to pass away. And the anger was dead. Always she had felt as if she had
been led to Africa for some definite end. Did not the freed negroes, far
out in the Desert, sing their song of the deeper mysteries--“No one but
God and I knows what is in my heart”? And had not she heard it again and
again, and each time with a sense of awe? She had always thought that
the words were wonderful and beautiful. But she had thought that perhaps
they were not true. She had said to Androvsky that he knew what was in
her heart. And now, in this night, in its intense stillness, close to
the man who for so long had not dared to pray but who now was praying,
again she thought that they were not quite true. It seemed to her that
she did not know what was in her heart, and that she was waiting there
for God to come and tell her. Would He come? She waited. Patience
entered into her.
The silence was long. Night was travelling, turning her thoughts to
a distant world. The moon waned, and a faint breath of wind that was
almost cold stole over the sands, among the graves in the cemetery, to
the man and the woman who were keeping vigil upon their knees. The wind
died away almost ere it had risen, and the rigid silence that precedes
the dawn held the desert in its grasp. And God came to Domini in the
silence, Allah through Allah’s garden that was shrouded still in the
shadows of night. Once, as she journeyed through the roaring of the
storm, she had listened for the voice of the desert. And as the desert
took her its voice had spoken to her in a sudden and magical silence, in
a falling of the wind. Now, in a more magical silence, the voice of God
spoke to her. And the voice of the desert and of God were as one. As she
knelt she heard God telling her what was in her heart. It was a strange
and passionate revelation. She trembled as she heard. And sometimes
she was inclined to say, “It is not so.” And sometimes she was afraid,
afraid of what this--all this that was in her heart--would lead her to
do. For God told her of a strength which she had not known her heart
possessed, which--so it seemed to her--she did not wish it to possess,
of a strength from which something within her shrank, against which
something within her protested. But God would not be denied. He told
her she had this strength. He told her that she must use it. He told
her that she would use it. And she began to understand something of
the mystery of the purposes of God in relation to herself, and to
understand, with it, how closely companioned even those who strive after
effacement of self are by selfishness--how closely companioned she had
been on her African pilgrimage. Everything that had happened in Africa
she had quietly taken to herself, as a gift made to her for herself.
The peace that had descended upon her was balm for her soul, and was
sent merely for that, to stop the pain she suffered from old wounds
that she might be comfortably at rest. The crescendo--the beautiful
crescendo--of calm, of strength, of faith, of hope which she had, as it
were, heard like a noble music within her spirit had been the David sent
to play upon the harp to her Saul, that from her Saul the black demon
of unrest, of despair, might depart. That was what she had believed. She
had believed that she had come to Africa for herself, and now God, in
the silence, was telling her that this was not so, that He had brought
her to Africa to sacrifice herself in the redemption of another. And as
she listened--listened, with bowed head, and eyes in which tears were
gathering, from which tears were falling upon her clasped hands--she
knew that it was true, she knew that God meant her to put away her
selfishness, to rise above it. Those eagle’s wings of which she had
thought--she must spread them. She must soar towards the place of the
angels, whither good women soar in the great moments of their
love, borne up by the winds of God. On the minaret of the mosque of
Sidi-Zerzour, while Androvsky remained in the dark shadow with a curse,
she had mounted, with prayer, surely a little way towards God. And now
God said to her, “Mount higher, come nearer to me, bring another with
you. That was my purpose in leading you to Beni-Mora, in leading you far
out into the desert, in leading you into the heart of the desert.”
She had been led to Africa for a definite end, and now she knew what
that end was. On the mosque of the minaret of Sidi-Zerzour she had
surely seen prayer travelling, the soul of prayer travelling. And
she had asked herself--“Whither?” She had asked herself where was the
halting-place, with at last the pitched tent, the camp fires, and the
long, the long repose? And when she came down into the court of the
mosque and found Androvsky watching the old Arab who struck against the
mosque and cursed, she had wished that Androvsky had mounted with her a
little way towards God.
He should mount with her. Always she had longed to see him above her.
Could she leave him below? She knew she could not. She understood that
God did not mean her to. She understood perfectly. And tears streamed
from her eyes. For now there came upon her a full comprehension of her
love for Androvsky. His revelation had not killed it, as, for a moment,
in her passionate personal anger, she had been inclined to think. Indeed
it seemed to her now that, till this hour of silence, she had never
really loved him, never known how to love. Even in the tent at Arba she
had not fully loved him, perfectly loved him. For the thought of self,
the desires of self, the passion of self, had entered into and been
mingled with her love. But now she loved him perfectly, because she
loved as God intended her to love. She loved him as God’s envoy sent to
him.
She was still weeping, but she began to feel calm, as if the stillness
of this hour before the dawn entered into her soul. She thought of
herself now only as a vessel into which God was pouring His purpose and
His love.
Just as dawn was breaking, as the first streak of light stole into the
east and threw a frail spear of gold upon the sands, she was conscious
again of a thrill of life within her, of the movement of her unborn
child. Then she lifted her head from her hand, looking towards the east,
and whispered:
“Give me strength for one more thing--give me strength to be silent!”
She waited as if for an answer. Then she rose from her knees, bathed her
face and went out to the tent door to Androvsky.
“Boris!” she said.
He rose from his knees and looked at her, holding the little wooden
crucifix in his hand.
“Domini?” he said in an uncertain voice.
“Put it back into your breast. Keep it for ever, Boris.”
As if mechanically, and not removing his eyes from her, he put the
crucifix into his breast. After a moment she spoke again, quietly.
“Boris, you never wished to stay here. You meant to stay here for me.
Let us go away from Amara. Let us go to-day, now, in the dawn.”
“Us!” he said.
There was a profound amazement in his voice.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Away from Amara--you and I--together?”
“Yes, Boris, together.”
“Where--where can we go?”
The amazement seemed to deepen in his voice. His eyes were watching her
with an almost fierce intentness. In a flash of insight she realised
that, just then, he was wondering about her as he had never wondered
before, wondering whether she was really the good woman at whose feet
his sin-stricken soul had worshipped. Yes, he was asking himself that
question.
“Boris,” she said, “will you leave yourself in my hands? We have talked
of our future life. We have wondered what we should do. Will you let me
do as I will, let the future be as I choose?”
In her heart she said “as God chooses.”
“Yes, Domini,” he answered. “I am in your hands, utterly in your hands.”
“No,” she said.
Neither of them spoke after that till the sunlight lay above the towers
and minarets of Amara. Then Domini said:
“We will go to-day--now.”
And that morning the camp was struck, and the new journey began--the
journey back.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A silence had fallen between Domini and Androvsky which neither seemed
able to break. They rode on side by side across the sands towards the
north through the long day. The tower of Amara faded in the sunshine
above the white crests of the dunes. The Arab villages upon their little
hills disappeared in the quivering gold. New vistas of desert opened
before them, oases crowded with palms, salt lakes and stony ground. They
passed by native towns. They saw the negro gardeners laughing among
the rills of yellow water, or climbing with bare feet the wrinkled tree
trunks to lop away dead branches. They heard tiny goatherds piping,
solitary, in the wastes. Dreams of the mirage rose and faded far off
on the horizon, rose and faded mystically, leaving no trembling trace
behind. And they were silent as the mirage, she in her purpose, he in
his wonder. And the long day waned, and towards evening the camp was
pitched and the evening meal was prepared. And still they could not
speak.
Sometimes Androvsky watched her, and there was a great calm in her face,
but there was no rebuke, no smallness of anger, no hint of despair.
Always he had felt her strength of mind and body, but never so much as
now. Could he rest on it? Dared he? He did not know. And the day seemed
to him to become a dream, and the silence recalled to him the silence of
the monastery in which he had worshipped God before the stranger
came. He thought that in this silence he ought to feel that she was
deliberately raising barriers between them, but--it was strange--he
could not feel this. In her silence there was no bitterness. When is
there bitterness in strength? He rode on and on beside her, and his
sense of a dream deepened, helped by the influence of the desert. Where
were they going? He did not know. What was her purpose? He could not
tell. But he felt that she had a purpose, that her mind was resolved.
Now and then, tearing himself with an effort from the dream, he asked
himself what it could be. What could be in store for him, for them,
after the thing he had told? What could be their mutual life? Must it
not be for ever at an end? Was it not shattered? Was it not dust, like
the dust of the desert that rose round their horses’ feet? The silence
did not tell him, and again he ceased from wondering and the dream
closed round him. Were they not travelling in a mirage, mirage people,
unreal, phantomlike, who would presently fade away into the spaces of
the sun? The sand muffled the tread of the horses’ feet. The desert
understood their silence, clothed it in a silence more vast and more
impenetrable. And Androvsky had made his effort. He had spoken the truth
at last. He could do no more. He was incapable of any further action. As
Domini felt herself to be in the hands of God, he felt himself to be
in the hands of this woman who had received his confession with
this wonderful calm, who was leading him he knew not whither in this
wonderful silence.
When the camp was pitched, however, he noticed something that caught
him sharply away from the dreamlike, unreal feeling, and set him face to
face with fact that was cold as steel. Always till now the dressing-tent
had been pitched beside their sleeping-tent, with the flap of the
entrance removed so that the two tents communicated. To-night it stood
apart, near the sleeping-tent, and in it was placed one of the small
camp beds. Androvsky was alone when he saw this. On reaching the
halting-place he had walked a little way into the desert. When he
returned he found this change. It told him something of what was passing
in Domini’s mind, and it marked the transformation of their mutual life.
