CHAPTER XI
Domini came into the ante-room alone. The three men had paused for amoment behind her, and the sound of a match struck reached her earsas she went listlessly forward to the door which was open to the broadgarden path, and stood looking out into the sunshine. Butterflies wereflitting here and there through the riot of gold, and she heard faintbird-notes from the shadows of the trees, echoed by the more distanttwitter of Larbi's flute. On the left, between the palms, she caughtglimpses of the desert and of the hard and brilliant mountains, and,as she stood there, she remembered her sensations on first entering thegarden and how soon she had learned to love it. It had always seemed toher a sunny paradise of peace until this moment. But now she felt as ifshe were compassed about by clouds.
The vagrant movement of the butterflies irritated her eyes, the distantsound of the flute distressed her ears, and all the peace had gone. Onceagain this man destroyed the spell Nature had cast upon her. Becauseshe knew that he had lied, her joy in the garden, her deeper joy in thedesert that embraced it, were stricken. Yet why should he not lie? Whichof us does not lie about his feelings? Has reserve no right to armour?
She heard her companions entering the room and turned round. At thatmoment her heart was swept by an emotion almost of hatred to Androvsky.Because of it she smiled. A forced gaiety dawned in her. She sat down onone of the low divans, and, as she asked Count Anteoni for a cigaretteand lit it, she thought, "How shall I punish him?" That lie, not eventold to her and about so slight a matter, seemed to her an attack whichshe resented and must return. Not for a moment did she ask herself ifshe were reasonable. A voice within her said, "I will not be lied to,I will not even bear a lie told to another in my presence by this man."And the voice was imperious.
Count Anteoni remained beside her, smoking a cigar. Father Roubier tooka seat by the little table in front of her. But Androvsky went over tothe door she had just left, and stood, as she had, looking out into thesunshine. Bous-Bous followed him, and snuffed affectionately round hisfeet, trying to gain his attention.
"My little dog seems very fond of your friend," the priest said toDomini.
"My friend!"
"Monsieur Androvsky."
She lowered her voice.
"He is only a travelling acquaintance. I know nothing of him."
The priest looked gently surprised and Count Anteoni blew forth afragrant cloud of smoke.
"He seems a remarkable man," the priest said mildly.
"Do you think so?"
She began to speak to Count Anteoni about some absurdity of Batouch,forcing her mind into a light and frivolous mood, and he echoed her tonewith a clever obedience for which secretly she blessed him. In a momentthey were laughing together with apparent merriment, and Father Roubiersmiled innocently at their light-heartedness, believing in it sincerely.But Androvsky suddenly turned around with a dark and morose countenance.
"Come in out of the sunshine," said the Count. "It is too strong. Trythis chair. Coffee will be--ah, here it is!"
Two servants appeared, carrying it.
"Thank you, Monsieur," Androvsky said with reluctant courtesy.
He came towards them with determination and sat down, drawing forwardhis chair till he was facing Domini. Directly he was quiet Bous-Boussprang upon his knee and lay down hastily, blinking his eyes, which werealmost concealed by hair, and heaving a sigh which made the priest lookkindly at him, even while he said deprecatingly:
"Bous-Bous! Bous-Bous! Little rascal, little pig--down, down!"
"Oh, leave him, Monsieur!" muttered Androvsky. "It's all the same tome."
"He really has no shame where his heart is concerned."
"Arab!" said the Count. "He has learnt it in Beni-Mora."
"Perhaps he has taken lessons from Larbi," said Domini. "Hark! He isplaying to-day. For whom?"
"I never ask now," said the Count. "The name changes so often."
"Constancy is not an Arab fault?" Domini asked.
"You say 'fault,' Madame," interposed the priest.
"Yes, Father," she returned with a light touch of conscious cynicism."Surely in this world that which is apt to bring inevitable misery withit must be accounted a fault."
"But can constancy do that?"
"Don't you think so, into a world of ceaseless change?"
"Then how shall we reckon truth in a world of lies?" asked the Count."Is that a fault, too?"
"Ask Monsieur Androvsky," said Domini, quickly.
"I obey," said the Count, looking over at his guest.
"Ah, but I am sure I know," Domini added. "I am sure you think truth athing we should all avoid in such a world as this. Don't you, Monsieur?"
"If you are sure, Madame, why ask me?" Androvsky replied.
