The Garden of Allah
CHAPTER XXII
The tumult of Amara waked up in Domini the town-sense that had beenslumbering. All that seemed to confuse, to daze, to repel Androvsky,even to inspire him with fear, the noise of the teeming crowds, theirperpetual movement, their contact, startled her into a vividness of lifeand apprehension of its various meanings, that sent a thrill throughher. And the thrill was musical with happiness. To the sad a greatvision of human life brings sadness because they read into the heartsof others their own misery. But to the happy such a vision bringsexultation, for everywhere they find dancing reflections of their ownjoy. Domini had lived much in crowds, but always she had been activelyunhappy, or at least coldly dreary in them. Now, for the first time, shewas surrounded by masses of fellow-beings in her splendid contentment.And the effect of this return, as it were, to something like theformer material conditions of her life, with the mental and affectionalconditions of it transformed by joy, was striking even to herself.Suddenly she realised to the full her own humanity, and the livingwarmth of sympathy that is fanned into flame in a human heart by thepresence of human life with its hopes, desires, fears, passions, joys,that leap to the eye. Instead of hating this fierce change from solitudewith the man she loved to a crowd with the man she loved she rejoiced init. Androvsky was the cause of both her joys, joy in the waste and joyin Amara, but while he shared the one he did not share the other.
This did not surprise her because of the conditions in which he hadlived. He was country-bred and had always dwelt far from towns. She wasreturning to an old experience--old, for the London crowd and thecrowd of Amara were both crowds of men, however different--with a mindtransformed by happiness. To him the experience was new. Somethingwithin her told her that it was necessary, that it had been ordainedbecause he needed it. The recalled town-sense, with its sharpnessof observation, persisted. As she rode in to Amara she had seemed toherself to be reading Androvsky with an almost merciless penetrationwhich yet she could not check. Now she did not wish to check it, for thepenetration that is founded on perfect love can only yield good fruit.It seemed to her that she was allowed to see clearly for Androvsky whathe could not see himself, almost as the mother sees for the child. Thiscontact with the crowds of Amara was, she thought, one of the gifts thedesert made to him. He did not like it. He wished to reject it. But hewas mistaken. For the moment his vision was clouded, as our vision forourselves so often is. She realised this, and, for the first time sincethe marriage service at Beni-Mora, perhaps seemed to be selfish. Sheopposed his wish. Hitherto there had never been any sort of contestbetween them. Their desires, like their hearts, had been in accord. Nowthere was not a contest, for Androvsky yielded to Domini's preference,when she expressed it, with a quickness that set his passion before herin a new and beautiful light. But she knew that, for the moment, theywere not in accord. He hated and dreaded what she encountered with avivid sensation of sympathy and joy.
She felt that there was something morbid in his horror of the crowd, andthe same strength of her nature said to her, "Uproot it!"
Their camp was pitched on the sand-hills, to the north of the city nearthe French and Arab cemeteries. They reached it only when darkness wasfalling, going out of the city on foot by the great wall of dressedstone which enclosed the Kasba of the native soldiers, and ascendingand descending various slopes of deep sand, over which the airs of nightblew with a peculiar thin freshness that renewed Domini's sense of beingat the end of the world. Everything here whispered the same message,said, "We are the denizens of far-away."
