CHAPTER X
It was noon in the desert.
The voice of the Mueddin died away on the minaret, and the goldensilence that comes out of the heart of the sun sank down once moresoftly over everything. Nature seemed unnaturally still in the heat.The slight winds were not at play, and the palms of Beni-Mora stoodmotionless as palm trees in a dream. The day was like a dream, intenseand passionate, yet touched with something unearthly, something almostspiritual. In the cloudless blue of the sky there seemed a magicaldepth, regions of colour infinitely prolonged. In the vision of thedistances, where desert blent with sky, earth surely curving up to meetthe downward curving heaven, the dimness was like a voice whisperingstrange petitions. The ranges of mountains slept in the burning sand,and the light slept in their clefts like the languid in cool places.For there was a glorious languor even in the light, as if the sun werefaintly oppressed by the marvel of his power. The clearness of theatmosphere in the remote desert was not obscured, but was impregnatedwith the mystery that is the wonder child of shadows. The far-offgold that kept it seemed to contain a secret darkness. In the oasis ofBeni-Mora men, who had slowly roused themselves to pray, sank down tosleep again in the warm twilight of shrouded gardens or the warm nightof windowless rooms.
In the garden of Count Anteoni Larbi's flute was silent.
"It is like noon in a mirage," Domini said softly.
Count Anteoni nodded.
"I feel as if I were looking at myself a long way off," she added. "Asif I saw myself as I saw the grey sea and the islands on the way toSidi-Zerzour. What magic there is here. And I can't get accustomedto it. Each day I wonder at it more and find it more inexplicable. Italmost frightens me."
"You could be frightened?"
"Not easily by outside things--it least I hope not."
"But what then?"
"I scarcely know. Sometimes I think all the outside things, which dowhat are called the violent deeds in life, are tame, and timid, andridiculously impotent in comparison with the things we can't see, whichdo the deeds we can't describe."
"In the mirage of this land you begin to see the exterior life as amirage? You are learning, you are learning."
There was a creeping sound of something that was almost impish in hisvoice.
"Are you a secret agent?" Domini asked him.
"Of whom, Madame?"
She was silent. She seemed to be considering. He watched her withcuriosity in his bright eyes.
"Of the desert," she answered at length, quite seriously.
"A secret agent has always a definite object. What is mine?"
"How can I know? How can I tell what the desert desires?"
"Already you personify it!"
The network of wrinkles showed itself in his brown face as he smiled,surely with triumph.
"I think I did that from the first," she answered gravely. "I know Idid."
"And what sort of personage does the desert seem to you?"
"You ask me a great many questions to-day."
"Mirage questions, perhaps. Forgive me. Let us listen to thequestion--or is it the demand?--of the desert in this noontide hour, thegreatest hour of all the twenty-four in such a land as this."
They were silent again, watching the noon, listening to it, feeling it,as they had been silent when the Mueddin's nasal voice rose in the callto prayer.
Count Anteoni stood in the sunshine by the low white parapet of thegarden. Domini sat on a low chair in the shadow cast by a great jamelontree. At her feet was a bush of vivid scarlet geraniums, againstwhich her white linen dress looked curiously blanched. There was ahalf-drowsy, yet imaginative light in her gipsy eyes, and her motionlessfigure, her quiet hands, covered with white gloves, lying loosely in herlap, looked attentive and yet languid, as if some spell began to bindher but had not completed its work of stilling all the pulses of lifethat throbbed within her. And in truth there was a spell upon her, thespell of the golden noon. By turns she gave herself to it consciously,then consciously strove to deny herself to its subtle summons. And eachtime she tried to withdraw it seemed to her that the spell was a littlestronger, her power a little weaker. Then her lips curved in a smilethat was neither joyous nor sad, that was perhaps rather part perplexedand part expectant.
After a minute of this silence Count Anteoni drew back from the sun andsat down in a chair beside Domini. He took out his watch.
"Twenty-five minutes," he said, "and my guests will be here."
"Guests!" she said with an accent of surprise.
"I invited the priest to make an even number."
"Oh!"
"You don't dislike him?"
"I like him. I respect him."
"But I'm afraid you aren't pleased?"
Domini looked him straight in the face.
"Why did you invite Father Roubier?" she said.
"Isn't four better than three?"
"You don't want to tell me."
"I am a little malicious. You have divined it, so why should I notacknowledge it? I asked Father Roubier because I wished to see the manof prayer with the man who fled from prayer."
"Mussulman prayer," she said quickly.
"Prayer," he said.
His voice was peculiarly harsh at that moment. It grated like aninstrument on a rough surface. Domini knew that secretly he was standingup for the Arab faith, that her last words had seemed to strike againstthe religion of the people whom he loved with an odd, concealed passionwhose fire she began to feel at moments as she grew to know him better.
It was plain from their manner to each other that their former slightacquaintance had moved towards something like a pleasant friendship.
Domini looked as if she were no longer a wonder-stricken sight-seer inthis marvellous garden of the sun, but as if she had become familiarwith it. Yet her wonder was not gone. It was only different. There wasless sheer amazement, more affection in it. As she had said, she had notbecome accustomed to the magic of Africa. Its strangeness, its contrastsstill startled and moved her. But she began to feel as if she belongedto Beni-Mora, as if Beni-Mora would perhaps miss her a little if shewent away.
Ten days had passed since the ride to Sidi-Zerzour--days rather like adream to Domini.
What she had sought in coming to Beni-Mora she was surely finding. Heract was bringing forth its fruit. She had put a gulf, in which rolledthe sea, between the land of the old life and the land in which at leastthe new life was to begin. The completeness of the severance had actedupon her like a blow that does not stun, but wakens. The days went likea dream, but in the dream there was the stir of birth. Her lassitude waspermanently gone. There had been no returning after the first hoursof excitement. The frost that had numbed her senses had utterly meltedaway. Who could be frost-bound in this land of fire? She had longedfor peace and she was surely finding it, but it was a peace withoutstagnation. Hope dwelt in it, and expectancy, vague but persistent.As to forgetfulness, sometimes she woke from the dream and was almostdazed, almost ashamed to think how much she was forgetting, and howquickly. Her European life and friends--some of them intimate andclose--were like a far-off cloud on the horizon, flying still fartherbefore a steady wind that set from her to it. Soon it would disappear,would be as if it had never been. Now and then, with a sort of fierceobstinacy, she tried to stay the flight she had desired, and desiredstill. She said to herself, "I will remember. It's contemptible toforget like this. It's weak to be able to." Then she looked at themountains or the desert, at two Arabs playing the ladies' game under theshadow of a cafe wall, or at a girl in dusty orange filling a goatskinpitcher at a well beneath a palm tree, and she succumbed to the lullinginfluence, smiling as they smile who hear the gentle ripple of thewaters of Lethe.
