She held out her hand.
"Good-bye," she added.
He took her hand, then signed to his men to ride on. When they had pa.s.sed, saluting her, he let her hand go. He had not spoken a word. His face, burned scarlet by the sun, had a look of exhaustion on it, but also another look--of horror, she thought, as if in his soul he was recoiling from her. His inflamed blue eyes watched her, as if in a search that was intense. She stood beside the mule in amazement. She could hardly believe that this was the man who had thanked her, with tears in his eyes, for her hospitality the night before. "Good-bye,"
he said, speaking at last, coldly. She saw him glance at the tent from which she had come. The horror in his face surely deepened. "Goodbye, Madame," he repeated. "Thank you for your hospitality." He pulled up the rein to ride on. The mule moved a step or two. Then suddenly he checked it and turned in the saddle. "Madame!" he said. "Madame!"
She came up to him. It seemed to her that he was going to say something of tremendous importance to her. His lips, blistered by the sun, opened to speak. But he only looked again towards the tent in which Androvsky was still sleeping, then at her.
A long moment pa.s.sed.
Then De Trevignac, as if moved by an irresistable impulse, leaned from the saddle and made over Domini the sign of the cross. His hand dropped down against the mule"s side, and without another word, or look, he rode away to the north, following his men.
CHAPTER XXI
That same day, to the surprise of Batouch, they left Mogar. To both Domini and Androvsky it seemed a tragic place, a place where the desert showed them a countenance that was menacing.
They moved on towards the south, wandering aimlessly through the warm regions of the sun. Then, as the spring drew into summer, and the heat became daily more intense, they turned again northwards, and on an evening in May pitched their camp on the outskirts of the Sahara city of Amara.
This city, although situated in the northern part of the desert, was called by the Arabs "The belly of the Sahara," and also "The City of Scorpions." It lay in the midst of a vast region of soft and shifting sand that suggested a white sea, in which the oasis of date palms, at the edge of which the city stood, was a green island. From the south, whence the wanderers came, the desert sloped gently upwards for a long distance, perhaps half a day"s march, and many kilometres before the city was reached, the minarets of its mosques were visible, pointing to the brilliant blue sky that arched the whiteness of the sands. Round about the city, on every side, great sand-hills rose like ramparts erected by Nature to guard it from the a.s.saults of enemies. These hills were black with the tents of desert tribes, which, from far off, looked like mult.i.tudes of flies that had settled on the sands. The palms of the oasis, which stretched northwards from the city, could not be seen from the south till the city was reached, and in late spring this region was a strange and barbarous pageant of blue and white and gold; crude in its intensity, fierce in its crudity, almost terrible in its blazing splendour that was like the Splendour about the portals of the sun.
Domini and Androvsky rode towards Amara at a foot"s pace, looking towards its distant towers. A quivering silence lay around them, yet already they seemed to hear the cries of the voices of a great mult.i.tude, to be aware of the movement of thronging crowds of men. This was the first Sahara city they had drawn near to, and their minds were full of memories of the stories of Batouch, told to them by the camp fire at night in the uninhabited places which, till now, had been their home: stories of the wealthy date merchants who trafficked here and dwelt in Oriental palaces, poor in aspect as seen from the dark and narrow streets, or zgags, in which they were situated, but within full of the splendours of Eastern luxury; of the Jew moneylenders who lived apart in their own quarter, rapacious as wolves, h.o.a.rding their gains, and practising the rites of their ancient and--according to the Arabs--detestable religion; of the marabouts, or sacred men, revered by the Mohammedans, who rode on white horses through the public ways, followed by adoring fanatics who sought to touch their garments and amulets, and demanded importunately miraculous blessings at their hands--the hedgehog"s foot to protect their women in the peril of childbirth; the scroll, covered with verses of the Koran and enclosed in a sheaf of leather, that banishes ill dreams at night and stays the uncertain feet of the sleep-walker; the camel"s skull that brings fruit to the palm trees; the red coral that stops the flow of blood from a knife-wound--of the dancing-girls glittering in an armour of golden pieces, their heads tied with purple and red and yellow handkerchiefs of silk, crowned with great bars of solid gold and tufted with ostrich feathers; of the dwarfs and jugglers who by night perform in the marketplace, contending for custom with the sorceresses who tell the fates from sh.e.l.ls gathered by mirage seas; with the snake-charmers--who are immune from the poison of serpents and the acrobats who come from far-off Persia and Arabia to spread their carpets in the shadow of the Agha"s dwelling and delight the eyes of negro and Kabyle, of Soudanese and Touareg with their feats of strength; of the haschish smokers who, a.s.sembled by night in an underground house whose ceiling and walls were black as ebony, gave themselves up to day-dreams of shifting glory, in which the things of earth and the joys and pa.s.sions of men reappeared, but transformed by the magic influence of the drug, made monstrous or fairylike, intensified or turned to voluptuous languors, through which the Ouled Nail floated like a syren, promising ecstasies unknown even in Baghdad, where the pale Circa.s.sian lifts her l.u.s.trous eyes, in which the palms were heavy with dates of solid gold, and the streams were gliding silver.
