Just as dawn was breaking, as the first streak of light stole into the east and threw a frail spear of gold upon the sands, she was conscious again of a thrill of life within her, of the movement of her unborn child. Then she lifted her head from her hand, looking towards the east, and whispered:
"Give me strength for one more thing--give me strength to be silent!"
She waited as if for an answer. Then she rose from her knees, bathed her face and went out to the tent door to Androvsky.
"Boris!" she said.
He rose from his knees and looked at her, holding the little wooden crucifix in his hand.
"Domini?" he said in an uncertain voice.
"Put it back into your breast. Keep it for ever, Boris."
As if mechanically, and not removing his eyes from her, he put the crucifix into his breast. After a moment she spoke again, quietly.
"Boris, you never wished to stay here. You meant to stay here for me.
Let us go away from Amara. Let us go to-day, now, in the dawn."
"Us!" he said.
There was a profound amazement in his voice.
"Yes," she answered.
"Away from Amara--you and I--together?"
"Yes, Boris, together."
"Where--where can we go?"
The amazement seemed to deepen in his voice. His eyes were watching her with an almost fierce intentness. In a flash of insight she realised that, just then, he was wondering about her as he had never wondered before, wondering whether she was really the good woman at whose feet his sin-stricken soul had worshipped. Yes, he was asking himself that question.
"Boris," she said, "will you leave yourself in my hands? We have talked of our future life. We have wondered what we should do. Will you let me do as I will, let the future be as I choose?"
In her heart she said "as G.o.d chooses."
"Yes, Domini," he answered. "I am in your hands, utterly in your hands."
"No," she said.
Neither of them spoke after that till the sunlight lay above the towers and minarets of Amara. Then Domini said:
"We will go to-day--now."
And that morning the camp was struck, and the new journey began--the journey back.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A silence had fallen between Domini and Androvsky which neither seemed able to break. They rode on side by side across the sands towards the north through the long day. The tower of Amara faded in the sunshine above the white crests of the dunes. The Arab villages upon their little hills disappeared in the quivering gold. New vistas of desert opened before them, oases crowded with palms, salt lakes and stony ground. They pa.s.sed by native towns. They saw the negro gardeners laughing among the rills of yellow water, or climbing with bare feet the wrinkled tree trunks to lop away dead branches. They heard tiny goatherds piping, solitary, in the wastes. Dreams of the mirage rose and faded far off on the horizon, rose and faded mystically, leaving no trembling trace behind. And they were silent as the mirage, she in her purpose, he in his wonder. And the long day waned, and towards evening the camp was pitched and the evening meal was prepared. And still they could not speak.
Sometimes Androvsky watched her, and there was a great calm in her face, but there was no rebuke, no smallness of anger, no hint of despair.
Always he had felt her strength of mind and body, but never so much as now. Could he rest on it? Dared he? He did not know. And the day seemed to him to become a dream, and the silence recalled to him the silence of the monastery in which he had worshipped G.o.d before the stranger came. He thought that in this silence he ought to feel that she was deliberately raising barriers between them, but--it was strange--he could not feel this. In her silence there was no bitterness. When is there bitterness in strength? He rode on and on beside her, and his sense of a dream deepened, helped by the influence of the desert. Where were they going? He did not know. What was her purpose? He could not tell. But he felt that she had a purpose, that her mind was resolved.
Now and then, tearing himself with an effort from the dream, he asked himself what it could be. What could be in store for him, for them, after the thing he had told? What could be their mutual life? Must it not be for ever at an end? Was it not shattered? Was it not dust, like the dust of the desert that rose round their horses" feet? The silence did not tell him, and again he ceased from wondering and the dream closed round him. Were they not travelling in a mirage, mirage people, unreal, phantomlike, who would presently fade away into the s.p.a.ces of the sun? The sand m.u.f.fled the tread of the horses" feet. The desert understood their silence, clothed it in a silence more vast and more impenetrable. And Androvsky had made his effort. He had spoken the truth at last. He could do no more. He was incapable of any further action. As Domini felt herself to be in the hands of G.o.d, he felt himself to be in the hands of this woman who had received his confession with this wonderful calm, who was leading him he knew not whither in this wonderful silence.
When the camp was pitched, however, he noticed something that caught him sharply away from the dreamlike, unreal feeling, and set him face to face with fact that was cold as steel. Always till now the dressing-tent had been pitched beside their sleeping-tent, with the flap of the entrance removed so that the two tents communicated. To-night it stood apart, near the sleeping-tent, and in it was placed one of the small camp beds. Androvsky was alone when he saw this. On reaching the halting-place he had walked a little way into the desert. When he returned he found this change. It told him something of what was pa.s.sing in Domini"s mind, and it marked the transformation of their mutual life.
