CHAPTER XIX
The Arabs have a saying, "In the desert one forgets everything, oneremembers nothing any more."
To Domini it sometimes seemed the truest of all the true and beautifulsayings of the East. Only three weeks had passed away since the firsthalt at Arba, yet already her life at Beni-Mora was faint in her mindas the dream of a distant past. Taken by the vast solitudes, journeyingwithout definite aim from one oasis to another through empty regionsbathed in eternal sunshine, camping often in the midst of the sandby one of the wells sunk for the nomads by the French engineers,strengthened perpetually, yet perpetually soothed, by airs that weresoft and cool, as if mingled of silk and snow, they lived surely in adesert dream with only a dream behind them. They had become as one withthe nomads, whose home is the moving tent, whose hearthstone is theyellow sand of the dunes, whose God is liberty.
Domini loved this life with a love which had already become a passion.All that she had imagined that the desert might be to her she found thatit was. In its so-called monotony she discovered eternal interest. Ofold she had thought the sea the most wonderful thing in Nature. In thedesert she seemed to possess the sea with something added to it, acalm, a completeness, a mystical tenderness, a passionate serenity. Shethought of the sea as a soul striving to fulfil its noblest aspirations,to be the splendid thing it knew how to dream of. But she thought ofthe desert as a soul that need strive no more, having attained. And she,like the Arabs, called it always in her heart the Garden of Allah. Forin this wonderful calm, bright as the child's idea of heaven; clear asa crystal with a sunbeam caught in it, silent as a prayer that willbe answered silently, God seemed to draw very near to His wanderingchildren. In the desert was the still, small voice, and the still, smallvoice was the Lord.
Often at dawn or sundown, when, perhaps in the distance of the sands,or near at hand beneath the shade of the palms of some oasis by awaterspring, she watched the desert men in their patched rags, withtheir lean, bronzed faces and eagle eyes turned towards Mecca, bowingtheir heads in prayer to the soil that the sun made hot, she rememberedCount Anteoni's words, "I like to see men praying in the desert," andshe understood with all her heart and soul why. For the life of thedesert was the most perfect liberty that could be found on earth, and tosee men thus worshipping in liberty set before her a vision of free willupon the heights. When she thought of the world she had known and left,of the men who would always live in it and know no other world, she wassaddened for a moment. Could she ever find elsewhere such joy as she hadfound in the simple and unfettered life of the wastes? Could she everexchange this life for another life, even with Androvsky?
One day she spoke to him of her intense joy in the wandering fate, andthe pain that came to her whenever she thought of exchanging it for alife of civilisation in the midst of fixed groups of men.
They had halted for the noonday rest at a place called Sidi-Hamdam, andin the afternoon were going to ride on to a Bordj called Mogar, wherethey meant to stay two or three days, as Batouch had told them it wasa good halting place, and near to haunts of the gazelle. The tents hadalready gone forward, and Domini and Androvsky were lying upon a rugspread on the sand, in the shadow of the grey wall of a traveller'shouse beside a well. Behind them their horses were tethered to aniron ring in the wall. Batouch and Ali were in the court of the house,talking to the Arab guardian who dwelt there, but their voices were notaudible by the well, and absolute silence reigned, the intense yetlight silence that is in the desert at noontide, when the sun is atthe zenith, when the nomad sleeps under his low-pitched tent, and thegardeners in the oasis cease even from pretending to work among thepalms. From before the well the ground sank to a plain of pale greysand, which stretched away to a village hard in aspect, as if carved outof bronze and all in one piece. In the centre of it rose a mosque witha minaret and a number of cupolas, faintly gilded and shining modestlyunder the fierce rays of the sun.
At the foot of the village the ground was white with saltpetre, whichresembled a covering of new-fallen snow. To right and left of it wereisolated groups of palms growing in threes and fours, like trees thathad formed themselves into cliques and set careful barriers of sandbetween themselves and their despised brethren. Here and there on thegrey sand dark patches showed where nomads had pitched their tents. Butthere was no movement of human life. No camels were visible. No guarddogs barked. The noon held all things in its golden grip.
