CHAPTER IX
On the following morning Batouch arrived with a handsome grey Arabhorse for Domini to try. He had been very penitent the night before, andDomini had forgiven easily enough his pre-occupation with Suzanne, whohad evidently made a strong impression upon his susceptible nature. Hadjhad been but slightly injured by Irena, but did not appear at the hotelfor a very sufficient reason. Both the dancer and he were locked up forthe moment, till the Guardians of Justice in Beni-Mora had made up theirminds who should be held responsible for the uproar of the previousnight. That the real culprit was the smiling poet was not likely tooccur to them, and did not seem to trouble him. When Domini inquiredafter Hadj he showed majestic indifference, and when she hinted at hiscrafty share in the causing of the tragedy he calmly replied,
"Hadj-ben-Ibrahim will know from henceforth whether the Mehari with theswollen tongue can bite."
Then, leaping upon the horse, whose bridle he was holding, he forced itto rear, caracole and display its spirit and its paces before Domini,sitting it superbly, and shooting many sly glances at Suzanne, wholeaned over the parapet of the verandah watching, with a rapt expressionon her face.
Domini admired the horse, but wished to mount it herself before comingto any conclusion about it. She had brought her own saddle with her andordered Batouch to put it on the animal. Meanwhile she went upstairs tochange into her habit. When she came out again on to the verandah BorisAndrovsky was there, standing bare-headed in the sun and looking downat Batouch and the horse. He turned quickly, greeted Domini with a deepbow, then examined her costume with wondering, startled eyes.
"I'm going to try that horse," she said with deliberate friendliness."To see if I'll buy him. Are you a judge of a horse?"
"I fear not, Madame."
She had spoken in English and he replied in the same language. She wasstanding at the head of the stairs holding her whip lightly in her righthand. Her splendid figure was defined by the perfectly-fitting, plainhabit, and she saw him look at it with a strange expression in his eyes,an admiration that was almost ferocious, and that was yet respectful andeven pure. It was like the glance of a passionate schoolboy verging onyoung manhood, whose natural instincts were astir but whose temperamentwas unwarped by vice; a glance that was a burning tribute, and that tolda whole story of sex and surely of hot, inquiring ignorance--strangeglances of a man no longer even very young. It made something in herleap and quiver. She was startled and almost angered by that, but not bythe eyes that caused it.
"_Au revoir_," she said, turning to go down.
"May I--might I see you get up?" said Androvsky.
"Get up!" she said.
"Up on the horse?"
She could not help smiling at his fashion of expressing the act ofmounting. He was not a sportsman evidently, despite his muscularstrength.
"Certainly, if you like. Come along."
Without thinking of it she spoke rather as to a schoolboy, notwith superiority, but with the sort of bluffness age sometimes usesgood-naturedly to youth. He did not seem to resent it and followed herdown to the arcade.
The side saddle was on and the poet held the grey by the bridle. SomeArab boys had assembled under the arcade to see what was going forward.The Arab waiter lounged at the door with the tassel of his fez swingingagainst his pale cheek. The horse fidgetted and tugged against the rein,lifting his delicate feet uneasily from the ground, flicking his narrowquarters with his long tail, and glancing sideways with his dark andbrilliant eyes, which were alive with a nervous intelligence that wasalmost hectic. Domini went up to him and caressed him with her hand. Hereared up and snorted. His whole body seemed a-quiver with the desire togallop furiously away alone into some far distant place.
Androvsky stood near the waiter, looking at Domini and at the horse withwonder and alarm in his eyes.
The animal, irritated by inaction, began to plunge violently and to getout of hand.
"Give me the reins," Domini said to the poet. "That's it. Now put yourhand for me."
Batouch obeyed. Her foot just touched his hand and she was in thesaddle.
Androvsky sprang forward on to the pavement. His eyes were blazing withanxiety. She saw it and laughed gaily.
"Oh, he's not vicious," she said. "And vice is the only thing that'sdangerous. His mouth is perfect, but he's nervous and wants handling.I'll just take him up the gardens and back."
She had been reining him in. Now she let him go, and galloped up thestraight track between the palms towards the station. The priest hadcome out into his little garden with Bous-Bous, and leaned over hisbrushwood fence to look after her. Bous-Bous barked in a light soprano.The Arab boys jumped on their bare toes, and one of them, who was abootblack, waved his board over his shaven head. The Arab waiter smiledas if with satisfaction at beholding perfect competence. But Androvskystood quite still looking down the dusty road at the diminishing formsof horse and rider, and when they disappeared, leaving behind them alight cloud of sand films whirling in the sun, he sighed heavily anddropped his chin on his chest as if fatigued.
"I can get a horse for Monsieur too. Would Monsieur like to have ahorse?"
It was the poet's amply seductive voice. Androvsky started.
"I don't ride," he said curtly.
"I will teach Monsieur. I am the best teacher in Beni-Mora. In threelessons Monsieur will--"
"I don't ride, I tell you."
Androvsky was looking angry. He stepped out into the road. Bous-Bous,who was now observing Nature at the priest's garden gate, emerged withsome sprightliness and trotted towards him, evidently with the intentionof making his acquaintance. Coming up to him the little dog raised hishead and uttered a short bark, at the same time wagging his tail in akindly, though not effusive manner. Androvsky looked down, bent quicklyand patted him, as only a man really fond of animals and accustomedto them knows how to pat. Bous-Bous was openly gratified. He began towriggle affectionately. The priest in his garden smiled. Androvsky hadnot seen him and went on playing with the dog, who now made preparationsto lie down on his curly back in the road in the hope of being tickled,a process he was an amateur of. Still smiling, and with a friendlylook on his face, the priest came out of his garden and approached theplaymates.
"Good morning, M'sieur," he said politely, raising his hat. "I see youlike dogs."
Androvsky lifted himself up, leaving Bous-Bous in a prayerful attitude,his paws raised devoutly towards the heavens. When he saw that it wasthe priest who had addressed him his face changed, hardened to grimness,and his lips trembled slightly.
"That's my little dog," the priest continued in a gentle voice. "He hasevidently taken a great fancy to you."
Batouch was watching Androvsky under the arcade, and noted the suddenchange in his expression and his whole bearing.
"I--I did not know he was your dog, Monsieur, or I should not haveinterfered with him," said Androvsky.
Bous-Bous jumped up against his leg. He pushed the little dog ratherroughly away and stepped back to the arcade. The priest looked puzzledand slightly hurt. At this moment the soft thud of horse's hoofs wasaudible on the road and Domini came cantering back to the hotel. Hereyes were sparkling, her face was radiant. She bowed to the priest andreined up before the hotel door, where Androvsky was standing.
"I'll buy him," she said to Batouch, who swelled with satisfaction atthe thought of his commission. "And I'll go for a long ride now--outinto the desert."
"You will not go alone, Madame?"
It was the priest's voice. She smiled down at him gaily.
"Should I be carried off by nomads, Monsieur?"
"It would not be safe for a lady, believe me."
Batouch swept forward to reassure the priest. "I am Madame's guide.I have a horse ready saddled to accompany Madame. I have sent for italready, M'sieur."
One of the little Arab boys was indeed visible running with all hismight towards the Rue Berthe. Domini's face suddenly clouded. Thepresence of the guide would take all the edge off her pleasu
re, and inthe short gallop she had just had she had savoured its keenness. She wasalive with desire to be happy.
