"To-morrow I am leaving Beni-Mora."
"To-morrow!" she said.
She did not feel the horse under her, the reins in her hand. She did not see the desert or the moon. Though she was looking at Androvsky she no longer perceived him. At the sound of his words it seemed to her as if all outside things she had ever known had foundered, like a ship whose bottom is ripped up by a razor-edged rock, as if with them had foundered, too, all things within herself: thoughts, feelings, even the bodily powers that were of the essence of her life; sense of taste, smell, hearing, sight, the capacity of movement and of deliberate repose. Nothing seemed to remain except the knowledge that she was still alive and had spoken.
"Yes, to-morrow I shall go away."
His face was still turned from her, and his voice sounded as if it spoke to someone at a distance, someone who could hear as man cannot hear.
"To-morrow," she repeated.
She knew she had spoken again, but it did not seem to her as if she had heard herself speak. She looked at her hands holding the reins, knew that she looked at them, yet felt as if she were not seeing them while she did so. The moonlit desert was surely flickering round her, and away to the horizon in waves that were caused by the disappearance of that ship which had suddenly foundered with all its countless lives. And she knew of the movement of these waves as the soul of one of the drowned, already released from the body, might know of the movement on the surface of the sea beneath which its body was hidden.
But the soul was evidently nothing without the body, or, at most, merely a continuance of power to know that all which had been was no more. All which had been was no more.
At last her mind began to work again, and those words went through it with persistence. She thought of the fascination of Africa, that enormous, overpowering fascination which had taken possession of her body and spirit. What had become of it? What had become of the romance of the palm gardens, of the brown villages, of the red mountains, of the white town with its lights, its white figures, its throbbing music? And the mystical attraction of the desert--where was it now? Its voice, that had called her persistently, was suddenly silent. Its hand, that had been laid upon her, was removed. She looked at it in the moonlight and it was no longer the desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of summons, s.p.a.ces, peopled with spirits from the sun. It was only a barren waste of dried-up matter, arid, featureless, desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that had died.
She heard the dogs barking by the tents of the nomads and the noises of the insects, but still she did not feel the horse underneath her. Yet she was gradually recovering her powers, and their recovery brought with it sharp, physical pain, such as is felt by a person who has been nearly drowned and is restored from unconsciousness.
Androvsky turned round. She saw his eyes fastened upon her, and instantly pride awoke in her, and, with pride, her whole self.
She felt her horse under her, the reins in her hands, the stirrup at her foot. She moved in her saddle. The blood tingled in her veins fiercely, bitterly, as if it had become suddenly acrid. She felt as if her face were scarlet, as if her whole body flushed, and as if the flush could be seen by her companion. For a moment she was clothed from head to foot in a fiery garment of shame. But she faced Androvsky with calm eyes, and her lips smiled.
"You are tired of it?" she said.
"I never meant to stay long," he answered, looking down.
"There is not very much to do here. Shall we ride back to the village now?"
She turned her horse, and as she did so cast one more glance at the three palm trees that stood far out on the path of the moon. They looked like three malignant fates lifting up their hands in malediction. For a moment she shivered in the saddle. Then she touched her horse with the whip and turned her eyes away. Androvsky followed her and rode by her side in silence.
To gain the oasis they pa.s.sed near to the tents of the nomads, whose fires were dying out. The guard dogs were barking furiously, and straining at the cords which fastened them to the tent pegs, by the short hedges of brushwood that sheltered the doors of filthy rags. The Arabs were all within, no doubt huddled up on the ground asleep. One tent was pitched alone, at a considerable distance from the others, and under the first palms of the oasis. A fire smouldered before it, casting a flickering gleam of light upon something dark which lay upon the ground between it and the tent. Tied to the tent was a large white dog, which was not barking, but which was howling as if in agony of fear.
Before Domini and Androvsky drew near to this tent the howling of the dog reached them and startled them. There was in it a note that seemed humanly expressive, as if it were a person trying to scream out words but unable to from horror. Both of them instinctively pulled up their horses, listened, then rode forward. When they reached the tent they saw the dark thing lying by the fire.
"What is it?" Domini whispered.
"An Arab asleep, I suppose," Androvsky answered, staring at the motionless object.
"But the dog----" She looked at the white shape leaping frantically against the tent. "Are you sure?"
"It must be. Look, it is wrapped in rags and the head is covered."
"I don"t know."
She stared at it. The howling of the dog grew louder, as if it were straining every nerve to tell them something dreadful.
"Do you mind getting off and seeing what it is? I"ll hold the horse."
He swung himself out of the saddle. She caught his rein and watched him go forward to the thing that lay by the fire, bend down over it, touch it, recoil from it, then--as if with a determined effort--kneel down beside it on the ground and take the rags that covered it in his hands.