There was in his voice a sound that was startling. Suddenly the priestreached out his hand and lifted Bous-Bous on to his knee, and CountAnteoni very lightly and indifferently interposed.
"Truth-telling among Arabs becomes a dire necessity to Europeans. Onecannot out-lie them, and it doesn't pay to run second to Orientals. Soone learns, with tears, to be sincere. Father Roubier is shocked by myapologia for my own blatant truthfulness."
The priest laughed.
"I live so little in what is called 'the world' that I'm afraid I'm veryready to take drollery for a serious expression of opinion."
He stroked Bous-Bous's white back, and added, with a simple genialitythat seemed to spring rather from a desire to be kind than from anytemperamental source:
"But I hope I shall always be able to enjoy innocent fun."
As he spoke his eyes rested on Androvsky's face, and suddenly he lookedgrave and put Bous-Bous gently down on the floor.
"I'm afraid I must be going," he said.
"Already?" said his host.
"I dare not allow myself too much idleness. If once I began to be idlein this climate I should become like an Arab and do nothing all day butsit in the sun."
"As I do. Father, we meet very seldom, but whenever we do I feel myselfa cumberer of the earth."
Domini had never before heard him speak with such humbleness. The priestflushed like a boy.
"We each serve in our own way," he said quickly. "The Arab who sits allday in the sun may be heard as a song of praise where He is."
And then he took his leave. This time he did not extend his hand toAndrovsky, but only bowed to him, lifting his white helmet. As he wentaway in the sun with Bous-Bous the three he had left followed himwith their eyes. For Androvsky had turned his chair sideways, as ifinvoluntarily.
"I shall learn to love Father Roubier," Domini said.
Androvsky moved his seat round again till his back was to the garden,and placed his broad hands palm downward on his knees.
"Yes?" said the Count.
"He is so transparently good, and he bears his great disappointment sobeautifully."
"What great disappointment?"
"He longed to become a monk."
Androvsky got up from his seat and walked back to the garden doorway.His restless demeanour and lowering expression destroyed all sense ofcalm and leisure. Count Anteoni looked after him, and then at Domini,with a sort of playful surprise. He was going to speak, but before thewords came Smain appeared, carrying reverently a large envelope coveredwith Arab writing.
"Will you excuse me for a moment?" the Count said.
"Of course."
He took the letter, and at once a vivid expression of excitement shonein his eyes. When he had read it there was a glow upon his face as ifthe flames of a fire played over it.
"Miss Enfilden," he said, "will you think me very discourteous if Ileave you for a moment? The messenger who brought this has come from farand starts to-day on his return journey. He has come out of the south,three hundred kilometres away, from Beni-Hassan, a sacred village--asacred village."
He repeated the last words, lowering his voice.
"Of course go and see him."
"And you?"
He glanced towards
Androvsky, who was standing with his back to them.
"Won't you show Monsieur Androvsky the garden?"
Hearing his name Androvsky turned, and the Count at once made hisexcuses to him and followed Smain towards the garden gate, carrying theletter that had come from Beni-Hassan in his hand.
When he had gone Domini remained on the divan, and Androvsky by thedoor, with his eyes on the ground. She took another cigarette from thebox on the table beside her, struck a match and lit it carefully. Thenshe said:
"Do you care to see the garden?"
She spoke indifferently, coldly. The desire to show her Paradise to himhad died away, but the parting words of the Count prompted the question,and so she put it as to a stranger.
"Thank you, Madame--yes," he replied, as if with an effort.
She got up, and they went out together on to the broad walk.
"Which way do you want to go?" she asked.
She saw him glance at her quickly, with anxiety in his eyes.
"You know best where we should go, Madame."
"I daresay you won't care about it. Probably you are not interested ingardens. It does not matter really which path we take. They are all verymuch alike."
"I am sure they are all very beautiful."
Suddenly he had become humble, anxious to please her. But now theviolent contrasts in him, unlike the violent contrasts of nature in thisland, exasperated her. She longed to be left alone. She felt ashamed ofAndrovsky, and also of herself; she condemned herself bitterly for theinterest she had taken in him, for her desire to put some pleasure intoa life she had deemed sad, for her curiosity about him, for her wishto share joy with him. She laughed at herself secretly for what she nowcalled her folly in having connected him imaginatively with the desert,whereas in reality he made the desert, as everything he approached, losein beauty and wonder. His was a destructive personality. She knew itnow. Why had she not realised it before? He was a man to put gall in thecup of pleasure, to create uneasiness, self-consciousness, constraintround about him, to call up spectres at the banquet of life. Well, inthe future she could avoid him. After to-day she need never have anymore intercourse with him. With that thought, that interior sense ofher perfect freedom in regard to this man, an abrupt, but always cold,content came to her, putting him a long way off where surely all that hethought and did was entirely indifferent to her.
