True to his promise, on the following day the priest called to inquire
after Androvsky’s health. He happened to come just before _dejeuner_ was
ready, and met Androvsky on the sand before the tent door.
“It’s not fever then, Monsieur,” he said, after they had shaken hands.
“No, no,” Androvsky replied. “I am quite well this morning.”
The priest looked at him closely with an unembarrassed scrutiny.
“Have you been long in the desert, Monsieur?” he asked.
“Some weeks.”
“The heat has tired you. I know the look--”
“I assure you, Monsieur, that I am accustomed to heat. I have lived in
North Africa all my life.”
“Indeed. And yet by your appearance I should certainly suppose that you
needed a change from the desert. The air of the Sahara is magnificent,
but there are people--”
“I am not one of them,” Androvsky said abruptly. “I have never felt so
strong physically as since I have lived in the sand.”
The priest still looked at him closely, but said nothing further on
the subject of health. Indeed, almost immediately his attention was
distracted by the apparition of Ouardi bearing dishes from the cook’s
tent.
“I am afraid I have called at a very unorthodox time,” he remarked,
looking at his watch; “but the fact is that here in Amara we--”
“I hope you will stay to _dejeuner_,” Androvsky said.
“It is very good of you. If you are certain that I shall not put you
out.”
“Please stay.”
“I will, then, with pleasure.”
He moved his lips expectantly, as if only a sense of politeness
prevented him from smacking them. Androvsky went towards the
sleeping-tent, where Domini, who had been into the city, was washing her
hands.
“The priest has called,” he said. “I have asked him to _dejeuner_.”
She looked at him with frank astonishment in her dark eyes.
“You--Boris!”
“Yes, I. Why not?”
“I don’t know. But generally you hate people.”
“He seems a good sort of man.”
She still looked at him with some surprise, even with curiosity.
“Have you taken a fancy to a priest?” she asked, smiling.
“Why not? This man is very different from Father Roubier, more human.”
“Father Beret is very human, I think,” she answered.
She was still smiling. It had just occurred to her that the priest had
timed his visit with some forethought.
“I am coming,” she added.
A sudden cheerfulness had taken possession of her. All the morning she
had been feeling grave, even almost apprehensive, after a bad night.
When her husband had abruptly left her and gone away into the darkness
she had been overtaken by a sudden wave of acute depression. She had
felt, more painfully than ever before, the mental separation which
existed between them despite their deep love, and a passionate but
almost hopeless longing had filled her heart that in all things they
might be one, not only in love of each other, but in love of God. When
Androvsky had taken his arms from her she had seemed to feel herself
released by a great despair, and this certainty--for as he vanished into
the darkness she was no more in doubt that his love for her left room
within his heart for such an agony--had for a moment brought her soul to
the dust. She had been overwhelmed by a sensation that instead of
being close together they were far apart, almost strangers, and a great
bitterness had entered into her. It was accompanied by a desire for
action. She longed to follow Androvsky, to lay her hand on his arm, to
stop him in the sand and force him to confide in her. For the first
time the idea that he was keeping something from her, a sorrow, almost
maddened her, even made her feel jealous. The fact that she divined what
that sorrow was, or believed she divined it, did not help her just then.
She waited a long while, but Androvsky did not return, and at last she
prayed and went to bed. But her prayers were feeble, disjointed, and
sleep did not come to her, for her mind was travelling with this man
who loved her and who yet was out there alone in the night, who was
deliberately separating himself from her. Towards dawn, when he stole
into the tent, she was still awake, but she did not speak or give any
sign of consciousness, although she was hot with the fierce desire to
spring up, to throw her arms round him, to draw his head down upon her
heart, and say, “I have given myself, body, heart and soul, to you. Give
yourself to me; give me the thing you are keeping back--your sorrow.
Till I have that I have not all of you. And till I have all of you I am
in hell.”
It was a mad impulse. She resisted it and lay quite still. And when he
lay down and was quiet she slept at length.
Now, as she heard him speak in the sunshine and knew that he had offered
hospitality to the comfortable priest her heart suddenly felt lighter,
she scarcely knew why. It seemed to her that she had been a little
morbid, and that the cloud which had settled about her was lifted,
revealing the blue.
At _dejeuner_ she was even more reassured. Her husband seemed to get on
with the priest better than she had ever seen him get on with anybody.