"I don't need you, Batouch," she said.
But the poet was inexorable, backed up by the priest.
"It is my duty to accompany Madame. I am responsible for her safety."
"Indeed, you cannot go into the desert alone," said the priest.
Domini glanced at Androvsky, who was standing silently under the arcade,a little withdrawn, looking uncomfortable and self-conscious. Sheremembered her thought on the tower of the dice-thrower, and of how thepresence of the stranger had seemed to double her pleasure then. Upthe road from the Rue Berthe came the noise of a galloping horse. Theshoeblack was returning furiously, his bare legs sticking out on eitherside of a fiery light chestnut with a streaming mane and tail.
"Monsieur Androvsky," she said.
He started.
"Madame?"
"Will you come with me for a ride into the desert?"
His face was flooded with scarlet, and he came a step forward, lookingup at her.
"I!" he said with an accent of infinite surprise.
"Yes. Will you?"
The chestnut thundered up and was pulled sharply back on its haunches.Androvsky shot a sideways glance at it and hesitated. Domini thoughthe was going to refuse and wished she had not asked him, wished itpassionately.
"Never mind," she said, almost brutally in her vexation at what she haddone.
"Batouch!"
The poet was about to spring upon the horse when Androvsky caught him bythe arm.
"I will go," he said.
Batouch looked vicious. "But Monsieur told me he did not----"
He stopped. The hand on his arm had given him a wrench that made himfeel as if his flesh were caught between steel pincers. Androvsky cameup to the chestnut.
"Oh, it's an Arab saddle," said Domini.
"It does not matter, Madame."
His face was stern.
"Are you accustomed to them?"
"It makes no difference."
He took hold of the rein and put his foot in the high stirrup, but soawkwardly that he kicked the horse in the side. It plunged.
"Take care!" said Domini.
Androvsky hung on, and climbed somehow into the saddle, coming down init heavily, with a thud. The horse, now thoroughly startled, plungedfuriously and lashed out with its hind legs. Androvsky was thrownforward against the high red peak of the saddle with his hands on theanimal's neck. There was a struggle. He tugged at the rein violently.The horse jumped back, reared, plunged sideways as if about to bolt.Androvsky was shot off and fell on his right shoulder heavily. Batouchcaught the horse while Androvsky got up. He was white with dust. Therewas even dust on his face and in his short hair. He looked passionate.
"You see," Batouch began, speaking to Domini, "that Monsieur cannot--"
"Give me the rein!" said Androvsky.
There was a sound in his deep voice that was terrible. He was lookingnot at Domini, but at the priest, who stood a little aside with anexpression of concern on his face. Bous-Bous barked with excitementat the conflict. Androvsky took the rein, and, with a sort of furiousdetermination, sprang into the saddle and pressed his legs againstthe horse's flanks. It reared up. The priest moved back under thepalm trees, the Arab boys scattered. Batouch sought the shelter of thearcade, and the horse, with a short, whining neigh that was like acry of temper, bolted between the trunks of the trees, heading for thedesert, and disappeared in a flash.
"He will be killed," said the priest.
Bous-Bous barked frantically.
"It is his own fault," said the poet. "He told me himself just now thathe did not know how to ride."
"Why didn't you tell me so?" Domini exclaimed.
"Madame----"
But she was gone, following Androvsky at a slow canter lest she shouldfrighten his horse by coming up behind it. She came out from the shadeof the palms into the sun. The desert lay before her. She searched iteagerly with her eyes and saw Androvsky's horse far off in the riverbed, still going at a gallop towards the south, towards that region inwhich she had told him on the tower she thought that peace must dwell.It was as if he had believed her words blindly and was frantically inchase of peace. And she pursued him through the blazing sunlight. Shewas out in the desert at length, beyond the last belt of verdure, beyondthe last line of palms. The desert wind was on her cheek and in herhair. The desert spaces stretched around her. Under her horse's hoofslay the sparkling crystals on the wrinkled, sun-dried earth. The redrocks, seamed with many shades of colour that all suggested primevalfires and the relentless action of heat, were heaped about her. But hereyes were fixed on the far-off moving speck that was the horse carryingAndrovsky madly towards the south. The light and fire, the great airs,the sense of the chase intoxicated her. She struck her horse with thewhip. It leaped, as if clearing an immense obstacle, came down lightlyand strained forward into the shining mysteries at a furious gallop. Theblack speck grew larger. She was gaining. The crumbling, cliff-like bankon her left showed a rent in which a faint track rose sharply to theflatness beyond. She put her horse at it and came out among the tinyhumps on which grew the halfa grass and the tamarisk bushes. A pale sandflew up here about the horse's feet. Androvsky was still below her inthe difficult ground where the water came in the floods. She gained andgained till she was parallel with him and could see his bent figure, hisarms clinging to the peak of his red saddle, his legs set forwardalmost on to his horse's withers by the short stirrups with their metaltoecaps. The animal's temper was nearly spent. She could see that. Theterror had gone out of his pace. As she looked she saw Androvsky raisehis arms from the saddle peak, catch at the flying rein, draw it up,lean against the saddle back and pull with all his force. The horsestopped dead.
"His strength must be enormous," Domini thought with a startledadmiration.
She pulled up too on the bank above him and gave a halloo. He turned hishead, saw her, and put his horse at the bank, which was steep here andwithout any gap. "You can't do it," she called.
In reply he dug the heels of his heavy boots into the horse's flanks andcame on recklessly. She thought the horse would either refuse or tryto get up and roll back on its rider. It sprang at the bank and mountedlike a wild cat. There was a noise of falling stones, a shower ofscattered earth-clods dropping downward, and he was beside her, whitewith dust, streaming with sweat, panting as if the labouring breathwould rip his chest open, with the horse's foam on his forehead, and asavage and yet exultant gleam in his eyes.
They looked at each other in silence, while their horses, standingquietly, lowered their narrow, graceful heads and touched noses withdelicate inquiry. Then she said:
"I almost thought----"
She stopped.
"Yes?" he said, on a great gasping breath that was like a sob.
"--that you were off to the centre of the earth, or--I don't know what Ithought. You aren't hurt?"
"No."
He could only speak in monosyllables as yet. She looked his horse over.
"He won't give much more trouble just now. Shall we ride back?"
As she spoke she threw a longing glance at the far desert, at the vergeof which was a dull green line betokening the distant palms of an oasis.
Androvsky shook his head.
"But you----" She hesitated. "Perhaps you aren't accustomed to horses,and with that saddle----"
He shook his head again, drew a tremendous breath and said
"I don't care, I'll go on, I won't go back."
He put up one hand, brushed the foam from his streaming forehead, andsaid again fiercely:
"I won't go back."
His face was extraordinary with its dogged, passionate expressionshowing through the dust and the sweat; like the face of a man in afight to the death, she thought, a fight with fists. She was glad at hislast words and liked the iron sound in his voice.
"Come on then."
And they began to ride towards
the dull green line of the oasis, slowlyon the sandy waste among the little round humps where the dusty clusterof bushes grew.
"You weren't hurt by the fall?" she said. "It looked a bad one."
"I don't know whether I was. I don't care whether I was."
He spoke almost roughly.
"You asked me to ride with you," he added. "I'll ride with you."
