CHAPTER XXX
In the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.
Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she feared it wouldbe impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid Batouch in the hotel andthanked him for all his services, she said:
"We'll say adieu here, Batouch."
The poet displayed a large surprise.
"But I will accompany Madame to the station. I will--"
"It is not necessary."
Batouch looked offended but obstinate. His ample person became almostrigid.
"If I am not at the station, Madame, what will Hadj think, and Ali, andOuardi, and--"
"They will be there?"
"Of course, Madame. Where else should they be? Does Madame wish to leaveus like a thief in the night, or like--"
"No, no, Batouch. I am very grateful to you all, but especially to you."
Batouch began to smile.
"Madame has entered into our hearts as no other stranger has ever done,"he remarked. "Madame understands the Arabs. We shall all come to say _aurevoir_ and to wish Madame and Monsieur a happy journey."
For the moment the irony of her situation struck Domini so forcibly thatshe could say nothing. She only looked at Batouch in silence.
"What is it? But I know. Madame is sad at leaving the desert, at leavingBeni-Mora."
"Yes, Batouch. I am sad at leaving Beni-Mora."
"But Madame will return?"
"Who knows?"
"I know. The desert has a spell. He who has once seen the desert mustsee it again. The desert calls and its voice is always heard. Madamewill hear it when she is far away, and some day she will feel, 'Imust come back to the land of the sun and to the beautiful land offorgetfulness.'"
"I shall see you at the station, Batouch," Domini said quickly."Good-bye till then."
The train for Tunis started at sundown, in order that the travellersmight avoid the intense heat of the day. All the afternoon they keptwithin doors. The Arabs were sleeping in dark rooms. The gardens weredeserted. Domini could not sleep. She sat near the French window thatopened on to the verandah and said a silent good-bye to life. For thatwas what she felt--that life was leaving her, life with its intensity,its fierce meaning. She had come out of a sort of death to find life inBeni-Mora, and now she felt that she was going back again to somethingthat would be like death. After her strife there came a numbness of thespirit, a heavy dullness. Time passed and she sat there without moving.Sometimes she looked at the trunks lying on the floor ready for thejourney, at the labels on which was written "Tunis _via_ Constantine."And then she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel in thetrain after her long travelling in the desert, and what it would be liketo be in a city. But she could not. The heat was intense. Perhaps itaffected her mind through her body. Faintly, far down in her mind andheart, she knew that she was wishing, even longing, to realise allthat these last hours in Beni-Mora meant, to gather up in them allthe threads of her life and her sensations there, to survey, as from aheight, the panorama of the change that had come to her in Africa. Butshe was frustrated.
The hours fled, and she remained cold, listless. Often she was hardlythinking at all. When the Arab servant came in to tell her that itwas time to start for the station she got up slowly and looked at himvaguely.
"Time to go already?" she asked.
"Yes, Madame. I have told Monsieur."
"Very well."
At this moment Androvsky came into the room.
"The carriage is waiting," he said.
She felt almost as if a stranger was speaking to her.
"I am ready," she said.
And without looking round the room she went downstairs and got into thecarriage.
They drove to the station without speaking. She had not seen FatherRoubier. Androvsky took the tickets. When they came out upon theplatform they found there a small crowd of Arab friends, with Batouchin command. Among them were the servants who had accompanied them upontheir desert journey, and Hadj. He came forward smiling to shake hands.When she saw him Domini remembered Irena, and, forgetting that it is notetiquette to inquire after an Arab's womenfolk, she said:
"Ah, Hadj, and are you happy now? How is Irena?"
Hadj's face fell, and he showed his pointed teeth in a snarl. For amoment he hesitated, looking round at the other Arabs. Then he said:
"I am always happy, Madame."
Domini saw that she had made a mistake. She took out her purse and gavehim five francs.
"A parting present," she said.
Hadj shook his head with recovered cheerfulness, tucked in his chinand laughed. Domini turned away, shook hands with all her darkacquaintances, and climbed up into the train, followed by Androvsky.Batouch sprang upon the step as the porter shut the door.
"Madame!" he exclaimed.
