CHAPTER XVII
As the voice of the Diviner fainted away on the wind, and the vision ofhis wounded face and piercing eyes was lost in the whirling sand grains,Androvsky stretched out his hand and drew together the heavy curtainsof the palanquin. The world was shut out. They were alone for the firsttime as man and wife; moving deliberately on this beast they could notsee, but whose slow and monotonous gait swung them gently to and fro,out from the last traces of civilisation into the life of the sands.With each soft step the camel took they went a little farther fromBeni-Mora, came a little nearer to that liberty of which Dominisometimes dreamed, to the smiling eyes and the lifted spheres of fire.
She shut her eyes now. She did not want to see her husband or to touchhis hand. She did not want to speak. She only wanted to feel in theuttermost depths of her spirit this movement, steady and persistent,towards the goal of her earthly desires, to realise absolutely themarvellous truth that after years of lovelessness, and a dreaminess morebenumbing than acute misery, happiness more intense than any she hadbeen able to conceive of in her moments of greatest yearning was beingpoured into her heart, that she was being taken to the place where shewould be with the one human being whose presence blotted out even thememory of the false world and gave to her the true. And whereas inthe dead years she had sometimes been afraid of feeling too much theemptiness and the desolation of her life, she was now afraid of feelingtoo little its fulness and its splendour, was afraid of some day lookingback to this superb moment of her earthly fate, and being conscious thatshe had not grasped its meaning till it was gone, that she had done thatmost terrible of all things--realised that she had been happy tothe limits of her capacity for happiness only when her happiness wasnumbered with the past.
But could that ever be? Was Time, such Time as this, not Eternity? Couldsuch earthly things as this intense joy ever have been and no longerbe? It seemed to her that it could not be so. She felt like one who heldEternity's hand, and went out with that great guide into the endlessnessof supreme perfection. For her, just then, the Creator's scheme wasrounded to a flawless circle. All things fell into order, stars and men,the silent growing things, the seas, the mountains and the plains,fell into order like a vast choir to obey the command of the canticle:
"Benedicite, omnia opera!"
"Bless ye the Lord!" The roaring of the wind about the palanquin becamethe dominant voice of this choir in Domini's ears.
"Bless ye the Lord!" It was obedient, not as the slave, but as the freewill is obedient, as her heart, which joined its voice with this windof the desert was obedient, because it gloriously chose with all itspowers, passions, aspirations to be so. The real obedience is only lovefulfilling its last desire, and this great song was the fulfilling ofthe last desire of all created things. Domini knew that she did notrealise the joy of this moment of her life now when she felt no longerthat she was a woman, but only that she was a living praise wingingupward to God.
A warm, strong hand clasped hers. She opened her eyes. In the dimtwilight of the palanquin she saw the darkness of Androvsky's tallfigure sitting in the crouched attitude rendered necessary by thepeculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the movement of the camel. Thelight was so obscure that she could not see his eyes or clearly discernhis features, but she felt that he was gazing at her shadowy figure,that his mind was passionately at work. Had he, too, been silentlypraising God for his happiness, and was he now wishing the body to joinin the soul's delight?
She left her hand in his passively. The sense of her womanhood, lost fora moment in the ecstasy of worship, had returned to her, but with anew and tremendous meaning which seemed to change her nature. Androvskyforcibly pressed her hand with his, let it go, then pressed it again,repeating the action with a regularity that seemed suggested by someguidance. She imagined him pressing her hand each time his heart pulsed.She did not want to return the pressure. As she felt his hand thusclosing and unclosing over hers, she was conscious that she, who intheir intercourse had played a dominant part, who had even deliberatelybrought about that intercourse by her action on the tower, now longed tobe passive and, forgetting her own power and the strength and force ofher nature, to lose herself in the greater strength and force of thisman to whom she had given herself. Never before had she wished to beanything but strong. Nor did she desire weakness now, but only that hisnature should rise above hers with eagle's wings, that when she lookedup she should see him, never when she looked down. She thought that tosee him below her would kill her, and she opened her lips to say so. Butsomething in the windy darkness kept her silent. The heavy curtains ofthe palanquin shook perpetually, and the tall wooden rods on which theywere slung creaked, making a small, incessant noise like a complaining,which joined itself with the more distant but louder noise made by theleaves of the thousands of palm trees dashed furiously together. Frombehind came the groaning of one of the camels, borne on the gusts ofthe wind, and faint sounds of the calling voices of the Arabs whoaccompanied them. It was not a time to speak.
