CHAPTER XII
The money dropped from Domini's fingers and rolled upon the sand at theDiviner's feet. But though he had surely come to ask for alms, he tookno heed of it. While the Arabs round him fell upon their knees andfought like animals for the plunder, he stood gaping at Domini. Thesmile still flickered about his lips. His hand was still stretched out.
Instinctively she had moved backwards. Something that was like a thrillof fear, mental, not physical, went through her, but she kept her eyessteadily on his, as if, despite the fear, she fought against him.
The contest of the beggars had become so passionate that Count Anteoni'scommands were forgotten. Urged by the pressure from behind those inthe front scrambled or fell over the sacred threshold. The garden wasinvaded by a shrieking mob. Smain ran forward, and the autocrat thatdwelt in the Count side by side with the benefactor suddenly emerged. Heblew his whistle four times. At each call a stalwart Arab appeared.
"Shut the gate!" he commanded sternly.
The attendants furiously repulsed the mob, using their fists and feetwithout mercy. In the twinkling of an eye the sand was cleared and Smainhad his hand upon the door to shut it. But the Diviner stopped him witha gesture, and in a fawning yet imperious voice called out something tothe Count.
The Count turned to Domini.
"This is an interesting fellow. Would you like to know him?"
Her mind said no, yet her body assented. For she bowed her head. TheCount beckoned. The Diviner stepped stealthily on to the sand with anair of subtle triumph, and Smain swung forward the great leaf of palmwood.
"Wait!" the Count cried, as if suddenly recollecting something. "Whereis Monsieur Androvsky?"
"Isn't he----?" Domini glanced round. "I don't know."
He went quickly to the door and looked out. The Arabs, silent now andrespectful, crowded about him, salaaming. He smiled at them kindly,and spoke to one or two. They answered gravely. An old man with oneeye lifted his hand, in which was a tomtom of stretched goatskin, andpointed towards the oasis, rapidly moving his toothless jaws. The Countstepped back into the garden, dismissed his pensioners with a masterfulwave of the hand, and himself shut the door.
"Monsieur Androvsky has gone--without saying good-bye," he said.
Again Domini felt ashamed for Androvsky.
"I don't think he likes my pensioners," the Count added, in amusedvoice, "or me."
"I am sure--" Domini began.
But he stopped her.
"Miss Enfilden, in a world of lies I look to you for truth."
His manner chafed her, but his voice had a ring of earnestness. Shesaid nothing. All this time the Diviner was standing on the sand, stillsmiling, but with downcast eyes. His thin body looked satirical andDomini felt a strong aversion from him, yet a strong interest in himtoo. Something in his appearance and manner suggested power and mysteryas well as cunning. The Count said some words to him in Arabic, andat once he walked forward and disappeared among the trees, going sosilently and smoothly that she seemed to watch a panther gliding intothe depths of a jungle where its prey lay hid. She looked at the Countinterrogatively.
"He will wait in the _fumoir_."
"Where we first met?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"For us, if you choose."
"Tell me about him. I have seen him twice. He followed me with a bag ofsand."
"He is a desert man. I don't know his tribe, but before he settled herehe was a nomad, one of the wanderers who dwell in tents, a man of thesand; as much of the sand as a viper or a scorpion. One would supposesuch beings were bred by the marriage of the sand-grains. The sand tellshim secrets."
"He says. Do you believe it?"
"Would you like to test it?"
"How?"
"By coming with me to the _fumoir_?"
She hesitated obviously.
"Mind," he added, "I do not press it. A word from me and he is gone.But you are fearless, and you have spoken already, will speak much moreintimately in the future, with the desert spirits."
"How do you know that?"
"The 'much more intimately'?"
"Yes."
"I do not know it, but--which is much more--I feel it."
She was silent, looking towards the trees where the Diviner haddisappeared. Count Anteoni's boyish merriment had faded away. He lookedgrave, almost sad.