"What is it, Batouch?"
"To-day you have put Hadj to shame."
He smiled broadly.
"I? How? What have I done?"
"Irena is dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert beyond Amara."
"Irena! But--"
"She could not live shut up in a room. She could not wear the veil forHadj."
"But then--?"
"She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a few francs onecan--"
The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her hand, seizedAndrovsky's, sprang back to the platform.
"Good-bye, Batouch! Good-bye, Ouardi! Good-bye, Smain!"
The train moved on. As it reached the end of the platform Domini saw anemaciated figure standing there alone, a thin face with glittering eyesturned towards her with a glaring scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. Hesmiled at her, and his smile contracted the wound upon his face, makingit look wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down onthe seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personifiedBeni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora's farewell to her and toAndrovsky.
And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert.
She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena's attack upon Hadj.
That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at an end? YetLarbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, stillplayed the little tune that was as the _leit motif_ of the eternalrenewal of life. And within herself she carried God's mystery ofrenewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, wasto help to carry forward the banner of life.
She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she wasleaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch thepageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyesand remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now werejourneying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards ittogether. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the eveningcame, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still shekept her eyes closed. Only when the desert was finally left behind,divided from them by the great wall of rock, did she look up and speakto Androvsky.
"We met here, Boris," she said.
"Yes," he answered, "at the gate of the desert. I shall never be hereagain."
Soon the night fell around them.
* * * * *
In the evening of the following day they reached Tunis, and drove to theHotel d'Orient, where they had written to engage rooms for one night.They had expected that the city would be almost deserted by its Europeaninhabitants now the summer had set in, but when they drove up to thedoor of the hotel the proprietor came out to inform them that, owingto the arrival of a ship full of American tourists who, personallyconducted, were "viewing" Tunis after an excursion to the East andto the Holy Land, he had been unable to keep for them a privatesitting-room. With many apologies he explained that all thesitting-rooms in the house had been turned into bedrooms, but only forone night. On the morrow the personally-conducted ones would depart andMadame and Monsieur could have a charming salon. They listened silentlyto his explanations and apolog
ies, standing in the narrow entrancehall, which was blocked up with piles of luggage. "Tomorrow," he kept onrepeating, "to-morrow" all would be different.
Domini glanced at Androvsky, who stood with his head bent down, lookingon the ground.
"Shall we try another hotel?" she asked.
"If you wish," he answered in a low voice.
"It would be useless, Madame," said the proprietor. "All the hotels arefull. In the others you will not find even a bedroom."
"Perhaps we had better stay here," she said to Androvsky.
Her voice, too, was low and tired. In her heart something seemed to say,"Do not strive any more. In the garden it was finished. Already you areface to face with the end."
When she was alone in her small bedroom, which was full of the noisesof the street, and had washed and put on another dress, she began torealise how much she had secretly been counting on one more eveningalone with Androvsky. She had imagined herself dining with him in theirsitting-room unwatched, sitting together afterwards, for an hour or two,in silence perhaps, but at least alone. She had imagined a last solitudewith him with the darkness of the African night around them. She hadcounted upon that. She realised it now. Her whole heart and soul hadbeen asking for that, believing that at least that would be granted toher. But it was not to be. She must go down with him into a crowd ofAmerican tourists, must--her heart sickened. It seemed to her for amoment that if only she could have this one more evening quietly withthe man she loved she could brace herself to bear anything afterwards,but that if she could not have it she must break down. She feltdesperate.
A gong sounded below. She did not move, though she heard it, knew whatit meant. After a few minutes there was a tap at the door.
"What is it?" she said.
"Dinner is ready, Madame," said a voice in English with a strong foreignaccent.
Domini went to the door and opened it.
"Does Monsieur know?"
"Monsieur is already in the hall waiting for Madame."
She went down and found Androvsky.