She heard them perhaps most clearly when she wandered in Count Anteoni'sgarden. He had made her free of it in their first interview. She hadventured to take him at his word, knowing that if he repented she woulddivine it. He had made her feel that he had not repented. Sometimesshe did not see him as she thr
eaded the sandy alleys between the littlerills, hearing the distant song of Larbi's amorous flute, or sat in thedense shade of the trees watching through a window-space of quiveringgolden leaves the passing of the caravans along the desert tracks.Sometimes a little wreath of ascending smoke, curling above the purplepetals of bougainvilleas, or the red cloud of oleanders, told her of hispresence, in some retired thinking-place. Oftener he joined her, withan easy politeness that did not conceal his oddity, but clothed it in apleasant garment, and they talked for a while or stayed for a while inan agreeable silence that each felt to be sympathetic.
Domini thought of him as a new species of man--a hermit of the world.He knew the world and did not hate it. His satire was rarely quiteungentle. He did not strike her as a disappointed man who fled tosolitude in bitterness of spirit, but rather as an imaginative man withan unusual feeling for romance, and perhaps a desire for freedom thatthe normal civilised life restrained too much. He loved thought as manylove conversation, silence as some love music. Now and then he said asad or bitter thing. Sometimes she seemed to be near to something stern.Sometimes she felt as if there were a secret link which connected himwith the perfume-seller in his little darkened chamber, with the legionswho prayed about the tomb of Sidi-Zerzour. But these moments were rare.As a rule he was whimsical and kind, with the kindness of a good-heartedman who was human even in his detachment from ordinary humanity. Hishumour was a salt with plenty of savour. His imagination was of a sortwhich interested and even charmed her.
She felt, too, that she interested him and that he was a man not readilyinterested in ordinary human beings. He had seen too many and judgedtoo shrewdly and too swiftly to be easily held for very long. She had noambition to hold him, and had never in her life consciously striven toattract or retain any man, but she was woman enough to find hisobvious pleasure in her society agreeable. She thought that her genuineadoration of the garden he had made, of the land in which it was set,had not a little to do with the happy nature of their intercourse. Forshe felt certain that beneath the light satire of his manner, his oftensmiling airs of detachment and quiet independence, there was somethingthat could seek almost with passion, that could cling with resolution,that could even love with persistence. And she fancied that he soughtin the desert, that he clung to its mystery, that he loved it and thegarden he had created in it. Once she had laughingly called him a desertspirit. He had smiled as if with contentment.
They knew little of each other, yet they had become friends in thegarden which he never left.
One day she said to him:
"You love the desert. Why do you never go into it?"
"I prefer to watch it," he relied. "When you are in the desert itbewilders you."
She remembered what she had felt during her first ride with Androvsky.
"I believe you are afraid of it," she said challengingly.
"Fear is sometimes the beginning of wisdom," he answered. "But you arewithout it, I know."
"How do you know?"
"Every day I see you galloping away into the sun."
She thought there was a faint sound of warning--or was it of rebuke--inhis voice. It made her feel defiant.
"I think you lose a great deal by not galloping into the sun too," shesaid.
"But if I don't ride?"
That made her think of Androvsky and his angry resolution. It had notbeen the resolution of a day. Wearied and stiffened as he had been bythe expedition to Sidi-Zerzour, actually injured by his fall--she knewfrom Batouch that he had been obliged to call in the Beni-Mora doctor tobandage his shoulder--she had been roused at dawn on the day followingby his tread on the verandah. She had lain still while it descendedthe staircase, but then the sharp neighing of a horse had awakened anirresistible curiosity in her. She had got up, wrapped herself in afur coat and slipped out on to the verandah. The sun was not above thehorizon line of the desert, but the darkness of night was melting into aluminous grey. The air was almost cold. The palms looked spectral, eventerrible, the empty and silent gardens melancholy and dangerous. Itwas not an hour for activity, for determination, but for reverie, forapprehension.
Below, a sleepy Arab boy, his hood drawn over his head, held thechestnut horse by the bridle. Androvsky came out from the arcade. Hewore a cap pulled down to his eyebrows which changed his appearance,giving him, as seen from above, the look of a groom or stable hand. Hestood for a minute and stared at the horse. Then he limped round to theleft side and carefully mounted, following out the directions Domini hadgiven him the previous day: to avoid touching the animal with his foot,to have the rein in his fingers before leaving the ground, and to comedown in the saddle as lightly as possible. She noted that all her hintswere taken with infinite precaution. Once on the horse he tried to situp straight, but found the effort too great in his weary and bruisedcondition. He leaned forward over the saddle peak, and rode away inthe luminous greyness towards the desert. The horse went quietly, as ifaffected by the mystery of the still hour. Horse and rider disappeared.The Arab boy wandered off in the direction of the village. But Dominiremained looking after Androvsky. She saw nothing but the grim palms andthe spectral atmosphere in which the desert lay. Yet she did not movetill a red spear was thrust up out of the east towards the last waningstar.
He had gone to learn his lesson in the desert.
Three days afterwards she rode with him again. She did not let him knowof her presence on the verandah, and he said nothing of his departure inthe dawn. He spoke very little and seemed much occupied with hishorse, and she saw that he was more than determined--that he was apt atacquiring control of a physical exercise new to him. His great strengthstood him in good stead. Only a man hard in the body could have sorapidly recovered from the effects of that first day of defeat andstruggle. His absolute reticence about his efforts and the iron willthat prompted them pleased Domini. She found them worthy of a man.