In their walk to the camp they were accompanied by a little procession.Shabah, the Caid of Amara, a shortish man whose immense dignity madehim almost gigantic, insisted upon attending them to the tents, with hisyoung brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor,an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having beenfreshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid ofthe Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was,immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person likea shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, andbehind streamed the curious, the envious, the greedy and the desultoryArabs, who follow in the trail of every stranger, hopeful of the crumbsthat are said to fall from the rich man's table. Shabah spoke Frenchand led the conversation, which was devoted chiefly to his conditionof health. Some years before an attempt had been made upon his life bypoison, and since that time, as he himself expressed it, his stomachhad been "perturbed as a guard dog in the night when robbers areapproaching." All efforts to console or to inspire him with hope offuture cure were met with a stern hopelessness, a brusque certainty ofperpetual suffering. The idea that his stomach could again know peaceevidently shocked and distressed him, and as they all waded togetherthrough the sand, pioneered by the glorified Batouch, Domini wasobliged to yield to his emphatic despair, and to join with him in hisappreciation of the perpetual indigestion which set him apart from therest of the world like some God within a shrine. The skittish boy, hisbrother, who wore kid gloves, cast at her sly glances of admirationwhich asked for a return. The black tutor grinned. And the Caid of theNomads punctuated their progress with loud grunts of heavy satisfaction,occasionally making use of Batouch as interpreter to express his hopesthat they would visit his palace in the town, and devour a cous-cous onhis carpet.
When they came to the tents it was necessary to entertain thesepersonages with coffee, and they finally departed promising a speedyreturn, and full of invitations, which were cordially accepted byBatouch on his employer's behalf before either Domini or Androvsky hadtime to say a word.
As the _cortege_ disappeared over the sands towards the city Dominiburst into a little laugh, and drew Androvsky out to the tent door tosee them go.
"Society in the sands!" she exclaimed gaily. "Boris, this is a newexperience. Look at our guests making their way to their palaces!"
Slowly the potentates progressed across the white dunes towards thecity. Shabah wore a long red cloak. His brother was in pink and gold,with white billowing trousers. The Caid of the Nomads was in green.They all moved with a large and conscious majesty, surrounded by theirobsequious attendants. Above them the purple sky showed a bright eveningstar. Near it was visible the delicate silhouette of the young moon.Scattered over the waste rose many koubbahs, grey in the white, withcupolas of gypse. Hundreds of dogs were barking in the distance. To theleft, on the vast, rolling slopes of sand, glared the innumerable fireskindled before the tents of the Ouled Nails. Before the sleeping tentrose the minarets and the gilded cupolas of the city which it dominatedfrom its mountain of sand. Behind it was the blanched immensity of theplain, of the lonely desert from which Domini and Androvsky had cometo face this barbaric stir of life. And the city was full of music, oftomtoms throbbing, of bugles blowing in the Kasba, of pipes shriekingfrom hidden dwellings, and of the faint but multitudinous voices of men,carried to them on their desolate and treeless height by the frail windof night that seemed a white wind, twin-brother of the sands.
"Let us go a step or two towards the city, Boris," Domini said, as theirguests sank magnificently down into a fold of the dunes.
"Towards the city!" he answered. "Why not--?" He glanced behind him tothe vacant, noiseless sands.
She set her impulse against his for the first time.
"No, this is our town life, our Sahara season. Let us give ourselves toit. The loneliness will be its antidote some day."
"Very well, Domini," he answered.
They went a little way towards the city, and stood still in the sand atthe edge of their height.
"Listen, Boris! Isn't it strange in the night all this barbaric music?It excites me."
"You are glad to be here."
She heard the note of disappointment in his voice, but did not respondto it.
"And look at all those fires, hundreds of them in the sand!"
"Yes," he said, "it is wonderful, but the solitudes are best. This isnot the heart of the desert, this is what the
Arabs call it, 'The bellyof the Desert.' In the heart of the desert there is silence."
She thought of the falling of the wind when the Sahara took them, andknew that her love of the silence was intense. Nevertheless, to-nightthe other part of her was in the ascendant. She wanted him to share it.He did not. Could she provoke him to share it?
"Yet, as we rode in, I had a feeling that the heart of the desert washere," she said. "You know I said so."
"Do you say so still?"
"The heart, Boris, is the centre of life, isn't it?"
He was silent. She felt his inner feeling fighting hers.
"To-night," she said, putting her arm through his, and looking towardsthe city. "I feel a tremendous sympathy with human life such as I neverfelt before. Boris, it comes to me from you. Yes, it does. It is bornof my love for you, and seems to link me, and you with me, to all thesestrangers, to all men and women, to everything that lives. It is as ifI was not quite human before, and my love for you had made me completelyhuman, had done something to me that even--even my love for God had notbeen able to do."