"I am not afraid," she said at last. "No, but--I will confess it--thereis something horrible about that man to me. I felt it the first timeI saw him. His eyes are too intelligent. They look diseased withintelligence."
"Let me send him away. Smain!"
But she stopped him. Directly he made the suggestion she felt that shemust know more of this man.
"No. Let us go to the _fumoir_."
"Very well. Go, Smain!"
Smain went into the little tent by the gate, sat down on his haunchesand began to smell at a sprig of orange blossoms. Domini and the Countwalked into the darkness of the trees.
"What is his name?" she asked.
"Aloui."
"Aloui."
She repeated the word slowly. There was a reluctant and yet fascinatedsound in her voice.
"There is melody in the name," he said.
"Yes. Has he--has he ever looked in the sand for you?"
"Once--a long time ago."
"May I--dare I ask if he found truth there?"
"He found nothing for all the years that have passed since then."
"Nothing!"
There was a sound of relief in her voice.
"For those years."
She glanced at him and saw that once again his face had lit up intoardour.
"He found what is still to come?" she said.
And he repeated:
"He found what is still to come."
Then they walked on in silence till they saw the purple blossoms ofthe bougainvillea clinging to the white walls of the _fumoir_. Doministopped on the narrow path.
"Is he in there?" she asked almost in a whisper.
"No doubt."
"Larbi was playing the first day I came here."
"Yes."
"I wish he was playing now."
The silence seemed to her unnaturally intense.
"Even his love must have repose."
She went on a step or two till, but still from a distance, she couldlook over the low plaster wall beneath the nearest window space into thelittle room.
"Yes, there he is," she whispered.
The Diviner was crouching on the floor with his back towards them andhis head bent down. Only his shoulders could be seen, covered with awhite gandoura. They moved perpetually but slightly.
"What is he doing?"
"Speaking with his ancestor."
"His ancestor?"
"The sand. Aloui!"
He called softly. The figure rose, without sound and instantly, and theface of the Diviner smiled at them through the purple flowers. AgainDomini had the sensation that her body was a glass box in which herthoughts, feelings and desires were ranged for this man's inspection;but she walked resolutely through the narrow doorway and sat down on oneof the divans. Count Anteoni followed.
She now saw that in the centre of the room, on the ground, there wasa symmetrical pyramid of sand, and that the Diviner was gently foldingtogether a bag in his long and flexible fingers.
"You see!" said the Count.
She nodded, without speaking. The little sand heap held her eyes. Shestrove to think it absurd and the man who had shaken it out a charlatanof the desert, but she was really gripped by an odd feeling of awe, asif she were secretly expectant of some magical demonstration.
The Diviner squatted down once more on his haunches, stretched out hisfingers above the sand heap, looked at her and smiled.
"La vie de Madame--I see it in the sable--la vie de Madame dans le granddesert du Sahara."
His eyes seemed to rout out the secrets from every corner of her being,and to scatter them upon the ground as the
sand was scattered.
"Dans le grand desert du Sahara," Count Anteoni repeated, as if he lovedthe music of the words. "Then there is a desert life for Madame?"
The Diviner dropped his fingers on to the pyramid, lightly pressing thesand down and outward. He no longer looked at Domini. The searchingand the satire slipped away from his eyes and body. He seemed to haveforgotten the two watchers and to be concentrated upon the grains ofsand. Domini noticed that the tortured expression, which had come intohis face when she met him in the street and he stared into the bag, hadreturned to it. After pressing down the sand he spread the bag whichhad held it at Domini's feet, and deftly transferred the sand to it,scattering the grains loosely over the sacking, in a sort of pattern.Then, bending closely over them, he stared at them in silence for along time. His pock-marked face was set like stone. His emaciated hands,stretched out, rested above the grains like carven things. His bodyseemed entirely breathless in its absolute immobility.
The Count stood in the doorway, still as he was, surrounded by themotionless purple flowers. Beyond, in their serried ranks, stood themotionless trees. No incense was burning in the little brazier to-day.This cloistered world seemed spell-bound.
