"Monsieur Anteoni has gone, I suppose, Madame?"
"Yes, he has gone. I reached the garden safely, you see."
"Batouch came later. He was much ashamed when he found you had gone. I believe he is afraid, and is hiding himself till your anger shall have pa.s.sed away."
She laughed.
"Batouch could not easily make me angry. I am not like you, Monsieur Androvsky."
Her sudden challenge startled him, as she had meant it should. He moved quickly, as at an unexpected touch.
"I, Madame?"
"Yes; I think you are very often angry. I think you are angry now."
His face was flooded with red.
"Why should I be angry?" he stammered, like a man completely taken aback.
"How can I tell? But, as I came in just now, you looked at me as if you wanted to punish me."
"I--I am afraid--it seems that my face says a great deal that--that--"
"Your lips would not choose to say. Well, it does. Why are you angry with me?" She gazed at him mercilessly, studying the trouble of his face. The combative part of her nature had been roused by the glance he had cast at her. What right had he, had any man, to look at her like that?
Her blunt directness lashed him back into the firmness he had lost.
She felt in a moment that there was a fighting capacity in him equal, perhaps superior, to her own.
"When I saw you come from the priest"s house, Madame, I felt as if you had been there speaking about me--about my conduct of yesterday."
"Indeed! Why should I do that?"
"I thought as you had kindly wished me to come--"
He stopped.
"Well?" she said, in rather a hard voice.
"Madame, I don"t know what I thought, what I think--only I cannot bear that you should apologise for any conduct of mine. Indeed, I cannot bear it."
He looked fearfully excited and moved two or three steps away, then returned.
"Were you doing that?" he asked. "Were you, Madame?"
"I never mentioned your name to Father Roubier, nor did he to me," she answered.
For a moment he looked relieved, then a sudden suspicion seemed to strike him.
"But without mentioning my name?" he said.
"You wish to accuse me of quibbling, of insincerity, then!" she exclaimed with a heat almost equal to his own.
"No, Madame, no! Madame, I--I have suffered much. I am suspicious of everybody. Forgive me, forgive me!"
He spoke almost with distraction. In his manner there was something desperate.
"I am sure you have suffered," she said more gently, yet with a certain inflexibility at which she herself wondered, yet which she could not control. "You will always suffer if you cannot govern yourself. You will make people dislike you, be suspicious of you."
"Suspicious! Who is suspicious of me?" he asked sharply. "Who has any right to be suspicious of me?"
She looked up and fancied that, for an instant, she saw something as ugly as terror in his eyes.
"Surely you know that people don"t ask permission to be suspicious of their fellow-men?" she said.
"No one here has any right to consider me or my actions," he said, fierceness blazing out of him. "I am a free man, and can do as I will.
No one has any right--no one!"
Domini felt as if the words were meant for her, as if he had struck her. She was so angry that she did not trust herself to speak, and instinctively she put her hand up to her breast, as a woman might who had received a blow. She touched something small and hard that was hidden beneath her gown. It was the little wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown into the stream at Sidi-Zerzour. As she realised that her anger died. She was humbled and ashamed. What was her religion if, at a word, she could be stirred to such a feeling of pa.s.sion?
"I, at least, am not suspicious of you," she said, choosing the very words that were most difficult for her to say just then. "And Father Roubier--if you included him--is too fine-hearted to cherish unworthy suspicions of anyone."
She got up. Her voice was full of a subdued, but strong, emotion.
"Oh, Monsieur Androvsky!" she said. "Do go over and see him. Make friends with him. Never mind yesterday. I want you to be friends with him, with everyone here. Let us make Beni-Mora a place of peace and good will."
Then she went across the verandah quickly to her room, and pa.s.sed in, closing the window behind her.
_Dejeuner_ was brought into her sitting-room. She ate it in solitude, and late in the afternoon she went out on the verandah. She had made up her mind to spend an hour in the church. She had told Father Roubier that she wanted to think something out. Since she had left him the burden upon her mind had become heavier, and she longed to be alone in the twilight near the altar. Perhaps she might be able to cast down the burden there. In the verandah she stood for a moment and thought how wonderful was the difference between dawn and sunset in this land. The gardens, that had looked like a place of departed and unhappy spirits when she rose that day, were now bathed in the luminous rays of the declining sun, were alive with the softly-calling voices of children, quivered with romance, with a dreamlike, golden charm. The stillness of the evening was intense, enclosing the children"s voices, which presently died away; but while she was marvelling at it she was disturbed by a sharp noise of knocking. She looked in the direction from which it came and saw Androvsky standing before the priest"s door. As she looked, the door was opened by the Arab boy and Androvsky went in.
Then she did not think of the gardens any more. With a radiant expression in her eyes she went down and crossed over to the church. It was empty. She went softly to a _prie-dieu_ near the altar, knelt down and covered her eyes with her hands.
At first she did not pray, or even think consciously, but just rested in the att.i.tude which always seems to bring humanity nearest its G.o.d.
And, almost immediately, she began to feel a quietude of spirit, as if something delicate descended upon her, and lay lightly about her, shrouding her from the troubles of the world. How sweet it was to have the faith that brings with it such tender protection, to have the trust that keeps alive through the swift pa.s.sage of the years the spirit of the little child. How sweet it was to be able to rest. There was at this moment a sensation of deep joy within her. It grew in the silence of the church, and, as it grew, brought with it presently a growing consciousness of the lives beyond those walls, of other spirits capable of suffering, of conflict, and of peace, not far away; till she knew that this present blessing of happiness came to her, not only from the scarce-realised thought of G.o.d, but also from the scarce-realised thought of man.
Close by, divided from her only by a little masonry, a few feet of sand, a few palm trees, Androvsky was with the priest.
Still kneeling, with her face between her hands, Domini began to think and pray. The memory of her pet.i.tion to Notre Dame de la Garde came back to her. Before she knew Africa she had prayed for men wandering, and perhaps unhappy, there, for men whom she would probably never see again, would never know. And now that she was growing familiar with this land, divined something of its wonders and its dangers, she prayed for a man in it whom she did not know, who was very near to her making a sacrifice of his prejudices, perhaps of his fears, at her desire. She prayed for Androvsky without words, making of her feelings of grat.i.tude to him a prayer, and presently, in the darkness framed by her hands, she seemed to see Liberty once more, as in the shadows of the dancing-house, standing beside a man who prayed far out in the glory of the desert. The storm, spoken of by the Diviner, did not always rage. It was stilled to hear his prayer. And the darkness had fled, and the light drew near to listen. She pressed her face more strongly against her hands, and began to think more definitely.
Was this interview with the priest the first step taken by Androvsky towards the gift the desert held for him?
He must surely be a man who hated religion, or thought he hated it.
Perhaps he looked upon it as a chain, instead of as the hammer that strikes away the fetters from the slave.
Yet he had worn a crucifix.
She lifted her head, put her hand into her breast, and drew out the crucifix. What was its history? She wondered as she looked at it. Had someone who loved him given it to him, someone, perhaps, who grieved at his hatred of holiness, and who fancied that this very humble symbol might one day, as the humble symbols sometimes do, prove itself a little guide towards shining truth? Had a woman given it to him?