"Come along then," she said. "We'll go this way."
And she turned down an alley which led towards the home of the purpledog. She did not know at the moment that anything had influenced her tochoose that particular path, but very soon the sound of Larbi's flutegrew louder, and she guessed that in reality the music had attractedher. Androvsky walked beside her without a word. She felt that hewas not looking about him, not noticing anything, and all at once shestopped decisively.
"Why should we take all this trouble?" she said bluntly. "I hatepretence and I thought I had travelled far away from it. But we are bothpretending."
"Pretending, Madame?" he said in a startled voice.
"Yes. I that I want to show you this garden, you that you want to seeit. I no longer wish to show it to you, and you have never wished to seeit. Let us cease to pretend. It is all my fault. I bothered you to comehere when you didn't want to come. You have taught me a lesson. I wasinclined to condemn you for it, to be angry with you. But why should Ibe? You were quite right. Freedom is my fetish. I set you free, MonsieurAndrovsky. Good-bye."
As she spoke she felt that the air was clearing, the clouds were flying.Constraint at least was at an end. And she had really the sensation ofsetting a captive at liberty. She turned to leave him, but he said:
"Please, stop, Madame."
"Why?"
"You have made a mistake."
"In what?"
"I do want to see this garden."
"Really? Well, then, you can wander through it."
"I do not wish to see it alone."
"Larbi shall guide you. For half a franc he will gladly give up hisserenading."
"Madame, if you will not show me the garden I will not see it at all. Iwill go now and will never come into it again. I do not pretend."
"Ah!" she said, and her voice was quite changed. "But you do worse."
"Worse!"
"Yes. You lie in the face of Africa."
She did not wish or mean to say it, and yet she had to say it. She knewit was monstrous that she should speak thus to him. What had his lies todo with her? She had been told a thousand, had heard a thousand told toothers. Her life had been passed in a world of which the words of thePsalmist, though uttered in haste, are a clear-cut description. Andshe had not thought she cared. Yet really she must have cared. For, inleaving this world, her soul had, as it were, fetched a long breath. Andnow, at the hint of a lie, it instinctively recoiled as from a gust ofair laden with some poisonous and suffocating vapour.
"Forgive me," she added. "I am a fool. Out here I do love truth."
Androvsky dropped his eyes. His whole body expressed humiliation, andsomething that suggested to her despair.
"Oh, you must think me mad to speak like this!" she exclaimed. "Ofcourse people must be allowed to arm themselves against the curiosityof others. I know that. The fact is I am under a spell here. I have beenliving for many, many years in the cold. I have been like a woman in aprison without any light, and--"
"You have been in a prison!" he said, lifting his head and looking ather eagerly.
"I have been living in what is called the great world."
"And you call that a prison?"
"Now that I am living in the greater world, really living at last. Ihave been in the heart of insincerity, and now I have come into theheart, the fiery heart of sincerity. It's there--there"--she pointedto the desert. "And it has intoxicated me; I think it has made meunreasonable. I expect everyone--not an Arab--to be as it is, and everylittle thing that isn't quite frank, every pretence, is like a horriblelittle hand tugging at me, as if trying to take me back to the prison Ihave left. I think, deep down, I have always loathed lies, but never asI have loathed them since I came here. It seems to me as if only in thedesert there is freedom for the body, and only in truth there is freedomfor the soul."
She stopped, drew a long breath, and added:
"You must forgive me. I have worried you. I have made you do what youdidn't want to do. And then I have attacked you. It is unpardonable."
"Show me the garden, Madame," he said in a very low voice.
Her outburst over, she felt a slight self-consciousness. She wonderedwhat he thought of her and became aware of her unconventionality. Hiscurious and persistent reticence made her frankness the more marked.Yet the painful sensation of oppression and exasperation had passed awayfrom her and she no longer thought of his personality as destructive.In obedience to his last words she walked on, and he kept heavily besideher, till they were in the deep shadows of the closely-growing trees andthe spell of the garden began to return upon her, banishing the thoughtof self.
