CHAPTER XXIXThe caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the mules, were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in the direction of the mountains, and the dark shadow which indicated the oasis of Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them. Domini and Androvsky were going to be alone on this last stage of their desert journey. They had mounted their horses before the great door of the bordj, said goodbye to the Sheikh of Arba, scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to watch them go, and cast one last look behind them.In that mutual, instinctive look back they were both bidding a silent farewell to the desert, that had sheltered their passion, surely taken part in the joy of their love, watched the sorrow and the terror grow in it to the climax at Amara, and was now whispering to them a faint and mysterious farewell.To Domini the desert had always been as a great and significant personality, a personality that had called her persistently to come to it. Now, as she turned on her horse, she felt as if it were calling her no longer, as if its mission to her were accomplished, as if its voice had sunk into a deep and breathless silence. She wondered if Androvsky felt this too, but she did not ask him. His face was pale and severe. His eyes stared into the distance. His hands lay on his horse’s neck like tired things with no more power to grip and hold. His lips were slightly parted, and she heard the sound of his breath coming and going like the breath of a man who is struggling. This sound warned her not to try his strength or hers.“Come, Boris,” she said, and her voice held none of the passionate regret that was in her heart, “we mustn’t linger, or it will be night before we reach Beni-Mora.”“Let it be night,” he said. “Dark night!”The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which stood the bordj.“Dark—dark night!” he said again.She said nothing. They rode into the plain. When they were there he said:“Domini, do you understand—do you realise?”“What, Boris?” she asked quietly.“All that we are leaving to-day?”“Yes, I understand.”“Are we—are we leaving it for ever?”“We must not think of that.”“How can we help it? What else can we think of? Can one govern the mind?”“Surely, if we can govern the heart.”“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes I wonder——”He looked at her. Something in her face made it impossible for him to go on, to say what he had been going to say. But she understood the unfinished sentence.“If you can wonder, Boris,” she said, “you don’t know me, you don’t know me at all!”“Domini,” he said, “I don’t wonder. But sometimes I understand your strength, and sometimes it seems to me scarcely human, scarcely the strength of a woman.”She lifted her whip and pointed to the dark shadow far away.“I can just see the tower,” she said. “Can’t you?”“I will not look,” he said. “I cannot. If you can, you are stronger than I. When I remember that it was on that tower you first spoke to me—oh, Domini, if we could only go back! It is in our power. We have only to draw a rein and—and—”“I look at the tower,” she said, “as once I looked at the desert. It calls us, the shadow of the palm trees calls us, as once the desert did.”“But the voice—what a different voice! Can you listen to it?”“I have been listening to it ever since we left Amara. Yes, it is a different voice, but we must obey it as we obeyed the voice of the desert. Don’t you feel that?”“If I do it is because you tell me to feel it; you tell me that I must feel it.”His words seemed to hurt her. An expression of pain came into her face.“Boris,” she said, “don’t make me regret too terribly that I ever came into your life. When you speak like that I feel almost as if you were putting me in the place of—of—I feel as if you were depending upon me for everything that you are doing, as if you were letting your own will fall asleep. The desert brings dreams. I know that. But we, you and I, we must not dream any more.”“A dream, you call it—the life we have lived together, our desert life?”“Boris, I only mean that we must live strongly now, act strongly now, that we must be brave. I have always felt that there was strength in you.”“Strength!” he said bitterly.“Yes. Otherwise I could never have loved you. Don’t ever prove to me that I was utterly wrong. I can bear a great deal. But that—I don’t feel as if I could bear that.”After a moment he answered:“I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me.”And he lifted his eyes and fixed them upon the tower with a sort of stern intentness, as a man looks at something cruel, terrible.She saw him do this.“Let us ride quicker,” she said. “To-night we must be in Beni-Mora.”He said nothing, but he touched his horse with his heel. His eyes were always fixed upon the tower, as if they feared to look at the desert any more. She understood that when he had said “I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me,” he had not spoken idly. He had waked up from the egoism of his despair. He had been able to see more clearly into her heart, to feel more rightly what she was feeling than he had before. As she watched him watching the tower, she had a sensation that a bond, a new bond between them, was chaining them together in a new way. Was it not a bond that would be strong and lasting, that the future, whatever it held, would not be able to break? Ties, sacred ties, that had bound them together might, must, be snapped asunder. And the end was not yet. She saw, as she gazed at the darkness of the palms of Beni-Mora, a greater darkness approaching, deeper than any darkness of palms, than any darkness of night. But now she saw also a ray of light in the gloom, the light of the dawning strength, the dawning unselfishness in Androvsky. And she resolved to fix her eyes upon it as he fixed his eyes upon the tower.Just after sunset they rode into Beni-Mora in advance of the camp, which they had passed upon their way. To the right were the trees of Count Anteoni’s garden. Domini felt them, but she did not look towards them. Nor did Androvsky. They kept their eyes fixed upon the distance of the white road. Only when they reached the great hotel, now closed and deserted, did she glance away. She could not pass the tower without seeing it. But she saw it through a mist of tears, and her hands trembled upon the reins they held. For a moment she felt that she must break down, that she had no more strength left in her. But they came to the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross towards the desert like a weapon. And she looked at it and saw the Christ.“Boris,” she whispered, “there is the Christ. Let us think only of that tonight.”She saw him look at it steadily.“You remember,” she said, at the bottom of the avenue of cypresses—“at El-Largani—Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis?”“Yes, Domini.”