She lowered her voice at the last words. After a moment she added:
"Perhaps in isolation, even with you, I could not come to completeness.Perhaps you could not in isolation even with me. Boris, I think it'sgood for us to be in the midst of life for a time."
"You wish to remain here, Domini?"
"Yes, for a time."
The fatalistic feeling that had sometimes come upon her in this landentered into her at this moment. She felt, "It is written that we are toremain here."
"Let us remain here, Domini," he said quietly.
The note of disappointment had gone out of his voice, deliberatelybanished from it by his love for her, but she seemed to hear it,nevertheless, echoing far down in his soul. At that moment she loved himlike a woman he had made a lover, but also like a woman he had made amother by becoming a child.
"Thank you, Boris," she answered very quietly. "You are good to me."
"You are good to me," he said, remembering the last words of FatherRoubier. "How can I be anything else?"
Directly he had spoken the words his body trembled violently.
"Boris, what is it?" she exclaimed, startled.
He took his arm away from hers.
"These--these noises of the city in the night coming across thesand-hills are extraordinary. I have become so used to silence thatperhaps they get upon my nerves. I shall grow accustomed to thempresently."
He turned towards the tents, and she went with him. It seemed to herthat he had evaded her question, that he had not wished to answer it,and the sense sharply awakened in her by a return to life near a citymade her probe for the reason of this. She did not find it, but in hermental search she found herself presently at Mogar. It seemed to herthat the same sort of uneasiness which had beset her husband at Mogarbeset him now more fiercely at Amara, that, as he had just said, hisnerves were being tortured by something. But it could not be the noisesfrom the city.
After dinner Batouch came to the tent to suggest that they should godown with him into the city. Domini, feeling certain that Androvskywould not wish to go, at once refused, alleging that she was tired.Batouch then asked Androvsky to go with him, and, to Domini'sastonishment, he said that if she did not mind his leaving her for ashort time he would like a stroll.
"Perhaps," he said to her, as Batouch and he were starting, "perhaps itwill make me more completely human; perhaps there is something still tobe done that even you, Domini, have not accomplished."
She knew he was alluding to her words before dinner. He stood looking ather with a slight smile that did not suggest happiness, then added:
"That link you spoke of between us and these strangers"--he made agesture towards the city--"I ought perhaps to feel it more strongly thanI do. I--I will try to feel it."
Then he turned away, and went with Batouch across the sand-hills,walking heavily.
As Domini watched him going she felt chilled, because there wassomething in his manner, in his smile, that seemed for the moment to setthem apart from each other, something she did not understand.
Soon Androvsky disappeared in a fold of the sands as he had disappearedin a fold of the sands at Mogar, not long before De Trevignac came.She thought of Mogar once more, steadily, reviewing mentally--with therenewed sharpness of intellect that had returned to her, brought bycontact with the city--all that had passed there, as she never reviewedit before.
It had been a strange episode.
She began to walk slowly up and down on the sand before the tent. Ouardicame to walk with her, but she sent him away. Before doing so, however,something moved her to ask him:
"That African liqueur, Ouardi--you remember that you brought to the tentat Mogar--have we any more of it?"
"The monk's liqueur, Madame?"
"What do you mean--monk's liqueur?"
"It was invented by a monk, Madame, and is sold by the monks ofEl-Largani."
"Oh! Have we any more of it?"
"There is another bottle, Madame, but I should not dare to bring itif----"
He paused.
"If what, Ouardi?"
"If Monsieur were there."
