The Garden of Allah Part 84

She did not speak loudly, but with an intention that recalled the mind of her husband. He stepped slowly into the tent and held out his hand in silence to the priest. As he did so the lamplight fell full upon him.

"Boris, are you ill?" Domini exclaimed.

The priest had taken Androvsky's hand, but with a doubtful air. His cheerful and confident manner had died away, and his eyes, fixed upon his host, shone with an astonishment which was mingled with a sort of boyish glumness. It was evident that he felt that his presence was unwelcome.

"I have a headache," Androvsky said. "I--that is why I returned."

He dropped the priest's hand. He was again looking towards the table.

"The sun was unusually fierce to-day," Domini said. "Do you think--"

"Yes, yes," he interrupted. "That's it. I must have had a touch of the sun."

He put his hand to his head.

"Excuse me, Monsieur," he said, speaking to the priest but not looking at him. "I am really feeling unwell. Another day--"

He went out of the tent and disappeared silently into the darkness.

Domini and the priest looked after him. Then the priest, with an air of embarra.s.sment, took up his hat from the table. His cigar had gone out, but he pulled at it as if he thought it was still alight, then took it out of his mouth and, glancing with a naive regret at the good things upon the table, his half-finished coffee, the biscuits, the white box of bon-bons--said:

"Madame, I must be off. I've a good way to go, and it's getting late. If you will allow me--"

He went to the tent door and called, in a powerful voice:

"Belga.s.sem! Belga.s.sem!"

He paused, then called again:

"Belga.s.sem!"

A light travelled over the sand from the farther tents of the servants.

Then the priest turned round to Domini and shook her by the hand.

"Good-night, Madame."

"I'm very sorry," she said, not trying to detain him. "You must come again. My husband is evidently ill, and--"

"You must go to him. Of course. Of course. This sun is a blessing.

Still, it brings fever sometimes, especially to strangers. We sand-rascals--eh, Madame!" he laughed, but the laugh had lost its sonorous ring--"we can stand it. It's our friend. But for travellers sometimes it's a little bit too much. But now, mind, I'm a bit of a doctor, and if to-morrow your husband is no better I might--anyhow"--he looked again longingly at the bon-bons and the cigars--"if you'll allow me I'll call to know how he is."

"Thank you, Monsieur."

"Not at all, Madame, not at all! I can set him right in a minute, if it's anything to do with the sun, in a minute. Ah, here's Belga.s.sem!"

The soldier stood like a statue without, bearing the lantern. The priest hesitated. He was holding the burnt-out cigar in his hand, and now he glanced at it and then at the cigar-box. A plaintive expression overspread his bronzed and bearded face. It became almost piteous.

Quickly Domini wait to the table, took two cigars from the box and came back.

"You must have a cigar to smoke on the way."

"Really, Madame, you are too good, but--well, I rarely refuse a fine cigar, and these--upon my word--are--"

He struck a match on his broad-toed boot. His demeanour was becoming cheerful again. Domini gave the other cigar to the soldier.

"Good-night, Madame. A demain then, a demain! I trust your husband may be able to rest. A demain! A demain!"

The light moved away over the dunes and dropped down towards the city.

Then Domini hurried across the sand to the sleeping-tent. As she went she was acutely aware of the many distant noises that rose up in the night to the pale crescent of the young moon, the pulsing of the tomtoms in the city, the faint screaming of the pipes that sounded almost like human beings in distress, the pa.s.sionate barking of the guard dogs tied up to the tents on the sand-slopes where the mult.i.tudes of fires gleamed. The sensation of being far away, and close to the heart of the desert, deepened in her, but she felt now that it was a savage heart, that there was something terrible in the remoteness. In the faint moonlight the tent cast black shadows upon the wintry whiteness of the sands, that rose and fell like waves of a smooth but foam-covered sea.

And the shadow of the sleeping-tent looked the blackest of them all.

For she began to feel as if there was another darkness about it than the darkness that it cast upon the sand. Her husband's face that night as he came in from the dunes had been dark with a shadow cast surely by his soul. And she did not know what it was in his soul that sent forth the shadow.

"Boris!"

She was at the door of the sleeping-tent. He did not answer.

"Boris!"

He came in from the farther tent that he used as a dressing-room, carrying a lit candle in his hand. She went up to him with a movement of swift, ardent sincerity.

"You felt ill in the city? Did Batouch let you come back alone?"

"I preferred to be alone."

He set down the candle on the table, and moved so that the light of it did not fall upon his face. She took his hands in hers gently. There was no response in his hands. They remained in hers, nervelessly. They felt almost like dead things in her hands. But they were not cold, but burning hot.

"You have fever!" she said.

She let one of his hands go and put one of hers to his forehead.

"Your forehead is burning, and your pulses--how they are beating! Like hammers! I must--"

"Don't give me anything, Domini! It would be useless."

She was silent. There was a sound of hopelessness in his voice that frightened her. It was like the voice of a man rejecting remedies because he knew that he was stricken with a mortal disease.

"Why did that priest come here to-night?" he asked.

They were both standing up, but now he sat down in a chair heavily, taking his hand from hers.

"Merely to pay a visit of courtesy."

"At night?"

He spoke suspiciously. Again she thought of Mogar, and of how, on his return from the dunes, he had said to her, "There is a light in the tower." A painful sensation of being surrounded with mystery came upon her. It was hateful to her strong and frank nature. It was like a miasma that suffocated her soul.

"Oh, Boris," she exclaimed bluntly, "why should he not come at night?"

"Is such a thing usual?"

"But he was visiting the tents over there--of the nomads, and he had heard of our arrival. He knew it was informal, but, as he said, in the desert one forgets formalities."