At this moment Batouch took hold of the curtains of the palanquin to draw them close, but she put out her hand and stopped him. She wanted to see the last of the church, of the tormented gardens she had learnt to love.

He looked astonished, but yielded to her gesture, and told the camel-driver to make the animal rise to its feet. The driver took his stick and plied it, crying out, "A-ah! A-ah!" The camel turned its head towards him, showing its teeth, and snarling with a sort of dreary pa.s.sion.

"A-ah!" shouted the driver. "A-ah! A-ah!"

The camel began to get up.

As it did so, from the shrouded group of desert men one started forward to the palanquin, throwing off his burnous and gesticulating with thin naked arms, as if about to commit some violent act. It was the sand-diviner. Made fantastic and unreal by the whirling sand grains, Domini saw his lean face pitted with small-pox; his eyes, blazing with an intelligence that was demoniacal, fixed upon her; the long wound that stretched from his cheek to his forehead. The pleading that had been mingled with the almost tyrannical command of his demeanour had vanished now. He looked ferocious, arbitrary, like a savage of genius full of some frightful message of warning or rebuke. As the camel rose he cried aloud some words in Arabic. Domini heard his voice, but could not understand the words. Laying his hands on the stuff of the palanquin he shouted again, then took away his hands and shook them above his head towards the desert, still staring at Domini with his fanatical eyes.

The wind shrieked, the sand grains whirled in spirals about his body, the camel began to move away from the church slowly towards the village.

"A-ah!" cried the camel-driver. "A-ah!"

In the storm his call sounded like a wail of despair.

CHAPTER XVII

As the voice of the Diviner fainted away on the wind, and the vision of his wounded face and piercing eyes was lost in the whirling sand grains, Androvsky stretched out his hand and drew together the heavy curtains of the palanquin. The world was shut out. They were alone for the first time as man and wife; moving deliberately on this beast they could not see, but whose slow and monotonous gait swung them gently to and fro, out from the last traces of civilisation into the life of the sands.

With each soft step the camel took they went a little farther from Beni-Mora, came a little nearer to that liberty of which Domini sometimes dreamed, to the smiling eyes and the lifted spheres of fire.

She shut her eyes now. She did not want to see her husband or to touch his hand. She did not want to speak. She only wanted to feel in the uttermost depths of her spirit this movement, steady and persistent, towards the goal of her earthly desires, to realise absolutely the marvellous truth that after years of lovelessness, and a dreaminess more benumbing than acute misery, happiness more intense than any she had been able to conceive of in her moments of greatest yearning was being poured into her heart, that she was being taken to the place where she would be with the one human being whose presence blotted out even the memory of the false world and gave to her the true. And whereas in the dead years she had sometimes been afraid of feeling too much the emptiness and the desolation of her life, she was now afraid of feeling too little its fulness and its splendour, was afraid of some day looking back to this superb moment of her earthly fate, and being conscious that she had not grasped its meaning till it was gone, that she had done that most terrible of all things--realised that she had been happy to the limits of her capacity for happiness only when her happiness was numbered with the past.

But could that ever be? Was Time, such Time as this, not Eternity? Could such earthly things as this intense joy ever have been and no longer be? It seemed to her that it could not be so. She felt like one who held Eternity's hand, and went out with that great guide into the endlessness of supreme perfection. For her, just then, the Creator's scheme was rounded to a flawless circle. All things fell into order, stars and men, the silent growing things, the seas, the mountains and the plains, fell into order like a vast choir to obey the command of the canticle:

"Benedicite, omnia opera!"

"Bless ye the Lord!" The roaring of the wind about the palanquin became the dominant voice of this choir in Domini's ears.

"Bless ye the Lord!" It was obedient, not as the slave, but as the free will is obedient, as her heart, which joined its voice with this wind of the desert was obedient, because it gloriously chose with all its powers, pa.s.sions, aspirations to be so. The real obedience is only love fulfilling its last desire, and this great song was the fulfilling of the last desire of all created things. Domini knew that she did not realise the joy of this moment of her life now when she felt no longer that she was a woman, but only that she was a living praise winging upward to G.o.d.

A warm, strong hand clasped hers. She opened her eyes. In the dim twilight of the palanquin she saw the darkness of Androvsky's tall figure sitting in the crouched att.i.tude rendered necessary by the peculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the movement of the camel. The light was so obscure that she could not see his eyes or clearly discern his features, but she felt that he was gazing at her shadowy figure, that his mind was pa.s.sionately at work. Had he, too, been silently praising G.o.d for his happiness, and was he now wishing the body to join in the soul's delight?

She left her hand in his pa.s.sively. The sense of her womanhood, lost for a moment in the ecstasy of worship, had returned to her, but with a new and tremendous meaning which seemed to change her nature. Androvsky forcibly pressed her hand with his, let it go, then pressed it again, repeating the action with a regularity that seemed suggested by some guidance. She imagined him pressing her hand each time his heart pulsed.