A low murmur at last broke the silence. It came from the Diviner. Hebegan to talk rapidly, but as if to himself, and as he talked he movedagain, broke up with his fingers the patterns in the sand, formed freshones; spirals, circles, snake-like lines, series of mounting dotsthat reminded Domini of spray flung by a fountain, curves, squares andoblongs. So swiftly was it done and undone that the sand seemed to beendowed with life, to be explaining itself in these patterns, to bepresenting deliberate glimpses of hitherto hidden truths. And always thevoice went on, and the eyes were downcast, and the body, save for themoving hands and arms, was absolutely motionless.
Domini looked over the Diviner to Count Anteoni, who came gently forwardand sat down, bending his head to listen to the voice.
"Is it Arabic?" she whispered.
He nodded.
"Can you understand it?"
"Not yet. Presently it will get slower, clearer. He always begins likethis."
"Translate it for me."
"Exactly as it is?"
"Exactly as it is."
"Whatever it may be?"
"Whatever it may be."
He glanced at the tortured face of the Diviner and looked grave.
"Remember you have said I am fearless," she said.
He answered:
"Whatever it is you shall know it."
Then they were silent again. Gradually the Diviner's voice grew clearer,the pace of its words less rapid, but always it sounded mysterious andinward, less like the voice of a man than the distant voice of a secret.
"I can hear now," whispered the Count.
"What is he saying?"
"He is speaking about the desert."
"Yes?"
"He sees a great storm. Wait a moment!"
The voice spoke for some seconds and ceased, and once again the Divinerremained absolutely motionless, with his hands extended above the grainslike carven things.
"He sees a great sand-storm, one of the most terrible that has everburst over the Sahara. Everything is blotted out. The desert vanishes.Beni-Mora is hidden. It is day, yet there is a darkness like night. Inthis darkness he sees a train of camels waiting by a church."
"A mosque?"
"No, a church. In the church there is a sound of music. The roar of thewind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the chanting and drowns it.He cannot hear it any more. It is as if the desert is angry and wishesto kill the music. In the church your life is beginning."
"My life?"
"Your real life. He says that now you are fully born, that till nowthere has been a veil around your soul like the veil of the womb arounda child."
"He says that!"
There was a sound of deep emotion in her voice.
"That is all. The roar of the wind from the desert has silenced themusic in the church, and all is dark."
The Diviner moved again, and formed fresh patterns in the sand withfeverish rapidity, and again began to speak swiftly.
"He sees the train of camels that waited by the church starting on adesert journey. The storm has not abated. They pass through the oasisinto the desert. He sees them going towards the south."
Domini leaned forward on the divan, looking at Count Anteoni above thebent body of the Diviner.
"By what route?" she whispered.
"By the route which the natives call the road to Tombouctou."
"But--it is my journey!"
"Upon one of the camels, in a palanquin such as the great sheikhs use tocarry their women, there are two people, protected against the storm bycurtains. They are silent, listening to the roaring of the wind. One ofthem is you."
"Two people!"
"Two people."
"But--who is the other?"
"He cannot see. It is as if the blackness of the storm were deeper roundabout the other and hid the other from him. The caravan passes on and islost in the desolation and the storm."
She said nothing, but looked down at the thin body of the Divinercrouched close to her knees. Was this pock-marked face the face ofa prophet? Did this skin and bone envelop the soul of a seer? She nolonger wished that Larbi was playing upon his flute or felt the silenceto be unnatural. For this man had filled it with the roar of the desertwind. And in the wind there struggled and was finally lost the sound ofvoices of her Faith chanting--what? The wind was too strong. The voiceswere too faint. She could not hear.
Once more the Diviner stirred. For some minutes his fingers were busyin the sand. But now they moved more slowly and no words came from hislips. Domini and the Count bent low to watch what he was doing. Thelook of torture upon his face increased. It was terrible, and made uponDomini an indelible impression, for she could not help connecting itwith his vision of her future, and it suggested to her formless phantomsof despair. She looked into the sand, as if she, too, would be able tosee what he saw and had not told, looked till she began to feel almosthypnotised. The Diviner's hands trembled now as they made the patterns,and his breast heaved under his white robe. Presently he traced in thesand a triangle and began to speak.