She remembered what Batouch had said. There was pluck in this man,pluck that surged up in the blundering awkwardness, the hesitation, theincompetence and rudeness of him like a black rock out of the sea. Shedid not answer. They rode on, always slowly. His horse, having had itswill, and having known his strength at the end of his incompetence,went quietly, though always with that feathery, light, tripping actionpeculiar to purebred Arabs, an action that suggests the treading ofa spring board rather than of the solid earth. And Androvsky seemed alittle more at home on it, although he sat awkwardly on the chair-likesaddle, and grasped the rein too much as the drowning man seizes thestraw. Domini rode without looking at him, lest he might think she wascriticising his performance. When he had rolled in the dust she hadbeen conscious of a sharp sensation of contempt. The men she had beenaccustomed to meet all her life rode, shot, played games as a matter ofcourse. She was herself an athlete, and, like nearly all athletic women,inclined to be pitiless towards any man who was not so strong and soagile as herself. But this man had killed her contempt at once by hisdesperate determination not to be beaten. She knew by the look she hadjust seen in his eyes that if to ride with her that day meant death tohim he would have done it nevertheless.
The womanhood in her liked the tribute, almost more than liked it.
"Your horse goes better now," she said at last to break the silence.
"Does it?" he said.
"You don't know!"
"Madame, I know nothing of horses or riding. I have not been on a horsefor twenty-three years."
She was amazed.
"We ought to go back then," she exclaimed.
"Why? Other men ride--I will ride. I do it badly. Forgive me."
"Forgive you!" she said. "I admire your pluck. But why have you neverridden all these years?"
After a pause he answered:
"I--I did not--I had not the opportunity."
His voice was suddenly constrained. She did not pursue the subject, butstroked her horse's neck and turned her eyes towards the dark greenline on the horizon. Now that she was really out in the desert she feltalmost bewildered by it, and as if she understood it far less thanwhen she looked at it from Count Anteoni's garden. The thousands uponthousands of sand humps, each crowned with its dusty dwarf bush, eachone precisely like the others, agitated her as if she were confronted bya vast multitude of people. She wanted some point which would keep theeyes from travelling but could not find it, and was mentally restless asthe swimmer far out at sea who is pursued by wave on wave, and who seesbeyond him the unceasing foam of those that are pressing to the horizon.Whither was she riding? Could one have a goal in this immense expanse?She felt an overpowering need to find one, and looked once more at thegreen line.
"Do you think we could go as far as that?" she asked Androvsky, pointingwith her whip.
"Yes, Madame."
"It must be an oasis. Don't you think so?"
"Yes. I can go faster."
"Keep your rein loose. Don't pull his mouth. You don't mind my tellingyou. I've been with horses all my life."
"Thank you," he answered.
"And keep your heels more out. That's much better. I'm sure you couldteach me a thousand things; it will be kind of you to let me teach youthis."
He cast a strange look at her. There was gratitude in it, but much more;a fiery bitterness and something childlike and helpless.
"I have nothing to teach," he said.
Their horses broke into a canter, and with the swifter movement Dominifelt more calm. There was an odd lightness in her brain, as if herthoughts were being shaken out of it like feathers out of a bag.The power of concentration was leaving her, and a sensation ofcarelessness--surely gipsy-like--came over her. Her body, dipped inthe dry and thin air as in a clear, cool bath, did not suffer from theburning rays of the sun, but felt radiant yet half lazy too. They wenton and on in silence as intimate friends might ride together, isolatedfrom the world and content in each other's company, content enough tohave no need of talking. Not once did it strike Domini as strangethat she should go far out into the desert with a man of whom she knewnothing, but in whom she had noticed disquieting peculiarities. She wasnaturally fearless, but that had little to do with her conduct. Withoutsaying so to herself she felt she could trust this man.
The dark green line showed clearer through the sunshine across thegleaming flats. It was possible now to see slight irregularities init, as in a blurred dash of paint flung across a canvas by an uncertainhand, but impossible to distinguish palm trees. The air sparkled as iffull of a tiny dust of intensely brilliant jewels, and near the groundthere seemed to quiver a maze of dancing specks of light. Everywherethere was solitude, yet everywhere there was surely a ceaseless movementof minute and vital things, scarce visible sun fairies eternally atplay.
And Domini's careless feeling grew. She had never before experienced sodelicious a recklessness. Head and heart were light, reckless of thoughtor love. Sad things had no meaning here and grave things no place. Forthe blood was full of sunbeams dancing to a lilt of Apollo. Nothingmattered here. Even Death wore a robe of gold and went with an airystep. Ah, yes, from this region of quivering light and heat the Arabsdrew their easy and lustrous resignation. Out here one was in the handsof a God who surely sang as He created and had not created fear.
Many minutes passed, but Domini was careless of time as of all else.The green line broke into feathery tufts, broadened into a still far-offdimness of palms.
"Water!"
Androvsky's voice spoke as if startled. Domini pulled up. Their horsesstood side by side, and at once, with the cessation of motion, themysticism of the desert came upon them and the marvel of its silence,and they seemed to be set there in a wonderful dream, themselves andtheir horses dreamlike.
"Water!" he said again.
He pointed, and along the right-hand edge of the oasis Domini saw grey,calm waters. The palms ran out into them and were bathed by them softly.And on their bosom here and there rose small, dim islets. Yes, there waswater, and yet--The mystery of it was a mystery she had never known tobrood even over a white northern sea in a twilight hour of winter, wasdeeper than the mystery of the Venetian _laguna morta_, when the Angelusbell chimes at sunset, and each distant boat, each bending rower andpatient fisherman, becomes a marvel, an eerie thing in the gold.
"Is it mirage?" she said to him almost in a whisper.
And suddenly she shivered.
"Yes, it is, it must be."
He did not answer. His left hand, holding the rein, dropped down on thesaddle peak, and he stared across the waste, leaning forward and movinghis lips. She looked at him and forgot even the mirage in a suddenlonging to understand exactly what he was feeling. His mystery--themystery of that which is human and is forever stretching out itsarms--was as the fluid mystery of the mirage, and seemed to blend atthat moment with the mystery she knew lay in herself. The mirage waswithin them as it was far off before them in the desert, still, grey,full surely of indistinct movement, and even perhaps of sound they couldnot hear.
At last he turned and looked at her.
"Yes, it must be mirage," he said. "The nothing that seems to be somuch. A man comes out into the desert and he finds there mirage. Hetravels right out and that's what he reaches--or at least he can't reachit, but just sees it far away. And that's all. And is that what a manfinds when he comes out into the world?"
It was the first time he had spoken without any trace of reserve to her,for even on the tower, though there had been tumult in his voice and afierceness of some strange passion in his words, there had been strugglein his manner, as if the pressure
of feeling forced him to speak indespite of something which bade him keep silence. Now he spoke as if tosomeone whom he knew and with whom he had talked of many things.
"But you ought to know better than I do," she answered.
"I!"
"Yes. You are a man, and have been in the world, and must know whatit has to give--whether there's only mirage, or something that can begrasped and felt and lived in, and----"
"Yes, I'm a man and I ought to know," he replied. "Well, I don't know,but I mean to know."
There was a savage sound in his voice.
"I should like to know, too," Domini said quietly. "And I feel as if itwas the desert that was going to teach me."
"The desert--how?"
"I don't know."
He pointed again to the mirage.
"But that's what there is in the desert."
"That--and what else?"
"Is there anything else?"
"Perhaps everything," she answered. "I am like you. I want to know."