Often they had smiled over Batouch"s opulent descriptions of the marvels of Ain-Amara, which they suspected to be very far away from the reality, and yet, nevertheless, when they saw the minarets soaring above the sands to the bra.s.sy heaven, it seemed to them both as if, perhaps, they might be true. The place looked intensely barbaric. The approach to it was grandiose.
Wide as the sands had been, they seemed to widen out into a greater immensity of arid pallor before the city gates as yet unseen. The stretch of blue above looked vaster here, the horizons more remote, the radiance of the sun more vivid, more inexorable. Nature surely expanded as if in an effort to hold her arm against some tremendous spectacle set in its bosom by the activity of men, who were strong and ardent as the giants of old, who had powers and a pa.s.sion for employing them persistently not known in any other region of the earth. The immensity of Mogar brought sadness to the mind. The immensity of Ain-Amara brought excitement. Even at this distance from it, when its minarets were still like shadowy fingers of an unlifted hand, Androvsky and Domini were conscious of influences streaming forth from its battlements over the sloping sands like a procession that welcomed them to a new phase of desert life.
"And people talk of the monotony of the Sahara!" Domini said speaking out of their mutual thought. "Everything is here, Boris; you"ve never drawn near to London. Long before you reach the first suburbs you feel London like a great influence brooding over the fields and the woods.
Here you feel Amara in the same way brooding over the sands. It"s as if the sands were full of voices. Doesn"t it excite you?"
"Yes," he said. "But"--and he turned in his saddle and looked back--"I feel as if the solitudes were safer."
"We can return to them."
"Yes."
"We are splendidly free. There"s nothing to prevent us leaving Amara tomorrow."
"Isn"t there?" he answered, fixing his eyes upon the minarets.
"What can there be?"
"Who knows?"
"What do you mean, Boris? Are you superst.i.tious? But you reject the influence of place. Don"t you remember--at Mogar?"
At the mention of the name his face clouded and she was sorry she had spoken it. Since they had left the hill above the mirage sea they had scarcely ever alluded to their night there. They had never once talked of the dinner in camp with De Trevignac and his men, or renewed their conversation in the tent on the subject of religion. But since that day, since her words about Androvsky"s lack of perfect happiness even with her far out in the freedom of the desert, Domini had been conscious that, despite their great love for each other, their mutual pa.s.sion for the solitude in which it grew each day more deep and more engrossing, wrapping their lives in fire and leading them on to the inner abodes of sacred understanding, there was at moments a barrier between them.
At first she had striven not to recognise its existence. She had striven to be blind. But she was essentially a brave woman and an almost fanatical lover of truth for its own sake, thinking that what is called an ugly truth is less ugly than the loveliest lie. To deny truth is to play the coward. She could not long do that. And so she quickly learned to face this truth with steady eyes and an unflinching heart.
At moments Androvsky retreated from her, his mind became remote--more, his heart was far from her, and, in its distant place, was suffering. Of that she was a.s.sured.