“We can be obedient too. Let us be obedient too.”When she said that, and looked at him, Androvsky felt as if he were on his knees before her, as he was upon his knees in the garden when he could not go away. But he felt, too, that then, though he had loved her, he had not known how to love her, how to love anyone. She had taught him now. The lesson sank into his heart like a sword and like balm. It was as if he were slain and healed by the same stroke.That night, as Domini lay in the lonely room in the hotel, with the French windows open to the verandah, she heard the church clock chime the hour and the distant sound of the African hautboy in the street of the dancers, she heard again the two voices. The hautboy was barbarous and provocative, but she thought that it was no more shrill with a persistent triumph. Presently the church bell chimed again.Was it the bell of the church of Beni-Mora, or the bell of the chapel of El-Largani? Or was it not rather the voice of the great religion to which she belonged, to which Androvsky was returning?When it ceased she whispered to herself, “Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis.” And with these words upon her lips towards dawn she fell asleep. They had dined upstairs in the little room that had formerly been Domini’s salon, and had not seen Father Roubier, who always came to the hotel to take his evening meal. In the morning, after they had breakfasted, Androvsky said:“Domini, I will go. I will go now.”He got up and stood by her, looking down at her. In his face there was a sort of sternness, a set expression.“To Father Roubier, Boris?” she said.“Yes. Before I go won’t you—won’t you give me your hand?”She understood all the agony of spirit he was enduring, all the shame against which he was fighting. She longed to spring up, to take him in her arms, to comfort him as only the woman he loves and who loves him can comfort a man, without words, by the pressure of her arms, the pressure of her lips, the beating of her heart against his heart. She longed to do this so ardently that she moved restlessly, looking up at him with a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before, not even when they watched the fire dying down at Arba. But she did not lift her hand to his.“Boris,” she said, “go. God will be with you.”After a moment she added:“And all my heart.”He stood, as if waiting, a long time. She had ceased from moving and had withdrawn her eyes from his. In his soul a voice was saying, “If she does not touch you now she will never touch you again.” And he waited. He could not help waiting.“Boris,” she whispered, “good-bye.”“Good-bye?” he said.“Come to me—afterwards. Come to me in the garden. I shall be there where we—I shall be there waiting for you.”He went out without another word.When he was gone she went on to the verandah quickly and looked over the parapet. She saw him come out from beneath the arcade and walk slowly across the road to the little gate of the enclosure before the house of the priest. As he lifted his hands to open the gate there was the sound of a bark, and she saw Bous-Bous run out with a manner of stern inquiry, which quickly changed to joyful welcome as he recognised an old acquaintance. Androvsky bent down, took up the little dog in his arms, and, holding him, walked to the house door. In a moment it was opened and he went in. Then Domini set out towards the garden, avoiding the village street, and taking a byway which skirted the desert. She walked quickly. She longed to be within the shadows of the garden behind the white wall. She did not feel much, think much, as she walked. Without self-consciously knowing it she was holding all her nature, the whole of herself, fiercely in check. She did not look about her, did not see the sunlit reaches of the desert, or the walls of the houses of Beni-Mora, or the palm trees. Only when she had passed the hotel and the negro village and turned to the left, to the track at the edge of which the villa of Count Anteoni stood, did she lift her eyes from the ground. They rested on the white arcade framing the fierce blue of the cloudless sky. She stopped short. Her nature seemed to escape from the leash by which she had held it in with a rush, to leap forward, to be in the garden and in the past, in the past with its passion and its fiery hopes, its magnificent looking forward, its holy desires of joy that would crown her woman’s life, of love that would teach her all the depth, and the height, and the force and the submission of her womanhood. And then, from that past, it strove on into the present. The shock was as the shock of battle. There were noises in her ears, voices clamouring in her heart. All her pulses throbbed like hammers, and then suddenly she felt as weak as a little sick child, and as if she must lie down there on the dust of the white road in the sunshine, lie down and die at the edge of the desert that had treated her cruelly, that had slain the hopes it had given to her and brought into her heart this terrible despair.For now she knew a moment of utter despair, in which all things seemed to dissolve into atoms and sink down out of her sight. She stood quivering in blackness. She stood absolutely alone, more absolutely alone than any woman had ever been, than any human being had ever been. She seemed presently, as the blackness faded into something pale, like a ghastly twilight, to see herself—her wraith, as it were—standing in a vast landscape, vast as the desert, companionless, lost, forgotten, out of mind, watching for something that would never come, listening for some voice that was hushed in eternal silence.That was to be her life, she thought—could she face it? Could she endure it? And everything within her said to her that she could not.And then, just then, when she felt that she must sink down and give up the battle of life, she seemed to see by her side a shape, a little shape like a child. And it lifted up a hand to her hand.And she knew that the vast landscape was God’s garden, the Garden of Allah, and that no day, no night could ever pass without God walking in it.Hearing a knock upon the great gate of the garden Smain uncurled himself on his mat within the tent, rose lazily to his feet, and, without a rose, strolled languidly to open to the visitor. Domini stood without. When he saw her he smiled quietly, with no surprise.“Madame has returned?”Domini smiled at him, but her lips were trembling, and she said nothing.Smain observed her with a dawning of curiosity.“Madame is changed,” he said at length. “Madame looks tired. The sun is hot in the desert now. It is better here in the garden.”With an effort she controlled herself.“Yes, Smain,” she answered, “it is better here. But I can not stay here long.”“You are going away?”“Yes, I am going away.”She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and added:“And now I want to walk in the garden alone.”He waved his hand towards the trees.