He looked straight into her eyes and there was something dominating inhis expression.
"You think it is the desert that could teach you whether the world holdsanything but a mirage," he said slowly. "Well, I don't think it would bethe desert that could teach me."
She said nothing more, but let her horse go and rode off. He followed,and as he rode awkwardly, yet bravely, pressing his strong legs againsthis animal's flanks and holding his thin body bent forward, he lookedat Domini's upright figure and brilliant, elastic grace--that gave in toher horse as wave gives to wind--with a passion of envy in his eyes.
They did not speak again till the great palm gardens of the oasis theyhad seen far off were close upon them. From the desert they looked bothshabby and superb, as if some millionaire had poured forth money tocreate a Paradise out here, and, when it was nearly finished, hadsuddenly repented of his whim and refused to spend another farthing. Thethousands upon thousands of mighty trees were bounded by long, irregularwalls of hard earth, at the top of which were stuck distraught thornbushes. These walls gave the rough, penurious aspect which was in suchsharp contrast to the exotic mystery they guarded. Yet in the fierceblaze of the sun their meanness was not disagreeable. Domini even likedit. It seemed to her as if the desert had thrown up waves to protectthis daring oasis which ventured to fling its green glory like adefiance in the face of the Sahara. A wide track of earth, sprinkledwith stones and covered with deep ruts, holes and hummocks, wound infrom the desert between the earthen walls and vanished into the heart ofthe oasis. They followed it.
Domini was filled with a sort of romantic curiosity. This luxury ofpalms far out in the midst of desolation, untended apparently byhuman hands--for no figures moved among them, there was no one onthe road--suggested some hidden purpose and activity, some concealedpersonage, perhaps an Eastern Anteoni, whose lair lay surely somewherebeyond them. As she had felt the call of the desert she now felt thecall of the oasis. In this land thrilled eternally a summons to goonward, to seek, to penetrate, to be a passionate pilgrim. She wonderedwhether her companion's heart could hear it.
"I don't know why it is," she said, "but out here I always feelexpectant. I always feel as if some marvellous thing might be going tohappen to me."
She did not add "Do you?" but looked at him as if for a reply.
"Yes, Madame," he said.
"I suppose it is because I am new to Africa. This is my first visithere. I am not like you. I can't speak Arabic."
She suddenly wondered whether the desert was new to him as to her. Shehad assumed that it was. Yet as he spoke Arabic it was almost certainthat he had been much in Africa.
"I do not speak it well," he answered.
And he looked away towards the dense thickets of the palms. The tracknarrowed till the trees on either side cast patterns of moving shadeacross it and the silent mystery was deepened. As far as the eye couldsee the feathery, tufted foliage swayed in the little wind. The deserthad vanished, but sent in after them the message of its soul, themarvellous breath which Domini had drunk into her lungs so long beforeshe saw it. That breath was like a presence. It dwells in all oases. Thehigh earth walls concealed the gardens. Domini longed to look over andsee what they contained, whether there were any dwellings in these dimand silent recesses, any pools of water, flowers or grassy lawns.
Her horse neighed.
"Something is coming," she said.
They turned a corner and were suddenly in a village. A mob of half-nakedchildren scattered from their horses' feet. Rows of seated men in whiteand earth-coloured robes stared upon them from beneath the shadow oftall, windowless earth houses. White dogs rushed to and fro upon theflat roofs, thrusting forward venomous heads, showing their teeth andbarking furiously. Hens fluttered in agitation from one side to theother. A grey mule, tethered to a palm-wood door and loaded withbrushwood, lashed out with its hoofs at a negro, who at once began tobatter it passionately with a pole, and a long line of sneering camelsconfronted them, treading stealthily, and turning their serpentinenecks from side to side as they came onwards with a soft and wearyinflexibility. In the distance there was a vision of a glaringmarket-place crowded with moving forms and humming with noises.
The change from mysterious peace to this vivid and concentrated life wasstartling.
With difficulty they avoided the onset of the camels by pulling theirhorses into the midst of the dreamers against the walls, who rolledand scrambled into places of safety, then stood up and surrounded them,staring with an almost terrible interest upon them, and surveying theirhorses with the eyes of connoisseurs. The children danced up and beganto ask for alms, and an immense man, with a broken nose and brownteeth like tusks, laid a gigantic hand on Domini's bridle and said, inatrocious French:
"I am the guide, I am the guide. Look at my certificates. Take no oneelse. The people here are robbers. I am the only honest man. I will showMadame everything. I will take Madame to the inn. Look--my certificates!Read them! Read what the English lord says of me. I alone am honesthere. I am honest Mustapha! I am honest Mustapha!"
He thrust a packet of discoloured papers and dirty visiting-cards intoher hands. She dropped them, laughing, and they floated down over thehorse's neck. The man leaped frantically to pick them up, assisted bythe robbers round about. A second caravan of camels appeared, precededby some filthy men in rags, who cried, "Oosh! oosh!" to clear the way.The immense man, brandishing his recovered certificates, plunged forwardto encounter them, shouting in Arabic, hustled them back, kicked them,struck at the camels with a stick till those in front receded upon thosebehind and the street was blocked by struggling beasts and resoundedwith roaring snarls, the thud of wooden bales clashing together, and thedesperate protests of the camel-drivers, one of whom was sent rollinginto a noisome dust heap with his turban torn from his head.
"The inn! This is the inn! Madame will descend here. Madame will eat inthe garden. Monsieur Alphonse! Monsieur Alphonse! Here are clientsfor _dejeuner_. I have brought them. Do not believe Mohammed. It is Ithat--I will assist Madame to descend. I will----"
Domini was standing in a tiny cabaret before a row of absinthe bottles,laughing, almost breathless. She scarcely knew how she had come there.Looking back she saw Androvsky still sitting on his horse in the midstof the clamouring mob. She went to the low doorway, but Mustapha barredher exit.
"This is Sidi-Zerzour. Madame will eat in the garden. She is tired,fainting. She will eat and then she will see the great Mosque ofZerzour."
"Sidi-Zerzour!" she exclaimed. "Monsieur Androvsky, do you know where weare? This is the famous Sidi-Zerzour, where the great warrior is buried,and where the Arabs make pilgrimages to worship at his tomb."
"Yes, Madame."
He answered in a low voice.
"As we are here we ought to see. Do you know, I think we must yield tohonest Mustapha and have _dejeuner_ in the garden. It is twelve o'clockand I am hungry. We might visit the mosque afterwards and ride home inthe afternoon."
He sat th
ere hunched up on the horse and looked at her in silenthesitation, while the Arabs stood round staring.
"You'd rather not?"
She spoke quietly. He shook his feet out of the stirrups. A number ofbrown hands and arms shot forth to help him. Domini turned back intothe cabaret. She heard a tornado of voices outside, a horse neighing andtrampling, a scuffling of feet, but she did not glance round. In aboutthree minutes Androvsky joined her. He was limping slightly and bendingforward more than ever. Behind the counter on which stood the absinthebottle was a tarnished mirror, and she saw him glance quickly, almostguiltily into it, put up his hands and try to brush the dust from hishair, his shoulders.
"Let me do it," she said abruptly. "Turn round."
He obeyed without a word, turning his back to her. With her two hands,which were covered with soft, loose suede gloves, she beat and brushedthe dust from his coat. He stood quite still while she did it. When shehad finished she said:
"There, that's better."