As he gazed at the two tents he felt stricken, yet he felt a curious
sense of something that was like--was it not like--relief? It was as if
his body had received a frightful blow and on his soul a saint’s hand
had been gently laid, as if something fell about him in ruins, and at
the same time a building which he loved, and which for a moment he had
thought tottering, stood firm before him founded upon rock. He was a man
capable of a passionate belief, despite his sin, and he had always had a
passionate belief in Domini’s religion. That morning, when she came out
to him in the sand, a momentary doubt had assailed him. He had known the
thought, “Does she love me still--does she love me more than she
loves God, more than she loves his dictates manifested in the Catholic
religion?” When she said that word “together” that had been his thought.
Now, as he looked at the two tents, a white light seemed to fall upon
Domini’s character, and in this white light stood the ruin and the house
that was founded upon a rock. He was torn by conflicting sensations
of despair and triumph. She was what he had believed. That made the
triumph. But since she was that where was his future with her? The monk
and the man who had fled from the monastery stood up within him to do
battle. The monk knew triumph, but the man was in torment.
Presently, as Androvsky looked at the two tents, the monk in him seemed
to die a new death, the man who had left the monastery to know a new
resurrection. He was seized by a furious desire to go backward in time,
to go backward but a few hours, to the moment when Domini did not know
what now she knew. He cursed himself for what he had done. At last he
had been able to pray. Yes, but what was prayer now, what was prayer to
the man who looked at the two tents and understood what they meant? He
moved away and began to walk up and down near to the two tents. He did
not know where Domini was. At a little distance he saw the servants
busy preparing the evening meal. Smoke rose up before the cook’s tent,
curling away stealthily among a group of palm trees, beneath which some
Arab boys were huddled, staring with wide eyes at the unusual sight of
travellers. They came from a tiny village at a short distance off, half
hidden among palm gardens. The camels were feeding. A mule was rolling
voluptuously in the sand. At a well a shepherd was watering his flocks,
which crowded about him baaing expectantly. The air seemed to breathe
out a subtle aroma of peace and of liberty. And this apparent presence
of peace, this vision of the calm of others, human beings and animals,
added to the torture of Androvsky. As he walked to and fro he felt as
if he were being devoured by his passions, as if he were losing the
last vestiges of self-control. Never in the monastery, never even in the
night when he left it, had he been tormented like this. For now he had
a terrible companion whom, at that time, he had not known. Memory walked
with him before the tents, the memory of his body, recalling and calling
for the past.
He had destroyed that past himself. But for him it might have been also
the present, the future. It might have lasted for years, perhaps till
death took him or Domini. Why not? He had only had to keep silence, to
insist on remaining in the desert, far from the busy ways of men.
They could have lived as certain others lived, who loved the free, the
solitary life, in an oasis of their own, tending their gardens of palms.
Life would have gone like a sunlit dream. And death? At that thought he
shuddered. Death--what would that have been to him? What would it be now
when it came? He put the thought from him with force, as a man thrusts
away from him the filthy hand of a clamouring stranger assailing him in
the street.
This evening he had no time to think of death. Life was enough, life
with this terror which he had deliberately placed in it.
He thought of himself as a madman for having spoken to Domini. He cursed
himself as a madman. For he knew, although he strove furiously not to
know, how irrevocable was his act, in consequence of the great strength
of her nature. He knew that though she had been to him a woman of fire
she might be to him a woman of iron--even to him whom she loved.
How she had loved him!
He walked faster before the tents, to and fro.
How she had loved him! How she loved him still, at this moment after she
knew what he was, what he had done to her. He had no doubt of her love
as he walked there. He felt it, like a tender hand upon him. But that
hand was inflexible too. In its softness there was firmness--firmness
that would never yield to any strength in him.
Those two tents told him the story of her strength. As he looked at them
he was looking into her soul. And her soul was in direct conflict with
his. That was what he felt. She had thought, she had made up her mind.
Quietly, silently she had acted. By that action, without a word, she had
spoken to him, told him a tremendous thing. And the man--the passionate
man who had left the monastery--loose in him now was aflame with an
impotent desire that was like a heat of fury against her, while the
monk, hidden far down in him, was secretly worshipping her cleanliness
of spirit.
But the man who had left the monastery was in the ascendant in him, and
at last drove him to a determination that the monk secretly knew to be
utterly vain. He made up his mind to enter into conflict with Domini’s
strength. He felt that he must, that he could not quietly, without a
word, accept this sudden new life of separation symbolised for him by
the two tents standing apart.
He stood still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw Batouch
laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing on a mat, moving his
head from side to side, smiling with half-shut, vacant eyes, and singing
a languid song.
This music maddened him.
“Batouch!” he called out sharply. “Batouch!”
Batouch stopped laughing, glanced round, then came towards him with a
large pace, swinging from his hips.
“Monsieur?”
“Batouch!” Androvsky said.
But he could not go on. He could not say anything about the two tents to
a servant.
“Where--where is Madame?” he said almost stammering.
“Out there, Monsieur.”
With a sweeping arm the poet pointed towards a hump of sand crowned by
a few palms. Domini was sitting there, surrounded by Arab children, to
whom she was giving sweets out of a box. As Androvsky saw her the anger
in him burnt up more fiercely. This action of Domini’s, simple, natural
though it was, seemed to him in his present condition cruelly heartless.
He thought of her giving the order about the tents and then going calmly
to play with these children, while he--while he----
“You can go, Batouch,” he said. “Go away.”
The poet stared at him with a superb surprise, then moved slowly towards
Ouardi, holding his burnous with his large hands.
Androvsky looked again at the two tents as a man looks at two enemies.
Then, walking quickly, he went towards the hump of sand. As he
approached it Domini had her side face turned towards him. She did not
see him. The little Arabs were dancing round her on their naked feet,
laughing, showing their white teeth and opening their mouths wide for
the sugar-plums--gaiety incarnate. Androvsky gazed at the woman who was
causing this childish joy, and he saw a profound sadness. Never had
he seen Domini’s face look like this. It was always white, but now its
whiteness was like a whiteness of marble. She moved her head, turning to
feed one of the little gaping mouths, and he saw her eyes, tearless,
but sadder than if they had been full of tears. She was looking at these
children as a mother looks at her children who are fatherless. He did
not--how could he?--understand the look, but it went to his heart.
He stopped, watching. One of the children saw him, shrieked, pointed.
Domini glanced round. As she saw him she smiled, threw the last
sugar-plums and came towards him.
“Do you want me?” she said, coming up to him.
His lips trembled.
“Yes,” he said, “I want you.”
Something in his voice seemed to startle her, but she said nothing more,
only stood looking at him. The children, who had followed her, crowded
round them, touching their clothes curiously.
“Send them away,” he said.
She made the children go, pushing them gently, pointing to the village,
and showing the empty box to them. Reluctantly at last they went towards
the village, turning their heads to stare at her till they were a long
way off, then holding up their skirts and racing for the houses.
“Domini--Domini,” he said. “You can--you can play with
children--to-day.”
“I wanted to feel I could give a little happiness to-day,” she
answered--“even to-day.”
“To-day when--when to me--to me--you are giving----”
But before her steady gaze all the words he had meant to say, all the
words of furious protest, died on his lips.
“To me--to me--” he repeated.
Then he was silent.
“Boris,” she said, “I want to give you one thing, the thing that you
have lost. I want to give you back peace.”
“You never can.”
“I must try. Even if I cannot I shall know that I have tried.”
“You are giving me--you are giving me not peace, but a sword,” he said.
She understood that he had seen the two tents.
“Sometimes a sword can give peace.”
“The peace of death.”
“Boris--my dear one--there are many kinds of deaths. Try to trust me.
Leave me to act as I must act. Let me try to be guided--only let me
try.”
He did not say another word.
That night they slept apart for the first time since their marriage.
“Domini, where are you taking me? Where are we going?”
* * * * *
The camp was struck once more and they were riding through the desert.
Domini hesitated to answer his question. It had been put with a sort of
terror.
“I know nothing,” he continued. “I am in your hands like a child. It
cannot be always so. I must know, I must understand. What is our life to
be? What is our future? A man cannot--”
He paused. Then he said:
“I feel that you have come to some resolve. I feel it perpetually. It
is as if you were in light and I in darkness, you in knowledge and I in
ignorance. You--you must tell me. I have told you all now. You must tell
me.”
But she hesitated.
“Not now,” she answered. “Not yet.”
“We are to journey on day by day like this, and I am not to know where
we are going! I cannot, Domini--I will not.”
“Boris, I shall tell you.”
“When?”
“Will you trust me, Boris, completely? Can you?”
“How?”
“Boris, I have prayed so much for you that at last I feel that I can act
for you. Don’t think me presumptuous. If you could see into my heart you
would see that--indeed, I don’t think it would be possible to feel more
humble than I do in regard to you.”
“Humble--you, Domini! You can feel humble when you think of me, when you
are with me.”
“Yes. You have suffered so terribly. God has led you. I feel that He has
been--oh, I don’t know how to say it quite naturally, quite as I feel
it--that He has been more intent on you than on anyone I have ever
known. I feel that His meaning in regarding to you is intense, Boris, as
if He would not let you go.”
“He let me go when I left the monastery.”
“Does one never return?”
Again a sensation almost of terror assailed him. He felt as if he were
fighting in darkness something that he could not see.
“Return!” he said. “What do you mean?”
She saw the expression of almost angry fear in his face. It warned her
not to give the reins to her natural impulse, which was always towards a
great frankness.
“Boris, you fled from God, but do you not think it possible that you
could ever return to Him? Have you not taken the first step? Have you
not prayed?” His face changed, grew slightly calmer.
“You told me I could pray,” he answered, almost like a child. “Otherwise
I--I should not have dared to. I should have felt that I was insulting
God.”