"Listen!" she said presently.
Larbi's flute was very near.
"He is always playing," she whispered.
"Who is he?"
"One of the gardeners. But he scarcely ever works. He is perpetually inlove. That is why he plays."
"Is that a love-tune then?" Androvsky asked.
"Yes. Do you think it sounds like one?"
"How should I know, Madame?"
He stood looking in the direction from which the music came, and now itseemed to hold him fascinated. After his question, which sounded to heralmost childlike, and which she did not answer, Domini glanced at hisattentive face, to which the green shadows lent a dimness that wasmysterious, at his tall figure, which always suggested to her bothweariness and strength, and remembered the passionate romance to whoseexistence she awoke when she first heard Larbi's flute. It was as ifa shutter, which had closed a window in the house of life, had beensuddenly drawn away, giving to her eyes the horizon of a new world.Was that shu
tter now drawn back for him? No doubt the supposition wasabsurd. Men of his emotional and virile type have travelled far in thatworld, to her mysterious, ere they reach his length of years. What wasextraordinary to her, in the thought of it alone, was doubtless quiteordinary to him, translated into act. Not ignorant, she was neverthelessa perfectly innocent woman, but her knowledge told her that no man ofAndrovsky's strength, power and passion is innocent at Androvsky's age.Yet his last dropped-out question was very deceptive. It had soundedabsolutely natural and might have come from a boy's pure lips. Again hemade her wonder.
There was a garden bench close to where they were standing. "If you liketo listen for a moment we might sit down," she said.
He started.
"Yes. Thank you."
When they were sitting side by side, closely guarded by the gigantic figand chestnut trees which grew in this part of the garden, he added:
"Whom does he love?"
"No doubt one of those native women whom you consider utterly withoutattraction," she answered with a faint touch of malice which made himredden.
"But you come here every day?" he said.
"I!"
"Yes. Has he ever seen you?"
"Larbi? Often. What has that to do with it?"
He did not reply.
Odd and disconnected as Larbi's melodies were, they created anatmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled up out of theheart of the Eastern world and, when the player was invisible as now,suggested an ebon faun couched in hot sand at the foot of a palm treeand making music to listening sunbeams and amorous spirits of the waste.
"Do you like it?" she said presently in an under voice.
"Yes, Madame. And you?"
"I love it, but not as I love the song of the freed negroes. That is asong of all the secrets of humanity and of the desert too. And it doesnot try to tell them. It only says that they exist and that God knowsthem. But, I remember, you do not like that song."
"Madame," he answered slowly, and as if he were choosing his words, "Isee that you understood. The song did move me though I said not. But no,I do not like it."
"Do you care to tell me why?"
"Such a song as that seems to me an--it is like an intrusion. There arethings that should be let alone. There are dark places that should beleft dark."
"You mean that all human beings hold within them secrets, and that noallusion even should ever be made to those secrets?"
"Yes."
"I understand."
After a pause he said, anxiously, she thought:
"Am I right, Madame, or is my thought ridiculous?"
He asked it so simply that she felt touched.
"I'm sure you could never be ridiculous," she said quickly. "And perhapsyou are right. I don't know. That song makes me think and feel, and so Ilove it. Perhaps if you heard it alone--"
"Then I should hate it," he interposed.
His voice was like an uncontrolled inner voice speaking.
"And not thought and feeling--" she began.
But he interrupted her.
"They make all the misery that exists in the world."
"And all the happiness."
"Do they?"
"They must."
"Then you want to think deeply, to feel deeply?"
"Yes. I would rather be the central figure of a world-tragedy than diewithout having felt to the uttermost, even if it were sorrow. My wholenature revolts against the idea of being able to feel little or nothingreally. It seems to me that when we begin to feel acutely we begin togrow, like the palm tree rising towards the African sun."
"I do not think you have ever been very unhappy," he said. The sound ofhis voice as he said it made her suddenly feel as if it were true, as ifshe had never been utterly unhappy. Yet she had never been really happy.Africa had taught her that.
"Perhaps not," she answered. "But--some day--"
She stopped.
"Yes, Madame?"