But she was a.s.sured, too, that she stood to him for perfection in human companionship. A woman"s love is, perhaps, the only true divining rod.
Domini knew instinctively where lay the troubled waters, what troubled them in their subterranean dwelling. She was certain that Androvsky was at peace with her but not with himself. She had said to him in the tent that she thought he sometimes felt far away from G.o.d. The conviction grew in her that even the satisfaction of his great human love was not enough for his nature. He demanded, sometimes imperiously, not only the peace that can be understood gloriously, but also that other peace which pa.s.seth understanding. And because he had it not he suffered.
In the Garden of Allah he felt a loneliness even though she was with him, and he could not speak with her of this loneliness. That was the barrier between them, she thought.
She prayed for him: in the tent by night, in the desert under the burning sky by day. When the muezzin cried from the minaret of some tiny village lost in the desolation of the wastes, turning to the north, south, east and west, and the Mussulmans bowed their shaved heads, facing towards Mecca, she prayed to the Catholics" G.o.d, whom she felt to be the G.o.d, too, of all the devout, of all the religions of the world, and to the Mother of G.o.d, looking towards Africa. She prayed that this man whom she loved, and who she believed was seeking, might find. And she felt that there was a strength, a pa.s.sion in her prayers, which could not be rejected. She felt that some day Allah would show himself in his garden to the wanderer there. She dared to feel that because she dared to believe in the endless mercy of G.o.d. And when that moment came she felt, too, that their love--hers and his--for each other would be crowned. Beautiful and intense as it was it still lacked something. It needed to be encircled by the protecting love of a G.o.d in whom they both believed in the same way, and to whom they both were equally near.
While she felt close to this love and he far from it they were not quite together.
There were moments in which she was troubled, even sad, but they pa.s.sed.
For she had a great courage, a great confidence. The hope that dwells like a flame in the purity of prayer comforted her.
"I love the solitudes," he said. "I love to have you to myself."
"If we lived always in the greatest city of the world it would make no difference," she said quietly. "You know that, Boris."
He bent over from his saddle and clasped her hand in his, and they rode thus up the great slope of the sands, with their horses close together.
The minarets of the city grew more distinct. They dominated the waste as the thought of Allah dominates the Mohammedan world. Presently, far away on the left, Domini and Androvsky saw hills of sand, clearly defined like small mountains delicately shaped. On the summits of these hills were Arab villages of the hue of bronze gleaming in the sun. No trees stood near them. But beyond them, much farther off, was the long green line of the palms of a large oasis. Between them and the riders moved slowly towards the minarets dark things that looked like serpents writhing through the sands. These were caravans coming into the city from long journeys. Here and there, dotted about in the immensity, were solitary hors.e.m.e.n, camels in twos and threes, small troops of donkeys. And all the things that moved went towards the minarets as if irresistibly drawn onwards by some strong influence that sucked them in from the solitudes of the whirlpool of human life.
Again Domini thought of the approach to London, and of the dominion of great cities, those octopus monsters created by men, whose tentacles are strong to seize and stronger still to keep. She was infected by Androvsky"s dread of a changed life, and through her excitement, that pulsed with interest and curiosity, she felt a faint thrill of something that was like fear.
"Boris," she said, "I feel as if your thoughts were being conveyed to me by your touch. Perhaps the solitudes are best."
By a simultaneous impulse they pulled in their horses and listened.
Sounds came to them over the sands, thin and remote. They could not tell what they were, but they knew that they heard something which suggested the distant presence of life.
"What is it?" said Domini.
"I don"t know, but I hear something. It travels to us from the minarets."
They both leaned forward on their horses" necks, holding each other"s hand.
"I feel the tumult of men," Androvsky said presently.
"And I. But it seems as if no men could have elected to build a city here."
"Here in the "Belly of the desert,"" he said, quoting the Arabs" name for Amara.
"Boris"--she spoke in a more eager voice, clasping his hand strongly--"you remember the _fumoir_ in Count Anteoni"s garden. The place where it stood was the very heart of the garden."
"Yes."
"We understood each other there."
He pressed her hand without speaking.