CHAPTER VI
Domini drew back and glanced at Smain. She was not accustomed to feelingintrusive, and the sudden sensation rendered her uneasy.
"It is Monsieur the Count," Smain said calmly and quite aloud.
The man in the doorway took off his soft hat, as if the words effectedan introduction between Domini and him.
"You were coming to see my little room, Madame?" he said in French. "IfI may show it to you I shall feel honoured."
The timbre of his voice was harsh and grating, yet it was a veryinteresting, even a seductive, voice, and, Domini thought, peculiarlyfull of vivid life, though not of energy. His manner at once banishedher momentary discomfort. There is a freemasonry between people born inthe same social world. By the way in which Count Anteoni took off hishat and spoke she knew at once that all was right.
"Thank you, Monsieur," she answered. "I was told at the gate you gavepermission to travellers to visit your garden."
"Certainly."
He spoke a few words in fluent Arabic to Smain, who turned away anddisappeared among the trees.
"I hope you will allow me to accompany you through the rest of thegarden," he said, turning again to Domini. "It will give me greatpleasure."
"It is very kind of you."
The way in which the change of companion had been effected made it seema pleasant, inevitable courtesy, which neither implied nor demandedanything.
"This is my little retreat," Count Anteoni continued, standing asidefrom the doorway that Domini might enter.
She drew a long breath when she was within.
The floor was of fine sand, beaten flat and hard, and strewn withEastern rugs of faint and delicate hues, dim greens and faded rosecolours, grey-blues and misty topaz yellows. Round the white walls ranbroad divans, also white, covered with prayer rugs from Bagdad, andlarge cushions, elaborately worked in dull gold and silver thread, withpatterns of ibises and flamingoes in flight. In the four angles of theroom stood four tiny smoking-tables of rough palm wood, holdinghammered ash-trays of bronze, green bronze torches for the lighting ofcigarettes, and vases of Chinese dragon china filled with velvety redroses, gardenias and sprigs of orange blossom. Leather footstools,covered with Tunisian thread-work, lay beside them. From the arches ofthe window-spaces hung old Moorish lamps of copper, fitted with smallpanes of dull jewelled glass, such as may be seen in venerable churchwindows. In a round copper brazier, set on one of the window-seats,incense twigs were drowsily burning and giving out thin, dwarf columnsof scented smoke. Through the archways and the narrow doorway thedense walls of leafage were visible standing on guard about this airyhermitage, and the hot purple blossoms of the bougainvillea shed a cloudof colour through the bosky dimness.
And still the flute of Larbi showered soft, clear, whimsical music fromsome hidden place close by.
Domini looked at her host, who was standing by the doorway, leaning onearm against the ivory-white wall.
"This is my first day in Africa," she said simply. "You may imagine whatI think of your garden, what I feel in it. I needn't tell you. Indeed, Iam sure the travellers you so kindly let in must often have worried youwith their raptures."
"No," he answered, with a still gravity which yet suggested kindness,"for I leave nearly always before the travellers come. That sounds alittle rude? But you would not be in Beni-Mora at this season, Madame,if it could include you."
"I have come here for peace," Domini replied simply.
She said it because she felt as if it was already understood by hercompanion.
Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and pulled a branchof the purple flowers slowly towards him through the doorway.
"There is peace--what is generally called so, at least--in Beni-Mora,"he answered rather slowly and meditatively. "That is to say, there issimilarity of day with day, night with night. The sun shines untiringlyover the desert, and the desert always hints at peace."
He let the flowers go, and they sprang softly back, and hung quiveringin the space beyond his thin figure. Then he added:
"Perhaps one should not say more than that."
"No."
Domini sat down for a moment. She looked up at him with her direct eyesand at the shaking flowers. The sound of Larbi's flute was always in herears.
"But may not one think, feel a little more?" she asked.
"Oh, why not? If one can, if one must? But how? Africa is as fierce andfull of meaning as a furnace, you know."
"Yes, I know--already," she replied.
His words expressed what she had already felt here in Beni-Mora,surreptitiously and yet powerfully. He said it, and last night theAfrican hautboy had said it. Peace and a flame. Could they existtogether, blended, married?
"Africa seems to me to agree through contradiction," she added, smilinga little, and touching the snowy wall with her right hand. "But then,this is my first day."
"Mine was when I was a boy of sixteen."
"This garden wasn't here then?"
"No. I had it made. I came here with my mother. She spoilt me. She letme have my whim."
"This garden is your boy's whim?"
"It was. Now it is a man's----"
He seemed to hesitate.
"Paradise," suggested Domini.
"I think I was going to say hiding-place."
There was no bitterness in his odd, ugly voice, yet surely the wordsimplied bitterness. The wounded, the fearful, the disappointed, thecondemned hide. Perhaps he remembered this, for he added rather quickly:
"I come here to be foolish, Madame, for I come here to think. This is myspecial thinking place."
"How strange!" Domini exclaimed impulsively, and leaning forward on thedivan.
"Is it?"
"I only mean that already Beni-Mora has seemed to me the ideal place forthat."
"For thought?"
"For finding out interior truth."
Count Anteoni looked at her rather swiftly and searchingly. His eyeswere not large, but they were bright, and held none of the languorso often seen in the eyes of his countrymen. His face was expressivethrough its mobility rather than through its contours. The features weresmall and refined, not noble, but unmistakably aristocratic. The nosewas sensitive, with wide nostrils. A long and straight moustache,turning slightly grey, did not hide the mouth, which had unusually palelips. The ears were set very flat against the head, and were finelyshaped. The chin was pointed. The general look of the whole face wastense, critical, conscious, but in the defiant rather than in the timidsense. Such an expression belongs to men who would always be aware ofthe thoughts and feelings of others concerning them, but who would throwthose thoughts and feelings off as decisively and energetically as a dogshakes the waterdrops from its coat on emerging from a swim.
"And sending it forth, like Ishmael, to shift for itself in the desert,"he said.