She rode with him on three occasions, twice in the oasis through thebrown villages, once out into the desert on the caravan road thatBatouch had told her led at last to Tombouctou. They did not travel faralong it, but Domini knew at once that this route held more fascinationfor her than the route to Sidi-Zerzour. There was far more sand in thisregion of the desert. The little humps crowned with the scrub thecamels feed on were fewer, so that the flatness of the ground was moredefinite. Here and there large dunes of golden-coloured sand rose,some straight as city walls, some curved like seats in an amphitheatre,others indented, crenellated like battlements, undulating in beastlikeshapes. The distant panorama of desert was unbroken by any visible oasisand powerfully suggested Eternity to Domini.
"When I go out into the desert for my long journey I shall go by thisroad," she said to Androvsky.
"You are going on a journey?" he said, looking at her as if startled.
"Some day."
"All alone?"
"I suppose I must take a caravan, two or three Arabs, some horses, atent or two. It's easy to manage. Batouch will arrange it for me."
Androvsky still looked startled, and half angry, she thought.
They had pulled up their horses among the sand dunes. It was nearsunset, and the breath of evening was in the sir, making its coolnesseven more ethereal, more thinly pure than in the daytime. The atmospherewas so clear that when they glanced back they could see the flagfluttering upon the white of the great hotel of Beni-Mora, manykilometres away among the palms; so still that they could hear the barkof a Kabyle off near a nomad's tent pitched in the green land by thewater-springs of old Beni-Mora. When they looked in front of them theyseemed to see thousands of leagues of flatness, stretching on and ontill the pale yellowish brown of it grew darker, merged into a strangeblueness, like the blue of a hot mist above a southern lake, then intoviolet, then into--the thing they could not see, the summoning thingwhose voice Domini's imagination heard, like a remote and thrillingecho, whenever she was in the desert.
"I did not know you were going on a journey, Madame," Androvsky said.
"Don
't you remember?" she rejoined laughingly, "that I told you on thetower I thought peace must dwell out there. Well, some day I shall setout to find it."
"That seems a long time ago, Madame," he muttered.
Sometimes, when speaking to her, he dropped his voice till she couldscarcely hear him, and sounded like a man communing with himself.
A red light from the sinking sun fell upon the dunes. As they rodeback over them their horses seemed to be wading through a silent seaof blood. The sky in the west looked like an enormous conflagration, inwhich tortured things were struggling and lifting twisted arms.
Domini's acquaintance with Androvsky had not progressed as easily andpleasantly as her intercourse with Count Anteoni. She recognised thathe was what is called a "difficult man." Now and then, as if under theprompting influence of some secret and violent emotion, he spoke withapparent naturalness, spoke perhaps out of his heart. Each time he didso she noticed that there was something of either doubt or amazement inwhat he said. She gathered that he was slow to rely, quick to mistrust.She gathered, too, that very many things surprised him, and felt surethat he hid nearly all of them from her, and would--had not his own willsometimes betrayed him--have hidden all. His reserve was as intense aseverything about him. There was a fierceness in it that revealed itsexistence. He always conveyed to her a feeling of strength, physical andmental. Yet he always conveyed, too, a feeling of uneasiness. To a womanof Domini's temperament uneasiness usually implies a public or secretweakness. In Androvsky's she seemed to be aware of passion, as if itwere one to dash obstacles aside, to break through doors of iron, torush out into the open. And then--what then? To tremble at the worldbefore him? At what he had done? She did not know. But she did knowthat even in his uneasiness there seemed to be fibre, muscle, sinew,nerve--all which goes to make strength, swiftness.
Speech was singularly difficult to him. Silence seemed to be natural,not irksome. After a few words he fell into it and remained in it. Andhe was less self-conscious in silence than in speech. He seemed, shefancied, to feel himself safer, more a man when he was not speaking. Tohim the use of words was surely like a yielding.
He had a peculiar faculty of making his presence felt when he wassilent, as if directly he ceased from speaking the flame in him wasfanned and leaped up at the outside world beyond its bars.
She did not know whether he was a gentleman or not.
If anyone had asked her, before she came to Beni-Mora, whether it wouldbe possible for her to take four solitary rides with a man, to meethim--if only for a few minutes--every day of ten days, to sit oppositeto him, and not far from him, at meals during the same space of time,and to be unable to say to herself whether he was or was not a gentlemanby birth and education--feeling set aside--she would have answeredwithout hesitation that it would be utterly impossible. Yet so it was.She could not decide. She could not place him. She could not imaginewhat his parentage, what his youth, his manhood had been. She couldnot fancy him in any environment--save that golden light, that blueradiance, in which she had first consciously and fully met him face toface. She could not hear him in converse with any set of men or women,or invent, in her mind, what he might be likely to say to them. Shecould not conceive him bound by any ties of home, or family, mother,sister, wife, child. When she looked at him, thought about him, hepresented himself to her alone, like a thing in the air.
Yet he was more male than other men, breathed humanity--of some kind--asfire breathes heat.
The child there was in him almost confused her, made her wonder whetherlong contact with the world had tarnished her own original simplicity.But she only saw the child in him now and then, and she fancied that it,too, he was anxious to conceal.
This man had certainly a power to rouse feeling in others. She knewit by her own experience. By turns he had made her feel motherly,protecting, curious, constrained, passionate, energetic, timid--yes,almost timid and shy. No other human being had ever, even at moments,thus got the better of her natural audacity, lack of self-consciousness,and inherent, almost boyish, boldness. Nor was she aware what it was inhim which sometimes made her uncertain of herself.
She wondered. But he often woke up wonder in her.
Despite their rides, their moments of intercourse in the hotel, onthe verandah, she scarcely felt more intimate with him than she hadat first. Sometimes indeed she thought that she felt less so, that themoment when the train ran out of the tunnel into the blue country wasthe moment in which they had been nearest to each other since they trodthe verges of each other's lives.
She had never definitely said to herself: "Do I like him or dislikehim?"
Now, as she sat with Count Anteoni watching the noon, the half-drowsy,half-imaginative expression had gone out of her face. She looked ratherrigid, rather formidable.
Androvsky and Count Anteoni had never met. The Count had seen Androvskyin the distance from his garden more than once, but Androvsky had notseen him. The meeting that was about to take place was due to Domini.She had spoken to Androvsky on several occasions of the romantic beautyof this desert garden.
