CHAPTER XXXIn the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she feared it would be impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid Batouch in the hotel and thanked 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 almost rigid.“If I am not at the station, Madame, what will Hadj think, and Ali, and Ouardi, and—”“They will be there?”“Of course, Madame. Where else should they be? Does Madame wish to leave us 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 sayau revoirand to wish Madame and Monsieur a happy journey.”For the moment the irony of her situation struck Domini so forcibly that she could say nothing. She only looked at Batouch in silence.“What is it? But I know. Madame is sad at leaving the desert, at leaving Beni-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 must see it again. The desert calls and its voice is always heard. Madame will hear it when she is far away, and some day she will feel, ‘I must come back to the land of the sun and to the beautiful land of forgetfulness.’”“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 travellers might avoid the intense heat of the day. All the afternoon they kept within doors. The Arabs were sleeping in dark rooms. The gardens were deserted. Domini could not sleep. She sat near the French window that opened on to the verandah and said a silent good-bye to life. For that was 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 in Beni-Mora, and now she felt that she was going back again to something that would be like death. After her strife there came a numbness of the spirit, a heavy dullness. Time passed and she sat there without moving. Sometimes she looked at the trunks lying on the floor ready for the journey, at the labels on which was written “TunisviaConstantine.” And then she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel in the train after her long travelling in the desert, and what it would be like to be in a city. But she could not. The heat was intense. Perhaps it affected her mind through her body. Faintly, far down in her mind and heart, she knew that she was wishing, even longing, to realise all that these last hours in Beni-Mora meant, to gather up in them all the threads of her life and her sensations there, to survey, as from a height, the panorama of the change that had come to her in Africa. But she was frustrated.The hours fled, and she remained cold, listless. Often she was hardly thinking at all. When the Arab servant came in to tell her that it was time to start for the station she got up slowly and looked at him vaguely.“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 the carriage.They drove to the station without speaking. She had not seen Father Roubier. Androvsky took the tickets. When they came out upon the platform they found there a small crowd of Arab friends, with Batouch in command. Among them were the servants who had accompanied them upon their desert journey, and Hadj. He came forward smiling to shake hands. When she saw him Domini remembered Irena, and, forgetting that it is not etiquette 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 a moment 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 gave him five francs.“A parting present,” she said.Hadj shook his head with recovered cheerfulness, tucked in his chin and laughed. Domini turned away, shook hands with all her dark acquaintances, 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 for Hadj.”“But then—?”“She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a few francs one can—”The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her hand, seized Androvsky’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 an emaciated figure standing there alone, a thin face with glittering eyes turned towards her with a glaring scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. He smiled at her, and his smile contracted the wound upon his face, making it look wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down on the seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora’s farewell to her and to Androvsky.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? Yet Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still played the little tune that was as theleit motifof the eternal renewal of life. And within herself she carried God’s mystery of renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was to help to carry forward the banner of life.She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she was leaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch the pageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyes and remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now were journeying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards it together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the evening came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still she kept 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 speak to Androvsky.“We met here, Boris,” she said.“Yes,” he answered, “at the gate of the desert. I shall never be here again.”Soon the night fell around them.In the evening of the following day they reached Tunis, and drove to the Hotel d’Orient, where they had written to engage rooms for one night. They had expected that the city would be almost deserted by its European inhabitants now the summer had set in, but when they drove up to the door of the hotel the proprietor came out to inform them that, owing to the arrival of a ship full of American tourists who, personally conducted, were “viewing” Tunis after an excursion to the East and to the Holy Land, he had been unable to keep for them a private sitting-room. With many apologies he explained that all the sitting-rooms in the house had been turned into bedrooms, but only for one night. On the morrow the personally-conducted ones would depart and Madame and Monsieur could have a charming salon. They listened silently to his explanations and apologies, standing in the narrow entrance hall, which was blocked up with piles of luggage. “Tomorrow,” he kept on repeating, “to-morrow” all would be different.Domini glanced at Androvsky, who stood with his head bent down, looking on 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 are full. 