“If you trusted me in such a thing, can you not trust me now?”
“But”--he said uneasily--“but this is different, a worldly matter, a
matter of daily life. I shall have to know.”
“Yes.”
“Then why should I not know now? At any moment I could ask Batouch.”
“Batouch only knows from day to day. I have a map of the desert. I got
it before we left Beni-Mora.”
Something--perhaps a very slight hesitation in her voice just before she
said the last words--startled him. He turned on his horse and looked at
her hard.
“Domini,” he said, “are we--we are not going back to Beni-Mora?”
“I will tell you to-night,” she replied in a low voice. “Let me tell you
tonight.”
He said no more, but he gazed at her for a long time as if striving
passionately to read her thoughts. But he could not. Her white face
was calm, and she rode looking straight before her, as one that looked
towards some distant goal to which all her soul was journeying with
her body. There was something mystical in her face, in that straight,
far-seeing glance, that surely pierced beyond the blue horizon line and
reached a faroff world. What world? He asked himself the question, but
no answer came, and he dropped his eyes. A new and horrible sadness came
to him, a new sensation of separation from Domini. She had set their
bodies apart, and he had yielded. Now, was she not setting something
else apart? For, in spite of all, in spite of his treacherous existence
with her, he had so deeply and entirely loved her that he had sometimes
felt, dared to feel, that in their passion in the desert their souls had
been fused together. His was black--he knew it--and hers was white. But
had not the fire and the depth of their love conquered all differences,
made even their souls one as their bodies had been one? And now was
she not silently, subtly, withdrawing her soul from his? A sensation of
acute despair swept over him, of utter impotence.
“Domini!” he said, “Domini!”
“Yes,” she answered.
And this time she withdrew her eyes from the blue distance and looked at
him.
“Domini, you must trust me.”
He was thinking of the two tents set the one apart from the other.
“Domini, I’ve borne something in silence. I haven’t spoken. I wanted
to speak. I tried--but I did not. I bore my punishment--you don’t know,
you’ll never know what I felt last--last night--when--I’ve borne that.
But there’s one thing I can’t bear. I’ve lived a lie with you. My love
for you overcame me. I fell. I have told you that I fell. Don’t--don’t
because of that--don’t take away your heart from me entirely.
Domini--Domini--don’t do that.”
She heard a sound of despair in his voice.
“Oh, Boris,” she said, “if you knew! There was only one moment when I
fancied my heart was leaving you. It passed almost before it came, and
now--”
“But,” he interrupted, “do you know--do you know that since--since I
spoke, since I told you, you’ve--you’ve never touched me?”
“Yes, I know it,” she replied quietly.
Something told him to be silent then. Something told him to wait till
the night came and the camp was pitched once more.
They rested at noon for several hours, as it was impossible to travel
in the heat of the day. The camp started an hour before they did. Only
Batouch remained behind to show them the way to Ain-la-Hammam, where
they would pass the following night. When Batouch brought the horses he
said:
“Does Madame know the meaning of Ain-la-Hammam?”
“No,” said Domini. “What is it?”
“Source des tourterelles,” replied Batouch. “I was there once with an
English traveller.”
“Source des tourterelles,” repeated Domini. “Is it beautiful, Batouch?
It sounds as if it ought to be beautiful.”
She scarcely knew why, but she had a longing that Ain-la-Hammam might be
tender, calm, a place to soothe the spirit, a place in which Androvsky
might be influenced to listen to what she had to tell him without
revolt, without despair. Once he had spoken about the influence of
place, about rising superior to it. But she believed in it, and she
waited, almost anxiously, for the reply of Batouch. As usual it was
enigmatic.
“Madame will see,” he answered. “Madame will see. But the
Englishman----”
“Yes?”
“The Englishman was ravished. ‘This,’ he said to me, ‘this, Batouch, is
a little Paradise!’ And there was no moon then. To-night there will be a
moon.”
“Paradise!” exclaimed Androvsky.
He sprang upon his horse and pulled up the reins. Domini said no more.
They had started late. It was night when they reached Ain-la-Hammam. As
they drew near Domini looked before her eagerly through the pale gloom
that hung over the sand. She saw no village, only a very small grove of
palms and near it the outline of a bordj. The place was set in a cup of
the Sahara. All around it rose low hummocks of sand. On two or three of
them were isolated clumps of palms. Here the eyes roamed over no vast
distances. There was little suggestion of space. She drew up her horse
on one of the hummocks and gazed down. She heard doves murmuring in
their soft voices among the trees. The tents were pitched near the
bordj.
“What does Madame think?” asked Batouch. “Does Madame agree with the
Englishman?”
“It is a strange little place,” she answered.
She listened to the voices of the doves. A dog barked by the bordj.
“It is almost like a hiding-place,” she added.
Androvsky said nothing, but he, too, was gazing intently at the trees
below them, he, too, was listening to the voices of the doves. After a
moment he looked at her.
“Domini,” he whispered. “Here--won’t you--won’t you let me touch your
hand again here?”
“Come, Boris,” she answered. “It is late.”
They rode down into Ain-la-Hammam.
The tents had all been pitched near together on the south of the bordj,
and separated by it from the tiny oasis. Opposite to them was a Cafe
Maure of the humblest kind, a hovel of baked earth and brushwood, with
earthen divans and a coffee niche. Before this was squatting a group
of five dirty desert men, the sole inhabitants of Ain-la-Hammam. Just
before dinner Domini gave an order to Batouch, and, while they were
dining, Androvsky noticed that their people were busy unpegging the two
sleeping-tents.
“What are they doing?” he said to Domini, uneasily. In his present
condition everything roused in him anxiety. In every unusual action he
discerned the beginning of some tragedy which might affect his life.
“I told Batouch to put our tents on the other side of the bordj,” she
answered.
“Yes. But why?”
“I thought that to-night it would be better if we were a little more
alone than we are here, just opposite to that Cafe Maure, and with the
servants. And on the other side there are the palms and the water. And
the doves were talking there as we rode in. When we have finished dinner
we can go and sit there and be quiet.”
“Together,” he said.
An eager light had come into his eyes. He leaned forward towards her
over the little table and stretched out his hand.
“Yes, together,” she said.
But she did not take his hand.
“Domini!” he said, still keeping his hand on the table, “Domini!”
An expression, that was like an expression of agony, flitted over her
face and died away, leaving it calm.
“Let us finish,” she said quietly. “Look, they have taken the tents! In
a moment we can go.”
The doves were silent. The night was very still in this nest of the
Sahara. Ouardi brought them coffee, and Batouch came to say that the
tents were ready.
“We shall want nothing more to-night, Batouch,” Domini said. “Don’t
disturb us.”
Batouch glanced towards the Cafe Maure. A red light gleamed through
its low doorway. One or two Arabs were moving within. Some of the camp
attendants had joined the squatting men without. A noise of busy voices
reached the tents.
“To-night, Madame,” Batouch said proudly, “I am going to tell stories
from the _Thousand and One Nights_. I am going to tell the story of the
young Prince of the Indies, and the story of Ganem, the Slave of Love.
It is not often that in Ain-la-Hammam a poet--”
“No, indeed. Go to them, Batouch. They must be impatient for you.”
Batouch smiled broadly.
“Madame begins to understand the Arabs,” he rejoined. “Madame will soon
be as the Arabs.”
“Go, Batouch. Look--they are longing for you.”
She pointed to the desert men, who were gesticulating and gazing towards
the tents.
“It is better so, Madame,” he answered. “They know that I am here only
for one night, and they are eager as the hungry jackal is eager for food
among the yellow dunes of the sand.”
He threw his burnous over his shoulder and moved away smiling, and
murmuring in a luscious voice the first words of Ganem, the Slave of
Love.
“Let us go now, Boris,” Domini said.
He got up at once from the table, and they walked together round the
bordj.
On its further side there was no sign of life. No traveller was resting
there that night, and the big door that led into the inner court was
closed and barred. The guardian had gone to join the Arabs at the Cafe
Maure. Between the shadow cast by the bordj and the shadow cast by
the palm trees stood the two tents on a patch of sand. The oasis was
enclosed in a low earth wall, along the top of which was a ragged edging
of brushwood. In this wall were several gaps. Through one, opposite to
the tents, was visible a shallow pool of still water by which tall reeds
were growing. They stood up like spears, absolutely motionless. A frog
was piping from some hidden place, giving forth a clear flute-like note
that suggested glass. It reminded Domini of her ride into the desert
at Beni-Mora to see the moon rise. On that night Androvsky had told
her that he was going away. That had been the night of his tremendous
struggle with himself. When he had spoken she had felt a sensation as if
everything that supported her in the atmosphere of life and of happiness
had foundered. And now--now she was going to speak to him--to tell
him--what was she going to tell him? How much could she, dared she, tell
him? She prayed silently to be given strength.
In the clear sky the young moon hung. Beneath it, to the left, was one
star like an attendant, the star of Venus. The faint light of the
moon fell upon the water of the pool. Unceasingly the frog uttered its
nocturne.
Domini stood for a moment looking at the water listening. Then she
glanced up at the moon and the solitary star. Androvsky stood by her.
“Shall we--let us sit on the wall, where the gap is,” she said.
“The water is beautiful, beautiful with that light on it, and the
palms--palms are always beautiful, especially at night. I shall never
love any other trees as I love palm trees.”
“Nor I,” he answered.
They sat down on the wall. At first they did not speak any more. The
stillness of the water, the stillness of reeds and palms, was against
speech. And the little flute-like note that came to them again and again
at regular intervals was like a magical measuring of the silence of the
night in the desert. At last Domini said, in a low voice:
“I heard that note on the night when I rode out of Beni-Mora to see the
moon rise in the desert. Boris, you remember that night?”