After a moment of contemplation of what they had hidden he dropped the rags--or rather threw them from him with a violent gesture--got up and came back to Domini, and looked at her without speaking. She bent down.
"I"ll tell you," she said. "I"ll tell you what it is. It"s a dead woman."
It seemed to her as if the dark thing lying by the fire was herself.
"Yes," he said. "It"s a woman who has been strangled."
"Poor woman!" she said. "Poor--poor woman!"
And it seemed to her as if she said it of herself.
CHAPTER XV
Lying in bed in the dark that night Domini heard the church clock chime the hours. She was not restless, though she was wakeful. Indeed, she felt like a woman to whom an injection of morphia had been administered, as if she never wished to move again. She lay there counting the minutes that made the pa.s.sing hours, counting them calmly, with an inexorable and almost cold self-possession. The process presently became mechanical, and she was able, at the same time, to dwell upon the events that had followed upon the discovery of the murdered woman by the tent: Androvsky"s pulling aside of the door of the tent to find it empty, their short ride to the encampment close by, their rousing up of the sleeping Arabs within, filthy nomads clothed in patched garments, unveiled women with wrinkled, staring faces and huge plaits of false hair and amulets. From the tents the strange figures had streamed forth into the light of the moon and the fading fires, gesticulating, talking loudly, furiously, in an uncouth language that was unintelligible to her. Led by Androvsky they had come to the corpse, while the air was rent by the frantic barking of all the guard dogs and the howling of the dog that had been a witness of the murder. Then in the night had risen the shrill wailing of the women, a wailing that seemed to pierce the stars and shudder out to the remotest confines of the desert, and in the cold white radiance of the moon a savage vision of grief had been presented to her eyes: naked arms gesticulating as if they strove to summon vengeance from heaven, claw-like hands casting earth upon the heads from which dangled Fatma hands, chains of tarnished silver and lumps of coral that reminded her of congealed blood, bodies that swayed and writhed as if stricken with convulsions or rent by seven devils.
She remembered how strange had seemed to her the vast calm, the vast silence, that encompa.s.sed this noisy outburst of humanity, how inflexible had looked the enormous moon, how unsympathetic the brightly shining stars, how feverish and irritable the flickering illumination of the flames that spurted up and fainted away like things still living but in the agonies of death.
Then had followed her silent ride back to Beni-Mora with Androvsky along the straight road which had always fascinated her spirit of adventure.
They had ridden slowly, without looking at each other, without exchanging a word. She had felt dry and weary, like an old woman who had pa.s.sed through a long life of suffering and emerged into a region where any acute feeling is unable to exist, as at a certain alt.i.tude from the earth human life can no longer exist. The beat of the horses" hoofs upon the road had sounded hard, as her heart felt, cold as the temperature of her mind. Her body, which usually swayed to her horse"s slightest movement, was rigid in the saddle. She recollected that once, when her horse stumbled, she had thrilled with an abrupt anger that was almost ferocious, and had lifted her whip to lash it. But the hand had slipped down nervelessly, and she had fallen again into her frigid reverie.
When they reached the hotel she had dropped to the ground, heavily, and heavily had ascended the steps of the verandah, followed by Androvsky.
Without turning to him or bidding him good-night she had gone to her room. She had not acted with intentional rudeness or indifference--indeed, she had felt incapable of an intention. Simply, she had forgotten, for the first time perhaps in her life, an ordinary act of courtesy, as an old person sometimes forgets you are there and withdraws into himself. Androvsky had said nothing, had not tried to attract her attention to himself. She had heard his steps die away on the verandah. Then, mechanically, she had undressed and got into bed, where she was now mechanically counting the pa.s.sing moments.
Presently she became aware of her own stillness and connected it with the stillness of the dead woman, by the tent. She lay, as it were, watching her own corpse as a Catholic keeps vigil beside a body that has not yet been put into the grave. But in this chamber of death there were no flowers, no lighted candles, no lips that moved in prayer. She had gone to bed without praying. She remembered that now, but with indifference. Dead people do not pray. The living pray for them. But even the watcher could not pray. Another hour struck in the belfry of the church. She listened to the chime and left off counting the moments, and this act of cessation made more perfect the peace of the dead woman.
When the sun rose her sensation of death pa.s.sed away, leaving behind it, however, a lethargy of mind and body such as she had never known before the previous night. Suzanne, coming in to call her, exclaimed:
"Mam"selle is ill?"
"No. Why should I be ill?"
"Mam"selle looks so strange," the maid said, regarding her with round and curious eyes. "As if--"
She hesitated.
"Give me my tea," Domini said.
When she was drinking it she asked:
"Do you know at what time the train leaves Beni-Mora--the pa.s.senger train?"
"Yes, Mam"selle. There is only one in the day. It goes soon after twelve. Monsieur Helmuth told me."
"Oh!"
"What gown will--?"