The odd remark sounded like neither statement nor question, merely likethe sudden exclamation of a mind at work.
"Will you allow me to take you through the rest of the garden, Madame?"he added in a more formal voice.
"Thank you," said Domini, who had already got up, moved by the examininglook cast at her.
There was nothing in it to resent, and she had not resented it, but ithad recalled her to the consciousness that they were utter strangers toeach other.
As they came out on the pale riband of sand which circled the littleroom Domini said:
"How wild and extraordinary that tune is!"
"Larbi's. I suppose it is, but no African music seems strange to me. Iwas born on my father's estate, near Tunis. He was a Sicilian; but cameto North Africa each winter. I have always heard the tomtoms and thepipes, and I know nearly all the desert songs of the nomads."
"This is a love-song, isn't it?"
"Yes. Larbi is always in love, they tell me. Each new dancer catches himin her net. Happy Larbi!"
"Because he can love so easily?"
"Or unlove so easily. Look at him, Madame."
> At a little distance, under a big banana tree, and half hidden by clumpsof scarlet geraniums, Domini saw a huge and very ugly Arab, with analmost black skin, squatting on his heels, with a long yellow and redflute between his thick lips. His eyes were bent down, and he did notsee them, but went on busily playing, drawing from his flute coquettishphrases with his big and bony fingers.
"And I pay him so much a week all the year round for doing that," theCount said.
His grating voice sounded kind and amused. They walked on, and Larbi'stune died gradually away.
"Somehow I can't be angry with the follies and vices of the Arabs," theCount continued. "I love them as they are; idle, absurdly amorous,quick to shed blood, gay as children, whimsical as--well, Madame, were Italking to a man I might dare to say pretty women."
"Why not?"
"I will, then. I glory in their ingrained contempt of civilisation.But I like them to say their prayers five times in the day as it iscommanded, and no Arab who touches alcohol in defiance of the Prophet'slaw sets foot in my garden."
There was a touch of harshness in his voice as he said the last words,the sound of the autocrat. Somehow Domini liked it. This man hadconvictions, and strong ones. That was certain. There was somethingoddly unconventional in him which something in her responded to. He wasperfectly polite, and yet, she was quite sure, absolutely careless ofopinion. Certainly he was very much a man.
"It is pleasant, too," he resumed, after a slight pause, "to besurrounded by absolutely thoughtless people with thoughtful faces andmysterious eyes--wells without truth at the bottom of them."
She laughed.
"No one must think here but you!"
"I prefer to keep all the folly to myself. Is not that a grandcocoanut?"
He pointed to a tree so tall that it seemed soaring to heaven.
"Yes, indeed. Like the one that presides over the purple dog."
"You have seen my fetish?"
"Smain showed him to me, with reverence."
"Oh, he is king here. The Arabs declare that on moonlight nights theyhave heard him joining in the chorus of the Kabyle dogs."
"You speak almost as if you believed it."
"Well, I believe more here than I believe anywhere else. That is partlywhy I come here."
"I can understand that--I mean believing much here."
"What! Already you feel the spell of Beni-Mora, the desert spell! Yes,there is enchantment here--and so I never stay too long."
"For fear of what?"
Count Anteoni was walking easily beside her. He walked from the hips,like many Sicilians, swaying very slightly, as if he liked to be awarehow supple his body still was. As Domini spoke he stopped. They were nowat a place where four paths joined, and could see four vistas of greenand gold, of magical sunlight and shadow.
"I scarcely know; of being carried who knows where--in mind or heart.Oh, there is danger in Beni-Mora, Madame, there is danger. Thisstartling air is full of influences, of desert spirits."
He looked at her in a way she could not understand--but it made herthink of the perfume-seller in his little dark room, and of the suddensensation she had had that mystery coils, like a black serpent, in theshining heart of the East.
"And now, Madame, which path shall we take? This one leads to mydrawing-room, that on the right to the Moorish bath."
"And that?"
"That one goes straight down to the wall that overlooks the Sahara."
"Please let us take it."
"The desert spirits are calling to you? But you are wise. What makesthis garden remarkable is not its arrangement, the number and variety ofits trees, but the fact that it lies flush with the Sahara--like a man'sthoughts of truth with Truth, perhaps."
He turned up the tail of the sentence and his harsh voice gave a littlegrating crack.
"I don't believe they are so different from one another as the gardenand the desert."
She looked at him directly.
"It would be too ironical."
"But nothing is," the Count said.
"You have discovered that in this garden?"
"Ah, it is new to you, Madame!"
For the first time there was a sound of faint bitterness in his voice.
"One often discovers the saddest thing in the loveliest place," headded. "There you begin to see the desert."
Far away, at the small orifice of the tunnel of trees down which theywere walking, appeared a glaring patch of fierce and quivering sunlight.
"I can only see the sun," Domini said.
"I know so well what it hides that I imagine I actually see the desert.One loves one's kind, assiduous liar. Isn't it so?"
"The imagination? But perhaps I am not disposed to allow that it is aliar."
"Who knows? You may be right."
He looked at her kindly with his bright eyes. It had not seem to strikehim that their conversation was curiously intimate, considering thatthey were strangers to one another, that he did not even know her name.Domini wondered suddenly how old he was. That look made him seem mucholder than he had seemed before. There was such an expression in hiseyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who iskissing a rag doll with deep and determined affection. "Kiss your doll!"they seemed to say. "Put off the years when you must know that dolls cannever return a kiss."
"I begin to see the desert now," Domini said after a moment of silentwalking. "How wonderful it is!"
"Yes, it is. The most wonderful thing in Nature. You will think it muchmore wonderful when you fancy you know it well."
"Fancy!"
"I don't think anyone can ever really know the desert. It is the thingthat keeps calling, and does not permit one to draw near."
"But then, one might learn to hate it."
"I don't think so. Truth does just the same, you know. And yet men keepon trying to draw near."