“Yes,” he answered.
He was gazing at the pool, with his face partly averted from her, one
hand on the wall, the other resting on his knee.
“You were brave that night, Boris,” she said.
“I--I wished to be--I tried to be. And if I had been--”
He stopped, then went on: “If I had been, Domini, really brave, if I
had done what I meant to do that night, what would our lives have been
to-day?”
“I don’t know. We mustn’t think of that to-night. We must think of the
future. Boris, there’s no life, no real life without bravery. No man or
woman is worthy of living who is not brave.”
He said nothing.
“Boris, let us--you and I--be worthy of living to-night--and in the
future.”
“Give me your hand then,” he answered. “Give it me, Domini.”
But she did not give it to him. Instead she went on, speaking a little
more rapidly:
“Boris, don’t rely too much on my strength. I am only a woman, and I
have to struggle. I have had to struggle more than perhaps you will
ever know. You--must not make--make things impossible for me. I am
trying--very hard--to--I’m--you must not touch me to-night, Boris.”
She drew a little farther away from him. A faint breath of air made the
leaves of the palm trees rustle slightly, made the reeds move for an
instant by the pool. He laid his hand again on the wall from which he
had lifted it. There was a pleading sound in her voice which made him
feel as if it were speaking close against his heart.
“I said I would tell you to-night where we are going.”
“Tell me now.”
“We are going back to Beni-Mora. We are not very far off from Beni-Mora
to-night--not very far.”
“We are going to Beni-Mora!” he repeated in a dull voice. “We are----”
He sat up on the wall, looking straight into her face.
“Why?” he said. His voice was sharp now, sharp with fear.
“Boris, do you want to be at peace, not with me, but with God? Do
you want to get rid of your burden of misery, which increases--I know
it--day by day?”
“How can I?” he said hopelessly.
“Isn’t expiation the only way? I think it is.”
“Expiation! How--how can--I can never expiate my sin.”
“There’s no sin that cannot be expiated. God isn’t merciless. Come back
with me to Beni-Mora. That little church--where you married me--come
back to it with me. You could not confess to the--to Father Beret. I
feel as if I knew why. Where you married me you will--you must--make
your confession.”
“To the priest who--to Father Roubier!”
There was fierce protest in his voice.
“It does not matter who is the priest who will receive your confession.
Only make it there--make it in the church at Beni-Mora where you married
me.”
“That was your purpose! That is where you are taking me! I can’t go, I
won’t! Domini, think what you are doing! You are asking too much--”
“I feel that God is asking that of you. Don’t refuse Him.”
“I cannot go--at Beni-Mora where we--where everything will remind us--”
“Ah, don’t you think I shall feel it too? Don’t you think I shall
suffer?”
He felt horribly ashamed when she said that, bowed down with an
overwhelming weight of shame.
“But our lives”--he stammered--“but--if I go--afterwards--if I make my
confession--afterwards--afterwards?”
“Isn’t it enough to think of that one thing? Isn’t it better to put
everything else, every other thought, away? It seems so clear to me that
we should go to Beni-Mora. I feel as if I had been told--as a child is
told to do something by its father.”
She looked up into the clear sky.
“I am sure I have been told,” she added. “I know I have.”
There was a long silence between them. Androvsky felt that he did not
dare to break it. Something in Domini’s face and voice cast out from him
the instinct of revolt, of protest. He began to feel exhausted, without
power, like a sick man who is being carried by bearers in a litter, and
who looks at the landscape through which he is passing with listless
eyes, and who scarcely has the force to care whither he is being borne.
“Domini,” he said at last, and his voice sounded very tired, “if you
say I must go to Beni-Mora I will go. I have done you a great wrong
and--and--”
“Don’t think of me any more,” she said. “Think--think as I
do--of--of----
“What am I? I have loved you, I shall always love you, but I am as you
are, here for a little while, elsewhere for all eternity. You told
him--that man in the monastery--that we are shadows set in a world of
shadows.”
“That was a lie,” he interrupted, and the weariness had gone out of his
voice. “When I said that I had never loved, I had never loved you.”
“Or was it a half-truth? Aren’t we, perhaps, shadow now in
comparison--comparison to what we shall be? Isn’t this world, even
this--this desert, this pool with the light on it, this silence of the
night around us--isn’t all this a shadow in comparison to the world
where we are going, you and I? Boris, I think if we are brave now we
shall be together in that world. But if we are cowards now, I think, I
am sure, that in that world--the real world--we shall be separated for
ever. You and I, whatever we may be, whatever we may have done, at least
are one thing--we are believers. We don’t think this is all. If we did
it would be different. But we can’t change the truth that is in our
souls, and as we can’t change it we must live by it, we must act by it.
We can’t do anything else. I can’t--and you? Don’t you feel, don’t you
know, that you can’t?”
“To-night,” he said, “I feel that I know nothing--nothing except that I
am suffering.”
His voice broke on the last words. Tears were shining in his eyes. After
a long silence he said:
“Domini, take me where you will. If it is to Beni-Mora I will go.
But--but--afterwards?”
“Afterwards----” she said.
Then she stopped.
The little note of the frog sounded again and again by the still water
among the reeds. The moon was higher in the sky. “Don’t let us think
of afterwards, Boris,” she said at length. “That song we have heard
together, that song we love--‘No one but God and I knows what is in
my heart.’ I hear it now so often, always almost. It seems to gather
meaning, it seems to--God knows what is in your heart and mine. He will
take care of the--afterwards. Perhaps in our hearts already He has put a
secret knowledge of the end.”
“Has He--has He put it--that knowledge--into yours?”
“Hush!” she said.
They spoke no more that night.
CHAPTER XXIX
The caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.
Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the mules,
were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in the direction
of the mountains, and the dark shadow which indicated the oasis of
Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them. Domini and Androvsky were going to be
alone on this last stage of their desert journey. They had mounted their
horses before the great door of the bordj, said goodbye to the Sheikh of
Arba, scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to watch them
go, and cast one last look behind them.
In that mutual, instinctive look back they were both bidding a silent
farewell to the desert, that had sheltered their passion, surely taken
part in the joy of their love, watched the sorrow and the terror grow
in it to the climax at Amara, and was now whispering to them a faint and
mysterious farewell.
To Domini the desert had always been as a great and significant
personality, a personality that had called her persistently to come to
it. Now, as she turned on her horse, she felt as if it were calling her
no longer, as if its mission to her were accomplished, as if its voice
had sunk into a deep and breathless silence. She wondered if Androvsky
felt this too, but she did not ask him. His face was pale and severe.
His eyes stared into the distance. His hands lay on his horse’s neck
like tired things with no more power to grip and hold. His lips were
slightly parted, and she heard the sound of his breath coming and going
like the breath of a man who is struggling. This sound warned her not to
try his strength or hers.
“Come, Boris,” she said, and her voice held none of the passionate
regret that was in her heart, “we mustn’t linger, or it will be night
before we reach Beni-Mora.”
“Let it be night,” he said. “Dark night!”
The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which stood the
bordj.
“Dark--dark night!” he said again.
She said nothing. They rode into the plain. When they were there he
said:
“Domini, do you understand--do you realise?”
“What, Boris?” she asked quietly.
“All that we are leaving to-day?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Are we--are we leaving it for ever?”
“We must not think of that.”
“How can we help it? What else can we think of? Can one govern the
mind?”
“Surely, if we can govern the heart.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes I wonder----”
He looked at her. Something in her face made it impossible for him to
go on, to say what he had been going to say. But she understood the
unfinished sentence.
“If you can wonder, Boris,” she said, “you don’t know me, you don’t know
me at all!”
“Domini,” he said, “I don’t wonder. But sometimes I understand your
strength, and sometimes it seems to me scarcely human, scarcely the
strength of a woman.”
She lifted her whip and pointed to the dark shadow far away.
“I can just see the tower,” she said. “Can’t you?”
“I will not look,” he said. “I cannot. If you can, you are stronger than
I. When I remember that it was on that tower you first spoke to me--oh,
Domini, if we could only go back! It is in our power. We have only to
draw a rein and--and--”
“I look at the tower,” she said, “as once I looked at the desert. It
calls us, the shadow of the palm trees calls us, as once the desert
did.”
“But the voice--what a different voice! Can you listen to it?”
“I have been listening to it ever since we left Amara. Yes, it is a
different voice, but we must obey it as we obeyed the voice of the
desert. Don’t you feel that?”
“If I do it is because you tell me to feel it; you tell me that I must
feel it.”
His words seemed to hurt her. An expression of pain came into her face.
“Boris,” she said, “don’t make me regret too terribly that I ever came
into your life. When you speak like that I feel almost as if you were
putting me in the place of--of--I feel as if you were depending upon me
for everything that you are doing, as if you were letting your own will
fall asleep. The desert brings dreams. I know that. But we, you and I,
we must not dream any more.”
“A dream, you call it--the life we have lived together, our desert
life?”
“Boris, I only mean that we must live strongly now, act strongly now,
that we must be brave. I have always felt that there was strength in
you.”
“Strength!” he said bitterly.
“Yes. Otherwise I could never have loved you. Don’t ever prove to me
that I was utterly wrong. I can bear a great deal. But that--I don’t
feel as if I could bear that.”
After a moment he answered:
“I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me.”
And he lifted his eyes and fixed them upon the tower with a sort of
stern intentness, as a man looks at something cruel, terrible.
She saw him do this.
“Let us ride quicker,” she said. “To-night we must be in Beni-Mora.”