“It is all for Madame. Monsieur the Count has always said so. But Monsieur?”“He is in Beni-Mora. He is coming presently to fetch me.”Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great sweep of sand towards the trees and was taken by their darkness. She heard again the liquid bubbling of the hidden waterfall, and was again companioned by the mystery of this desert Paradise, but it no longer whispered to her of peace for her. It murmured only its own personal peace and accentuated her own personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it still was, but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the full terror of Nature’s equanimity environing the fierce and tortured lives of men.As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the hidden home of the Geni of the garden. Yet she remembered acutely all her first feelings there. Not one was forgotten. They returned to her like spectres stealing across the sand. They lurked like spectres among the dense masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes, not to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the sun. But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased. At last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw pine needles strewed about her feet. Then she stood still, instinctively listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and her own despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she wanted, that she needed it—the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent. Had he fallen out of an old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was he dead? For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell.But the silence lasted and she went on and came to thefumoir. She went into it at once and sat down. She was going to wait for Androvsky here.Her mind was straying curiously to-day. Suddenly she found herself thinking of the fanatical religious performance she had seen with Hadj on the night when she had ridden out to watch the moon rise. She saw in imagination the bowing bodies, the foaming mouths, the glassy eyes of the young priests of the Sahara. She saw the spikes behind their eyeballs, the struggling scorpions descending into their throats, the flaming coals under their arm-pits, the nails driven into their heads. She heard them growling as they saw the glass, like hungry beasts at the sight of meat. And all this was to them religion. This madness was their conception of worship. A voice seemed to whisper to her: “And your madness?”It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the cemetery of El-Largani, “Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world which God made for men. Why do you reject it?”For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit some act which they feel would be contrary to God’s will if there were a God. It was a thrill of almost insolent human emancipation. The soul cried out: “I have no master. When I thought I had a master I was mad. Now I am sane.”But it passed almost as it came, like a false thing slinking from the sunlight, and Domini bowed her head in the obscurity of Count Anteoni’s thinking-place and returned to her true self. That moment had been like the moment upon the tower when she saw below her the Jewess dancing upon the roof for the soldiers, a black speck settling for an instant upon whiteness, then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a human being, that there would always be in her blood something that was self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already in Paradise? She sat and prayed for strength in the battle of life, that could never be anything else but a battle.At last something within her told her to look up, to look out through the window-space into the garden. She had not heard a step, but she knew that Androvsky was approaching, and, as she looked up, she prepared herself for a sight that would be terrible. She remembered his face when he came to bid her good-bye in the garden, and she feared to see his face now. But she schooled herself to be strong, for herself and for him.He was near her on the path coming towards her. As she saw him she uttered a little cry and stood up. An immense surprise came to her, followed in a moment by an immense joy—the greatest joy, she thought, that she had ever experienced. For she looked on a face in which she saw for the first time a pale dawning of peace. There was sadness in it, there was awe, but there was a light of calm, such as sometimes settles upon the faces of men who have died quietly without agony or fear. And she felt fully, as she saw it, the rapture of having refused cowardice and grasped the hand of bravery. Directly afterwards there came to her a sensation of wonder that at this moment of their lives she and Androvsky should be capable of a feeling of joy, of peace. When the wonder passed it was as if she had seen God and knew for ever the meaning of His divine compensations.Androvsky came to the doorway of thefumoirwithout looking up, stood still there—just where Count Anteoni had stood during his first interview with Domini—and said:“Domini, I have been to the priest. I have made my confession.”“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Boris!”He came into thefumoirand sat down near her, but not close to her, on one of the divans. Now the sad look in his face had deepened and the peace seemed to be fading. She had thought of the dawn—that pale light which is growing into day. Now she thought of the twilight which is fading into night. And the terrible knowledge struck her, “I am the troubler of his peace. Without me only could he ever regain fully the peace which he has lost.”“Domini,” he said, looking up at her, “you know the rest. You meant it to be as it will be when we left Amara.”“Was there any other way? Was there any other possible life for us—for you—for me?”“For you!” he said, and there was a sound almost of despair in his voice. “But what is to be your life? I have never protected you—you have protected me. I have never been strong for you—you have been strong for me. But to leave you—all alone, Domini, must I do that? Must I think of you out in the world alone?”For a moment she was tempted to break her silence, to tell him the truth, that she would perhaps not be alone, that another life, sprung from his and hers, was coming to be with her, was coming to share the great loneliness that lay before her. But she resisted the temptation and only said:“Do not think of me, Boris.”“You tell me not to think of you!” he said with an almost fierce wonder. “Do you—do you wish me not to think of you?”“What I wish—that is so little, but—no, Boris, I can’t say—I don’t think I could ever truly say that I wish you to think no more of me. After all, one has a heart, and I think if it’s worth anything it must be often a rebellious heart. I know mine is rebellious. But if you don’t think too much of me—when you are there—”She paused, and they looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then she continued:“Surely it will be easier for you, happier for you.”Androvsky clenched his right hand on the divan and turned round till he was facing her full. His eyes blazed.“Domini,” he said, “you are truthful. I’ll be truthful to you. Till the end of my life I’ll think of you—every day, every hour. If it were mortal sin to think of you I would commit it—yes, Domini, deliberately, I would commit it. But—God doesn’t ask so much of us; no, God doesn’t. I’ve made my confession. I know what I must do. I’ll do it. You are right—you are always right—you are guided, I know that. But I will think of you. And I’ll tell you something—don’t shirk from it, because it’s truth, the truth of my soul, and you love truth. Domini—”Suddenly he got up from the divan and stood before her, looking down at her steadily.“Domini, I can’t regret that I have seen you, that we have been together, that we have loved each other, that we do love each other for ever. I can’t regret it; I can’t even try or wish to. I can’t regret that I have learned from you the meaning of life. I know that God has punished me for what I have done. In my love for you—till I told you the truth, that other truth—I never had a moment of peace—of exultation, yes, of passionate exultation; but never, never a moment of peace. For always, even in the most beautiful moments, there has been agony for me. For always I have known that I was sinning against God and you, against myself, my eternal vows. And yet now I tell you, Domini, as I have told God since I have been able to pray again, that I am glad, thankful, that I have loved you, been loved by you. Is it wicked? I don’t know. I can scarcely even care, because it’s true. And how can I deny the truth, strive against truth? I am as I am, and I am that. God has made me that. God will forgive me for being as I am. I’m not afraid. I believe—I dare to believe—that He wishes me to think of you always till the end of my life. I dare to believe that He would almost hate me if I could ever cease from loving you. That’s my other confession—my confession to you. I was born, perhaps, to be a monk. But I was born, too, that I might love you and know your love, your beauty, your tenderness, your divinity. If I had not known you, if I had died a monk, a good monk who had never denied his vows, I should have died—I feel it, Domini—in a great, a terrible ignorance. I should have known the goodness of God, but I should never have known part, a beautiful part, of His goodness. For I should never have known the goodness that He has put into you. He has taught me through you. He has tortured me through you; yes, but through you, too, He has made me understand Him. When I was in the monastery, when I was at peace, when I lost myself in prayer, when I was absolutely pure, absolutely—so I thought—the child of God, I never really knew God. Now, Domini, now I know Him. In the worst moments of the new agony that I must meet at least I shall always have that help. I shall always feel that I know what God is. I shall always, when I think of you, when I remember you, be able to say, ‘God is love.’”He was silent, but his face still spoke to her, his eyes read her eyes. And in that moment at last they understood each other fully and for ever. “It was written”—that was Domini’s thought—“it was written by God.” Far away the church bell chimed.“Boris,” Domini said quietly, “we must go to-day. We must leave Beni-Mora. You know that?”“Yes,” he said, “I know.”He looked out into the garden. The almost fierce resolution, that had something in it of triumph, faded from him.“Yes,” he said, “this is the end, the real end, for—there, it will all be different—it will be terrible.”“Let us sit here for a little while together,” Domini said, “and be quiet. Is it like the garden of El-Largani, Boris?”“No. But when I first came here, when I saw the white walls, the great door, when I saw the poor Arabs gathered there to receive alms, it made me feel almost as if I were at El-Largani. That was why——” he paused.“I understand, Boris, I understand everything now.”And then they were silent. Such a silence as theirs was then could never be interpreted to others. In it the sorrows, the aspirations, the struggles, the triumphs, the torturing regrets, the brave determinations of poor, great, feeble, noble humanity were enclosed as in a casket—a casket which contains many kinds of jewels, but surely none that are not precious.And the garden listened, and beyond the garden the desert listened—that other garden of Allah. And in this garden was not Allah, too, listening to this silence of his children, this last mutual silence of theirs in the garden where they had wandered, where they had loved, where they had learned a great lesson and drawn near to a great victory?They might have sat thus for hours; they had lost all count of time. But presently, in the distance among the trees, there rose a light, frail sound that struck into both their hearts like a thin weapon. It was the flute of Larbi, and it reminded them—of what did it not remind them? All their passionate love of the body, all their lawlessness, all the joy of liberty and of life, of the barbaric life that is liberty, all their wandering in the great spaces of the sun, were set before them in Larbi’s fluttering tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call of danger, the call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to abandon the summons of the spirit. Domini got up swiftly.“Come, Boris,” she said, without looking at him.He obeyed her and rose to his feet.“Let us go to the wall,” she said, “and look out once more on the desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps—perhaps we shall hear the call to prayer.”They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence. Soon they saw before them the great spaces of the Sahara flooded with the blinding glory of the summer sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the shelter of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs were visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over, naked, to the dominion of the sun. While they stood there the nasal voice of the Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque of Beni-Mora, uttered its fourfold cry, and died away.“Boris,” Domini said, “that is for the Arabs, but for us, too, for we belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even more than they.”“Yes, Domini.”She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood there with her and repeated the words of the angel to the Prophet, and she murmured them now:“O thou that art covered, arise, and magnify thy Lord, and purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness.”Then, standing side by side, they prayed, looking at the desert.
The caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.
Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the mules, were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in the direction of the mountains, and the dark shadow which indicated the oasis of Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them. Domini and Androvsky were going to be alone on this last stage of their desert journey. They had mounted their horses before the great door of the bordj, said goodbye to the Sheikh of Arba, scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to watch them go, and cast one last look behind them.
In that mutual, instinctive look back they were both bidding a silent farewell to the desert, that had sheltered their passion, surely taken part in the joy of their love, watched the sorrow and the terror grow in it to the climax at Amara, and was now whispering to them a faint and mysterious farewell.
To Domini the desert had always been as a great and significant personality, a personality that had called her persistently to come to it. Now, as she turned on her horse, she felt as if it were calling her no longer, as if its mission to her were accomplished, as if its voice had sunk into a deep and breathless silence. She wondered if Androvsky felt this too, but she did not ask him. His face was pale and severe. His eyes stared into the distance. His hands lay on his horse’s neck like tired things with no more power to grip and hold. His lips were slightly parted, and she heard the sound of his breath coming and going like the breath of a man who is struggling. This sound warned her not to try his strength or hers.
“Come, Boris,” she said, and her voice held none of the passionate regret that was in her heart, “we mustn’t linger, or it will be night before we reach Beni-Mora.”
“Let it be night,” he said. “Dark night!”
The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which stood the bordj.
“Dark—dark night!” he said again.
She said nothing. They rode into the plain. When they were there he said:
“Domini, do you understand—do you realise?”
“What, Boris?” she asked quietly.
“All that we are leaving to-day?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Are we—are we leaving it for ever?”
“We must not think of that.”
“How can we help it? What else can we think of? Can one govern the mind?”
“Surely, if we can govern the heart.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes I wonder——”
He looked at her. Something in her face made it impossible for him to go on, to say what he had been going to say. But she understood the unfinished sentence.
“If you can wonder, Boris,” she said, “you don’t know me, you don’t know me at all!”
“Domini,” he said, “I don’t wonder. But sometimes I understand your strength, and sometimes it seems to me scarcely human, scarcely the strength of a woman.”
She lifted her whip and pointed to the dark shadow far away.
“I can just see the tower,” she said. “Can’t you?”
“I will not look,” he said. “I cannot. If you can, you are stronger than I. When I remember that it was on that tower you first spoke to me—oh, Domini, if we could only go back! It is in our power. We have only to draw a rein and—and—”
“I look at the tower,” she said, “as once I looked at the desert. It calls us, the shadow of the palm trees calls us, as once the desert did.”
“But the voice—what a different voice! Can you listen to it?”
“I have been listening to it ever since we left Amara. Yes, it is a different voice, but we must obey it as we obeyed the voice of the desert. Don’t you feel that?”
“If I do it is because you tell me to feel it; you tell me that I must feel it.”
His words seemed to hurt her. An expression of pain came into her face.
“Boris,” she said, “don’t make me regret too terribly that I ever came into your life. When you speak like that I feel almost as if you were putting me in the place of—of—I feel as if you were depending upon me for everything that you are doing, as if you were letting your own will fall asleep. The desert brings dreams. I know that. But we, you and I, we must not dream any more.”
“A dream, you call it—the life we have lived together, our desert life?”
“Boris, I only mean that we must live strongly now, act strongly now, that we must be brave. I have always felt that there was strength in you.”
“Strength!” he said bitterly.
“Yes. Otherwise I could never have loved you. Don’t ever prove to me that I was utterly wrong. I can bear a great deal. But that—I don’t feel as if I could bear that.”
After a moment he answered:
“I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me.”
And he lifted his eyes and fixed them upon the tower with a sort of stern intentness, as a man looks at something cruel, terrible.
She saw him do this.
“Let us ride quicker,” she said. “To-night we must be in Beni-Mora.”
He said nothing, but he touched his horse with his heel. His eyes were always fixed upon the tower, as if they feared to look at the desert any more. She understood that when he had said “I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me,” he had not spoken idly. He had waked up from the egoism of his despair. He had been able to see more clearly into her heart, to feel more rightly what she was feeling than he had before. As she watched him watching the tower, she had a sensation that a bond, a new bond between them, was chaining them together in a new way. Was it not a bond that would be strong and lasting, that the future, whatever it held, would not be able to break? Ties, sacred ties, that had bound them together might, must, be snapped asunder. And the end was not yet. She saw, as she gazed at the darkness of the palms of Beni-Mora, a greater darkness approaching, deeper than any darkness of palms, than any darkness of night. But now she saw also a ray of light in the gloom, the light of the dawning strength, the dawning unselfishness in Androvsky. And she resolved to fix her eyes upon it as he fixed his eyes upon the tower.
Just after sunset they rode into Beni-Mora in advance of the camp, which they had passed upon their way. To the right were the trees of Count Anteoni’s garden. Domini felt them, but she did not look towards them. Nor did Androvsky. They kept their eyes fixed upon the distance of the white road. Only when they reached the great hotel, now closed and deserted, did she glance away. She could not pass the tower without seeing it. But she saw it through a mist of tears, and her hands trembled upon the reins they held. For a moment she felt that she must break down, that she had no more strength left in her. But they came to the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross towards the desert like a weapon. And she looked at it and saw the Christ.
“Boris,” she whispered, “there is the Christ. Let us think only of that tonight.”
She saw him look at it steadily.
