CHAPTER XV
Lying in bed in the dark that night Domini heard the church clock chimethe hours. She was not restless, though she was wakeful. Indeed, shefelt like a woman to whom an injection of morphia had been administered,as if she never wished to move again. She lay there counting the minutesthat made the passing hours, counting them calmly, with an inexorableand almost cold self-possession. The process presently becamemechanical, and she was able, at the same time, to dwell upon the eventsthat had followed upon the discovery of the murdered woman by the tent:Androvsky's pulling aside of the door of the tent to find it empty,their short ride to the encampment close by, their rousing up of thesleeping Arabs within, filthy nomads clothed in patched garments,unveiled women with wrinkled, staring faces and huge plaits of falsehair and amulets. From the tents the strange figures had streamed forthinto the light of the moon and the fading fires, gesticulating, talkingloudly, furiously, in an uncouth language that was unintelligible toher. Led by Androvsky they had come to the corpse, while the air wasrent by the frantic barking of all the guard dogs and the howling of thedog that had been a witness of the murder. Then in the night had risenthe shrill wailing of the women, a wailing that seemed to pierce thestars and shudder out to the remotest confines of the desert, and inthe cold white radiance of the moon a savage vision of grief had beenpresented to her eyes: naked arms gesticulating as if they strove tosummon vengeance from heaven, claw-like hands casting earth upon theheads from which dangled Fatma hands, chains of tarnished silver andlumps of coral that reminded her of congealed blood, bodies that swayedand writhed as if stricken with convulsions or rent by seven devils.She remembered how strange had seemed to her the vast calm, thevast silence, that encompassed this noisy outburst of humanity, howinflexible had looked the enormous moon, how unsympathetic the brightlyshining stars, how feverish and irritable the flickering illumination ofthe flames that spurted up and fainted away like things still living butin the agonies of death.
Then had followed her silent ride back to Beni-Mora with Androvsky alongthe straight road which had always fascinated her spirit of adventure.They had ridden slowly, without looking at each other, withoutexchanging a word. She had felt dry and weary, like an old woman who hadpassed through a long life of suffering and emerged into a region whereany acute feeling is unable to exist, as at a certain altitude from theearth human life can no longer exist. The beat of the horses' hoofs uponthe road had sounded hard, as her heart felt, cold as the temperatureof her mind. Her body, which usually swayed to her horse's slightestmovement, was rigid in the saddle. She recollected that once, when herhorse stumbled, she had thrilled with an abrupt anger that was almostferocious, and had lifted her whip to lash it. But the hand had slippeddown nervelessly, and she had fallen again into her frigid reverie.
When they reached the hotel she had dropped to the ground, heavily, andheavily had ascended the steps of the verandah, followed by Androvsky.Without turning to him or bidding him good-night she had gone toher room. She had not acted with intentional rudeness orindifference--indeed, she had felt incapable of an intention. Simply,she had forgotten, for the first time perhaps in her life, an ordinaryact of courtesy, as an old person sometimes forgets you are there andwithdraws into himself. Androvsky had said nothing, had not tried toattract her attention to himself. She had heard his steps die away onthe verandah. Then, mechanically, she had undressed and got into bed,where she was now mechanically counting the passing moments.
Presently she became aware of her own stillness and connected it withthe stillness of the dead woman, by the tent. She lay, as it were,watching her own corpse as a Catholic keeps vigil beside a body that hasnot yet been put into the grave. But in this chamber of death there wereno flowers, no lighted candles, no lips that moved in prayer. Shehad gone to bed without praying. She remembered that now, but withindifference. Dead people do not pray. The living pray for them. Buteven the watcher could not pray. Another hour struck in the belfry ofthe church. She listened to the chime and left off counting the moments,and this act of cessation made more perfect the peace of the dead woman.
When the sun rose her sensation of death passed away, leaving behind it,however, a lethargy of mind and body such as she had never known beforethe previous night. Suzanne, coming in to call her, exclaimed:
"Mam'selle is ill?"
"No. Why should I be ill?"
"Mam'selle looks so strange," the maid said, regarding her with roundand curious eyes. "As if--"
She hesitated.