"Boris!" Domini said, breaking a long silence.
"Yes, Domini?"
He turned towards her on the rug, stretching his long, thin body lazilyas if in supreme physical contentment.
"You know that saying of the Arabs about forgetting everything in thedesert?"
"Yes, Domini, I know it."
"How long shall we stay in this world of forgetfulness?"
He lifted himself up on his elbow quickly, and fixed his eyes on hers.
"How long!"
"Yes."
"But--do you wish to leave it? Are you tired of it?"
There was a note of sharp anxiety in his voice.
"I don't answer such a question," she said, smiling at him.
"Ah, then, why do you try to frighten me?"
She put her hand in his.
"How burnt you are!" she said. "You are like an Arab of the South."
"Let me become more like one. There's health here."
"And peace, perfect peace."
He said nothing. He was looking down now at the sand.
She laid her lips on his warm brown hand.
"There's all I want here," she added.
"Let us stay here."
"But some day we must go back, mustn't we?"
"Why?"
"Can anything be lifelong--even our honeymoon?"
"Suppose we choose that it shall be?"
"Can we choose such a thing? Is anybody allowed to choose to live alwaysquite happily without duties? Sometimes I wonder. I love this wanderinglife so much, I am so happy in it, that I sometimes think it cannot lastmuch longer."
He began to sift the sand through his fingers swiftly.
"Duties?" he said in a low voice.
"Yes. Oughtn't we to do something presently, something besides beinghappy?"
"What do you mean, Domini?"
"I hardly know, I don't know. You tell me."
There was an urging in her voice, as if she wanted, almost demanded,something of him.
"You mean that a man must do some work in his life if he is to keephimself a man," he said, not as if he were asking a question.
He spoke reluctantly but firmly.
"You know," he added, "that I have worked hard all my life, hard like alabourer."
"Yes, I know," she said.
She stroked his hand, that was worn and rough, and spoke eloquently ofmanual toil it had accomplished in the past.
"I know. Before we were married, that day when we sat in the garden, youtold me your life and I told you mine. How different they have been!"
"Yes," he said.
He lit a cigar and watched the smoke curling up into the gold of thesunlit atmosphere.
"Mine in the midst of the world and yours so far away from it. I oftenimagine that little place, El Krori, the garden, your brother, yourtwin-brother Stephen, that one-eyed Arab servant--what was his name?"
"El Magin."
"Yes, El Magin, who taught you to play Cora and to sing Arab songs, andto eat cous-cous with your fingers. I can almost see Father Andre,from whom you learnt to love the Classics, and who talked to you ofphilosophy. He's dead too, isn't he, like your mother?"
"I don't know whether Pere Andre is dead. I have lost sight of him,"Androvsky said.
He still looked steadily at the rings of smoke curling up into thegolden air. There was in his voice a sound of embarrassment. She guessedthat it came from the consciousness of the pain he must have causedthe good priest who had loved him when he ceased from practising thereligion in which he had been brought up. Even to her he never spokefrankly on
religious subjects, but she knew that he had been baptised aCatholic and been educated for a time by priests. She knew, too, thathe was no longer a practising Catholic, and that, for some reason, hedreaded any intimacy with priests. He never spoke against them. He hadscarcely ever spoken of them to her. But she remembered his words in thegarden, "I do not care for priests." She remembered, too, his actionin the tunnel on the day of his arrival in Beni-Mora. And the reticencethat they both preserved on the subject of religion, and its reason,were the only causes of regret in this desert dream of hers. Even thisregret, too, often faded in hope. For in the desert, the Garden ofAllah, she had it borne in upon her that Androvsky would discover whathe must surely secretly be seeking--the truth that each man must findfor himself, truth for him of the eventual existence in which themysteries of this present existence will be made plain, and of the Powerthat has fashioned all things.
And she was able to hope in silence, as women do for the men they love.