"But sometimes they succeed."
"Do they? Not when they live in gardens."
He laughed for the first time since they had been together, and all hisface was covered with a network of little moving lines.
"One should never live in a garden, Madame."
"I will try to take your word for it, but the task will be difficult."
"Yes? More difficult, perhaps, when you see what lies beside my thoughtsof truth."
As he spoke they came out from the tunnel and were seized by the fiercehands of the sun. It was within half an hour of noon, and the radiancewas blinding. Domini put up her parasol sharply, like one startled. Shestopped.
"But how tremendous!" she exclaimed.
Count Anteoni laughed again, and drew down the brim of his grey hatover his eyes. The hand with which he did it was almost as burnt as anArab's.
"You are afraid of it?"
"No, no. But it startled me. We don't know the sun really in Europe."
"No. Not even in Southern Italy, not even in Sicily. It is fiercethere in summer, but it seems further away. Here it insists on the mostintense intimacy. If you can bear it we might sit down for a moment?"
"Please."
All along the edge of the garden, from the villa to the boundary ofCount Anteoni's domain, ran a straight high wall made of earth brickshardened by the sun and topped by a coping of palm wood painted white.This wall was some eight feet high on the side next to the desert, butthe garden was raised in such a way that the inner side was merely alow parapet running along the sand path. In this parapet were cut smallseats, like window-seats, in which one could rest and look full upon thedesert as from a little cliff. Domini sat down on one of them, and theCount stood by her, resting one foot on the top of the wall and leaninghis right arm on his knee.
"There is the world on which I look for my hiding-place," he said. "Avast world, isn't it?"
Domini nodded without speaking.
Immediately beneath them, in the narrow shadow of the wall, was a pathof earth and stones which turned off at the right at the end of thegarden into the oasis. Beyond lay the vast river bed, a chaos of
hotboulders bounded by ragged low earth cliffs, interspersed here and therewith small pools of gleaming water. These cliffs were yellow. From theiredge stretched the desert, as Eternity stretches from the edge of Time.Only to the left was the immeasurable expanse intruded upon by a longspur of mountains, which ran out boldly for some distance and thenstopped abruptly, conquered and abashed by the imperious flats. Beneaththe mountains were low, tent-like, cinnamon-coloured undulations, whichreminded Domini of those made by a shaken-out sheet, one smaller thanthe other till they melted into the level. The summits of the mostdistant mountains, which leaned away as if in fear of the desert, weredark and mistily purple. Their flanks were iron grey at this hour,flecked in the hollows with the faint mauve and pink which becamecarnation colour when the sun set.
Domini scarcely looked at them. Till now she had always thought thatshe loved mountains. The desert suddenly made them insignificant, almostmean to her. She turned her eyes towards the flat spaces. It was in themthat majesty lay, mystery, power, and all deep and significant things.In the midst of the river bed, and quite near, rose a round and squatwhite tower with a small cupola. Beyond it, on the little cliff, was atangle of palms where a tiny oasis sheltered a few native huts. At animmense distance, here and there, other oases showed as dark stains showon the sea where there are hidden rocks. And still farther away, on allhands, the desert seemed to curve up slightly like a shallow wine-huedcup to the misty blue horizon line, which resembled a faintly seen andmysterious tropical sea, so distant that its sultry murmur was lost inthe embrace of the intervening silence.
An Arab passed on the path below the wall. He did not see them. A whitedog with curling lips ran beside him. He was singing to himself ina low, inward voice. He went on and turned towards the oasis, stillsinging as he walked slowly.
"Do you know what he is singing?" the Count asked.
Domini shook her head. She was straining her ears to hear the melody aslong as possible.
"It is a desert song of the freed negroes of Touggourt--'No one but Godand I knows what is in my heart.'"
Domini lowered her parasol to conceal her face. In the distance shecould still hear the song, but it was dying away.
"Oh! what is going to happen to me here?" she thought.
Count Anteoni was looking away from her now across the desert. A strangeimpulse rose up in her. She could not resist it. She put down herparasol, exposing herself to the blinding sunlight, knelt down on thehot sand, leaned her arms on the white parapet, put her chin in theupturned palms of her hands and stared into the desert almost fiercely.
"No one but God and I knows what is in my heart," she thought. "Butthat's not true, that's not true. For I don't know."
The last echo of the Arab's song fainted on the blazing air. Surely ithad changed now. Surely, as he turned into the shadows of the palms,he was singing, "No one but God knows what is in my heart." Yes, he wassinging that. "No one but God--no one but God."
Count Anteoni looked down at her. She did not notice it, and he kept hiseyes on her for a moment. Then he turned to the desert again.
By degrees, as she watched, Domini became aware of many thingsindicative of life, and of many lives in the tremendous expanse thatat first had seemed empty of all save sun and mystery. She saw low,scattered tents, far-off columns of smoke rising. She saw a bird passacross the blue and vanish towards the mountains. Black shapes appearedamong the tiny mounds of earth, crowned with dusty grass and dwarftamarisk bushes. She saw them move, like objects in a dream, slowlythrough the shimmering gold. They were feeding camels, guarded by nomadswhom she could not see.
At first she persistently explored the distances, carried forcibly by an_elan_ of her whole nature to the remotest points her eyes could reach.Then she withdrew her gaze gradually, reluctantly, from the hiddensummoning lands, whose verges she had with difficulty gained, andlooked, at first with apprehension, upon the nearer regions. But herapprehension died when she found that the desert transmutes what isclose as well as what is remote, suffuses even that which the handcould almost touch with wonder, beauty, and the deepest, most strangesignificance.