He began by making an effort to be agreeable that was obvious to her;
but presently he was agreeable without effort. The simple geniality
and lack of self-consciousness in Father Beret evidently set him at
his ease. Once or twice she saw him look at his guest with an earnest
scrutiny that puzzled her, but he talked far more than usual and with
greater animation, discussing the Arabs and listening to the priest’s
account of the curiosities of life in Amara. When at length Father Beret
rose to go Androvsky said he would accompany him a little way, and they
went off together, evidently on the best of terms.
She was delighted and surprised. She had been right, then. It was time
that Androvsky was subjected to another influence than that of the
unpeopled wastes. It was time that he came into contact with men whose
minds were more akin to his than the minds of the Arabs who had been
their only companions. She began to imagine him with her in civilised
places, to be able to imagine him. And she was glad they had come to
Amara and confirmed in her resolve to stay on there. She even began to
wish that the French officers quartered there--few in number, some five
or six--would find them in the sand, and that Androvsky would offer them
hospitality. It occurred to her that it was not quite wholesome for a
man to live in isolation from his fellow-men, even with the woman he
loved, and she determined that she would not be selfish in her love,
that she would think for Androvsky, act for him, even against her own
inclination. Perhaps his idea of life in an oasis apart from Europeans
was one she ought to combat, though it fascinated her. Perhaps it would
be stronger, more sane, to face a more ordinary, less dreamy, life, in
which they would meet with people, in which they would inevitably find
themselves confronted with duties. She felt powerful enough in that
moment to do anything that would make for Androvsky’s welfare of soul.
His body was strong and at ease. She thought of him going away with the
priest in friendly conversation. How splendid it would be if she could
feel some day that the health of his soul accorded completely with that
of his body!
“Batouch!” she called almost gaily.
Batouch appeared, languidly smoking a cigarette, and with a large flower
tied to a twig protending from behind his ear.
“Saddle the horses. Monsieur has gone with the Pere Beret. I shall take
a ride, just a short ride round the camp over there--in at the city
gate, through the market-place, and home. You will come with me.”
Batouch threw away his cigarette with energy. Poet though he was, all
the Arab blood in him responded to the thought of a gallop over the
sands. Within a few minutes they were off. When she was in the saddle it
was at all times difficult for Domini to be sad or even pensive. She had
a native passion for a good horse, and riding was one of the joys,
and almost the keenest, of her life. She felt powerful when she had
a spirited, fiery animal under her, and the wide spaces of the desert
summoned speed as they summoned dreams. She and Batouch went away at a
rapid pace, circled round the Arab cemetery, made a detour towards the
south, and then cantered into the midst of the camps of the Ouled Nails.
It was the hour of the siesta. Only a few people were stirring, coming
and going over the dunes to and from the city on languid errands for the
women of the tents, who reclined in the shade of their brushwood
arbours upon filthy cushions and heaps of multi-coloured rags, smoking
cigarettes, playing cards with Arab and negro admirers, or staring into
vacancy beneath their heavy eyebrows as they listened to the sound of
music played upon long pipes of reed. No dogs barked in their camp.
The only guardians were old women, whose sandy faces were scored with
innumerable wrinkles, and whose withered hands drooped under their loads
of barbaric rings and bracelets. Batouch would evidently have liked to
dismount here. Like all Arabs he was fascinated by the sight of these
idols of the waste, whose painted faces called to the surface the fluid
poetry within him, but Domini rode on, descending towards the city gate
by which she had first entered Amara. The priest’s house was there
and Androvsky was with the priest. She hoped he had perhaps gone in to
return the visit paid to them. As she rode into the city she glanced
at the house. The door was open and she saw the gay rugs in the little
hall. She had a strong inclination to stop and ask if her husband were
there. He might mount Batouch’s horse and accompany her home.
“Batouch,” she said, “will you ask if Monsieur Androvsky is with Pere
Beret. I think--”
She stopped speaking. She had just seen her husband’s face pass across
the window-space of the room on the right-hand side of the hall door.
She could not see it very well. The arcade built out beyond the house
cast a deep shade within, and in this shade the face had flitted like a
shadow. Batouch had sprung from his horse. But the sight of the shadowy
face had changed her mind. She resolved not to interrupt the two men.