"Could one stay long in such a world as this and not be either intenselyhappy or intensely unhappy? I don't feel as if it would be possible.Fierceness and fire beat upon one day after day and--one must learn tofeel here."
As she spoke a sensation of doubt, almost of apprehension, came to her.She was overtaken by a terror of the desert. For a moment it seemed toher that he was right, that it were better never to be the prey of anydeep emotion.
"If one does not wish to feel one should never come to such a place asthis," she added.
And she longed to ask him why he was here, he, a man whose philosophytold him to avoid the heights and depths, to shun the ardours of natureand of life.
"Or, having come, one should leave it."
A sensation of lurking danger increased upon her, bringing with it thethought of flight.
"One can always do that," she said, looking at him. She saw fear in hiseyes, but it seemed to her that it was not fear of peril, but fear offlight. So strongly was this idea borne in upon her that she bluntlyexclaimed:
"Unless it is one's nature to face things, never to turn one's back. Isit yours, Monsieur Androvsky?"
"Fear could never drive me to leave Beni-Moni," he answered.
"Sometimes I think that the only virtue in us is courage," she said,"that it includes all the others. I believe I could forgive everythingwhere I found absolute courage."
Androvsky's eyes were lit up as if by a flicker of inward fire.
"You might create the virtue you love," he said hoarsely.
They looked at each other for a moment. Did he mean that she mightcreate it in him?
Perhaps she would have asked, or perhaps he would have told her, but atthat moment something happened. Larbi stopped playing. In the last fewminutes they had both forgotten that he was playing, but when he ceasedthe garden changed. Something was withdrawn in which, without knowingit, they had been protecting themselves, and when the music faded theirarmour dropped away from them. With the complete silence came an alteredatmosphere, the tenderness of mysticism instead of the tenderness of awild humanity. The love of man seemed to depart out of the garden andanother love to enter it, as when God walked under the trees in the coolof the day. And they sat quite still, as if a common impulse muted theirlips. In the long silence that followed Domini thought of her mirage ofthe palm tree growing towards the African sun, feeling growing in theheart of a human being. But was it a worthy image? For the palm treerises high. It soars into the air. But presently it ceases to grow.There is nothing infinite in its growth. And the long, hot years passaway and there it stands, never nearer to the infinite gold of the sun.But in the intense feeling of a man or woman is there not infinitude? Isthere not a movement that is ceaseless till death comes to destroy--orto translate?
That was what she was thinking in the silence of the garden. AndAndrovsky? He sat beside her with his head bent, his hands hangingbetween his knees, his eyes gazing before him at the ordered tangleof the great trees. His lips were slightly parted, and on hisstrongly-marked face there was an expression as of emotional peace, asif the soul of the man were feeling deeply in calm. The restlessness,the violence that had made his demeanour so embarrassing duringand after the _dejeuner_ had vanished. He was a different man. Andpresently, noticing it, feeling his sensitive serenity, Domini seemedto see the great Mother at work about this child of hers, Nature at hertender task of pacification. The shared silence became to her likea song of thanksgiving, in which all the green things of the gardenjoined. And beyond them the desert lay listening, the Garden of Allahattentive to the voices of man's garden. She could hardly believe thatbut a few minutes before she had been full of irritation and bitterness,not free even from a touch of pride that was almost petty. But when sheremembered that it was so she realised the abysses and the heights ofwhich the heart is mingled, and an intense desire came to her to bealways upon the heights of her own heart. For there only was the lightof happiness. Never could she know joy if she forswore nobility. Nevercould she be at peace with the love within her--love of s
omething thatwas not self, of something that seemed vaguer than God, as if it hadentered into God and made him Love--unless she mounted upwards duringher little span of life. Again, as before in this land, in the firstsunset, on the tower, on the minaret of the mosque of Sidi-Zerzour,Nature spoke to her intimate words of inspiration, laid upon herthe hands of healing, giving her powers she surely had not known orconceived of till now. And the passion that is the chiefest grace ofgoodness, making it the fire that purifies, as it is the littlesister of the poor that tends the suffering, the hungry, the gropingbeggar-world, stirred within her, like the child not yet born, but whosedestiny is with the angels. And she longed to make some great offeringat the altar on whose lowest step she stood, and she was filled, for thefirst time consciously, with woman's sacred desire for sacrifice.