"Don't think I do not realise that you have worked," she went on aftera pause. "You told me how you always cultivated the land yourself, evenwhen you were still a boy, that you directed the Spanish labourers inthe vineyards, that--you have earned a long holiday. But should it lastfor ever?"
"You are right. Well, let us take an oasis; let us become palm gardenerslike that Frenchman at Meskoutine."
"And build ourselves an African house, white, with a terrace roof."
"And sell our dates. We can give employment to the Arabs. We can choosethe poorest. We can improve their lives. After all, if we owe a debt toanyone it is to them, to the desert. Let us pay our debt to the desertmen and live in the desert."
"It would be an ideal life," she said with her eyes shining on his.
"And a possible life. Let us live it. I could not bear to leave thedesert. Where should we go?"
"Where should we go!" she repeated.
She was still looking at him, but now the expression of her eyes hadquite changed. They had become grave, and examined him seriously with asort of deep inquiry. He sat upon the Arab rug, leaning his back againstthe wall of the traveller's house.
"Why do you look at me like that, Domini?" he asked with a suddenstirring of something that was like uneasiness.
"I! I was wondering what you would like, what other life would suityou."
"Yes?" he said quickly. "Yes?"
"It's very strange, Boris, but I cannot connect you with anything butthe desert, or see you anywhere but in the desert. I cannot even imagineyou among your vines in Tunisia."
"They were not altogether mine," he corrected, still with a certainexcitement which he evidently endeavoured to repress. "I--I had theright, the duty of cultivating the land."
"Well, however it was, you were always at work; you were responsible,weren't you?"
"Yes."
"I can't see you even in the vineyards or the wheat-fields. Isn't itstrange?"
She was always looking at him with the same deep and whollyunselfconscious inquiry.
"And as to London, Paris--"
Suddenly she burst into a little laugh and her gravity vanished.
"I think you would hate them," she said. "And they--they wouldn't likeyou because they wouldn't understand you."
"Let us buy our oasis," he said abruptly. "Build our African house, sellour dates and remain in the desert. I hear Batouch. It must be time toride on to Mogar. Batouch! Batouch!"
Batouch came from the courtyard of the house wiping the remains of acous-cous from his languid lips.
"Untie the horses," said Androvsky.
"But, Monsieur, it is still too hot to travel. Look! No one is stirring.All the village is asleep."
He waved his enormous hand, with henna-tinted nails, towards the distanttown, carved surely out of one huge piece of bronze.
"Untie the horses. There are gazelle in the plain near Mogar. Didn't youtell me?"
"Yes, Monsieur, but--"
"We'll get there early and go out after them at sunset. Now, Domini."
They rode away in the burning heat of the noon towards the southwestacross the vast plains of grey sand, followed at a short distance byBatouch and Ali.
"Monsieur is mad to start in the noon," grumbled Batouch. "But Monsieuris not like Madame. He may live in the desert till he is old and hishair is grey as the sand, but he will never be an Arab in his heart."
"Why, Batouch-ben-Brahim?"
"He cannot rest. To Madame the desert gives its calm, but to Monsieur--"He did not finish his sentence. In front Domini and Androvsky had puttheir horses to a gallop. The sand flew up in a thin cloud around them.
"Nom d'un chien!" said Batouch, who, in unpoetical moments, occasionallyindulged in the expletives of the French infidels who were his country'srulers. "What is there in the mind of Monsieur which makes him ride asif he fled from an enemy?"
"I know not, but he goes like a hare before the sloughi, Batouch-benBrahim," answered Ali, gravely.
Then they sent their horses on in chase of the cloud of sand towards thesouthwest.
About four in the afternoon they reached the camp at Mogar.