"Give me my tea," Domini said.
When she was drinking it she asked:
"Do you know at what time the train leaves Beni-Mora--the passengertrain?"
"Yes, Mam'selle. There is only one in the day. It goes soon aftertwelve. Monsieur Helmuth told me."
"Oh!"
"What gown will--?"
"Any gown--the white linen one I had on yesterday."
"Yes, Mam'selle."
"No, not that. Any other gown. Is it to be hot?"
"Very hot, Mam'selle. There is not a cloud in the sky."
"How strange!" Domini said, in a low voice that Suzanne did not hear.When she was up and dressed she said:
"I am going out to Count Anteoni's garden. I think I'll--yes, I'll takea book with me."
She went into her little salon and looked at the volumes scattered aboutthere, some books of devotion, travel, books on sport, Rossetti's andNewman's poems, some French novels, and the novels of Jane Austen, ofwhich, oddly, considering her nature, she was very fond. For the firsttime in her life they struck her as shrivelled, petty chronicles ofshrivelled, bloodless, artificial lives. She turned back into herbedroom, took up the little white volume of the _Imitation_, which layalways near her bed, and went out into the verandah. She looked neitherto right nor left, but at once descended the staircase and took her wayalong the arcade.
When she reached the gate of the garden she hesitated before knockingupon it. The sight of the villa, the arches, the white walls andclustering trees she knew so well hurt her so frightfully, sounexpectedly, that she felt frightened and sick, and as if she must goaway quickly to some place which she had never seen, and which couldcall up no reminiscences in her mind.
Perhaps she would have gone into the oasis, or along the path thatskirted the river bed, had not Smain softly opened the gate and come outto meet her, holding a great velvety rose in his slim hand.
He gave it to her without a word, smiling languidly with eyes in whichthe sun seemed caught and turned to glittering darkness, and as she tookit and moved it in her fingers, looking at the wine-coloured petals onwhich lay tiny drops of water gleaming with thin and silvery lights, sheremembered her first visit to the garden, and the mysterious enchantmentthat had floated out to her through the gate from the golden vistas andthe dusky shadows of the trees, the feeling of romantic expectation thathad stirred within her as she stepped on to the sand and saw before herthe winding ways disappearing into dimness between the rills edged bythe pink geraniums.
How long ago that seemed, like a remembrance of early childhood in theheart of one who is old.
Now that the gate was open she resolved to go into the garden. She mightas well be there as elsewhere. She stepped in, holding the rose in herhand. One of the drops of water slipped from an outer petal and fellupon the sand. She thought of it as a tear. The rose was weeping, buther eyes were dry. She touched the rose with her lips.
To-day the garden was like a stranger to her, but a stranger with whomshe had once--long, long ago--been intimate, whom she had trusted, andby whom she had been betrayed. She looked at it and knew that she hadthought it beautiful and loved it. From its recesses had come to hertroops of dreams. The leaves of its trees had touched her as with tenderhands. The waters of its rills had whispered to her of the hidden thingsthat lie in the breast of joy. The golden rays that played through itsscented alleys had played, too, through the shadows of her heart, makinga warmth and light there that seemed to come from heaven. She knew thisas one
knows of the apparent humanity that greeted one's own humanity inthe friend who is a friend no longer, and she sickened at it as at thethought of remembered intimacy with one proved treacherous. There seemedto her nothing ridiculous in this personification of the garden, asthere had formerly seemed to her nothing ridiculous in her thought ofthe desert as a being; but the fact that she did thus instinctivelypersonify the nature that surrounded her gave to the garden in her eyesan aspect that was hostile and even threatening, as if she faced a lovenow changed to hate, a cold and inimical watchfulness that knew too muchabout her, to which she had once told all her happy secrets and murmuredall her hopes. She did not hate the garden, but she felt as if shefeared it. The movements of its leaves conveyed to her uneasiness. Thehidden places, which once had been to her retreats peopled with tranquilblessings, were now become ambushes in which lay lurking enemies.
Yet she did not leave it, for to-day something seemed to tell her thatit was meant that she should suffer, and she bowed in spirit to thedecree.