Her voice was practical. He did not move, but stood there.
"I've done what I can, Monsieur Androvsky."
Then he turned slowly, and she saw, with amazement, that there weretears in his eyes. He did not thank her or say a word.
A small and scrubby-looking Frenchman, with red eyelids and moustachesthat drooped over a pendulous underlip, now begged Madame to followhim through a small doorway beyond which could be seen three just shotgazelles lying in a patch of sunlight by a wired-in fowl-run. Dominiwent after him, and Androvsky and honest Mustapha--still vigorouslyproclaiming his own virtues--brought up the rear. They came into themost curious garden she had ever seen.
It was long and narrow and dishevelled, without grass or flowers. Theuneven ground of it was bare, sun-baked earth, hard as parquet, risinghere into a hump, falling there into a depression. Immediately behindthe cabaret, where the dead gazelles with their large glazed eyes layby the fowl-run, was a rough wooden trellis with vines trained over it,making an arbour. Beyond was a rummage of orange trees, palms, gums andfig trees growing at their own sweet will, and casting patterns of deepshade upon the earth in sharp contrast with the intense yellow sunlightwhich fringed them where the leafage ceased. An attempt had been madeto create formal garden paths and garden beds by sticking rushes intolittle holes drilled in the ground, but the paths were zig-zag as adrunkard's walk, and the round and oblong beds contained no trace ofplants. On either hand rose steep walls of earth, higher than a man, andcrowned with prickly thorn bushes. Over them looked palm trees. At theend of the garden ran a slow stream of muddy water in a channel withcrumbling banks trodden by many naked feet. Beyond it was yet anotherlower wall of earth, yet another maze of palms. Heat and silence broodedhere like reptiles on the warm mud of a tropic river in a jungle.Lizards ran in and out of the innumerable holes in the walls, and fliesbuzzed beneath the ragged leaves of the fig trees and crawled in the hotcracks of the earth.
The landlord wished to put a table under the vine close to the cabaretwall, but Domini begged him to bring it to the end of the garden nearthe stream. With the furious assistance of honest Mustapha he carried itthere and quickly laid it in the shadow of a fig tree, while Domini andAndrovsky waited in silence on two straw-bottomed chairs.
The atmosphere of the garden was hostile to conversation. The sluggishmuddy stream, the almost motionless trees, the imprisoned heat betweenthe surrounding walls, the faint buzz of the flies caused drowsiness tocreep upon the spirit. The long ride, too, and the ardent desertair, made this repose a luxury. Androvsky's face lost its emotionalexpression as he gazed almost vacantly at the brown water shiftingslowly by between the brown banks and the brown walls above whichthe palm trees peered. His aching limbs relaxed. His hands hung loosebetween his knees. And Domini half closed her eyes. A curious peacedescended upon her. Lapped in the heat and silence for the moment shewanted nothing. The faint buzz of the flies sounded in her ears andseemed more silent than even the silence to which it drew attention.Never before, not in Count Anteoni's garden, had she felt more utterlywithdrawn from the world. The feathery tops of the palms were likethe heads of sentinels guarding her from contact with all that she hadknown. And beyond them lay the desert, the empty, sunlit waste. She shuther eyes, and murmured to herself, "I am in far away. I am in faraway." And the flies said it in her ears monotonously. And the lizardswhispered it as they slipped in and out of the little dark holes in thewalls. She heard Androvsky stir, and she moved her lips slowly. And theflies and the lizards continued the refrain. But she said now, "We arein far away."
Honest Mustapha strode forward. He had a Bashi-Bazouk tread to wake up aworld. _Dejeuner_ was ready. Domini sighed. They took their places underthe fig tree on either side of the deal table covered with a rough whitecloth, and Mustapha, with tremendous gestures, and gigantic posturessuggesting the untamed descendant of legions of freeborn, sun-suckledmen, served them with red fish, omelette, gazelle steaks, cheese,oranges and dates, with white wine and Vals water.
Androvsky scarcely spoke. Now that he was sitting at a meal with Dominihe was obviously embarrassed. All his movements were self-conscious. Heseemed afraid to eat and refused the gazelle. Mustapha broke out intoturbulent surprise and prolonged explanations of the delicious flavourof this desert food. But Androvsky still refused, looking desperatelydisconcerted.
"It really is delicious," said Domini, who was eating it. "But perhapsyou don't care about meat."
She spoke quite carelessly and was surprised to see him look at her asif with sudden suspicion and immediately help himself to the gazelle.
This man was perpetually giving a touch of the whip to her curiosity tokeep it alert. Yet she felt oddly at ease with him. He seemed somehowpart of her impression of the desert, and now, as they sat under thefig tree between the high earth walls, and at their _al fresco_ meal inunbroken silence--for since her last remark Androvsky had kept his eyesdown and had not uttered a word--she tried to imagine the desert withouthim.
She thought of the gorge of El-Akbara, the cold, the darkness, and thenthe sun and the blue country. They had framed his face. She thought ofthe silent night when the voice of the African hautboy had died away.His step had broken its silence. She thought of the garden of CountAnteoni, and of herself kneeling on the hot sand with her arms on thewhite parapet and gazing out over the regions of the sun, of her dreamupon the tower, of her vision when Irena danced. He was there, partof the noon, part of the twilight, chief surely of the worshippers whoswept on in the pale procession that received gifts from the desert'shands. She could no longer imagine the desert without him. The almostpainful feeling that had come to her in the garden--of the human powerto distract her attention from the desert power--was dying, perhaps hadcompletely died away. Another feeling was surely coming to replace it;that Androvsky belonged to the desert more even than the Arabs did, thatthe desert spirits were close about him, clasping his hands, whisperingin his ears, and laying their unseen hands about his heart. But----
They had finished their meal. Domini set her chair once more in frontof the sluggish stream, while honest Mustapha bounded, with motionssuggestive of an ostentatious panther, to get the coffee. Androvskyfollowed her after an instant of hesitation.
"Do smoke," she said.
He lit a small cigar with difficulty. She did not wish to watch him,but she could not help glancing at him once or twice, and the convictioncame to her that he was unaccustomed to smoking. She lit a cigarette,and saw him look at her with a sort of horrified surprise which changedto staring interest. There was more boy, more child in this man thanin any man she had ever known. Yet at moments she felt as if hehad penetrated more profoundly into the dark and winding valleys ofexperience than all the men of her acquaintance.
"Monsieur Androvsky," she said, looking at the slow waters of the streamslipping by towards the hidden gardens, "is the desert new to you?"
She longed to know.
"Yes, Madame."
"I thought perhaps--I wondered a little whether you
had travelled in italready."
"No, Madame. I saw it for the first time the day before yesterday."
"When I did."
"Yes."
So they had entered it for the first time together. She was silent,watching the pale smoke curl up through the shade and out into the glareof the sun, the lizards creeping over the hot earth, the flies circlingbeneath the lofty walls, the palm trees looking over into this gardenfrom the gardens all around, gardens belonging to Eastern people, bornhere, and who would probably die here, and go to dust among the roots ofthe palms.
On the earthen bank on the far side of the stream there appeared, whileshe gazed, a brilliant figure. It came soundlessly on bare feet froma hidden garden; a tall, unveiled girl, dressed in draperies of vividmagenta, who carried in her exquisitely-shaped brown hands a number ofhandkerchiefs--scarlet, orange, yellow green and flesh colour. She didnot glance into the _auberge_ garden, but caught up her draperies intoa bunch with one hand, exposing her slim legs far above the knees, wadedinto the stream, and bending, dipped the handkerchiefs in the water.