As they rode in slowly, for their horses were tired and streaming withheat after their long canter across the sands, both Domini and Androvskywere struck by the novelty of this halting-place, which was quite unlikeanything they had yet seen. The ground rose gently but continuously fora considerable time before they saw in the distance the pitched tentswith the dark forms of the camels and mules. Here they were out of thesands, and upon hard, sterile soil covered with small stones embeddedin the earth. Beyond the tents they could see nothing but the sky,which was now covered with small, ribbed grey clouds, sad-coloured andautumnal, and a lonely tower built of stone, which rose from the wasteat about two hundred yards from the tents to the east. Although theycould see so little, however, they were impressed with a sensation thatthey were on the edge of some vast vision, of some grandiose effect ofNature, that would bring to them a new and astonishing knowledge of thedesert. Perhaps it was the sight of the distant tower pointing tothe grey clouds that stirred in them this almost excited feeling ofexpectation.
"It is like a watch-tower," Domini said, pointing with her whip. "Butwho could live in such a place, far from any oasis?"
"And what can it overlook?" said Androvsky. "This is the nearest horizonline we have seen since we came into the desert."
"Yes, but----"
She glanced at him as they put their horses into a gentle canter. Thenshe added:
"You, too, feel that we are coming to something tremendous, don't you?"
Her horse whinnied shrilly. Domini stroked his foam-flecked neck withher hand.
"Abou is as full of anticipation as we are," she said. Androvsky waslooking towards the tower.
"That was built for French soldiers," he said. A moment afterwards headded:
"I wonder why Batouch chose this place for us to camp in?"
There was a faint sound as of irritation in his voice.
"Perhaps we shall know in a minute," Domini answered. They cantered on.Their horses' hoofs rang with a hard sound on the stony ground.
"It's inhospitable here," Androvsky said. She looked at him in surprise.
"I never knew you to take a dislike to any halting-place before," shesaid. "What's the matter, Boris?"
He smiled at her, but almost immediately his face was clouded by theshadow of a gloom that seemed to respond to the gloom of the sky. And hefixed his eyes again upon the tower.
"I like a far horizon," he answered. "And there's no sun to-day."
"I suppose even in the desert we cannot have it always," she said. Andin her voice, too, there was a touch of melancholy, as if she had caughthis mood. A minute later she added:
"I feel exactly as if I were on a hill top and were coming to a view ofthe sea."
Almost as she spoke they cantered in among the tents of the attendants,and reined in their horses at the edge of a slope that was almost aprecipice. Then they sat still in their
saddles, gazing.
They had been living for weeks in the midst of vastness, and had becomeaccustomed to see stretched out around them immense tracts of landmelting away into far blue distances, but this view from Mogar made themcatch their breath and stiffed their pulses.
It was gigantic. There was even something unnatural in its appearanceof immensity, as if it were, perhaps, deceptive, and existed in theirvision of it only. So, surely, might look a plain to one who had takenhaschish, which enlarges, makes monstrous and threateningly terrific.Domini had a feeling that no human eyes could really see such infinitetracts of land and water as those she seemed to be seeing at thismoment. For there was water here, in the midst of the desert. Infiniteexpanses of sea met infinite plains of snow. Or so it seemed to bothof them. And the sea was grey and calm as a winter sea, breathing itsplaint along a winter land. From it, here and there, rose islets whoselow cliffs were a deep red like the red of sandstone, a sad colour thatsuggests tragedy, islets that looked desolate, and as if no life hadever been upon them, or could be. Back from the snowy plains stretchedsand dunes of the palest primrose colour, sand dunes innumerable,myriads and myriads of them, rising and falling, rising and falling,till they were lost in the grey distance of this silent world. In theforeground, at their horses' feet, wound from the hill summit a broadtrack faintly marked in the deep sand, and flanked by huge dunes shaped,by the action of the winds, into grotesque semblances of monsters,leviathans, beasts with prodigious humps, sphinxes, whales. This trackwas presently lost in the blanched plains. Far away, immeasurably far,sea and snow blended and faded into the cloudy grey. Above the neardunes two desert eagles were slowly wheeling in a weary flight,occasionally sinking towards the sand, then rising again towards theclouds. And the track was strewn with the bleached bones of camels thathad perished, or that had been slaughtered, on some long desert march.
To the left of them the solitary tower commanded this terrific visionof desolation, seemed to watch it steadily, yet furtively, with its tinyloophole eyes.
"We have come into winter," Domini murmured.