She did not want to return the pressure. As she felt his hand thus closing and unclosing over hers, she was conscious that she, who in their intercourse had played a dominant part, who had even deliberately brought about that intercourse by her action on the tower, now longed to be pa.s.sive and, forgetting her own power and the strength and force of her nature, to lose herself in the greater strength and force of this man to whom she had given herself. Never before had she wished to be anything but strong. Nor did she desire weakness now, but only that his nature should rise above hers with eagle's wings, that when she looked up she should see him, never when she looked down. She thought that to see him below her would kill her, and she opened her lips to say so. But something in the windy darkness kept her silent. The heavy curtains of the palanquin shook perpetually, and the tall wooden rods on which they were slung creaked, making a small, incessant noise like a complaining, which joined itself with the more distant but louder noise made by the leaves of the thousands of palm trees dashed furiously together. From behind came the groaning of one of the camels, borne on the gusts of the wind, and faint sounds of the calling voices of the Arabs who accompanied them. It was not a time to speak.

She wondered where they were, in what part of the oasis, whether they had yet gained the beginning of the great route which had always fascinated her, and which was now the road to the goal of all her earthly desires. But there was nothing to tell her. She travelled in a world of dimness and the roar of wind, and in this obscurity and uproar, combined with perpetual though slight motion, she lost all count of time. She had no idea how long it was since she had come out of the church door with Androvsky. At first she thought it was only a few minutes, and that the camels must be just coming to the statue of the Cardinal. Then she thought that it might be an hour, even more; that Count Anteoni's garden was long since left behind, and that they were pa.s.sing, perhaps, along the narrow streets of the village of old Beni-Mora, and nearing the edge of the oasis. But even in this confusion of mind she felt that something would tell her when the last palms had vanished in the sand mist and the caravan came out into the desert.

The sound of the wind would surely be different when they met it on the immense flats, where there was nothing to break its fury. Or even if it were not different, she felt that she would know, that the desert would surely speak to her in the moment when, at last, it took her to itself.

It could not be that they would be taken by the desert and she not know it. But she wanted Androvsky to know it too. For she felt that the moment when the desert took them, man and wife, would be a great moment in their lives, greater even than that in which they met as they came into the blue country. And she set herself to listen, with a pa.s.sionate expectation, with an attention so close and determined that it thrilled her body, and even affected her muscles.

What she was listening for was a rising of the wind, a crescendo of its voice. She was antic.i.p.ating a triumphant cry from the Sahara, unlimited power made audible in a sound like the blowing of the clarion of the sands.

Androvsky's hand was still on hers, but now it did not move as if obeying the pulsations of his heart. It held hers closely, warmly, and sent his strength to her, and presently, for an instant, taking her mind from the desert, she lost herself in the mystery and the wonder of human companionship. She realised that the touch of Androvsky's hand on hers altered for her herself, and the whole universe as it was presented to her, as she observed and felt it. Nothing remained as it was when he did not touch her. There was something stupefying in the thought, something almost terrible. The wonder that is alive in the tiny things of love, and that makes tremendously important their presence in, or absence from, a woman's life, took hold on her completely for the first time, and set her forever in a changed world, a world in which a great knowledge ruled instead of a great ignorance. With the consciousness of exactly what Androvsky's touch meant to her came a multiple consciousness of a thousand other things, all connected with him and her consecrated relation to him. She quivered with understanding. All the gates of her soul were being opened, and the white light of comprehension of those things which make life splendid and fruitful was pouring in upon her. Within the dim, contained s.p.a.ce of the palanquin, that was slowly carried onward through the pa.s.sion of the storm, there was an effulgence of unseen glory that grew in splendour moment by moment. A woman was being born of a woman, woman who knew herself of woman who did not know herself, woman who henceforth would divinely love her womanhood of woman who had often wondered why she had been created woman.

The words muttered by the man of the sand in Count Anteoni's garden were coming true. In the church of Beni-Mora the life of Domini had begun more really than when her mother strove in the pains of childbirth and her first faint cry answered the voice of the world's light when it spoke to her.

Slowly the caravan moved on. The camel-drivers sang low under the folds of their haiks those mysterious songs of the East that seem the songs of heat and solitude. Batouch, smothered in his burnous, his large head sunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares of State. Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished. Ali, perched behind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady and remote as those of a vulture of the desert. The houses of Beni-Mora faded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of Count Anteoni's garden. Along the white blue which was the road the camels painfully advanced, urged by the cries and the sticks of the running drivers. Presently the brown buildings of old Beni-Mora came partially into sight, peeping here and there through the flying sands and the frantic palm leaves. The desert was at hand.

Ali began to sing, breathing his song into the back of Batouch's hood.

"The love of women is like the holiday song that the boy sings gaily In the sunny garden-- The love of women is like the little moon, the little happy moon In the last night of Ramadan.

The love of women is like the great silence that steals at dusk To kiss the scented blossoms of the orange tree.

Sit thee down beneath the orange tree, O loving man!

That thou mayst know the kiss that tells the love of women.

"Janat! Janat! Janat!"

