Count Anteoni looked down at her. She did not notice it, and he kept his eyes on her for a moment. Then he turned to the desert again.
By degrees, as she watched, Domini became aware of many things indicative of life, and of many lives in the tremendous expanse that at first had seemed empty of all save sun and mystery. She saw low, scattered tents, far-off columns of smoke rising. She saw a bird pa.s.s across the blue and vanish towards the mountains. Black shapes appeared among the tiny mounds of earth, crowned with dusty gra.s.s and dwarf tamarisk bushes. She saw them move, like objects in a dream, slowly through the shimmering gold. They were feeding camels, guarded by nomads whom she could not see.
At first she persistently explored the distances, carried forcibly by an _elan_ of her whole nature to the remotest points her eyes could reach.
Then she withdrew her gaze gradually, reluctantly, from the hidden summoning lands, whose verges she had with difficulty gained, and looked, at first with apprehension, upon the nearer regions. But her apprehension died when she found that the desert trans.m.u.tes what is close as well as what is remote, suffuses even that which the hand could almost touch with wonder, beauty, and the deepest, most strange significance.
Quite near in the river bed she saw an Arab riding towards the desert upon a prancing black horse. He mounted a steep bit of path and came out on the flat ground at the cliff top. Then he set his horse at a gallop, raising his bridle hand and striking his heels into the flanks of the beast. And each of his movements, each of the movements of his horse, was profoundly interesting, and held the attention of the onlooker in a vice, as if the fates of worlds depended upon where he was carried and how soon he reached his goal. A string of camels laden with wooden bales met him on the way, and this chance encounter seemed to Domini fraught with almost terrible possibilities. Why? She did not ask herself. Again she sent her gaze further, to the black shapes moving stealthily among the little mounds, to the spirals of smoke rising into the glimmering air. Who guarded those camels? Who fed those distant fires? Who watched beside them? It seemed of vital consequence to her that she should know.
Count Anteoni took out his watch and glanced at it.
"I am looking to see if it is nearly the hour of prayer," he said. "When I am in Beni-Mora I usually come here then."
"You turn to the desert as the faithful turn towards Mecca?"
"Yes. I like to see men praying in the desert."
He spoke indifferently, but Domini felt suddenly sure that within him there were depths of imagination, of tenderness, even perhaps of mysticism.
"An atheist in the desert is unimaginable," he added. "In cathedrals they may exist very likely, and even feel at home. I have seen cathedrals in which I could believe I was one, but--how many human beings can you see in the desert at this moment, Madame?"
Domini, still with her round chin in her hands, searched the blazing region with her eyes. She saw three running figures with the train of camels which was now descending into the river bed. In the shadow of the low white tower two more were huddled, motionless. She looked away to right and left, but saw only the shallow pools, the hot and gleaming boulders, and beyond the yellow cliffs the brown huts peeping through the palms. The horseman had disappeared.
"I can see five," she answered.
"Ah! you are not accustomed to the desert."
"There are more?"
"I could count up to a dozen. Which are yours?"
"The men with the camels and the men under that tower."
"There are four playing the _jeu des dames_ in the shadow of the cliff opposite to us. There is one asleep under a red rock where the path ascends into the desert. And there are two more just at the edge of the little oasis--Filiash, as it is called. One is standing under a palm, and one is pacing up and down."
"You must have splendid eyes."
"They are trained to the desert. But there are probably a score of Arabs within sight whom I don"t see."
"Oh! now I see the men at the edge of the oasis. How oddly that one is moving. He goes up and down like a sailor on the quarter-deck."
"Yes, it is curious. And he is in the full blaze of the sun. That can"t be an Arab."