A soft step on the sand broke the silence and scattered her aspirations.Count Anteoni was coming towards them between the trees. The light ofhappiness was still upon his face and made him look much younger thanusual. His whole bearing, in its elasticity and buoyant courage, wasfull of anticipation. As he came up to them he said to Domini:
"Do you remember chiding me?"
"I!" she said. "For what?"
Androvsky sat up and the expression of serenity passed away from hisface.
"For never galloping away into the sun."
"Oh!--yes, I do remember."
"Well, I am going to obey you. I am going to make a journey."
"Into the desert?"
"Three hundred kilometers on horseback. I start to-morrow."
She looked up at him with a new interest. He saw it and laughed, almostlike a boy.
"Ah, your contempt for me is dying!"
"How can you speak of contempt?"
"But you were full of it." He turned to Androvsky. "Miss Enfildenthought I could not sit a horse, Monsieur, unlike you. Forgive me forsaying that you are almost more dare-devil than the Arabs themselves. Isaw you the other day set your stallion at the bank of the river bed. Idid not think any horse could have done it, but you knew better."
"I did not know at all," said Androvsky. "I had not ridden for overtwenty years until that day."
He spoke with a blunt determination which made Domini remember theirrecent conversation on truth-telling.
"Dio mio!" said the Count, slowly, and looking at him with undisguisedwonder. "You must have a will and a frame of iron."
"I am pretty strong."
He spoke rather roughly. Since the Count had joined them Domini noticedthat Androvsky had become a different man. Once more he was on thedefensive. The Count did not seem to notice it. Perhaps he was tooradiant.
"I hope I shall endure as well as you, Monsieur," he said. "I go toBeni-Hassan to visit Sidi El Hadj Aissa, one of the mightiest maraboutsin the Sahara. In your Church," he added, turning again to Domini, "hewould be a powerful Cardinal."
She noticed the "your." Evidently the Count was not a professingCatholic. Doubtless, like many modern Italians, he was a free-thinker inmatters of religion.
"I am afraid I have never heard of him," she said. "In which directiondoes Beni-Hassan lie?"
"To go there one takes the caravan route that the natives call the routeto Tombouctou."
An eager look came into her face.
"My road!" she said.
"Yours?"
"The one I shall travel on. You remember, Monsieur Androvsky?"
"Yes, Madame."
"Let me into your secret," said the Count, laughingly, yet with interesttoo.
"It is no secret. It is only that I love that route. It fascinates me,and I mean some day to make a desert journey along it."
"What a pity that we cannot join forces," the Count said. "I should feelit an honour to show the desert to one who has the reverence for it, theunderstanding of its spell, that you have."
He spoke earnestly, paused, and then added:
"But I know well what you are thinking."
"What is that?"
"That you will go to the desert alone. You are right. It is the onlyway, at any rate the first time. I went like that many years ago."
She said nothing in assent, and Androvsky got up from the bench.
"I must go, Monsieur."
"Already! But have you seen the garden?"
"It is wonderful. Good-bye, Monsieur. Thank you."
"But--let me see you to the gate. On Fridays----"
He was turning to Domini when she got up too.
"Don't you distribute alms on Fridays?" she said.
"How should you know it?"
"I have heard all about you. But is this the hour?"
"Yes."
"Let me see the distribution."
"And we will speed Monsieur Androvsky on his way at the same time."
She noticed that there was no question in his mind of her going withAndrovsky. Did she mean to go with him? She had not decided yet.
They walked towards the gate and were soon on the great sweep of sandbefore the villa. A murmur of many voices was audible outside in thedesert, nasal exclamations, loud guttural cries that sounded angry, thetwittering of flutes and the snarl of camels.
"Do you hear my pensioners?" said the Count. "They are alwaysimpatient."
There was the noise of a tomtom and of a whining shriek.
"That is old Bel Cassem's announcement of his presence. He has beenliving on me for years, the old ruffian, ever since his right eyewas gouged out by his rival in the affections of the Marechale of thedancing-girls. Smain!"
He blew his silver whistle. Instantly Smain came out of the villacarrying a money-bag. The Count took it and weighed it in his hand,looking at Domini with the joyous expression still upon his face.
"Have you ever made a thank-offering?" he said.
"No."
"That tells me something. Well, to-day I wish to make a thank-offeringto the desert."
"What has it done for you?"
"Who knows? Who knows?"