“You remember,” she said, at the bottom of the avenue of cypresses—“at El-Largani—Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis?”
“Yes, Domini.”
“We can be obedient too. Let us be obedient too.”
When she said that, and looked at him, Androvsky felt as if he were on his knees before her, as he was upon his knees in the garden when he could not go away. But he felt, too, that then, though he had loved her, he had not known how to love her, how to love anyone. She had taught him now. The lesson sank into his heart like a sword and like balm. It was as if he were slain and healed by the same stroke.
That night, as Domini lay in the lonely room in the hotel, with the French windows open to the verandah, she heard the church clock chime the hour and the distant sound of the African hautboy in the street of the dancers, she heard again the two voices. The hautboy was barbarous and provocative, but she thought that it was no more shrill with a persistent triumph. Presently the church bell chimed again.
Was it the bell of the church of Beni-Mora, or the bell of the chapel of El-Largani? Or was it not rather the voice of the great religion to which she belonged, to which Androvsky was returning?
When it ceased she whispered to herself, “Factus obediens usque ad mortem Crucis.” And with these words upon her lips towards dawn she fell asleep. They had dined upstairs in the little room that had formerly been Domini’s salon, and had not seen Father Roubier, who always came to the hotel to take his evening meal. In the morning, after they had breakfasted, Androvsky said:
“Domini, I will go. I will go now.”
He got up and stood by her, looking down at her. In his face there was a sort of sternness, a set expression.
“To Father Roubier, Boris?” she said.
“Yes. Before I go won’t you—won’t you give me your hand?”
She understood all the agony of spirit he was enduring, all the shame against which he was fighting. She longed to spring up, to take him in her arms, to comfort him as only the woman he loves and who loves him can comfort a man, without words, by the pressure of her arms, the pressure of her lips, the beating of her heart against his heart. She longed to do this so ardently that she moved restlessly, looking up at him with a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before, not even when they watched the fire dying down at Arba. But she did not lift her hand to his.
“Boris,” she said, “go. God will be with you.”
After a moment she added:
“And all my heart.”
He stood, as if waiting, a long time. She had ceased from moving and had withdrawn her eyes from his. In his soul a voice was saying, “If she does not touch you now she will never touch you again.” And he waited. He could not help waiting.
“Boris,” she whispered, “good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” he said.
“Come to me—afterwards. Come to me in the garden. I shall be there where we—I shall be there waiting for you.”
He went out without another word.
When he was gone she went on to the verandah quickly and looked over the parapet. She saw him come out from beneath the arcade and walk slowly across the road to the little gate of the enclosure before the house of the priest. As he lifted his hands to open the gate there was the sound of a bark, and she saw Bous-Bous run out with a manner of stern inquiry, which quickly changed to joyful welcome as he recognised an old acquaintance. Androvsky bent down, took up the little dog in his arms, and, holding him, walked to the house door. In a moment it was opened and he went in. Then Domini set out towards the garden, avoiding the village street, and taking a byway which skirted the desert. She walked quickly. She longed to be within the shadows of the garden behind the white wall. She did not feel much, think much, as she walked. Without self-consciously knowing it she was holding all her nature, the whole of herself, fiercely in check. She did not look about her, did not see the sunlit reaches of the desert, or the walls of the houses of Beni-Mora, or the palm trees. Only when she had passed the hotel and the negro village and turned to the left, to the track at the edge of which the villa of Count Anteoni stood, did she lift her eyes from the ground. They rested on the white arcade framing the fierce blue of the cloudless sky. She stopped short. Her nature seemed to escape from the leash by which she had held it in with a rush, to leap forward, to be in the garden and in the past, in the past with its passion and its fiery hopes, its magnificent looking forward, its holy desires of joy that would crown her woman’s life, of love that would teach her all the depth, and the height, and the force and the submission of her womanhood. And then, from that past, it strove on into the present. The shock was as the shock of battle. There were noises in her ears, voices clamouring in her heart. All her pulses throbbed like hammers, and then suddenly she felt as weak as a little sick child, and as if she must lie down there on the dust of the white road in the sunshine, lie down and die at the edge of the desert that had treated her cruelly, that had slain the hopes it had given to her and brought into her heart this terrible despair.
For now she knew a moment of utter despair, in which all things seemed to dissolve into atoms and sink down out of her sight. She stood quivering in blackness. She stood absolutely alone, more absolutely alone than any woman had ever been, than any human being had ever been. She seemed presently, as the blackness faded into something pale, like a ghastly twilight, to see herself—her wraith, as it were—standing in a vast landscape, vast as the desert, companionless, lost, forgotten, out of mind, watching for something that would never come, listening for some voice that was hushed in eternal silence.
That was to be her life, she thought—could she face it? Could she endure it? And everything within her said to her that she could not.
And then, just then, when she felt that she must sink down and give up the battle of life, she seemed to see by her side a shape, a little shape like a child. And it lifted up a hand to her hand.
And she knew that the vast landscape was God’s garden, the Garden of Allah, and that no day, no night could ever pass without God walking in it.
Hearing a knock upon the great gate of the garden Smain uncurled himself on his mat within the tent, rose lazily to his feet, and, without a rose, strolled languidly to open to the visitor. Domini stood without. When he saw her he smiled quietly, with no surprise.
“Madame has returned?”
Domini smiled at him, but her lips were trembling, and she said nothing.
