|
ſ
|
|||
15 OO397
342 O
-* * * * * prº ſº º~--~
• • • • •ſº_º_ſ}（ſ）eº ： • • ► ► ► ►►•
„....……. - s.º. s.， s.ſ.--~~~~ ~ ~º ~~~~ ~º ~º ~*~***
~ „: ~~~~' ：- ！… • 8. * * s--- » < -* - *: *; **: *; * • •
º » º «» -- ~~~~
Jº...！！！！！！！ ：-:-, -:-:-
， ， ，
--№rrir！！！！！！！ſ.º.
* * *
** * * * * * * * * * * * *
** * *, *
E-
sº
∞ •¿Ď
• • •*ſae ，，s-
¿（.*¿¿.*¿¿.
* … • C --★ → • ， • • • • •– →
∞ … •
* *
[.
‘. . . . .
• ſº
[.
∞
• • • • • •
• • • • • • • •
-• • • ، ، ، ، ، ، ،
ſº: º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º.º. s.”,
U، ،º ，
0
∞
∞
• Lae aº aº e , • • •
BU HR
s = e º e º 'ºw e o e º m º e -w- tº -º º e º 'º e
University of Michig."
A 3
·e º~
， ， ， ， ， ,
$[] ºſº，•
#:;];
ſae
∞• l)
：##Ë
[]
----º : † №ſº， i ！{{！}}{{#5
-į·},t\,};};};};};}, iritſae
#################
∞

C
§
\
N
*
\
-F3s :-:i.~:::=_;E.
º.
&§º-f
º*
|º
--
**
sºil. III:
| “. 2 ºn tº , "...t
* * *
J} ** *
º
*
º
ºf IIIIIITIIIIIIIITIIIIII
RSITYor MICH6
"ultiAN
J
ſº
º
º
ſº
ſ
U
D
O
C
C
C
C
O
C
O
[]
[.
C
O
O
O
º
D
C
º
D
C
º
C
C
C
t
ſº
C
O
º
C
C
{}
O
C
C
D
IBEQUEST OF
IRVING KANE POND
C.E. 1879, A.M.
(HON. ) 1911





X 2 3
H 42 ºz.
/ ?es 3 &
T H E G A R D EN
of AL LA H
THE GARDEN
of ALLAH
By ROBERT HICHENS
Author of “THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN,”
“FELIX,” “TONGUES OF CONSCIENCE,” Etc.
N E W Y O R K - F R. E. D. E. R. I. C. K. A.
STO KES COMPANY - PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1904,
BY ROBERT HICHENS
This edition published in January, 1905
*///oz, A/3&ceſ
A 2.
- *
C O N T ENTS
BOOK I
PRELUDE . . . . .
BOOK II
THE VOICE OF PRAYER .
BOOK III
THE GARDEN
BOOK IV
THE JOURNEY
BOOK V
THE REVELATION
BOOK VI
THE JOURNEY BACK .
PAGE
87
158
268
402
434
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
BOOK I
PRELUDE
CHAPTER I

HE fatigue caused by a rough sea journey, and,
perhaps, the consciousness that she would have to
be dressed before dawn to catch the train for Beni-
Mora, prevented Domini Enfilden from sleeping.
There was deep silence in the Hôtel de la Mer at
Robertville. The French officers who took their pension
there had long since ascended the hill of Addouna to the
barracks. The cafés had closed their doors to the drinkers
and domino players. The lounging Arab boys had deserted
the sandy Place de la Marine. In their small and dusky
bazaars the Israelites had reckoned up the takings of the day,
and curled themselves up in gaudy quilts on their low divans
to rest. Only two or three gendarmes were still about, and a
few French and Spaniards at the Port, where, moored against
the wharf, lay the steamer Le Général Bertrand, in which
Domini had arrived that evening from Marseilles. -
In the hotel the fair and plump Italian waiter, who had
drifted to North Africa from Pisa, had swept up the crumbs
from the two long tables in the salle-à-manger, Smoked a thin,
dark cigar over a copy of the Dépêche Algérienne, put the paper
down, scratched his blonde head, on which the hair stood up in
bristles, stared for a while at nothing in the firm manner of
weary men who are at the same time thoughtless and depressed,
and thrown himself on his narrow bed in the dusty corner of
the little room on the stairs near the front door. Madame,
the landlady, had laid aside her front and said her prayer to
the Virgin. Monsieur, the landlord, had muttered his last
Curse against the Jews and drunk his last glass of rum. They
Snored like honest people recruiting their strength for the mor-
2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
row. In number two Suzanne Charpot, Domini's maid, was
dreaming of the Rue de Rivoli. X-
But Domini, with wide-open eyes, was staring from her big,
square pillow at the red brick floor of her bedroom, on which
stood various trunks marked by the officials of the Douane.
There were two windows in the room looking out towards the
Place de la Marine, below which lay the station. Closed per-
siennes of brownish-green, blistered wood protected them. One
of these windows was open. Yet the candle at Domini’s bed-
side burnt steadily. The night was warm and quiet, without
wind. -
As she lay there, Domini still felt the movement of the sea.
The passage had been a bad one. The ship, crammed with
French recruits for the African regiments, had pitched and
rolled almost incessantly for thirty-one hours, and Domini and
most of the recruits had been ill. Domini had had an inner
cabin, with a skylight opening on to the lower deck, and had
heard above the sound of the waves and winds their groans and
exclamations, rough laughter, and half-timid, half-defiant con-
versations as she shook in her berth. At Marseilles she had seen
them come on board, one by one, dressed in every variety of
poor costume, each one looking anxiously around to see what
the others were like, each one carrying a mean yellow or black
bag or a carefully-tied bundle. On the wharf stood a Zouave, in
tremendous red trousers and a fez, among great heaps of dull
brown woollen rugs. And as the recruits came hesitatingly
along he stopped them with a sharp word, examined the tickets
they held out, gave each one a rug, and pointed to the gangway
that led from the wharf to the vessel. Domini, then leaning
over the rail of the upper deck, had noticed the different ex-
pressions with which the recruits looked at the Zouave. To all
of them he was a phenomenon, a mystery of Africa and of the
new life for which they were embarking. He stood there im-
pudently and indifferently among the woollen rugs, his red fez
pushed well back on his short, black hair cut en brosse, his
bronzed face twisted into a grimace of fiery contempt, throwing,
with his big and muscular arms, rug after rug to the anxious
young peasants who filed before him. They all gazed at his
legs in the billowing red trousers; some like children regarding
a Jack-in-the-box which had just sprung up into view, others
like ignorant, but superstitious, people who had unexpectedly
come upon a shrine by the wayside. One or two seemed dis-
posed to laugh nervously, as the very stupid laugh at anything
PRELUDE 3
they see for the first time. But fear seized them. They re-
frained convulsively and shambled on to the gangway, looking
sideways, like fowls, and holding their rugs awkwardly to their
breasts with their dirty, red hands.
To Domini there was something pitiful in the sight of all
these lads, uprooted from their homes in France, stumbling
helplessly on board this ship that was to convey them to Africa.
They crowded together. Their poor bundles and bags jostled
one against the other. With their clumsy boots they trod on
each other's feet. And yet all were lonely strangers. No two
in the mob seemed to be acquaintances. And every lad, each
in his different way, was furtively on the defensive, uneasily
wondering whether some misfortune might not presently come
to him from one of these unknown neighbours.
A few of the recruits, as they came on board, looked up at
Domini as she leant over the rail; and in all the different
coloured and shaped eyes she thought she read a similar dread
and nervous hope that things might turn out pretty well for
them in the new existence that had to be faced. The Zouave,
wholly careless or unconscious of the fact that he was an in-
carnation of Africa to these raw peasants, who had never before
stirred beyond the provinces where they were born, went on
taking the tickets, and tossing the woollen rugs to the passing
figures, and pointing ferociously to the gangway. He got very
tired of his task towards the end, and showed his fatigue to the
latest comers, shoving their rugs into their arms with brusque
violence. And when at length the wharf was bare he spat on it,
rubbed his short-fingered, sunburnt hands down the sides of his
blue jacket, and Swaggered on board with the air of a dutiful but
injured man who longed to do harm in the world. By this time
the ship was about to cast off, and the recruits, ranged in line
along the bulwarks of the lower deck, were looking in silence
towards Marseilles, which, with its tangle of tall houses, its
forest of masts, its long, ugly factories and workshops, now
represented to them the whole of France. The bronchial hoot
of the siren rose up menacingly. Suddenly two Arabs, in dirty
white burnouses and turbans bound with cords of camel's hair,
came running along the wharf. The siren hooted again. The
Arabs bounded over the gangway with grave faces. All the
recruits turned to examine them with a mixture of superiority
and deference, such as a schoolboy might display when observ-
ing the agilities of a tiger. The ropes fell heavily from the
Posts of the quay into the water, and were drawn up dripping
4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
by the sailors, and Le Général Bertrand began to move out
slowly among the motionless ships.
Domini, looking towards the land with the vague and yet
inquiring glance of those who are going out to Sea, noticed the
church of Notre dame de la Garde, perched on its high hill, and
dominating the noisy city, the harbour, the cold, grey Squadrons
of the rocks and Monte Cristo's dungeon. At the time she
hardly knew it, but now, as she lay in bed in the silent inn,
she remembered that, keeping her eyes upon the church, she
had murmured a confused prayer to the Blessed Virgin for the
recruits. What was the prayer? She could scarcely recall it.
A woman's petition, perhaps, against the temptations that beset
men shifting for themselves in far-off and dangerous countries;
a woman's cry to a woman to watch over all those who wander.
When the land faded, and the white sea rose, less romantic
considerations took possession of her. She wished to sleep, and
drank a dose of a drug. It did not act completely, but only
numbed her senses. Through the long hours she lay in the
dark cabin, looking at the faint radiance that penetrated through
the glass shutters of the skylight. The recruits, humanised and
drawn together by misery, were becoming acquainted. The
incessant murmur of their voices dropped down to her, with
the sound of the waves, and of the mysterious cries and creaking
shudders that go through labouring ships. And all these noises
seemed to her hoarse and pathetic, suggestive, too, of danger.
When they reached the African shore, and saw the lights of
houses twinkling upon the hills, the pale recruits were mar-
shalled on the white road by Zouaves, who met them from the
barracks of Robertville. Already they looked older than they
had looked when they embarked. Domini saw them march
away up the hill. They still clung to their bags and bundles.
Some of them, lifting shaky voices, tried to sing in chorus. One
of the Zouaves angrily shouted to them to be quiet. They
obeyed, and disappeared heavily into the shadows, staring about
them anxiously at the feathery palms that clustered in this new
and dark Country, and at the shrouded figures of Arabs who met
them on the way.
The red brick floor was heaving gently, Domini thought.
She found herself wondering how the cane chair by the small
wardrobe kept its footing, and why the cracked china basin
in the iron washstand, painted bright yellow, did not stir and
rattle. Her dressing-bag was open. She could see the silver
backs and tops of the brushes and bottles in it gleaming. They
PRELUDE 5
made her think suddenly of England. She had no idea why.
But it was too warm for England. There, in the autumn
time, an open window would let in a cold air, probably a biting
blast. The wooden shutter would be shaking. There would
be, perhaps, a sound of rain. And Domini found herself vaguely
pitying England and the people mewed up in it for the
winter. Yet how many winters she had spent there, dreaming
of liberty and doing dreary things—things without savour, with-
out meaning, without salvation for brain or soul. Her mind was
still dulled to a certain extent by the narcotic she had taken.
She was a strong and active woman, with long limbs and well-
knit muscles, a clever fencer, a tireless swimmer, a fine horse-
woman. But to-night she felt almost neurotic, like one of
the weak or dissipated sisterhood for whom “rest cures" are
invented, and by whom bland doctors live. That heaving
red floor continually emphasised for her her present feebleness.
She hated feebleness. So she blew out the candle and, with
misplaced energy, strove resolutely to sleep. Possibly her
resolution defeated its object. She continued in a condition of
dull and heavy wakefulness till the darkness became intolera-
ble to her. In it she saw perpetually the long procession of
the pale recruits winding up the hill of Addouna with their
bags and bundles, like spectres on a way of dreams. Finally
she resolved to accept a sleepless night. She lit her candle
again and saw that the brick floor was no longer heaving.
Two of the books that she called her “bed-books” lay within
easy reach of her hand. One was Newman's Dream of
Gerontius, the other a volume of the Badminton Library. She
chose the former and began to read.
Towards two o'clock she heard a long-continued rustling.
At first she supposed that her tired brain was still playing her
tricks. But the rustling continued and grew louder. It
Sounded like a noise coming from something very wide, and
spread out as a veil over an immense surface. She got up,
walked across the floor to the open window and unfastened the
persiennes. Heavy rain was falling. The night was very black,
and Smelt rich and damp, as if it held in its arms strange
offerings—a merchandise altogether foreign, tropical and
alluring. As she stood there, face to face with a wonder that
she could not see, Domini forgot Newman. She felt the brave
companionship of mystery. In it she divined the beating pulses,
the hot, surging blood of freedom.
She wanted freedom, a wide horizon, the great winds, the
6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
great sun, the terrible spaces, the glowing, shimmering radiance,
the hot, entrancing moons and bloomy, purple nights of Africa.
She wanted the nomad's fires and the acid voices of the Kabyle
dogs. She wanted the roar of the tom-toms, the clash of the
cymbals, the rattle of the negroes' castanets, the fluttering,
painted figures of the dancers. She wanted—more than she
could express, more than she knew. It was there, want, aching
in her heart, as she drew into her nostrils this strange and
wealthy atmosphere.
When Domini returned to her bed she found it impossible
to read any more Newman. The rain and the scents coming
up out of the hidden earth of Africa had carried her mind
away, as if on a magic carpet. She was content now to lie
awake in the dark.
Domini was thirty-two, unmarried, and in a singularly inde-
pendent—some might have thought a singularly lonely—situa-
tion. Her father, Lord Rens, had recently died, leaving
Domini, who was his only child, a large fortune. His life had
been a curious and a tragic one. Lady Rens, Domini's mother,
had been a great beauty of the gipsy type, the daughter of a
Hungarian mother and of Sir Henry Arlworth, one of the most
prominent and ardent English Catholics of his day. A son of
his became a priest, and a famous preacher and writer on
religious subjects. Another child, a daughter, took the veil.
Lady Rens, who was not clever, although she was at one time
almost universally considered to have the face of a muse, shared
in the family ardour for the Church, but was far too fond of
the world to leave it. While she was very young she met Lord
Rens, a Lifeguardsman of twenty-six, who called himself a
Protestant, but who was really quite happy without any faith.
He fell madly in love with her and, in order to marry her,
became a Catholic, and even a very devout one, aiding his
wife's Church by every means in his power, giving large sums
to Catholic charities, and working, with almost fiery zeal, for
the spread of Catholicism in England.
Unfortunately, his new faith was founded only on love for
a human being, and when Lady Rens, who was intensely pas-
sionate and impulsive, suddenly threw all her principles to the
winds, and ran away with a Hungarian musician, who had
made a furore one season in London by his magnificent violin-
playing, her husband, stricken in his soul, and also wounded
almost to the death in his pride, abandoned abruptly the religion
of the woman who had converted and betrayed him.
PRELUDE 7
Domini was nineteen, and had recently been presented at
Court when the scandal of her mother's escapade shook the
town, and changed her father in a day from one of the happiest
to one of the most cynical, embittered and despairing of men.
She, who had been brought up by both her parents as a Catholic,
who had from her earliest years been earnestly educated in the
beauties of religion, was now exposed to the almost frantic
persuasions of a father who, hating all that he had formerly
loved, abandoning all that, influenced by his faithless wife, he
had formerly clung to, wished to carry his daughter with him
into his new and most miserable way of life. But Domini,
who, with much of her mother's dark beauty, had inherited
much of her quick vehemence and passion, was also gifted with
brains, and with a certain largeness of temperament and clear-
ness of insight which Lady Rens lacked. Even when she was
still quivering under the shock and shame of her mother's guilt
and her own solitude, Domini was unable to share her father's
intensely egoistic view of the religion of the culprit. She could
not be persuaded that the faith in which she had been brought
up was proved to be a sham because one of its professors, whom
she had above all others loved and trusted, had broken away
from its teachings and defied her own belief. She would not
secede with her father, but remained in the Church of the
mother she was never to see again, and this in spite of extraor-
dinary and dogged efforts on the part of Lord Rens to pervert
her to his own Atheism. His mind had been so warped by the
agony of his heart that he had come to feel as if by tearing his
only child from the religion he had been led to by the greatest
sinner he had known, he would be, in some degree at least,
purifying his life tarnished by his wife's conduct, raising again
a little way the pride she had trampled in the dust.
Her uncle, Father Arlworth, helped Domini by his support
and counsel in this critical period of her life, and Lord Rens
in time ceased from the endeavour to carry his child with
him as companion in his tragic journey from love and belief
to hatred and denial. He turned to the violent occupations of
despair, and the last years of his life were hideous enough,
as the world knew and Domini sometimes suspected. But
though Domini had resisted him she was not unmoved or
wholly uninfluenced by her mother's desertion and its effect
upon her father. She remained a Catholic, but she gradually
ceased from being a devout one. Although she had seemed
to stand firm she had in truth been shaken, if not in her belief,
8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in a more precious thing—her love. She complied with the
ordinances, but felt little of the inner beauty of her faith.
The effort she had made in withstanding her father's assault
upon it had exhausted her. Though she had had the strength
to triumph at the moment, a partial and secret collapse was
the price she had afterwards to pay. Father Arlworth, who
had a subtle understanding of human nature, noticed that
Domini was changed and slightly hardened by the tragedy she
had known, and was not surprised or shocked. Nor did he
attempt to force her character back into its former way of
beauty. He knew that to do so would be dangerous, that
Domini's nature required peace in which to become absolutely
normal once again after the shock it had sustained.
When Domini was twenty-one he died, and her safest guide,
the one who understood her best, went from her. The years
passed. She lived with her embittered father, and drifted into
the unthinking worldliness of the life of her order. Her home
was far from ideal. Yet she would not marry. The wreck of
her parents’ domestic life had rendered her mistrustful of
human relations. She had seen something of the terror of love,
and could not, like other women, regard it as safety and as
sweetness. So she put it from her, and strove to fill her life
with all those lesser things which men and women grasp, as
the Chinese grasp the opium pipe, those things which lull our
comprehension of realities to sleep.
When Lord Rens died, still blaspheming, and without any
of the consolations of religion, Domini felt the imperious need
of change. She did not grieve actively for the dead man.
In his last years they had been very far apart, and his death
relieved her from the perpetual contemplation of a tragedy.
Lord Rens had grown to regard his daughter almost with
enmity in his enmity against her mother's religion, which was
hers. She had come to think of him rather with pity than
with love. Yet his death was a shock to her. When he could
speak no more, but only lie still, she remembered suddenly just
what he had been before her mother's flight. The succeeding
period, long though it had been and ugly, was blotted out.
She wept for the poor, broken life now ended, and was afraid
for his future in the other world. His departure into the un-
known roused her abruptly to a clear conception of how his
action and her mother's had affected her own character. As
she stood by his bed she wondered what she might have been
if her mother had been true, her father happy, to the end. Then
PRELUDE - 9
she felt afraid of herself, recognising partially, and for the first
time, how all these years had seen her long indifference. She
felt self-conscious too, ignorant of the real meaning of life,
and as if she had always been, and still remained, rather a
complicated piece of mechanism than a woman. A desolate
enervation of spirit descended upon her, a sort of bitter, and
yet dull, perplexity. She began to wonder what she was,
capable of what, of how much good or evil, and to feel sure that
she did not know, had never known or tried to find out. Once,
in this state of mind, she went to confession. She came away
feeling that she had just joined with the priest in a farce. How
can a woman who knows nothing about herself make anything
but a worthless confession? she thought. To say what you have
done is not always to say what you are. And only what you are
matters eternally.
Presently, still in this perplexity of spirit, she left England
with only her maid as companion. After a short tour in the
South of Europe, with which she was too familiar, she crossed
the sea to Africa, which she had never seen. Her destination
was Beni-Mora. She had chosen it because she liked its name,
because she saw on the map that it was an oasis in the Sahara
Desert, because she knew it was small, quiet, yet face to face
with an immensity of which she had often dreamed. Idly she
fancied that perhaps in the sunny solitude of Beni-Mora, far
from all the friends and reminiscences of her old life, she might
learn to understand herself. How 2 She did not know. She
did not seek to know. Here was a vague pilgrimage, as many
pilgrimages are in this world—the journey of the searcher who
knew not what she sought. And so now she lay in the dark,
and heard the rustle of the warm African rain, and smelt the
perfumes rising from the ground, and felt that the unknown
was very near her—the unknown with all its blessed possibilities
of change.
CHAPTER II
LONG before dawn the Italian waiter rolled off his little bed,
put a cap on his head, and knocked at Domini's and at Suzanne
Charpot's doors.
It was still dark, and still raining, when the two women came
out to get into the carriage that was to take them to the station.
The Place de la Marine was a sea of mud, brown and sticky
IO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
as nougat. Wet palms dripped by the railing near a desolate
kiosk painted green and blue. The sky was grey and low.
