"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d"s garden, the Garden of Allah, and that no day, no night could ever pa.s.s without G.o.d walking in it.