Long ago at Beni-Mora she had asked Androvsky to call upon a priest. She
remembered the sequel to that visit. This time Androvsky had gone of his
own will. If he liked this priest, if they became friends, perhaps--she
remembered her vision in the dancing-house, her feeling that when she
drew near Amara she was drawing near to the heart of the desert. If she
should see Androvsky praying here! Yet Father Beret hardly seemed a man
likely to influence her husband, or anyone with a strong and serious
personality. He was surely too fond of the things of this world, too
obviously a lover and cherisher of the body. Nevertheless, there was
something attractive in him, a kindness, a geniality. In trouble he
would be sympathetic. Certainly her husband must have taken a liking to
him, and the chances of life and the influences of destiny were strange
and not to be foreseen.
“No, Batouch,” she said. “We won’t stop.”
“But, Madame,” he cried, “Monsieur is in there. I saw his face at the
window.”
“Never mind. We won’t disturb them. I daresay they have something to
talk about.”
They cantered on towards the market-place. It was not market-day, and
the town, like the camp of the Ouled Nails, was almost deserted. As she
rode up the hill towards the place of the fountain, however, she saw
two handsomely-dressed Arabs, followed by a servant, slowly strolling
towards her from the doorway of the Bureau Arabe. One, who was very
tall, was dressed in green, and carried a long staff, from which hung
green ribbons. The other wore a more ordinary costume of white, with a
white burnous and a turban spangled with gold.
“Madame!” said Batouch.
“Yes.”
“Do you see the Arab dressed in green?”
He spoke in an almost awestruck voice.
“Yes. Who is he?”
“The great marabout who lives at Beni-Hassan.”
The name struck upon Domini’s ear with a strange familiarity.
“But that’s where Count Anteoni went when he rode away from Beni-Mora
that morning.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Is it far from Amara?”
“Two hours’ ride across the desert.”
“But then Count Anteoni may be near us. After he left he wrote to me and
gave me his address at the marabout’s house.”
“If he is still with the marabout, Madame.”
They were close to the fountain now, and the marabout and his companion
were coming straight towards them.
“If Madame will allow me I will salute the marabout,” said Batouch.
“Certainly.”
He sprang off his horse immediately, tied it up to the railing of the
fountain, and went respectfully towards the approaching potentate to
kiss his hand. Domini saw the marabout stop and Batouch bend down, then
lift himself up and suddenly move back as if in surprise. The Arab who
was with the marabout seemed also surprised. He held out his hand to
Batouch, who took it, kissed it, then kissed his own hand, and turning,
pointed towards Domini. The Arab spoke a word to the marabout, then left
him, and came rapidly forward to the fountain. As he drew close to her
she saw a face browned by the sun, a very small, pointed beard, a pair
of intensely bright eyes surrounded by wrinkles. These eyes held her.
It seemed to her that she knew them, that she had often looked into them
and seen their changing expressions. Suddenly she exclaimed:
“Count Anteoni!”
“Yes, it is I!”
He held out his hand and clasped hers.
“So you have started upon your desert journey,” he added, looking
closely at her, as he had often looked in the garden.
“Yes.”
“And as I ventured to advise--that last time, do you remember?”
She recollected his words.
“No,” she replied, and there was a warmth of joy, almost of pride, in
her voice. “I am not alone.”
Count Anteoni was standing with one hand on her horse’s neck. As she
spoke, his hand dropped down.
“I have been away from Beni-Hassan,” he said slowly. “The marabout and
I have been travelling in the south and only returned yesterday. I have
heard no news for a long time from Beni-Mora, but I know. You are Madame
Androvsky.”
“Yes,” she answered; “I am Madame Androvsky.”
There was a silence between them. In it she heard the dripping water in
the fountain. At last Count Anteoni spoke again.
“It was written,” he said quietly. “It was written in the sand.”
She thought of the sand-diviner and was silent. An oppression of spirit
had suddenly come upon her. It seemed to her connected with something
physical, something obscure, unusual, such as she had never felt before.
It was, she thought, as if her body at that moment became more alive
than it had ever been, and as if that increase of life within her gave
to her a peculiar uneasiness. She was startled. She even felt alarmed,
as at the faint approach of something strange, of something that was
going to alter her life. She did not know at all what it was. For the
moment a sense of confusion and of pain beset her, and she was scarcely
aware with whom she was, or where. The sensation passed and she
recovered herself and met Count Anteoni’s eyes quietly.
“Yes,” she answered; “all that has happened to me here in Africa was
written in the sand and in fire.”
“You are thinking of the sun.”
“Yes.”
“I--where are you living?”
“Close by on the sand-hill beyond the city wall.”
“Where you can see the fires lit at night and hear the sound of the
music of Africa?”
“Yes.”
“As he said.”
“Yes, as he said.”
Again the overwhelming sense of some strange and formidable approach
came over her, but this time she fought it resolutely.
“Will you come and see me?” she said.
She had meant to say “us,” but did not say it.
“If you will allow me.”
“When?”
“I--” she heard the odd, upward grating in his voice which she
remembered so well. “May I come now if you are riding to the tents?”
“Please do.”
“I will explain to the marabout and follow you.”
“But the way? Shall Batouch--?”
“No, it is not necessary.”
She rode away. When she reached the camp she found that Androvsky had
not yet returned, and she was glad. She wanted to talk to Count Anteoni
alone. Within a few minutes she saw him coming towards the tent. His
beard and his Arab dress so altered him that at a short distance she
could not recognise him, could only guess that it was he. But directly
he was near, and she saw his eyes, she forgot that he was altered, and
felt that she was with her kind and whimsical host of the garden.
“My husband is in the city,” she said.
“Yes.”
“With the priest.”
She saw an expression of surprise flit over Count Anteoni’s face. It
went away instantly.
“Pere Beret,” he said. “He is a cheerful creature and very good to the
Arabs.”
They sat down just inside the shadow of the tent before the door, and he
looked out quietly towards the city.
“Yes, this is the place,” he said.
She knew that he was alluding to the vision of the sand-diviner, and
said so.
“Did you believe at the time that what he said would come true?” she
asked.
“How could I? Am I a child?”
He spoke with gentle irony, but she felt he was playing with her.
“Cannot a man believe such things?”
He did not answer her, but said:
“My fate has come to pass. Do you not care to know what it is?”
“Yes, do tell me.”
She spoke earnestly. She felt a change in him, a great change which
as yet she did not understand fully. It was as if he had been a man in
doubt and was now a man no longer in doubt, as if he had arrived at some
goal and was more at peace with himself than he had been.
“I have become a Mohammedan,” he said simply.
“A Mohammedan!”
She repeated the words as a person repeats words in surprise, but her
voice did not sound surprised.
“You wonder?” he asked.
After a moment she answered:
“No. I never thought of such a thing, but I am not surprised. Now
you have told me it seems to explain you, much that I noticed in you,
wondered about in you.”
She looked at him steadily, but without curiosity.
“I feel that you are happy now.”
“Yes, I am happy. The world I used to know, my world and yours, would
laugh at me, would say that I was crazy, that it was a whim, that I
wished for a new sensation. Simply it had to be. For years I have been
tending towards it--who knows why? Who knows what obscure influences
have been at work in me, whether there is not perhaps far back, some
faint strain of Arab blood mingled with the Sicilian blood in my veins?
I cannot understand why. What I can understand is that at last I have
fulfilled my destiny! After years of unrest I am suddenly and completely
at peace. It is a magical sensation. I have been wandering all my life
and have come upon the open door of my home.”
He spoke very quietly, but she heard the joy in his voice.
“I remember you saying, ‘I like to see men praying in the desert.’”
“Yes. When I looked at them I was longing to be one of them. For
years from my garden wall I watched them with a passion of envy, with
bitterness, almost with hatred sometimes. They had something I had not,
something that set them above me, something that made their lives plain
through any complication, and that gave to death a meaning like the
meaning at the close of a great story that is going to have a sequel.
They had faith. And it was difficult not to hate them. But now I am one
of them. I can pray in the desert.”
“That was why you left Beni-Mora.”
“Yes. I had long been wishing to become a Mohammedan. I came here to be
with the marabout, to enter more fully into certain questions, to see if
I had any lingering doubts.”
“And you have none?”
“None.”
She looked at his bright eyes and sighed, thinking of her husband.
“You will go back to Beni-Mora?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I am inclined to go farther into the desert, farther
among the people of my own faith. I don’t want to be surrounded by
French. Some day perhaps I may return. But at present everything draws
me onward. Tell me”--he dropped the earnest tone in which he had been
speaking, and she heard once more the easy, half-ironical man of the
world--“do you think me a half-crazy eccentric?”
“No!”
“You look at me very gravely, even sadly.”
“I was thinking of the men who cannot pray,” she said, “even in the
desert.”
