The Garden of Allah Part 88

"I--where are you living?"

"Close by on the sand-hill beyond the city wall."

"Where you can see the fires lit at night and hear the sound of the music of Africa?"

"Yes."

"As he said."

"Yes, as he said."

Again the overwhelming sense of some strange and formidable approach came over her, but this time she fought it resolutely.

"Will you come and see me?" she said.

She had meant to say "us," but did not say it.

"If you will allow me."

"When?"

"I--" she heard the odd, upward grating in his voice which she remembered so well. "May I come now if you are riding to the tents?"

"Please do."

"I will explain to the marabout and follow you."

"But the way? Shall Batouch--?"

"No, it is not necessary."

She rode away. When she reached the camp she found that Androvsky had not yet returned, and she was glad. She wanted to talk to Count Anteoni alone. Within a few minutes she saw him coming towards the tent. His beard and his Arab dress so altered him that at a short distance she could not recognise him, could only guess that it was he. But directly he was near, and she saw his eyes, she forgot that he was altered, and felt that she was with her kind and whimsical host of the garden.

"My husband is in the city," she said.

"Yes."

"With the priest."

She saw an expression of surprise flit over Count Anteoni's face. It went away instantly.

"Pere Beret," he said. "He is a cheerful creature and very good to the Arabs."

They sat down just inside the shadow of the tent before the door, and he looked out quietly towards the city.

"Yes, this is the place," he said.

She knew that he was alluding to the vision of the sand-diviner, and said so.

"Did you believe at the time that what he said would come true?" she asked.

"How could I? Am I a child?"

He spoke with gentle irony, but she felt he was playing with her.

"Cannot a man believe such things?"

He did not answer her, but said:

"My fate has come to pa.s.s. Do you not care to know what it is?"

"Yes, do tell me."

She spoke earnestly. She felt a change in him, a great change which as yet she did not understand fully. It was as if he had been a man in doubt and was now a man no longer in doubt, as if he had arrived at some goal and was more at peace with himself than he had been.

"I have become a Mohammedan," he said simply.

"A Mohammedan!"

She repeated the words as a person repeats words in surprise, but her voice did not sound surprised.

"You wonder?" he asked.

After a moment she answered:

"No. I never thought of such a thing, but I am not surprised. Now you have told me it seems to explain you, much that I noticed in you, wondered about in you."

She looked at him steadily, but without curiosity.

"I feel that you are happy now."

"Yes, I am happy. The world I used to know, my world and yours, would laugh at me, would say that I was crazy, that it was a whim, that I wished for a new sensation. Simply it had to be. For years I have been tending towards it--who knows why? Who knows what obscure influences have been at work in me, whether there is not perhaps far back, some faint strain of Arab blood mingled with the Sicilian blood in my veins?

I cannot understand why. What I can understand is that at last I have fulfilled my destiny! After years of unrest I am suddenly and completely at peace. It is a magical sensation. I have been wandering all my life and have come upon the open door of my home."

He spoke very quietly, but she heard the joy in his voice.

"I remember you saying, 'I like to see men praying in the desert.'"

"Yes. When I looked at them I was longing to be one of them. For years from my garden wall I watched them with a pa.s.sion of envy, with bitterness, almost with hatred sometimes. They had something I had not, something that set them above me, something that made their lives plain through any complication, and that gave to death a meaning like the meaning at the close of a great story that is going to have a sequel.

They had faith. And it was difficult not to hate them. But now I am one of them. I can pray in the desert."

"That was why you left Beni-Mora."

"Yes. I had long been wis.h.i.+ng to become a Mohammedan. I came here to be with the marabout, to enter more fully into certain questions, to see if I had any lingering doubts."

"And you have none?"

"None."