the sinking sun to that
darkness of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place for
ever. And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her came
upon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat of noon. She saw
Androvsky at her feet on the sand. She heard the chiming church bell and
the twitter of Larbi’s flute. The dark blue of trees was as the heart of
the world to her and as the heart of life. It had seen the birth of her
soul and given to her another newborn soul. There was a pathos in
seeing it fade like a thing sinking down till it became one with the
immeasurable sands, and at that moment she said to herself, “When shall
I see Beni-Mora again--and how?” She looked at Androvsky, met his eyes,
and thought: “When I see it again how different I shall be! How I shall
be changed!” And in the sunset she seemed to be saying a mute good-bye
to one who was fading with Beni-Mora.
As soon as they had got off the camel and were standing in the group
of staring Arabs, Batouch begged them to come to their tents, where
tea would be ready. He led them round the angle of the wall towards the
west, and there, pitched in the full radiance of the sunset, with a wide
space of hard earth gleaming with gypse around it, was a white tent.
Before it, in the open air, was stretched a handsome Arab carpet, and on
this carpet were set a folding table and two folding chairs. The table
held a japanned tray with tea-cups, a milk jug and plates of biscuits
and by it, in an attitude that looked deliberately picturesque stood
Ouardi, the youth selected by Batouch to fill the office of butler in
the desert.
Ouardi smiled a broad welcome as they approached, and having made sure
that his pose had been admired, retired to the cook’s abode to fetch the
teapot, while Batouch invited Domini and Androvsky to inspect the tent
prepared for them. Domini assented with a dropped-out word. She still
felt in a dream. But Androvsky, after casting towards the tent door
a glance that was full of a sort of fierce shyness, moved away a few
steps, and stood at the edge of the hill looking down upon the incoming
caravan, whose music was now plainly audible in the stillness of the
waste.
Domini went into the tent that was to be their home for many weeks,
alone. And she was glad just then that she was alone. For she too, like
Androvsky, felt a sort of exquisite trouble moving, like a wave, in her
heart. On some pretext, but only after an expression of admiration, she
got rid of Batouch. Then she stood and looked round.
From the big tent opened a smaller one, which was to serve Androvsky as
a dressing-room and both of them as a baggage room. She did not go into
that, but saw, with one glance of soft inquiry, the two small, low beds,
the strips of gay carpet, the dressing-table, the stand and the two cane
chairs which furnished the sleeping-tent. Then she looked back to the
aperture. In the distance, standing alone at the edge of the hill, she
saw Androvsky, bathed in the sunset, looking out over the hidden desert
from which rose the wild sound of African music, steadily growing
louder. It seemed to her as if he must be gazing at the plains of
heaven, so magically brilliant and tender, so pellucidly clear and
delicate was the atmosphere and the colour of the sky. She saw no other
form, only his, in this poem of light, in this wide world of the sinking
sun. And the music seemed to be about his feet, to rise from the sand
and throb in its breast.
At that moment the figure of Liberty, which she had seen in the shadows
of the dancing-house, came in at the tent door and laid, for the first
time, her lips on Domini’s. That kiss was surely the consecration of
the life of the sands. But to-day there had been another consecration.
Domini had a sudden impulse to link the two consecrations together.
She drew from her breast the wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown into
the stream at Sidi-Zerzour, and, softly going to one of the beds, she
pinned the crucifix above it on the canvas of the tent. Then she turned
and went out into the glory of the sunset to meet the fierce music that
was rising from the desert.