She went on slowly till she reached the _fumoir_. She entered it and satdown.
She had not seen any of the gardeners or heard the note of a flute.The day was very still. She looked at the narrow doorway and rememberedexactly the attitude in which Count Anteoni had stood during their firstinterview, holding a trailing branch of the bougainvillea in his hand.She saw him as a shadow that the desert had taken. Glancing down at thecarpet sand she imagined the figure of the sand-diviner crouching thereand recalled his prophecy, and directly she did this she knew that shehad believed in it. She had believed that one day she would ride, outinto the desert in a storm, and that with her, enclosed in the curtainsof a palanquin, there would be a companion. The Diviner had not toldher who would be this companion. Darkness was about him rendering himinvisible to the eyes of the seer. But her heart had told her. She hadseen the other figure in the palanquin. It was a man. It was Androvsky.
She had believed that she would go out into the desert with Androvsky,with this traveller of whose history, of whose soul, she knew nothing.Some inherent fatalism within her had told her so. And now----?
The darkness of the shade beneath the trees in this inmost recess of thegarden fell upon her like the darkness of that storm in which the desertwas blotted out, and it was fearful to her because she felt that shemust travel in the storm alone. Till now she had been very much alonein life and had realised that such solitude was dreary, that in itdevelopment was difficult, and that it checked the steps of the pilgrimwho should go upward to the heights of life. But never till now had shefelt the fierce tragedy of solitude, the utter terror of it. As she satin the _fumoir_, looking down on the smoothly-raked sand, she said toherself that till this moment she had never had any idea of the meaningof solitude. It was the desert within a human soul, but the desertwithout the sun. And she knew this because at last she loved. The darkand silent flood of passion that lay within her had been released fromits boundaries, the old landmarks were swept away for ever, the face ofthe world was changed.
She loved Androvsky. Everything in her loved him; all that she had been,all that she was, all that she could ever be loved him; that which wasphysical in her, that which was spiritual, the brain, the heart, thesoul, body and flame burning within it--all that made her the wonderthat is woman, loved him. She was love for Androvsky. It seemed to herthat she was nothing else, had never been anything else. The past yearswere nothing, the pain by which she was stricken when her mother fled,by which she was tormented when her father died blaspheming, werenothing. There was no room in her for anything but love of Androvsky. Atthis moment even her love of God seemed to have been expelled from her.Afterwards she remembered that. She did not think of it now. For herthere was a universe with but one figure in it--Androvsky. She wasunconscious of herself except as love for him. She was unconscious ofany Creative Power to whom she owed the fact that he was there to beloved by her. She was passion, and he was that to which passion flowed.
The world was the stream and the sea.
As she sat there with her hands folded on her knees, her eyes bent down,and the purple flowers all about her, she felt simplified and cleansed,as if a mass of little things had been swept from her, leaving spacefor the great thing that henceforth must for ever dwell within her anddominate her life. The burning shame of which she had been conscious onthe previous night, when Androvsky told her of his approaching departureand she was stricken as by a lightning flash, had died away from herutterly. She remembered it with wonder. How should she be ashamed oflove? She thought that it would be impossible to her to be ashamed, evenif Androvsky knew all that she knew. Just then the immense truth of herfeeling conquered everything else, made every other thing seem false,and she said to herself that of truth she did not know how to beashamed. But with the knowledge of the immense truth of her love camethe knowledge of the immense sorrow that might, that must, dwell side byside with it.
Suddenly she moved. She lifted her eyes from the sand and looked outinto the garden. Besides this truth within her there was one other thingin the world that was true. Androvsky was going away. While she satthere the moments were passing. They were making the hours that werebent upon destruction. She was sitting in the garden now and Androvskywas close by. A little time would pass noiselessly. She would be sittingthere and Androvsky would be far away, gone from the desert, gone out ofher life no doubt for ever. And the garden would not have changed. Eachtree would stand in its place, each flower would still give forth itsscent. The breeze would go on travelling through the lacework of thebranches, the streams slipping between the sandy walls of the rills.The inexorable sun would shine, and the desert would whisper in its bluedistances of the unseen things that always dwell beyond. And Androvskywould be gone. Their short intercourse, so full of pain, uneasiness,reserve, so fragmentary, so troubled by abrupt violences, by ignorance,by a sense of horror even on the one side, and by an almost constantsuspicion on the other, would have come to an end.