She looked at the white of the camels' bones, of the plains, at the greywhite of the sky, at the yellow pallor of the dunes.
"How wonderful! How terrible!" she said.
She drew her horse to one side, a little nearer to Androvsky's.
"Does the Russian in you greet this land?" she asked him.
He did not reply. He seemed to be held in thrall by the sad immensitybefore them.
"I realise here what it must be to die in the desert, to be killed byit--by hunger, by thirst in it," she said presently, speaking, as if toherself, and looking out over the mirage sea, the mirage snow. "This isthe first time I have really felt the terror of the desert."
Her horse drooped its head till its nose nearly touched the earth, andshook itself in a long shiver. She shivered too, as if constrained toecho an animal's distress.
"Things have died here," Androvsky said, speaking at last in a low voiceand pointing with his long-lashed whip towards the camels' skeletons."Come, Domini, the horses are tired."
He cast another glance at the tower, and they dismounted by their tent,which was pitched at the very edge of the steep slope that sank down tothe beast-like shapes of the near dunes.
An hour later Domini said to Androvsky:
"You won't go after gazelle this evening surely?"
They had been having coffee in the tent and had just finished. Androvskygot up from his chair and went to the tent door. The grey of the sky waspierced by a gleaming shaft from the sun.
"Do you mind if I go?" he said, turning towards her after a glance tothe desert.
"No, but aren't you tired?"
He shook his head.
"I couldn't ride, and now I can ride. I couldn't shoot, and I'm justbeginning--"
"Go," she said quickly. "Besides, we want gazelle for dinner, Batouchsays, though I don't suppose we should starve without it." She came tothe tent door and stood beside him, and he put his arm around her.
"If I were alone here, Boris," she said, leaning against his shoulder,"I believe I should feel horribly sad to-day."
"Shall I stay?"
He pressed her against him.
"No. I shall know you are coming back. Oh, how extraordinary it is tothink we lived so many years without knowing of each other's existence,that we lived alone. Were you ever happy?"
He hesitated before he replied.
"I sometimes thought I was."
"But do you think now you ever really were?"
"I don't know--perhaps in a lonely sort of way."
"You can never be happy in that way now?"
He said nothing, but, after a moment, he kissed her long and hard, andas if he wanted to draw her being into his through the door of his lips.
"Good-bye," he said, releasing her. "I shall be back directly aftersundown."
"Yes. Don't wait for the dark down there. If you were lost in thedunes!"
She pointed to the distant sand hills rising and falling monotonously tothe horizon.
"If you are not back in good time," she said, "I shall stand by thetower and wave a brand from the fire."
"Why by the tower?"
"The ground is highest by the tower."
She watched him ride away on a mule, with two Arabs carrying guns. Theywent towards the plains of saltpetre that looked like snow beside thesea that was only a mirage. Then she turned back into the tent, tookup a volume of Fromentin's, and sat down in a folding-chair at the tentdoor. She read a little, but it was difficult to read with the miragebeneath her. Perpetually her eyes were attracted from the book to itsmystery and plaintive sadness, that was like the sadness of somethingunearthly, of a spirit that did not move but that suffered. She did notput away the book, but presently she laid it down on her knees, open,and sat gazing. Androvsky had disappeared with the Arabs into some foldof the sands. The sun-ray had vanished with him. Without Androvsky andthe sun--she still connected them together, and knew she would for ever.
The melancholy of this desert scene was increased for her till it becameoppressive and lay upon her like a heavy weight. She was not a womaninclined to any morbid imaginings. Indeed, all that was morbid rousedin her an instinctive disgust. But the sudden greyness of the weather,coming after weeks of ardent sunshine, and combined with the fantasticdesolation of the landscape, which was half real and half unreal, turnedher for the moment towards a dreariness of spirit that was rare in her.
She realised suddenly, as she looked and did not see Androvsky even as ablack and moving speck upon the plain; what the desert would seem to herwithout him, even in sunshine, the awfulness of the desolation of it,the horror of its distances. And realising this she also realised theuncertainty of the human life in connection with any other human life.To be dependent on another is to double the sum of the terrors ofuncertainty. She had done that.