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 are face to face with the end.”When she was alone in her small bedroom, which was full of the noises of the street, and had washed and put on another dress, she began to realise how much she had secretly been counting on one more evening alone with Androvsky. She had imagined herself dining with him in their sitting-room unwatched, sitting together afterwards, for an hour or two, in silence perhaps, but at least alone. She had imagined a last solitude with him with the darkness of the African night around them. She had counted upon that. She realised it now. Her whole heart and soul had been asking for that, believing that at least that would be granted to her. But it was not to be. She must go down with him into a crowd of American tourists, must—her heart sickened. It seemed to her for a moment that if only she could have this one more evening quietly with the man she loved she could brace herself to bear anything afterwards, but that if she could not have it she must break down. She felt desperate.A gong sounded below. She did not move, though she heard it, knew what it 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 foreign accent.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 electric light and restless with revolving fans. Close to them, at an immense table decorated with flowers, dined the American tourists. The women wore hats with large hanging veils. The men were in travelling suits. They looked sunburnt and gay, and talked and laughed with an intense vivacity. Afterwards they were going in a body to see the dances of the Almees. Androvsky shot one glance at them as he came in, then looked away quickly. The lines near his mouth deepened. For a moment he shut 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. The public drawing-room opened out of it on the left. They looked into it and saw red plush settees, a large centre table covered with a rummage of newspapers, a Jew with a bald head writing a letter, and two old German 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 the hotel 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 to return.”The man whipped his horses, and they rattled down the broad street, past the brilliantly-lighted cafés, the Cercle Militaire, the palace of the Resident, where Zouaves were standing, turned to the left and were soon out on a road where a tram line stretched between villas, waste ground and flat fields. In front of them rose a hill with a darkness of trees scattered over it. They reached it, and began to mount it slowly. The lights of the city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawns dotted with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to her in the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they mounted, and presently 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. Below them she saw the lights of ships gliding upon the lakes, the bright eyes of a lighthouse, the distant lamps of scattered villages along the shores, and, very far off, a yellow gleam that dominated the sea beyond the lakes and seemed to watch patiently all those who came and went, the pilgrims to and from Africa. That gleam shone in Carthage.From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a savour of freshness, 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 comfort to her own soul.“To-night I feel as if it were not so,” he answered. “When we came to the 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 I know it. I cannot imagine any future away from you, any life in which I do not see you. I feel as if in parting from you I am parting from myself, as if the thing left would be no more a man, but only a broken husk. 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 the sunshine, 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 done my 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 He may let us be together once more. Look, Boris, there are lights in the darkness, 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 be strong for him. On the edge of the hill, close to them, she saw a Moorish temple built of marble, with narrow arches and columns, and marble seats.“Let us sit here for a moment, Boris,” she said.He followed her up the marble steps. Two or three times he stumbled, but she did not give him her hand. They sat down between the slender columns and looked out over the city, whose blanched domes and minarets were faintly 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 can I—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 soul to you? Domini—Domini—what does it all mean—this mystery of torture—this scourging of the body—this tearing in pieces of my soul and yours? Domini, shall we know—shall we ever know?”“I am sure we shall know, we shall all know some day, the meaning of the mystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then surely, we shall each of us be glad that we have suffered. The suffering will make the glory of our happiness. Even now sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as if there were a kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I am doing, as if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God has put 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 frightful circumstances, if only I could sometimes see you—even far away as now I see those lights.”“You will see me in your prayers every day, and I shall see you in mine.”“But the cry of the body, Domini, of the eyes, of the hands, to see, to touch—it’s so fierce, it’s so—it’s so—”“I know, I hear it too, always. But there is another voice, which will be strong when the other has faded into eternal silence. In all bodily things, even the most beautiful, there is something finite. We must reach out our poor, feeble, trembling hands to the infinite. I think everyone who is born does that through life, often without being conscious of it. We shall do it consciously, you and I. We shall be able to do it because of our dreadful suffering. We shall want, we shall have to 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, in these last few hours—in these last——”Her voice faltered and broke. Then the tears came to her also, and for a while 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 to Tunis.When they reached the hotel they came into the midst of the American tourists, who were excitedly discussing the dances they had seen, and calling for cooling drinks to allay the thirst created by the heat of the close rooms of Oriental houses.Early next morning a carriage was at the door. When they had got into it the 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 about their necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine that lay over the land. They passed soldiers marching, and heard the call of bugles, the rattle of drums. And each sound seemed distant and each moving figure far away. This world of Africa, fiercely distinct in the clear air under the cloudless sky, was unreal to them both, was vague as a northern land wrapped in a mist of autumn. The unreal was about them. Within themselves 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 for them to speak their thoughts for each other, of each other, to speak their emotions, all that was in their minds and hearts during that drive from the city to the monastery that stood upon the hill. Yet did not their mutual action of that morning say all that need be said? The silence of the Trappists surely floated out to them over the plains and the 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 sang on his high seat.Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a pedestal of stone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive trees. It marked the beginning of the domain of El-Largani. When Domini saw it she looked at Androvsky, and his eyes answered her silent question. The coachman whipped his horses into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach his destination. He was thinking of the good red wine of the monks. In a cloud of white dust the carriage rolled onwards between vineyards in which, here and there, labourers were working, sheltered from the sun by immense straw hats. A long line of waggons, laden with barrels and drawn by mules covered with bells, sheltered from the flies by leaves, met them. In the distance Domini saw forests of eucalyptus trees. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she saw Androvsky coming from them towards the white road, helping a man who was pale, and who stumbled as if half-fainting, yet whose face was full of a fierce passion of joy—the stranger whose influence had driven him out of the monastery into the world. 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 her life. But almost directly the prayers died on her lips and in her heart, and she found herself repeating the words ofThe Imitation:“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this voice.”Again and again she said the words: “It securely passeth through all—it securely passeth through all.” Now, at last, she was to know the 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 door which stood open. Above it was a statue of the Madonna and Child, and on either side were two angels with swords and stars. Underneath was written, in great letters:JANUA COELI.Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon which the sunlight 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 beard shuffled slowly across the patch of sunlight and disappeared.The coachman turned round.“You descend here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Madame will be entertained in the parlour on the right of the first door, but Monsieur can go on to thehotellerie. 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 ofThe Imitation. Androvsky got up from his seat, stepped heavily out of the carriage, and stood beside it. The coachman was busy lighting a long cigar. Androvsky leaned forward towards Domini with his arms on the carriage 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 shoulders and looked into his face for a long time, as if she were trying to see it now for all the years that were perhaps to come. Her eyes, too, were tearless.At last she leaned down and touched his forehead with her lips.She said nothing. Her hands dropped from his shoulders, she turned away and 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 the second 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. He hesitated a moment, staring at Domini from his seat, then, with a muttered curse, he turned his horses’ heads and plied the whip ferociously.“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not tired. When weary—it—is not—tired.”Domini’s lips ceased to move. She could not speak any more. She could not even pray without words.Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone.
In the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.
Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she feared it would be impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid Batouch in the hotel and thanked 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 almost rigid.
“If I am not at the station, Madame, what will Hadj think, and Ali, and Ouardi, and—”
“They will be there?”
“Of course, Madame. Where else should they be? Does Madame wish to leave us 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 sayau revoirand to wish Madame and Monsieur a happy journey.”
For the moment the irony of her situation struck Domini so forcibly that she could say nothing. She only looked at Batouch in silence.
“What is it? But I know. Madame is sad at leaving the desert, at leaving Beni-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 must see it again. The desert calls and its voice is always heard. Madame will hear it when she is far away, and some day she will feel, ‘I must come back to the land of the sun and to the beautiful land of forgetfulness.’”
“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 travellers might avoid the intense heat of the day. All the afternoon they kept within doors. The Arabs were sleeping in dark rooms. The gardens were deserted. Domini could not sleep. She sat near the French window that opened on to the verandah and said a silent good-bye to life. For that was 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 in Beni-Mora, and now she felt that she was going back again to something that would be like death. After her strife there came a numbness of the spirit, a heavy dullness. Time passed and she sat there without moving. Sometimes she looked at the trunks lying on the floor ready for the journey, at the labels on which was written “TunisviaConstantine.” And then she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel in the train after her long travelling in the desert, and what it would be like to be in a city. But she could not. The heat was intense. Perhaps it affected her mind through her body. Faintly, far down in her mind and heart, she knew that she was wishing, even longing, to realise all that these last hours in Beni-Mora meant, to gather up in them all the threads of her life and her sensations there, to survey, as from a height, the panorama of the change that had come to her in Africa. But she was frustrated.
The hours fled, and she remained cold, listless. Often she was hardly thinking at all. When the Arab servant came in to tell her that it was time to start for the station she got up slowly and looked at him vaguely.
“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 the carriage.
They drove to the station without speaking. She had not seen Father Roubier. Androvsky took the tickets. When they came out upon the platform they found there a small crowd of Arab friends, with Batouch in command. Among them were the servants who had accompanied them upon their desert journey, and Hadj. He came forward smiling to shake hands. When she saw him Domini remembered Irena, and, forgetting that it is not etiquette 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 a moment 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 gave him five francs.