Curtains of tarpaulin were let down on each side of the carriage,
and the coachman, who looked like a Maltese, and wore a
round cap edged with pale yellow fur, was muffled up to the
ears. Suzanne's round, white face was puffy with fatigue,
and her dark eyes, generally good-natured and hopeful, were
dreary, and squinted slightly, as she tipped the Italian waiter,
and handed her mistress's dressing-bag and rug into the car-
riage. The waiter stood on the discoloured step, yawning from
ear to ear. Even the tip could not excite him. Before the
carriage started he had gone into the hotel and banged the
door. The horses trotted quickly through the mud, descending
the hill. One of the tarpaulin curtains had been left unbut-
toned by the coachman. It flapped to and fro, and when its
movement was outward Domini could catch short glimpses of .
mud, of glistening palm-leaves with yellow stems, of gas-lamps,
and of Something that was like an extended grey nothingness.
This was the sea. Twice she saw Arabs trudging along, hold-
ing their skirts up in a bunch sideways, and showing legs bare
beyond the knees. Hoods hid their faces. They appeared to
be agitated by the weather, and to be continually trying to plant
their naked feet in dry places. Suzanne, who sat opposite to
Domini, had her eyes shut. If she had not from time to time
passed her tongue quickly over her full, pale lips she would
have looked like a dead thing. The coquettish angle at which
her little black hat was set on her head seemed absurdly in-
appropriate to the occasion and her mood. It suggested a hat
being worn at some festival. Her black, gloved hands were
tightly twisted together in her lap, and she allowed her plump
body to wag quite loosely with the motion of the carriage, mak-
ing no attempt at resistance. She had really the appearance of
a corpse sitting up. The tarpaulin flapped monotonously. The
coachman cried out in the dimness to his horses like a bird,
prolonging his call drearily, and then violently cracking his
whip. Domini kept her eyes fixed on the loose tarpaulin, so
that she might not miss one of the wet visions it discovered
by its reiterated movement. She had not slept at all, and felt
as if there was a gritty dryness close behind her eyes. She also
felt very alert and enduring, but not in the least natural. Had
some extraordinary event occurred; had the carriage, for in-
stance, rolled over the edge of the road into the sea, she was
convinced that she could not have managed to be either sur-
PRELUDE II
prised or alarmed. If anyone had asked her whether she was
tired she would certainly have answered “No.” -
Like her mother, Domini was of a gipsy type. She stood five
feet ten, had thick, almost coarse and wavy black hair that was
parted in the middle of her small head, dark, almond-shaped,
heavy-lidded eyes, and a clear, warmly-white skin, unflecked
with colour. She never flushed under the influence of ex-
citement or emotion. Her forehead was broad and low. Her
eyebrows were long and level, thicker than most women's.
The shape of her face was oval, with a straight, short nose, a
short, but rather prominent and round chin, and a very
expressive mouth, not very small, slightly depressed at the cor-
ners, with perfect teeth, and red lips that were unusually flex-
ible. Her figure was remarkably athletic, with shoulders that
were broad in a woman, and a naturally small waist. Her
hands and feet were also small. She walked splendidly, like
a Syrian, but without his defiant insolence. In her face, when
it was in repose, there was usually an expression of still indif-
ference, some thought of opposition. She looked her age, and
had never used a powder-puff in her life. She could smile
easily and easily become animated, and in her animation there
was often fire, as in her calmness there was sometimes cloud.
Timid people were generally disconcerted by her appearance,
and her manner did not always reassure them. Her obvious
physical strength had something surprising in it, and woke
wonder as to how it had been, or might be, used. Even when
her eyes were shut she looked singularly wakeful.
Domini and Suzanne got to the station of Robertville much
too early. The large hall in which they had to wait was
miserably lit, blank and decidedly cold. The ticket-office was
on the left, and the room was divided into two parts by a
broad, low counter, on which the heavy luggage was placed
before being weighed by two unshaven and hulking men in blue
Smocks. Three or four Arab touts, in excessively shabby
European clothes and turbans, surrounded Domini with offers
of assistance. One, the dirtiest of the group, with a gaping
eye-socket, in which there was no eye, succeeded by his pas-
sionate volubility and impudence in attaching himself to her in
a sort of official capacity. He spoke fluent, but faulty, French,
which attracted Suzanne, and, being abnormally muscular and
active, in an amazingly short time got hold of all their boxes
and bags and ranged them on the counter. He then indulged
in a dramatic performance, which he apparently considered
I 2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
likely to rouse into life and attention the two unshaven men in
smocks, who were smoking cigarettes, and staring vaguely at
the metal sheet on which the luggage was placed to be weighed.
Suzanne remained expectantly in attendance, and Domini,
having nothing to do, and seeing no bench to rest on, walked
slowly up and down the hall near the entrance.
It was now half-past four in the morning, and in the air
Domini fancied that she felt the cold breath of the coming
dawn. Beyond the opening of the station, as she passed and
repassed in her slow and aimless walk, she saw the soaking
tarpaulin curtains of the carriage she had just left glistening
in the faint lamp-light. After a few minutes the Arabs she had
noticed on the road entered. Their brown, slipperless feet were
caked with sticky mud, and directly they found themselves
under shelter in a dry place they dropped the robes they had
been holding up, and, bending down, began to flick it off on to
the floor with their delicate fingers. They did this with ex-
traordinary care and precision, rubbed the soles of their feet
repeatedly against the boards, and then put on their yellow
slippers and threw back the hoods which had been drawn over
their heads. -
A few French passengers straggled in, yawning and looking
irritable. The touts surrounded them, with noisy offers of
assistance. The men in smocks still continued to smoke and
to stare at the metal sheet on the floor. Although the luggage
now extended in quite a long line upon the counter they paid
no attention to it, or to the violent and reiterated cries of the
Arabs who stood behind it, anxious to earn a tip by getting it
weighed and registered quickly. Apparently they were wrapped
in savage dreams. At length a light shone through the small
opening of the ticket-office, the men in smocks stirred and threw
down their cigarette stumps, and the few travellers pressed for-
ward against the counter, and pointed to their boxes with their
sticks and hands. Suzanne Charpot assumed an expression of
attentive suspicion, and Domini ceased from walking up and
down. Several of the recruits came in hastily, accompanied by
two Zouaves. They were wet, and looked dazed and tired out.
Grasping their bags and bundles they went towards the plat-
form. A train glided slowly in, gleaming faintly with lights.
Domini's trunks were slammed down on the weighing machine,
and Suzanne, drawing out her purse, took her stand before the
shining hole of the ticket-office.
In the wet darkness there rose up a sound like a child
PRELUDE I3
calling out an insulting remark. This was followed imme-
diately by the piping of a horn. With a jerk the train started,
passed one by one the station lamps, and, with a steady jangling
and rattling, drew out into the shrouded country. Domini
was in a wretchedly-lit carriage with three Frenchmen, facing
the door which opened on to the platform. The man opposite
to her was enormously fat, with a coal-black beard growing up
to his eyes. He wore black gloves and trousers, a huge black
cloth hat, and a thick black cloak with a black buckle near the
throat. His eyes were shut, and his large, heavy head drooped
forward. Domini wondered if he was travelling to the funeral
of some relative. The two other men, one of whom looked like
a commercial traveller, kept shifting their feet upon the hot-
water tins that lay on the floor, clearing their throats and sigh-
ing loudly. One of them coughed, let down the window, spat,
drew the window up, sat sideways, put his legs suddenly up on
the seat and groaned. The train rattled more harshly, and
shook from side to side as it got up speed. Rain streamed
down the window-panes, through which it was impossible to
See anything.
Domini still felt alert, but an overpowering sensation of
dreariness had come to her. She did not attribute this sensa-
tion to fatigue. She did not try to analyse it. She only felt as
if she had never seen or heard anything that was not cheerless,
as if she had never known anything that was not either sad, or
odd, or inexplicable. What did she remember 2 A train of
trifles that seemed to have been enough to fill all her life; the
arrival of the nervous and badly-dressed recruits at the wharf,
their embarkation, their last staring and pathetic look at France,
the stormy voyage, the sordid illness of almost everyone on
board, the approach long after Sundown to the small and un-
known town, of which it was impossible to see anything clearly,
the marshalling of the recruits pale with sickness, their pitiful
attempt at cheerful singing, angrily checked by the Zouaves in
charge of them, their departure up the hill carrying their poor
belongings, the sleepless night, the Sound of the rain falling,
the scents rising from the unseen earth. The tap of the Italian
waiter at the door, the damp drive to the station, the long wait
there, the sneering signal, followed by the piping horn, the
jerking and rattling of the carriage, the dim light within it
falling upon the stout Frenchman in his mourning, the stream-
ing water upon the window-panes. These few sights, sounds,
sensations were like the story of a life to Domini just then,
I4 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
were more, were like the whole of life; always dull noise,
strange, flitting, pale faces, and an unknown region that re-
mained perpetually invisible, and that must surely be ugly or
terrible.
The train stopped frequently at lonely little stations. Domini
looked out, letting down the window for a moment. At each
station she saw a tiny house with a peaked roof, a wooden
railing dividing the platform from the country road, mud, grass
bending beneath the weight of water-drops, and tall, dripping,
shaggy eucalyptus trees. Sometimes the station-master's children
peered at the train with curious eyes, and depressed-looking
Arabs, carefully wrapped up, their mouths and chins covered by
folds of linen, got in and out slowly. s
Once Domini saw two women, in thin, floating white dresses
and spangled veils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy
silver ornaments jangled on their ankles, above their black
slippers splashed with mud. Their sombre eyes stared out from
circles of Kohl, and, with stained, claret-coloured hands, whose
nails were bright red, they clasped their light and bridal
raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted by a
gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left
side of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey
woollen jacket. He pushed the two women into the train as
if he were pushing bales, and got in after them, showing
enormous bare legs, with calves that stuck out like lumps of
1IOI].
The darkness began to fade, and presently, as the grey light
grew slowly stronger, the rain ceased, and it was possible to sce
through the glass of the carriage window.
The country began to discover itself, as if timidly, to
Domini's eyes. She had recently noticed that the train was
going very slowly, and she could now see why. They were
mounting a steep incline. The rich, damp earth of the plains
beyond Robertville, with its rank grass, its moist ploughland and
groves of eucalyptus, was already left behind. The train was
crawling in a cup of the hills, grey, sterile and abandoned, with-
out roads or houses, without a single tree. Small, grey-green
bushes flourished here and there on tiny humps of earth, but
they seemed rather to emphasise than to diminish the aspect of
poverty presented by the soil, over which the dawn, rising from
the wet arms of night, shed a cold and reticent illumination.
By a gash in the rounded hills, where the earth was brownish
yellow, a flock of goats with flapping ears tripped slowly, fol-
PRELUDE I5
lowed by two Arab boys in rags. One of the boys was playing
upon a pipe covered with red arabesques. Domini heard two or
three bars of the melody. They were ineffably wild and bird-
like, very clear and sweet. They seemed to her to match exactly
the pure and ascetic light cast by the dawn over these bare,
grey hills, and they stirred her abruptly from the depressed
lassitude in which the dreary chances of recent travel had
drowned her. She began, with a certain faint excitement, to
realise that these low, round-backed hills were African, that
she was leaving behind the sea, so many of whose waves wept
along European shores, that somewhere, beyond the broken
and near horizon line toward which the train was creeping,
lay the great desert, her destination, with its pale sands and
desolate cities, its sunburnt tribes of workers, its robbers, war-
riors and priests, its ethereal mysteries of mirage, its tragic
splendours of colour, of tempest and of heat. A sense of a
wider world than the compressed world into which physical
fatigue had decoyed her woke in her brain and heart. The
little Arab, playing carelessly upon his pipe with the red
arabesques, was soon invisible among his goats beside the dry
water-course that was probably the limit of his journeying,
but Domini felt that like a musician at the head of a proces-
sion he had played her bravely forward into the dawn and
Africa.
At Ah-Souf Domini changed into another train and had the
carriage to herself. The recruits had reached their destination.
Hers was a longer pilgrimage and still towards the sun. She
could not afterwards remember what she thought about during
this part of her journey. Subsequent events so coloured all her
memories of Africa that every fold of its sun-dried soil was
endowed in her mind with the significance of a living thing.
Every palm beside a well, every stunted vine and clambering
flower upon an auberge wall, every form of hill and silhouette
of shadow, became in her heart intense with the beauty and the
pathos she used, as a child, to think must lie beyond the sunset.
And so she forgot.
A strange sense of leaving all things behind had stolen over
her. . She was really fatigued by travel and by want of sleep,
but she did not know it. Lying back in her seat, with her head
against the dirty white covering of the shaking carriage, she
watched the great change that was coming over the land.
It seemed as if God were putting forth His hand to with-
draw gradually all things of His creation, all the furniture He
I6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
had put into the great Palace of the world; as if He meant to
leave it empty and utterly naked.
So Domini thought.
First He took the rich and shaggy grass, and all the little
flowers that bloomed modestly in it. Then He drew away the
orange groves, the oleander and the apricot trees, the faithful
eucalyptus with its pale stems and tressy foliage, the Sweet
waters that fertilised the soil, making it soft and brown where
the plough seamed it into furrows, the tufted plants and giant
reeds that crowd where water is. And still, as the train ran
on, His gifts were fewer. At last even the palms were gone,
and the Barbary fig displayed no longer among the crumbling
boulders its tortured strength, and the pale and fantastic evolu-
tions of its unnatural foliage. Stones lay everywhere upon the
pale yellow or grey-brown earth. Crystals glittered in the sun
like shallow jewels, and far away, under clouds that were dark
and feathery, appeared hard and relentless mountains, which
looked as if they were made of iron carved into horrible and
jagged shapes. Where they fell into ravines they became black.
Their swelling bosses and flanks, sharp sometimes as the spines
of animals, were steel coloured. Their summits were purple,
deepening where the clouds came down to ebony.
Journeying towards these terrible fastnesses were caravans on
which Domini looked with a heavy and lethargic interest.
Many Kabyles, fairer than she was, moved slowly on foot
towards their rock villages. -
Over the withered earth they went towards the distant
mountains and the clouds. The sun was hidden. The wind
continued to rise. Sand found its way in through the carriage
windows. The mountains, as Domini saw them more clearly,
looked more gloomy, more unearthly. There was something
unnatural in their hard outlines, in the rigid mystery of their
innumerable clefts. That all these people should be journeying
towards them was pathetic, and grieved the imagination.
The wind seemed so cold, now the sun was hidden, that she
had drawn both the windows up and thrown a rug over her.
She put her feet up on the opposite seat, and half closed her
eyes. But she still turned them towards the glass on her left,
and watched. It seemed to her quite impossible that this shak-
ing and slowly moving train had any destination. The desola-
tion of the country had become so absolute that she could not
conceive of anything but still greater desolation lying beyond.
She had no feeling that she was merely traversing a tract of
PRELUDE 17
sterility. Her sensation was that she had passed the boundary
of the world God had created, and come into some other place,
upon which He had never looked and of which He had no
knowledge.
Abruptly she felt as if her father had entered into some
such region when he forced his way out of his religion. And in
this region he had died. She had stood on the verge of it by his
deathbed. Now she was in it.
There were no Arabs journeying now. No tents huddled
among the low bushes. The last sign of vegetation was
obliterated. The earth rose and fell in a series of humps and
depressions, interspersed with piles of rock. Every shade of
yellow and of brown mingled and flowed away towards the
foot of the mountains. Here and there dry water-courses
showed their teeth. Their crumbling banks were like the rind
of an orange. Little birds, the hue of the earth, with tufted
crests, tripped jauntily among the stones, fluttered for a few
yards and alighted, with an air of strained alertness, as if
their minute bodies were full of trembling wires. They were
the only living things Domini could see. -
She thought again of her father. In some such region as
this his soul must surely be wandering, far away from God.
She let down the glass.
The wind was really cold and blowing gustily. She drank it
in as if she were tasting a new wine, and she was conscious at
once that she had never before breathed such air. There was
a wonderful, a startling flavour in it, the flavour of gigantic
spaces and of rolling leagues of emptiness. Neither among
mountains nor upon the sea had she ever found an atmosphere
so fiercely pure, clean and lively with unutterable freedom. She
leaned out to it, shutting her eyes. And now that she saw
nothing her palate savoured it more intensely. The thought of
her father fled from her. All detailed thoughts, all the minutiae
of the mind were swept away. She was bracing herself to an
encounter with something gigantic, something unshackled, the
being from whose lips this wonderful breath flowed.
When two lovers kiss their breath mingles, and, if they
really love, each is conscious that in the breath of the loved
one is the loved one's soul, coming forth from the temple of
the body through the temple door. As Domini leaned out, see-
ing nothing, she was conscious that in this breath she drank
there was a soul, and it seemed to her that it was the soul which
flames in the centre of things, and beyond. She could not think
I8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
any longer of her father as an outcast because he had aban-
doned a religion. For all religions were surely here, marching
side by side, and behind them, background to them, there was
something far greater than any religion. Was it snow or fire?
Was it the lawlessness of that which has made laws, or the
calm of that which has brought passion into being? Greater
love than is in any creed, or greater freedom than is in any
human liberty P Domini only felt that if she had ever been a
slave at this moment she would have died of joy, realising the
boundless freedom that circles this little earth. -
“Thank God for it!” she murmured aloud.
Her own words woke her to a consciousness of ordinary
things—or made her sleep to the eternal.
She closed the window and sat down.
A little later the sun came out again, and the various shades
of yellow and of orange that played over the wrinkled earth
deepened and glowed. Domini had sunk into a lethargy so
complete that, though not asleep, she was scarcely aware of the
sun. She was dreaming of liberty.
Presently the train slackened and stopped. She heard a loud
chattering of many voices and looked out. The sun was now
shining brilliantly, and she saw a station crowded with Arabs
in white burnouses, who were vociferously greeting friends in
the train, were offering enormous oranges for sale to the pas-
sengers, or were walking up and down gazing curiously into
the carriages, with the unblinking determination and indiffer-
ence to a return of scrutiny which she had already noticed and
thought animal. A guard came up, told her the place was El-
Akbara, and that the train would stay there ten minutes to
wait for the train from Beni-Mora. She decided to get out
and stretch her cramped limbs. On the platform she found
Suzanne, looking like a person who had just been slapped.
One side of the maid’s face was flushed and covered with a
faint tracery of tiny lines. The other was greyish white. Sleep
hung in her eyes, over which the lids drooped as if they were
partially paralysed. Her fingers were yellow from peeling an
orange, and her Smart little hat was cocked on one side. There
were grains of sand on her black gown, and when she saw
her mistress she at once began to compress her lips, and to
assume the expression of obstinate patience characteristic of prop-
erly-brought-up servants who find themselves travelling far
from home in outlandish places. -
“Have you been asleep, Suzanne?” .
PRELUDE I9
“No, Mam'zelle.”
“You’ve had an orange?”
“I couldn’t get it down, Mam'zelle.”
“Would you like to see if you can get a cup of coffee here?”
“No, thank you, Mam'zelle. I couldn't touch this Arab
stuff.”
“We shall soon be there now.”
Suzanne made all her naturally small features look much
smaller, glanced down at her skirt, and suddenly began to shake
the grains of sand from it in an outraged manner, at the same
time extending her left foot. Two or three young Arabs came
up and stood, staring, round her. Their eyes were magnificent,
and gravely observant. Suzanne went on shaking and patting
her skirt, and Domini walked away down the platform, won-
dering what a French maid's mind was like. Suzanne's certainly
had its limitations. It was evident that she was horrified by the
sight of bare legs. Why?
As Domini walked along the platform among the fruit-
sellers, the guides, the turbaned porters with their badges, the
staring children and the ragged wanderers who thronged about
the train, she thought of the desert to which she was now so
near. It lay, she knew, beyond the terrific wall of rock that
faced her. But she could see no opening. The towering sum-
mits of the cliffs, jagged as the teeth of a wolf, broke crudely
upon the serene purity of the sky. Somewhere, concealed in the
darkness of the gorge at their feet, was the mouth from which
had poured forth that wonderful breath, quivering with freedom
and with unearthly things. The sun was already declining,
and the light it cast becoming softened and romantic. Soon
there would be evening in the desert. Then there would be
night. And she would be there in the night with all things that
the desert holds. -
A train of camels was passing on the white road that de-
scended into the shadow of the gorge. Some savage-looking
men accompanied them, crying continually, “Oosh! Oosh!”
They disappeared, desert-men with their desert-beasts, bound
no doubt on some tremendous journey through the regions of
the sun. Where would they at last unlade the groaning
camels? Domini saw them in the midst of dunes red with the
dying fires of the west. And their shadows lay along the sands
like weary things reposing.
She started when a low voice spoke to her in French, and,
turning round, saw a tall Arab boy, magnificently dressed in
2O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
pale blue cloth trousers, a Zouave jacket braided with gold,
and a fez, standing near her. She was struck by the colour
of his skin, which was faint as the colour of café au lait, and by
the contrast between his huge bulk and his languid, almost
effeminate, demeanour. As she turned he smiled at her calmly,
and lifted one hand toward the wall of rock.
“Madame has seen the desert?” he asked.
“Never,” answered Domini.
“It is the garden of oblivion,” he said, still in a low voice,
, and speaking with a delicate refinement that was almost minc-
ing, “In the desert one forgets everything; even the little heart
one loves, and the desire of one's own soul.”