Smain observed her with a dawning of curiosity.
“Madame is changed,” he said at length. “Madame looks tired. The sun is hot in the desert now. It is better here in the garden.”
With an effort she controlled herself.
“Yes, Smain,” she answered, “it is better here. But I can not stay here long.”
“You are going away?”
“Yes, I am going away.”
She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and added:
“And now I want to walk in the garden alone.”
He waved his hand towards the trees.
“It is all for Madame. Monsieur the Count has always said so. But Monsieur?”
“He is in Beni-Mora. He is coming presently to fetch me.”
Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great sweep of sand towards the trees and was taken by their darkness. She heard again the liquid bubbling of the hidden waterfall, and was again companioned by the mystery of this desert Paradise, but it no longer whispered to her of peace for her. It murmured only its own personal peace and accentuated her own personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it still was, but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the full terror of Nature’s equanimity environing the fierce and tortured lives of men.
As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the hidden home of the Geni of the garden. Yet she remembered acutely all her first feelings there. Not one was forgotten. They returned to her like spectres stealing across the sand. They lurked like spectres among the dense masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes, not to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the sun. But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased. At last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw pine needles strewed about her feet. Then she stood still, instinctively listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and her own despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she wanted, that she needed it—the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent. Had he fallen out of an old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was he dead? For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell.
But the silence lasted and she went on and came to thefumoir. She went into it at once and sat down. She was going to wait for Androvsky here.
Her mind was straying curiously to-day. Suddenly she found herself thinking of the fanatical religious performance she had seen with Hadj on the night when she had ridden out to watch the moon rise. She saw in imagination the bowing bodies, the foaming mouths, the glassy eyes of the young priests of the Sahara. She saw the spikes behind their eyeballs, the struggling scorpions descending into their throats, the flaming coals under their arm-pits, the nails driven into their heads. She heard them growling as they saw the glass, like hungry beasts at the sight of meat. And all this was to them religion. This madness was their conception of worship. A voice seemed to whisper to her: “And your madness?”
It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the cemetery of El-Largani, “Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world which God made for men. Why do you reject it?”
For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that sometimes comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit some act which they feel would be contrary to God’s will if there were a God. It was a thrill of almost insolent human emancipation. The soul cried out: “I have no master. When I thought I had a master I was mad. Now I am sane.”
But it passed almost as it came, like a false thing slinking from the sunlight, and Domini bowed her head in the obscurity of Count Anteoni’s thinking-place and returned to her true self. That moment had been like the moment upon the tower when she saw below her the Jewess dancing upon the roof for the soldiers, a black speck settling for an instant upon whiteness, then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a human being, that there would always be in her blood something that was self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already in Paradise? She sat and prayed for strength in the battle of life, that could never be anything else but a battle.
At last something within her told her to look up, to look out through the window-space into the garden. She had not heard a step, but she knew that Androvsky was approaching, and, as she looked up, she prepared herself for a sight that would be terrible. She remembered his face when he came to bid her good-bye in the garden, and she feared to see his face now. But she schooled herself to be strong, for herself and for him.
He was near her on the path coming towards her. As she saw him she uttered a little cry and stood up. An immense surprise came to her, followed in a moment by an immense joy—the greatest joy, she thought, that she had ever experienced. For she looked on a face in which she saw for the first time a pale dawning of peace. There was sadness in it, there was awe, but there was a light of calm, such as sometimes settles upon the faces of men who have died quietly without agony or fear. And she felt fully, as she saw it, the rapture of having refused cowardice and grasped the hand of bravery. Directly afterwards there came to her a sensation of wonder that at this moment of their lives she and Androvsky should be capable of a feeling of joy, of peace. When the wonder passed it was as if she had seen God and knew for ever the meaning of His divine compensations.
Androvsky came to the doorway of thefumoirwithout looking up, stood still there—just where Count Anteoni had stood during his first interview with Domini—and said:
“Domini, I have been to the priest. I have made my confession.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Boris!”
He came into thefumoirand sat down near her, but not close to her, on one of the divans. Now the sad look in his face had deepened and the peace seemed to be fading. She had thought of the dawn—that pale light which is growing into day. Now she thought of the twilight which is fading into night. And the terrible knowledge struck her, “I am the troubler of his peace. Without me only could he ever regain fully the peace which he has lost.”
“Domini,” he said, looking up at her, “you know the rest. You meant it to be as it will be when we left Amara.”
“Was there any other way? Was there any other possible life for us—for you—for me?”
“For you!” he said, and there was a sound almost of despair in his voice. “But what is to be your life? I have never protected you—you have protected me. I have never been strong for you—you have been strong for me. But to leave you—all alone, Domini, must I do that? Must I think of you out in the world alone?”
For a moment she was tempted to break her silence, to tell him the truth, that she would perhaps not be alone, that another life, sprung from his and hers, was coming to be with her, was coming to share the great loneliness that lay before her. But she resisted the temptation and only said:
“Do not think of me, Boris.”
“You tell me not to think of you!” he said with an almost fierce wonder. “Do you—do you wish me not to think of you?”
“What I wish—that is so little, but—no, Boris, I can’t say—I don’t think I could ever truly say that I wish you to think no more of me. After all, one has a heart, and I think if it’s worth anything it must be often a rebellious heart. I know mine is rebellious. But if you don’t think too much of me—when you are there—”
She paused, and they looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then she continued:
“Surely it will be easier for you, happier for you.”