The Count bent down till his ear was almost at the Diviner's lips,and Domini held her breath. That caravan lost in the desolation of thedesert, in the storm and the darkness--where was it? What had been itsfate? Sweat ran down over the Diviner's face, and dropped upon hisrobe, upon his hands, upon the sand, making dark spots. And the voicewhispered on huskily till she was in a fever of impatience. She saw uponthe face of the Count the Diviner's tortured look reflected. Was it notalso on her face? A link surely bound them all together in this tinyroom, close circled by the tall trees and the intense silence. Shelooked at the triangle in the sand. It was very distinct, more distinctthan the other patterns had been. What did it represent? She searchedher mind, thinking of the desert, of her life there, of man's life inthe desert. Was it not tent-shaped? She saw it as a tent, as her tentpitched somewhere in the waste far from the habitations of men. Now thetrembling hands were still, the voice was still, but the sweat did notcease from dropping down upon the sand.
"Tell me!" she murmured to the Count.
He obeyed, seeming now to speak with an effort.
"It is far away in the desert----"
He paused.
"Yes? Yes?"
"Very far away in a sandy place. There are immense dunes, immense whitedunes of sand on every side, like mountains. Near at hand there is agleam of many fires. They are lit in the market-place of a desert city.Among the dunes, with camels picketed behind it, there is a tent----"
She pointed to the triangle traced upon the sand.
"I knew it," she whispered. "It is my tent."
"He sees you there, as he saw you in the palanquin. But now it is nightand you are quite alone. You are not asleep. Something keeps you awake.You are excited. You go out of the tent upon the dunes
and look towardsthe fires of the city. He hears the jackals howling all around you, andsees the skeletons of dead camels white under the moon."
She shuddered in spite of herself.
"There is something tremendous in your soul. He says it is as if all thedate palms of the desert bore their fruit together, and in all thedry places, where men and camels have died of thirst in bygone years,running springs burst forth, and as if the sand were covered withmillions of golden flowers big as the flower of the aloe."
"But then it is joy, it must be joy!"
"He says it is great joy."
"Then why does he look like that, breathe like that?"
She indicated the Diviner, who was trembling where he crouched, andbreathing heavily, and always sweating like one in agony.
"There is more," said the Count, slowly.
"Tell me."
"You stand alone upon the dunes and you look towards the city. He hearsthe tomtoms beating, and distant cries as if there were a fantasia. Thenhe sees a figure among the dunes coming towards you."
"Who is it?" she asked.
He did not answer. But she did not wish him to answer. She had spokenwithout meaning to speak.
"You watch this figure. It comes to you, walking heavily."
"Walking heavily?"
"That's what he says. The dates shrivel on the palms, the streams dryup, the flowers droop and die in the sand. In the city the tomtoms faintaway and the red fires fade away. All is dark and silent. And then hesees--"
"Wait!" Domini said almost sharply.
He sat looking at her. She pressed her hands together. In her dark face,with its heavy eyebrows and strong, generous mouth, a contest showed, astruggle between some quick desire and some more sluggish but determinedreluctance. In a moment she spoke again.
"I won't hear anything more, please."
"But you said 'whatever it may be.'"
"Yes. But I won't hear anything more."
She spoke very quietly, with determination.
The Diviner was beginning to move his hands again, to make freshpatterns in the sand, to speak swiftly once more.
"Shall I stop him?"
"Please."
"Then would you mind going out into the garden? I will join you in amoment. Take care not to disturb him."
She got up with precaution, held her skirts together with her hands, andslipped softly out on to the garden path. For a moment she was inclinedto wait there, to look back and see what was happening in the _fumoir_.But she resisted her inclination, and walked on slowly till she reachedthe bench where she had sat an hour before with Androvsky. There she satdown and waited. In a few minutes she saw the Count coming towards heralone. His face was very grave, but lightened with a slight smile whenhe saw her.
"He has gone?" she asked.
"Yes."
He was about to sit beside her, but she said quickly:
"Would you mind going back to the jamelon tree?"
"Where we sat this morning?"
"Was it only--yes."
"Certainly."
"Oh; but you are going away to-morrow! You have a lot to do probably?"
"Nothing. My men will arrange everything."
She got up, and they walked in silence till they saw once more theimmense spaces of the desert bathed in the afternoon sun. As Dominilooked at them again she knew that their wonder, their meaning, hadincreased for her. The steady crescendo that was beginning almost tofrighten her was maintained--the crescendo of the voice of the Sahara.To what tremendous demonstration was this crescendo tending, towhat ultimate glory or terror? She felt that her soul was as yet tooundeveloped to conceive. The Diviner had been right. There was a veilaround it, like the veil of the womb that hides the unborn child.
Under the jamelon tree she sat down once more.
"May--I light a cigar?" the Count asked.
"Do."
He struck a match, lit a cigar, and sat down on her left, by the gardenwall.
"Tell me frankly," he said. "Do you wish to talk or to be silent?"
"I wish to speak to you."
"I am sorry now I asked you to test Aloui's powers."
"Why?"
"Because I fear they made an unpleasant impression upon you."
"That was not why I made you stop him."
"No?"
"You don't understand me. I was not afraid. I can only say that, but Ican't give you my reason for stopping him. I wished to tell you that itwas not fear."
"I believe--I know that you are fearless," he said with an unusualwarmth. "You are sure that I don't understand you?"
"Remember the refrain of the Freed Negroes' song!"
"Ah, yes--those black fellows. But I know something of you, MissEnfilden--yes, I do."
"I would rather you did--you and your garden."
"And--some day--I should like you to know a little more of me."
"Thank you. When will you come back?"
"I can't tell. But you are not leaving?"
"Not yet."
The idea of leaving Beni-Mora troubled her heart strangely.
"No, I am too happy here."
"Are you really happy?"
"At any rate I am happier than I have ever been before."
"You are on the verge."
He was looking at her with eyes in which there was tenderness, butsuddenly they flashed fire, and he exclaimed:
"My desert land must not bring you despair."
She was startled by his sudden vehemence.
"What I would not hear!" she said. "You know it!"
"It is not my fault. I am ready to tell it to you."
"No. But do you believe it? Do you believe that man can read the futurein the sand? How can it be?"
"How can a thousand things be? How can these desert men stand in fire,with their naked feet set on burning brands, with burning brands undertheir armpits, and not be burned? How can they pierce themselves withskewers and cut themselves with knives and no blood flow? But I told youthe first day I met you; the desert always makes me the same gift when Ireturn to it."
"What gift?"
"The gift of belief."
"Then you do believe in that man--Aloui?"
"Do you?"
"I can only say that it seemed to me as if it might be divination. If Ihad not felt that I should not have stopped it. I should have treated itas a game."
"It impressed you as it impresses me. Well, for both of us the deserthas gifts. Let us accept them fearlessly. It is the will of Allah."
She remembered her vision of the pale procession. Would she walk in itat last?
"You are as fatalistic as an Arab," she said.
"And you?"
"I!" she answered simply. "I believe that I am in the hands of God, andI know that perfect love can never harm me."
After a moment he said, gently:
"Miss Enfilden, I want to ask something of you."
"Yes?"
"Will you make a sacrifice? To-morrow I start at dawn. Will you be hereto wish me God speed on my journey?"
"Of course I will."
"It will be good of you. I shall value it from you. And--and when--ifyou ever make your long journey on that road--the route to the south--Iwill wish you Allah's blessing in the Garden of Allah."
He spoke with solemnity, almost with passion, and she felt the tearsvery near her eyes. Then they sat in silence, looking out over thedesert.
And she heard its voices calling.
The Garden of Allah Page 12