The current took them. They streamed out on the muddy surface of thestream, and tugged as if, suddenly endowed with life, they were strivingto escape from the hand that held them.
The girl's face was beautiful, with small regular features and lustrous,tender eyes. Her figure, not yet fully developed, was perfect in shape,and seemed to thrill softly with the spirit of youth. Her tint of bronzesuggested statuary, and every fresh pose into which she fell, while thewater eddied about her, strengthened the suggestion. With the goldensunlight streaming upon her, the brown banks, the brown waters, thebrown walls throwing up the crude magenta of her bunched-up draperies,the vivid colours of the handkerchiefs that floated from her hand, withthe feathery palms beside her, the cloudless blue sky above her, shelooked so strangely African and so completely lovely that Domini watchedher with an almost breathless attention.
She withdrew the handkerchiefs from the stream, waded out, and spreadthem one by one upon the low earth wall to dry, letting her draperiesfall. When she had finished disposing them she turned round, and, nolonger preoccupied with her task, looked under her level brows into thegarden opposite and saw Domini and her companion. She did not start,but stood quite still for a moment, then slipped away in the directionwhence she had come. Only the brilliant patches of colour on the wallremained to hint that she had been there and would come again. Dominisighed.
"What a lovely creature!" she said, more to herself than to Androvsky.
He did not speak, and his silence made her consciously demand hisacquiescence in her admiration.
"Did you ever see anything more beautiful and more characteristic ofAfrica?" she asked.
"Madame," he said in a slow, stern voice, "I did not look at her."
Domini felt piqued.
"Why not?" she retorted.
Androvsky's face was cloudy and almost cruel.
"These native women do not interest me," he said. "I see nothingattractive in them."
Domini knew that he was telling her a lie. Had she not seen him watchingthe dancing girls in Tahar's cafe? Anger rose in her. She said toherself then that it was anger at man's hypocrisy. Afterwards she knewthat it was anger at Androvsky's telling a lie to her.
"I can scarcely believe that," she answered bluntly.
They looked at each other.
"Why not, Madame?" he said. "If I say it is so?"
She hesitated. At that moment she realised, with hot astonishment, thatthere was something in this man that could make her almost afraid, thatcould prevent her even, perhaps, from doing the thing she had resolvedto do. Immediately she felt hostile to him, and she knew that, at thatmoment, he was feeling hostile to her.
"If you say it is so naturally I am bound to take your word for it," shesaid coldly.
He flushed and looked down. The rigid defiance that had confronted herdied out of his face.
Honest Mustapha broke joyously upon them with the coffee. Domini helpedAndrovsky to it. She had to make a great effort to perform this simpleact with quiet, and apparently indifferent, composure.
"Thank you, Madame."
His voice sounded humble, but she felt hard and as if ice were in allher veins. She sipped her coffee, looking straight before her at thestream. The magenta robe appeared once more coming out from the brownwall. A yellow robe succeeded it, a scarlet, a deep purple. The girl,with three curious young companions, stood in the sun examining theforeigners with steady, unflinching eyes. Domini smiled grimly. Fategave her an opportunity. She beckoned to the girls. They looked at eachother but did not move. She held up a bit of silver so that the sun wason it, and beckoned them again. The magenta robe was lifted above thepretty knees it had covered. The yellow, the scarlet, the deep purplerobes rose too, making their separate revelations. And the four girls,all staring at the silver coin, waded through the muddy water and stoodbefore Domini and Androvsky, blotting out the glaring sunshine withtheir young figures. Their smiling faces were now eager and confident,and they stretched out their delicate hands hopefully to the silver.Domini signified that they must wait a moment.
She felt full of malice.
The girls wore many ornaments. She began slowly and deliberately toexamine them; the huge gold earrings that were as large as the littleears that sustained them, the bracelets and anklets, the triangularsilver skewers that fastened the draperies across the gentle swellingbreasts, the narrow girdles, worked with gold thread, and hung withlumps of coral, that circled the small, elastic waists. Her inventorywas an adagio, and while it lasted Androvsky sat on his low straw chairwith this wall of young womanhood before him, of young womanhood nolonger self-conscious and timid, but eager, hardy, natural, warm withthe sun and damp with the trickling drops of the water. The vividdraperies touched him, and presently a little hand stole out to hisbreast, caught at the silver chain that lay across it, and jerked out ofits hiding-place--a wooden cross.
Domini saw the light on it for a second, heard a low, fierceexclamation, saw Androvsky's arm push the pretty hand roughly away, andthen a thing that was strange.
He got up violently from his chair with the cross hanging loose on hisbreast. Then he seized hold of it, snapped the chain in two, threw thecross passionately into the stream and walked away down the garden. Thefour girls, with a twittering cry of excitement, rushed into thewater, heedless of draperies, bent down, knelt down, and began to feelfrantically in the mud for the vanished ornament. Domini stood up andwatched them. Androvsky did not come back. Some minutes passed. Thenthere was an exclamation of triumph from the stream. The girl in magentaheld up the dripping cross with the bit of silver chain in herdripping fingers. Domini cast a swift glance behind her. Androvsky haddisappeared. Quickly she went to the edge of the water. As she was inriding-dress she wore no ornaments except two earrings made of largeand beautiful turquoises. She took them hastily out of her ears and heldthem out to the girl, signifying by gestures that she bartered them forthe little cross and chain. The girl hesitated, but the clear blue tintof the turquoise pleased her eyes. She yielded, snatched the earringswith an eager, gave up the cross and chain with a reluctant, hand.Domini's fingers closed round the wet gold. She threw some coins acrossthe stream on to the bank, and turned away, thrusting the cross into herbosom.
And she felt at that moment as if she had saved a sacred thing fromoutrage.
At the cabaret door she found Androvsky, once more surrounded by Arabs,whom honest Mustapha was trying to beat off. He turned when he heardher. His eyes were still full of a light that revealed an intensity ofmental agitation, and she saw his left hand, which hung down, quiveringagainst his side. But he succeeded in schooling his voice as he asked:
"Do you wish to visit the village, Madame?"
"Yes. But don't let me bother you if you would rather--"
"I will come. I wish to come."
She did not believe it. She felt that he was in great pain, both of bodyand mind. His fall had hurt him. She knew
that by the way he moved hisright arm. The unaccustomed exercise had made him stiff. Probably thephysical discomfort he was silently enduring had acted as an irritant tothe mind. She remembered that it was caused by his determination to beher companion, and the ice in her melted away. She longed to make himcalmer, happier. Secretly she touched the little cross that lay underher habit. He had thrown it away in a passion. Well, some day perhapsshe would have the pleasure of giving it back to him. Since he hadworn it he must surely care for it, and even perhaps for that which itrecalled.
"We ought to visit the mosque, I think," she said.
"Yes, Madame."
