The word, when it came, sounded like a lie.
For the first time since her marriage Domini felt a cold, like a cold of ice about her heart. Was it possible that Androvsky had not shared her joy in the desert? Had she been alone in her happiness? For a moment she sat like one stunned by a blow. Then knowledge, reason, spoke in her.
She knew of Androvsky"s happiness with her, knew it absolutely. There are some things in which a woman cannot be deceived. When Androvsky was with her he wanted no other human being. Nothing could take that certainty from her.
"Of course," she said, recovered, "there are places in the desert in which melancholy seems to brood, in which one has a sense of the terrors of the wastes. Mogar, I think, is one of them, perhaps the only one we have been in yet. This evening, when I was sitting under the tower, even I"--and as she said "even I" she smiled happily at Androvsky--"knew some forebodings."
"Forebodings?" Androvsky said quickly. "Why should you--?" He broke off.
"Not of coming misfortune, I hope, Madame?" said De Trevignac in a voice that was now irresistibly cheerful.
He was helping himself to some gazelle, which sent forth an appetising odour, and Ouardi was proudly pouring out for him the first gla.s.s of blithely winking champagne.
"I hardly know, but everything looked sad and strange; I began to think about the uncertainties of life."
Domini and De Trevignac were sipping their champagne. Ouardi came behind Androvsky to fill his gla.s.s.
"Non! non!" he said, putting his hand over it and shaking his head.
De Trevignac started.
Ouardi looked at Domini and made a distressed grimace, pointing with a brown finger at the gla.s.s.
"Oh, Boris! you must drink champagne to-night!" she exclaimed.
"I would rather not," he answered. "I am not accustomed to it."
"But to drink our guest"s health after his escape from death!"
Androvsky took his hand from the gla.s.s and Ouardi filled it with wine.
Then Domini raised her gla.s.s and drank to De Trevignac. Androvsky followed her example, but without geniality, and when he put his lips to the wine he scarcely tasted it. Then he put the gla.s.s down and told Ouardi to give him red wine. And during the rest of the evening he drank no more champagne. He also ate very little, much less than usual, for in the desert they both had the appet.i.tes of hunters.
After thanking them cordially for drinking his health, De Trevignac said:
"I was nearly experiencing the certainty of death. But was it Mogar that turned you to such thoughts, Madame?"
"I think so. There is something sad, even portentous about it."
She looked towards the tent door, imagining the immense desolation that was hidden in the darkness outside, the white plains, the mirage sea, the sand dunes like monsters, the bleached bones of the dead camels with the eagles hovering above them.
"Don"t you think so, Boris? Don"t you think it looks like a place in which--like a tragic place, a place in which tragedies ought to occur?"
"It is not places that make tragedies," he said, "or at least they make tragedies far more seldom than the people in them."
He stopped, seemed to make an effort to throw off his taciturnity, and suddenly to be able to throw it off, at least partially. For he continued speaking with greater naturalness and ease, even with a certain dominating force.
"If people would use their wills they need not be influenced by place, they need not be governed by a thousand things, by memories, by fears, by fancies--yes, even by fancies that are the merest shadows, but out of which they make phantoms. Half the terrors and miseries of life lie only in the minds of men. They even cause the very tragedies they would avoid by expecting them."
He said the last words with a sort of strong contempt--then, more quietly, he added:
"You, Domini, why should you feel the uncertainty of life, especially at Mogar? You need not. You can choose not to. Life is the same in its chances here as everywhere?"
"But you," she answered--"did you not feel a tragic influence when we arrived here? Do you remember how you looked at the tower?"
"The tower!" he said, with a quick glance at De Trevignac. "I--why should I look at the tower?"
"I don"t know, but you did, almost as if you were afraid of it."
"My tower!" said De Trevignac.
Another roar of laughter reached them from the camp fire. It made Domini smile in sympathy, but De Trevignac and Androvsky looked at each other for a moment, the one with a sort of earnest inquiry, the other with hostility, or what seemed hostility, across the circle of lamplight that lay between them.
"A tower rising in the desert emphasises the desolation. I suppose that was it," Androvsky said, as the laugh died down into Batouch"s throaty chuckle. "It suggests lonely people watching."
"For something that never comes, or something terrible that comes," De Trevignac said.
As he spoke the last words Androvsky moved uneasily in his chair, and looked out towards the camp, as if he longed to get up and go into the open air, as if the tent roof above his head oppressed him.
Trevignac turned to Domini.
"In this case, Madame, you were the lonely watcher, and I was the something terrible that came."
She laughed. While she laughed De Trevignac noticed that Androvsky looked at her with a sort of sad intentness, not reproachful or wondering, as an older person might look at a child playing at the edge of some great gulf into which a false step would precipitate it. He strove to interpret this strange look, so obviously born in the face of his host in connection with himself. It seemed to him that he must have met Androvsky, and that Androvsky knew it, knew--what he did not yet know--where it was and when. It seemed to him, too, that Androvsky thought of him as the "something terrible" that had come to this woman who sat between them out of the desert.
But how could it be?
A profound curiosity was roused in him and he mentally cursed his treacherous memory--if it were treacherous. For possibly he might be mistaken. He had perhaps never met his host before, and this strange manner of his might be due to some inexplicable cause, or perhaps to some cause explicable and even commonplace. This Monsieur Androvsky might be a very jealous man, who had taken this woman away into the desert to monopolise her, and who resented even the chance intrusion of a stranger. De Trevignac knew life and the strange pa.s.sions of men, knew that there are Europeans with the Arab temperament, who secretly long that their women should wear the veil and live secluded in the harem.
Androvsky might be one of these.
When she had laughed Domini said:
"On the contrary, Monsieur, you have turned my thoughts into a happier current by your coming."
"How so?"
"You made me think of what are called the little things of life that are more to us women than to you men, I suppose."
"Ah," he said. "This food, this wine, this chair with a cushion, this gay light--Madame, they are not little things I have to be grateful for.
When I think of the dunes they seem to me--they seem--"
Suddenly he stopped. His gay voice was choked. She saw that there were tears in his blue eyes, which were fixed on her with an expression of ardent grat.i.tude. He cleared his throat.
"Monsieur," he said to Androvsky, "you will not think me presuming on an acquaintance formed in the desert if I say that till the end of my life I--and my men--can only think of Madame as of the good G.o.ddess of the desolate Sahara!"
He did not know how Androvsky would take this remark, he did not care. For the moment in his impulsive nature there was room only for admiration of the woman and, grat.i.tude for her frank kindness. Androvsky said:
"Thank you, Monsieur."