They dined at a small table in a room fiercely lit up with electriclight and restless with revolving fans. Close to them, at an immensetable decorated with flowers, dined the American tourists. The womenwore hats with large hanging veils. The men were in travelling suits.They looked sunburnt and gay, and talked and laughed with an intensevivacity. Afterwards they were going in a body to see the dances of theAlmees. Androvsky shot one glance at them as he came in, then lookedaway quickly. The lines near his mouth deepened. For a moment heshut his eyes. Domini did not speak to him, did not attempt to talk.Enveloped by the nasal uproar of the gay tourists they ate in silence.When the short meal was over they got up and went out into the hall. Thepublic drawing-room opened out of it on the left. They looked into itand saw red plush settees, a large centre table covered with a rummageof newspapers, a Jew with a bald head writing a letter, and two oldGerman ladies with caps drinking coffee and knitting stockings.
"The desert!" Androvsky whispered.
Suddenly he drew away from the door and walked out into the street.Lines of carriages stood there waiting to be hired. He beckoned to one,a victoria with a pair of small Arab horses. When it was in front of thehotel he said to Domini:
"Will you get in, Domini?"
She obeyed. Androvsky said to the mettse driver:
"Drive to the Belvedere. Drive round the park till I tell you toreturn."
The man whipped his horses, and they rattled down the broad street, pastthe brilliantly-lighted cafes, the Cercle Militaire, the palace of theResident, where Zouaves were standing, turned to the left and were soonout on a road where a tram line stretched between villas, waste groundand flat fields. In front of them rose a hill with a darkness of treesscattered over it. They reached it, and began to mount it slowly. Thelights of the city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawnsdotted with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to herin the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they mounted, andpresently reached the top of the hill.
"Stop!" said Androvsky to the driver.
He drew up his horses.
"Wait for us here."
Androvsky got out.
"Shall we walk a little way?" he said to Domini.
"Yes--yes."
She got out too, and they walked slowly along the deserted road. Belowthem she saw the lights of ships gliding upon the lakes, the brighteyes of a lighthouse, the distant lamps of scattered villages along theshores, and, very far off, a yellow gleam that dominated the sea beyondthe lakes and seemed to watch patiently all those who came and went, thepilgrims to and from Africa. That gleam shone in Carthage.
From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a savour offreshness, of cool and delicate life.
They walked for some time without speaking, then Domini said:
"From the cemetery of El-Largani you looked out over this, didn't you,Boris?"
"Yes, Domini," he answered. "It was then that the voice spoke to me."
"It will never speak again. God will not let it speak again."
"How can you know that?"
"We are tried in the fire, Boris, but we are not burnt to death."
She said it for herself, to reassure herself, to give a little comfortto her own soul.
"To-night I feel as if it were not so," he answered. "When we came tothe hotel it seemed--I thought that I could not go on."
"And now?"
"Now I do not know anything except that this is my last night with you.And, Domini, that seems to me to be absolutely incredible although Iknow it. I cannot imagine any future away from you, any life in whichI do not see you. I feel as if in parting from you I am parting frommyself, as if the thing left would be no more a man, but only a brokenhusk. Can I pray without you, love God without you?"
"Best without me."
"But can I live without you, Domini? Can I wake day after day to thesunshine, and know that I shall never see you again, and go on living?Can I do that? I don't feel as if it could be. Perhaps, when I have donemy penance, God will have mercy."
"How, Boris?"
"Perhaps He will let me die."
"Let us fix all the thoughts of our hearts on the life in which Hemay let us be together once more. Look, Boris, there are lights in thedarkness, there will always be lights."
"I can't see them," he said.
She looked at him and saw that tears were running down his cheeks.Again, on this last night of companionship, God summoned her to bestrong for him. On the edge of the hill, close to them, she saw aMoorish temple built of marble, with narrow arches and columns, andmarble seats.
"Let us sit here for a moment, Boris," she said.
He followed her up the marble steps. Two or three times he stumbled, butshe did not give him her hand. They sat down between the slender columnsand looked out over the city, whose blanched domes and minarets werefaintly visible in the night. Androvsky was shaken with sobs.
"How can I part from you?" he said brokenly. "How am I to do it? How canI--how can I? Why was I given this love for you, this terrible thing,this crying out, this reaching out of the flesh and heart and soulto you? Domini--Domini--what does it all mean--this mystery oftorture--this scourging of the body--this tearing in pieces of my souland yours? Domini, shall we know--shall we ever know?"
