"Yes, Domini?" he said.
"No, not now. I can"t tell you. There"s too much light."
"Domini," he repeated.
Then they were silent once more, thinking of how the darkness would come to them at Arba.
In the late afternoon they drew near to the Bordj, moving along a difficult route full of deep ruts and holes, and bordered on either side by bushes so tall that they looked almost like trees. Here, tended by Arabs who stared gravely at the strangers in the palanquin, were grazing immense herds of camels. Above the bushes to the horizon on either side of the way appeared the serpentine necks flexibly moving to and fro, now bending deliberately towards the dusty twigs, now stretched straight forward as if in patient search for some solace of the camel"s fate that lay in the remoteness of the desert. Baby camels, many of them only a few days old, yet already vowed to the eternal pilgrimages of the wastes, with mild faces and long, disobedient-looking legs, ran from the caravan, nervously seeking their morose mothers, who cast upon them glances that seemed expressive of a disdainful pity. In front, beyond a watercourse, now dried up, rose the low hill on which stood the Bordj, a huge, square building, with two square towers pierced with loopholes.
From a distance it resembled a fort threatening the desert in magnificent isolation. Its towers were black against the clear lemon of the failing sunlight. Pigeons, that looked also black, flew perpetually about them, and the telegraph posts, that bordered the way at regular intervals on the left, made a diminishing series of black vertical lines sharply cutting the yellow till they were lost to sight in the south.
To Domini these posts were like pointing fingers beckoning her onward to the farthest distances of the sun. Drugged by the long journey over the flats, and the unceasing caress of the air, that was like an importunate lover ever unsatisfied, she watched from the height on which she was perched this evening scene of roaming, feeding animals, staring nomads, monotonous herbage and vague, surely-retreating mountains, with quiet, dreamy eyes. Everything which she saw seemed to her beautiful, a little remote and a little fantastic. The slow movement of the camels, the swifter movements of the circling pigeons about the square towers on the hill, the motionless, or gently-gliding, Arabs with their clubs held slantwise, the telegraph poles, one smaller than the other, diminishing till--as if magically--they disappeared in the lemon that was growing into gold, were woven together for her by the shuttle of the desert into a softly brilliant tapestry--one of those tapestries that is like a legend struck to sleep as the Beauty in her palace. As they began to mount the hill, and the radiance of the sky increased, this impression faded, for the life that centred round the Bordj was vivid, though spa.r.s.e in comparison with the eddying life of towns, and had that air of peculiar concentration which may be noted in pictures representing a halt in the desert.
No longer did the strongly-built Bordj seem to Domini like a fort threatening the oncomer, but like a stalwart host welcoming him, a host who kept open house in this treeless desolation that yet had, for her, no feature that was desolate. It was earth-coloured, built of stone, and had in the middle of the facade that faced them an immense hospitable doorway with a white arch above it. This doorway gave a partial view of a vast courtyard, in which animals and people were moving to and fro.
Round about, under the sheltering shadow of the windowless wall, were many Arabs, some squatting on their haunches, some standing upright with their backs against the stone, some moving from one group to another, gesticulating and talking vivaciously. Boys were playing a game with stones set in an ordered series of small holes scooped by their fingers in the dust. A negro crossed the flat s.p.a.ce before the Bordj carrying on his head a huge earthen vase to the well near by, where a crowd of black donkeys, just relieved of their loads of brushwood, was being watered.
From the south two Spahis were riding in on white horses, their scarlet cloaks floating out over their saddles; and from the west, moving slowly to a wailing sound of indistinct music, a faint beating of tomtoms, was approaching a large caravan in a cloud of dust which floated back from it and melted away into the radiance of the sunset.
When they gained the great open s.p.a.ce before the building they were bathed in the soft golden light, in which all these figures of Africans, and all these animals, looked mysterious and beautiful, and full of that immeasurable significance which the desert sheds upon those who move in it, specially at dawn or at sundown. From the plateau they dominated the whole of the plain they had traversed as far as Beni-Mora, which on the morrow would fade into the blue horizon. Its thousands of palms made a darkness in the gold, and still the tower of the hotel was faintly visible, pointing like a needle towards the sky. The range of mountains showed their rosy flanks in the distance. They, too, on the morrow would be lost in the desert s.p.a.ces, the last outposts of the world of hill and valley, of stream and sea. Only in the deceptive dream of the mirage would they appear once more, looming in a pearl-coloured shaking veil like a fluid on the edge of some visionary lagune.