She wondered where they were, in what part of the oasis, whetherthey had yet gained the beginning of the great route which had alwaysfascinated her, and which was now the road to the goal of all herearthly desires. But there was nothing to tell her. She travelled in aworld of dimness and the roar of wind, and in this obscurity and uproar,combined with perpetual though slight motion, she lost all count oftime. She had no idea how long it was since she had come out of thechurch door with Androvsky. At first she thought it was only a fewminutes, and that the camels must be just coming to the statue of theCardinal. Then she thought that it might be an hour, even more; thatCount Anteoni's garden was long since left behind, and that theywere passing, perhaps, along the narrow streets of the village of oldBeni-Mora, and nearing the edge of the oasis. But even in this confusionof mind she felt that something would tell her when the last palms hadvanished in the sand mist and the caravan came out into the desert.The sound of the wind would surely be different when they met it on theimmense flats, where there was nothing to break its fury. Or even if itwere not different, she felt that she would know, that the desert wouldsurely speak to her in the moment when, at last, it took her to itself.It could not be that they would be taken by the desert and she notknow it. But she wanted Androvsky to know it too. For she felt that themoment when the desert took them, man and wife, would be a great momentin their lives, greater even than that in which they met as they cameinto the blue country. And she set herself to listen, with a passionateexpectation, with an attention so close and determined that it thrilledher body, and even affected her muscles.
What she was listening for was a rising of the wind, a crescendo of itsvoice. She was anticipating a triumphant cry from the Sahara, unlimitedpower made audible in a sound like the blowing of the clarion of thesands.
Androvsky's hand was still on hers, but now it did not move as ifobeying the pulsations of his heart. It held hers closely, warmly, andsent his strength to her, and presently, for an instant, taking her mindfrom the desert, she lost herself in the mystery and the wonder of humancompanionship. She realised that the touch of Androvsky's hand on hersaltered for her herself, and the whole universe as it was presented toher, as she observed and felt it. Nothing remained as it was when he didnot touch her. There was something stupefying in the thought, somethingalmost terrible. The wonder that is alive in the tiny things of love,and that makes tremendously important their presence in, or absencefrom, a woman's life, took hold on her completely for the first time,and set her forever in a changed world, a world in which a greatknowledge ruled instead of a great ignorance. With the consciousnessof exactly what Androvsky's touch meant to her came a multipleconsciousness of a thousand other things, all connected with him and herconsecrated relation to him. She quivered with understanding. Allthe gates of her soul were being opened, and the white light ofcomprehension of those things which make life splendid and fruitful waspouring in upon her. Within the dim, contained space of the palanquin,that was slowly carried onward thr
ough the passion of the storm, therewas an effulgence of unseen glory that grew in splendour moment bymoment. A woman was being born of a woman, woman who knew herself ofwoman who did not know herself, woman who henceforth would divinely loveher womanhood of woman who had often wondered why she had been createdwoman.
The words muttered by the man of the sand in Count Anteoni's garden werecoming true. In the church of Beni-Mora the life of Domini had begunmore really than when her mother strove in the pains of childbirth andher first faint cry answered the voice of the world's light when itspoke to her.
Slowly the caravan moved on. The camel-drivers sang low under the foldsof their haiks those mysterious songs of the East that seem the songsof heat and solitude. Batouch, smothered in his burnous, his large headsunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares ofState. Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished. Ali, perchedbehind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady andremote as those of a vulture of the desert. The houses of Beni-Morafaded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding thedouble cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of CountAnteoni's garden. Along the white blue which was the road the camelspainfully advanced, urged by the cries and the sticks of the runningdrivers. Presently the brown buildings of old Beni-Mora came partiallyinto sight, peeping here and there through the flying sands and thefrantic palm leaves. The desert was at hand.
Ali began to sing, breathing his song into the back of Batouch's hood.
"The love of women is like the holiday song that the boy sings gaily In the sunny garden-- The love of women is like the little moon, the little happy moon In the last night of Ramadan. The love of women is like the great silence that steals at dusk To kiss the scented blossoms of the orange tree. Sit thee down beneath the orange tree, O loving man! That thou mayst know the kiss that tells the love of women.