“A parting present,” she said.
Hadj shook his head with recovered cheerfulness, tucked in his chin and laughed. Domini turned away, shook hands with all her dark acquaintances, 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 for Hadj.”
“But then—?”
“She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a few francs one can—”
The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her hand, seized Androvsky’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 an emaciated figure standing there alone, a thin face with glittering eyes turned towards her with a glaring scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. He smiled at her, and his smile contracted the wound upon his face, making it look wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down on the seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora’s farewell to her and to Androvsky.
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? Yet Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still played the little tune that was as theleit motifof the eternal renewal of life. And within herself she carried God’s mystery of renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was to help to carry forward the banner of life.
She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she was leaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch the pageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyes and remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now were journeying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards it together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the evening came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still she kept 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 speak to Androvsky.
“We met here, Boris,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, “at the gate of the desert. I shall never be here again.”
Soon the night fell around them.
In the evening of the following day they reached Tunis, and drove to the Hotel d’Orient, where they had written to engage rooms for one night. They had expected that the city would be almost deserted by its European inhabitants now the summer had set in, but when they drove up to the door of the hotel the proprietor came out to inform them that, owing to the arrival of a ship full of American tourists who, personally conducted, were “viewing” Tunis after an excursion to the East and to the Holy Land, he had been unable to keep for them a private sitting-room. With many apologies he explained that all the sitting-rooms in the house had been turned into bedrooms, but only for one night. On the morrow the personally-conducted ones would depart and Madame and Monsieur could have a charming salon. They listened silently to his explanations and apologies, standing in the narrow entrance hall, which was blocked up with piles of luggage. “Tomorrow,” he kept on repeating, “to-morrow” all would be different.
Domini glanced at Androvsky, who stood with his head bent down, looking on 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 are full. 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 are face to face with the end.”
When she was alone in her small bedroom, which was full of the noises of the street, and had washed and put on another dress, she began to realise how much she had secretly been counting on one more evening alone with Androvsky. She had imagined herself dining with him in their sitting-room unwatched, sitting together afterwards, for an hour or two, in silence perhaps, but at least alone. She had imagined a last solitude with him with the darkness of the African night around them. She had counted upon that. She realised it now. Her whole heart and soul had been asking for that, believing that at least that would be granted to her. But it was not to be. She must go down with him into a crowd of American tourists, must—her heart sickened. It seemed to her for a moment that if only she could have this one more evening quietly with the man she loved she could brace herself to bear anything afterwards, but that if she could not have it she must break down. She felt desperate.
A gong sounded below. She did not move, though she heard it, knew what it 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 foreign accent.
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 electric light and restless with revolving fans. Close to them, at an immense table decorated with flowers, dined the American tourists. The women wore hats with large hanging veils. The men were in travelling suits. They looked sunburnt and gay, and talked and laughed with an intense vivacity. Afterwards they were going in a body to see the dances of the Almees. Androvsky shot one glance at them as he came in, then looked away quickly. The lines near his mouth deepened. For a moment he shut 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. The public drawing-room opened out of it on the left. They looked into it and saw red plush settees, a large centre table covered with a rummage of newspapers, a Jew with a bald head writing a letter, and two old German 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 the hotel 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 to return.”
The man whipped his horses, and they rattled down the broad street, past the brilliantly-lighted cafés, the Cercle Militaire, the palace of the Resident, where Zouaves were standing, turned to the left and were soon out on a road where a tram line stretched between villas, waste ground and flat fields. In front of them rose a hill with a darkness of trees scattered over it. They reached it, and began to mount it slowly. The lights of the city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawns dotted with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to her in the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they mounted, and presently 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. Below them she saw the lights of ships gliding upon the lakes, the bright eyes of a lighthouse, the distant lamps of scattered villages along the shores, and, very far off, a yellow gleam that dominated the sea beyond the lakes and seemed to watch patiently all those who came and went, the pilgrims to and from Africa. That gleam shone in Carthage.
From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a savour of freshness, 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 comfort to her own soul.
“To-night I feel as if it were not so,” he answered. “When we came to the 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 I know it. I cannot imagine any future away from you, any life in which I do not see you. I feel as if in parting from you I am parting from myself, as if the thing left would be no more a man, but only a broken husk. 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 the sunshine, 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 done my 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 He may let us be together once more. Look, Boris, there are lights in the darkness, 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 be strong for him. On the edge of the hill, close to them, she saw a Moorish temple built of marble, with narrow arches and columns, and marble seats.