The assent sounded determined yet reluctant. She knew this was allagainst his will. Mustapha took charge of them, and they set out downthe narrow street, accompanied by a little crowd. They crossed theglaring market-place, with its booths of red meat made black by flies,its heaps of refuse, its rows of small and squalid hutches, in whichsat serious men surrounded by their goods. The noise here was terrific.Everyone seemed shouting, and the uproar of the various trades, theclamour of hammers on sheets of iron, the dry tap of the shoemaker'swooden wand on the soles of countless slippers, the thud of thecoffee-beater's blunt club on the beans, and the groaning grunt withwhich he accompanied each downward stroke mingled with the incessantroar of camels, and seemed to be made more deafening and intolerable bythe fierce heat of the sun, and by the innumerable smells which seethedforth upon the air. Domini felt her nerves set on edge, and was thankfulwhen they came once more into the narrow alleys that ran everywherebetween the brown, blind houses. In them there was shade and silence andmystery. Mustapha strode before to show the way, Domini and Androvskyfollowed, and behind glided the little mob of barefoot inquisitors inlong shirts, speechless and intent, and always hopeful of some chancescattering of money by the wealthy travellers.
The tumult of the market-place at length died away, and Domini wasconscious of a curious, far-off murmur. At first it was so faint thatshe was scarcely aware of it, and merely felt the soothing influence ofits level monotony. But as they walked on it grew deeper, stronger. Itwas like the sound of countless multitudes of bees buzzing in the noonamong flowers, drowsily, ceaselessly. She stopped under a low mud archto listen. And when she listened, standing still, a feeling of awecame upon her, and she knew that she had never heard such a strangelyimpressive, strangely suggestive sound before.
"What is that?" she said.
She looked at Androvsky.
"I don't know, Madame. It must be people."
"But what can they be doing?"
"They are praying in the mosque where Sidi-Zerzour is buried," saidMustapha.
Domini remembered the perfume-seller. This was the sound she had beardin his sunken chamber, infinitely multiplied. They went on again slowly.Mustapha had lost something of his flaring manner, and his gait wassubdued. He walked with a sort of soft caution, like a man approachingholy ground. And Domini was moved by his sudden reverence. It wasimpressive in such a fierce and greedy scoundrel. The level murmurdeepened, strengthened. All the empty and dim alleys surrounding theunseen mosque were alive with it, as if the earth of the houses, thepalm-wood beams, the iron bars of the tiny, shuttered windows, the verythorns of the brushwood roofs were praying ceaselessly and intently insecret under voices. This was a world intense with prayer as a flame isintense with heat, with prayer penetrating and compelling, urgent in itspersistence, powerful in its deep and sultry concentration, yet almostoppressive, almost terrible in its monotony.
"Allah-Akbar! Allah-Akbar!" It was the murmur of the desert and themurmur of the sun. It was the whisper of the mirage, and of the airsthat stole among the palm leaves. It was the perpetual heart-beat ofthis world that was engulfing her, taking her to its warm and glowingbosom with soft and tyrannical intention.
"Allah! Allah! Allah!" Surely God must be very near, bending to such aneverlasting cry. Never before, not even when the bell sounded and theHost was raised, had Domini felt the nearness of God to His world, theabsolute certainty of a Creator listening to His creatures, watchingthem, wanting them, meaning them some day to be one with Him, as shefelt it now while she threaded the dingy alleys towards these countlessmen who prayed.
Androvsky was walking slowly as if in pain.
"Your shoulder isn't hurting you?" she whispered.
This long sound of prayer moved her to the soul, made her feel very fullof compassion for everybody and everything, and as if prayer were a cordbinding the world together. He shook his head silently. She looked athim, and felt that he was moved also, but whether as she was she couldnot tell. His face was like that of a man stricken with awe. Mustaphaturned round to them. The everlasting murmur was now so near thatit seemed to be within them, as if they, too, prayed at the tomb ofZerzour.
"Follow me into the court, Madame," Mustapha said, "and remain at thedoor while I fetch the slippers."
They turned a corner, and came to an open space before an archway,which led into the first of the courts surrounding the mosque. Underthe archway Arabs were sitting silently, as if immersed in profoundreveries. They did not move, but stared upon the strangers, and Dominifancied that there was enmity in their eyes. Beyond them, upon anuneven pavement surrounded with lofty walls, more Arabs were gathered,kneeling, bowing their heads to the ground, and muttering ceaselesswords in deep, almost growling, voices. Their fingers slipped over thebeads of the chaplets they wore round their necks, and Domini thoughtof her rosary. Some prayed alone, removed in shady corners, with facesturned to the wall. Others were gathered into knots. But each onepursued his own devotions, immersed in a strange, interior solitude towhich surely penetrated an unseen ray of sacred light. There were youngboys praying, and old, wrinkled men, eagles of the desert, with fierceeyes that did not soften as they cried the greatness of Allah, thegreatness of his Prophet, but gleamed as if their belief were a thingof flame and bronze. The boys sometimes glanced at each other while theyprayed, and after each glance they swayed with greater violence, andbowed down with more passionate abasement. The vision of prayer hadstirred them to a young longing for excess. The spirit of emulationflickered through them and turned their worship into war.
In a second and smaller court before the portal of the mosque menwere learning the Koran. Dressed in white they sat in circles, holdingsquares of some material that looked like cardboard covered with minuteArab characters, pretty, symmetrical curves and lines, dots and dashes.The teachers squatted in the midst, expounding the sacred text in nasalvoices with a swiftness and vivacity that seemed pugnacious. Therewas violence within these courts. Domini could imagine the worshippersspringing up from their knees to tear to pieces an intruding dog of anunbeliever, then sinking to their knees again while the blood trickledover the sun-dried pavement and the lifeless body, lay there to rot anddraw the flies.
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
There was something imperious in such ardent, such concentrated anduntiring worship, a demand which surely could not be overlooked or setaside. The tameness, the half-heartedness of Western prayer and Westernpraise had no place here. This prayer was hot as the sunlight, thispraise was a mounting fire. The breath of this human incense was as thebreath of a furnace pouring forth to the gates of the Paradise of Allah.It gave to Domini a quite new conception of religion, of the relationbetween Creator and created. The personal pride which, like blood ina body, runs through all the veins of the mind of Mohammedanism, thatmeasureless hauteur which sets the soul of a Sultan in the twistedframe of a beggar at a street corner, and makes impressive, even almostmajestical, the filthy marabout, quivering with palsy and devoured bydisease, who squats beneath a holy bush thick with the discoloured ragsof the faithful, was not abased at the shrine of the warrior, Zerzour,was not cast off in the act of adoration. These Arabs humbled themselvesin the body. Their foreheads touched the stones. By their attitudes theyseemed as if they wished to make themselves even with the ground, toshrink into the space occupied by a grain of sand. Yet they were proudin the presence of
Allah, as if the firmness of their belief in him andhis right dealing, the fury of their contempt and hatred for those wholooked not towards Mecca nor regarded Ramadan, gave them a patent ofnobility. Despite their genuflections they were all as men who knew,and never forgot, that on them was conferred the right to keep on theirhead-covering in the presence of their King. With their closed eyesthey looked God full in the face. Their dull and growling murmur had themajesty of thunder rolling through the sky.