Quite near in the river bed she saw an Arab riding towards the desertupon a prancing black horse. He mounted a steep bit of path and came outon the flat ground at the cliff top. Then he set his horse at a gallop,raising his bridle hand and striking his heels into the flanks of thebeast. And each of his movements, each of the movements of his horse,was profoundly interesting, and held the attention of the onlooker in avice, as if the fates of worlds depended upon where he was carried andhow soon he reached his goal. A string of camels laden with wooden balesmet him on the way, and this chance encounter seemed to Domini fraughtwith almost terrible possibilities. Why? She did not ask herself. Againshe sent her gaze further, to the black shapes moving stealthily amongthe little mounds, to the spirals of smoke rising into the glimmeringair. Who guarded those camels? Who fed those distant fires? Who watchedbeside them? It seemed of vital consequence to her that she should know.
Count Anteoni took out his watch and glanced at it.
"I am looking to see if it is nearly the hour of prayer," he said. "WhenI am in Beni-Mora I usually come here then."
"You turn to the desert as the faithful turn towards Mecca?"
"Yes. I like to see men praying in the desert."
He spoke indifferently, but Domini felt suddenly sure that withinhim there were depths of imagination, of tenderness, even perhaps ofmysticism.
"An atheist in the desert is unimaginable," he added. "In cathedralsthey may exist very likely, and even feel at home. I have seencathedrals in which I could believe I was one, but--how many humanbeings can you see in the desert at this moment, Madame?"
Domini, still with her round chin in her hands, searched the blazingregion with her eyes. She saw three running figures with the train ofcamels which was now descending into the river bed. In the shadow of thelow white tower two more were huddled, motionless. She looked away toright and left, but saw only the shallow pools, the hot and gleamingboulders, and beyond the yellow cliffs the brown huts peeping throughthe palms. The horseman had disappeared.
"I can see five," she answered.
"Ah! you are not accustomed to the desert."
"There are more?"
"I could count up to a dozen. Which are yours?"
"The men with the camels and the men under that tower."
"There are four playing the _jeu des dames_ in the shadow of the cliffopposite to us. There is one asleep under a red rock where the pathascends into the desert. And there are two more just at the edge of thelittle oasis--Filiash, as it is called. One is standing under a palm,and one is pacing up and down."
"You must have splendid eyes."
"They are trained to the desert. But there are probably a score of Arabswithin sight whom I don't see."
"Oh! now I see the men at the edge of the oasis. How oddly that one ismoving. He goes up and down like a sailor on the quarter-deck."
"Yes, it is curious. And he is in the full blaze of the sun. That can'tbe an Arab."
He drew a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket, put it to his lipsand sounded a call. In a moment Smain same running lightly over thesand. Count Anteoni said something to him in Arabic. He disappeared, andspeedily returned with a pair of field-glasses. While he was gone Dominiwatched the two doll-like figures on the cliff in silence. One wasstanding under a large isolated palm tree absolutely still, as Arabsoften stand. The other, at a short distance from him and full in thesun, went to and fro, to and fro, always measuring the same spaceof desert, and turning and returning at two given points which nevervaried. He walked like a man hemmed in by walls, yet around him were theinfinite spaces. The effect was singularly unpleasant upon Domini. Allthings in the desert, as she had already noticed, became almostterribly significant, and this peculiar activity seemed full of someextraordinary and even horrible meaning. She watched it with strainingeyes.
Count Anteoni took the glasses from Smain and loo
ked through them,adjusting them carefully to suit his sight.
"_Ecco!_" he said. "I was right. That man is not an Arab."
He moved the glasses and glanced at Domini.
"You are not the only traveller here, Madame."
He looked through the glasses again.
"I knew that," she said.
"Indeed?"
"There is one at my hotel."
"Possibly this is he. He makes me think of a caged tiger, who has beenso long in captivity that when you let him out he still imagines thebars to be all round him. What was he like?"
All the time he was speaking he was staring intently through theglasses. As Domini did not reply he removed them from his eyes andglanced at her inquiringly.
"I am trying to think what he looked like," she said slowly. "But I feelthat I don't know. He was quite unlike any ordinary man."
"Would you care to see if you can recognise him? These are reallymarvellous glasses."
Domini took them from him with some eagerness.
"Twist them about till they suit your eyes."
At first she could see nothing but a fierce yellow glare. She turned thescrew and gradually the desert came to her, startlingly distinct. Theboulders of the river bed were enormous. She could see the veins ofcolour in them, a lizard running over one of them and disappearing intoa dark crevice, then the white tower and the Arabs beneath it. One wasan old man yawning; the other a boy. He rubbed the tip of his brownnose, and she saw the henna stains upon his nails. She lifted theglasses slowly and with precaution. The tower ran away. She came to thelow cliff, to the brown huts and the palms, passed them one by one,and reached the last, which was separated from its companions. Under itstood a tall Arab in a garment like a white night-shirt.
"He looks as if he had only one eye!" she exclaimed.
"The palm-tree man--yes."
She travelled cautiously away from him, keeping the glasses level.
"Ah!" she said on an indrawn breath.
As she spoke the thin, nasal cry of a distant voice broke upon her ears,prolonging a strange call.
"The Mueddin," said Count Anteoni.
And he repeated in a low tone the words of the angel to the prophet: "Ohthou that art covered arise . . . and magnify thy Lord; and purify thyclothes, and depart from uncleanness."
The call died away and was renewed three times. The old man and theboy beneath the tower turned their faces towards Mecca, fell upon theirknees and bowed their heads to the hot stones. The tall Arab under thepalm sank down swiftly. Domini kept the glasses at her eyes. Throughthem, as in a sort of exaggerated vision, very far off, yet intenselydistinct, she saw the man with whom she had travelled in the train. Hewent to and fro, to and fro on the burning ground till the fourth callof the Mueddin died away. Then, as he approached the isolated palm treeand saw the Arab beneath it fall to the earth and bow his long body inprayer, he paused and stood still as if in contemplation. The glasseswere so powerful that it was possible to see the expressions on faceseven at that distance. The expression on the traveller's face was,or seemed to be, at first one of profound attention. But this changedswiftly as he watched the bowing figure, and was succeeded by a look ofuneasiness, then of fierce disgust, then--surely--of fear or horror. Heturned sharply away like a driven man, and hurried off along the cliffedge in a striding walk, quickening his steps each moment till hisdeparture became a flight. He disappeared behind a projection of earthwhere the path sank to the river bed.