She was stunned by the thought, and looked round her as if she expectedinanimate Nature to take up arms for her against this fate. Yet she didnot for a moment think of taking up arms herself. She had left the hotelwithout trying to see Androvsky. She did not intend to return to it tillhe was gone. The idea of seeking him never came into her mind. There isan intensity of feeling that generates action, but there is a greaterintensity of feeling that renders action impossible, the feeling thatseems to turn a human being into a shell of stone within which burn allthe fires of creation. Domini knew that she would not move out of the_fumoir_ till the train was creeping along the river-bed on its way fromBeni-Mora.
She had laid down the _Imitation_ upon the seat by her side, and now shetook it up. The sight of its familiar pages made her think for the firsttime, "Do I love God any more?" And immediately afterwards camethe thought: "Have I ever loved him?" The knowledge of her love forAndrovsky, for this body that she had seen, for this soul that she hadseen through the body like a flame through glass, made her believe justthen that if she had ever thought--and certainly she had thought--thatshe loved a being whom she had never seen, never even imaginativelyprojected, she had deceived herself. The act of faith was notimpossible, but the act of love for the object on which that faith wasconcentrated now seemed to her impossible. For her body, that remainedpassive, was full of a riot, a fury of life. The flesh that had sleptwas awakened and knew itself. And she could no longer feel that shecould love that which her flesh could not touch, that which could nottouch her flesh. And she said to herself, without terror, even withoutregret, "I do not love, I never have loved, God."
She looked into the book:
"Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thoubestowest on them that love thee."
The sweetness of thy contemplation! She remembered Androvsky's facelooking at her out of the heart of the sun as they met for the firsttime in the blue country. In that moment she put him consciously inthe place of God, and there was nothing within her to say, "Yo
u arecommitting mortal sin."
She looked into the book once more and her eyes fell upon the wordswhich she had read on her first morning in Beni-Mora:
"Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is nottired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it isnot disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mountethupwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth thecry of this voice."
She had always loved these words and thought them the most beautiful inthe book, but now they came to her with the newness of the first springmorning that ever dawned upon the world. The depth of them was laid bareto her, and, with that depth, the depth of her own heart. The paralysisof anguish passed from her. She no longer looked to Nature as onedumbly seeking help. For they led her to herself, and made her lookinto herself and her own love and know it. "When frightened it isnot disturbed--it securely passeth through all." That was absolutelytrue--true as her love. She looked down into her love, and she saw therethe face of God, but thought she saw the face of human love only. Andit was so beautiful and so strong that even the tears upon it gave hercourage, and she said to herself: "Nothing matters, nothing can matterso long as I have this love within me. He is going away, but I am notsad, for I am going with him--my love, all that I am--that is going withhim, will always be with him."
Just then it seemed to her that if she had seen Androvsky lying deadbefore her on the sand she could not have felt unhappy. Nothing could doharm to a great love. It was the one permanent, eternally vital thing,clad in an armour of fire that no weapon could pierce, free of allterror from outside things because it held its safety within its ownheart, everlastingly enough, perfectly, flawlessly complete for and initself. For that moment fear left her, restlessness left her. Anyonelooking in upon her from the garden would have looked in upon a great,calm happiness.
Presently there came a step upon the sand of the garden walks. A man,going slowly, with a sort of passionate reluctance, as if somethingimmensely strong was trying to hold him back, but was conquered withdifficulty by something still stronger that drove him on, came out ofthe fierce sunshine into the shadow of the garden, and began to searchits silent recesses. It was Androvsky. He looked bowed and old andguilty. The two lines near his mouth were deep. His lips were working.His thin cheeks had fallen in like the cheeks of a man devoured by awasting illness, and the strong tinge of sunburn on them seemed to bebut an imperfect mark to a pallor that, fully visible, would have beenmore terrible than that of a corpse. In his eyes there was a fixedexpression of ferocious grief that seemed mingled with ferocious anger,as if he were suffering from some dreadful misery, and cursed himselfbecause he suffered, as a man may curse himself for doing a thing thathe chooses to do but need not do. Such an expression may sometimes beseen in the eyes of those who are resisting a great temptation.