"It is like a garden of the _Arabian Nights_," she had said.
He did not look enlightened, and she was moved to ask him abruptlywhether he had ever read the famous book. He had not. A doubt came toher whether he had ever even heard of it. She mentioned the fact ofCount Anteoni's having made the garden, and spoke of him, sketchinglightly his whimsicality, his affection for the Arabs, his love ofsolitude, and of African life. She also mentioned that he was by birth aRoman.
"But scarcely of the black world I should imagine," she added.
Androvsky said nothing.
"You should go and see the garden," she continued. "Count Anteoni allowsvisitors to explore it."
"I am sure it must be very beautiful, Madame," he replied, rathercoldly, she thought.
He did not say that he would go.
As the garden won upon her, as its enchanted mystery, the airy wonderof its shadowy places, the glory of its trembling golden vistas, therestfulness of its green defiles, the strange, almost unearthly peacethat reigned within it embalmed her spirit, as she learned not only tomarvel at it, to be entranced by it, but to feel at home in it and loveit, she was conscious of a persistent desire that Androvsky should knowit too.
Perhaps his dogged determination about the riding had touched her morethan she was aware. She often saw before her the bent figure, thatlooked tired, riding alone into the luminous grey; starting thus earlythat his act, humble and determined, might not be known by her. He didnot know that she had seen him, not only on that morning, but on manysubsequent mornings, setting forth to study the new art in the solitudeof the still hours. But the fact that she had seen, had watched tillhorse and rider vanished beyond the palms, had understood why, perhapsmoved her to this permanent wish that he could share her pleasure in thegarden, know it as she did.
She did not argue with herself about the matter. She only knew that shewished, that presently she meant Androvsky to pass through the whitegate and be met on the sand by Smain with his rose.
One day Count Anteoni had asked her whether she had made acquaintancewith the man who had fled from prayer.
"Yes," she said. "You know it."
"How?"
"We have ridden to Sidi-Zerzour."
"I am not always by the wall."
"No, but I think you were that day."
"Why do you think so?"
"I am sure you were."
He did not either acknowledge or deny it.
"He has never been to see my garden," he said.
"No."
"He ought to come."
"I have told him so."
"Ah? Is he coming?"
"I don't think so."
"Persuade him to. I have a pride in my garden--oh, you have no idea whata pride! Any neglect of it, any indifference about it rasps me, playsupon the raw nerve each one of us possesses."
He spoke smilingly. She did not know what he was feeling, whether theremo
te thinker or the imp within him was at work or play.
"I doubt if he is a man to be easily persuaded," she said.
"Perhaps not--persuade him."
After a moment Domini said:
"I wonder whether you recognise that there are obstacles which the humanwill can't negotiate?"
"I could scarcely live where I do without recognising that the grains ofsand are often driven by the wind. But when there is no wind!"
"They lie still?"
"And are the desert. I want to have a strange experience."
"What?"
"A _fete_ in my garden."
"A fantasia?"
"Something far more banal. A lunch party, a _dejeuner_. Will you honourme?"
"By breakfasting with you? Yes, of course. Thank you."
"And will you bring--the second sun worshipper?"
She looked into the Count's small, shining eyes.
"Monsieur Androvsky?"
"If that is his name. I can send him an invitation, of course. Butthat's rather formal, and I don't think he is formal."
"On what day do you ask us?"
"Any day--Friday."
"And why do you ask us?"
"I wish to overcome this indifference to my garden. It hurts me, notonly in my pride, but in my affections."
The whole thing had been like a sort of serious game. Domini had notsaid that she would convey the odd invitation; but when she was alone,and thought of the way in which Count Anteoni had said "Persuade him,"she knew she would, and she meant Androvsky to accept it. This was anopportunity of seeing him in company with another man, a man of theworld, who had read, travelled, thought, and doubtless lived.
She asked him that evening, and saw the red, that came as it comes in aboy's face, mount to his forehead.
"Everybody who comes to Beni-Mora comes to see the garden," she saidbefore he could reply. "Count Anteoni is half angry with you for beingan exception."
"But--but, Madame, how can Monsieur the Count know that I am here? Ihave not seen him."
"He knows there is a second traveller, and he's a hospitable man.Monsieur Androvsky, I want you to come; I want you to see the garden."
"It is very kind of you, Madame."
The reluctance in his voice was extreme. Yet he did not like to say no.While he hesitated, Domini continued:
"You remember when I asked you to ride?"
"Yes, Madame."
"That was new to you. Well, it has given you pleasure, hasn't it?"
"Yes, Madame."
"So will the garden. I want to put another pleasure into your life."
She had begun to speak with the light persuasiveness of a woman of theworld--wishing to overcome a man's diffidence or obstinacy, but whileshe said the words she felt a sudden earnestness rush over her. It wentinto the voice, and surely smote upon him like a gust of the hot windthat sometimes blows out of the desert.
"I shall come, Madame," he said quickly.
"Friday. I may be in the garden in the morning. I'll meet you at thegate at half-past twelve."
"Friday?" he said.
Already he seemed to be wavering in his acceptance. Domini did not staywith him any longer.
"I'm glad," she said in a finishing tone.
And she went away.
Now Count Anteoni told her that he had invited the priest. Shefelt vexed, and her face showed that she did. A cloud came down andimmediately she looked changed and disquieting. Yet she liked thepriest. As she sat in silence her vexation became more profound. Shefelt certain that if Androvsky had known the priest was coming he wouldnot have accepted the invitation. She wished him to come, yet shewished he had known. He might think that she had known the fact and hadconcealed it. She did not suppose for a moment that he disliked FatherRoubier personally, but he certainly avoided him. He bowed to him in thecoffee-room of the hotel, but never spoke to him. Batouch had told herabout the episode with Bous-Bous. And she had seen Bous-Bous endeavourto renew the intimacy and repulsed with determination. Androvsky mustdislike the priesthood. He might fancy that she, a believing Catholic,had--a number of disagreeable suppositions ran through her mind. She hadalways been inclined to hate the propagandist since the tragedy inher family. It was a pity Count Anteoni had not indulged his imp in adifferent fashion. The beauty of the noon seemed spoiled.