Domini laid the glasses down on the wall and looked at Count Anteoni.
"You say an atheist in the desert is unimaginable?
"Isn't it true?"
"Has an atheist a hatred, a horror of prayer?"
"Chi lo sa? The devil shrank away from the lifted Cross."
"Because he knew how much that was true it symbolised."
"No doubt had it been otherwise he would have jeered, not cowered. Butwhy do you ask me this question, Madame?"
"I have just seen a man flee from the sight of prayer."
"Your fellow-traveller?"
"Yes. It was horrible."
She gave him back the glasses.
"They reveal that which should be hidden," she said.
Count Anteoni took the glasses slowly from her hands. As he bent to doit he looked steadily at her, and she could not read the expression inhis eyes.
"The desert is full of truth. Is that what you mean?" he asked.
She made no reply. Count Anteoni stretched out his hand to the shiningexpanse before them.
"The man who is afraid of prayer is unwise to set foot beyond the palmtrees," he said.
"Why unwise?"
He answered her very gravely.
"The Arabs have a saying: 'The desert is the garden of Allah.'"
* * * * *
Domini did not ascend the tower of the hotel that morning. She had seenenough for the moment, and did not wish to disturb her impressions byadding to them. So she walked back to the Hotel du Desert with Batouch.
Count Anteoni had said good-bye to her at the door of the garden, andhad begged her to come again whenever she liked, and to spend as manyhours there as she pleased.
"I shall take you at your word," she said frankly. "I feel that I may."
As they shook hands she gave him her card. He took out his. "By theway," he said, "the big hotel you passed in coming here is mine. Ibuilt it to prevent a more hideous one being built, and let it to theproprietor. You might like to ascend the tower. The view at sundown isincomparable. At present the hotel is shut, but the guardian will showyou everything if you give him my card."
He pencilled some words in Arabic on the back from right to left.
"You write Arabic, too?" Domini said, watching the forming of the prettycurves with interest.
"Oh, yes; I am more than half African, though my father was a Sicilianand my mother a Roman."
He gave her the card, took off his hat and bowed. When the tall whitedoor was softly shut by Smain, Domini felt rather like a new Eveexpelled from Paradise, without an Adam as a companion in exile.
"Well, Madame?" said Batouch. "Have I spoken the truth?"
"Yes. No European garden can be so beautiful as that. Now I am goingstraight home."
She smiled to herself as she said the last word.
Outside the hotel they found Hadj looking ferocious. He exchanged somewords with Batouch, accompanying them with violent gestures. When he hadfinished speaking he spat upon the ground.
"What is the matter with him?" Domini asked.
"The Monsieur who is staying here would not take him to-day, but wentinto the desert alone. Hadj wishes that the nomads may cut his throat,and that his flesh may be eaten by jackals. Hadj is sure that he is abad man and will come to a bad end."
"Because he does not want a guide every day! But neither shall I."
"Madame is quite different. I would give my life for Madame."
"Don't do that, but go this afternoon and find me a horse. I don't wanta quiet one, but something with devil, something that a Spahi would liketo ride."
The desert spirits were speaking to her body as well as to her mind. Aphysical audacity was stirring in her, and she longed to give it vent.
"Madame is like the lion. She is afraid of nothing."
"You speak without knowing, Batouch. Don't come for me this afternoon,but bring round a horse, if you can find one, to-morrow morning."
"This very evening I will--"
"No, Batouch. I said to-morrow morning."
She spoke with a quiet but inflexible decision which silenced him. Thenshe gave him ten francs and went into the dark house, from which theburning noonday sun was carefully excluded. She intended to rest after_dejeuner_, and towards sunset to go to the big hotel and mount alone tothe summit of the tower.
It was half-past twelve, and a faint rattle of knives and forks from the_salle-a-manger_ told her that _dejeuner_ was ready. She went upstairs,washed her face and hands in cold water, stood still while Suzann
e shookthe dust from her gown, and then descended to the public room. The keenair had given her an appetite.
The _salle-a-manger_ was large and shady, and was filled with smalltables, at only three of which were people sitting. Four French officerssat together at one. A small, fat, perspiring man of middle age,probably a commercial traveller, who had eyes like a melancholy toad,was at another, eating olives with anxious rapidity, and wiping hisforehead perpetually with a dirty white handkerchief. At the third wasthe priest with whom Domini had spoken in the church. His napkin wastucked under his beard, and he was drinking soup as he bent well overhis plate.
A young Arab waiter, with a thin, dissipated face, stood near the doorin bright yellow slippers. When Domini came in he stole forward to showher to her table, making a soft, shuffling sound on the polished woodenfloor. The priest glanced up over his napkin, rose and bowed. The Frenchofficers stared with an interest they were too chivalrous to attempt toconceal. Only the fat little man was entirely unconcerned. He wiped hisforehead, stuck his fork deftly into an olive, and continued to looklike a melancholy toad entangled by fate in commercial pursuits.