He began to search the garden, furtively but minutely. Sometimes hehesitated. Sometimes he stood still. Then he turned back and went alittle way towards the wide sweep of sand that was bathed in sunlightwhere the villa stood. Then with more determination, and walkingfaster, he again made his way through the shadows that slept beneaththe densely-growing trees. As he passed between them he several timesstretched out trembling hands, broke off branches and threw them on thesand, treading on them heavily and crushing them down below the surface.Once he spoke to himself in a low voice that shook as if with difficultydominating sobs that were rising in his throat.
"_De profundis_--" he said. "_De profundis_--_de profundis_--"
His voice died away. He took hold of one hand with the other and went onsilently.
Presently he made his way at last towards the _fumoir_ in which Dominiwas still sitting, with one hand resting on the open page whose wordshad lit up the darkness in her spirit. He came to it so softly that shedid not hear his step. He saw her, stood quite still under the trees,and looked at her for a long time. As he did so his face changed till heseemed to become another man. The ferocity of grief and anger faded fromhis eyes, which were filled with an expression of profound wonder, thenof flickering uncertainty, then of hard, manly resolution--a fightingexpression that was full of sex and passion. The guilty, furtive lookwhich had been stamped upon all his features, specially upon hislips, vanished. Suddenly he became younger in appearance. His figurestraightened itself. His hands ceased from trembling. He moved away fromthe trees, and went to the doorway of the _fumoir_.
Domini looked up, saw him, and got up quietly, clasping her fingersround the little book.
Androvsky stood just beyond the doorway, took off his hat, kept it inhis hand, and said:
"I came here to say good-bye."
He made a movement as if to come into the _fumoir_, but she stopped itby coming at once to the opening. She felt that she could not speak tohim enclosed within walls, under a roof. He drew back, and she came outand stood beside him on the sand.
"Did you know I should come?" he said.
She noticed that he had ceased to call her "Madame," and also that therewas in his voice a sound she had not heard in it before, a note of newself-possession that suggested a spirit concentrating itself and awareof its own strength to act.
"No," she answered.
"Were you coming back to the hotel this morning?" he asked.
"No."
He was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly:
"Then--then you did not wish--you did not mean to see me again before Iwent?"
"It was not that. I came to the garden--I had to come--I had to bealone."
"You want to be alone?" he said. "You want to be alone?"
Already the strength was dying out of his voice and face, and the olduneasiness was waking up in him. A dreadful expression of pain came intohis eyes.
"Was that why you--you looked so happy?" he said in a harsh, tremblingvoice.
"When?"
"I stood for a long while looking at you when you were in there"--hepointed to the _fumoir_--"and your face was happy--your face was happy."
"Yes, I know."
"You will be happy alone?--alone in the desert?"
When he said that she felt suddenly the agony of the waterless spaces,the agony of the unpeopled wastes. Her whole spirit shrank and quivered,all the great joy of her love died within her. A moment before she hadstood upon the heights of her heart. Now she shrank into its deepest,blackest abysses. She looked at him and said nothing.
"You will not be happy alone."
His voice no longer trembled. He caught hold of her left hand,awkwardly, nervously, but held it strongly with his close to his side,and went on speaking.
"Nobody is happy alone. Nothing is--men and women--children--animals." Abird flew across the shadowy space under the trees, followed by anotherbird; he pointed to them; they disappeared. "The birds, too, they musthave companionship. Everything wants a companion."
"Yes."
"But then--you will stay here alone in the desert?"
"What else can I do?" she said.
"And that journey," he went on, still holding her hand fast against hisside, "Your journey into the desert--you will take it alone?"
"What else can I do?" she repeated in a lower voice.
It seemed to her that he was deliberately pressing her down into theuttermost darkness.
"You will not go."
"Yes, I shall go."
She spoke with conviction. Even in that moment--most of all in thatmoment--she knew that she would obey the summons of the desert.