He said nothing, but he touched his horse with his heel. His eyes were
always fixed upon the tower, as if they feared to look at the desert
any more. She understood that when he had said “I will try to give you
nothing more to bear for me,” he had not spoken idly. He had waked up
from the egoism of his despair. He had been able to see more clearly
into her heart, to feel more rightly what she was feeling than he had
before. As she watched him watching the tower, she had a sensation that
a bond, a new bond between them, was chaining them together in a new
way. Was it not a bond that would be strong and lasting, that the
future, whatever it held, would not be able to break? Ties, sacred ties,
that had bound them together might, must, be snapped asunder. And the
end was not yet. She saw, as she gazed at the darkness of the palms of
Beni-Mora, a greater darkness approaching, deeper than any darkness of
palms, than any darkness of night. But now she saw also a ray of
light in the gloom, the light of the dawning strength, the dawning
unselfishness in Androvsky. And she resolved to fix her eyes upon it as
he fixed his eyes upon the tower.
Just after sunset they rode into Beni-Mora in advance of the camp, which
they had passed upon their way. To the right were the trees of Count
Anteoni’s garden. Domini felt them, but she did not look towards them.
Nor did Androvsky. They kept their eyes fixed upon the distance of
the white road. Only when they reached the great hotel, now closed and
deserted, did she glance away. She could not pass the tower without
seeing it. But she saw it through a mist of tears, and her hands
trembled upon the reins they held. For a moment she felt that she must
break down, that she had no more strength left in her. But they came to
the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross towards the desert
like a weapon. And she looked at it and saw the Christ.
“Boris,” she whispered, “there is the Christ. Let us think only of that
tonight.”
She saw him look at it steadily.
“You remember,” she said, at the bottom of the avenue of cypresses--“at
El-Largani--_Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis_?”
“Yes, Domini.”
“We can be obedient too. Let us be obedient too.”
When she said that, and looked at him, Androvsky felt as if he were on
his knees before her, as he was upon his knees in the garden when he
could not go away. But he felt, too, that then, though he had loved her,
he had not known how to love her, how to love anyone. She had taught him
now. The lesson sank into his heart like a sword and like balm. It was
as if he were slain and healed by the same stroke.
That night, as Domini lay in the lonely room in the hotel, with the
French windows open to the verandah, she heard the church clock chime
the hour and the distant sound of the African hautboy in the street of
the dancers, she heard again the two voices. The hautboy was barbarous
and provocative, but she thought that it was no more shrill with a
persistent triumph. Presently the church bell chimed again.
Was it the bell of the church of Beni-Mora, or the bell of the chapel
of El-Largani? Or was it not rather the voice of the great religion to
which she belonged, to which Androvsky was returning?
When it ceased she whispered to herself, “_Factus obediens usque ad
mortem Crucis_.” And with these words upon her lips towards dawn
she fell asleep. They had dined upstairs in the little room that had
formerly been Domini’s salon, and had not seen Father Roubier, who
always came to the hotel to take his evening meal. In the morning, after
they had breakfasted, Androvsky said:
“Domini, I will go. I will go now.”
He got up and stood by her, looking down at her. In his face there was a
sort of sternness, a set expression.
“To Father Roubier, Boris?” she said.
“Yes. Before I go won’t you--won’t you give me your hand?”
She understood all the agony of spirit he was enduring, all the shame
against which he was fighting. She longed to spring up, to take him in
her arms, to comfort him as only the woman he loves and who loves him
can comfort a man, without words, by the pressure of her arms, the
pressure of her lips, the beating of her heart against his heart. She
longed to do this so ardently that she moved restlessly, looking up at
him with a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before, not
even when they watched the fire dying down at Arba. But she did not lift
her hand to his.
“Boris,” she said, “go. God will be with you.”
After a moment she added:
“And all my heart.”
He stood, as if waiting, a long time. She had ceased from moving and
had withdrawn her eyes from his. In his soul a voice was saying, “If she
does not touch you now she will never touch you again.” And he waited.
He could not help waiting.
“Boris,” she whispered, “good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” he said.
“Come to me--afterwards. Come to me in the garden. I shall be there
where we--I shall be there waiting for you.”
He went out without another word.
When he was gone she went on to the verandah quickly and looked over the
parapet. She saw him come out from beneath the arcade and walk slowly
across the road to the little gate of the enclosure before the house of
the priest. As he lifted his hands to open the gate there was the sound
of a bark, and she saw Bous-Bous run out with a manner of stern
inquiry, which quickly changed to joyful welcome as he recognised an old
acquaintance. Androvsky bent down, took up the little dog in his arms,
and, holding him, walked to the house door. In a moment it was opened
and he went in. Then Domini set out towards the garden, avoiding the
village street, and taking a byway which skirted the desert. She walked
quickly. She longed to be within the shadows of the garden behind the
white wall. She did not feel much, think much, as she walked. Without
self-consciously knowing it she was holding all her nature, the whole of
herself, fiercely in check. She did not look about her, did not see the
sunlit reaches of the desert, or the walls of the houses of Beni-Mora,
or the palm trees. Only when she had passed the hotel and the negro
village and turned to the left, to the track at the edge of which the
villa of Count Anteoni stood, did she lift her eyes from the ground.
They rested on the white arcade framing the fierce blue of the cloudless
sky. She stopped short. Her nature seemed to escape from the leash by
which she had held it in with a rush, to leap forward, to be in the
garden and in the past, in the past with its passion and its fiery
hopes, its magnificent looking forward, its holy desires of joy that
would crown her woman’s life, of love that would teach her all
the depth, and the height, and the force and the submission of her
womanhood. And then, from that past, it strove on into the present. The
shock was as the shock of battle. There were noises in her ears, voices
clamouring in her heart. All her pulses throbbed like hammers, and then
suddenly she felt as weak as a little sick child, and as if she must lie
down there on the dust of the white road in the sunshine, lie down and
die at the edge of the desert that had treated her cruelly, that had
slain the hopes it had given to her and brought into her heart this
terrible despair.
For now she knew a moment of utter despair, in which all things seemed
to dissolve into atoms and sink down out of her sight. She stood
quivering in blackness. She stood absolutely alone, more absolutely
alone than any woman had ever been, than any human being had ever been.
She seemed presently, as the blackness faded into something pale, like a
ghastly twilight, to see herself--her wraith, as it were--standing in a
vast landscape, vast as the desert, companionless, lost, forgotten, out
of mind, watching for something that would never come, listening for
some voice that was hushed in eternal silence.
That was to be her life, she thought--could she face it? Could she
endure it? And everything within her said to her that she could not.
And then, just then, when she felt that she must sink down and give
up the battle of life, she seemed to see by her side a shape, a little
shape like a child. And it lifted up a hand to her hand.
And she knew that the vast landscape was God’s garden, the Garden of
Allah, and that no day, no night could ever pass without God walking in
it.
Hearing a knock upon the great gate of the garden Smain uncurled himself
on his mat within the tent, rose lazily to his feet, and, without a
rose, strolled languidly to open to the visitor. Domini stood without.
When he saw her he smiled quietly, with no surprise.
“Madame has returned?”
Domini smiled at him, but her lips were trembling, and she said nothing.
Smain observed her with a dawning of curiosity.
“Madame is changed,” he said at length. “Madame looks tired. The sun is
hot in the desert now. It is better here in the garden.”
With an effort she controlled herself.
“Yes, Smain,” she answered, “it is better here. But I can not stay here
long.”
“You are going away?”
“Yes, I am going away.”
She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and added:
“And now I want to walk in the garden alone.”
He waved his hand towards the trees.
“It is all for Madame. Monsieur the Count has always said so. But
Monsieur?”
“He is in Beni-Mora. He is coming presently to fetch me.”
Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great sweep of sand
towards the trees and was taken by their darkness. She heard again the
liquid bubbling of the hidden waterfall, and was again companioned by
the mystery of this desert Paradise, but it no longer whispered to
her of peace for her. It murmured only its own personal peace and
accentuated her own personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it
still was, but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the
full terror of Nature’s equanimity environing the fierce and tortured
lives of men.
As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the
winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the
hidden home of the Geni of the garden. Yet she remembered acutely all
her first feelings there. Not one was forgotten. They returned to her
like spectres stealing across the sand. They lurked like spectres among
the dense masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes,
not to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more
from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the
sun. But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased. At
last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw
pine needles strewed about her feet. Then she stood still, instinctively
listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and
her own despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she
wanted, that she needed it--the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his
amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent. Had he fallen out of an
old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was
he dead? For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and
his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she
felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell.
But the silence lasted and she went on and came to the _fumoir_. She
went into it at once and sat down. She was going to wait for Androvsky
here.
Her mind was straying curiously to-day. Suddenly she found herself
thinking of the fanatical religious performance she had seen with Hadj
on the night when she had ridden out to watch the moon rise. She saw in
imagination the bowing bodies, the foaming mouths, the glassy eyes
of the young priests of the Sahara. She saw the spikes behind their
eyeballs, the struggling scorpions descending into their throats, the
flaming coals under their arm-pits, the nails driven into their heads.
She heard them growling as they saw the glass, like hungry beasts at the
sight of meat. And all this was to them religion. This madness was
their conception of worship. A voice seemed to whisper to her: “And your
madness?”
It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the cemetery of
El-Largani, “Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world
which God made for men. Why do you reject it?”
For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations
of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared
the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And
a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her,
the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to
commit some act which they feel would be contrary to God’s will if there
were a God. It was a thrill of almost insolent human emancipation. The
soul cried out: “I have no master. When I thought I had a master I was
mad. Now I am sane.”