Domini was on the point of asking him why, but she checked herself andtold him to leave her. Then she walked up and down once more onthe sand. She was thinking now of the broken glass on the ground atAndrovsky's feet when she found him alone in the tent after De Trevignachad gone. Ouardi's words made her wonder whether this liqueur, broughtto celebrate De Trevignac's presence in the camp, had turned theconversation upon the subject of the religious orders; whether Androvskyhad perhaps said something against them which had offended De Trevignac,a staunch Catholic; whether there had been a quarrel between the twomen on the subject of religion. It was possible. She remembered DeTrevignac's strange, almost mystical, gesture in the dawn, following hislook of horror towards the tent where her husband lay sleeping.
To-night her mind--her whole nature--felt terribly alive.
She tried to think no more of Mogar, but her thoughts centred round it,linked it with this great city, whose lights shone in the distance belowher, whose music came to her from afar over the silence of the sands.
Mogar and Amara; what had they to do with one another? Leagues of desertdivided them. One was a desolation, the other was crowded with men. Whatlinked them together in her mind?
Androvsky's fear of both--that was the link. She kept on thinking of theglance he had cast at the watch-tower, to which Trevignac had been eventhen approaching, although they knew it not. De Trevignac! She walkedfaster on the sand, to and fro before the tent. Why had he looked at thetent in which Androvsky slept with horror? Was it because Androvsky haddenounced the religion that he reverenced and loved? Could it have beenthat? But then--did Androvsky actively hate religion? Perhaps he hatedit, and concealed his hatred from her because he knew it would causeher pain. Yet she had sometimes felt as if he were seeking, perhapswith fear, perhaps with ignorance, perhaps with uncertainty, but stillseeking to draw near to God. That was why she had been able to hopefor him, why she had not been more troubled by his loss of the faith inwhich he had been brought up, and to which she belonged heart and soul.Could she have been wrong in her feeling--deceived? There were men inthe world, she knew, who denied the existence of a God, and bitterlyridiculed all faith. She remembered the blasphemies of her father. Hadshe married a man who, like him, was lost, who, as he had, furiouslydenied God?
A cold thrill of fear came into her heart. Suddenly she felt as if,perhaps, even in her love, Androvsky had been a stranger to her.
She stood upon the sand. It chanced that she looked towards the camp ofthe Ouled Nails, whose fires blazed upon the dunes. While she looked shewas presently aware of a light that detached itself from the blaze ofthe fires, and moved from them, coming towards the place where she wasstanding, slowly. The young moon only gave a faint ray to the night.This light travelled onward through the dimness like an earth-boundstar. Sh
e watched it with intentness, as people watch any moving thingwhen their minds are eagerly at work, staring, yet scarcely consciousthat they see.
The little light moved steadily on over the sands, now descending theside of a dune, now mounting to a crest, and always coming towards theplace where Domini was standing, And presently this determined movementtowards her caught hold of her mind, drew it away from other thoughts,fixed it on the light. She became interested in it, intent upon it.
Who was bearing it? No doubt some desert man, some Arab. She imaginedhim tall, brown, lithe, half-naked, holding the lamp in his muscularfingers, treading on bare feet silently, over the deep sand. Why had heleft the camp? What was his purpose?
The light drew near. It was now moving over the flats and seemed, shethought, to travel more quickly. And always it came straight towardswhere she was standing. A conviction dawned in her that it wastravelling with an intention of reaching her, that it was carried bysomeone who was thinking of her. But how could that be? She thought ofthe light as a thing with a mind and a purpose, borne by someone whobacked up its purpose, helping it to do what it wanted. And it wanted tocome to her.
In Mogar! Androvsky had dreaded something in Mogar. De Trevignac hadcome. He dreaded something in Amara. This light came. For an instant shefancied that the light was a lamp carried by De Trevignac. Then she sawthat it gleamed upon a long black robe, the soutane of a priest.
As she and Androvsky rode into Amara she had asked herself whetherhis second dread would be followed, as his first dread had been, by anunusual incident. When she saw the soutane of a priest, black in thelamplight, moving towards her over the whiteness of the sand, she saidto herself that it was to be so followed. This priest stood in the placeof De Trevignac.
Why did he come to her?