As he gazed at the two tents he felt stricken, yet he felt a curious sense of something that was like--was it not like--relief? It was as if his body had received a frightful blow and on his soul a saint"s hand had been gently laid, as if something fell about him in ruins, and at the same time a building which he loved, and which for a moment he had thought tottering, stood firm before him founded upon rock. He was a man capable of a pa.s.sionate belief, despite his sin, and he had always had a pa.s.sionate belief in Domini"s religion. That morning, when she came out to him in the sand, a momentary doubt had a.s.sailed him. He had known the thought, "Does she love me still--does she love me more than she loves G.o.d, more than she loves his dictates manifested in the Catholic religion?" When she said that word "together" that had been his thought.
Now, as he looked at the two tents, a white light seemed to fall upon Domini"s character, and in this white light stood the ruin and the house that was founded upon a rock. He was torn by conflicting sensations of despair and triumph. She was what he had believed. That made the triumph. But since she was that where was his future with her? The monk and the man who had fled from the monastery stood up within him to do battle. The monk knew triumph, but the man was in torment.
Presently, as Androvsky looked at the two tents, the monk in him seemed to die a new death, the man who had left the monastery to know a new resurrection. He was seized by a furious desire to go backward in time, to go backward but a few hours, to the moment when Domini did not know what now she knew. He cursed himself for what he had done. At last he had been able to pray. Yes, but what was prayer now, what was prayer to the man who looked at the two tents and understood what they meant? He moved away and began to walk up and down near to the two tents. He did not know where Domini was. At a little distance he saw the servants busy preparing the evening meal. Smoke rose up before the cook"s tent, curling away stealthily among a group of palm trees, beneath which some Arab boys were huddled, staring with wide eyes at the unusual sight of travellers. They came from a tiny village at a short distance off, half hidden among palm gardens. The camels were feeding. A mule was rolling voluptuously in the sand. At a well a shepherd was watering his flocks, which crowded about him baaing expectantly. The air seemed to breathe out a subtle aroma of peace and of liberty. And this apparent presence of peace, this vision of the calm of others, human beings and animals, added to the torture of Androvsky. As he walked to and fro he felt as if he were being devoured by his pa.s.sions, as if he were losing the last vestiges of self-control. Never in the monastery, never even in the night when he left it, had he been tormented like this. For now he had a terrible companion whom, at that time, he had not known. Memory walked with him before the tents, the memory of his body, recalling and calling for the past.
He had destroyed that past himself. But for him it might have been also the present, the future. It might have lasted for years, perhaps till death took him or Domini. Why not? He had only had to keep silence, to insist on remaining in the desert, far from the busy ways of men.
They could have lived as certain others lived, who loved the free, the solitary life, in an oasis of their own, tending their gardens of palms.
Life would have gone like a sunlit dream. And death? At that thought he shuddered. Death--what would that have been to him? What would it be now when it came? He put the thought from him with force, as a man thrusts away from him the filthy hand of a clamouring stranger a.s.sailing him in the street.
This evening he had no time to think of death. Life was enough, life with this terror which he had deliberately placed in it.
He thought of himself as a madman for having spoken to Domini. He cursed himself as a madman. For he knew, although he strove furiously not to know, how irrevocable was his act, in consequence of the great strength of her nature. He knew that though she had been to him a woman of fire she might be to him a woman of iron--even to him whom she loved.
How she had loved him!
He walked faster before the tents, to and fro.
How she had loved him! How she loved him still, at this moment after she knew what he was, what he had done to her. He had no doubt of her love as he walked there. He felt it, like a tender hand upon him. But that hand was inflexible too. In its softness there was firmness--firmness that would never yield to any strength in him.
Those two tents told him the story of her strength. As he looked at them he was looking into her soul. And her soul was in direct conflict with his. That was what he felt. She had thought, she had made up her mind.
Quietly, silently she had acted. By that action, without a word, she had spoken to him, told him a tremendous thing. And the man--the pa.s.sionate man who had left the monastery--loose in him now was aflame with an impotent desire that was like a heat of fury against her, while the monk, hidden far down in him, was secretly worshipping her cleanliness of spirit.
But the man who had left the monastery was in the ascendant in him, and at last drove him to a determination that the monk secretly knew to be utterly vain. He made up his mind to enter into conflict with Domini"s strength. He felt that he must, that he could not quietly, without a word, accept this sudden new life of separation symbolised for him by the two tents standing apart.
He stood still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw Batouch laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing on a mat, moving his head from side to side, smiling with half-shut, vacant eyes, and singing a languid song.
This music maddened him.
"Batouch!" he called out sharply. "Batouch!"
Batouch stopped laughing, glanced round, then came towards him with a large pace, swinging from his hips.
"Monsieur?"
"Batouch!" Androvsky said.
But he could not go on. He could not say anything about the two tents to a servant.
"Where--where is Madame?" he said almost stammering.
"Out there, Monsieur."