"Forgive my malice," Count Anteoni said. "It was really a thing ofthistledown. Can it be going to do harm? I can scarcely think so."
"No, no."
She roused herself, with the instinct of a woman who has lived muchin the world, to conceal the vexation that, visible, would cause adepression to stand in the natural place of cheerfulness.
"The desert is making me abominably natural," she thought.
At this moment the black figure of Father Roubier came out of theshadows of the trees with Bous-Bous trotting importantly beside it.
"Ah, Father," said Count Anteoni, going to meet him, while Domini gotup from her chair, "it is good of you to come out in the sun to eat fishwith such a bad parishioner as I am. Your little companion is welcome."
He patted Bous-Bous, who took little notice of him.
"You know Miss Enfilden, I think?" continued the Count.
"Father Roubier and I meet every day," said Domini, smiling.
"Mademoiselle has been good enough to take a kind interest in the humblework of the Church in Beni-Mora," said the priest with the serioussimplicity characteristic of him.
He was a sincere man, utterly without pretension, and, as such men oftenare, quietly at home with anybody of whatever class or creed.
"I must go to the garden gate," Domini said. "Will you excuse me for amoment?"
"To meet Monsieur Androvsky? Let us accompany you if Father Roubier--"
"Please don't trouble. I won't be a minute."
Something in her voice made Count Anteoni at once acquiesce, defying hiscourteous instinct.
"We will wait for you here," he said.
There was a whimsical plea for forgiveness in his eyes. Domini's didnot reject it; they did not answer it. She walked away, and the two menlooked after her tall figure with admiration. As she went along thesand paths between the little streams, and came into the deep shade, hervexation seemed to grow darker like the garden ways. For a moment shethought she understood the sensations that must surely sometimes beseta treacherous woman. Yet she was incapable of treachery. Smain wasstanding dreamily on the great sweep of sand before the villa. She andhe were old friends now, and every day he calmly gave her a flower whenshe came into the garden.
"What time is it, Smain?"
"Nearly half-past twelve, Madame."
"Will you open the door and see if anyone is coming?"
He went towards the great door, and Domini sat down on a bench under theevergreen roof to wait. She had seldom felt more discomposed, and beganto reason with herself almost angrily. Even if the presence of thepriest was unpleasant to Androvsky, why should she mind? Antagonism tothe priesthood was certainly not a mental condition to be fostered, buta prejudice to be broken down. But she had wished--she still wished withardour--that Androvsky's first visit to the garden should be a happyone, should pass off delightfully. She had a dawning instinct to makethings smooth for him. Surely they had been rough in the past, roughereven than for herself. And she wondered for an instant whether he hadcome to Beni-Mora, as she had come, vaguely seeking for a happinessscarcely embodied in a definite thought.
"There is a gentleman coming, Madame."
It was the soft voice of Smain from the gate. In a moment Androvskystood before it. Domini saw him framed in the white wood, with abrilliant blue behind him and a narrow glimpse of the watercourse. Hewas standing still and hesitating.
"Monsieur Androvsky!" she called.
He started, looked across the sand, and stepped into the garden with asort of reluctant caution that pained her, she scarcely knew why. Shegot up and went towards him, and they met full in the sunshine.
"I came to be your ciceron
e."
"Thank you, Madame."
There was the click of wood striking against wood as Smain closed thegate. Androvsky turned quickly and looked behind him. His demeanour wasthat of a man whose nerves were tormenting him. Domini began to dreadtelling him of the presence of the priest, and, characteristically, didwithout hesitation what she feared to do.
"This is the way," she said.
Then, as they turned into the shadow of the trees and began to walkbetween the rills of water, she added abruptly:
"Father Roubier is here already, so our party is complete."
Androvsky stood still.
"Father Roubier! You did not tell me he was coming."
"I did not know it till five minutes ago."
She stood still too, and looked at him. There was a flaming of distrustin his eyes, his lips were compressed, and his whole body betokenedhostility.
"I did not understand. I thought Senor Anteoni would be alone here."
"Father Roubier is a pleasant companion, sincere and simple. Everyonelikes him."
"No doubt, Madame. But--the fact is I"--he hesitated, then added, almostwith violence--"I do not care for priests."
"I am sorry. Still, for once--for an hour--you can surely----"
She did not finish the sentence. While she was speaking she felt thebanality of such phrases spoken to such a man, and suddenly changed toneand manner.
"Monsieur Androvsky," she said, laying one hand on his arm, "I knew youwould not like Father Roubier's being here. If I had known he was comingI should have told you in order that you might have kept away if youwished to. But now that you are here--now that Smain has let you in andthe Count and Father Roubier must know of it, I am sure you will stayand govern your dislike. You intend to turn back. I see that. Well, Iask you to stay."
She was not thinking of herself, but of him. Instinct told her to teachhim the way to conceal his aversion. Retreat would proclaim it.
"For yourself I ask you," she added. "If you go, you tell them what youhave told me. You don't wish to do that."
They looked at each other. Then, without a word, he walked on again. Asshe kept beside him she felt as if in that moment their acquaintanceshiphad sprung forward, like a thing that had been forcibly restrained andthat was now sharply released. They did not speak again till they saw,at the end of an alley, the Count and the priest standing togetherbeneath the jamelon tree. Bous-Bous ran forward barking, and Domini wasconscious that Androvsky braced himself up, like a fighter stepping intothe arena. Her keen sensitiveness of mind and body was so infectedby his secret impetuosity of feeling that it seemed to her as if hisencounter with the two men framed in the sunlight were a great eventwhich might be fraught with strange consequences. She almost held herbreath as she and Androvsky came down the path and the fierce sunraysreached out to light up their faces.
Count Anteoni stepped forward to greet them.
"Monsieur Androvsky--Count Anteoni," she said.
The hands of the two men met. She saw that Androvsky's was liftedreluctantly.
"Welcome to my garden," Count Anteoni said with his invariable easycourtesy. "Every traveller has to pay his tribute to my domain. I dareto exact that as the oldest European inhabitant of Beni-Mora."
Androvsky said nothing. His eyes were on the priest. The Count noticedit, and added:
"Do you know Father Roubier?"