Batouch stirred uneasily, pulled his hood from his eyes and looked into the storm gravely. Then he shifted on the camel's hump and said to Ali:

"How shall we get to Arba? The wind is like all the Touaregs going to battle. And when we leave the oasis----"

"The wind is going down, Batouch-ben-Brahim," responded Ali, calmly.

"This evening the Roumis can lie in the tents."

Batouch's thick lips curled with sarcasm. He spat into the wind, blew his nose in his burnous, and answered:

"You are a child, and can sing a pretty song, but--"

Ali pointed with his delicate hand towards the south.

"Do you not see the light in the sky?"

Batouch stared before him, and perceived that there was in truth a lifting of the darkness beyond, a whiteness growing where the desert lay.

"As we come into the desert the wind will fall," said Ali; and again he began to sing to himself:

"Janat! Janat! Janat!"

Domini could not see the light in the south, and no premonition warned her of any coming abatement of the storm. Once more she had begun to listen to the roaring of the wind and to wait for the larger voice of the desert, for the triumphant clarion of the sands that would announce to her her entry with Androvsky into the life of the wastes. Again she personified the Sahara, but now more vividly than ever before. In the obscurity she seemed to see it far away, like a great heroic figure, waiting for her and her pa.s.sion, waiting in a region of gold and silken airs at the back of the tempest to crown her life with a joy wide as its dreamlike s.p.a.ces, to teach her mind the inner truths that lie beyond the crowded ways of men and to open her heart to the most profound messages of Nature.

She listened, holding Androvsky's hand, and she felt that he was listening too, with an intensity strong as her own, or stronger.

Presently his hand closed upon hers more tightly, almost hurting her physically. As it did so she glanced up, but not at him, and noticed that the curtains of the palanquin were fluttering less fiercely. Once, for an instant, they were almost still. Then again they moved as if tugged by invisible hands; then were almost still once more. At the same time the wind's voice sank in her ears like a music dropping downward in a hollow place. It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softer hush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly growing light which enabled her to see, for the first time since she had left the church, her husband's features. He was looking at her with an expression of antic.i.p.ation in which there was awe, and she realised that in her expectation of the welcome of the desert she had been mistaken.

She had listened for the sounding of a clarion, but she was to be greeted by a still, small voice. She understood the awe in her husband's eyes and shared it. And she knew at once, with a sudden thrill of rapture, that in the scheme of things there are blessings and n.o.bilities undreamed of by man and that must always come upon him with a glorious shock of surprise, showing him the poor faultiness of what he had thought perhaps his most magnificent imaginings. Elisha sought for the Lord in the fire and in the whirlwind; but in the still, small voice onward came the Lord.

Incomparably more wonderful than what she had waited for seemed to her now this sudden falling of the storm, this mystical voice that came to them out of the heart of the sands telling them that they were pa.s.sing at last into the arms of the Sahara. The wind sank rapidly. The light grew in the palanquin. From without the voices of the camel-drivers and of Batouch and Ali talking together reached their ears distinctly. Yet they remained silent. It seemed as if they feared by speech to break the spell of the calm that was flowing around them, as if they feared to interrupt the murmur of the desert. Domini now returned the gaze of her husband. She could not take her eyes from his, for she wished him to read all the joy that was in her heart; she wished him to penetrate her thoughts, to understand her desires, to be at one with the woman who had been born on the eve of the pa.s.sing of the wind. With the coming of this mystic calm was coming surely something else. The silence was bringing with it the fusing of two natures. The desert in this moment was drawing together two souls into a union which Time and Death would have no power to destroy. Presently the wind completely died away, only a faint breeze fluttered the curtains of the palanquin, and the light that penetrated between them here and there was no longer white, but sparkled with a tiny dust of gold. Then Androvsky moved to open the curtains, and Domini spoke for the first time since their marriage.

"Wait," she said in a low voice.

He dropped his hand obediently, and looked at her with inquiry in his eyes.

"Don't let us look till we are far out," she said, "far away from Beni-Mora."

He made no answer, but she saw that he understood all that was in her heart. He leaned a little nearer to her and stretched out his arm as if to put it round her. But he did not put it round her, and she knew why.

He was husbanding his great joy as she had husbanded the dark hours of the previous night that to her were golden. And that unfinished action, that impulse unfulfilled, showed her more clearly the depths of his pa.s.sion for her even than had the desperate clasp of his hands about her knees in the garden. That which he did not do now was the greatest a.s.sertion possible of all that he would do in the life that was before them, and made her feel how entirely she belonged to him. Something within her trembled like a poor child before whom is suddenly set the prospect of a day of perfect happiness. She thought of the ending of this day, of the coming of the evening. Always the darkness had parted them; at the ending of this day it would unite them. In Androvsky's eyes she read her thought of the darkness reflected, reflected and yet changed, trans.m.u.ted by s.e.x. It was as if at that moment she read the same story written in two ways--by a woman and by a man, as if she saw Eden, not only as Eve saw it, but as Adam.

A long time pa.s.sed, but they did not feel it to be long. When their camel halted they unclasped their hands slowly like sleepers reluctantly awaking.