"I am sure we shall know, we shall all know some day, the meaning of themystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then surely, we shall each of usbe glad that we have suffered. The suffering will make the glory of ourhappiness. Even now sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as ifthere were a kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I amdoing, as if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God hasput into me. Boris, let us--you and I--learn to say in all this terror,'I am unconquered, I am unconquerable.'"
"I feel that I could say that, be it in the most frightfulcircumstances, if only I could sometimes see you--even far away as now Isee those lights."
"You will see
me in your prayers every day, and I shall see you inmine."
"But the cry of the body, Domini, of the eyes, of the hands, to see, totouch--it's so fierce, it's so--it's so--"
"I know, I hear it too, always. But there is another voice, which willbe strong when the other has faded into eternal silence. In all bodilythings, even the most beautiful, there is something finite. We mustreach out our poor, feeble, trembling hands to the infinite. I thinkeveryone who is born does that through life, often without beingconscious of it. We shall do it consciously, you and I. We shall be ableto do it because of our dreadful suffering. We shall want, we shall haveto do it, you--where you are going, and I----"
"Where will you be?"
"I don't know, I don't know. I won't think of the afterwards now, inthese last few hours--in these last----"
Her voice faltered and broke. Then the tears came to her also, and for awhile she could not see the distant lights.
Then she spoke again; she said:
"Boris, let us go now."
He got up without a word. They found the carriage and drove back toTunis.
When they reached the hotel they came into the midst of the Americantourists, who were excitedly discussing the dances they had seen, andcalling for cooling drinks to allay the thirst created by the heat ofthe close rooms of Oriental houses.
Early next morning a carriage was at the door. When they had got into itthe coachman looked round.
"Where shall I drive to, Monsieur?"
Androvsky looked at him and made no reply.
"To El-Largani," Domini said.
"To the monastery, Madame?"
He whistled to his horses gaily. As they trotted on bells chimed abouttheir necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine that lay over the land.They passed soldiers marching, and heard the call of bugles, the rattleof drums. And each sound seemed distant and each moving figure faraway. This world of Africa, fiercely distinct in the clear air underthe cloudless sky, was unreal to them both, was vague as a northernland wrapped in a mist of autumn. The unreal was about them. Withinthemselves was the real. They sat beside each other without speaking.Words to them now were useless things. What more had they to say?Everything and nothing. Lifetimes would not have been long enough forthem to speak their thoughts for each other, of each other, to speaktheir emotions, all that was in their minds and hearts during that drivefrom the city to the monastery that stood upon the hill. Yet did nottheir mutual action of that morning say all that need be said? Thesilence of the Trappists surely floated out to them over the plains andthe pale waters of the bitter lakes and held them silent.
But the bells on the horses' necks rang always gaily, and the coachman,who would presently drive Domini back alone to Tunis, whistled and sangon his high seat.
Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a pedestal ofstone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive trees. It markedthe beginning of the domain of El-Largani. When Domini saw it she lookedat Androvsky, and his eyes answered her silent question. The coachmanwhipped his horses into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach hisdestination. He was thinking of the good red wine of the monks. In acloud of white dust the carriage rolled onwards between vineyards inwhich, here and there, labourers were working, sheltered from the sun byimmense straw hats. A long line of waggons, laden with barrels and drawnby mules covered with bells, sheltered from the flies by leaves, metthem. In the distance Domini saw forests of eucalyptus trees. Suddenlyit seemed to her as if she saw Androvsky coming from them towardsthe white road, helping a man who was pale, and who stumbled as ifhalf-fainting, yet whose face was full of a fierce passion of joy--thestranger whose influence had driven him out of the monastery into theworld. She bent down her head and hid her face in her hands, praying,praying with all her strength for courage in this supreme moment of herlife. But almost directly the prayers died on her lips and in her heart,and she found herself repeating the words of _The Imitation_:
"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."