"We have often seen each other in the hotel," Father Roubier said withhis usual straightforward simplicity.
He held out his hand, but Androvsky bowed hastily and awkwardly and didnot seem to see it. Domini glanced at Count Anteoni, and surprised apiercing expression in his bright eyes. It died away at once, and hesaid:
"Let us go to the _salle-a-manger_. _Dejeuner_ will be ready, MissEnfilden."
She joined him, concealing her reluctance to leave Androvsky with thepriest, and walked beside him down the path, preceded by Bous-Bous.
"Is my _fete_ going to be a failure?" he murmured.
She did not reply. Her heart was full of vexation, almost of bitterness.She felt angry with Count Anteoni, with Androvsky, with herself. Shealmost felt angry with poor Father Roubier.
"Forgive me! do forgive me!" the Count whispered. "I meant no harm."
She forced herself to smile, but the silence behind them, where the twomen were following, oppressed her. If only Androvsky would speak! He hadnot said one word since they were all together. Suddenly she turned herhead and said:
"Did you ever see such palms, Monsieur Androvsky? Aren't theymagnificent?"
Her voice was challenging, imperative. It commanded him to rousehimself, to speak, as a touch of the lash commands a horse to quickenhis pace. Androvsky raised his head, which had been sunk on his breastas he walked.
"Palms!" he said confusedly.
"Yes, they are wonderful."
"You care for trees?" asked the Count, following Domini's lead andspeaking with a definite intention to force a conversation.
"Yes, Monsieur, certainly."
"I have some wonderful fellows here. After _dejeuner_ you must let meshow them to you. I spent years in collecting my children and teachingthem to live rightly in the desert."
Very naturally, while he spoke, he had joined Androvsky, and now walkedon with him, pointing out the different varieties of trees. Domini wasconscious of a sense of relief and of a strong feeling of gratitudeto their host. Following upon the gratitude came a less pleasantconsciousness of Androvsky's lack of good breeding. He was certainly nota man of the world, whatever he might be. To-day, perhaps absurdly, shefelt responsible for him, and as if he owed it to her to bear himselfbravely and govern his dislikes if they clashed with the feelings ofhis companions. She longed hotly for him to make a good impression, and,when her eyes met Father Roubier's, was almost moved to ask his pardonfor Androvsky's rudeness. But the Father seemed unconscious of it, andbegan to speak about the splendour of the African vegetation.
"Does not its luxuriance surprise you after England?" he said.
"No," she replied bluntly. "Ever since I have been in Africa I have feltthat I was in a land of passionate growth."
"But--the desert?" he replied with a gesture towards the long flats ofthe Sahara, which were still visible between the trees.
"I should find it there too," she answered. "There, perhaps, most ofall."
He looked at her with a gentle wonder. She did not explain that she wasno longer thinking of growth in Nature.
The _salle-a-manger_ stood at the end of a broad avenue of palms not farfrom the villa. Two Arab servants were waiting on each side of the whitestep that led into an ante-room filled with divans and coffee-tables.Beyond was a lofty apartment with an arched roof, in the centre ofwhich was an oval table laid for breakfast, and decorated with masses oftrumpet-shaped scarlet flowers in silver vases. Behind each of the fourhigh-backed chairs stood an Arab motionless as a statue. Evidently theCount's _fete_ was to be attended by a good deal of ceremony. Dominifelt sorry, though not for herself. She had been accustomed to ceremonyall her life, and noticed it, as a rule, almost as little as the airshe breathed. But she feared that to Androvsky it would be novel andunpleasant. As they came into the shady room she saw him glance swiftlyat the walls covered with dark Persian hangings, at the servants intheir embroidered jackets, wide trousers, and snow-white turbans, atthe vivid flowers on the table, then at the tall windows, over whichflexible outside blinds, dull green in colour, were drawn; and it seemedto her that he was feeling like a trapped animal, full of a fury ofuneasiness. Father Roubier's unconscious serenity in the midst of aluxury to which he was quite unaccustomed emphasised Androvsky's secretagitation, which was no secret to Domini, and which she knew must beobvious to Count Anteoni. She began to wish ardently that she had letAndrovsky follow his impulse to go when he heard of Father Roubier'spresence.
They sat down. She was on the Count's right hand, with Androvskyopposite to her and Father Roubier on her left. As they took theirplaces she and the Father said a silent gr
ace and made the sign of theCross, and when she glanced up after doing so she saw Androvsky's handlifted to his forehead. For a moment she fancied that he had joinedin the tiny prayer, and was about to make the sacred sign, but as shelooked at him his hand fell heavily to the table. The glasses by hisplate jingled.
"I only remembered this morning that this is a _jour maigre_," saidCount Anteoni as they unfolded their napkins. "I am afraid, FatherRoubier, you will not be able to do full justice to my chef, Hamdane,although he has thought of you and done his best for you. But I hopeMiss Enfilden and--"
"I keep Friday," Domini interrupted quietly.
"Yes? Poor Hamdane!"
He looked in grave despair, but she knew that he was really pleased thatshe kept the fast day.
"Anyhow," he continued, "I hope that you, Monsieur Androvsky, will beable to join me in testing Hamdane's powers to the full. Or are youtoo----"
He did not continue, for Androvsky at once said, in a loud and firmvoice:
"I keep no fast days."
The words sounded like a defiance flung at the two Catholics, and for amoment Domini thought that Father Roubier was going to treat them as achallenge, for he lifted his head and there was a flash of sudden firein his eyes. But he only said, turning to the Count:
"I think Mademoiselle and I shall find our little Ramadan a very easybusiness. I once breakfasted with you on a Friday--two years ago it was,I think--and I have not forgotten the banquet you gave me."
Domini felt as if the priest had snubbed Androvsky, as a saint mightsnub, without knowing that he did so. She was angry with Androvsky, andyet she was full of pity for him. Why could he not meet courtesy withgraciousness? There was something almost inhuman in his demeanour.To-day he had returned to his worst self, to the man who had twicetreated her with brutal rudeness.
"Do the Arabs really keep Ramadan strictly?" she asked, looking awayfrom Androvsky.