He laughed aloud, almost like a boy. Androvsky glanced at him with asort of wondering envy.
"And I want you to share in my little distribution," he added. "Andyou, Monsieur, if you don't mind. There are moments when--Open the gate,Smain!"
His ardour was infectious and Domini felt stirred by it to a suddensense of the joy of life. She looked at Androvsky, to include him inthe rigour of gaiety which swept from the Count to her, and found himstaring apprehensively at the Count, who was now loosening the stringof the bag. Smain had reached the gate. He lifted the bar of wood andopened it. Instantly a crowd of dark faces and turbaned heads werethrust through the tall aperture, a multitude of dusky hands flutteredfrantically, and the cry of eager voices, saluting, begging, callingdown blessings, relating troubles, shrieking wants, proclaiming virtuesand necessities, rose into an almost deafening uproar. But not afoot was lifted over the lintel to press the sunlit sand. The Count'spensioners might be clamorous, but they knew what they might not do. Ashe saw them the wrinkles in his face deepened and his fingers quickenedto achieve their purpose.
"My pensioners are very hungry to-day, and, as you see, they don't mindsaying so. Hark at Bel Cassem!"
The tomtom and the shriek that went with it made it a fierce crescendo.
"That means he is starving--the old hypocrite! Aren't they like thewolves in your Russia, Monsieur? But we must feed them. We mustn't letthem devour our Beni-Mora. That's it!"
He threw the string on to the sand, plunged his hand into the bag andbrought it out full of copper coins. The mouths opened wider, the handswaved more frantically, and all the dark eyes gleamed with the light ofgreed.
"Will you help me?" he said to Domini.
"Of course. What fun!"
Her eyes were gleaming too, but with the dancing fires of a gay impulseof generosity which made her wish that the bag contained her money. Hefilled her hands with coins.
"Choose whom you will. And now, Monsieur!"
For the moment he was so boyishly concentrated on the immediate presentt
hat he had ceased to observe whether the whim of others jumped withhis own. Otherwise he must have been struck by Androvsky's markeddiscomfort, which indeed almost amounted to agitation. The sight of thethrong of Arabs at the gateway, the clamour of their voices, evidentlyroused within him something akin to fear. He looked at them withdistaste, and had drawn back several steps upon the sand, and now, asthe Count held out to him a hand filled with money, he made no motionto take it, and half turned as if he thought of retreating into therecesses of the garden.
"Here, Monsieur! here!" exclaimed the Count, with his eyes on the crowd,towards which Domini was walking with a sort of mischievous slowness, towhet those appetites already so voracious.
Androvsky set his teeth and took the money, dropping one or two pieceson the ground. For a moment the Count seemed doubtful of his guest'sparticipation in his own lively mood.
"Is this boring you?" he asked. "Because if so--"
"No, no, Monsieur, not at all! What am I to do?"
"Those hands will tell you."
The clamour grew more exigent.
"And when you want more come to me!"
Then he called out in Arabic, "Gently! Gently!" as the vehementscuffling seemed about to degenerate into actual fighting at Domini'sapproach, and hurried forward, followed more slowly by Androvsky.
Smain, from whose velvety eyes the dreams were not banished by theuproar, stood languidly by the porter's tent, gazing at Androvsky.Something in the demeanour of the new visitor seemed to attract him.Domini, meanwhile, had reached the gateway. Gently, with a capriciousdeftness and all a woman's passion for personal choice, she dropped thebits of money into the hands belonging to the faces that attracted her,disregarding the bellowings of those passed over. The light from allthese gleaming eyes made her feel warm, the clamour that poured fromthese brown throats excited her. When her fingers were empty she touchedthe Count's arm eagerly.
"More, more, please!"
"Ecco, Signora."
He held out to her the bag. She plunged her hands into it and camenearer to the gate, both hands full of money and held high above herhead. The Arabs leapt up at her like dogs at a bone, and for a momentshe waited, laughing with all her heart. Then she made a movement tothrow the money over the heads of the near ones to the unfortunates whowere dancing and shrieking on the outskirts of the mob. But suddenly herhands dropped and she uttered a startled exclamation.
The sand-diviner of the red bazaar, slipping like a reptile under thewaving arms and between the furious bodies of the beggars, stood upbefore her with a smile on his wounded face, stretched out to her hisemaciated hands with a fawning, yet half satirical, gesture of desire.