If the immeasurable sands took Androvsky and never gave him back to her!What would she do?
She gazed at the mirage sea with its dim red islands, and at the sadwhite plains along its edge.
Winter--she would be plunged in eternal winter. And each human lifehangs on a thread. All deep love, all consuming passion, holds a greatfear within the circle of a great glory. To-day the fear within thecircle of her glory seemed to grow. But she suddenly realised that sheought to dominate it, to confine it--as it were--to its original andpermanent proportions.
She got up, came out upon the edge of the hill, and walked along itslowly towards the tower.
Outside, freed from the shadow of the tent, she felt less oppressed,though still melancholy, and even slightly apprehensive, as if sometrouble were coming to her and were near at hand. Mentally she had madethe tower the limit of her walk, and therefore when she reached it shestood still.
It was a squat, square tower, strongly constructed, with loopholes inthe four sides, and now that she was by it she saw built out at the backof it a low house with small shuttered windows and a narrow cour
tyardfor mules. No doubt Androvsky was right and French soldiers had oncebeen here to work the optic telegraph. She thought of the recruits andof Marseilles, of Notre Dame de la Garde, the Mother of God, lookingtowards Africa. Such recruits came to live in such strange houses asthis tower lost in the desert and now abandoned. She glanced at theshuttered windows and turned back towards the tent; but something in thesituation of the tower--perhaps the fact that it was set on the highestpoint of the ground--attracted her, and she presently made Batouch bringher out some rugs and ensconced herself under its shadow, facing themirage sea.
How long she sat there she did not know. Mirage hypnotises theimaginative and suggests to them dreams strange and ethereal, sadsometimes, as itself. How long she might have sat there dreaming,but for an interruption, she knew still less. It was towards evening,however, but before evening had fallen, that a weary and travel-stainedparty of three French soldiers, Zouaves, and an officer rode slowly upthe sandy track from the dunes. They were mounted on mules, and carriedtheir small baggage with them on two led mules. When they reached thetop of the hill they turned to the right and came towards the tower. Theofficer was a little in advance of his men. He was a smart-looking, fairman of perhaps thirty-two, with blonde moustaches, blue eyes with blondelashes, and hair very much the colour of the sand dunes. His face wasbright red, burnt, as a fair delicate skin burns, by the sun. His eyes,although protected by large sun spectacles, were inflamed. The skin waspeeling from his nose. His hair was full of sand, and he rode leaningforward over his animal's neck, holding the reins loosely in his hands,that seemed nerveless from fatigue. Yet he looked smart and well-breddespite his evident exhaustion, as if on parade he would be a dashingofficer. It was evident that both he and his men were riding in fromsome tremendous journey. The latter looked dog-tired, scarcely human intheir collapse. They kept on their mules with difficulty, shaking thisway and that like sacks, with their unshaven chins wagging loosely upand down. But as they saw the tower they began to sing in chorus halfunder their breath, and leaning their broad hands on the necks of thebeasts for support they looked with a sort of haggard eagerness in itsdirection.
Domini was roused from her contemplation of the mirage and the daydreamsit suggested by the approach of this small cavalcade. The officer wasalmost upon her ere she heard the clatter of his mule among the stones.She looked up, startled, and he looked down, even more surprised,apparently, to see a lady ensconced at the foot of the tower. Hisastonishment and exhaustion did not, however, get the better of hisinstinctive good breeding, and sitting straight up in the saddle he tookoff his sun helmet and asked Domini's pardon for disturbing her.
"But this is my home for the night, Madame," he added, at the same timedrawing a key from the pocket of his loose trousers. "And I'm thankfulto reach it. _Ma foi_! there have been several moments in the last dayswhen I never thought to see Mogar."
Slowly he swung himself off his mule and stood up, catching on to thesaddle with one hand.
"F-f-f-f!" he said, pursing his lips. "I can hardly stand. Excuse me,Madame."
Domini had got up.