“How can that be?” asked Domini.
“Shal-lâh. It is the will of God. One remembers nothing
any more.”
His eyes were fixed upon the gigantic pinnacles of the rocks.
There was something fanatical and highly imaginative in their
gaZe.
“What is your name?” Domini asked.
“Batouch, Madame. You are going to Beni-Mora?”
“Yes, Batouch.”
“I too. To-night, under the mimosa trees, I shall compose a
poem. It will be addressed to Irena, the dancing-girl. She is like
the little moon when it first comes up above the palm trees.”
Just then the train from Beni-Mora ran into the station, and
Domini turned to seek her carriage. As she was coming to it
she noticed, with the pang of the selfish traveller who wishes
to be undisturbed, that a tall man, attended by an Arab porter
holding a green bag, was at the door of it and was evidently
about to get in. He glanced round as Domini came up, half
drew back rather awkwardly as if to allow her to precede him,
then suddenly sprang in before her. The Arab lifted in the
bag, and the man, endeavouring hastily to thrust some money
into his hand, dropped the coin, which fell down between the
step of the carriage and the platform. The Arab immediately
made a greedy dive after it, interposing his body between
Domini and the train; and she was obliged to stand waiting
while he looked for it, grubbing frantically in the earth with
his brown fingers, and uttering muffled exclamations, apparently
of rage. Meanwhile, the tall man had put the green bag up
on the rack, gone quickly to the far side of the carriage, and sat
down looking out of the window.
Domini was struck by the mixture of indecision and blunder-
PRELUDE 2 I
ing haste which he had shown, and by his impoliteness.
Evidently he was not a gentleman, she thought, or he would
surely have obeyed his first impulse and allowed her to get into
the train before him. It seemed, too, as if he were determined
to be discourteous, for he sat with his shoulder deliberately
turned towards the door, and made no attempt to get his Arab
out of the way, although the train was just about to start.
Domini was very tired, and she began to feel angry with him,
contemptuous too. The Arab could not find the money, and the
little horn now piped its warning of departure. It was absolutely
necessary for her to get in at once if she did not mean to stay
at El-Akbara. She tried to pass the grovelling Arab, but as she
did so he suddenly sprang up, jumped on to the step of the
carriage, and, thrusting his body half through the doorway,
began to address a torrent of Arabic to the passenger within.
The horn sounded again, and the carriage jerked backwards
preparatory to starting on its way to Beni-Mora.
Domini caught hold of the short European jacket the Arab
was wearing, and said in French:
“You must let me get in at once. The train is going.”
The man, however, intent on replacing the coin he had lost,
took no notice of her, but went on vociferating and gesticulating.
The traveller said something in Arabic. Domini was now very
angry. She gripped the jacket, exerted all her force, and pulled
the Arab violently from the door. He alighted on the platform
beside her and nearly fell. Before he had recovered himself she
sprang up into the train, which began to move at that very
moment. As she got in, the man who had caused all the bother
was leaning forward with a bit of silver in his hand, looking as if
he were about to leave his seat. Domini cast a glance of contempt
at him, and he turned quickly to the window again and stared
out, at the same time putting the coin back into his pocket.
A dull flush rose on his cheek, but he attempted no apology,
and did not even offer to fasten the lower handle of the door.
“What a boor!” Domini thought as she bent out of the
window to do it.
When she turned from the door, after securing the handle,
she found the carriage full of a pale twilight. The train was
stealing into the gorge, following the caravan of camels which
she had seen disappearing. She paid no more attention to her
companion, and her feeling of acute irritation against him died
away for the moment. The towering cliffs cast mighty shadows,
the darkness deepened, the train, quickening its speed, seemed
22 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
straining forward into the arms of night. There was a chill in
the air. Domini drank it into her lungs again, and again was
startled, stirred, by the life and the mentality of it. She was
conscious of receiving it with passion, as if, indeed, she held her
lips to a mouth and drank some being's very nature into hers.
She forgot her recent vexation and the man who had caused it.
She forgot everything in mere sensation. She had no time to
ask, “Whither am I going?” She felt like one borne upon a
wave, Seaward, to the wonder, to the danger, perhaps, of a mur-
muring unknown. The rocks leaned forward; their teeth were
fastened in the sky; they enclosed the train, banishing the sun
and the world from all the lives within it. She caught a fleeting
glimpse of rushing waters far beneath her; of crumbling banks,
covered with débris like the banks of a disused quarry; of
shattered boulders, grouped in a wild disorder, as if they had
been vomited forth from some underworld or cast headlong
from the sky; of the flying shapes of fruit trees, mulberries and
apricot trees, oleanders and palms; of dull yellow walls guarding
pools the colour of absinthe, imperturbable and still. A strong
impression of increasing cold and darkness grew in her, and the
noises of the train became hollow, and seemed to be expanding,
as if they were striving to press through the impending rocks and
find an outlet into space; failing, they rose angrily, violently, in
Domini’s ears, protesting, wrangling, shouting, declaiming. The
darkness became like the darkness of a nightmare. All the trees
vanished, as if they fled in fear. The rocks closed in as if to
crush the train. There was a moment in which Domini shut
her eyes, like one expectant of a tremendous blow that cannot
be avoided. *
She opened them to a flood of gold, out of which the face of
a man looked, like a face looking out of the heart of the sun.
CHAPTER III
IT flashed upon her with the desert, with the burning heaps of
carnation and orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilder-
ness, the first brown villages glowing in the late radiance of the
afternoon like carven things of bronze, the first oasis of palms,
deep green as a wave of the sea and moving like a wave, the first
wonder of Sahara warmth and Sahara distance. She passed
through the golden door into the blue country, and saw this
face, and, for a moment, moved by the exalted sensation of a
PRELUDE 23
magical change in all her world, she looked at it simply as a new
sight presented, with the sun, the mighty rocks, the hard, blind
villages, and the dense trees, to her eyes, and connected it with
nothing. It was part of this strange and glorious desert region
to her. That was all, for a moment.
In the play of untempered golden light the face seemed pale.
It was narrow, rather long, with marked and prominent features,
a nose with a high bridge, a mouth with straight, red lips, and a
powerful chin. The eyes were hazel, almost yellow, with curious
markings of a darker shade in the yellow, dark centres that
looked black, and dark outer circles. The eyelashes were very
long, the eyebrows thick and strongly curved. The forehead
was high, and swelled out slightly above the temples. There
was no hair on the face, which was closely shaved. Near the
mouth were two faint lines that made Domini think of physical
suffering, and also of mediaeval knights. Despite the glory of
i. sunshine there seemed to be a shadow falling across the
2C6.
This was all that Domini noticed before the spell of change
and the abrupt glory was broken, and she knew that she was
staring into the face of the man who had behaved so rudely at
the station of El-Akbara. The knowledge gave her a definite
shock, and she thought that her expression must have changed
abruptly, for a dull flush rose on the stranger's thin cheeks and
mounted to his rugged forehead. He glanced out of the window
and moved his hands uneasily. Domini noticed that they
scarcely tallied with his face. Though scrupulously clean, they
looked like the hands of a labourer, hard, broad, and brown.
Even his wrists, and a small section of his left forearm, which
showed as he lifted his left hand from one knee to the other,
were heavily tinted by the sun. The spaces between the fingers
were wide, as they usually are in hands accustomed to grasping
implements, but the fingers themselves were rather delicate and
art1St 1C.
Domini observed this swiftly. Then she saw that her neigh-
bour was unpleasantly conscious of her observation. This vexed
her vaguely, perhaps because even so trifling a circumstance was
like a thin link between them. She snapped it by ceasing to
look at or think of him. The window was down. A delicate
and warm breeze drifted in, coming from the thickets of the
palms. In flashing out of the darkness of the gorge Domini
had had the sensation of passing into a new world and a new
atmosphere. The sensation stayed with her now that she was
24 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
no longer dreaming or giving the reins to her imagination, but
was calmly herself. Against the terrible rampart of rock the
winds beat across the land of the Tell. But they die there
frustrated. And the rains journey thither and fail, sinking into
the absinthe-coloured pools of the gorge. And the snows and
even the clouds stop, exhausted in their pilgrimage. The gorge
is not their goal, but it is their grave, and the desert never sees
their burial. So Domini’s first sense of casting away the known
remained, and even grew, but now strongly and quietly. It was
well founded, she thought. For she looked out of the carriage
window towards the barrier she was leaving, and saw that on this
side, guarding the desert from the world that is not desert, it was
pink in the evening light, deepening here and there to rose
colour, whereas on the far side it had a rainy hue as of rocks in
England. And there was a lustre of gold in the hills, tints of
glowing bronze slashed with a red line as the heart of a wound,
but recalling the heart of a flower. The folds of the earth
glistened. There was flame down there in the river bed. The
wreckage of the land, the broken fragments, gleamed as if
braided with precious things. Everywhere the salt crystals
sparkled with the violence of diamonds. Everywhere there was
a strength of colour that hurled itself to the gaze, unabashed
and almost savage, the colour of summer that never ceases, of
heat that seldom dies, in a land where there is no autumn and
seldom a flitting cold.
Down on the road near the village there were people; old
men playing the “lady's game " with Stones set in squares of
sand, women peeping from flat roofs and doorways, children
driving goats. A man, like a fair and beautiful Christ, with
long hair and a curling beard, beat on the ground with a staff
and howled some tuneless notes. He was dressed in red and
green. No one heeded him. A distant sound of the beating
of drums rose in the air, mingled with piercing cries uttered by
a nasal voice. And as if below it, like the orchestral accom-
paniment of a dramatic solo, hummed many blending noises;
faint calls of labourers in the palm-gardens and of women at the
wells; chatter of children in dusky courts sheltered with reeds
and pale-stemmed grasses; dim pipings of homeward-coming
shepherds drowned, with their pattering charges, in the golden
vapours of the west; soft twitterings of birds beyond brown walls
in green seclusions; dull barking of guard dogs; mutter of camel
drivers to their velvet-footed beasts.
The caravan which Domini had seen descending into the
PRELUDE 25
gorge reappeared, moving deliberately along the desert road
towards the south. A watch-tower peeped above the palms.
Doves were circling round it. Many of thern were white. They
flew like ivory things above this tower of glowing bronze, which
slept at the foot of the pink rocks. On the left rose a mass of
blood-red earth and stone. Slanting rays of the sun struck it,
and it glowed mysteriously like a mighty jewel.
As Domini leaned out of the window, and the salt crystals
sparkled to her eyes, and the palms swayed languidly above the
waters, and the rose and mauve of the hills, the red and orange
of the earth, streamed by in the flames of the sun before the
passing train like a barbaric procession, to the sound of the
hidden drums, the cry of the hidden priest, and all the whisper-
ing melodies of these strange and unknown lives, tears started
into her eyes. The entrance into this land of lame and colour,
through its narrow and terrific portal, stirred her almost beyond
her present strength. The glory of this world mounted to her
heart, oppressing it. The embrace of Nature was so violent
that it crushed her. She felt like a little fly that had sought to
wing its way to the sun and, at a million miles' distance from it,
was being shrivelled by its heat. When all the voices of the vil-
lage fainted away she was glad, although she strained her ears to
hear their fading echoes. Suddenly she knew that she was
very tired, so tired that emotions acted upon her as physical
exertion acts upon an exhausted man. She sat down and
shut her eyes. For a long time she stayed with her eyes
shut, but she knew that on the windows strange lights were
glittering, that the carriage was slowly filling with the ineffable
splendours of the west. Long afterwards she often wondered
whether she endowed the sunset of that day with supernatural
glories because she was so tired. Perhaps the salt mountain
of El-Alia did not really sparkle like the celestial mountains in
the visions of the saints. Perhaps the long chain of the Aures
did not really look as if all its narrow clefts had been powdered
with the soft and bloomy leaves of unearthly violets, and the
desert was not cloudy in the distance towards the Zibans with
the magical blue she thought she saw there, a blue neither
of sky nor sea, but like the hue at the edge of a flame in
the heart of a wood fire. She often wondered, but she never
knew.
The sound of a movement made her look up. Her com-
panion was changing his place and going to the other side
of the compartment. He walked softly, no doubt with the
26 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
desire not to disturb Domini. His back was towards her for
an instant, and she noticed that he was a powerful man, though
very thin, and that his gait was heavy. It made her think again
of his labourer's hands, and she began to wonder idly what was
his rank and what he did. He sat down in the far corner on
the same side as herself and stared out of his window, crossing
his legs. He wore large boots with square toes, clumsy and
unfashionable, but comfortable and good for walking in. His
clothes had obviously been made by a French tailor. The stuff
of them was grey and woolly, and they were cut tighter to the
figure than English clothes generally are. He had on a black
silk necktie, and a soft brown travelling hat dented in the
middle. By the way in which he looked out of the window,
Domini judged that he, too, was seeing the desert for the first
time. There was something almost passionately attentive in
his attitude, something of strained eagerness in that part of his
face which she could see from where she was sitting. His
cheek was not pale, as she had thought at first, but brown,
obviously burnt by the sun of Africa. But she felt that under-
neath the sunburn there was pallor. She fancied he might be
a painter, and was noting all the extraordinary colour effects
with the definiteness of a man who meant, perhaps, to repro-
duce them on canvas.
The light, which had now the peculiar, almost supernatural
softness and limpidity of light falling at evening from a declin-
ing sun in a hot country, came full upon him, and brightened
his hair. Domini saw that it was brown with some chestnut
in it, thick, and cut extremely short, as if his head had recently
been shaved. She felt convinced that he was not French. He
might be an Austrian, perhaps, or a Russian from the south of
Russia. He remained motionless in that attitude of profound
observation. It suggested great force not merely of body, but
also of mind, an almost abnormal concentration upon the thing
observed. This was a man who could surely shut out the whole
world to look at a grain of sand, if he thought it beautiful or
interesting.
They were near Beni-Mora now. Its palms appeared far off,
and in the midst of them a snow-white tower. The Sahara lay
beyond and around it, rolling away from the foot of low, brown
hills, that looked as if they had been covered with a soft powder
of bronze. A long spur of rose-coloured mountains stretched
away towards the South. The Sun was very near his setting.
Small, red clouds floated in the western quarter of the sky,
PRELUDE 27
and the far desert was becoming mysteriously dim and blue
like a remote sea. Here and there thin wreaths of smoke
ascended from it, and lights glittered in it, like earth-bound
StarS.
Domini had never before understood how strangely, how
strenuously, colour can at moments appeal to the imagination.
In this pageant of the East she saw arise the naked soul of
Africa; no faded, gentle thing, fearful of being seen, fearful
of being known and understood; but a phenomenon vital,
bold and gorgeous, like the sound of a trumpet pealing a
great réveille. As she looked on this flaming land laid fear-
lessly bare before her, disdaining the clothing of grass, plant
and flower, of stream and tree, displaying itself with an almost
brazen insouciance, confident in its spacious power, and in its
golden pride, her heart leaped up as if in answer to a deliberate
appeal. The fatigue in her died. She responded to this réveille
like a young warrior who, so soon as he is wakened, stretches
out his hand for his sword. The sunset flamed on her clear,
white cheeks, giving them its hue of life. And her nature
flamed to meet it. In the huge spaces of the Sahara her soul
seemed to hear the footsteps of Freedom treading towards the
south. And all her dull perplexities, all her bitterness of ennui,
all her questionings and doubts, were swept away on the keen
desert wind into the endless plains. She had come from her
last confession asking herself, “What am I?’” She had felt
infinitely small confronted with the pettiness of modern, civi-
lised life in a narrow, crowded world. Now she did not torture
herself with any questions, for she knew that something large,
Something capable, something perhaps even noble, rose up
within her to greet all this nobility, all this mighty frankness
and fierce, undressed sincerity of nature. This desert and this
sun would be her comrades, and she was not afraid of them.
Without being aware of it she breathed out a great sigh,
feeling the necessity of liberating her joy of spirit, of letting
the body, however inadequately and absurdly, make some dem-
onstration in response to the secret stirring of the soul. The
man in the far corner of the carriage turned and looked at her.
When she heard this movement Domini remembered her irrita-
tion against him at El-Akbara. In this splendid moment the
feeling seemed to her so paltry and contemptible that she had
a lively impulse to make amends for the angry look she had
cast at him. Possibly, had she been quite normal, she would
have checked such an impulse. The voice of conventionality
28 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
would have made itself heard. But Domini could act vigor-
ously, and quite carelessly, when she was moved. And she
was deeply moved now, and longed to lavish the humanity,
the sympathy and ardour that were quick in her. In answer
to the stranger's movement she turned towards him, opening
her lips to speak to him. Afterwards she never knew what she
meant to say, whether, if she had spoken, the words would have
been French or English. For she did not speak.
The man's face was illuminated by the setting sun as he
sat half round on his seat, leaning with his right hand palm
downwards on the cushions. The light glittered on his short
hair. He had pushed back his soft hat, and exposed his high,
rugged forehead to the air, and his brown left hand gripped the
top of the carriage door. The large, knotted veins on it, the
stretched sinews, were very perceptible. The hand looked
violent. Domini’s eyes fell on it as she turned. The impulse
to speak began to fail, and when she glanced up at the man's
face she no longer felt it at all. For, despite the glory of the
sunset on him, there seemed to be a cold shadow in his eyes.
The faint lines near his mouth looked deeper than before, and
now suggested most powerfully the dreariness, the harshness
of long-continued suffering. The mouth itself was compressed
and grim, and the man's whole expression was fierce and
startling as the expression of a criminal bracing himself to
endure inevitable detection. So crude and piercing indeed
was this mask confronting her that Domini started and was
inclined to shudder. For a minute the man’s eyes held hers,
and she thought she saw in them unfathomable depths of
misery or of wickedness. She hardly knew which. Sorrow
was like crime, and crime like the sheer desolation of grief
to her just then. And she thought of the outer darkness
spoken of in the Bible. It came before her in the sunset.
Her father was in it, and this stranger stood by him. The
thing was as vital, and fled as swiftly as a hallucination in a
madman's brain.
Domini looked down. All the triumph died out in her, all
the exquisite consciousness of the freedom, the colour, the
bigness of life. For there was a black spot on the Sun—
humanity, God's mistake in the great plan of Creation. And
the shadow cast by humanity tempered, even surely conquered,
the light. She wondered whether she would always feel the
cold of the Sunless places in the golden dominion of the sun.
The man had dropped his eyes too. His hand fell from
PRELUDE 29
the door to his knee. He did not move till the train ran into
Beni-Mora, and the eager faces of countless Arabs stared in
upon them from the scorched field of manoeuvres where Spahis
were exercising in the gathering twilight.
CHAPTER IV
HAVING given her luggage ticket to a porter, Domini passed
out of the station followed by Suzanne, who looked and walked
like an exhausted marionette. Batouch, who had emerged from
a third-class compartment before the train stopped, followed
them closely, and as they reached the jostling crowd of Arabs
which swarmed on the roadway he joined them with the air of
a proprietor.
“Which is Madame's hotel?”
Domini looked round.
“Ah, Batouch!”
Suzanne jumped as if her string had been sharply pulled, and
cast a glance of dreary suspicion upon the poet. She looked at
his legs, then upwards.
He wore white socks which almost met his pantaloons.
Scarcely more than an inch of pale brown skin was visible. The
gold buttons of his jacket glittered brightly. His blue robe
floated majestically from his broad shoulders, and the large
tassel of his fez fell coquettishly towards his left ear, above
which was set a pale blue flower with a woolly green leaf.
Suzanne was slightly reassured by the flower and the bright
buttons. She felt that they needed a protector in this mob of
shouting brown and black men, who clamoured about them like
Savages, exposing bare legs and arms, even bare chests, in a
most barbarous manner.
“We are going to the Hotel du Désert,” Domini con-
tinued. “Is it far?”
“Only a few minutes, Madame.”
“I shall like to walk there.”
Suzanne collapsed. Her bones became as wax with appre-
hension. She saw herself toiling over leagues of sand towards
Some nameless hovel.
b ( & Suzanne, you can get into the omnibus and take the hand-
agS.
At the Sweet word omnibus a ray of hope stole into the
maid's heart, and when a nicely-dressed man, in a long blue
3O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
coat and indubitable trousers, assisted her politely into a vehicle
which was unmistakable she almost wept for joy.
Meanwhile Domini, escorted serenely by the poet, walked
towards the long gardens of Beni-Mora. She passed over a
wooden bridge. White dust was flying from the road, along
which many of the Arab aristocracy were indolently strolling,
carrying lightly in their hands small red roses or sprigs of pink
geranium. In their white robes they looked, she thought, like
monks, though the cigarettes many of them were smoking fought
against the illusion. Some of them were dressed like Batouch
in pale-coloured cloth. They held each other's hands loosely as
they sauntered along, chattering in soft contralto voices. Two
or three were attended by servants, who walked a pace or two
behind them on the left. These were members of great families,
rulers of tribes, men who had influence over the Sahara people.
One, a shortish man with a coal-black beard, moved so majestic-
ally that he seemed almost a giant. His face was very pale.
On one of his small, almost white, hands glittered a diamond
ring. A boy with a long, hooked nose strolled gravely near
him, wearing brown kid gloves and a turban Spangled with
gold.
“That is the Kaid of Tonga, Madame,” whispered Batouch,
looking at the pale man reverently. “He is here en permis-
sion.”
“How white he is.”
“They tried to poison him. Ever since he is ill inside.
That is his brother. The brown gloves are very chic.”
A light carriage rolled rapidly by them in a white mist of
dust. It was drawn by a pair of white mules, who whisked
their long tails as they trotted briskly, urged on by a cracking
whip. A big boy with heavy brown eyes was the coachman.
By his side sat a very tall young negro with a humorous pointed
nose, dressed in primrose yellow. He grinned at Batouch out
of the mist, which accentuated the coal-black hue of his whim-
sical, happy face.
“That is the Agha's son with Mabrouk.”
They turned aside from the road and came into a long
tunnel formed by mimosa trees that met above a broad path.
To right and left were other little paths branching among the
trunks of fruit trees and the narrow twigs of many bushes that
grew luxuriantly. Between sandy brown banks, carefully
flattened and beaten hard by the spades of Arab gardeners,
glided streams of opaque water that were guided from the
PRELUDE 3I
desert by a system of dams. The Kaid’s mill watched over
them and the great wall of the fort. In the tunnel the light
was very delicate and tinged with green. The noise of the
water flowing was just audible. A few Arabs were sitting on
benches in dreamy attitudes, with their heelless slippers hanging
from the toes of their bare feet. Beyond the entrance of the
tunnel Domini could see two horsemen galloping at a tremen-
dous pace into the desert. Their red cloaks streamed out over
the sloping quarters of their horses, which devoured the earth
as if in a frenzy of emulation. They disappeared into the last
glories of the sun, which still lingered on the plain and blazed
among the summits of the red mountains.
All the contrasts of this land were exquisite to Domini and,
in some mysterious way, suggested eternal things; whispering
through colour, gleam, and shadow, through the pattern of leaf
and rock, through the air, now fresh, now tenderly warm and
perfumed, through the silence that hung like a filmy cloud in
the golden heaven.
She and Batouch entered the tunnel, passing at once into
definite evening. The quiet of these gardens was delicious, and
was only interrupted now and then by the sound of wheels upon
the road as a carriage rolled by to some house which was hidden
in the distance of the oasis. The seated Arabs scarcely dis-
turbed it by their murmured talk. Many of them indeed said
nothing, but rested like lotus-eaters in graceful attitudes, with
hanging hands, and eyes, soft as the eyes of gazelles, that
regarded the shadowy paths and creeping waters with a grave
serenity born of the inmost spirit of idleness.
But Batouch loved to talk, and soon began a languid mono-
logue.
He told Domini that he had been in Paris, where he had
been the guest of a French poet who adored the East; that he
himself was “instructed,” and not like other Arabs; that he
smoked the hashish and could sing the love songs of the Sahara;
that he had travelled far in the desert, to Souf and to Ouargla
beyond the ramparts of the Dunes; that he composed verses in
the night when the uninstructed, the brawlers, the drinkers of
absinthe and the domino players were sleeping or wasting their
time in the darkness over the pastimes of the lewd, when the
sybarites were sweating under the smoky arches of the Moorish
baths, and the maréchale of the dancing-girls sat in her flat-
roofed house guarding the jewels and the amulets of her gay
confederation. These verses were written both in Arabic and
32 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in French, and the poet of Paris and his friends had found them
beautiful as the dawn, and as the palm trees of Ourlana by the
Artesian wells. All the girls of the Ouled Nails were cele-
brated in these poems—Aishoush and Irena, Fatma and Baali.
In them also were enshrined legends of the venerable marabouts
who slept in the Paradise of Allah, and tales of the great war-
riors who had fought above the rocky precipices of Constantine
and far off among the sands of the South. They told the stories
of the Koulouglis, whose mothers were Moorish slaves, and
romances in which figured the dark-skinned Beni M'Zab and
the freed negroes who had fled away from the lands in the very
heart of the sun.
All this information, not wholly devoid of a naïve egoism,
Batouch poured forth gently and melodiously as they walked
through the twilight in the tunnel. And Domini was quite
content to listen. The strange names the poet mentioned, his
liquid pronunciation of them, his allusions to wild events that
had happened long ago in desert places, and to the lives of priests
of his old religion, of fanatics, and girls who rode on camels
caparisoned in red to the dancing-houses of Sahara cities—all
these things cradled her humour at this moment and seemed to
plant her, like a mimosa tree, deep down in this sand garden of
the sun.
She had forgotten her bitter sensation in the railway carriage
when it was recalled to her mind by an incident that clashed
with her present mood.
Steps sounded on the path behind them, going faster than
they were, and presently Domini saw her fellow-traveller strid-
ing along, accompanied by a young Arab who was carrying the
green bag. The stranger was looking straight before him
down the tunnel, and he went by swiftly. But his guide had
something to say to Batouch, and altered his pace to keep beside
them for a moment. He was a very thin, lithe, skittish-looking
youth, apparently about twenty-three years old, with a choco-
late-brown skin, high cheek bones, long, almond-shaped eyes
twinkling with dissipated humour, and a large mouth that
Smiled showing pointed white teeth. A straggling black mous-
tache Sprouted on his upper lip, and long coarse strands of jet-
black hair escaped from under the front of a fez that was
pushed back on his small head. His neck was thin and long,
and his hands were wonderfully delicate and expressive, with
rosy and quite perfect nails. When he laughed he had a habit
of throwing his head forward and tucking in his chin, letting
PRELUDE - 33
the tassel of his fez fall over his temple to left or right. He
was dressed in white with a burnous, and had a many-coloured
piece of silk with frayed edges wound about his waist, which
was as slim as a young girl's.
He spoke to Batouch with intense vivacity in Arabic, at the
same time shooting glances half-obsequious, half-impudent,
wholly and even preternaturally keen and intelligent at Domini.
Batouch replied with the dignified languor that seemed peculiar
to him. The colloquy continued for two or three minutes.
Domini thought it sounded like a quarrel, but she was not
accustomed to Arabs' talk. Meanwhile, the stranger in front
had slackened his pace, and was obviously lingering for his
neglectful guide. Once or twice he nearly stopped, and made a
movement as if to turn round. But he checked it and went
on slowly. His guide spoke more and more vehemently, and
suddenly, tucking in his chin and displaying his rows of big and
dazzling teeth, burst into a gay and boyish laugh, at the same
time shaking his head rapidly. Then he shot one last sly look
at Domini and hurried on, airily Swinging the green bag to
and fro. His arms had tiny bones, but they were evidently
strong, and he walked with the light ease of a young animal.
After he had gone he turned his head once and stared full at
Domini. She could not help laughing at the vanity and con-
sciousness of his expression. It was childish. Yet there was
something ruthless and wicked in it too. As he came up to
the stranger the latter looked round, said something to him,
and then hastened forward. Domini was struck by the dif-
ference between their gaits. For the stranger, although he
was so strongly built and muscular, walked rather heavily and
awkwardly, with a peculiar shuffling motion of his feet. She
began to wonder how old he was. About thirty-five or thirty-
seven, she thought.
“That is Hadj,” said. Batouch in his soft, rich voice.
( & Hadj P y 3
“Yes. He is my cousin. He lives in Beni-Mora, but he,
too, has been in Paris. He has been in prison too.”
“What for P '’
“Stabbing.”
Batouch gave this piece of information with quiet indiffer-
ence, and continued:
“He likes to laugh. He is lazy. He has earned a great
deal of money, and now he has none. To-night he is very gay,
because he has a client.” -
34 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“I see. Then he is a guide?”
“Many people in Beni-Mora are guides. But Hadj is
always lucky in getting the English.” -
“That man with him isn't English ” Domini exclaimed.
She had wondered what the traveller's nationality was, but
it had never occurred to her that it might be the same as her
OWI1. -
“Yes, he is. And he is going to the Hotel du Désert. You
and he are the only English here, and almost the only travellers.
It is too early for many travellers yet. They fear the heat.
And besides, few English come here now. What a pity! They
spend money, and like to see everything. Hadj is very anxious
to buy a costume at Tunis for the great fête at the end of
Ramadan. It will cost fifty or sixty francs. He hopes the
Englishman is rich. But all the English are rich and generous.”
Here Batouch looked steadily at Domini with his large,
unconcerned eyes.
“This one speaks Arabic a little.”
Domini made no reply. She was surprised by this piece of
information. There was something, she thought, essentially
un-English about the stranger. He was certainly not dressed
by an English tailor. But it was not only that which had
caused her mistake. His whole air and look, his manner of
holding himself, of sitting, of walking—yes, especially of walk-
ing—were surely foreign. Yet, when she came to think about
it, she could not say that they were characteristic of any other
country. Idly she had said to herself that the stranger might
be an Austrian or a Russian. But she had been thinking of his
colouring. It happened that two attachés of those two nations.
whom she had met frequently in London, had hair of that
shade of rather warm brown.
“He does not look like an Englishman,” she said pres-
ently.
“. He can talk in French and in Arabic, but Hadj says he is
English.”
“How should Hadj know 2 ”
“Because he has the eyes of the jackal, and has been with
many English. We are getting near to the Catholic church,
Madame. You will see it through the trees. And there is
Monsieur the Curé coming towards us. He is coming from his
house, which is near the hotel.”
At some distance in the twilight of the tunnel Domini saw a
black figure in a Soutane walking very slowly towards them,
PRELUDE 35
The stranger, who had been covering the ground rapidly with
his curious, shuffling stride, was much nearer to it than they
were, and, if he kept on at his present pace, would soon pass
it. But suddenly Domini saw him pause and hesitate. He
bent down and seemed to be doing something to his boot.
Hadj dropped the green bag, and was evidently about to kneel
down and assist him when he lifted himself up abruptly, looked
before him as if at the priest who was approaching, then turned
sharply to the right into a path which led out of the garden to
the arcades of the Rue Berthe. Hadj followed, gesticulating
frantically, and volubly explaining that the hotel was in the
opposite direction. But the stranger did not stop. He only
glanced swiftly back over his shoulder once, and then continued
on his way. #
“What a funny man that is!” said Batouch. “What does
he want to do?”
Domini did not answer him, for the priest was just passing
them, and she saw the church to the left among the trees. It
was a plain, unpretending building, with a white wooden door
set in an arch. Above the arch were a small cross, two windows
with rounded tops, a clock, and a white tower with a pink roof.
She looked at it, and at the priest, whose face was dark and
meditative, with lustrous, but sad, brown eyes. Yet she
thought of the stranger.
Her attention was beginning to be strongly fixed upon this
unknown man. His appearance and manner were so unusual
that it was impossible not to notice him. -
“There is the hotel, Madame!” said Batouch.
Domini saw it standing at right angles to the church, facing
the gardens. A little way back from the church was the priest's
house, a white building shaded by date palms and pepper trees.
As they drew near the stranger reappeared under the arcade,
above which was the terrace of the hotel. He vanished through
the big doorway, followed by Hadj.
While Suzanne was unpacking Domini came out on to the
broad terrace which ran along the whole length of the Hotel du
Désert. Her bedroom opened on to it in front, and at the
back communicated with a small salon. This salon opened on
to a second and Smaller terrace, from which the desert could be
seen beyond the palms. There seemed to be no guests in the
hotel. The verandah was deserted, and the peace of the soft
evening was profound. Against the white parapet a small,
round table and a cane arm-chair had been placed. A sub-
36 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
dued patter of feet in slippers came up the stairway, and an
Arab servant appeared with a tea-tray. He put it down on
the table with the precise deftness which Domini had already
observed in the Arabs at Robertville, and swiftly vanished.
She sat down in the chair and poured out the tea, leaning her
left arm on the parapet.
Her head was very tired and her temples felt compressed.
She was thankful for the quiet round her. Any harsh voice
would have been intolerable to her just then. There were many
Sounds in the village, but they were vague, and mingled, flowing
together and composing one sound that was soothing, the
restrained and level voice of Life. It hummed in Domini’s ears
as she Sipped her tea, and gave an under-side of romance to the
peace. The light that floated in under the round arches of the
terrace was subdued. The sun had just gone down, and the
bright colours bloomed no more upon the mountains, which
looked like silent monsters that had lost the hue of youth and
had suddenly become mysteriously old. The evening star shone
in a sky that still held on its Western border some last pale
glimmerings of day, and, at its signal, many dusky wanderers
folded their loose garments round them, slung their long guns
across their shoulders, and prepared to start on their journey,
helped by the cool night wind that blows in the desert when the
sun departs.
Domini did not know of them, but she felt the near presence
of the desert, and the feeling quieted her nerves. She was
thankful at this moment that she was travelling without any
woman friend and was not persecuted by any sense of obliga-
tion. In her fatigue, to rest passive in the midst of quiet, and
soft light, calm in the belief, almost the certainty, that this
desert village contained no acquaintance to disturb her, was to
know all the joy she needed for the moment. She drank it in
dreamily. Liberty had always been her fetish. What woman
had more liberty than she had, here on this lonely verandah,
with the shadowy trees below P ; "
The bell of the church near by chimed softly, and the
familiar sound fell strangely upon Domini’s ears out here in
Africa, reminding her of many sorrows. Her religion was
linked with terrible memories, with cruel struggles, with hateful
Scenes of violence. Lord Rens had been a man of passionate
temperament. Strong in goodness when he had been led by
love, he had been equally strong in evil when hate had led him.
Domini had been forced to contemplate at close quarters the
PRELUDE 37
raw character of a warped man, from whom circumstance had
stripped all tenderness, nearly all reticence. The terror of
truth was known to her. She had shuddered before it, but
she had been obliged to watch it during many years. In
coming to Beni-Mora she had had a sort of vague, and almost
childish, feeling that she was putting the broad sea between her-
self and it. Yet before she had started it had been buried in
the grave. She never wished to behold such truth again. She
wanted to look upon some other truth of life—the truth of
beauty, of calm, of freedom. Lord Rens had always been a
slave, the slave of love, most of all when he was filled with
hatred, and Domini, influenced by his example, instinctively
connected love with a chain. Only the love a human being
has for God seemed to her sometimes the finest freedom; the
movement of the soul upward into the infinite obedient to the
call of the great Liberator. The love of man for woman,
of woman for man, she thought of as imprisonment, bondage.
Was not her mother a slave to the man who had wrecked her
life and carried her spirit beyond the chance of heaven? Was
not her father a slave to her mother? She shrank definitely
from the contemplation of herself loving, with all the strength
she suspected in her heart, a human being. In her religion only
she had felt in rare moments something of love. And now
here, in this tremendous and conquering land, she felt a divine
stirring in her love for Nature. For that afternoon Nature, so
often calm and meditative, or gently indifferent, as one too
complete to be aware of those who lack completeness, had
impetuously summoned her to worship, had ardently appealed
to her for something more than a temperate watchfulness or a
Sober admiration. There had been a most definite demand
made upon her. Even in her fatigue and in this dreamy twilight
she was conscious of a latent excitement that was not lulled to
sleep. 3.
And as she sat there, while the darkness grew in the sky
and spread Secretly along the Sandy rills among the trees, she
wondered how much she held within her to give in answer to
this cry to her of self-confident Nature. Was it only a little?
She did not know. Perhaps she was too tired to know. But
however much it was it must seem meagre. What is even a
woman's heart given to the desert or a woman's soul to the
Sea? What is the worship of anyone to the sunset among the
hills, or to the wind that lifts all the clouds from before the
face of the moon?
38 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
A chill stole over Domini. She felt like a very poor woman,
who can never know the joy of giving, because she does not
possess even a mite.
The church bell chimed again among the palms. Domini
heard voices quite clearly below her under the arcade. A
French café was installed there, and two or three soldiers were
taking their apéritif before dinner out in the air. They were
talking of France, as people in exile talk of their country, with
the deliberateness that would conceal regret and the child's
instinctive affection for the mother. Their voices made
Domini think again of the recruits, and then, because of them,
of Notre Dame de la Garde, the mother of God, looking
towards Africa. She remembered the tragedy of her last con-
fession. Would she be able to confess here to the Father whom
she had seen strolling in the tunnel? Would she learn to
know here what she really was?
How warm it was in the night, and how warmth, as it
develops the fecundity of the earth, develops also the possibili-
ties in many men and women. Despite her lassitude of body,
which kept her motionless as an idol in her chair, with her
arm lying along the parapet of the verandah, Domini felt as
if a confused crowd of things indefinable, but violent, was
already stirring within her nature, as if this new climate was
calling armed men into being. Could she not hear the murmur
of their voices, the distant clashing of their weapons?
Without being aware of it she was dropping into sleep. The
sound of a footstep on the wooden floor of the verandah recalled
her. It was at some distance behind her. It crossed the
verandah and stopped. She felt quite certain that it was the
step of her fellow-traveller, not because she knew he was staying
in the hotel, but rather because of the curious, uneven heaviness
of the tread.
What was he doing? Looking over the parapet into the
fruit gardens, where the white figures of the Arabs were flitting
through the trees?
He was perfectly silent. Domini was now wide awake. The
feeling of calm serenity had left her. She was nervously
troubled by this presence near her, and swiftly recalled the few
trifling incidents of the day which had begun to delineate a
character for her. They were, she found, all unpleasant, all,
at least, faintly disagreeable. Yet, in sum, what was their
meaning? The sketch they traced was so slight, so confused,
that it told little. The last incident was the strangest. And
TRELUDE 39,
again she saw the long and luminous pathway of the tunnel,
flickering with light and shade, carpeted with the pale reflec-
tions of the leaves and narrow branches of the trees, the black
figure of the priest far down it, and the tall form of the
stranger in an attitude of painful hesitation. Each time she
had seen him, apparently desirous of doing something definite,
hesitation had overtaken him. In his indecision there was some-
thing horrible to her, something alarming.
She wished he was not standing behind her, and her discom-
fort increased. She could still hear the voices of the soldiers in
the café. Perhaps he was listening to them. They sounded
louder.
The speakers were getting up from their seats. There
was a jingling of spurs, a tramp of feet, and the voices died
away. The church bell chimed again. As it did so Domini
heard heavy and uneven steps cross the verandah hurriedly.
An instant later she heard a window shut sharply.
“Suzannel ” she called.
Her maid appeared, yawning, with various parcels in her
hands.
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“I sha’n’t go down to the salle-à-manger to-night. Tell them
to give me some dinner in my salon.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“You did not see who was on the verandah just now?”
The maid looked surprised.
“I was in Mademoiselle’s room.”
“Yes. How near the church is.”
“Mademoiselle will have no difficulty in getting to Mass.
She will not be obliged to go among all the Arabs.”
Domini smiled.
“I have come here to be among the Arabs, Suzanne.”
“The porter of the omnibus tells me they are dirty and very
dangerous. They carry knives, and their clothes are full of
fleas.” -
“You will feel quite differently about them in the morning.
Don't forget about dinner.”
“I will speak about it at once, Mademoiselle.”
Suzanne disappeared, walking as one who suspects an
ambush.
After dinner Domini went again to the verandah. She found
Batouch there. He had now folded a snow-white turban round
his head, and looked like a young high priest of some ornate
4O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
religion. He suggested that Domini should come out with him
to visit the Rue des Ouled Nails and see the strange dances of
the Sahara. But she declined.
“Not to-night, Batouch. I must go to bed. I haven't slept
for two nights.” -
“But I do not sleep, Madame. In the night I compose
verses. My brain is alive. My heart is on fire.”
“Yes, but I am not a poet. Besides, I may be here for a
long time. I shall have many evenings to see the dances.”
The poet looked displeased.
“The gentleman is going,” he said. “Hadj is at the door
waiting for him now. But Hadj is afraid when he enters the
street of the dancers.”
( ( Why? } }
“There is a girl there who wishes to kill him. Her name is
Aishoush. She was sent away from Beni-Mora for six months,
but she has come back, and after all this time she still wishes to
kill Hadj.”
“What has he done to her?”
“He has not loved her. Yes, Hadj is afraid, but he will go
with the gentleman because he must earn money to buy a cos-
tume for the fête of Ramadan. I also wish to buy a new
costume.”
He looked at Domini with a dignified plaintiveness. His
pose against the pillar of the verandah was superb. Over his
blue cloth jacket he had thrown a thin white burnous, which
hung round him in classic folds. Domini could scarcely believe
that so magnificent a creature was touting for a franc. The
idea certainly did occur to her, but she banished it. For she
was a novice in Africa.
“I am too tired to go out to-night,” she said decisively.
“Good-night, Madame. I shall be here to-morrow morning
at seven o’clock. The dawn in the garden of the gazelles is
like the flames of Paradise, and you can see the Spahis galloping
upon horses that are beautiful as 5 y
“I shall not get up early to-morrow.”
Batouch assumed an expression that was tragically submis-
sive and turned to go. Just then Suzanne appeared at the
French window of her bedroom. She started as she perceived
the poet, who walked slowly past her to the staircase, throwing
his burnous back from his big shoulders, and stood looking after
him. Her eyes fixed themselves upon the section of bare leg
that was visible above his stockings white as the driven snow,
PRELUDE 41
and a faintly sentimental expression mingled with their defiance
and alarm.
Domini got up from her chair and leaned over the parapet.
A streak of yellow light from the doorway of the hotel lay upon
the white road below, and in a moment she saw two figures
come out from beneath the verandah and pause there. Hadj
was one, the stranger was the other. The stranger struck a
match and tried to light a cigar, but failed. He struck another
match, and then another, but still the cigar would not draw.
Hadj looked at him with mischievous astonishment.
“If Monsieur will permit me ” he began.
But the stranger took the cigar hastily from his mouth and
flung it away. + -
“I don’t want to smoke,” Domini heard him say in French.
Then he walked away with Hadj into the darkness.
As they disappeared Domini heard a faint shrieking in the
distance. It was the music of the African hautboy.
The night was marvellously dry and warm. The thickly
growing trees in the garden scarcely moved. It was very still
and very dark. Suzanne, standing at her window, looked like
a shadow in her black dress. Her attitude was romantic.
Perhaps the subtle influence of this Sahara village was beginning
to steal even over her obdurate spirit.
The hautboy went on crying. Its notes, though faint, were
sharp and piercing. Once more the church bell chimed among
the date palms, and the two musics, with their violently differ-
ing associations, clashing together smote upon Domini’s heart
with a sense of trouble, almost of tragedy. The pulses in her
temples throbbed, and she clasped her hands tightly together.
That brief moment, in which she heard the duet of those two
voices, was one of the most interesting, yet also one of the most
painful she had ever known. The church bell was silent now,
but the hautboy did not cease. It was barbarous and provoca-
tive, shrill with a persistent triumph.
Domini went to bed early, but she could not sleep. Just
before midnight she heard someone walking up and down on
the verandah. The step was heavy and shuffling. It came and
went, came and went, without pause till she was in a fever of
uneasiness. Only when two chimed from the church did it
cease at last.
She whispered a prayer to Notre Dame de la Garde, The
Blessed Virgin, looking towards Africa. For the first time she
felt the loneliness of her situation and that she was far away.
42 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
CHAPTER V
TowARDs morning Domini slept. It was nearly eight o'clock
when she awoke. The room was full of soft light which told of
the sun outside, and she got up at once, put on a pair of slippers
and opened the French window on to the verandah. Already
Beni-Mora was bathed in golden beams and full of gentle
activities. A flock of goats pattered by towards the edge of the
oasis. The Arab gardeners were lazily sweeping small leaves
from the narrow paths under the mimosa and pepper trees.
Soldiers in loose white suits, dark blue sashes and the fez, were
hastening from the Fort towards the market. A distant bugle
rang out and the snarl of camels was audible from the village.
Domini stood on the verandah for a moment, drinking in the
desert air. It made her feel very pure and clean, as if she had
just bathed in clear water. She looked up at the limpid sky,
which seemed full of hope and of the power to grant blessings,
and she was glad that she had come to Beni-Mora. Her lonely
sensation of the previous night had gone. As she stood in the
sun she was conscious that she needed re-creation and that here
she might find it. The radiant sky, the warm sun and the
freedom of the coming day and of many coming desert days,
filled her heart with an almost childish sensation. She felt
younger than she had felt for years, and even foolishly innocent,
like a puppy dog or a kitten. Her thick black hair, unbound,
fell in a veil round her strong, active body, and she had the
rare consciousness that behind that other more mysterious veil
her soul was to-day a less unfit companion for its mate than it
had been since her mother's sin.
Cleanliness—what a blessed condition that was, a condition
to breed bravery. In this early morning hour Beni-Mora looked
magically clean. Domini thought of the desperate dirt of
London mornings, of the sooty air brooding above black trees
and greasy pavements. Surely it was difficult to be clean of
soul there. Here it would be easy. One would tune one's lyre
in accord with Nature and be as a singing palm tree beside a
water-spring. She took up a little vellum-bound book which
she had laid at night upon her dressing-table. It was Of the
Imitation of Christ, and she opened it at haphazard and glanced
down on a sunlit page. Her eyes fell on these words:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When
PRELUDE 43
weary it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained;
when frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame
and a burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely pass-
eth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this
voice.”
The sunlight on the page of the little book was like the vivid
flame and the burning torch spoken of in it. Heat, light, a
fierce vitality. Domini had been weary so long, weary of Soul,
that she was almost startled to find herself responding quickly
to the sacred passion on the page, to the bright beam that kissed
it as twin kisses twin. She knelt down to say her morning
prayer, but all she could whisper was:
“O, God, renew me. O, God; renew me. Give me power
to feel, keenly, fiercely, even though I suffer. Let me wake.
Let me feel. Let me be a living thing once more. O, God,
renew me, renew me!”
While she prayed she pressed her face so hard against her
hands that patches of red came upon her cheeks. And after-
wards it seemed to her as if her first real, passionate prayer in
Beni-Mora had been almost like a command to God. Was not
such a fierce prayer perhaps a blasphemy?
She rose from that prayer to the first of her new days.
After breakfast she looked over the edge of the verandah and
saw Batouch and Hadj squatting together in the shadow of the
trees below. They were smoking cigarettes and talking eagerly.
Their conversation, which was in Arabic, sounded violent. The
accented words were like blows. Domini had not looked over
the parapet for more than a minute before the two guides saw
her and rose smiling to their feet.
“I am waiting to show the village to Madame,” said
Batouch, coming out softly into the road, while Hadj remained
under the trees, exposing his teeth in a sarcastic grin, which
plainly enough conveyed to Domini his pity for her sad mistake
in not engaging him as her attendant.
Domini nodded, went back into her room and put on a
shady hat. Suzanne handed her a large parasol lined with
green, and she descended the stairs rather slowly. She was not
Sure whether she wanted a companion in her first walk about
Beni-Mora. There would be more savour of freedom in soli-
tude. Yet she had hardly the heart to dismiss Batouch, with
all his dignity and determination. She resolved to take him for
a little while and then to get rid of him on some pretext.
44 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Perhaps she would make some purchases in the bazaars and
send him to the hotel with them. -
“Madame has slept well?” asked the poet as she emerged
into the Sun. *
“Pretty well,” she answered, nodding again to Hadj, whose
grin became more mischievous, and opening her parasol.
“Where are we going?”
“Wherever Madame wishes. There is the market, the negro
village, the mosque, the casino, the statue of the Cardinal, the
bazaars, the garden of the Count Ferdinand Anteoni.”
“A garden,” said Domini. “Is it a beautiful one?”
Batouch was about to burst into a lyric ecstasy, but he
checked himself and said:
“Madame shall see for herself and tell me afterwards if in
all Europe there is one such garden.”
“Oh, the English gardens are wonderful,” she said, smiling
at his patriotic conceit.
“No doubt. Madame shall tell me, Madame shall tell me,”
he repeated with imperturbable confidence.
“But first I wish to go for a moment into the church,” she
said. “Wait for me here, Batouch.”
She crossed the road, passed the modest, one-storied house
of the priest, and came to the church, ...hich looked out on to
the quiet gardens. Before going up the steps and in at the door
she paused for a moment. There was something touching to
her, as a Catholic, in this symbol of her faith set thus far out
in the midst of Islamism. The cross was surely rather lonely
here, raised above the white-robed men to whom it meant
nothing. She was conscious that since she had come to this
land of another creed, and of another creed held with fanati-
cism, her sentiment for her own religion, which in England for
many years had been but lukewarm, had suddenly gained in
strength. She had an odd, almost manly, sensation that it
was her duty in Africa to stand up for her faith, not blatantly
in words to impress others, but perseveringly in heart to satisfy
herself. Sometimes she felt very protective. She felt pro-
tective to-day as she looked at this humble building, which she
likened to one of the poor saints of the Thebaid, who dwelt
afar in desert places, and whose devotions were broken by the
night-cries of jackals and by the roar of ravenous beasts. With
this feeling strong upon her she pushed open the door and
went in.
The interior was plain, even ugly. The walls were painted a
PRELUDE 45
hideous drab. The stone floor was covered with small, hard,
straw-bottomed chairs and narrow wooden forms for the
patient knees of worshippers. In the front were two rows of
private chairs, with velvet cushions of various brilliant hues
and velvet-covered rails. On the left was a high stone pulpit.
The altar, beyond its mean black and gold railing, was dingy
and forlorn. On it there was a tiny gold cross with a gold
statuette of Christ hanging, surmounted by a canopy with four
pillars, which looked as if made of some unwholesome Sweet-
meat. Long candles of blue and gold and bouquets of dusty
artificial flowers flanked it. Behind it, in a round niche, stood
a painted figure of Christ holding a book. The two adjacent
side chapels had domed roofs representing the firmament.
Beneath the pulpit stood a small harmonium. At the opposite
end of the church was a high gallery holding more chairs.
The mean, featureless windows were filled with glass half
white, half staring red dotted with yellow crosses. Round the
walls were reliefs of the fourteen stations of the Cross in white
plaster on a gilt ground framed in grey marble. From the roof
hung vulgar glass chandeliers with ropes tied with faded pink
ribands. Several frightful plaster statues daubed with Scarlet
and chocolate brown stood under the windows, which were
protected with brown woollen curtains. Close to the entrance
were a receptacle for holy water in the form of a shell, and a
confessional of stone flanked by boxes, one of which bore the
words, “Grâces obtenues,” the other, “Demandes,” and a
card on which was printed, “Litanies en honneur de Saint
Antoine de Padoue.”
There was nothing to please the eye, nothing to appeal to the
senses. There was not even the mystery which shrouds and
softens, for the sunshine streamed in through the white glass of
the windows, revealing, even emphasising, as if with deliberate
cruelty, the cheap finery, the tarnished velvet, the crude colours,
the meretricious gestures and poses of the plaster saints. Yet as
Domini touched her forehead and breast with holy water, and
knelt for a moment on the stone floor, she was conscious that
this rather pitiful house of God moved her to an emotion she
had not felt in the great and beautiful churches to which she
was accustomed in England and on the Continent. Through
the windows she saw the outlines of palm leaves vibrating in the
breeze; African fingers, feeling, with a sort of fluttering sus-
picion, if not enmity, round the heart of this intruding religion,
which had wandered hither from some distant place, and
46 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
stayed, confronting the burning glance of the desert. Bold,
little, humble church' Domini knew that she would love it.
But she did not know then how much.
She wandered round slowly with a grave face. Yet now and
then, as she stood by one of the plaster saints, she smiled. They
were indeed strange offerings at the shrine of Him who held
this Africa in the hollow of His hand, of Him who had ordered
the pageant of the sun which she had seen last night among the
mountains. And presently she and this little church in which
she stood alone became pathetic in her thoughts, and even the
religion which the one came to profess in the other pathetic
too. For here, in Africa, she began to realise the wideness of
the world, and that many things must surely seem to the Creator
what these plaster saints seemed just then to her.
“Oh, how little, how little!” she whispered to herself. “Let
me be bigger! Oh, let me grow, and here, not only hereafter!”
The church door creaked. She turned her head and saw the
priest whom she had met in the tunnel entering. He came up
to her at once, saluted her, and said:
“I saw you from my window, Madame, and thought I
would offer to show you our little church here. We are very
proud of it.”
Domini liked his voice and his naïve remark. His face, too,
though undistinguished, looked honest, kind, and pathetic, but
with a pathos that was unaffected and quite unconscious. The
lower part of it was hidden by a moustache and beard.
“Thank you,” she answered. “I have been looking round
already.”
“You are a Catholic, Madame?”
( { Yes.”
The priest looked pleased. There was something childlike
in the mobility of his face.
“I am glad,” he said simply. “We are not a rich com-
munity in Beni-Mora, but we have been fortunate in bygone
years. Our great Cardinal, the Father of Africa, loved this
place and cherished his children here.”
“Cardinal Lavigerie?”
“Yes, Madame. His house is now a native hospital. His
statue faces the beginning of the great desert road. But we
remember him and his spirit is still among us.”
The priest's eyes lit up as he spoke. The almost tragic
expression of his face changed to one of enthusiasm.
“He loved Africa, I believe,” Domini said.
BRELUDE 47
“His heart was here. And what he did I was to have been
one of his frères armés, but my health prevented, and after-
wards the association was dissolved.”
The sad expression returned to his face.
“There are many temptations in such a land and climate as
this,” he said. “And men are weak. But there are still the
White Fathers whom he founded. Glorious men. They carry
the Cross into the wildest places of the world. The most
fanatical Arabs respect the White Marabouts.”
“You wish you were with them?”
“Yes, Madame. But my health only permits me to be a
humble parish priest here. Not all who desire to enter the most
severe life can do so. If it were otherwise I should long since
have been a monk. The Cardinal himself showed me that my
duty lay in other paths.”
He pointed out to Domini one or two things in the church
which he admired and thought worthy; the carving of the altar
rail into grapes, ears of corn, crosses, anchors; the white em-
broidered muslin that draped the tabernacle; the statue of a
bishop in a red and gold mitre holding a staff and Bible, and
another statue representing a saint with a languid and con-
sumptive expression stretching out a Bible, on the leaves of
which a tiny, smiling child was walking.
As they were about to leave the church he made Domini pause
in front of a painting of Saint Bruno dressed in a white monkish
robe, beneath which was written in gilt letters:
“Saint Bruno ordonne à ses disciples
De renoncer aux biens terrestres
Pour acquérir les biens celestes.”
The disciples stood around the saint in grotesque attitudes
of pious attention.
“That, I think, is very beautiful,” he said. “Who could
look at it without feeling that the greatest act of man is re-
nunciation?”
His dark eyes flamed. Just then a faint soprano bark came
to them from outside the church door, a very discreet and even
humble, but at the same time anxious, bark. The priest's face
changed. The almost passionate asceticism of it was replaced
by a soft and gentle look.
“Bous-Bous wants me,” he said, and he opened the door for
Domini to pass out.
A small white and yellow dog, very clean and well brushed,
48 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
was sitting on the step in an attentive attitude. Directly the
priest appeared it began to wag its short tail violently and to
run round his feet, curving its body into semi-circles. He bent
down and patted it.
“My little companion, Madame,” he said. “He was not with
me yesterday, as he was being washed.”
Then he took off his hat and walked towards his house,
accompanied by Bous-Bous, who had suddenly assumed an air of
conscious majesty, as of one born to preside over the fate of an
important personage. -
Domini stood for a moment under the palm trees looking
after them. There was a steady shining in her eyes.
“Madame is a Catholic too?” asked Batouch, staring
steadily at her.
Domini nodded. She did not want to discuss religion with
an Arab minor poet just then.
“Take me to the market,” she said, mindful of her secret
resolve to get rid of her companion as soon as possible.
They set out across the gardens.
It was a celestial day. All the clear, untempered light of the
world seemed to have made its home in Beni-Mora. Yet the
heat was not excessive, for the glorious strength of the sun was
robbed of its terror, its possible brutality, by the bright and
feathery dryness and coolness of the airs. She stepped out
briskly. Her body seemed suddenly to become years younger,
full of elasticity and radiant strength.
“Madame is very strong. Madame walks like a Bedouin.”
Batouch's voice sounded seriously astonished, and Domini
burst out laughing.
“In England there are many strong women. But I shall
grow stronger here. I shall become a real Arab. This air gives
me life.” -
They were just reaching the road when there was a clatter of
hoofs, and a Spahi, mounted on a slim white horse, galloped
past at a tremendous pace, holding his reins high above the red
peak of his saddle and staring up at the sun. Domini looked
after him with critical admiration.
“You’ve got some good horses here,” she said when the
Spahi had disappeared.
“Madame knows how to ride?”
She laughed again.
“I’ve ridden ever since I was a child.”
“You can buy a fine horse here for sixteen pounds,” remarked
PRELUDE 49
( & } }
Batouch, using the pronoun as is the custom of the
Arabs.
“Find me a good horse, a horse with spirit, and I’ll buy
him,” Domini said. “I want to go far out in the desert, far
away from everything.”
“You must not go alone.”
“Why not?”
“There are bandits in the desert.”
“I’ll take my revolver,” Domini said carelessly. “But I
will go alone.” --
They were in sight of the market now, and the hum of
voices came to them, with nasal cries, the whine of praying
beggars, and the fierce braying of donkeys. At the end of the
small street in which they were Domini saw a wide open space,
in the centre of which stood a quantity of pillars supporting a
peaked roof. Round the sides of the square were arcades swarm-
ing with Arabs, and under the central roof a mob of figures came
and went, as flies go and come on a piece of meat flung out into
a Sunny place.
“What a quantity of people! Do they all live in Beni-
Mora?” she asked. -
“No, they come from all parts of the desert to sell and to
buy. But most of those who sell are Mozabites.”
Little children in bright-coloured rags came dancing round
Domini, holding out their copper-coloured hands, and crying
shrilly, “’Msee, M'dame! 'Msee, M'dame!” A deformed
man, who looked like a distorted beetle, crept round her feet,
gazing up at her with eyes that squinted horribly, and roaring
in an imperative voice some Arab formula in which the words
“Allah-el-Akbar” continually recurred. A tall negro, with a
long tuft of hair hanging from his shaven head, followed hard
upon her heels, rolling his bulging eyes, in which two yellow
flames were caught, and trying to engage her attention, though
with what object she could not imagine. From all directions
tall men with naked arms and legs, and fluttering white gar-
ments, came slowly towards her, staring intently at her with
lustrous eyes, whose expression seemed to denote rather a calm
and dignified appraisement than any vulgar curiosity. Boys,
with the whitest teeth she had ever beheld, and flowers above
their well-shaped, delicate ears, Smiled up at her with engaging
impudence. Her nostrils were filled with a strange crowd of
odours, which came from humanity dressed in woollen gar-
ments, from fruits exposed for sale in rush panniers, from round
tu,
5O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
close bouquets of roses ringed with tight borders of green
leaves, from burning incense twigs, from raw meat, from amber
ornaments and strong perfumes in glass phials figured with gold
attar of rose, orange blossom, geranium and white lilac. In
the shining heat of the sun sounds, scents and movements
mingled, and were almost painfully vivid and full of meaning
and animation. Never had a London mob on some great fête
day seemed so significant and personal to Domini as this little
mob of desert people, come together for the bartering of beasts,
the buying of burnouses, weapons, skins and jewels, grain for
their camels, charms for their women, ripe glistening dates for
the little children at home in the brown earth houses. -
As she made her way slowly through the press, pioneered by
Batouch, who forced a path with great play of his huge shoulders
and mighty arms, she was surprised to find how much at home
she felt in the midst of these fierce and uncivilised-looking
people. She had no sense of shrinking from their contact, no
feeling of personal disgust at their touch. When her eyes
chanced to meet any of the bold, inquiring eyes around her she
was inclined to smile as if in recognition of these children of the
Sun, who did not seem to her like strangers, despite the un-
known language that struggled fiercely in their throats. Never-
theless, she did not wish to stay very long among them now.
She was resolved to get a full and delicately complete first
impression of Beni-Mora, and to do that she knew that she must
detach herself from close human contact. She desired the
mind's bird’s-eye view—a height, a watch-tower and a little
solitude. So, when the eager Mozabite merchants called to her
she did not heed them, and even the busy patter of the informing
Batouch fell upon rather listless ears.
“I sha’n’t stay here,” she said to him. “But I’ll buy some
perfumes. Where can I get them?”
A thin youth, brooding above a wooden tray close by, held
up in his delicate fingers a long bottle, sealed and furnished with
a tiny label, but Batouch shook his head.
“For perfumes you must go to Ahmeda, under the arcade.”
They crossed a sunlit space and stood before a dark room,
sunk lightly below the level of the pathway in a deserted
corner. Shadows congregated here, and in the gloom Domini
saw a bent white figure hunched against the blackened wall,
and heard an old voice murmuring like a drowsy bee. The per-
fume-Seller was immersed in the Koran, his back to the buy-
ing world. Batouch was about to call upon him, when Domini
PRELUDE 51
checked the exclamation with a quick gesture. For the first
time the mystery that coils like a great black serpent in the shin-
ing heart of the East startled and fascinated her, a mystery in
which indifference and devotion mingle. The white figure
swayed slowly to and fro, carrying the dull, humming voice
with it, and now she seemed to hear a far-away fanaticism, the
bourdon of a fatalism which she longed to understand.
“Ahmeda! ”
Batouch shouted. His voice came like a stone from a catapult.
The merchant turned calmly and without haste, showing an
aquiline face covered with wrinkles, tufted with white hairs,
lit by eyes that shone with the cruel expressiveness of a falcon's.
After a short colloquy in Arabic he raised himself from his
haunches, and came to the front of the room, where there was
a small wooden counter. He was smiling now with a grace that
was almost feminine.
“What perfume does Madame desire?” he said in French.
Domini gazed at him as at a deep mystery, but with the
searching directness characteristic of her, a fearlessness so abso-
lute that it embarrassed many people.
“Please give me something that is of the East—not violets,
not lilac.”
“Amber,” said Batouch.
The merchant, still Smiling, reached up to a shelf, showing
an arm like a brown twig, and took down a glass bottle covered
with red and green lines. He removed the stopper, made
Domini take off her glove, touched her bare hand with the
stopper, then with his forefinger gently rubbed the drop of per-
fume which had settled on her skin till it was slightly red.
“Now, smell it,” he commanded.
Domini obeyed. The perfume was faintly medicinal, but it
filled her brain with exotic visions. She shut her eyes. Yes,
that was a voice of Africa too. Oh! how far away she was from
her old life and hollow days. The magic carpet had been spread
indeed, and she had been wafted into a strange land where she
had all to learn. *.
“Please give me some of that,” she said.
The merchant poured the amber into a phial, where it lay
like a thread in the glass, weighed it in a scales and demanded
a price. Batouch began at once to argue with vehemence, but
Domini stopped him.
“Pay him,” she said, giving Batouch her purse.
The perfume-seller took the money with dignity, turned
52 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
away, squatted upon his haunches against the blackened wall,
and picked up the broad-leaved volume which lay upon the
floor. He swayed gently and rhythmically to and fro. Then
once more the voice of the drowsy bee hummed in the shadows.
The worshipper and the Prophet stood before the feet of
Allah.
And the woman—she was set afar off, as woman is by white-
robed men in Africa.
“Now, Batouch, you can carry the perfume to the hotel and
I will go to that garden.”
“Alone? Madame will never find it.”
“I can ask the way.”
“Impossible! I will escort Madame to the gate. There I
will wait for her. Monsieur the Count does not permit the
Arabs to enter with strangers.”
“Very well,” Domini said.
The seller of perfumes had led her towards a dream. She
was not combative, and she would be alone in the garden. As
they walked towards it in the sun, through narrow ways where
idle Arabs lounged with happy aimlessness, Batouch talked of
Count Anteoni, the owner of the garden.
Evidently the Count was the great personage of Beni-Mora.
Batouch spoke of him with a convinced respect, describing him
as fabulously rich, fabulously generous to the Arabs.
“He never gives to the French, Madame, but when he is
here each Friday, upon our Sabbath, he comes to the gate with
a bag of money in his hand, and he gives five franc pieces to
every Arab who is there.”
“And what is he? French P’’ •
“He is Italian; but he is always travelling, and he has made
gardens everywhere. He has three in Africa alone, and in one
he keeps many lions. When he travels he takes six Arabs with
him. He loves only the Arabs.”
Domini began to feel interested in this wandering maker of
gardens, who was a pilgrim over the world like Monte Cristo.
“Is he young?” she asked. -
{ { No.” .
“Married ?”
“Oh, no! He is always alone. Sometimes he comes here
and stays for three months, and is never once seen outside the
garden. And sometimes for a year he never comes to Beni-
Mora. But he is here now. Twenty Arabs are always working
in the garden, and at night ten Arabs with guns are always
PRELUDE 53
awake, some in a tent inside the door and some among the
trees.”
“Then there is danger at night?”
“The garden touches the desert, and those who are in the
desert without arms are as birds in the air without wings.”
They had come out from among the houses now into a broad,
straight road, bordered on the left by land that was under culti-
vation, by fruit trees, and farther away by giant palms, between
whose trunks could be seen the stony reaches of the desert and
spurs of grey-blue and faint rose-coloured mountains. On the
right was a shady garden with fountains and stone benches, and
beyond stood a huge white palace built in the Moorish style, and
terraced roofs and a high tower ornamented with green and
peacock-blue tiles. In the distance, among more palms, appeared
a number of low, flat huts of brown earth. The road, as far as
the eyes could see, stretched straight forward through enormous
groves of palms, whose feathery tops swayed gently in the light
wind that blew from the desert. Upon all things rained a
flood of blue and gold. A blinding radiance made all things
glad.
“How glorious light is!” Domini exclaimed, as she looked
down the road to the point where its whiteness was lost in the
moving ocean of the trees.
Batouch assented without enthusiasm, having always lived in
the light.
“As we return from the garden we will visit the tower,” he
said, pointing to the Moorish palace. “It is a hotel, and is not
yet open, but I know the guardian. From the tower Madame
will see the whole of Beni-Mora. Here is the negro village.”
They traversed its dusty alleys slowly. On the side where
the low brown dwellings threw shadows some of the inhabitants
were dreaming or chattering, wrapped in garments of gaudy
cotton. Little girls in the fiercest orange colour, with tattooed
foreheads and leathern amulets, darted to and fro, chasing each
other and shrieking with laughter. Naked babies, whose shaven
heads made a warm resting-place for flies, stared at Domini with
a lustrous vacancy of expression. At the corners of the alleys
unveiled women squatted, grinding corn in primitive hand-mills,
or winding wool on wooden sticks. Their heads were covered
with plaits of imitation hair made of wool, in which barbaric
silver ornaments were fastened, and their black necks and arms
jingled with chains and bangles set with squares of red coral
and large dull blue and green stones. Some of them called
54. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
boldly to Batouch, and he answered them with careless impu-
dence. The palm-wood door of one of the houses stood wide
open, and Domini looked in. She saw a dark space with floor
and walls of earth, a ceiling of palm and brushwood, a low
divan of earth without mat or covering of any kind.
“They have no furniture?” she asked Batouch.
“No. What do they want with it? They live out here in
the sun and go in to sleep.”
Life simplified to this extent made her smile. Yet she looked
at the squatting figures in the gaudy cotton rags with a stirring
of envy. The memory of her long and complicated London
years, filled with a multitude of so-called pleasures which had
never stifled the dull pain set up in her heart by the rude shock
of her mother's sin and its result, made this naked, sunny, bar-
barous existence seem desirable. She stood for a moment to
watch two women sorting grain for cous-cous. Their guttural
laughter, their noisy talk, the quick and energetic movements
of their busy black hands, reminded her of children's gaiety.
And Nature rose before her in the sunshine, confronting artifice
and the heavy languors of modern life in cities. How had she
been able to endure the yoke so long?
“Will Madame take me to London with her when she
returns?” said Batouch, slyly.
“I am not going back to London for a very long time,” she
replied with energy.
“You will stay here many weeks?”
“Months, perhaps. And perhaps I shall travel on into the
desert. Yes, I must do that.” -
“If we followed the white road into the desert, and went on
and on for many days, we should come at last to Tombouctou,”
said Batouch. “But very likely we should be killed by the
Touaregs. They are fierce and they hate strangers.”
“Would you be afraid to go?” Domini asked him, curiously.
“Why afraid?” -
“Of being killed 2 ” -
He looked calmly surprised. -
“Why should I be afraid to die? All must pass through that
door. It does not matter whether it is to-day or to-morrow.”
“You have no fear of death, then P’’
“Of course not. Have you, Madame?”
He gazed at Domini with genuine astonishment.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
And she wondered and could not tell.
PRELUDE 55
“There is the Villa Anteoni.”
Batouch lifted his hand and pointed. They had turned aside
from the way to Tombouctou, left the village behind them, and
come into a narrow track which ran parallel to the desert. The
palm trees rustled on their right, the green corn waved, the
narrow cuttings in the earth gleamed with shallow water. But
on their other side was limitless sterility; the wide, stony expanse
of the great river bed, the Oued-Beni-Mora, then a low earth
cliff, and then the immense airy flats stretching away into the
shining regions of the sun. At some distance, raised on a
dazzling white wall above the desert in an unshaded place,
Domini saw a narrow, two-sided white house, with a flat roof
and a few tiny loopholes instead of windows. One side looked
full upon the waterless river bed, the other, at right angles to
it, ran back towards a thicket of palms and ended in an arcade
of six open Moorish arches, through which the fierce blue of
the cloudless sky stared, making an almost theatrical effect.
Beyond, masses of trees were visible, looking almost black
against the intense, blinding pallor of wall, villa and arcade, the
intense blue above.
“What a strange house!” Domini said. “There are no
windows.”
“They are all on the other side, looking into the garden.”
The villa fascinated Domini at once. The white Moorish
arcade framing bare, quivering blue, blue from the inmost heart
of heaven, intense as a great vehement cry, was beautiful as the
arcade of a Geni's home in Fairyland. Mystery hung about this
dwelling, a mystery of light, not darkness, secrets of flame and
hidden things of golden meaning. She felt almost like a child
who is about to penetrate into the red land of the winter fire,
and she hastened her steps till she reached a tall white gate set
in an arch of wood, and surmounted with a white coat of arms
and two lions. Batouch struck on it with a white knocker and
then began to roll a cigarette. º -
“I will wait here for Madame.”
Domini nodded. A leaf of wood was pulled back softly in
the gate, and she stepped into the garden and confronted a
graceful young Arab dressed in pale green, who saluted her
respectfully and gently closed the door.
“ May I walk about the garden a little?” she asked.
She did not look round her yet, for the Arab's face interested
and even charmed her. It was aristocratic, enchantingly in-
dolent, like the face of a happy lotus-eater. The great, lustrous
56 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
eyes were tender as a gazelle's and thoughtless as the eyes of a
sleepy child. His perfectly-shaped feet were bare on the shin-
ing sand. In one hand he held a large red rose and in the
other a half-smoked cigarette.
Domini could not help Smiling at him as she put her question,
and he smiled contentedly back at her as he answered, in a low,
level voice:
“You can go where you will. Shall I show you the paths?”
He lifted his hand and calmly smelt his red rose, keeping his
great eyes fixed upon her. Domini's wish to be alone had left
her. This was surely the geni of the garden, and his company
would add to its mystery and fragrance.
“You need not stay by the door?” she asked.
“No one will come. There is no one in Beni-Mora. And
Hassan will stay.”
He pointed with his rose to a little tent that was pitched
closed to the gate beneath a pepper tree. In it Domini saw a
brown boy curled up like a dog and fast asleep. She began to
feel as if she had eaten hashish. The world seemed made for
dreaming.
“Thank you, then.”
And now for the first time she looked round to see whether
Batouch had implied the truth. Must the European gardens
give way to this Eastern garden, take a lower place with all
their roses?
She stood on a great expanse of newly-raked smooth sand,
rising in a very gentle slope to a gigantic hedge of carefully
trimmed evergreens, which projected at the top, forming a roof
and casting a pleasant shade upon the sand. At intervals white
benches were placed under this hedge. To the right was the
villa. She saw now that it was quite small. There were two
lines of windows—on the ground floor and the upper story.
The lower windows opened on to the sand, those above on to a
verandah with a white railing, which was gained by a white
staircase outside the house built beneath the arches of the arcade.
The villa was most delicately simple, but in this riot of blue
and gold its ivory cleanliness, set there upon the shining sand
which was warm to the foot, made it look magical to Domini.
She thought she had never known before what spotless purity
was like.
“Those are the bedrooms,” murmured the Arab at her side.
“There are only bedrooms?” she asked in surprise.
“The other rooms, the drawing-room of Monsieur the
PRELUDE 57
Count, the dining-room, the smoking-room, the Moorish bath,
the room of the little dog, the kitchen and the rooms for the
servants are in different parts of the garden. There is the
dining-room.”
He pointed with his rose to a large white building, whose
dazzling walls showed here and there through the masses of
trees to the left, where a little raised sand-path with flattened,
sloping sides wound away into a maze of shadows diapered with
gold.
“Let us go down that path,” Domini said almost in a
whisper.
The spell of the place was descending upon her. This was
surely a home of dreams, a haven where the sun came to lie
down beneath the trees and sleep.
“What is your name?” she added.
“Smain,” replied the Arab. “I was born in this garden.
My father, Mohammed, was with Monsieur the Count.”
He led the way over the sand, moving silently on his long,
brown feet, straight as a reed in a windless place. Domini fol-
lowed, holding her breath. Only sometimes she let her strong
imagination play utterly at its will. She let it go now as she
and Smain turned into the golden diapered shadows of the little
path and came into the swaying mystery of the trees. The
longing for secrecy, for remoteness, for the beauty of far away
had sometimes haunted her, especially in the troubled moments
of her life. Her heart, oppressed, had overleaped the horizon
line in answer to a calling from hidden things beyond. Her
emotions had wandered, seeking the great distances in which
the dim purple twilight holds surely comfort for those who
suffer. But she had never thought to find any garden of peace
that realised her dreams. Nevertheless, she was already con-
scious that Smain with his rose was showing her the way to her
ideal, that her feet were set upon its pathway, that its legendary
trees were closing round her.
Behind the evergreen hedge she heard the liquid bubbling of
a hidden waterfall, and when they had left the untempered sun-
light behind them this murmur grew louder. It seemed as if
the green gloom in which they walked acted as a sounding-
board to the delicious voice. The little path wound on and on
between two running rills of water, which slipped incessantly
away under the broad and yellow-tipped leaves of dwarf palms,
making a music so faint that it was more like a remembered
sound in the mind than one which slid upon the ear. On
58 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
either hand towered a jungle of trees brought to this home in the
desert from all parts of the world.
There were many unknown to Domini, but she recognised
several varieties of palms, acacias, gums, fig trees, chestnuts,
poplars, false pepper trees, the huge olive trees called Jamelons,
white laurels, indiarubber and cocoanut trees, bananas, bam-
boos, yuccas, many mimosas and quantities of tall eucalyptus
trees. Thickets of scarlet geranium flamed in the twilight. The
hibiscus lifted languidly its frail and rosy cup, and the red gold
oranges gleamed amid leaves that looked as if they had been
polished by an attentive fairy. •
As she went with Smain farther into the recesses of the gar-
den the voice of the waterfall died away. No birds were sing-
ing. Domini thought that perhaps they dared not sing lest they
might wake the sun from its golden reveries, but afterwards,
when she knew the garden better, she often heard them twitter-
ing with a subdued, yet happy, languor, as if joining in a nocturn
upon the edge of sleep. Under the trees the sand was yellow,
of a shade so voluptuously beautiful that she longed to touch it
with her bare feet like Smain. Here and there it rose in sym-
metrical little pyramids, which hinted at absent gardeners, per-
haps enjoying a siesta.
Never before had she fully understood the enchantment of
green, quite realised how happy a choice was made on that day
of Creation when it was showered prodigally over the world.
But now, as she walked secretly over the yellow sand between
the rills, following the floating green robe of Smain, she rested
her eyes, and her soul, on countless mingling shades of the
delicious colour; rough, furry green of geranium leaves, silver
green of olives, black green of distant palms from which the sun
held aloof, faded green of the eucalyptus, rich, emerald green
of fan-shaped, sunlit palms, hot, Sultry green of bamboos, dull,
drowsy green of mulberry trees and brooding chestnuts. It
was a choir of colours in one colour, like a choir of boys all
with treble voices singing to the sun. -
Gold flickered everywhere, weaving patterns of enchantment,
quivering, vital patterns of burning beauty. Down the narrow,
branching paths that led to inner mysteries the light ran in and
out, peeping between the divided leaves of plants, gliding over
the slippery edges of the palm branches, trembling airily where
the papyrus bent its antique head, dancing among the big blades
of Sturdy grass that sprouted in tufts here and there, resting
languidly upon the glistening magnolias that were besieged by
PRELUDE 59
somnolent bees. All the greens and all the golds of Creation
were surely met together in this profound retreat to prove the
perfect harmony of earth with sun.
And now, growing accustomed to the pervading silence,
Domini began to hear the tiny sounds that broke it. They came
from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping
the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and
bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing
it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the
courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to
the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very
delicate was the touch of the dying ºupon the yellow sand. It
increased the sense of pervading mystéry and made Domini more
deeply conscious of the pulsing life of the garden.
“There is the room of the little dog,” said Smain.
They had come out into a small open space, over which an
immense cocoanut tree presided. Low box hedges ran round
two squares of grass which were shadowed by date palms heavy
with yellow fruit, and beneath some leaning mulberry trees
Domini saw a tiny white room with two glass windows down to
the ground. She went up to it and peeped in, smiling.
There, in a formal salon, with gilt chairs, oval, polished
tables, faded rugs and shining mirrors, sat a purple china dog
with his tail curled over his back sternly staring into vacancy.
His expression and his attitude were autocratic and determined,
betokening a tyrannical nature, and Domini peeped at him with
precaution, holding herself very still lest he should become aware
of her presence and resent it.
“Monsieur the Count paid much money for the dog,” mur-
mured Smain. “He is very valuable.”
“How long has he been there?”
“For many years. He was there when I was born, and I
have been married twice and divorced twice.”
Domini turned from the window and looked at Smain
with astonishment. He was smelling his rose like a dreamy
child.
“You have been divorced twice?”
“Yes. Now I will show Madame the smoking-room.”
They followed another of the innumerable alleys of the
garden. This one was very narrow and less densely roofed with
trees than those they had already traversed. Tall shrubs bent
forward on either side of it, and their small leaves almost meet-
ing were transformed by the radiant sunbeams into tongues of
ÓO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
pale fire, quivering, well nigh transparent. As she approached
them Domini could not resist the fancy that they would burn
her. A brown butterfly flitted forward between them and
vanished into the golden dream beyond.
“Oh, Smain, how you must love this garden!” she said.
A sort of ecstasy was waking within her. The pure air, the
caressing warmth, the enchanted stillness and privacy of this
domain touched her soul and body like the hands of a saint with
power to bless her. -
“I could live here for ever,” she added, “without once wish-
ing to out into the world.”
Smain looked drowsily pleased.
“We are coming to the centre of the garden,” he said, as
they passed over a palm-wood bridge beneath which a stream
glided under the red petals of geraniums.
The tongues of flame were left behind. Green darkness
closed in upon them and the sand beneath their feet looked
blanched. The sense of mystery increased, for the trees were
enormous and grew densely here. Pine needles lay upon the
ground, and there was a stirring of sudden wind far up above
their heads in the tree-tops.
“This is the part of the garden that Monsieur the Count
loves,” said Smain. “ He comes here every day.”
“What is that?” said Domini, suddenly stopping on the
pale sand.
A thin and remote sound stole to them down the alley, clear
and frail as the note of a night bird.
“It is Larbi playing upon the flute. He is in love. That is
why he plays when he ought to be watering the flowers and
raking out the sand.”
The distant love-song of the flute seemed to Domini the last
touch of enchantment making this indeed a wonderland. She
could not move, and held up her hands to stay the feet of Smain,
who was quite content to wait. Never before had she heard
any music that seemed to mean and suggest so much to her as
this African tune played by an enamoured gardener. Queer
and uncouth as it was, distorted with ornaments and tricked
out with abrupt runs, exquisitely unnecessary grace notes, and
Sudden twitterings prolonged till a strange and frivolous Eter-
nity tripped in to banish Time, it grasped Domini's fancy and
laid a spell upon her imagination. For it sounded as naïvely
sincere as the song of a bird, and as if the heart from which it
flowed were like the heart of a child, a place of revelation, not of
PRELUDE 6I
concealment. The sun made men careless here. They opened
their windows to it, and one could see into the warm and glow-
ing rooms. Domini looked at the gentle Arab youth beside
her, already twice married and twice divorced. She listened
to Larbi's unénding song of love. And she said to herself,
“These people, uncivilised or not, at least live, and I have been
dead all my life, dead in life.” That was horribly possible.
She knew it as she felt the enormously powerful spell of Africa
descending upon her, enveloping her quietly but irresistibly.
The dream of this garden was quick with a vague and yet fierce
stirring of realities. There was a murmuring of many small
and distant voices, like the voices of innumerable tiny things
following restless activities in a deep forest. As she stood there
the last grain of European dust was lifted from Domini’s soul.
How deeply it had been buried, and for how many years.
“The greatest act of man is the act of renunciation.” She
had just heard those words. The eyes of the priest had flamed
as he spoke them, and she had caught the Spark of his enthusiasm.
But now another fire seemed lit within her, and she found
herself marvelling at such austerity. Was it not a fanatical
defiance flung into the face of the Sun ? She shrank from her
own thought, like one startled, and walked on Softly in the
green darkness.
Larbi's flute became more distant. Again and again it re-
peated the same queer little melody, changing the ornamentation
at the fantasy of the player. She looked for him among the
trees but saw no one. He must be in some very secret place.
Smain touched her. -
“Look!” he said, and his voice was very low.
He parted the branches of some palms with his delicate hands,
and Domini, peering between them, saw in a place of deep
shadows an isolated square room, whose white walls were almost
entirely concealed by masses of purple bougainvillea. It had a
flat roof. In three of its sides were large arched window-
spaces without windows. In the fourth was a narrow doorway
without a door. Immense fig trees and palms and thickets of
bamboo towered around it and leaned above it. And it was
circled by a narrow riband of finely-raked sand.
“That is the smoking-room of Monsieur the Count,” said
Smain. “He spends many hours there. Come and I will show
the inside to Madame.” .
They turned to the left and went towards the room. The
flute was close to them now.
62 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Larbi must be in there,” Domini whispered to Smain, as a
person whispers in a church.
“No, he is among the trees beyond.”
“But someone is there.”
She pointed to the arched window-space nearest to them. A
thin spiral of blue-grey smoke curled through it and evaporated
into the shadows of the trees. After a moment it was followed
gently and deliberately by another.
“It is not Larbi. He would not go in there. It must
be—”
He paused. A tall, middle-aged man had come to the door-
way of the little room and looked out into the garden with
bright eyes.
CHAPTER VI
DOMINI drew back and glanced at Smain. She was not accus-
tomed to feeling intrusive, 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
effected an introduction between Domini and him.
“You were coming to see my little room, Madame?” he
said in French. “If I may show it to you I shall feel honoured.”
The timbre of his voice was harsh and grating, yet it was a
very interesting, even a seductive, voice, and, Domini thought,
peculiarly full of vivid life, though not of energy. His manner
at once banished her momentary discomfort. There is a free-
masonry between people born in the same social world. By the
way in which Count Anteoni took off his hat and spoke she
knew at once that all was right.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” she answered. “I was told at
the gate you gave permission to travellers to visit your garden.”
“Certainly.”
He spoke a few words in fluent Arabic to Smain, who turned
away and disappeared among the trees.
“I hope you will allow me to accompany you through the rest
of the garden,” he said, turning again to Domini. “It will give
me great pleasure.”
“It is very kind of you.”
The way in which the change of companion had been effected
PRELUDE 63
made it seem a pleasant, inevitable courtesy, which neither
implied nor demanded anything.”
“This is my little retreat,” Count Anteoni continued, stand-
ing aside from 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
with Eastern rugs of faint and delicate hues, dim greens and
faded rose colours, grey-blues and misty topaz yellows. Round
the white walls ran broad divans, also white, covered with
prayer rugs from Bagdad, and large cushions, elaborately
worked in dull gold and silver thread, with patterns of ibises
and flamingoes in flight. In the four angles of the room stood
four tiny smoking-tables of rough palm wood, holding ham-
mered ash-trays of bronze, green bronze torches for the lighting
of cigarettes, and vases of Chinese dragon china filled with
velvety red roses, gardenias and sprigs of orange blossom.
Leather footstools, covered with Tunisian thread-work, lay
beside them. From the arches of the window-spaces hung old
Moorish lamps of copper, fitted with small panes of dull
jewelled glass, such as may be seen in venerable church win-
dows. In a round copper brazier, set on one of the window-
seats, incense twigs were drowsily burning and giving out thin,
dwarf columns of scented smoke. Through the archways and
the narrow doorway the dense walls of leafage were visible
standing on guard about this airy hermitage, and the hot purple
blossoms of the bougainvillea shed a cloud of colour through
the bosky dimness.
And still the flute of Larbi showered soft, clear, whimsical
music from some hidden place close by.
Domini looked at her host, who was standing by the door-
way, leaning one arm against the ivory-white wall. &
“This is my first day in Africa,” she said simply. “You
may imagine what I think of your garden, what I feel in it. I
needn't tell you. Indeed, I am sure the travellers you so kindly
let in must often have worried you with their raptures.”
“No,” he answered, with a still gravity which yet suggested
kindness, “ for I leave nearly always before the travellers come.
That sounds a little 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
her companion.
Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and
64 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
pulled a branch of the purple flowers slowly towards nim
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 is similarity of day with day, night with
night. The sun shines untiringly over the desert, and the desert
always hints at peace.”
He let the flowers go, and they sprang Softly back, and
hung quivering in 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 eyes and at the shaking flowers. The sound of
Larbi's flute was always in her ears.
“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 and full 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 the African hautboy had said it. Peace and a flame.
Could they exist together, blended, married ?
“Africa seems to me to agree through contradiction,” she
added, smiling a 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 let me 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
words implied bitterness. The wounded, the fearful, the dis-
appointed, the condemned 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 my special thinking place.”
“How strange!” Domini exclaimed impulsively, and leaning
forward on the divan,
PRELUDE 65
“Is it?”
“I only mean that already Beni-Mora has seemed to me the
ideal place for that.”
“For thought?”
“For finding out interior truth.”
Count Anteoni looked at her rather swiftly and searchingly.
His eyes were not large, but they were bright, and held none of
the languor so often seen in the eyes of his countrymen. His
face was expressive through its mobility rather than through its
contours. The features were small and refined, not noble, but
unmistakably aristocratic. The nose was sensitive, with wide
nostrils. A long and straight moustache, turning slightly grey,
did not hide the mouth, which had unusually pale lips. The
ears were set very flat against the head, and were finely shaped.
The chin was pointed. The general look of the whole face was
tense, critical, conscious, but in the defiant rather than in the
timid sense. Such an expression belongs to men who would
always be aware of the thoughts and feelings of others con-
cerning them, but who would throw those thoughts and feelings
off as decisively and energetically as a dog shakes the water-
drops 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 like the 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 examining look cast at her.
There was nothing in it to resent, and she had not resented
it, but it had recalled her to the consciousness that they were
utter strangers to each other.
As they came out on the pale riband of sand which circled
the little room Domini said:
“How wild and extraordinary that tune is!”
“Larbi's. I suppose it is, but no African music seems strange
to me. I was born on my father's estate, near Tunis. He was
a Sicilian, but came to North Africa each winter. I have
always heard the tom-toms and the pipes, 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 him in her net. Happy Larbiſ "
66 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“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 clumps of Scarlet geraniums, Domini saw a huge and very
ugly Arab, with an almost black skin, squatting on his heels,
with a long yellow and red flute between his thick lips. His
eyes were bent down, and he did not see them, but went on
busily playing, drawing from his flute coquettish phrases with
his big and bony fingers.
“And I pay him so much a week all the year round for doing
that,” the Count said.
His grating voice sounded kind and amused. They walked
on, and Larbi's tune died gradually away.
“Somehow I can’t be angry with the follies and vices of
the Arabs,” the Count continued. “I love them as they are;
idle, absurdly amorous, quick to shed blood, gay as children,
whimsical as–well, Madame, were I talking to a man I might
dare to say pretty women.”
“Why not?”
“I will, then. I glory in their ingrained contempt of civi-
lisation. But I like them to say their prayers five times in the
day as it is commanded, and no Arab who touches alcohol in
defiance of the Prophet's law 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 had convictions, and strong ones. That was
certain. There was something oddly unconventional in him
which something in her responded to. He was perfectly polite,
and yet, she was quite sure, absolutely careless of opinion.
Certainly he was very much a man.
“It is pleasant, too,” he resumed, after a slight pause, “to
be surrounded by absolutely thoughtless people with thoughtful
faces and mysterious 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 grand
cocoanut?”
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.”
PRELUDE 67
“Oh, he is king here. The Arabs declare that on moonlight
nights they have 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 partly why 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 aware how supple his body still was. As Domini
spoke he stopped. They were now at a place where four paths
joined, and could see four vistas of green and 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. This startling air is full of influences, of desert
spirits.”
He looked at her in a way she could not understand—but it
made her think of the perfume-seller in his little dark room, and
of the sudden sensation she had had that mystery coils, like a
black serpent, in the shining heart of the East.
“And now, Madame, which path shall we take? This one
leads to my drawing-room, that on the right to the Moorish
bath.”
* “And that P ''
“That one goes straight down to the wall that overlooks the
CN 5 y
Sahara. .
“Please let us take it.”
“The desert spirits are calling to you? But you are wise.
What makes this garden rather remarkable is not its arrange-
ment, the number and variety of its trees, but the fact that it
lies flush with the Sahara—like a man's thoughts of truth with
Truth, perhaps.”
He turned up the tail of the sentence and his harsh voice gave
a little grating crack.
“I don't believe they are so different from one another as
the garden and the desert.”
She looked at him directly.
“It would be too ironical.”
63 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“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,” he added. “There you begin to see the desert.”
Far away, at the small orifice of the tunnel of trees down
which they were 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 a liar.” -
“Who knows? You may be right.”
He looked at her kindly with his bright eyes. It did not
seem to strike him that their conversation was curiously inti-
mate, considering that they 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 much older than
he had seemed before. There was such an expression in his
eyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who
is kissing 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 can never return a kiss.”
“I begin to see the desert now,” Domini said after a moment
of silent walking. “How wonderful it is!”
“Yes, it is. The most wonderful thing in Nature. You
will think it much more wonderful when you fancy you know
it well.”
“Fancy!” p .
“I don’t think anyone can ever really know the desert. It
is the thing that 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 keep on 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 his face was covered with a network of little moving
lines.
PRELUDE 69
“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 thoughts of truth.”
As he spoke they came out from the tunnel and were seized
by the fierce hands of the sun. It was within half an hour of
noon, and the radiance was blinding. Domini put up her
parasol sharply, like one startled. She stopped.
“But how tremendous! ” she exclaimed.
Count Anteoni laughed again, and drew down the brim of his
grey hat over his eyes. The hand with which he did it was
almost as burnt as an Arab’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
fierce there in summer, but it seems further away. Here it
insists on the most intense 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 of Count Anteoni's domain, ran a straight high wall
made of earth bricks hardened 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, but the garden was
raised in such a way that the inner side was merely a low
parapet running along the sand path. In this parapet were cut
small seats, like window-seats, in which one could rest and look
full upon the desert as from a little cliff. Domini sat down on
one of them, and the Count stood by her, resting one foot on the
top of the wall and leaning his right arm on his knee.
“There is the world on which I look for my hiding-place,”
he said. “A vast world, isn’t it?”
Domini nodded without speaking.
Immediately beneath them, in the narow shadow of the wall,
was a path of earth and stones which turned off at the right at
the end of the garden into the oasis. Beyond lay the vast river
bed, a chaos of hot boulders bounded by ragged low earth cliffs,
interspersed here and there with small pools of gleaming water.
These cliffs were yellow. From their edge stretched the desert,
as Eternity stretches from the edge of Time. Only to the left
was the immeasurable expanse intruded upon by a long spur of
70 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
mountains, which ran out boldly for some distance and then
stopped abruptly, conquered and abashed by the imperious flats.
Beneath the mountains were low, tent-like, cinnamon-coloured
undulations, which reminded Domini of those made by a shaken-
out sheet, one smaller than the other till they melted into the
level. The summits of the most distant mountains, which
leaned away as if in fear of the desert, were dark and mistily
purple. Their flanks were iron grey at this hour, flecked in
the hollows with the faint mauve and pink which became carna-
tion colour when the sun set.
Domini scarcely looked at them. Till now she had always
thought that she loved mountains. The desert suddenly made
them insignificant, almost mean to her. She turned her eyes
towards the flat spaces. It was in them that majesty lay,
mystery, power, and all deep and significant things. In the
midst of the river bed, and quite near, rose a round and squat
white tower with a small cupola. Beyond it, on the little cliff,
was a tangle of palms where a tiny oasis sheltered a few native
huts. At an immense distance, here and there, other oases
showed as dark stains show on the sea where there are hidden
rocks. And still farther away, on all hands, the desert seemed
to curve up slightly like a shallow wine-hued cup to the misty
blue horizon line, which resembled a faintly seen and mysterious
tropical sea, so distant that its sultry murmur was lost in the
embrace of the intervening silence.
An Arab passed on the path below the wall. He did not see
them. A white dog with curling lips ran beside him. He was
singing to himself in a low, inward voice. He went on and
turned towards the oasis, still singing 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 as long as possible.
“It is a desert song of the freed negroes of Touggourt—“No
one but God and I knows what is in my heart.’”
Domini lowered her parasol to conceal her face. In the
distance she could 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 strange impulse rose up in her. She could not
resist it. She put down her parasol, exposing herself to the
blinding sunlight, knelt down on the hot sand, leaned her arms
on the white parapet, put her chin in the upturned palms of
her hands and stared into the desert almost fiercely.
PRELUDE 71
“No one but God and I knows what is in my heart,” she
thought. “But that'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 it had 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 was singing that. “No one
but God—no one but God.”
Count Anteoni looked down at her. She did not notice it,
and he kept his eyes on her for a moment. Then he turned to
the desert again.
By degrees, as she watched, Domini became aware of many
things indicative of life, and of many lives in the tremendous
expanse that at 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 pass across the blue and vanish towards
the mountains. Black shapes appeared among the tiny mounds
of earth, crowned with dusty grass and dwarf tamarisk bushes.
She saw them move, like objects in a dream, slowly through the
shimmering gold. They were feeding camels, guarded by
nomads whom she could not see.
At first she persistently explored the distances, carried
forcibly by an élan of her whole nature to the remotest points
her eyes could reach. Then she withdrew her gaze gradually,
reluctantly, from the hidden summoning lands, whose verges
she had with difficulty gained, and looked, at first with appre-
hension, upon the nearer regions. But her apprehension died
when she found that the desert transmutes what is close as well
as what is remote, suffuses even that which the hand could
almost touch with wonder, beauty, and the deepest, most strange
significance.
Quite near in the river bed she saw an Arab riding towards
the desert upon a prancing black horse. He mounted a steep
bit of path and came out on 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 the beast. And each of his
movements, each of the movements of his horse, was pro-
foundly interesting, and held the attention of the onlooker in
a vice, as if the fates of worlds depended upon where he was
carried and how soon he reached his goal. A string of camels
laden with wooden bales met him on the way, and this chance
encounter seemed to Domini fraught with almost terrible possi-
bilities. Why? She did not ask herself. Again she sent her
72 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
gaze further, to the black shapes moving stealthily among the
little mounds, to the spirals of smoke rising into the glimmering
air. Who guarded those camels? Who fed those distant
fires? Who watched beside them? It seemed of vital conse-
quence 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. “When I 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
within him there were depths of imagination, of tenderness,
even perhaps of mysticism.
“An atheist in the desert is unimaginable,” he added. “In
cathedrals they may exist very likely, and even feel at home. I
have seen cathedrals in which I could believe I was one, but—
how many human beings can you see in the desert at this
moment, Madame?”
Domini, still with her round chin in her hands, searched the
blazing region with her eyes. She saw three running figures
with the train of camels which was now descending into the
river bed. In the shadow of the low white tower two more
were huddled, motionless. She looked away to right and left,
but saw only the shallow pools, the hot and gleaming boulders,
and beyond the yellow cliffs the brown huts peeping through
the 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 cliff opposite to us. There is one asleep under a red rock
where the path ascends into the desert. And there are two
more just at the edge of the little 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 Arabs within sight whom I don’t see.”
“Oh! now I see the men at the edge of the oasis. How
oddly that one is moving. He goes up and down like a sailor on
the quarter-deck.”
PRELUDE 73
“Yes, it is curious. And he is in the full blaze of the sun.
That can’t be an Arab.”
He drew a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket, put it to
his lips and sounded a call. In a moment Smain same running
lightly over the sand. Count Anteoni said something to him in
Arabic. He disappeared, and speedily returned with a pair of
field-glasses. While he was gone Domini watched the two doll-
like figures on the cliff in silence. One was standing under a
large isolated palm tree absolutely still, as Arabs often stand.
The other, at a short distance from him and full in the sun,
went to and fro, to and fro, always measuring the same space
of desert, and turning and returning at two given points which
never varied. He walked like a man hemmed in by walls, yet
around him were the infinite spaces. The effect was singularly
unpleasant upon Domini. All things in the desert, as she had
already noticed, became almost terribly significant, and this
peculiar activity seemed full of some extraordinary and even
horrible meaning. She watched it with straining eyes.
Count Anteoni took the glasses from Smain and looked
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 P’’
“There is one at my hotel.”
“Possibily this is he. He makes me think of a caged tiger,
who has been so long in captivity that when you let him out he
jºine the bars to be all round him. What was he
like :
All the time he was speaking he was staring intently through
the glasses. As Domini did not reply he removed them from
his eyes and glanced at her inquiringly.
“I am trying to think what he looked like,” she said slowly.
“But I feel that I don't know. He was quite unlike any ordi-
nary man.” -
“Would you care to see if you can recognise him? These
are really marvellous 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
74 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
turned the screw and gradually the desert came to her,
startlingly distinct. The boulders of the river bed were
enormous. She could see the veins of colour in them, a lizard
running over one of them and disappearing into a dark crevice,
then the white tower and the Arabs beneath it. One was an
old man yawning; the other a boy. He rubbed the tip of his
brown nose, and she saw the henna stains upon his nails. She
lifted the glasses slowly and with precaution. The tower ran
away. She came to the low cliff, to the brown huts and the
palms, passed them one by one, and reached the last, which was
separated from its companions. Under it stood 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: “Oh thou that art covered arise . . . and
magnify thy Lord; and purify thy clothes, and depart from
uncleanness.”
The call died away and was renewed three times. The old
man and the boy beneath the tower turned their faces towards
Mecca, fell upon their knees and bowed their heads, to the hot
stones. The tall Arab under the palm sank down swiftly.
Domini kept the glasses at her eyes. Through them, as in a
sort of exaggerated vision, very far off, yet intensely distinct, she
saw the man with whom she had travelled in the train. He
went to and fro, to and fro on the burning ground till the
fourth call of the Mueddin died away. Then, as he approached
the isolated palm tree and saw the Arab beneath it fall to the
earth and bow his long body in prayer, he paused and, stood
still as if in contemplation. The glasses were so powerful
that it was possible to see the expressions on faces even at that
distance. The expression on the traveller's face was, or seemed
to be, at first one of profound attention. But this changed
Swiftly as he watched the bowing figure, and was succeeded
by a look of uneasiness, then of fierce disgust, then—surely—
of fear or horror. He turned sharply away like a driven man,
and hurried off along the cliff edge in a striding walk, quicken-
PRELUDE : 75
ing his steps each moment till his departure became a flight.
He disappeared behind a projection of earth where 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. But why 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 do it he looked steadily at her, and she could not
read the expression in his 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 shining expanse before them.
“The man who is afraid of prayer is unwise to set foot
beyond the palm trees,” 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 seen enough for the moment, and did not wish to
disturb her impressions by adding to them. So she walked back
to the Hotel du Désert with Batouch.
Count Anteoni had said good-bye to her at the door of the
garden, and had begged her to come again whenever she liked,
and to spend as many hours there as she pleased.
“I shall take you at your word,” she said frankly. “I feel
that I may.”
hi As they shook hands she gave him her card. He took out
1S.
76 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“By the way,” he said, “the big hotel you passed in coming
here is mine. I built it to prevent a more hideous one being
built, and let it to the proprietor. You might like to ascend
the tower. The view at sundown is incomparable. At present
the hotel is shut, but the guardian will show you 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 form-
ing of the pretty curves with interest.
“Oh, yes; I am more than half African, though my father
was a Sicilian and my mother a Roman.”
He gave her the card, took off his hat and bowed. When
the tall white door was softly shut by Smain, Domini felt
rather like a new Eve expelled 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 going straight home.”
She smiled to herself as she said the last word. -
Outside the hotel they found Hadj looking ferocious. He
exchanged some words with Batouch, accompanying them with
violent gestures. When he had finished speaking he spat upon
the ground.
“What is the matter with him 2 ” Domini asked.
“The Monsieur who is staying here would not take him
to-day, but went into 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 a bad 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 want a quiet one, but something with devil, something
that a Spahi would like to ride.”
The desert spirits were speaking to her body as well as to
her mind. A physical audacity was stirring in her, and she
longed to give it vent. t
“Madame is like the lion. She is afraid of nothing.”
“You speak without knowing, Batouch. Don't come for me
PRELUDE 77
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
kim. Then she gave him ten francs and went into the dark
house, from which the burning noonday Sun was carefully
excluded. She intended to rest after déjeuner, and towards
sunset to go to the big hotel and mount alone to the summit of
the tower.
It was half-past twelve, and a faint rattle of knives and forks
from the salle-à-manger told her that déjeuner was ready. She
went upstairs, washed her face and hands in cold water, stood
still while Suzanne shook the dust from her gown, and then
descended to the public room. The keen air had given her an
appetite.
The salle-à-manger was large and shady, and was filled with
small tables, at only three of which were people sitting. Four
French officers sat 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 his forehead perpetually with a
dirty white handkerchief. At the third was the priest with
whom Domini had spoken in the church. His napkin was
tucked under his beard, and he was drinking soup as he bent
well over his plate.
A young Arab waiter, with a thin, dissipated face, stood near
the door in bright yellow slippers. When Domini came in he
stole forward to show her to her table, making a soft, shuffling
sound on the polished wooden floor. The priest glanced up
over his napkin, rose and bowed. The French officers stared
with an interest they were too chivalrous to attempt to conceal.
Only the fat little man was entirely unconcerned. He wiped
his forehead, stuck his fork deftly into an olive, and continued
to look like a melancholy toad entangled by fate in commercial
pursuits.
Domini's table was by a window, across which green Venetian
shutters were drawn. It was at a considerable distance from
the other guests, who did not live in the house, but came there
each day for their meals. Near it she noticed a table laid for
one person, and so arranged that if he came to déjeuner he
would sit exactly opposite to her. She wondered if it was for
the man at whom she had just been looking through Count
y 3
78 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Anteoni's field-glasses, the man who had fled from prayer in
the “Garden of Allah.” As she glanced at the empty chair
standing before the knives and forks, and the white cloth, she
was uncertain whether she wished it to be filled by the traveller
or not. She felt his presence in Beni-Mora as a warring
element. That she knew. She knew also that she had come
there to find peace, a great calm and remoteness in which she
could at last grow, develop, loose her true self from cramping
bondage, come to an understanding with herself, face her heart
and Soul, and—as it were—look them in the eyes and know
them for what they were, good or evil. In the presence of this
total stranger there was something unpleasantly distracting
which she could not and did not ignore, something which
roused her antagonism and which at the same time compelled
her attention. She had been conscious of it in the train, con-
Scious of it in the tunnel at twilight, at night in the hotel, and
once again in Count Anteoni's garden. This man intruded
himself, no doubt unconsciously, or even against his will, into
her sight, her thoughts, each time that she was on the point
of giving herself to what Count Anteoni called “ the desert
spirits.” So it had been when the train ran out of the tunnel
into the blue country. So it had been again when she leaned
on the white wall and gazed out over the shining fastnesses of
the sun. He was there like an enemy, like something deter-
mined, egoistical, that said to her, “You would look at the
greatness of the desert, at immensity, infinity, God!—Look at
me.” And she could not 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 beat faster with
Some thrill of what? Was it pity ? Was it a faint horror?