Domini's table was by a window, across which green Venetian shutterswere drawn. It was at a considerable distance from the other guests, whodid not live in the house, but came there each day for their meals. Nearit she noticed a table laid for one person, and so arranged that if hecame to _dejeuner_ he would sit exactly opposite to her. She wonderedif it was for the man at whom she had just been looking through CountAnteoni's field-glasses, the man who had fled from prayer in the "Gardenof Allah." As she glanced at the empty chair standing before the knivesand forks, and the white cloth, she was uncertain whether she wished itto be filled by the traveller or not. She felt his presence in Beni-Moraas a warring element. That she knew. She knew also that she had comethere to find peace, a great calm and remoteness in which she could atlast grow, develop, loose her true self from cramping bondage, cometo an understanding with herself, face her heart and soul, and--as itwere--look them in the eyes and know them for what they were, goodor evil. In the presence of this total stranger there was somethingunpleasantly distracting which she could not and did not ignore,something which roused her antagonism and which at the same timecompelled her attention. She had been conscious of it in the train,conscious of it in the tunnel at twilight, at night in the hotel, andonce again in Count Anteoni's garden. This man intruded himself, nodoubt unconsciously, or even against his will, into her sight, herthoughts, each time that she was on the point of giving herself to whatCount Anteoni called "the desert spirits." So it had been when the trainran out of the tunnel into the blue country. So it had been again whenshe leaned on the white wall and gazed out over the shining fastnessesof the sun. He was there like an enemy, like something determined,egoistical, that said to her, "You would look at the greatness of thedesert, at immensity, infinity, God!--Look at me." And she couldnot turn her eyes away. Each time the man had, as if without effort,conquered the great competing power, fastened her thoughts upon himself,set her imagination working about his life, even made her heart beatfaster with some thrill of--what? Was it pity? Was it a faint horror?She knew that to call the feeling merely repugnance would not besincere. The intensity, the vitality of the force shut up in a humanbeing almost angered her at this moment as she looked at the empty chairand realised all that it had suddenly set at work. There was somethinginsolent in humanity as well as something divine, and just then shefelt the insolence more than the divinity. Terrifically greater, moreoverpowering than man, the desert was yet also somehow less than man,feebler, vaguer. Or else how could she have been grasped, moved, turnedto curiosity, surmise, almost to a sort of dread--all at the desert'sexpense--by the distant moving figure seen through the glasses?
Yes, as she looked at the little white table and thought of all this,Domini began to feel angry. But she was capable of effort, whethermental or physical, and now she resolutely switched her mind off fromthe antagonistic stranger and devoted her thoughts to the priest,whose narrow back she saw down the room in the distance. As she ateher fish--a mystery of the seas of Robertville--she imagined his quietexistence in this remote place, sunny day succeeding sunny day, eachone surely so like its brother that life must become a sort of dream,through which the voice of the church bell called melodiously and theincense rising before the altar shed a drowsy perfume. How strange itmust be really to live in Beni-Mora, to have your house, your workhere, your friendships here, your duties here, perhaps here too thetiny section of earth which would hold at the last your body. It must bestrange and monotonous, and yet surely rather sweet, rather safe.
The officers lifted their heads from their plates, the fat man stared,the priest looked quietly up over his napkin, and the Arab waiterslipped forward with attentive haste. For the swing door of the_salle-a-manger_ at this moment was pushed open, and the traveller--soDomini called him in her thoughts--entered and stood looking withhesitation from one table to another.
Domini did not glance up. She knew who it was and kept her eyesresolutely on her plate. She heard the Arab speak, a loud noise of stoutboots tramping over the wooden floor, and the creak of a chair receivinga surely tired body. The traveller sat down heavily. She went on slowlyeating the large Robertville fish, which was like something between atrout and a herring. When she had finished it she gazed straight beforeher at the cloth, and strove to resume her thoughts of the priest's lifein Beni-Mora. But she could not. It seemed to her as if she were backagain in Count Anteoni's garden. She looked once more through theglasses, and heard the four cries of the Mueddin, and saw the pacingfigure in the burning heat, the Arab bent in prayer, the one who watchedhim, the flight. And she was indignant with herself for her strangeinability to govern her mind. It seemed to her a pitiful thing of whichshe should be ashamed.
She heard the waiter set down a plate upon the traveller's table, andthen the noise of a liquid being poured into a glass. She could not keepher eyes down any more. Besides, why should she? Beni-Mora wasbreeding in her a self-consciousness--or a too acute consciousness ofothers--that was unnatural in her. She had never been sensitive likethis in her former life, but the fierce African sun seemed now to havethawed the ice of her indifference. She felt everything with almostunpleasant acuteness. All her senses seemed to her sharpened. Shesaw, she heard, as she had never seen and heard till now. Suddenly sheremembered her almost violent prayer--"Let me be alive! Let me feel!"and she was aware that such a prayer might have an answer that would beterrible.
Looking up thus with a kind of severe determination, she saw the managain. He was eating and was not looking towards her, and she fanciedthat his eyes were downcast with as much conscious resolution as hershad been a moment before. He wore the same suit as he had worn in thetrain, but now it was flecked with desert dust. She could not "place"him at all. He was not of the small, fat man's order. They would havenothing in common. With the French officers? She could not imagine howhe would be with them. The only other man in the room--the servant hadgone out for the moment--was the priest. He and the priest--they wouldsurely be antagonists. Had he not turned aside to avoid the priest inthe tunnel? Probably he was one of those many men who actively hatethe priesthood, to whom the soutane is anathema. Could he find pleasantcompanionship with such a man as Count Anteoni, an original man, nodoubt, but also a cultivated and easy man of the world? She smiledinternally at the mere thought. Whatever this stranger might be she feltthat he was as far from being a man of the world as she was from being aCockney sempstress or a veiled favourite in a harem. She could not,she found, imagine him easily at home with any type of human being withwhich she was acquainted. Yet no doubt, like all men, he had somewherefriends, relations, possibly even a wife, children.
No doubt--then why could she not believe it?
The man had finished his fish. He rested his broad, burnt hands on thetable on each side of his plate and looked at them steadily. Then heturned his head and glanced sideways at the priest, who was behind himto
the right. Then he looked again at his hands. And Domini knew thatall the time he was thinking about her, as she was thinking abouthim. She felt the violence of his thought like the violence of a handstriking her.
The Arab waiter brought her some ragout of mutton and peas, and shelooked down again at her plate.