Domini was glad that on this first night of their journey they could still see Beni-Mora, the place where they had found each other and been given to each other by the Church. As the camel stopped before the great doorway of the Bordj she turned in the palanquin and looked down upon the desert, motioning to the camel-driver to leave the beast for a moment. She put her arm through Androvsky"s and made his eyes follow hers across the vast s.p.a.ces made magical by the sinking sun to that darkness of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place for ever. And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her came upon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat of noon. She saw Androvsky at her feet on the sand. She heard the chiming church bell and the twitter of Larbi"s flute. The dark blue of trees was as the heart of the world to her and as the heart of life. It had seen the birth of her soul and given to her another newborn soul. There was a pathos in seeing it fade like a thing sinking down till it became one with the immeasurable sands, and at that moment she said to herself, "When shall I see Beni-Mora again--and how?" She looked at Androvsky, met his eyes, and thought: "When I see it again how different I shall be! How I shall be changed!" And in the sunset she seemed to be saying a mute good-bye to one who was fading with Beni-Mora.
As soon as they had got off the camel and were standing in the group of staring Arabs, Batouch begged them to come to their tents, where tea would be ready. He led them round the angle of the wall towards the west, and there, pitched in the full radiance of the sunset, with a wide s.p.a.ce of hard earth gleaming with gypse around it, was a white tent.
Before it, in the open air, was stretched a handsome Arab carpet, and on this carpet were set a folding table and two folding chairs. The table held a j.a.panned tray with tea-cups, a milk jug and plates of biscuits and by it, in an att.i.tude that looked deliberately picturesque stood Ouardi, the youth selected by Batouch to fill the office of butler in the desert.
Ouardi smiled a broad welcome as they approached, and having made sure that his pose had been admired, retired to the cook"s abode to fetch the teapot, while Batouch invited Domini and Androvsky to inspect the tent prepared for them. Domini a.s.sented with a dropped-out word. She still felt in a dream. But Androvsky, after casting towards the tent door a glance that was full of a sort of fierce shyness, moved away a few steps, and stood at the edge of the hill looking down upon the incoming caravan, whose music was now plainly audible in the stillness of the waste.
Domini went into the tent that was to be their home for many weeks, alone. And she was glad just then that she was alone. For she too, like Androvsky, felt a sort of exquisite trouble moving, like a wave, in her heart. On some pretext, but only after an expression of admiration, she got rid of Batouch. Then she stood and looked round.
From the big tent opened a smaller one, which was to serve Androvsky as a dressing-room and both of them as a baggage room. She did not go into that, but saw, with one glance of soft inquiry, the two small, low beds, the strips of gay carpet, the dressing-table, the stand and the two cane chairs which furnished the sleeping-tent. Then she looked back to the aperture. In the distance, standing alone at the edge of the hill, she saw Androvsky, bathed in the sunset, looking out over the hidden desert from which rose the wild sound of African music, steadily growing louder. It seemed to her as if he must be gazing at the plains of heaven, so magically brilliant and tender, so pellucidly clear and delicate was the atmosphere and the colour of the sky. She saw no other form, only his, in this poem of light, in this wide world of the sinking sun. And the music seemed to be about his feet, to rise from the sand and throb in its breast.
At that moment the figure of Liberty, which she had seen in the shadows of the dancing-house, came in at the tent door and laid, for the first time, her lips on Domini"s. That kiss was surely the consecration of the life of the sands. But to-day there had been another consecration.
Domini had a sudden impulse to link the two consecrations together.
She drew from her breast the wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown into the stream at Sidi-Zerzour, and, softly going to one of the beds, she pinned the crucifix above it on the canvas of the tent. Then she turned and went out into the glory of the sunset to meet the fierce music that was rising from the desert.
CHAPTER XVIII
Night had fallen over the desert, a clear purple night, starry but without a moon. Around the Bordj, and before a Cafe Maure built of brown earth and palm-wood, opposite to it, the Arabs who were halting to sleep at Arba on their journeys to and from Beni-Mora were huddled, sipping coffee, playing dominoes by the faint light of an oil lamp, smoking cigarettes and long pipes of keef. Within the court of the Bordj the mules were feeding tranquilly in rows. The camels roamed the plain among the tamarisk bushes, watched over by shrouded shadowy guardians sleepless as they were. The mountains, the palms of Beni-Mora, were lost in the darkness that lay over the desert.
On the low hill, at some distance beyond the white tent of Domini and Androvsky, the obscurity was lit up fiercely by the blaze of a huge fire of brushwood, the flames of which towered up towards the stars, flickering this way and that as the breeze took them, and casting a wild illumination upon the wild faces of the rejoicing desert men who were gathered about it, telling stories of the wastes, singing songs that were melancholy and remote to Western ears, even though they hymned past victories over the infidels, or pa.s.sionate ecstasies of love in the golden regions of the sun. The steam from bowls of cous-cous and stews of mutton and vegetables curled up to join the thin smoke that made a light curtain about this fantasia, and from time to time, with a shrill cry of exultation, a half-naked form, all gleaming eyes and teeth and polished bronze-hued limbs, rushed out of the blackness beyond the fire, leaped through the tongues of flame and vanished like a spectre into the embrace of the night.
All the members of the caravan, presided over by Batouch in glory, were celebrating the wedding night of their master and mistress.