Androvsky clenched his right hand on the divan and turned round till he was facing her full. His eyes blazed.
“Domini,” he said, “you are truthful. I’ll be truthful to you. Till the end of my life I’ll think of you—every day, every hour. If it were mortal sin to think of you I would commit it—yes, Domini, deliberately, I would commit it. But—God doesn’t ask so much of us; no, God doesn’t. I’ve made my confession. I know what I must do. I’ll do it. You are right—you are always right—you are guided, I know that. But I will think of you. And I’ll tell you something—don’t shirk from it, because it’s truth, the truth of my soul, and you love truth. Domini—”
Suddenly he got up from the divan and stood before her, looking down at her steadily.
“Domini, I can’t regret that I have seen you, that we have been together, that we have loved each other, that we do love each other for ever. I can’t regret it; I can’t even try or wish to. I can’t regret that I have learned from you the meaning of life. I know that God has punished me for what I have done. In my love for you—till I told you the truth, that other truth—I never had a moment of peace—of exultation, yes, of passionate exultation; but never, never a moment of peace. For always, even in the most beautiful moments, there has been agony for me. For always I have known that I was sinning against God and you, against myself, my eternal vows. And yet now I tell you, Domini, as I have told God since I have been able to pray again, that I am glad, thankful, that I have loved you, been loved by you. Is it wicked? I don’t know. I can scarcely even care, because it’s true. And how can I deny the truth, strive against truth? I am as I am, and I am that. God has made me that. God will forgive me for being as I am. I’m not afraid. I believe—I dare to believe—that He wishes me to think of you always till the end of my life. I dare to believe that He would almost hate me if I could ever cease from loving you. That’s my other confession—my confession to you. I was born, perhaps, to be a monk. But I was born, too, that I might love you and know your love, your beauty, your tenderness, your divinity. If I had not known you, if I had died a monk, a good monk who had never denied his vows, I should have died—I feel it, Domini—in a great, a terrible ignorance. I should have known the goodness of God, but I should never have known part, a beautiful part, of His goodness. For I should never have known the goodness that He has put into you. He has taught me through you. He has tortured me through you; yes, but through you, too, He has made me understand Him. When I was in the monastery, when I was at peace, when I lost myself in prayer, when I was absolutely pure, absolutely—so I thought—the child of God, I never really knew God. Now, Domini, now I know Him. In the worst moments of the new agony that I must meet at least I shall always have that help. I shall always feel that I know what God is. I shall always, when I think of you, when I remember you, be able to say, ‘God is love.’”
He was silent, but his face still spoke to her, his eyes read her eyes. And in that moment at last they understood each other fully and for ever. “It was written”—that was Domini’s thought—“it was written by God.” Far away the church bell chimed.
“Boris,” Domini said quietly, “we must go to-day. We must leave Beni-Mora. You know that?”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
He looked out into the garden. The almost fierce resolution, that had something in it of triumph, faded from him.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the end, the real end, for—there, it will all be different—it will be terrible.”
“Let us sit here for a little while together,” Domini said, “and be quiet. Is it like the garden of El-Largani, Boris?”
“No. But when I first came here, when I saw the white walls, the great door, when I saw the poor Arabs gathered there to receive alms, it made me feel almost as if I were at El-Largani. That was why——” he paused.
“I understand, Boris, I understand everything now.”
And then they were silent. Such a silence as theirs was then could never be interpreted to others. In it the sorrows, the aspirations, the struggles, the triumphs, the torturing regrets, the brave determinations of poor, great, feeble, noble humanity were enclosed as in a casket—a casket which contains many kinds of jewels, but surely none that are not precious.
And the garden listened, and beyond the garden the desert listened—that other garden of Allah. And in this garden was not Allah, too, listening to this silence of his children, this last mutual silence of theirs in the garden where they had wandered, where they had loved, where they had learned a great lesson and drawn near to a great victory?
They might have sat thus for hours; they had lost all count of time. But presently, in the distance among the trees, there rose a light, frail sound that struck into both their hearts like a thin weapon. It was the flute of Larbi, and it reminded them—of what did it not remind them? All their passionate love of the body, all their lawlessness, all the joy of liberty and of life, of the barbaric life that is liberty, all their wandering in the great spaces of the sun, were set before them in Larbi’s fluttering tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call of danger, the call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to abandon the summons of the spirit. Domini got up swiftly.
“Come, Boris,” she said, without looking at him.
He obeyed her and rose to his feet.
“Let us go to the wall,” she said, “and look out once more on the desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps—perhaps we shall hear the call to prayer.”
They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence. Soon they saw before them the great spaces of the Sahara flooded with the blinding glory of the summer sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the shelter of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs were visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over, naked, to the dominion of the sun. While they stood there the nasal voice of the Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque of Beni-Mora, uttered its fourfold cry, and died away.
“Boris,” Domini said, “that is for the Arabs, but for us, too, for we belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even more than they.”
“Yes, Domini.”
She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood there with her and repeated the words of the angel to the Prophet, and she murmured them now:
“O thou that art covered, arise, and magnify thy Lord, and purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness.”
Then, standing side by side, they prayed, looking at the desert.