As she left the room after _dejeuner_ the priest again got up andbowed. She stopped for a moment to speak to him. All the French officerssurveyed her tall, upright figure and broad, athletic shoulders withintent admiration. Domini knew it and was indifferent. If a hundredFrench soldiers had been staring at her critically she would not havecared at all. She was not a shy woman and was in nowise uncomfortablewhen many eyes were fixed upon her. So she stood and talked a little tothe priest about Count Anteoni and her pleasure in his garden. Andas she did so, feeling her present calm self-possession, she wonderedsecretly at the wholly unnatural turmoil--she called it that,exaggerating her feeling because it was unusual--in which she had been afew minutes before as she sat at her table.
The priest spoke well of Count Anteoni.
"He is very generous," he said.
Then he paused, twisting his napkin, and added:
"But I never have any real intercourse with him, Madame. I believe hecomes here in search of solitude. He spends days and even weeks aloneshut up in his garden."
"Thinking," she said.
The priest looked slightly surprised.
"It would be difficult not to think, Madame, would it not?"
"Oh, yes. But Count Anteoni thinks rather as a Bashi-Bazouk fights, Ifancy."
She heard a chair creak in the distance and glanced over her shoulder.The traveller had turned sideways. At once she bade the priest good-byeand walked away and out through the swing door.
All the afternoon she rested. The silence was profound. Beni-Mora wasenjoying a siesta in the heat. Domini revelled in the stillness. Thefatigue of travel had quite gone from her now and she began to feelstrangely at home. Suzanne had arranged photographs, books, flowers inthe little salon, had put cushions here and there, and thrown prettycoverings over the sofa and the two low chairs. The room had an airof cosiness, of occupation. It was a room one could sit in withoutrestlessness, and Domini liked its simplicity, its bare wooden floor andwhite walls. The sun made everything right here. Without the sun--butshe could not think of Beni-Mora without the sun.
She read on the verandah and dreamed, and the hours slipped quicklyaway. No one came to disturb her. She heard no footsteps, no movementsof humanity in the house. Now and then the sound of voices floated upto her from the gardens, mingling with the peculiar dry noise of palmleaves stirring in a breeze. Or she heard the distant gallop of horses'feet. The church bell chimed the hours and made her recall the previousevening. Already it seemed far off in the past. She could scarcelybelieve that she had not yet spent twenty-four hours in Beni-Mora. Aconviction came to her that she would be there for a long while, thatshe would strike roots into this sunny place of peace. When she heardthe church bell now she thought of the interior of the church and of thepriest with an odd sort of familiar pleasure, as people in England oftenthink of the village church in which they have always been accustomed toworship, and of the clergyman who ministers in it Sunday after Sunday.Yet at moments she remembered her inward cry in Count Anteoni's garden,"Oh, what is going to happen to me here?" And then she was dimlyconscious that Beni-Mora was the home of many things besides peace. Itheld warring influences. At one moment it lulled her and she was like aninfant rocked in a cradle. At another moment it stirred her, and shewas a woman on the edge of mysterious possibilities. There must bemany individualities among the desert spirits of whom Count Anteonihad spoken. Now one was with her and whispered to her, now another. Shefancied the light touch of their hands on hers, pulling gently at her,as a child pulls you to take you to see a treasure. And their treasurewas surely far away, hidden in the distance of the desert sands.
As soon as the sun began to decline towards the west she put on her hat,thrust the card Count Anteoni had given her into her glove and set outtowards the big hotel alone. She met Hadj as she walked down the arcade.He wished to accompany her, and was evidently filled with treacherousideas of supplanting his friend Batouch, but she gave him a franc andsent him away. The franc soothed him slightly, yet she could see thathis childish vanity was injured. There was a malicious gleam inhis long, narrow eyes as he looked after her. Yet there was genuineadmiration too. The Arab bows down instinctively before any dominatingspirit, and such a spirit in a foreign woman flashes in his eyes likea bright flame. Physical strength, too, appeals to him with peculiarforce. Hadj tossed his head upwards, tucked in his chin, and mutteredsome words in his brown throat as he noted the elastic grace with whichthe rejecting foreign woman moved till she was out of his sight. And shenever looked back at him. That was a keen arrow in her quiver. He fellinto a deep reverie under the arcade and his face became suddenly likethe face of a sphinx.
Meanwhile Domini had forgotten him. She had turned to the left down asmall street in which some Indians and superior Arabs had bazaars.One of the latter came out from the shadow of his hanging rugs andembroideries as she passed, and, addressing her in a strange mixtureof incorrect French and English, begged her to come in and examine hiswares.
She shook her head, but could not help looking at him with interest.
He was the thinnest man she had ever seen, and moved and stood almost asif he were boneless. The line of his delicate and yet arbitrary featureswas fierce. His face was pitted with small-pox and marked by an oldwound, evidently made by a knife, which stretched from his left cheek tohis forehead, ending just over the left eyebrow. The expression of hiseyes was almost disgustingly intelligent. While they were fixed upon herDomini felt as if her body were a glass box in which all her thoughts,feelings, and desires were ranged for his inspection. In his demeanourthere was much that pleaded, but also something that commanded. Hisfingers were unnaturally long and held a small bag, and he plantedhimself right before her in the road.
"Madame, come in, venez avec moi. Venez--venez! I have much--I willshow--j'ai des choses extraordinaires! Tenez! Look!"
He untied the mouth of the bag. Domini looked into it, expecting to seesomething precious--jewels perhaps. She saw only a quantity of sand,laughed, and moved to go on. She thought the Arab was an impudent fellowtrying to make fun of her.
"No, no, Madame! Do not laugh! Ce sable est du desert. Il y a deshistoires la-dedans. Il y a l'histoire de Madame. Come bazaar! I willread for Madame--what will be--what will become--I will read--I willtell. Tenez!" He stared down into the bag and his face became suddenlystern and fixed. "Deja je vois des choses dans la vie de Madame. Ah! MonDieu! Ah! Mon Dieu!"
"No, no," Domini said.
She had hesitated, but was now determined.
"I have no time to-day."