But it passed almost as it came, like a false thing slinking from the
sunlight, and Domini bowed her head in the obscurity of Count Anteoni’s
thinking-place and returned to her true self. That moment had been like
the moment upon the tower when she saw below her the Jewess dancing upon
the roof for the soldiers, a black speck settling for an instant upon
whiteness, then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she
would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a human
being, that there would always be in her blood something that was
self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already in Paradise? She sat
and prayed for strength in the battle of life, that could never be
anything else but a battle.
At last something within her told her to look up, to look out through
the window-space into the garden. She had not heard a step, but she
knew that Androvsky was approaching, and, as she looked up, she prepared
herself for a sight that would be terrible. She remembered his face when
he came to bid her good-bye in the garden, and she feared to see his
face now. But she schooled herself to be strong, for herself and for
him.
He was near her on the path coming towards her. As she saw him she
uttered a little cry and stood up. An immense surprise came to her,
followed in a moment by an immense joy--the greatest joy, she thought,
that she had ever experienced. For she looked on a face in which she
saw for the first time a pale dawning of peace. There was sadness in it,
there was awe, but there was a light of calm, such as sometimes settles
upon the faces of men who have died quietly without agony or fear. And
she felt fully, as she saw it, the rapture of having refused cowardice
and grasped the hand of bravery. Directly afterwards there came to her a
sensation of wonder that at this moment of their lives she and Androvsky
should be capable of a feeling of joy, of peace. When the wonder passed
it was as if she had seen God and knew for ever the meaning of His
divine compensations.
Androvsky came to the doorway of the _fumoir_ without looking up,
stood still there--just where Count Anteoni had stood during his first
interview with Domini--and said:
“Domini, I have been to the priest. I have made my confession.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Boris!”
He came into the _fumoir_ and sat down near her, but not close to her,
on one of the divans. Now the sad look in his face had deepened and the
peace seemed to be fading. She had thought of the dawn--that pale light
which is growing into day. Now she thought of the twilight which is
fading into night. And the terrible knowledge struck her, “I am the
troubler of his peace. Without me only could he ever regain fully the
peace which he has lost.”
“Domini,” he said, looking up at her, “you know the rest. You meant it
to be as it will be when we left Amara.”
“Was there any other way? Was there any other possible life for us--for
you--for me?”
“For you!” he said, and there was a sound almost of despair in his
voice. “But what is to be your life? I have never protected you--you
have protected me. I have never been strong for you--you have been
strong for me. But to leave you--all alone, Domini, must I do that? Must
I think of you out in the world alone?”
For a moment she was tempted to break her silence, to tell him the
truth, that she would perhaps not be alone, that another life, sprung
from his and hers, was coming to be with her, was coming to share the
great loneliness that lay before her. But she resisted the temptation
and only said:
“Do not think of me, Boris.”
“You tell me not to think of you!” he said with an almost fierce wonder.
“Do you--do you wish me not to think of you?”
“What I wish--that is so little, but--no, Boris, I can’t say--I don’t
think I could ever truly say that I wish you to think no more of me.
After all, one has a heart, and I think if it’s worth anything it must
be often a rebellious heart. I know mine is rebellious. But if you don’t
think too much of me--when you are there--”
She paused, and they looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then
she continued:
“Surely it will be easier for you, happier for you.”
Androvsky clenched his right hand on the divan and turned round till he
was facing her full. His eyes blazed.
“Domini,” he said, “you are truthful. I’ll be truthful to you. Till
the end of my life I’ll think of you--every day, every hour. If it were
mortal sin to think of you I would commit it--yes, Domini, deliberately,
I would commit it. But--God doesn’t ask so much of us; no, God doesn’t.
I’ve made my confession. I know what I must do. I’ll do it. You are
right--you are always right--you are guided, I know that. But I will
think of you. And I’ll tell you something--don’t shirk from it, because
it’s truth, the truth of my soul, and you love truth. Domini--”
Suddenly he got up from the divan and stood before her, looking down at
her steadily.
“Domini, I can’t regret that I have seen you, that we have been
together, that we have loved each other, that we do love each other for
ever. I can’t regret it; I can’t even try or wish to. I can’t regret
that I have learned from you the meaning of life. I know that God has
punished me for what I have done. In my love for you--till I told
you the truth, that other truth--I never had a moment of peace--of
exultation, yes, of passionate exultation; but never, never a moment of
peace. For always, even in the most beautiful moments, there has been
agony for me. For always I have known that I was sinning against God and
you, against myself, my eternal vows. And yet now I tell you, Domini,
as I have told God since I have been able to pray again, that I am glad,
thankful, that I have loved you, been loved by you. Is it wicked? I
don’t know. I can scarcely even care, because it’s true. And how can I
deny the truth, strive against truth? I am as I am, and I am that. God
has made me that. God will forgive me for being as I am. I’m not afraid.
I believe--I dare to believe--that He wishes me to think of you always
till the end of my life. I dare to believe that He would almost hate me
if I could ever cease from loving you. That’s my other confession--my
confession to you. I was born, perhaps, to be a monk. But I was born,
too, that I might love you and know your love, your beauty, your
tenderness, your divinity. If I had not known you, if I had died a monk,
a good monk who had never denied his vows, I should have died--I feel
it, Domini--in a great, a terrible ignorance. I should have known the
goodness of God, but I should never have known part, a beautiful part,
of His goodness. For I should never have known the goodness that He has
put into you. He has taught me through you. He has tortured me through
you; yes, but through you, too, He has made me understand Him. When I
was in the monastery, when I was at peace, when I lost myself in prayer,
when I was absolutely pure, absolutely--so I thought--the child of
God, I never really knew God. Now, Domini, now I know Him. In the worst
moments of the new agony that I must meet at least I shall always have
that help. I shall always feel that I know what God is. I shall always,
when I think of you, when I remember you, be able to say, ‘God is
love.’”
He was silent, but his face still spoke to her, his eyes read her eyes.
And in that moment at last they understood each other fully and for
ever. “It was written”--that was Domini’s thought--“it was written by
God.” Far away the church bell chimed.
“Boris,” Domini said quietly, “we must go to-day. We must leave
Beni-Mora. You know that?”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
He looked out into the garden. The almost fierce resolution, that had
something in it of triumph, faded from him.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the end, the real end, for--there, it will all
be different--it will be terrible.”
“Let us sit here for a little while together,” Domini said, “and be
quiet. Is it like the garden of El-Largani, Boris?”
“No. But when I first came here, when I saw the white walls, the great
door, when I saw the poor Arabs gathered there to receive alms, it made
me feel almost as if I were at El-Largani. That was why----” he paused.
“I understand, Boris, I understand everything now.”
And then they were silent. Such a silence as theirs was then could
never be interpreted to others. In it the sorrows, the aspirations, the
struggles, the triumphs, the torturing regrets, the brave determinations
of poor, great, feeble, noble humanity were enclosed as in a casket--a
casket which contains many kinds of jewels, but surely none that are not
precious.
And the garden listened, and beyond the garden the desert listened--that
other garden of Allah. And in this garden was not Allah, too, listening
to this silence of his children, this last mutual silence of theirs in
the garden where they had wandered, where they had loved, where they had
learned a great lesson and drawn near to a great victory?
They might have sat thus for hours; they had lost all count of time. But
presently, in the distance among the trees, there rose a light, frail
sound that struck into both their hearts like a thin weapon. It was the
flute of Larbi, and it reminded them--of what did it not remind them?
All their passionate love of the body, all their lawlessness, all the
joy of liberty and of life, of the barbaric life that is liberty, all
their wandering in the great spaces of the sun, were set before them in
Larbi’s fluttering tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call
of danger, the call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to
abandon the summons of the spirit. Domini got up swiftly.
“Come, Boris,” she said, without looking at him.
He obeyed her and rose to his feet.
“Let us go to the wall,” she said, “and look out once more on the
desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps--perhaps we shall hear the call
to prayer.”
They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The
sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence. Soon they
saw before them the great spaces of the Sahara flooded with the blinding
glory of the summer sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the
shelter of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs were
visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over, naked, to the
dominion of the sun. While they stood there the nasal voice of the
Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque of Beni-Mora, uttered its
fourfold cry, and died away.
“Boris,” Domini said, “that is for the Arabs, but for us, too, for we
belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even more than they.”
“Yes, Domini.”
She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood there with her and
repeated the words of the angel to the Prophet, and she murmured them
now:
“O thou that art covered, arise, and magnify thy Lord, and purify thy
clothes, and depart from uncleanness.”
Then, standing side by side, they prayed, looking at the desert.
CHAPTER XXX
In the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.
Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she feared it would
be impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid Batouch in the hotel and
thanked him for all his services, she said:
“We’ll say adieu here, Batouch.”
The poet displayed a large surprise.
“But I will accompany Madame to the station. I will--”
“It is not necessary.”
Batouch looked offended but obstinate. His ample person became almost
rigid.
“If I am not at the station, Madame, what will Hadj think, and Ali, and
Ouardi, and--”
“They will be there?”
“Of course, Madame. Where else should they be? Does Madame wish to leave
us like a thief in the night, or like--”
“No, no, Batouch. I am very grateful to you all, but especially to you.”
Batouch began to smile.
“Madame has entered into our hearts as no other stranger has ever done,”
he remarked. “Madame understands the Arabs. We shall all come to say _au
revoir_ and to wish Madame and Monsieur a happy journey.”
For the moment the irony of her situation struck Domini so forcibly that
she could say nothing. She only looked at Batouch in silence.