"You are tired out," she said, looking at him and his men, who had nowcome up, with interest.
"Pretty well indeed. We have been three days lost in the great dunesin a sand-storm, and hit the track here just as we were preparing fora--well, a great event."
"A great event?" said Domini.
"The last in a man's life, Madame."
He spoke simply, even with a light touch of humour that was almostcynical, but she felt beneath his words and manner a solemnity and athankfulness that attracted and moved her.
"Those terrible dunes!" she said.
And, turning, she looked out over them.
There was no sunset, but the deepening of the grey into a dimness thatseemed to have blackness behind it, the more ghastly hue of the whiteplains of saltpetre, and the fading of the mirage sea, whose islands nowlooked no longer red, but dull brown specks in a pale mist, hinted atthe rapid falling of night.
"My husband is out in them," she added.
"Your husband, Madame!"
He looked at her rather narrowly, shifted from one leg to the other asif trying his strength, then added:
"Not far, though, I suppose. For I see you have a camp here."
"He has only gone after gazelle."
As she said the last word she saw one of the soldiers, a mere boy, lickhis lips and give a sort of tragic wink at his companions. A suddenthought struck her.
"Don't think me impertinent, Monsieur, but--what about provisions inyour tower?"
"Oh, as to that, Madame, we shall do well enough. Here, open the door,Marelle!"
And he gave the key to a soldier, who wearily dismounted and thrust itinto the door of the tower.
"But after three days in the dunes! Your provisions must be exhaustedunless you've been able to replenish them."
"You are too good, Madame. We shall manage a cous-cous."
"And wine? Have you any wine?"
She glanced again at the exhausted soldiers covered with sand and sawthat their eyes were fixed upon her and were shining eagerly. All the"good fellow" in her nature rose up.
"You must let me send you some," she said. "We have plenty."
She thought of some bottles of champagne they had brought with them andnever opened.
"In the desert we are all comrades," she added, as if speaking to thesoldiers.
They looked at her with an open adoration which lit up their tiredfaces.
"Madame," said the officer, "you are much too good; but I accept youroffer as frankly as you have made it. A little wine will be a godsend tous to-night. Thank you, Madame."
The soldiers looked as if they were going to cheer.
"I'll go to the camp--"
"Cannot one of the men go for you, Madame? You were sitting here. Pray,do not let us disturb you."
"But night is falling and I shall have to go back in a moment."
While they had been speaking the darkness had rapidly increased. Shelooked towards the distant dunes and no longer saw them. At once hermind went to Androvsky. Why had he not returned? She thought of thesignal. From the camp, behind their sleeping-tent, rose the flames of anewly-made fire.
"If one of your men can go and tell Batouch--Batouch--to come to me hereI shall be grateful," she answered. "And I want him to bring me a bigbrand from the fire over there."
She saw wonder dawning in the eyes fixed upon her, and smiled.
"I want to signal to my husband," she said, "and this is the highestpoint. He will see it best if I stand here."
"Go, Marelle, ask for Batouch, and be sure you bring the brand from thefire."
The man saluted and rode off with alacrity. The thought of wine hadinfused a gaiety into him and his companions.
"Now, Monsieur, don't stand on ceremony," Domini said to the officer."Go in and make your toilet. You are longing to, I know."
"I am longing to look a little more decent--now, Madame," he saidgallantly, and gazing at her with a sparkle of admiration in hisinflamed eyes. "You will let me return in a moment to escort you to thecamp."
"Thank you."
"Will you permit me--my name is De Trevignac."
"And mine is Madame Androvsky."
"Russian!" the officer said. "The alliance in the desert! Vive laRussie!"
She laughed.
"That is for my husband, for I am English."
"Vive l'Angleterre!" he said.
The two soldier echoed his words impulsively, lifting up in thegathering darkness hoarse voices.
"Vive l'Angleterre!"
"Thank you, thank you," she said. "Now, Monsieur, please don't let mekeep you."
"I shall be back directly," the officer replied.