He drew a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket, put it to his lips and sounded a call. In a moment Smain same running lightly over the sand. Count Anteoni said something to him in Arabic. He disappeared, and speedily returned with a pair of field-gla.s.ses. While he was gone Domini watched the two doll-like figures on the cliff in silence. One was standing under a large isolated palm tree absolutely still, as Arabs often stand. The other, at a short distance from him and full in the sun, went to and fro, to and fro, always measuring the same s.p.a.ce of desert, and turning and returning at two given points which never varied. He walked like a man hemmed in by walls, yet around him were the infinite s.p.a.ces. The effect was singularly unpleasant upon Domini. All things in the desert, as she had already noticed, became almost terribly significant, and this peculiar activity seemed full of some extraordinary and even horrible meaning. She watched it with straining eyes.
Count Anteoni took the gla.s.ses from Smain and looked through them, adjusting them carefully to suit his sight.
"_Ecco!_" he said. "I was right. That man is not an Arab."
He moved the gla.s.ses and glanced at Domini.
"You are not the only traveller here, Madame."
He looked through the gla.s.ses again.
"I knew that," she said.
"Indeed?"
"There is one at my hotel."
"Possibly this is he. He makes me think of a caged tiger, who has been so long in captivity that when you let him out he still imagines the bars to be all round him. What was he like?"
All the time he was speaking he was staring intently through the gla.s.ses. As Domini did not reply he removed them from his eyes and glanced at her inquiringly.
"I am trying to think what he looked like," she said slowly. "But I feel that I don"t know. He was quite unlike any ordinary man."
"Would you care to see if you can recognise him? These are really marvellous gla.s.ses."
Domini took them from him with some eagerness.
"Twist them about till they suit your eyes."
At first she could see nothing but a fierce yellow glare. She turned the screw and gradually the desert came to her, startlingly distinct. The boulders of the river bed were enormous. She could see the veins of colour in them, a lizard running over one of them and disappearing into a dark crevice, then the white tower and the Arabs beneath it. One was an old man yawning; the other a boy. He rubbed the tip of his brown nose, and she saw the henna stains upon his nails. She lifted the gla.s.ses slowly and with precaution. The tower ran away. She came to the low cliff, to the brown huts and the palms, pa.s.sed them one by one, and reached the last, which was separated from its companions. Under it stood a tall Arab in a garment like a white night-shirt.
"He looks as if he had only one eye!" she exclaimed.
"The palm-tree man--yes."
She travelled cautiously away from him, keeping the gla.s.ses level.
"Ah!" she said on an indrawn breath.
As she spoke the thin, nasal cry of a distant voice broke upon her ears, prolonging a strange call.
"The Mueddin," said Count Anteoni.
And he repeated in a low tone the words of the angel to the prophet: "Oh thou that art covered arise ... and magnify thy Lord; and purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness."
The call died away and was renewed three times. The old man and the boy beneath the tower turned their faces towards Mecca, fell upon their knees and bowed their heads to the hot stones. The tall Arab under the palm sank down swiftly. Domini kept the gla.s.ses at her eyes. Through them, as in a sort of exaggerated vision, very far off, yet intensely distinct, she saw the man with whom she had travelled in the train. He went to and fro, to and fro on the burning ground till the fourth call of the Mueddin died away. Then, as he approached the isolated palm tree and saw the Arab beneath it fall to the earth and bow his long body in prayer, he paused and stood still as if in contemplation. The gla.s.ses were so powerful that it was possible to see the expressions on faces even at that distance. The expression on the traveller"s face was, or seemed to be, at first one of profound attention. But this changed swiftly as he watched the bowing figure, and was succeeded by a look of uneasiness, then of fierce disgust, then--surely--of fear or horror. He turned sharply away like a driven man, and hurried off along the cliff edge in a striding walk, quickening his steps each moment till his departure became a flight. He disappeared behind a projection of earth where the path sank to the river bed.
Domini laid the gla.s.ses down on the wall and looked at Count Anteoni.
"You say an atheist in the desert is unimaginable?
"Isn"t it true?"
"Has an atheist a hatred, a horror of prayer?"