“What is it? But I know. Madame is sad at leaving the desert, at leaving
Beni-Mora.”
“Yes, Batouch. I am sad at leaving Beni-Mora.”
“But Madame will return?”
“Who knows?”
“I know. The desert has a spell. He who has once seen the desert must
see it again. The desert calls and its voice is always heard. Madame
will hear it when she is far away, and some day she will feel, ‘I
must come back to the land of the sun and to the beautiful land of
forgetfulness.’”
“I shall see you at the station, Batouch,” Domini said quickly.
“Good-bye till then.”
The train for Tunis started at sundown, in order that the travellers
might avoid the intense heat of the day. All the afternoon they kept
within doors. The Arabs were sleeping in dark rooms. The gardens were
deserted. Domini could not sleep. She sat near the French window that
opened on to the verandah and said a silent good-bye to life. For that
was what she felt--that life was leaving her, life with its intensity,
its fierce meaning. She had come out of a sort of death to find life in
Beni-Mora, and now she felt that she was going back again to something
that would be like death. After her strife there came a numbness of the
spirit, a heavy dullness. Time passed and she sat there without moving.
Sometimes she looked at the trunks lying on the floor ready for the
journey, at the labels on which was written “Tunis _via_ Constantine.”
And then she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel in the
train after her long travelling in the desert, and what it would be like
to be in a city. But she could not. The heat was intense. Perhaps it
affected her mind through her body. Faintly, far down in her mind and
heart, she knew that she was wishing, even longing, to realise all
that these last hours in Beni-Mora meant, to gather up in them all
the threads of her life and her sensations there, to survey, as from a
height, the panorama of the change that had come to her in Africa. But
she was frustrated.
The hours fled, and she remained cold, listless. Often she was hardly
thinking at all. When the Arab servant came in to tell her that it
was time to start for the station she got up slowly and looked at him
vaguely.
“Time to go already?” she asked.
“Yes, Madame. I have told Monsieur.”
“Very well.”
At this moment Androvsky came into the room.
“The carriage is waiting,” he said.
She felt almost as if a stranger was speaking to her.
“I am ready,” she said.
And without looking round the room she went downstairs and got into the
carriage.
They drove to the station without speaking. She had not seen Father
Roubier. Androvsky took the tickets. When they came out upon the
platform they found there a small crowd of Arab friends, with Batouch
in command. Among them were the servants who had accompanied them upon
their desert journey, and Hadj. He came forward smiling to shake hands.
When she saw him Domini remembered Irena, and, forgetting that it is not
etiquette to inquire after an Arab’s womenfolk, she said:
“Ah, Hadj, and are you happy now? How is Irena?”
Hadj’s face fell, and he showed his pointed teeth in a snarl. For a
moment he hesitated, looking round at the other Arabs. Then he said:
“I am always happy, Madame.”
Domini saw that she had made a mistake. She took out her purse and gave
him five francs.
“A parting present,” she said.
Hadj shook his head with recovered cheerfulness, tucked in his chin
and laughed. Domini turned away, shook hands with all her dark
acquaintances, and climbed up into the train, followed by Androvsky.
Batouch sprang upon the step as the porter shut the door.
“Madame!” he exclaimed.
“What is it, Batouch?”
“To-day you have put Hadj to shame.”
He smiled broadly.
“I? How? What have I done?”
“Irena is dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert beyond Amara.”
“Irena! But--”
“She could not live shut up in a room. She could not wear the veil for
Hadj.”
“But then--?”
“She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a few francs one
can--”
The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her hand, seized
Androvsky’s, sprang back to the platform.
“Good-bye, Batouch! Good-bye, Ouardi! Good-bye, Smain!”
The train moved on. As it reached the end of the platform Domini saw an
emaciated figure standing there alone, a thin face with glittering eyes
turned towards her with a glaring scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. He
smiled at her, and his smile contracted the wound upon his face, making
it look wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down on
the seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified
Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora’s farewell to her and to
Androvsky.
And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert.
She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena’s attack upon Hadj.
That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at an end? Yet
Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still
played the little tune that was as the _leit motif_ of the eternal
renewal of life. And within herself she carried God’s mystery of
renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was
to help to carry forward the banner of life.
She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she was
leaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch the
pageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyes
and remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now were
journeying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards it
together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the evening
came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still she
kept her eyes closed. Only when the desert was finally left behind,
divided from them by the great wall of rock, did she look up and speak
to Androvsky.
“We met here, Boris,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, “at the gate of the desert. I shall never be here
again.”
Soon the night fell around them.
* * * * *
In the evening of the following day they reached Tunis, and drove to the
Hotel d’Orient, where they had written to engage rooms for one night.
They had expected that the city would be almost deserted by its European
inhabitants now the summer had set in, but when they drove up to the
door of the hotel the proprietor came out to inform them that, owing
to the arrival of a ship full of American tourists who, personally
conducted, were “viewing” Tunis after an excursion to the East and
to the Holy Land, he had been unable to keep for them a private
sitting-room. With many apologies he explained that all the
sitting-rooms in the house had been turned into bedrooms, but only for
one night. On the morrow the personally-conducted ones would depart and
Madame and Monsieur could have a charming salon. They listened silently
to his explanations and apologies, standing in the narrow entrance
hall, which was blocked up with piles of luggage. “Tomorrow,” he kept on
repeating, “to-morrow” all would be different.
Domini glanced at Androvsky, who stood with his head bent down, looking
on the ground.
“Shall we try another hotel?” she asked.
“If you wish,” he answered in a low voice.
“It would be useless, Madame,” said the proprietor. “All the hotels are
full. In the others you will not find even a bedroom.”
“Perhaps we had better stay here,” she said to Androvsky.
Her voice, too, was low and tired. In her heart something seemed to say,
“Do not strive any more. In the garden it was finished. Already you are
face to face with the end.”
When she was alone in her small bedroom, which was full of the noises
of the street, and had washed and put on another dress, she began to
realise how much she had secretly been counting on one more evening
alone with Androvsky. She had imagined herself dining with him in their
sitting-room unwatched, sitting together afterwards, for an hour or two,
in silence perhaps, but at least alone. She had imagined a last solitude
with him with the darkness of the African night around them. She had
counted upon that. She realised it now. Her whole heart and soul had
been asking for that, believing that at least that would be granted to
her. But it was not to be. She must go down with him into a crowd of
American tourists, must--her heart sickened. It seemed to her for a
moment that if only she could have this one more evening quietly with
the man she loved she could brace herself to bear anything afterwards,
but that if she could not have it she must break down. She felt
desperate.
A gong sounded below. She did not move, though she heard it, knew what
it meant. After a few minutes there was a tap at the door.
“What is it?” she said.
“Dinner is ready, Madame,” said a voice in English with a strong foreign
accent.
Domini went to the door and opened it.
“Does Monsieur know?”
“Monsieur is already in the hall waiting for Madame.”
She went down and found Androvsky.
They dined at a small table in a room fiercely lit up with electric
light and restless with revolving fans. Close to them, at an immense
table decorated with flowers, dined the American tourists. The women
wore hats with large hanging veils. The men were in travelling suits.
They looked sunburnt and gay, and talked and laughed with an intense
vivacity. Afterwards they were going in a body to see the dances of the
Almees. Androvsky shot one glance at them as he came in, then looked
away quickly. The lines near his mouth deepened. For a moment he
shut his eyes. Domini did not speak to him, did not attempt to talk.
Enveloped by the nasal uproar of the gay tourists they ate in silence.
When the short meal was over they got up and went out into the hall. The
public drawing-room opened out of it on the left. They looked into it
and saw red plush settees, a large centre table covered with a rummage
of newspapers, a Jew with a bald head writing a letter, and two old
German ladies with caps drinking coffee and knitting stockings.
“The desert!” Androvsky whispered.
Suddenly he drew away from the door and walked out into the street.
Lines of carriages stood there waiting to be hired. He beckoned to one,
a victoria with a pair of small Arab horses. When it was in front of the
hotel he said to Domini:
“Will you get in, Domini?”
She obeyed. Androvsky said to the mettse driver:
“Drive to the Belvedere. Drive round the park till I tell you to
return.”
The man whipped his horses, and they rattled down the broad street, past
the brilliantly-lighted cafés, the Cercle Militaire, the palace of the
Resident, where Zouaves were standing, turned to the left and were soon
out on a road where a tram line stretched between villas, waste ground
and flat fields. In front of them rose a hill with a darkness of trees
scattered over it. They reached it, and began to mount it slowly. The
lights of the city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawns
dotted with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to her
in the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they mounted, and
presently reached the top of the hill.
“Stop!” said Androvsky to the driver.
He drew up his horses.
“Wait for us here.”
Androvsky got out.
“Shall we walk a little way?” he said to Domini.
“Yes--yes.”
She got out too, and they walked slowly along the deserted road. Below
them she saw the lights of ships gliding upon the lakes, the bright
eyes of a lighthouse, the distant lamps of scattered villages along the
shores, and, very far off, a yellow gleam that dominated the sea beyond
the lakes and seemed to watch patiently all those who came and went, the
pilgrims to and from Africa. That gleam shone in Carthage.
From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a savour of
freshness, of cool and delicate life.
They walked for some time without speaking, then Domini said:
“From the cemetery of El-Largani you looked out over this, didn’t you,
Boris?”
“Yes, Domini,” he answered. “It was then that the voice spoke to me.”
“It will never speak again. God will not let it speak again.”
“How can you know that?”
“We are tried in the fire, Boris, but we are not burnt to death.”
She said it for herself, to reassure herself, to give a little comfort
to her own soul.