"Very," said Father Roubier. "Although, of course, I am not in sympathywith their religion, I have often been moved by their adherence to itsrules. There is something very grand in the human heart deliberatelytaking upon itself the yoke of discipline."
"Islam--the very word means the surrender of the human will to the willof God," said Count Anteoni. "That word and its meaning lie like theshadow of a commanding hand on the soul of every Arab, even of theabsinthe-drinking renegades one sees here and there who have caught thevices of their conquerors. In the greatest scoundrel that the Prophet'srobe covers there is an abiding and acute sense of necessary surrender.The Arabs, at any rate, do not buzz against their Creator, like midgesraging at the sun in whose beams they are dancing."
"No," assented the priest. "At least in that respect they are superiorto many who call themselves Christians. Their pride is immense, but itnever makes itself ridiculous."
"You mean by trying to defy the Divine Will?" said Domini.
"Exactly, Mademoiselle."
She thought of her dead father.
The servants stole round the table, handing various dishes noiselessly.One of them, at this moment, poured red wine into Androvsky's glass. Heuttered a low exclamation that sounded like the beginning of a protesthastily checked.
"You prefer white wine?" said Count Anteoni.
"No, thank you, Monsieur."
He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.
"Are you a judge of wine?" added the Count. "That is made from my owngrapes. I have vineyards near Tunis."
"It is excellent," said Androvsky.
Domini noticed that he spoke in a louder voice than usual, as if he weremaking a determined effort to throw off the uneasiness that evidentlyoppressed him. He ate heartily, choosing almost ostentatiously dishesin which there was meat. But everything that he did, even this eatingof meat, gave her the impression that he was--subtly, how she did notknow--defying not only the priest, but himself. Now and then she glancedacross at him, and when she did so he was always looking away fromher. After praising the wine he had relapsed into silence, and CountAnteoni--she thought moved by a very delicate sense of tact--did notdirectly address him again just then, but resumed the interruptedconversation about the Arabs, first explaining that the servantsunderstood no French. He discussed them with a minute knowledge thatevidently sprang from a very real affection, and presently she could nothelp alluding to this.
"I think you love the Arabs far more than any Europeans," she said.
He fixed his bright eyes upon her, and she thought that just then theylooked brighter than ever before.
"Why?" he asked quietly.
"Do you know the sound that comes into the voice of a lover of childrenwhen it speaks of a child?"
"Ah!--the note of a deep indulgence?"
"I hear it in yours whenever you speak of the Arabs."
She spoke half jestingly. For a moment he did not reply. Then he said tothe priest:
"You have lived long in Africa, Father. Have not you something of thesame feeling towards these children of the sun?"
"Yes, and I have noticed it in our dead Cardinal."
"Cardinal Lavigerie."
Androvsky bent over his plate. He seemed suddenly to withdraw his mindforcibly from this conversation in which he was taking no active part,as if he refused even to listen to it.
"He is your hero, I know," the Count said sympathetically.
"He did a great deal for me."
"And for Africa. And he was wise."
"You mean in some special way?" Domini said.
"Yes. He looked deep enough into the dark souls of the desert mento find out that his success with them must come chiefly through hisgoodness to their dark bodies. You aren't shocked, Father?"
"No, no. There is truth in that."
But the priest assented rather sadly.
"Mahomet thought too much of the body," he added.
Domini saw the Count compress his lips. Then he turned to Androvsky andsaid:
"Do you think so, Monsieur?"
It was a definite, a resolute attempt to draw his guest into theconversation. Androvsky could not ignore it. He looked up reluctantlyfrom his plate. His eyes met Domini's, but immediately travelled awayfrom them.
"I doubt----" he said.
He paused, laid his hands on the table, clasping its edge, and continuedfirmly, even with a sort of hard violence:
"I doubt if most good men, or men who want to be good, think enoughabout the body, consider it enough. I have thought that. I think itstill."
As he finished he stared at the priest, almost menacingly. Then, as ifmoved by an after-thought, he added:
"As to Mahomet, I know very little about him. But perhaps he obtainedhis great influence by recognising that the bodies of men are of greatimportance, of tremendous--tremendous importance."
Domini saw that the interest of Count Anteoni in his guest was suddenlyand vitally aroused by what he had just said, perhaps even more by hispeculiar way of saying it, as if it were forced from him by some secret,irresistible compulsion. And the Count's interest seemed to takehands with her interest, which had had a much longer existence. FatherRoubier, however, broke in with a slightly cold:
"It is a very dangerous thing, I think, to dwell upon the importance ofthe perishable. One runs the risk of detracting from the much greaterimportance of the imperishable."
"Yet it's the starved wolves that devour the villages," said Androvsky.
For the first time Domini felt his Russian origin. There was a silence.Father Roubier looked straight before him, but Count Anteoni's eyes werefixed piercingly upon Androvsky. At last he said:
"May I ask, Monsieur, if you are a Russian?"
"My father was. But I have never set foot in Russia."
"The soul that I find in the art, music, literature of your country is,to me, the most interesting soul in Europe," the Count said with a ringof deep earnestness in his grating voice.
Spoken as he spoke it, no compliment could have been more gracious, evenmoving. But Androvsky only replied abruptly:
/>
"I'm afraid I know nothing of all that."
Domini felt hot with a sort of shame, as at a close friend's publicdisplay of ignorance. She began to speak to the Count of Russian music,books, with an enthusiasm that was sincere. For she, too, had found inthe soul from the Steppes a meaning and a magic that had taken her soulprisoner. And suddenly, while she talked, she thought of the Desertas the burning brother of the frigid Steppes. Was it the wonder of theeternal flats that had spoken to her inmost heart sometimes in Londonconcert-rooms, in her room at night when she read, forgetting time,which spoke to her now more fiercely under the palms of Africa? At thethought something mystic seemed to stand in her enthusiasm. The mysteryof space floated about her. But she did not express her thought. CountAnteoni expressed it for her.
"The Steppes and the Desert are akin, you know," he said. "Despite theopposition of frost and fire."
"Just what I was thinking!" she exclaimed. "That must be why--"
She stopped short.
"Yes?" said the Count.