Mustapha had disappeared within the mosque, leaving Domini and Androvskyfor the moment alone in the midst of the worshippers. From the shadowyinterior came forth a ceaseless sound of prayer to join the prayerwithout. There was a narrow stone seat by the mosque door and she satdown upon it. She felt suddenly weary, as one being hypnotised feelsweary when the body and spirit begin to yield to the spell of theoperator. Androvsky remained standing. His eyes were fixed on theground, and she thought his face looked almost phantom-like, as if theblood had sunk away from it, leaving it white beneath the brown tintset there by the sun. He stayed quite still. The dark shadow cast by thetowering mosque fell upon him, and his immobile figure suggested to herranges of infinite melancholy. She sighed as one oppressed. There wasan old man praying near them at the threshold of the door, with his faceturned towards the interior. He was very thin, almost a skeleton, wasdressed in rags through which his copper-coloured body, sharp withscarce-covered bones, could be seen, and had a scanty white beardsticking up, like a brush, at the tip of his pointed chin. His face,worn with hardship and turned to the likeness of parchment by timeand the action of the sun, was full of senile venom; and his toothlessmouth, with its lips folded inwards, moved perpetually, as if hewere trying to bite. With rhythmical regularity, like one obeying aconductor, he shot forth his arms towards the mosque as if he wished tostrike it, withdrew them, paused, then shot them forth again. And ashis arms shot forth he uttered a prolonged and trembling shriek, full ofweak, yet intense, fury.
He was surely crying out upon God, denouncing God for the evils thathad beset his nearly ended life. Poor, horrible old man! Androvsky wascloser to him than she was, but did not seem to notice him. Once she hadseen him she could not take her eyes from him. His perpetual gesture,his perpetual shriek, became abominable to her in the midst of thebowing bodies and the humming voices of prayer. Each time he struckat the mosque and uttered his piercing cry she seemed to hear an oathspoken in a sanctuary. She longed to stop him. This one blasphemer beganto destroy for her the mystic atmosphere created by the multitudes ofadorers, and at last she could no longer endure his reiterated enmity.
She touched Androvsky's arm. He started and looked at her.
"That old man," she whispered. "Can't you speak to him?"
Androvsky glanced at him for the first time.
"Speak to him, Madame? Why?"
"He--he's horrible!"
She felt a sudden disinclination to tell Androvsky why the old man washorrible to her.
"What do you wish me to say to him?"
"I thought perhaps you might be able to stop him from doing that."
Androvsky bent down and spoke to the old man in Arabic.
He shot out his arms and reiterated his trembling shriek. It pierced thesound of prayer as lightning pierces cloud.
Domini got up quickly.
"I can't bear it," she said, still in a whisper. "It's as if he werecursing God."
Androvsky looked at the old man again, this time with profoundattention.
"Isn't it?" she said. "Isn't it as if he were cursing God while thewhole world worshipped? And that one cry of hatred seems louder than thepraises of the whole world."
"We can't stop it."
Something in his voice made her say abruptly:
"Do you wish to stop it?"
He did not answer. The old man struck at the mosque and shrieked. Dominishuddered.
"I can't stay here," she said.
At this moment Mustapha appeared, followed by the guardian of themosque, who carried two pairs of tattered slippers.
"Monsieur and Madame must take off their boots. Then I will show themosque."
Domini put on the slippers hastily, and went into the mosque withoutwaiting to see whether Androvsky was following. And the old man'sfurious cry pursued her through the doorway.
Within there was space and darkness. The darkness seemed to be praying.Vistas of yellowish-white arches stretched away in front, to right andleft. On the floor, covered with matting, quantities of shrouded figuresknelt and swayed, stood up suddenly, knelt again, bowed down theirforeheads. Preceded by Mustapha and the guide, who walked on theirstockinged feet, Domini slowly threaded her way among them, followinga winding path whose borders were praying men. To prevent her slippersfrom falling off she had to shuffle along without lifting her feet fromthe ground. With the regularity of a beating pulse the old man's shriek,fainter now, came to her from without. But presently, as she penetratedfarther into the mosque, it was swallowed up by the sound of prayer. Noone seemed to see her or to know that she was there. She brushed againstthe white garments of worshippers, and when she did so she felt as ifshe touched the hem of the garments of mystery, and she held her habittogether with her hands lest she should recall even one of these heartsthat were surely very far off.
Mustapha and the guardian stood still and looked round at Domini. Theirfaces were solemn. The expression of greedy anxiety had gone out ofMustapha's eyes. For the moment the thought of money had been driven outof his mind by some graver pre-occupation. She saw in the semi-darknesstwo wooden doors set between pillars. They were painted green andred, and fastened with clamps and bolts of hammered copper that lookedenormously old. Against them were nailed two pictures of winged horseswith human heads, and two more pictures representing a fantastical townof Eastern houses and minarets in gold on a red background. Balls ofpurple and yellow glass, and crystal chandeliers, hung from the highceiling above these doors, with many ancient lamps; and two tatteredand dusty banners of pale pink and white silk, fringed with gold andpowdered with a gold pattern of flowers, were tied to the pillars withthin cords of camel's hair.
"This is the tomb of Sidi-Zerzour," whispered Mustapha. "It is openedonce a year."
The guardian of the mosque fell on his knees before the tomb.
"That is Mecca."
Mustapha pointed to the pictures of the city. Then he, too, dropped downand pressed his forehead against the matting. Domini glanced round forAndrovsky. He was not there. She stood alone before the tomb of Zerzour,the only human being in the great, dim building who was not worshipping.And she felt a terrible isolation, as if she were excommunicated, asif she dared not pray, for a moment almost as if the God to whom thistorrent of worship flowed were hostile to her alone.
Had her father ever felt such a sensation of unutterable solitude?
It passed quickly, and, standing under the votive lamps before thepainted doors, she prayed too, silently. She shut her eyes and imagineda church of her religion--the little church of Beni-Mora. She triedto imagine the voice of prayer all about her, the voice of the greatCatholic Church. But that was not possible. Even when she saw nothing,and turned her soul inward upon itself, and strove to set this newworld into which she had come far off, she heard in the long murmur thatfilled it a sound that surely rose from the sand, from the heart and thespirit of the sand, from the heart and the spirit of desert places, andthat went up in the darkness of the mosque and floated under the archesthrough the doorway, above the palms and the flat-roofed houses, andthat winged its fierce way, like a desert eagle, towards the sun.
Mustapha's hand was on her arm. The guardian, too, had risen from hisknees and drawn from his robe and lit a candle. She came to a tinydoorway, passed through it and began to mount a winding stair. The soundof prayer mounted with her from the mosque, and when she came out uponthe platform enclosed in the summit of the minaret she heard it stilland it was multiplied. For all the voices from the outside courts joinedit, and many voices from the roofs of the
houses round about.
Men were praying there too, praying in the glare of the sun upon theirhousetops. She saw them from the minaret, and she saw the town that hadsprung up round the tomb of the saint, and all the palms of the oasis,and beyond them immeasurable spaces of desert.
"Allah-Akbar! Allah-Akbar!"
She was above the eternal cry now. She had mounted like a prayer towardsthe sun, like a living, pulsing prayer, like the soul of prayer. Shegazed at the far-off desert and saw prayer travelling, the soulof prayer travelling--whither? Where was the end? Where was thehalting-place, with at last the pitched tent, the camp fires, and thelong, the long repose?
* * * * *
When she came down and reached the court she found the old man stillstriking at the mosque and shrieking out his trembling imprecation. Andshe found Androvsky still standing by him with fascinated eyes.
She had mounted with the voice of prayer into the sunshine, surely alittle way towards God.
Androvsky had remained in the dark shadow with a curse.
It was foolish, perhaps--a woman's vagrant fancy--but she wished he hadmounted with her.
BOOK III. THE GARDEN
The Garden of Allah Page 9