And he turned and went into the tower, while the soldiers rode round tothe court, tugging at the cords of the led mules.
Domini waited for the return of Marelle. Her mood had changed. A glow ofcordial humanity chased away her melanch
oly. The hostess that lurks inevery woman--that housewife-hostess sense which goes hand-in-hand withthe mother sense--was alive in her. She was keenly anxious to play thegood fairy simply, unostentatiously, to these exhausted men who had cometo Mogar out of the jaws of Death, to see their weary faces shine underthe influence of repose and good cheer. But the tower looked desolate.The camp was gayer, cosier. Suddenly she resolved to invite them all todine in the camp that night.
Marelle returned with Batouch. She saw them from a distance comingthrough the darkness with blazing torches in their hands. When they cameto her she said:
"Batouch, I want you to order dinner in camp for the soldiers."
A broad and radiant smile irradiated the blunt Breton features ofMarelle.
"And Monsieur the officer will dine with me and Monsieur. Give us allyou can. Perhaps there will be some gazelle."
She saw him opening his lips to say that the dinner would be poor andstopped him.
"You are to open some of the champagne--the Pommery. We will drink toall safe returns. Now, give me the brand and go and tell the cook."
As he took his torch and disappeared into the darkness De Trevignaccame out from the tower. He still looked exhausted and walked with somedifficulty, but he had washed the sand from his face with water from theartesian well behind the tower, changed his uniform, brushed the sandfrom his yellow hair, and put on a smart gold-laced cap instead of hissun-helmet. The spectacles were gone from his eyes, and between his lipswas a large Havana--his last, kept by him among the dunes as a possiblesolace in the dreadful hour of death.
"Monsieur de Trevignac, I want you to dine with us in campto-night--only to dine. We won't keep you from your bed one moment afterthe coffee and the cognac. You must seal the triple alliance--France,Russia, England--in some champagne."
She had spoken gaily, cordially. She added more gravely:
"One doesn't escape from death among the dunes every day. Will youcome?"
She held out her hand frankly, as a man might to another man. He pressedit as a man presses a woman's hand when he is feeling very soft andtender.
"Madame, what can I say, but that you are too good to us poor fellowsand that you will find it very difficult to get rid of us, for we shallbe so happy in your camp that we shall forget all about our tower."
"That's settled then."
With the brand in her hand she walked to the edge of the hill. DeTrevignac followed her. He had taken the other brand from Marelle. Theystood side by side, overlooking the immense desolation that was nowalmost hidden in the night.
"You are going to signal to your husband, Madame?"
"Yes."
"Let me do it for you. See, I have the other brand!"
"Thank you--but I will do it."
In the light of the flame that leaped up as if striving to touch herface he saw a light in her eyes that he understood, and he drooped historch towards the earth while she lifted hers on high and waved it inthe blackness.
He watched her. The tall, strong, but exquisitely supple figure, theuplifted arm with the torch sending forth a long tongue of golden flame,the ardent and unconscious pose, that set before him a warm passionateheart calling to another heart without shame, made him think of heras some Goddess of the Sahara. He had let his torch droop towards theearth, but, as she waved hers, he had an irresistible impulse to joinher in the action she made heroic and superb. And presently he liftedhis torch, too, and waved it beside hers in the night.
She smiled at him in the flames.
"He must see them surely," she said.
From below, in the distance of the desert, there rose a loud cry in astrong man's voice.
"Aha!" she exclaimed.
She called out in return in a warm, powerful voice. The man's voiceanswered, nearer. She dropped her brand to the earth.
"Monsieur, you will come then--in half an hour?"
"Madame, with the most heartfelt pleasure. But let me accompany--"
"No, I am quite safe. And bring your men with you. We'll make the bestfeast we can for them. And there's enough champagne for all."
Then she went away quickly, eagerly, into the darkness.
"To be her husband!" murmured De Trevignac. "Lucky--lucky fellow!" Andhe dropped his brand beside hers on the ground, and stood watching thetwo flames mingle.
"Lucky--lucky fellow!" he said again aloud. "I wonder what he's like."