“Let us sit here for a moment, Boris,” she said.
He followed her up the marble steps. Two or three times he stumbled, but she did not give him her hand. They sat down between the slender columns and looked out over the city, whose blanched domes and minarets were faintly 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 can I—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 soul to you? Domini—Domini—what does it all mean—this mystery of torture—this scourging of the body—this tearing in pieces of my soul and yours? Domini, shall we know—shall we ever know?”
“I am sure we shall know, we shall all know some day, the meaning of the mystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then surely, we shall each of us be glad that we have suffered. The suffering will make the glory of our happiness. Even now sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as if there were a kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I am doing, as if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God has put 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 frightful circumstances, if only I could sometimes see you—even far away as now I see those lights.”
“You will see me in your prayers every day, and I shall see you in mine.”
“But the cry of the body, Domini, of the eyes, of the hands, to see, to touch—it’s so fierce, it’s so—it’s so—”
“I know, I hear it too, always. But there is another voice, which will be strong when the other has faded into eternal silence. In all bodily things, even the most beautiful, there is something finite. We must reach out our poor, feeble, trembling hands to the infinite. I think everyone who is born does that through life, often without being conscious of it. We shall do it consciously, you and I. We shall be able to do it because of our dreadful suffering. We shall want, we shall have to 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, in these last few hours—in these last——”
Her voice faltered and broke. Then the tears came to her also, and for a while 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 to Tunis.
When they reached the hotel they came into the midst of the American tourists, who were excitedly discussing the dances they had seen, and calling for cooling drinks to allay the thirst created by the heat of the close rooms of Oriental houses.
Early next morning a carriage was at the door. When they had got into it the 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 about their necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine that lay over the land. They passed soldiers marching, and heard the call of bugles, the rattle of drums. And each sound seemed distant and each moving figure far away. This world of Africa, fiercely distinct in the clear air under the cloudless sky, was unreal to them both, was vague as a northern land wrapped in a mist of autumn. The unreal was about them. Within themselves 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 for them to speak their thoughts for each other, of each other, to speak their emotions, all that was in their minds and hearts during that drive from the city to the monastery that stood upon the hill. Yet did not their mutual action of that morning say all that need be said? The silence of the Trappists surely floated out to them over the plains and the 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 sang on his high seat.
Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a pedestal of stone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive trees. It marked the beginning of the domain of El-Largani. When Domini saw it she looked at Androvsky, and his eyes answered her silent question. The coachman whipped his horses into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach his destination. He was thinking of the good red wine of the monks. In a cloud of white dust the carriage rolled onwards between vineyards in which, here and there, labourers were working, sheltered from the sun by immense straw hats. A long line of waggons, laden with barrels and drawn by mules covered with bells, sheltered from the flies by leaves, met them. In the distance Domini saw forests of eucalyptus trees. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she saw Androvsky coming from them towards the white road, helping a man who was pale, and who stumbled as if half-fainting, yet whose face was full of a fierce passion of joy—the stranger whose influence had driven him out of the monastery into the world. 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 her life. But almost directly the prayers died on her lips and in her heart, and she found herself repeating the words ofThe Imitation:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this voice.”
Again and again she said the words: “It securely passeth through all—it securely passeth through all.” Now, at last, she was to know the 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 door which stood open. Above it was a statue of the Madonna and Child, and on either side were two angels with swords and stars. Underneath was written, in great letters:
JANUA COELI.
Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon which the sunlight 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 beard shuffled slowly across the patch of sunlight and disappeared.
The coachman turned round.
“You descend here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Madame will be entertained in the parlour on the right of the first door, but Monsieur can go on to thehotellerie. 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 ofThe Imitation. Androvsky got up from his seat, stepped heavily out of the carriage, and stood beside it. The coachman was busy lighting a long cigar. Androvsky leaned forward towards Domini with his arms on the carriage 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 shoulders and looked into his face for a long time, as if she were trying to see it now for all the years that were perhaps to come. Her eyes, too, were tearless.
At last she leaned down and touched his forehead with her lips.
She said nothing. Her hands dropped from his shoulders, she turned away and 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 the second 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. He hesitated a moment, staring at Domini from his seat, then, with a muttered curse, he turned his horses’ heads and plied the whip ferociously.
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not tired. When weary—it—is not—tired.”
Domini’s lips ceased to move. She could not speak any more. She could not even pray without words.
Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone.