The dawn came struggling like an exhausted pilgrim through the windy dark, pale and faint, with no courage, it seemed, to grow bravely into day. As if with the sedulous effort of something weary but of unconquered will, it slowly lit up Beni-Mora with a feeble light that flickered in a cloud of whirling sand, revealing the desolation of an almost featureless void. The village, the whole oasis, was penetrated by a passionate fog that instead of brooding heavily, phlegmatically, over the face of life and nature travelled like a demented thing bent upon instant destruction, and coming thus cloudily to be more free for crime. It was an emissary of the desert, propelled with irresistible force from the farthest recess of the dunes, and the desert itself seemed to be hurrying behind it as if to spy upon the doing of its deeds.
As the sea in a great storm rages against the land, ferocious that land should be, so the desert now raged against the oasis that ventured to exist in its bosom. Every palm tree was the victim of its wrath, every running rill, every habitation of man. Along the tunnels of mimosa it went like a foaming tide through a cavern, roaring towards the mountains. It returned and swept about the narrow streets, eddying at the corners, beating upon the palmwood doors, behind which the painted dancing-girls were cowering, cold under their pigments and their heavy jewels, their red hands trembling and clasping one another, clamouring about the minarets of the mosques on which the frightened doves were sheltering, shaking the fences that shut in the gazelles in their pleasaunce, tearing at the great statue of the Cardinal that faced it resolutely, holding up the double cross as if to exorcise it, battering upon the tall, white tower on whose summit Domini had first spoken with Androvsky, raging through the alleys of Count Anteoni's garden, the arcades of his villa, the window-spaces of the /fumoir/, from whose walls it tore down frantically the purple petals of the bougainvillea and dashed them, like enemies defeated, upon the quivering paths which were made of its own body.
Everywhere in the oasis it came with a lust to kill, but surely its deepest enmity was concentrated upon the Catholic Church.
There, despite the tempest, people were huddled, drawn together not so much by the ceremony that was to take place within as by the desire to see the departure of an unusual caravan. In every desert centre news is propagated with a rapidity seldom equalled in the home of civilisation. It runs from mouth to mouth like fire along straw. And Batouch, in his glory, had not been slow to speak of the wonders prepared under his superintendence to make complete the desert journey of his mistress and Androvsky. The main part of the camp had already gone forward, and must have reached Arba, the first halting stage outside Beni-Mora; tents, the horses for the Roumis, the mules to carry necessary baggage, the cooking utensils and the guard dogs. But the Roumis themselves were to depart from the church on camel-back directly the marriage was accomplished. Domini, who had a native hatred of everything that savoured of ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedition, and would gladly have gone out into the desert with but one tent, Batouch and a servant to do the cooking. But the journey was to be long and indefinite, an aimless wandering through the land of liberty towards the south, without fixed purpose or time of returning. She knew nothing of what was necessary for such a journey, and tired of ceaseless argument, and too much occupied with joy to burden herself with detail, at last let Batouch have his way.
"I leave it to you, Batouch," she said. "But, remember, as few people and beasts as possible. And as you say we must have camels for certain parts of the journey, we will travel the first stage on camel-back."
Consciously she helped to fulfil the prediction of the Diviner, and then she left Batouch free.
Now outside the church, shrouded closely in hoods and haiks, grey and brown bundles with staring eyes, the desert men were huddled against the church wall in the wind. Hadj was there, and Smain, sheltering in his burnous roses from Count Anteoni's garden. Larbi had come with his flute and the perfume-seller from his black bazaar. For Domini had bought perfumes from him on her last day in Beni-Mora. Most of Count Anteoni's gardeners had assembled. They looked upon the Roumi lady, who rode magnificently, but who could dream as they dreamed, too, as a friend. Had she not haunted the alleys where they worked and idled till they had learned to expect her, and to miss her when she did not come? And with those whom Domini knew were assembled their friends, and their friends' friends, men of Beni-Mora, men from the near oasis, and also many of those desert wanderers who drift in daily out of the sands to the centres of buying and selling, barter their goods for the goods of the South, or sell their loads of dates for money, and, having enjoyed the dissipation of the cafes and of the dancing-houses, drift away again into the pathless wastes which are their home.
Few of the French population had ventured out, and the church itself was almost deserted when the hour for the wedding drew nigh.