"Janat! Janat! Janat!"
Batouch stirred uneasily, pulled his hood from his eyes and looked intothe storm gravely. Then he shifted on the camel's hump and said to Ali:
"How shall we get to Arba? The wind is like all the Touaregs going tobattle. And when we leave the oasis----"
"The wind is going down, Batouch-ben-Brahim," responded Ali, calmly."This evening the Roumis can lie in the tents."
Batouch's thick lips curled with sarcasm. He spat into the wind, blewhis nose in his burnous, and answered:
"You are a child, and can sing a pretty song, but--"
Ali pointed with his delicate hand towards the south.
"Do you not see the light in the sky?"
Batouch stared before him, and perceived that there was in truth alifting of the darkness beyond, a whiteness growing where the desertlay.
"As we come into the desert the wind will fall," said Ali; and again hebegan to sing to himself:
"Janat! Janat! Janat!"
Domini could not see the light in the south, and no premonition warnedher of any coming abatement of the storm. Once more she had begun tolisten to the roaring of the wind and to wait for the larger voice ofthe desert, for the triumphant clarion of the sands that would announceto her her entry with Androvsky into the life of the wastes. Again shepersonified the Sahara, but now more vividly than ever before. In theobscurity she seemed to see it far away, like a great heroic figure,waiting for her and her passion, waiting in a region of gold and silkenairs at the back of the tempest to crown her life with a joy wide as itsdreamlike spaces, to teach her mind the inner truths that lie beyond thecrowded ways of men and to open her heart to the most profound messagesof Nature.
She listened, holding Androvsky's hand, and she felt that he waslistening too, with an intensity strong as her own, or stronger.Presently his hand closed upon hers more tightly, almost hurting herphysically. As it did so she glanced up, but not at him, and noticedthat the curtains of the palanquin were fluttering less fiercely. Once,for an instant, they were almost still. Then again they moved as iftugged by invisible hands; then were almost still once more. At the sametime the wind's voice sank in her ears like a music dropping downwardin a hollow place. It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softerhush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly growinglight which enabled her to see, for the first time since she had leftthe church, her husband's features. He was looking at her with anexpression of anticipation in which there was awe, and she realised thatin her expectation of the welcome of the desert she had been mistaken.She had listened for the sounding of a clarion, but she was to begreeted by a still, small voice. She understood the awe in her husband'seyes and shared it. And she knew at once, with a sudden thrill ofrapture, that in the scheme of things there are blessings and nobilitiesundreamed of by man and that must always come upon him with a gloriousshock of surprise, showing him the poor faultiness of what he hadthought perhaps his most magnificent imaginings. Elisha sought for theLord in the fire and in the whirlwind; but in the still, small voiceonward came the Lord.
Incomparably more wonderful than what she had waited for seemed to hernow this sudden falling of the storm, this mystical voice that came tothem out of the heart of the sands telling them that they were passingat last into the arms of the Sahara. The wind sank rapidly. The lightgrew in the palanquin. From without the voices of the camel-drivers andof Batouch and Ali talking together reached their ears distinctly. Yetthey remained silent. It seemed as if they feared by speech to breakthe spell of the calm that was flowing around them, as if they feared tointerrupt the murmur of the desert. Domini now returned the gaze of herhusband. She could not take her eyes from his, for she wished him toread all the joy that was in her heart; she wished him to penetrate herthoughts, to understand her desires, to be at one with the woman who hadbeen born on the eve of the passing of the wind. With the coming of thismystic calm was coming surely something else. The silence was bringingwith it the fusing of two natures. The desert in this moment was drawingtogether two souls into a union which Time and Death would have no powerto destroy. Presently the wind completely died away, only a faint breezefluttered the curtains of the palanquin, and the light that penetratedbetween them here and there was no longer white, but sparkled with atiny dust of gold. Then Androvsky moved to open the curtains, and Dominispoke for the first time since their marriage.
"Wait," she said in a low voice.
He dropped his hand obediently, and looked at her with inquiry in hiseyes.
"Don't let us look till we are far out," she said, "far away fromBeni-Mora."
He made no answer, but she saw that he understood all that was in herheart. He leaned a little nearer to her and stretched out his arm as ifto put it round her. But he did not put it round her, and she knew why.He was husbanding his great joy as she had husbanded the dark hours ofthe previous night that to her were golden. And that unfinished action,that impulse unfulfilled, showed her more clearly the depths of hispassion for her even than had the desperate clasp of his hands abouther knees in the garden. That which he did not do now was the greatestassertion possible of all that he would do in the life that was beforethem, and made her feel how entirely she belonged to him. Somethingwithin her trembled like a poor child before whom is suddenly set theprospect of a day of perfect happiness. She thought of the ending ofthis day, of the coming of the evening. Always the darkness had partedthem; at the ending of this day it would unite them. In Androvsky'seyes she read her thought of the darkness reflected, reflected and yetchanged, transmuted by sex. It was as if at that moment she read thesame story written in two ways--by a woman and by a man, as if she sawEden, not only as Eve saw it, but as Adam.
A long time passed, but they did not feel it to be long. When theircamel halted they unclasped their hands slowly like sleepers reluctantlyawaking.
They heard Batouch's voice outside the palanquin.
"Madame!" he called. "Madame!"
"What is it?" asked Domini, stifling a sigh.
"Madame should draw the curtains. We are halfway to Arba
. It is time for_dejeuner_. I will make the camel of Madame lie down."
A loud "A-a-ah!" rose up, followed by a fierce groaning from the camel,and a lethargic, yet violent, movement that threw them forward andbackward. They sank. A hand from without pulled back the curtains andlight streamed over them. They set their feet in sand, stood up, andlooked about them.
Already they were far out in the desert, though not yet beyond the limitof the range of red mountains, which stretched forward upon their leftbut at no great distance beyond them ended in the sands. The camels werelying down in a faintly defined track which was bordered upon eitherside by the plain covered with little humps of sandy soil on which grewdusty shrub. Above them was a sky of faint blue, heavy with banks ofclouds towards the east, and over their heads dressed in wispy veilsof vaporous white, through which the blue peered in sections that grewlarger as they looked. Towards the south, where Arba lay on a low hillof earth, without grass or trees, beyond a mound covered thickly withtamarisk bushes, which was a feeding-place for immense herds of camels,the blue was clear and the light of the sun intense. A delicate breezetravelled about them, stirring the bushes and the robes of the Arabs,who were throwing back their hoods, and uncovering their mouths, andsmiling at them, but seriously, as Arabs alone can smile. Beside themstood two white and yellow guard dogs, blinking and looking weary.
For a moment they stood still, blinking too, almost like the dogs.The change to this immensity and light from the narrow darkness of thepalanquin overwhelmed their senses. They said nothing, but only staredsilently. Then Domini, with a large gesture, stretched her arms aboveher head, drawing a deep breath which ended in a little, almost sobbing,laugh of exultation.
"Out of prison," she said disconnectedly. "Out of prison--into this!"Suddenly she turned upon Androvsky and caught his arm, and twined bothof her arms round it with a strong confidence that was careless ofeverything in the intensity of its happiness.
"All my life I've been in prison," she said. "You've unlocked thedoor!" And then, as suddenly as she had caught his arm, she let it go.Something surged up in her, making her almost afraid; or, if not that,confused. It was as if her nature were a horse taking the bit betweenits teeth preparatory to a tremendous gallop. Whither? She did not know.She was intoxicated by the growing light, the sharp, delicious air, thehuge spaces around her, the solitude with this man who held her soulsurely in his hands. She had always connected him with the desert. Nowhe was hers into the desert, and the desert was hers with him. But wasit possible? Could such a fate have been held in reserve for her? Shescarcely dared even to try to realise the meaning of her situation,lest at a breath it should be changed. Just then she felt that if sheventured to weigh and measure her wonderful gift Androvsky would falldead at her feet and the desert be folded together like a scroll.
"There is Beni-Mora, Madame," said Batouch.
She was glad he spoke to her, turned and followed with her eyes hispointing hand. Far off she saw a green darkness of palms, and above it awhite tower, small, from here, as the tower of a castle of dolls.
"The tower!" she said to Androvsky. "We first spoke in it. We must bidit good-bye."
She made a gesture of farewell towards it. Androvsky watched themovement of her hand. She noticed now that she made no movement that hedid not observe with a sort of passionate attention. The desert did notexist for him. She saw that in his eyes. He did not look towards thetower even when she repeated:
"We must--we owe it that."
Batouch and Ali were busy spreading a cloth upon the sand, making itfirm with little stones, taking out food, plates, knives, glasses,bottles from a great basket slung on one of the camels. They moveddeftly, seriously intent upon their task. The camel-drivers wereloosening the cords that bound the loads upon their beasts, who roaredvenomously, opening their mouths, showing long decayed teeth, andturning their heads from side to side with a serpentine movement. Dominiand Androvsky were not watched for a moment.
"Why won't you look? Why won't you say good-bye?" she asked, comingnearer to him on the sand softly, with a woman's longing to hear himexplain what she understood.
"What do I care for it, or the palms, or the sky, or the desert?" heanswered almost savagely. "What can I care? If you were mine behindiron bars in that prison you spoke of--don't you think it's enough forme--too much--a cup running over?"
And he added some words under his breath, words she could not hear.
"Not even the desert!" she said with a catch in her voice.
"It's all in you. Everything's in you--everything that brought ustogether, that we've watched and wanted together."
"But then," she said, and now her voice was very quiet, "am I peace foryou?"
"Peace!" said Androvsky.
"Yes. Don't you remember once I said that there must be peace in thedesert. Then is it in me--for you?"
"Peace!" he repeated. "To-day I can't think of peace, or want it. Don'tyou ask too much of me! Let me live to-day, live as only a man canwho--let me live with all that is in me to-day--Domini. Men ask to diein peace. Oh, Domini--Domini!"
His expression was like arms that crushed her, lips that pressed hermouth, a heart that beat on hers.
"Madame est servie!" cried Batouch in a merry voice.
His mistress did not seem to hear him. He cried again:
"Madame est servie!"
Then Domini turned round and came to the first meal in the sand. Twocushions lay beside the cloth upon an Arab quilt of white, red, andorange colour. Upon the cloth, in vases of rough pottery, stained withdesigns in purple, were arranged the roses brought by Smain from CountAnteoni's garden.
"Our wedding breakfast!" Domini said under her breath.
She felt just then as if she were living in a wonderful romance.
They sat down side by side and ate with a good appetite, served byBatouch and Ali. Now and then a pale yellow butterfly, yellow as thesand, flitted by them. Small yellow birds with crested heads ran swiftlyamong the scrub, or flew low over the flats. In the sky the vapoursgathered themselves together and moved slowly away towards the east,leaving the blue above their heads unflecked with white. With eachmoment the heat of the sun grew more intense. The wind had gone. It wasdifficult to believe that it had ever roared over the desert. A littleway from them the camel-drivers squatted beside the beasts, eating flatloaves of yellow bread, and talking together in low, guttural voices.The guard dogs roamed round them, uneasily hungry. In the distance,before a tent of patched rags, a woman, scantily clad in bright redcotton, was suckling a child and staring at the caravan.
Domini and Androvsky scarcely spoke as they ate. Once she said:
"Do you realise that this is a wedding breakfast?"
She was thinking of the many wedding receptions she had attended inLondon, of crowds of smartly-dressed women staring enviously attiaras, and sets of jewels arranged in cases upon tables, of brides andbridegrooms, looking flushed and anxious, standing under canopies offlowers and forcing their tired lips into smiles as they replied tostereotyped congratulations, while detectives--poorly disguised asgentlemen--hovered in the back-ground to see that none of the presentsmysteriously disappeared. Her presents were the velvety roses in theearthen vases, the breezes of the desert, the sand humps, the yellowbutterflies, the silence that lay around like a blessing pronouncedby the God who made the still places where souls can learn to knowthemselves and their great destiny.
"A wedding breakfast," Androvsky said.
"Yes. But perhaps you have never been to one."
"Never."
"Then you can't love this one as much as I do."
"Much more," he answered.
She looked at him, remembering how often in the past, when she had beenfeeling intensely, she had it borne in upon her that he was feeling evenmore intensely than herself. But could that be possible now?
"Do you think," she said, "that it is possible for you, who have neverlived in cities, to love this land as I love it?"
Androvsky moved on h
is cushion and leaned down till his elbow touchedthe sand. Lying thus, with his chin in his hand, and his eyes fixed uponher, he answered:
"But it is not the land I am loving."
His absolute concentration upon her made her think that, perhaps, hemisunderstood her meaning in speaking of the desert, her joy in it.She longed to explain how he and the desert were linked together inher heart, and she dropped her hand upon his left hand, which lay palmdownwards in the warm sand.
"I love this land," she began, "because I found you in it, because Ifeel----"
She stopped.
"Yes, Domini?" he said.
"No, not now. I can't tell you. There's too much light."
"Domini," he repeated.
Then they were silent once more, thinking of how the darkness would cometo them at Arba.
In the late afternoon they drew near to the Bordj, moving along adifficult route full of deep ruts and holes, and bordered on either sideby bushes so tall that they looked almost like trees. Here, tended byArabs who stared gravely at the strangers in the palanquin, were grazingimmense herds of camels. Above the bushes to the horizon on either sideof the way appeared the serpentine necks flexibly moving to and fro,now bending deliberately towards the dusty twigs, now stretched straightforward as if in patient search for some solace of the camel's fate thatlay in the remoteness of the desert. Baby camels, many of them onlya few days old, yet already vowed to the eternal pilgrimages of thewastes, with mild faces and long, disobedient-looking legs, ran fromthe caravan, nervously seeking their morose mothers, who cast upon themglances that seemed expressive of a disdainful pity. In front, beyond awatercourse, now dried up, rose the low hill on which stood the Bordj,a huge, square building, with two square towers pierced with loopholes.From a distance it resembled a fort threatening the desert inmagnificent isolation. Its towers were black against the clear lemon ofthe failing sunlight. Pigeons, that looked also black, flew perpetuallyabout them, and the telegraph posts, that bordered the way at regularintervals on the left, made a diminishing series of black vertical linessharply cutting the yellow till they were lost to sight in the south.To Domini these posts were like pointing fingers beckoning her onward tothe farthest distances of the sun. Drugged by the long journey over theflats, and the unceasing caress of the air, that was like an importunatelover ever unsatisfied, she watched from the height on which she wasperched this evening scene of roaming, feeding animals, staring nomads,monotonous herbage and vague, surely-retreating mountains, with quiet,dreamy eyes. Everything which she saw seemed to her beautiful, a littleremote and a little fantastic. The slow movement of the camels, theswifter movements of the circling pigeons about the square towers onthe hill, the motionless, or gently-gliding, Arabs with their clubs heldslantwise, the telegraph poles, one smaller than the other, diminishingtill--as if magically--they disappeared in the lemon that was growinginto gold, were woven together for her by the shuttle of the desertinto a softly brilliant tapestry--one of those tapestries that is likea legend struck to sleep as the Beauty in her palace. As they began tomount the hill, and the radiance of the sky increased, this impressionfaded, for the life that centred round the Bordj was vivid, thoughsparse in comparison with the eddying life of towns, and had that airof peculiar concentration which may be noted in pictures representing ahalt in the desert.
No longer did the strongly-built Bordj seem to Domini like a fortthreatening the oncomer, but like a stalwart host welcoming him, a hostwho kept open house in this treeless desolation that yet had, for her,no feature that was desolate. It was earth-coloured, built of stone, andhad in the middle of the facade that faced them an immense hospitabledoorway with a white arch above it. This doorway gave a partial view ofa vast courtyard, in which animals and people were moving to and fro.Round about, under the sheltering shadow of the windowless wall, weremany Arabs, some squatting on their haunches, some standing upright withtheir backs against the stone, some moving from one group to another,gesticulating and talking vivaciously. Boys were playing a game withstones set in an ordered series of small holes scooped by their fingersin the dust. A negro crossed the flat space before the Bordj carrying onhis head a huge earthen vase to the well near by, where a crowd of blackdonkeys, just relieved of their loads of brushwood, was being watered.From the south two Spahis were riding in on white horses, their scarletcloaks floating out over their saddles; and from the west, moving slowlyto a wailing sound of indistinct music, a faint beating of tomtoms, wasapproaching a large caravan in a cloud of dust which floated back fromit and melted away into the radiance of the sunset.