Both Father Roubier and Androvsky looked at her with expectancy. But shedid not continue her sentence, and her failure to do so was covered, orat the least excused, by a diversion that secretly she blessed. At thismoment, from the ante-room, there came a sound of African music, bothsoft and barbarous. First there was only one reiterated liquid note,clear and glassy, a note that suggested night in a remote place. Then,beneath it, as foundation to it, rose a rustling sound as of a forestof reeds through which a breeze went rhythmically. Into this stole thebroken song of a thin instrument with a timbre rustic and antique asthe timbre of the oboe, but fainter, frailer. A twang of softly-pluckedstrings supported its wild and pathetic utterance, and presently thealmost stifled throb of a little tomtom that must have been placed at adistance. It was like a beating heart.
The Count and his guests sat listening in silence. Domini began tofeel curiously expectant, yet she did not recognise the odd melody. Hersensation was that some other music must be coming which she had heardbefore, which had moved her deeply at some time in her life. She glancedat the Count and found him looking at her with a whimsical expression,as if he were a kind conspirator whose plot would soon be known.
"What is it?" she asked in a low voice.
He bent towards her.
"Wait!" he whispered. "Listen!"
She saw Androvsky frown. His face was distorted by an expression ofpain, and she wondered if he, like some Europeans, found the barbarityof the desert music ugly and even distressing to the nerves. Whileshe wondered a voice began to sing, always accompanied by the fourinstruments. It was a contralto voice, but sounded like a youth's.
"What is that song?" she asked under her breath. "Surely I must haveheard it!"
"You don't know?"
"Wait!"
She searched her heart. It seemed to her that she knew the song. At someperiod of her life she had certainly been deeply moved by it--but when?where? The voice died away, and was succeeded by a soft chorus singingmonotonously:
"Wurra-Wurra."
Then it rose once more in a dreamy and reticent refrain, like the voiceof a soul communing with itself in the desert, above the instruments andthe murmuring chorus.
"You remember?" whispered the Count.
She moved her head in assent but did not speak. She could not speak. Itwas the song the Arab had sung as he turned into the shadow of the palmtrees, the song of the freed negroes of Touggourt:
"No one but God and I Knows what is in my heart."
The priest leaned back in his chair. His dark eyes were cast down, andhis thin, sun-browned hands were folded together in a way that suggestedprayer. Did this desert song of the black men, children of God likehim as their song affirmed, stir his soul to some grave petition thatembraced the wants of all humanity?
Androvsky was sitting quite still. He was also looking down and the lidscovered his eyes. An expression of pain still lingered on his face, butit was less cruel, no longer tortured, but melancholy. And Domini, asshe listened, recalled the strange cry that had risen within her as theArab disappeared in the sunshine, the cry of the soul in life surroundedby mysteries, by the hands, the footfalls, the voices of hiddenthings--"What is going to happen to me here?" But that cry had risen inher, found words in her, only when confronted by the desert. Before ithad been perhaps hidden in the womb. Only then was it born. And now thedays had passed and the nights, and the song brought with it the cryonce more, the cry and suddenly something else, another voice that, veryfar away, seemed to be making answer to it. That answer she could nothear. The words of it were hidden in the womb as, once, the words of herintense question. Only she felt that an answer had been made. The futureknew, and had begun to try to tell her. She was on the very edge ofknowledge while she listened, but she could not step into the marvellousland.
Presently Count Anteoni spoke to the priest.
"You have heard this song, no doubt, Father?"
Father Roubier shook his head.
"I don't think so, but I can never remember the Arab music"
"Perhaps you dislike it?"
"No, no. It is ugly in a way, but there seems a great deal of meaning init. In this song especially there is--one might almost call it beauty."
"Wonderful beauty," Domini said in a low voice, still listening to thesong.
"The words are beautiful," said the Count, this time addressing himselfto Androvsky. "I don't know them all, but they begin like this:
"'The gazelle dies in the water, The fish dies in the air, And I die in the dunes of the desert sand For my love that is deep and sad.'
"And when the chorus sounds, as now"--and he made a gesture toward theinner room, in which the low murmur of " Wurra-Wurra" rose again, "thesinger reiterates always the same refrain:
"'No one but God and I Knows what is in my heart.'"
Almost as he spoke the contralto voice began to sing the refrain.Androvsky turned pale. There were drops of sweat on his forehead. Helifted his glass of wine to his lips and his hand trembled so that someof the wine was spilt upon the tablecloth. And, as once before, Dominifelt that what moved her deeply moved him even more deeply, whether inthe same way or differently she could not tell. The image of the taperand the torch recurred to her mind. She saw Androvsky with fire roundabout him. The violence of this man surely resembled the violence ofAfrica. There was something terrible about it, yet also something noble,for it suggested a male power, which might make for either good or evil,but which had nothing to do with littleness. For a moment Count Anteoniand the priest were dwarfed, as if they had come into the presence of agiant.
The Arabs handed round fruit. And now the song died softly away. Onlythe instruments went on playing. The distant tomtom was surely thebeating of that heart into whose mysteries no other human heart couldlook. Its reiterated and dim throbbing affected Domini almost terribly.She was relieved, yet regretful, when at length it ceased.
"Shall we go into the ante-room?" the Count said. "Coffee will bebrought there."
"Oh, but--don't let us see them!" Domini exclaimed.
"The musicians?"
She nodded.
"You would rather not hear any more music?"
"If you don't mind!"
He gave an order in Arabic. One of the servants slipped away andreturned almost immediately.
"Now we can go," the Count said. "They have vanished."
The priest sighed. It was evident that the music had moved him too. Asthey got up he said:
"Yes, there was beauty in that song and something more. Some of thesedesert poets can teach us to think."
"A dangerous lesson, perhaps," said the Count. "What do you say,Monsieur Androvsky?"
Androvsky was on his feet. His eyes were turned toward the door throughwhich the sound of the music had come.
"I!" he answered. "I--Monsieur, I am afraid that to me this music meansvery little. I cannot judge of it."
"But the words?" asked the Count with
a certain pressure.
"They do not seem to me to suggest much more than the music."
The Count said no more. As she went into the outer room Domini feltangry, as she had felt angry in the garden at Sidi-Zerzour whenAndrovsky said:
"These native women do not interest me. I see nothing attractive inthem."
For now, as then, she knew that he had lied.
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