“To-night I feel as if it were not so,” he answered. “When we came to
the hotel it seemed--I thought that I could not go on.”
“And now?”
“Now I do not know anything except that this is my last night with you.
And, Domini, that seems to me to be absolutely incredible although I
know it. I cannot imagine any future away from you, any life in which
I do not see you. I feel as if in parting from you I am parting from
myself, as if the thing left would be no more a man, but only a broken
husk. Can I pray without you, love God without you?”
“Best without me.”
“But can I live without you, Domini? Can I wake day after day to the
sunshine, and know that I shall never see you again, and go on living?
Can I do that? I don’t feel as if it could be. Perhaps, when I have done
my penance, God will have mercy.”
“How, Boris?”
“Perhaps He will let me die.”
“Let us fix all the thoughts of our hearts on the life in which He
may let us be together once more. Look, Boris, there are lights in the
darkness, there will always be lights.”
“I can’t see them,” he said.
She looked at him and saw that tears were running down his cheeks.
Again, on this last night of companionship, God summoned her to be
strong for him. On the edge of the hill, close to them, she saw a
Moorish temple built of marble, with narrow arches and columns, and
marble seats.
“Let us sit here for a moment, Boris,” she said.
He followed her up the marble steps. Two or three times he stumbled, but
she did not give him her hand. They sat down between the slender columns
and looked out over the city, whose blanched domes and minarets were
faintly visible in the night. Androvsky was shaken with sobs.
“How can I part from you?” he said brokenly. “How am I to do it? How can
I--how can I? Why was I given this love for you, this terrible thing,
this crying out, this reaching out of the flesh and heart and soul
to you? Domini--Domini--what does it all mean--this mystery of
torture--this scourging of the body--this tearing in pieces of my soul
and yours? Domini, shall we know--shall we ever know?”
“I am sure we shall know, we shall all know some day, the meaning of the
mystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then surely, we shall each of us
be glad that we have suffered. The suffering will make the glory of our
happiness. Even now sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as if
there were a kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I am
doing, as if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God has
put into me. Boris, let us--you and I--learn to say in all this terror,
‘I am unconquered, I am unconquerable.’”
“I feel that I could say that, be it in the most frightful
circumstances, if only I could sometimes see you--even far away as now I
see those lights.”
“You will see me in your prayers every day, and I shall see you in
mine.”
“But the cry of the body, Domini, of the eyes, of the hands, to see, to
touch--it’s so fierce, it’s so--it’s so--”
“I know, I hear it too, always. But there is another voice, which will
be strong when the other has faded into eternal silence. In all bodily
things, even the most beautiful, there is something finite. We must
reach out our poor, feeble, trembling hands to the infinite. I think
everyone who is born does that through life, often without being
conscious of it. We shall do it consciously, you and I. We shall be able
to do it because of our dreadful suffering. We shall want, we shall have
to do it, you--where you are going, and I----”
“Where will you be?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I won’t think of the afterwards now, in
these last few hours--in these last----”
Her voice faltered and broke. Then the tears came to her also, and for a
while she could not see the distant lights.
Then she spoke again; she said:
“Boris, let us go now.”
He got up without a word. They found the carriage and drove back to
Tunis.
When they reached the hotel they came into the midst of the American
tourists, who were excitedly discussing the dances they had seen, and
calling for cooling drinks to allay the thirst created by the heat of
the close rooms of Oriental houses.
Early next morning a carriage was at the door. When they had got into it
the coachman looked round.
“Where shall I drive to, Monsieur?”
Androvsky looked at him and made no reply.
“To El-Largani,” Domini said.
“To the monastery, Madame?”
He whistled to his horses gaily. As they trotted on bells chimed about
their necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine that lay over the land.
They passed soldiers marching, and heard the call of bugles, the rattle
of drums. And each sound seemed distant and each moving figure far
away. This world of Africa, fiercely distinct in the clear air under
the cloudless sky, was unreal to them both, was vague as a northern
land wrapped in a mist of autumn. The unreal was about them. Within
themselves was the real. They sat beside each other without speaking.
Words to them now were useless things. What more had they to say?
Everything and nothing. Lifetimes would not have been long enough for
them to speak their thoughts for each other, of each other, to speak
their emotions, all that was in their minds and hearts during that drive
from the city to the monastery that stood upon the hill. Yet did not
their mutual action of that morning say all that need be said? The
silence of the Trappists surely floated out to them over the plains and
the pale waters of the bitter lakes and held them silent.
But the bells on the horses’ necks rang always gaily, and the coachman,
who would presently drive Domini back alone to Tunis, whistled and sang
on his high seat.
Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a pedestal of
stone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive trees. It marked
the beginning of the domain of El-Largani. When Domini saw it she looked
at Androvsky, and his eyes answered her silent question. The coachman
whipped his horses into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach his
destination. He was thinking of the good red wine of the monks. In a
cloud of white dust the carriage rolled onwards between vineyards in
which, here and there, labourers were working, sheltered from the sun by
immense straw hats. A long line of waggons, laden with barrels and drawn
by mules covered with bells, sheltered from the flies by leaves, met
them. In the distance Domini saw forests of eucalyptus trees. Suddenly
it seemed to her as if she saw Androvsky coming from them towards
the white road, helping a man who was pale, and who stumbled as if
half-fainting, yet whose face was full of a fierce passion of joy--the
stranger whose influence had driven him out of the monastery into the
world. She bent down her head and hid her face in her hands, praying,
praying with all her strength for courage in this supreme moment of her
life. But almost directly the prayers died on her lips and in her heart,
and she found herself repeating the words of _The Imitation_:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not
tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is
not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth
upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the
cry of this voice.”
Again and again she said the words: “It securely passeth through
all--it securely passeth through all.” Now, at last, she was to know
the uttermost truth of those words which she had loved in her happiness,
which she clung to now as a little child clings to its father’s hand.
The carriage turned to the right, went on a little way, then stopped.
Domini lifted her face from her hands. She saw before her a great door
which stood open. Above it was a statue of the Madonna and Child, and
on either side were two angels with swords and stars. Underneath was
written, in great letters:
JANUA COELI.
Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon which the
sunlight streamed, three palm trees, and a second door which was shut.
Above this second door was written:
“_Les dames n’entrent pas ici._”
As she looked the figure of a very old monk with a long white beard
shuffled slowly across the patch of sunlight and disappeared.
The coachman turned round.
“You descend here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Madame will be
entertained in the parlour on the right of the first door, but Monsieur
can go on to the _hotellerie_. It’s over there.”
He pointed with his whip and turned his back to them again.
Domini sat quite still. Her lips moved, once more repeating the words of
_The Imitation_. Androvsky got up from his seat, stepped heavily out of
the carriage, and stood beside it. The coachman was busy lighting a
long cigar. Androvsky leaned forward towards Domini with his arms on the
carriage and looked at her with tearless eyes.
“Domini,” at last he whispered. “Domini!”
Then she turned to him, bent towards him, put her hands on his shoulders
and looked into his face for a long time, as if she were trying to see
it now for all the years that were perhaps to come. Her eyes, too, were
tearless.
At last she leaned down and touched his forehead with her lips.
She said nothing. Her hands dropped from his shoulders, she turned away
and her lips moved once more.
Then Androvsky moved slowly in through the doorway of the monastery,
crossed the patch of sunlight, lifted his hand and rang the bell at the
second door.
“Drive back to Tunis, please.”
“Madame!” said the coachman.
“Drive back to Tunis.”
“Madame is not going to enter! But Monsieur--”
“Drive back to Tunis!”
Something in the voice that spoke to him startled the coachman. He
hesitated a moment, staring at Domini from his seat, then, with
a muttered curse, he turned his horses’ heads and plied the whip
ferociously.
* * * * *
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not
tired. When weary--it--is not--tired.”
Domini’s lips ceased to move. She could not speak any more. She could
not even pray without words.
Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone.
CHAPTER XXXI
In the garden of Count Anteoni, which has now passed into other hands,
a little boy may often be seen playing. He is gay, as children are, and
sometimes he is naughty and, as if out of sheer wantonness, he destroys
the pyramids of sand erected by the Arab gardeners upon the narrow paths
between the hills, or tears off the petals of the geraniums and scatters
them to the breezes that whisper among the trees. But when Larbi’s flute
calls to him he runs to hear. He sits at the feet of that persistent
lover, and watches the big fingers fluttering at the holes of the
reed, and his small face becomes earnest and dreamy, as if it looked
on far-off things, or watched the pale pageant of the mirages rising
mysteriously out of the sunlit spaces of the sands to fade again,
leaving no trace behind.
Only one other song he loves more than the twittering tune of Larbi.
Sometimes, when twilight is falling over the Sahara, his mother calls
him to her, to the white wall where she is sitting beneath a jamelon
tree.
“Listen, Boris!” she whispers.
The little boy climbs up on her knee, leans his face against her breast
and obeys. An Arab is passing below on the desert track, singing to
himself as he goes towards his home in the oasis:
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
He is singing the song of the freed negroes. When his voice has died
away the mother puts the little boy down. It is bed time, and Smain is
there to lead him to the white villa, where he will sleep dreamlessly
till morning.
But the mother stays alone by the wall till the night falls and the
desert is hidden.
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
She whispers the words to herself. The cool wind of the night blows over
the vast spaces of the Sahara and touches her cheek, reminding her of
the wind that, at Arba, carried fire towards her as she sat before the
tent, reminding her of her glorious days of liberty, of the passion that
came to her soul like fire in the desert.
But she does not rebel.
For always, when night falls, she sees the form of a man praying who
once fled from prayer in the desert; she sees a wanderer who at last has
reached his home.