Again and again she said the words: "It securely passeth throughall--it securely passeth through all." Now, at last, she was to knowthe uttermost truth of those words which she had loved in her happiness,which she clung to now as a little child clings to its father's hand.
The carriage turned to the right, went on a little way, then stopped.
Domini lifted her face from her hands. She saw before her a great doorwhich stood open. Above it was a statue of the Madonna and Child, andon either side were two angels with swords and stars. Underneath waswritten, in great letters:
JANUA COELI.
Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon which thesunlight streamed, three palm trees, and a second door which was shut.Above this second door was written:
"_Les dames n'entrent pas ici._"
As she looked the figure of a very old monk with a long white beardshuffled slowly across the patch of sunlight and disappeared.
The coachman turned round.
"You descend here," he said in a cheerful voice. "Madame will beentertained in the parlour on the right of the first door, but Monsieurcan go on to the _hotellerie_. It's over there."
He pointed with his whip and turned his back to them again.
Domini sat quite still. Her lips moved, once more repeating the words of_The Imitation_. Androvsky got up from his seat, stepped heavily out ofthe carriage, and stood beside it. The coachman was busy lighting along cigar. Androvsky leaned forward towards Domini with his arms on thecarriage and looked at her with tearless eyes.
"Domini," at last he whispered. "Domini!"
Then she turned to him, bent towards him, put her hands on his shouldersand looked into his face for a long time, as if she were trying to seeit now for all the years that were perhaps to come. Her eyes, too, weretearless.
At last she leaned down and touched his forehead with her lips.
She said nothing. Her hands dropped from his shoulders, she turned awayand her lips moved once more.
Then Androvsky moved slowly in through the doorway of the monastery,crossed the patch of sunlight, lifted his hand and rang the bell at thesecond door.
"Drive back to Tunis, please."
"Madame!" said the coachman.
"Drive back to Tunis."
"Madame is not going to enter! But Monsieur--"
"Drive back to Tunis!"
Something in the voice that spoke to him startled the coachman. Hehesitated a moment, staring at Domini from his seat, then, witha muttered curse, he turned his horses' heads and plied the whipferociously.
* * * * *
"Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is nottired. When weary--it--is not--tired."
Domini's lips ceased to move. She could not speak any more. She couldnot even pray without words.
Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone.
CHAPTER XXXI
In the garden of Count Anteoni, which has now passed into other hands,a little boy may often be seen playing. He is gay, as children are, andsometimes he is naughty and, as if out of sheer wantonness, he destroysthe pyramids of sand erected by the Arab gardeners upon the narrow pathsbetween the hills, or tears off the petals of the geraniums and scattersthem to the breezes that whisper among the trees. But when Larbi's flutecalls to him he runs to hear. He sits at the feet of that persistentlover, and watches the big fingers fluttering at the holes of thereed, and his small face becomes earnest and dreamy, as if it lookedon far-off things, or watched the pale pageant of the mirages risingmysteriously out of the sunlit spaces of the sands to fade again,leaving no trace behind.
Only one other song he loves more than the twittering tune of Larbi.
Sometimes, when twilight is falling over the Sahara, his mother callshim to her, to the
white wall where she is sitting beneath a jamelontree.
"Listen, Boris!" she whispers.
The little boy climbs up on her knee, leans his face against her breastand obeys. An Arab is passing below on the desert track, singing tohimself as he goes towards his home in the oasis:
"No one but God and I Knows what is in my heart."
He is singing the song of the freed negroes. When his voice has diedaway the mother puts the little boy down. It is bed time, and Smain isthere to lead him to the white villa, where he will sleep dreamlesslytill morning.
But the mother stays alone by the wall till the night falls and thedesert is hidden.
"No one but God and I Knows what is in my heart."
She whispers the words to herself. The cool wind of the night blows overthe vast spaces of the Sahara and touches her cheek, reminding her ofthe wind that, at Arba, carried fire towards her as she sat before thetent, reminding her of her glorious days of liberty, of the passion thatcame to her soul like fire in the desert.
But she does not rebel.
For always, when night falls, she sees the form of a man praying whoonce fled from prayer in the desert; she sees a wanderer who at last hasreached his home.
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