When they gained the great open space before the building they werebathed in the soft golden light, in which all these figures of Africans,and all these animals, looked mysterious and beautiful, and full of thatimmeasurable significance which the desert sheds upon those who move init, specially at dawn or at sundown. From the plateau they dominated thewhole of the plain they had traversed as far as Beni-Mora, which on themorrow would fade into the blue horizon. Its thousands of palms madea darkness in the gold, and still the tower of the hotel was faintlyvisible, pointing like a needle towards the sky. The range of mountainsshowed their rosy flanks in the distance. They, too, on the morrow wouldbe lost in the desert spaces, the last outposts of the world of hilland valley, of stream and sea. Only in the deceptive dream of the miragewould they appear once more, looming in a pearl-coloured shaking veillike a fluid on the edge of some visionary lagune.
Domini was glad that on this first night of their journey they couldstill see Beni-Mora, the place where they had found each other and beengiven to each other by the Church. As the camel stopped before the greatdoorway of the Bordj she turned in the palanquin and looked down uponthe desert, motioning to the camel-driver to leave the beast for amoment. She put her arm through Androvsky's and made his eyes followhers across the vast spaces made magical by the sinking sun to thatdarkness of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place forever. And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her cameupon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat of noon. She sawAndrovsky at her feet on the sand. She heard the chiming church bell andthe twitter of Larbi's flute. The dark blue of trees was as the heart ofthe world to her and as the heart of life. It had seen the birth of hersoul and given to her another newborn soul. There was a pathos inseeing it fade like a thing sinking down till it became one with theimmeasurable sands, and at that moment she said to herself, "When shallI see Beni-Mora again--and how?" She looked at Androvsky, met his eyes,and thought: "When I see it again how different I shall be! How I shallbe changed!" And in the sunset she seemed to be saying a mute good-byeto one who was fading with Beni-Mora.
As soon as they had got off the camel and were standing in the groupof staring Arabs, Batouch begged them to come to their tents, wheretea would be ready. He led them round the angle of the wall towards thewest, and there, pitched in the full radiance of the sunset, with a widespace of hard earth gleaming with gypse around it, was a white tent.Before it, in the open air, was stretched a handsome Arab carpet, and onthis carpet were set a folding table and two folding chairs. The tableheld a japanned tray with tea-cups, a milk jug and plates of biscuitsand by it, in an attitude that looked deliberately picturesque stoodOuardi, the youth selected by Batouch to fill the office of butler inthe desert.
Ouardi smiled a broad welcome as they approached, and having made surethat his pose had been admired, retired to the cook's abode to fetch theteapot, while Batouch invited Domini and Androvsky to inspect the tentprepared for them. Domini assented with a dropped-out word. She stillfelt in a dream. But Androvsky, after casting towards the tent doora glance that was full of a sort of fierce shyness, moved away a fewsteps, and stood at the edge of the hill looking down upon the incomingcaravan, whose music was now plainly audible in the stillness of thewaste.
Domini went into the tent that was to be their home for many weeks,alone. And she was glad just then that she was alone. For she too, likeAndrovsky, felt a sort of exquisit
e trouble moving, like a wave, in herheart. On some pretext, but only after an expression of admiration, shegot rid of Batouch. Then she stood and looked round.
From the big tent opened a smaller one, which was to serve Androvsky asa dressing-room and both of them as a baggage room. She did not go intothat, but saw, with one glance of soft inquiry, the two small, low beds,the strips of gay carpet, the dressing-table, the stand and the two canechairs which furnished the sleeping-tent. Then she looked back to theaperture. In the distance, standing alone at the edge of the hill, shesaw Androvsky, bathed in the sunset, looking out over the hidden desertfrom which rose the wild sound of African music, steadily growinglouder. It seemed to her as if he must be gazing at the plains ofheaven, so magically brilliant and tender, so pellucidly clear anddelicate was the atmosphere and the colour of the sky. She saw no otherform, only his, in this poem of light, in this wide world of the sinkingsun. And the music seemed to be about his feet, to rise from the sandand throb in its breast.
At that moment the figure of Liberty, which she had seen in the shadowsof the dancing-house, came in at the tent door and laid, for the firsttime, her lips on Domini's. That kiss was surely the consecration ofthe life of the sands. But to-day there had been another consecration.Domini had a sudden impulse to link the two consecrations together.
She drew from her breast the wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown intothe stream at Sidi-Zerzour, and, softly going to one of the beds, shepinned the crucifix above it on the canvas of the tent. Then she turnedand went out into the glory of the sunset to meet the fierce music thatwas rising from the desert.
The Garden of Allah Page 17