Domini and Androvsky had already visited them by their bonfire, had received their compliments, watched the sword dance and the dance of the clubs, touched with their lips, or pretended to touch, the stem of a keef, listened to a marriage song warbled by Ali to the accompaniment of a flute and little drums, and applauded Ouardi"s agility in leaping through the flames. Then, with many good-nights, pressures of the hand, and auguries for the morrow, they had gone away into the cool darkness, silently towards their tent.
They walked slowly, a little apart from each other. Domini looked up at the stars and saw among them the star of Liberty. Androvsky looked at her and saw all the stars in her face. When they reached the tent door they stopped on the warm earth. A lamp was lit within, casting a soft light on the simple furniture and on the whiteness of the two beds, above one of which Domini imagined, though from without she could not see, the wooden crucifix Androvsky had once worn in his breast.
"Shall we stay here a little?" Domini said in a low voice. "Out here?"
There was a long pause. Then Androvsky answered:
"Yes. Let us feel it all--all. Let us feel it to the full."
He caught hold of her hand with a sort of tender roughness and twined his fingers between hers, pressing his palm against hers.
"Don"t let us miss anything to-night," he said. "All my life is to-night. I"ve had no life yet. To-morrow--who knows whether we shall be dead to-morrow? Who knows? But we"re alive to-night, flesh and blood, heart and soul. And there"s nothing here, there can be nothing here to take our life from us, the life of our love to-night. For we"re out in the desert, we"re right away from anyone, everything. We"re in the great freedom. Aren"t we, Domini? Aren"t we?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
He took her other hand in the same way. He was facing her, and he held his hands against his heart with hers in them, then pressed her hands against her heart, then drew them back again to his.
"Then let us realise it. Let us forget our prison. Let us forget everything, everything that we ever knew before Beni-Mora, Domini. It"s dead, absolutely dead, unless we make it live by thinking. And that"s mad, crazy. Thought"s the great madness. Domini, have you forgotten everything before we knew each other?"
"Yes," she said. "Now--but only now. You"ve made me forget it all."
There was a deep breathing under her voice. He held up her hands to his shoulders and looked closely into her eyes, as if he were trying to send all himself into her through those doors of the soul opened to seeing him. And now, in this moment, she felt that her fierce desire was realised, that he was rising above her on eagle"s wings. And as on the night before the wedding she had blessed all the sorrows of her life, now she blessed silently all the long silence of Androvsky, all his strange reticence, his uncouthness, his avoidance of her in the beginning of their acquaintance. That which had made her pain by being, now made her joy by having been and being no more. The hidden man was rushing forth to her at last in his love. She seemed to hear in the night the crash of a great obstacle, and the voice of the flood of waters that had broken it down at length and were escaping into liberty.
His silence of the past now made his speech intensely beautiful and wonderful to her. She wanted to hear the waters more intensely, more intensely.
"Speak to me," she said. "You"ve spoken so little. Do you know how little? Tell me all you are. Till now I"ve only felt all you are. And that"s so much, but not enough for a woman--not enough. I"ve taken you, but now--give me all I"ve taken. Give--keep on giving and giving. From to-night to receive will be my life. Long ago I"ve given all I had to you. Give to me, give me everything. You know I"ve given all."
"All?" he said, and there was a throb in his deep voice, as if some intense feeling rose from the depths of him and shook it.
"Yes, all," she whispered. "Already--and long ago--that day in the garden. When I--when I put my hands against your forehead--do you remember? I gave you all, for ever."
And as she spoke she bent down her face with a sort of proud submission and put her forehead against his heart.
The purity in her voice and in her quiet, simple action dazzled him like a flame shining suddenly in his eyes out of blackness. And he, too, in that moment saw far up above him the beating of an eagle"s wings. To each one the other seemed to be on high, and as both looked up that was their true marriage.
"I felt it," he said, touching her hair with his lips. "I felt it in your hands. When you touched me that day it was as if you were giving me the world and the stars. It frightened me to receive so much. I felt as if I had no place to put my gift in."
"Did your heart seem so small?" she said.
"You make everything I have and am seem small--and yet great. What does it mean?"
"That you are great, as I am, because we love. No one is small who loves. No one is poor, no one is bad, who loves. Love burns up evil.
It"s the angel that destroys."
Her words seemed to send through his whole body a quivering joy. He took her face between his hands and lifted it from his heart.
"Is that true? Is that true?" he said. "I"ve--I"ve tried to think that.
If you know how I"ve tried."
"And don"t you know it is true?"
"I don"t feel as if I knew anything that you do not tell me to-night. I don"t feel as if I have, or am, anything but what you give me, make me to-night. Can you understand that? Can you understand what you are to me? That you are everything, that I have nothing else, that I have never had anything else in all these years that I have lived and that I have forgotten? Can you understand it? You said just now "Speak to me, tell me all you are." That"s what I am, all I am, a man you have made a man.
You, Domini--you have made me a man, you have created me."
She was silent. The intensity with which he spoke, the intensity of his eyes while he was speaking, made her hear those rushing waters as if she were being swept away by them.
"And you?" he said. "You?"