"I--I shall never know the desert," he said. "I thought--it seemed to methat I, too, should go out into it. I have wanted to go. You have mademe want to go."
"I?"
"Yes. Once you said to me that peace must dwell out there. It was on thetower the--the first time you ever spoke to me."
"I remember."
"I wondered--I often wonder why you spoke to me."
She knew he was looking at her with intensity, but she kept her eyes onthe sand. There was something in them that
she felt he must not see, alight that had just come into them as she realised that already, on thetower before she even knew him, she had loved him. It was that love,already born in her heart but as yet unconscious of its own existence,which had so strangely increased for her the magic of the Africanevening when she watched it with him. But before--suddenly she knew thatshe had loved Androvsky from the beginning, from the moment when hisface looked at her as if out of the heart of the sun. That was why herentry into the desert had been full of such extraordinary significance.This man and the desert were, had always been, as one in her mind.Never had she thought of the one without the other. Never had she beenmysteriously called by the desert without hearing as a far-off echo thevoice of Androvsky, or been drawn onward by the mystical summons of theblue distances without being drawn onward, too, by the mystical summonsof the heart to which her own responded. The link between the manand the desert was indissoluble. She could not conceive of its beingsevered, and as she realised this, she realised also something thatturned her whole nature into flame.
She could not conceive of Androvsky's not loving her, of his not havingloved her from the moment when he saw her in the sun. To him, too, thedesert had made a revelation--the revelation of her face, and of thesoul behind it looking through it. In the flames of the sun, as theywent into the desert, the flames of their two spirits had been blended.She knew that certainly and for ever. Then how could it be possible thatAndrovsky should not go out with her into the desert?
"Why did you speak to me?" he said.
"We came into the desert together," she answered simply. "We had to knoweach other."
"And now--now--we have to say----"
His voice ceased. Far away there was the thin sound of a chime. Dominihad never before heard the church bell in the garden, and now she feltas if she heard it, not with her ears, but with her spirit. As she heardshe felt Androvsky's hand, which had been hot upon hers, turn cold. Helet her hand go, and again she was stricken by the horrible sound shehad heard the previous night in the desert, when he turned his horseand rode away with her. And now, as then, he turned away from her insilence, but she knew that this time he was leaving her, that thismovement was his final good-bye. With his head bowed down he took a fewsteps. He was near to a turning of the path. She watched him, knowingthat within less than a moment she would be watching only the trees andthe sand. She gazed at the bent figure, calling up all her faculties,crying out to herself passionately, desperately, "Remember it--rememberit as it is--there--before you--just as it is--for ever." As it reachedthe turning, in the distance of the garden rose the twitter of the fluteof Larbi. Androvsky stopped, stood still with his back turned towardsher. And Larbi, hidden and far off, showered out his little notes ofAfrican love, of love in the desert where the sun is everlasting, andthe passion of man is hot as the sun, where Liberty reigns, lifting hercymbals that are as spheres of fire, and the footsteps of Freedom areheard upon the sand, treading towards the south.
Larbi played--played on and on, untiring as the love that blossomed withthe world, but that will not die when the world dies.
Then Androvsky came back quickly till he reached the place where Dominiwas standing. He put his hands on her shoulders. Then he sank down onthe sand, letting his hands slip down over her breast and along herwhole body till they clasped themselves round her knees. He pressed hisface into her dress against her knees.
"I love you," he said. "I love you but don't listen to me--you mustn'thear it--you mustn't. But I must say it. I can't--I can't go till I sayit. I love you--I love you."
She heard him sobbing against her knees, and the sound was as the soundof strength made audible. She put her hands against his temples.
"I am listening," she said. "I must hear it."
He looked up, rose to his feet, put his hands behind her shoulders, heldher, and set his lips on hers, pressing his whole body against hers.
"Hear it!" he said, muttering against her lips. "Hear it. I love you--Ilove you."
The two birds they had seen flew back beneath the trees, turned in anairy circle, rose above the trees into the blue sky, and, side by side,winged their way out of the garden to the desert.
BOOK IV. THE JOURNEY
The Garden of Allah Page 15