The man cast a quick and sly glance at her, then stared once moreinto the bag. "Ah! Mon Dieu! Ah! Mon Dieu!" he repeated. "The life tocome--the life of Madame--I see it in the bag!"
His face looked tortured. Domini walked on hurriedly. When she hadgot to a little distance she glanced back. The man was standing in themiddle of the road and glaring into the bag. His voice came down thestreet to her.
"Ah! Mon Dieu! Ah! Mon Dieu! I see it--I see--je vois la vie deMadame--Ah! Mon Dieu!"
There was an accent of dreadful suffering in his voice. It made Dominishudder.
She passed the mouth of the dancers' street. At the corner there wasa large Cafe Maure, and here, on rugs laid by the side of the road,numbers of Arabs were stretched, some sipping tea from glasses, someplaying dominoes, some conversing, some staring calmly into vacancy,like animals drowned in a lethargic dream. A black boy ran by holdinga hammered brass tray on which were some small china cups filled withthick coffee. Halfway up the street he met three unveiled women clad involuminous white dresses, with scarlet, yellow, and purple handkerchiefsbound over their black hair. He stopped and the women took the cups withtheir henna-
tinted fingers. Two young Arabs joined them. There was ascuffle. White lumps of sugar flew up into the air. Then there was ababel of voices, a torrent of cries full of barbaric gaiety.
Before it had died out of Domini's ears she stood by the statue ofCardinal Lavigerie. Rather militant than priestly, raised high on amarble pedestal, it faced the long road which, melting at last into afaint desert track, stretched away to Tombouctou. The mitre upon thehead was worn surely as if it were a helmet, the pastoral staff with itsdouble cross was grasped as if it were a sword. Upon the lower cross wasstretched a figure of the Christ in agony. And the Cardinal, gazingwith the eyes of an eagle out into the pathless wastes of sand that laybeyond the palm trees, seemed, by his mere attitude, to cry to all themyriad hordes of men the deep-bosomed Sahara mothered in her mystery andsilence, "Come unto the Church! Come unto me!"
He called men in from the desert. Domini fancied his voice echoing alongthe sands till the worshippers of Allah and of his Prophet heard it likea clarion in Tombouctou.
When she reached the great hotel the sun was just beginning to set. Shedrew Count Anteoni's card from her glove and rang the bell. After along interval a magnificent man, with the features of an Arab but a skinalmost as black as a negro, opened the door.
"Can I go up the tower to see the sunset?" she asked, giving him thecard.
The man bowed low, escorted her through a long hall full of furnitureshrouded in coverings, up a staircase, along a corridor with numberedrooms, up a second staircase and out upon a flat-terraced roof, fromwhich the tower soared high above the houses and palms of Beni-Mora, alandmark visible half-a-day's journey out in the desert. A narrow spiralstair inside the tower gained the summit.
"I'll go up alone," Domini said. "I shall stay some time and I wouldrather not keep you."
She put some money into the Arab's hand. He looked pleased, yet doubtfultoo for a moment. Then he seemed to banish his hesitation and, with adeprecating smile, said something which she could not understand. Shenodded intelligently to get rid of him. Already, from the roof, shecaught sight of a great visionary panorama glowing with colour andmagic. She was impatient to climb still higher into the sky, to lookdown on the world as an eagle does. So she turned away decisively andmounted the dark, winding stair till she reached a door. She pushed itopen with some difficulty, and came out into the air at a dizzy height,shutting the door forcibly behind her with an energetic movement of herstrong arms.
The top of the tower was small and square, and guarded by a whiteparapet breast high. In the centre of it rose the outer walls and theceiling of the top of the staircase, which prevented a person standingon one side of the tower from seeing anybody who was standing at theopposite side. There was just sufficient space between parapet andstaircase wall for two people to pass with difficulty and manoeuvring.
But Domini was not concerned with such trivial details, as she wouldhave thought them had she thought of them. Directly she had shut thelittle door and felt herself alone--alone as an eagle in the sky--shetook the step forward that brought her to the parapet, leaned her armson it, looked out and was lost in a passion of contemplation.
At first she did not discern any of the multitudinous minutiae in thegreat evening vision beneath and around her. She only felt conscious ofdepth, height, space, colour, mystery, calm. She did not measure. Shedid not differentiate. She simply stood there, leaning lightly onthe snowy plaster work, and experienced something that she had neverexperienced before, that she had never imagined. It was scarcely vivid;for in everything that is vivid there seems to be something small, thepoint to which wonders converge, the intense spark to which many fireshave given themselves as food, the drop which contains the murmuringforce of innumerable rivers. It was more than vivid. It was reliantlydim, as is that pulse of life which is heard through and above the crashof generations and centuries falling downwards into the abyss; thatpersistent, enduring heart-beat, indifferent in its mystical regularity,that ignores and triumphs, and never grows louder nor diminishes,inexorably calm, inexorably steady, undefeated--more--utterly unaffectedby unnumbered millions of tragedies and deaths.
Many sounds rose from far down beneath the tower, but at first Dominidid not hear them. She was only aware of an immense, living silence, asilence flowing beneath, around and above her in dumb, invisible waves.Circles of rest and peace, cool and serene, widened as circles in a pooltowards the unseen limits of the satisfied world, limits lost in thehidden regions beyond the misty, purple magic where sky and desert met.And she felt as if her brain, ceaselessly at work from its birth,her heart, unresting hitherto in a commotion of desires, her soul, aneternal flutter of anxious, passionate wings, folded themselves togethergently like the petals of roses when a summer night comes into a garden.
She was not conscious that she breathed while she stood there. Shethought her bosom ceased to rise and fall. The very blood dreamed in herveins as the light of evening dreamed in the blue.
She knew the Great Pause that seems to divide some human lives in two,as the Great Gulf divided him who lay in Abraham's bosom from him whowas shrouded in the veil of fire.
BOOK II. THE VOICE OF PRAYER