“They should not come into the Garden of Allah. Don’t you remember that
day by the garden wall, when--”
He suddenly checked himself.
“Forgive me,” he said simply. “And now tell me about yourself. You never
wrote that you were going to be married.”
“I knew you would know it in time--when we met again.”
“And you knew we should meet again?”
“Did not you?”
He nodded.
“In the heart of the desert. And you--where are you going? You are not
returning to civilisation?”
“I don’t know. I have no plans. I want to do what my husband wishes.”
“And he?”
“He loves the desert. He has suggested our buying an oasis and setting
up as date merchants. What do you think of the idea?”
She spoke with a smile, but her eyes were serious, even sad.
“I cannot judge for others,” he answered.
When he got up to go he held her hand fast for a moment.
“May I speak what is in my heart?” he asked.
“Yes--do.”
“I feel as if what I have told you to-day about myself, about my having
come to the open door of a home I had long been wearily seeking, had
made you sad. Is it so?”
“Yes,” she answered frankly.
“Can you tell me why?”
“It has made me realise more sharply than perhaps I did before what must
be the misery of those who are still homeless.”
There was in her voice a sound as if she suppressed a sob.
“Hope for them, remembering my many years of wandering.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Good-bye.”
“Will you come again?”
“You are here for long?”
“Some days, I think.”
“Whenever you ask me I will come.”
“I want you and my husband to meet again. I want that very much.” She
spoke with a pressure of eagerness.
“Send for me and I will come at any hour.”
“I will send--soon.”
When he was gone, Domini sat in the shadow of the tent. From where she
was she could see the Arab cemetery at a little distance, a quantity of
stones half drowned in the sand. An old Arab was wandering there alone,
praying for the dead in a loud, persistent voice. Sometimes he paused
by a grave, bowed himself in prayer, then rose and walked on again. His
voice was never silent. The sound of it was plaintive and monotonous.
Domini listened to it, and thought of homeless men, of those who had
lived and died without ever coming to that open door through which Count
Anteoni had entered. His words and the changed look in his face had made
a deep impression upon her. She realised that in the garden, when they
were together, his eyes, even when they twinkled with the slightly
ironical humour peculiar to him, had always held a shadow. Now that
shadow was lifted out of them. How deep was the shadow in her husband’s
eyes. How deep had it been in the eyes of her father. He had died with
that terrible darkness in his eyes and in his soul. If her husband were
to die thus! A terror came upon her. She looked out at the stones in
the sand and imagined herself there--as the old Arab was--praying for
Androvsky buried there, hidden from her on earth for ever. And suddenly
she felt, “I cannot wait, I must act.”
Her faith was deep and strong. Nothing could shake it. But might it not
shake the doubt from another’s soul, as a great, pure wind shakes leaves
that are dead from a tree that will blossom with the spring? Hitherto
a sense of intense delicacy had prevented her from ever trying to draw
near definitely to her husband’s sadness. But her interview with Count
Anteoni, and the sound of this voice praying, praying for the dead men
in the sand, stirred her to an almost fierce resolution. She had given
herself to Androvsky. He had given himself to her. They were one. She
had a right to draw near to his pain, if by so doing there was a chance
that she might bring balm to it. She had a right to look closer into his
eyes if hers, full of faith, could lift the shadow from them.
She leaned back in the darkness of the tent. The old Arab had wandered
further on among the graves. His voice was faint in the sand, faint and
surely piteous, as if, even while he prayed, he felt that his prayers
were useless, that the fate of the dead was pronounced beyond recall.
Domini listened to him no more. She was praying for the living as she
had never prayed before, and her prayer was the prelude not to patience
but to action. It was as if her conversation with Count Anteoni had set
a torch to something in her soul, something that gave out a great flame,
a flame that could surely burn up the sorrow, the fear, the secret
torture in her husband’s soul. All the strength of her character had
been roused by the sight of the peace she desired for the man she loved;
enthroned in the heart of this other man who was only her friend.
The voice of the old Arab died away in the distance, but before it died
away Domini had ceased from hearing it.
She heard only a voice within her, which said to her, “If you really
love be fearless. Attack this sorrow which stands like a figure of death
between you and your husband. Drive it away. You have a weapon--faith.
Use it.”
It seemed to her then that through all their intercourse she had been
a coward in her love, and she resolved that she would be a coward no
longer.