She knew that to call the feeling merely repugnance would not
be sincere. The intensity, the vitality of the force shut up
in a human being almost angered her at this moment as she
looked at the empty chair and realised all that it had suddenly
set at work. There was something insolent in humanity as
well as something divine, and just then she felt the insolence
more than the divinity. Terrifically greater, more overpower-
ing than man, the desert was yet also somehow less than man,
feebler, vaguer. Or else how could she have been grasped,
moved, turned to curiosity, surmise, almost to a sort of dread—
all at the desert's expense—by the distant, moving figure seen
through the glasses?
PRELUDE 79
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,
whether mental or physical, and now she resolutely switched her
mind off from the antagonistic stranger and devoted her
thoughts to the priest, whose narrow back she saw down the
room in the distance. As she ate her fish—a mystery of the
seas of Robertville—she imagined his quiet existence in this
remote place, sunny day succeeding sunny day, each one Surely
so like its brother that life must become a sort of dream, through
which the voice of the church bell called melodiously and the
incense rising before the altar shed a drowsy perfume. How
strange it must be really to live in Beni-Mora, to have your
house, your work here, your friendships here, your duties here,
perhaps here too the tiny section of earth which would hold at
the last your body. It must be strange 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
waiter slipped forward with attentive haste. For the swing
door of the salle-à-manger at this moment was pushed open, and
the traveller—so Domini called him in her thoughts—entered
and stood looking with hesitation from one table to another.
Domini did not glance up. She knew who it was and kept
her eyes resolutely on her plate. She heard the Arab speak, a
loud noise of stout boots tramping over the wooden floor, and
the creak of a chair receiving a surely tired body. The traveller
sat down heavily. She went on slowly eating the large Robert-
ville fish, which was like something between a trout and a
herring. When she had finished it she gazed straight before
her at the cloth, and strove to resume her thoughts of the priest's
life in Beni-Mora. But she could not. It seemed to her as if
she were back again in Count Anteoni's garden. She looked
once more through the glasses, and heard the four cries of the
Mueddin, and saw the pacing figure in the burning heat, the
Arab bent in prayer, the one who watched him, the flight.
And she was indignant with herself for her strange inability
to govern her mind. It seemed to her a pitiful thing of which
she should be ashamed.
She heard the waiter set down a plate upon the traveller's
table, and then the noise of a liquid being poured into a glass.
She could not keep her eyes down any more. Besides, why
should she? Beni-Mora was breeding in her a self-conscious-
ness—or a too acute consciousness of others—that was unnatural
8O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in her. She had never been sensitive like this in her former life,
but the fierce African sun seemed now to have thawed the ice
of her indifference. She felt everything with almost un-
pleasant acuteness. All her senses seemed to her sharpened.
She saw, she heard, as she had never seen and heard till now.
Suddenly she remembered 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 be terrible.
Looking up thus with a kind of severe determination, she saw
the man again. He was eating and was not looking towards
her, and she fancied that his eyes were downcast with as much
conscious resolution as hers had been a moment before. He
wore the same suit as he had worn in the train, 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 have
nothing in common. With the French officers? She could
not imagine how he would be with them. The only other
man in the room—the servant had gone out for the moment—
was the priest. He and the priest—they would surely be
antagonists. Had he not turned aside to avoid the priest in
the tunnel? Probably he was one of those many men who
actively hate the priesthood, to whom the soutane is anathema.
Could he find pleasant companionship with such a man as Count
Anteoni, an original man, no doubt, but also a cultivated and
easy man of the world 2 She smiled internally at the mere
thought. Whatever this stranger might be she felt that he
was as far from being a man of the world as she was from being
a Cockney sempstress or a veiled favourite in a harem. She
could not, she found, imagine him easily at home with any type
of human being with which she was acquainted. Yet no doubt,
like all men, he had somewhere friends, 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 the table on each side of his plate and looked at them
steadily. Then he turned his head and glanced sideways at the
priest, who was behind him to the right. Then he looked again
at his hands. And Domini knew that all the time he was think-
ing about her, as she was thinking about him. She felt the
violence of his thought like the violence of a hand striking her.
The Arab waiter brought her some ragout of mutton and
peas, and she looked down again at her plate.
As she left the room after déjeuner the priest again got up
PRELUDE 8 I
and bowed. She stopped for a moment to speak to him. All
the French officers surveyed her tall, upright figure and broad,
athletic shoulders with intent admiration. Domini knew it
and was indifferent. If a hundred French soldiers had been
staring at her critically she would not have cared at all. She
was not a shy woman and was in nowise uncomfortable when
many eyes were fixed upon her. So she stood and talked a little
to the priest about Count Anteoni and her pleasure in his
garden. And as she did so, feeling her present calm self-posses-
sion, she wondered secretly at the wholly unnatural turmoil—
she called it that, exaggerating her feeling because it was
unusual—in which she had been a few 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 he comes here in search of solitude. He spends days
and even weeks alone shut 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, I fancy.” -
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-bye and walked away and out through the
Swing door.
All the afternoon she rested. The silence was profound.
Beni-Mora was enjoying a siesta in the heat. Domini revelled
in the stillness. The fatigue of travel had quite gone from her
now and she began to feel strangely at home. Suzanne had
arranged photographs, books, flowers in the little salon, had put
cushions here and there, and thrown pretty coverings over the
sofa and the two low chairs. The room had an air of cosiness,
of Occupation. It was a room one could sit in without restless-
ness, and Domini liked its simplicity, its bare wooden floor and
white walls. The sun made everything right here. Without
the Sun—but she could not think of Beni-Mora without the sun.
She read on the verandah and dreamed, and the hours slipped
quickly away. No one came to disturb her. She heard no
footsteps, no movements of humanity in the house. Now and
then the Sound of voices floated up to her from the gardens,
82 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
mingling with the peculiar dry noise of palm leaves stirring in
a breeze. Or she heard the distant gallop of horses’ feet. The
church bell chimed the hours and made her recall the previous
evening. Already it seemed far off in the past. She could
scarcely believe that she had not yet spent twenty-four hours
in Beni-Mora. A conviction came to her that she would be
there for a long while, that she would strike roots into this
sunny place of peace. When she heard the church bell now
she thought of the interior of the church and of the priest with
an odd sort of familiar pleasure, as people in England often
think of the village church in which they have always been
accustomed to worship, 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 dimly conscious
that Beni-Mora was the home of many things besides peace.
It held warring influences. At one moment it lulled her and
she was like an infant rocked in a cradle. At another moment
it stirred her, and she was a woman on the edge of mysterious
possibilities. There must be many individualities among the
desert spirits of whom Count Anteoni had spoken. Now one
was with her and whispered to her, now another. She fancied
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
treasure was 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 out towards the big hotel alone. She
met Hadj as she walked down the arcade. He wished to
accompany her, and was evidently filled with treacherous ideas
of supplanting his friend Batouch, but she gave him a franc and
sent him away. The franc soothed him slightly, yet she could
see that his childish vanity was injured. There was a malicious
gleam in his long, narrow eyes as he looked after her. Yet there
was genuine admiration too. The Arab bows down instinctively
before any dominating spirit, and such a spirit in a foreign
woman flashes in his eyes like a bright flame. Physical strength,
too, appeals to him with peculiar force. Hadj tossed his head
upwards, tucked in his chin, and muttered some words in his
brown throat as he noted the elastic grace with which the reject-
ing foreign woman moved till she was out of his sight. And she
never looked back at him. That was a keen arrow in her
PRELUDE 83
quiver. He fell into a deep reverie under the arcade and his
face became suddenly like the face of a sphinx.
Meanwhile Domini had forgotten him. She had turned to
the left down a small street in which some Indians and Superior
Arabs had bazaars. One of the latter came out from the
shadow of his hanging rugs and embroideries as she passed, and,
addressing her in a strange mixture of incorrect French and
English, begged her to come in and examine his wares.
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 as if he were boneless. The line of his delicate
and yet arbitrary features was fierce. His face was pitted with
small-pox and marked by an old wound, evidently made by a
knife, which stretched from his left cheek to his forehead, end-
ing just over the left eyebrow. The expression-of his eyes was
almost disgustingly intelligent. While they were fixed upon
her Domini felt as if her body were a glass box in which all
her thoughts, feelings, and desires were ranged for his inspec-
tion. In his demeanour there was much that pleaded, but also
something that commanded. His fingers were unnaturally
long and held a small bag, and he planted himself right before
her in the road.
“Madame, come in, venez avec moi. Venez—venez! I
have much—I will show—j’ai des choses extraordinaires!
Tenez! Look!”
He untied the mouth of the bag. Domini looked into it,
expecting to see Something precious—jewels perhaps. She saw
only a quantity of Sand, laughed, and moved to go on. She
thought the Arab was an impudent fellow trying to make fun
of her.
“No, no, Madame! Do not laugh! Ce sable est du désert.
Il y a des histoires la-dedans. Il y a l'histoire de Madame.
Come bazaar! I will read for Madame—what will be—what
will become—I will read—I will tell. Tenez!” He stared
down into the bag and his face became suddenly stern and fixed.
“Déja je vois des choses dans la vie de Madame. Ah! Mon
Dieu ! 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
more into the bag.
84 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Ah!, Mon Dieu ! Ah! Mon Dieu !” he repeated. “The
life to come—the life of Madame—I see it in the bag! ”
His face looked tortured. Domini walked on hurriedly.
When she had got to a little distance she glanced back. The
man was standing in the middle of the road and glaring into the
bag. His voice came down the street to her.
“Ah! Mon Dieu ! Ah Mon Dieu ! I see it—I see—je
vois la vie de Madame—Ah! Mon Dieu !”
There was an accent of dreadful suffering in his voice. It
made Domini shudder.
She passed the mouth of the dancers’ street. At the corner
there was a large Café Maure, and here, on rugs laid by the
side of the road, numbers of Arabs were stretched, some
sipping tea from glasses, some playing dominoes, Some convers-
ing, some staring calmly into vacancy, like animals drowned
in a lethargic dream. A black boy ran by holding a hammered
brass tray on which were some small china cups filled with thick
coffee. Halfway up the street he met three unveiled women
clad in voluminous white dresses, with scarlet, yellow, and
purple handkerchiefs bound over their black hair. He stopped
and the women took the cups with their henna-tinted fingers.
Two young Arabs joined them. There was a scuffle. White
lumps of sugar flew up into the air. Then there was a babel
of voices, a torrent of cries full of barbaric gaiety.
Before it had died out of Domini’s ears she stood by the
statue of Cardinal Lavigerie. Rather militant than priestly,
raised high on a marble pedestal, it faced the long road which,
melting at last into a faint desert track, stretched away to
Tombouctou. The mitre upon the head was worn surely as
if it were a helmet, the pastoral staff with its double cross was
grasped as if it were a sword. Upon the lower cross was
stretched a figure of the Christ in agony. And the Cardinal,
gazing with the eyes of an eagle out into the pathless wastes
of sand that lay beyond the palm trees, seemed, by his mere
attitude, to cry to all the myriad hordes of men the deep-
bosomed Sahara mothered in her mystery and silence, “Come
unto the Church | Come unto me!”
He called men in from the desert. Domini fancied his voice
echoing along the sands till the worshippers of Allah and of his
Prophet heard it like a clarion in Tombouctou.
When she reached the great hotel the sun was just beginning
to set. She drew Count Anteoni's card from her glove and
rang the bell. After a long interval a magnificent man, with
PRELUDE 85
the features of an Arab but a skin almost as black as a negro,
opened the door.
“Can I go up the tower to see the sunset?” she asked,
giving him the card.
The man bowed low, escorted her through a long hall full
of furniture shrouded in coverings, up a staircase, along a
corridor with numbered rooms, up a second staircase and out
upon a flat-terraced roof, from which the tower soared high
above the houses and palms of Beni-Mora, a landmark visible
half-a-day's journey out in the desert. A narrow spiral stair
inside the tower gained the summit.
“I’ll go up alone,” Domini said. “I shall stay some time
and I would rather not keep you.”
She put some money into the Arab's hand. He looked
pleased, yet doubtful too for a moment. Then he seemed
to banish his hesitation and, with a deprecating Smile, said
something which she could not understand. She nodded in-
telligently to get rid of him. Already, from the roof, she
caught sight of a great visionary panorama glowing with colour
and magic. She was impatient to climb still higher into the
sky, to look down on the world as an eagle does. So she
turned away decisively and mounted the dark, winding stair
till she reached a door. She pushed it open with some difficulty,
and came out into the air at a dizzy height, shutting the door
forcibly behind her with an energetic movement of her strong
31II]].S. *
The top of the tower was small and square, and guarded by
a white parapet breast high. In the centre of it rose the outer
walls and the ceiling of the top of the staircase, which pre-
vented a person standing on one side of the tower from seeing
anybody who was standing at the opposite side. There was just
sufficient space between parapet and staircase wall for two
people to pass with difficulty and manoeuvring.
But Domini was not concerned with such trivial details, as
she would have thought them had she thought of them.
Directly she had shut the little door and felt herself alone—
alone as an eagle in the sky—she took the step forward that
brought her to the parapet, leaned her arms on it, looked out
and was lost in a passion of contemplation.
At first she did not discern any of the multitudinous
minutiae in the great evening vision beneath and around her.
She only felt conscious of depth, height, space, colour, mystery,
calm. She did not measure. She did not differentiate. She
86 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
simply stood there, leaning lightly on the snowy plaster work,
and experienced something that she had never experienced
before, that she had never imagined. It was scarcely vivid;
for in everything that is vivid there seems to be something
small, the point to which wonders converge, the intense spark
to which many fires have given themselves as food, the drop
which contains the murmuring force of innumerable rivers. It
was more than vivid. It was reliantly dim, as is that pulse of
life which is heard through and above the crash of generations
and centuries falling downwards into the abyss; that persistent,
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
unaffected by unnumbered millions of tragedies and deaths.
Many sounds rose from far down beneath the tower, but at
first Domini did not hear them. She was only aware of an
immense, living silence, a silence flowing beneath, around and
above her in dumb, invisible waves. Circles of rest and peace,
cool and Serene, widened as circles in a pool towards the unseen
limits of the satisfied world, limits lost in the hidden 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, an eternal flutter of anxious, passionate wings, folded
themselves together gently like the petals of roses when a sum-
mer night comes into a garden.
She was not conscious that she breathed while she stood
there. She thought her bosom ceased to rise and fall. The
very blood dreamed in her veins 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 who was shrouded in the veil of fire.
B O O K II
THE VOICE OF PRAYER
CHAPTER VII
* HE music of things from below stole up through
the ethereal spaces to Domini without piercing
her dream. But suddenly she started with a
sense of pain so acute that it shook her body and
set the pulses in her temples beating. She lifted
her arms swiftly from the parapet and turned her head. She
had heard a little grating noise which seemed to be near to
her, enclosed with her on this height in the narrow space of the
tower. Slight as it was, and short—already she no longer heard
it—it had in an instant driven her out of Heaven, as if it had
been an angel with a flaming sword. She felt sure that there
must be something alive with her at the tower Summit, some-
thing which by a sudden movement had caused the little noise
she had heard. What was it? When she turned her head she
could only see the outer wall of the staircase, a section of the
narrow white space which surrounded it, an angle of the para-
pet and blue air.
She listened, holding her breath and closing her two hands
on the parapet, which was warm from the sun. Now, caught
back to reality, she could hear faintly the sounds from below in
Beni-Mora. But they did not concern her, and she wished to
shut them out from her ears. What did concern her was to
know what was with her up in the sky. Had a bird alighted
on the parapet and startled her by scratching at the plaster
with its beak? Could a mouse have shuffled in the wall? Or
was there a human being up there hidden from her by the
masonry P
This last supposition disturbed her almost absurdly for a
moment. She was inclined to walk quickly round to the
opposite side of the tower, but something stronger than her
inclination, an imperious shyness, held her motionless. She had
been carried so far away from the world that she felt unable to
87

88 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
face the scrutiny of any world-bound creature. Having been in
the transparent region of magic it seemed to her as if her secret,
the great secret of the absolutely true, the naked personality
hidden in every human being, were set blazing in her eyes like
some torch borne in a procession, just for that moment. The
moment past, she could look anyone fearlessly in the face; but
not now, not yet. -
While she stood there, half turning round, she heard the
sound again and knew what caused it. A foot had shifted on
the plaster floor. There was someone else then looking out over
the desert. A sudden idea struck her. Probably it was Count
Anteoni. He knew she was coming and might have decided to
act once more as her cicerone. He had not heard her climbing
the stairs, and, having gone to the far side of the tower, was no
doubt watching the Sunset, lost in a dream as she had been.
She resolved not to disturb him—if it was he. When he had
dreamed enough he must inevitably come round to where she
was standing in order to gain the staircase. She would let him
find her there. Less troubled now, but in an utterly changed
mood, she turned, leaned once more on the parapet and looked
over, this time observantly, prepared to note the details that,
combined and veiled in the evening light of Africa, made the
magic which had so instantly entranced her.
She looked down into the village and could see its extent,
precisely how it was placed in the Sahara, in what relation
exactly it stood to the mountain ranges, to the palm groves and
the arid, sunburnt tracts, where its life centred and where it
tailed away into Suburban edges not unlike the ragged edges
of worn garments, where it was idle and frivolous, where busy
and sedulous. She realised for the first time that there were
two distinct layers of life in Beni-Mora—the life of the streets,
courts, gardens and market-place, and above it the life of the
roofs. Both were now spread out before her, and the latter, in
its domestic intimacy, interested and charmed her. She saw
upon the roofs the children playing with little dogs, goats, fowls,
mothers in rags of gaudy colours stirring the barley for cous-
cous, shredding vegetables, pounding coffee, Stewing meat,
plucking chickens, bending over bowls from which rose the steam
of soup; small girls, seated in dusty Corners, Solemnly winding
wool on sticks, and pausing, now and then, to Squeak to distant
members of the home circle, or to smell at flowers laid beside
them as solace to their industry. An old grandmother rocked
and kissed a naked baby with a pot belly. A big grey rat stole
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 89
from a rubbish heap close by her, flitted across the sunlit space,
and disappeared into a cranny. Pigeons circled above the home
activities, delicate lovers of the air, wandered among the palm
tops, returned and fearlessly alighted on the brown earth para-
pets, strutting hither and thither and making their perpetual,
characteristic motion of the head, half nod, half genuflection.
Veiled girls promenaded to take the evening cool, folding their
arms beneath their flowing draperies, and chattering to one
another in voices that Domini could not hear. More close at
hand certain roofs in the dancers' street revealed luxurious sofas
on which painted houris were lolling in sinuous attitudes, or
were posed with a stiffness of idols, little tables set with coffee
cups, others round which were gathered Zouaves intent on card
games, but ever ready to pause for a caress or for some jesting
absurdity with the women who squatted beside them. Some
men, dressed like girls, went to and fro, serving the dancers
with sweetmeats and with cigarettes, their beards flowing down
with a grotesque effect over their dresses of embroidered muslin,
their hairy arms emerging from hanging sleeves of silk. A
negro boy sat holding a tom-tom between his bare knees and
beating it with supple hands, and a Jewess performed the
stomach dance, waving two handkerchiefs stained red and purple,
and singing in a loud and barbarous contralto voice which
Domini could hear but very faintly. The card-players stopped
their game and watched her, and Domini watched too. For
the first time, and from this immense height, she saw this
universal dance of the east; the doll-like figure, fantastically
dwarfed, waving its tiny hands, wriggling its minute body,
turning about like a little top, strutting and bending, while the
Soldiers—small almost from here as toys taken out of a box—
assumed attitudes of deep attention as they leaned upon the card-
table, stretching out their legs enveloped in balloon-like
trouserS.
Domini thought of the recruits, now, no doubt, undergoing
elsewhere their initiation. For a moment she seemed to see
their coarse peasant faces rigid with surprise, their hanging jaws,
their childish, and yet sensual, round eyes. Notre Dame de la
Garde must seem very far away from them now.
With that thought she looked quickly away from the Jewess
and the Soldiers. She felt a sudden need of something more
nearly in relation with her inner self. She was almost angry as
she realised how deep had been her momentary interest in a
Scene suggestive of a license which was surely unattractive to
90 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
her. Yet was it unattractive? She scarcely knew. But she
knew that it had kindled in her a sudden and very strong
curiosity, even a vague, momentary desire that she had been
born in some tent of the Ouled Nails—no, that was impossible.
She had not felt such a desire even for an instant. She looked
towards the thickets of the palms, towards the mountains full of
changing, exquisite colours, towards the desert. And at once
the dream began to return, and she felt as if hands slipped under
her heart and uplifted it.
What depths and heights were within her, what deep, dark
valleys, and what mountain peaks! And how she travelled
within herself, with swiftness of light, with speed of the wind.
What terrors of activity she knew. Did every human being
know similar terrors? -
The colours everywhere deepened as day failed. The desert
spirits were at work. She thought of Count Anteoni again, and
resolved to go round to the other side of the tower. As she
moved to do this she heard once more the shifting of a foot on
the plaster floor, then a step. Evidently she had infected him
with an intention similar to her own. She went on, still hearing
the step, turned the corner and stood face to face in the strong
evening light with the traveller. Their bodies almost touched
in the narrow space before they both stopped, startled. For a
moment they stood still looking at each other, as people might
look who have spoken together, who know something of each
other's lives, who may like or dislike, wish to avoid or to draw
near to each other, but who cannot pretend that they are
complete strangers, wholly indifferent to each other. They met
in the sky, almost as one bird may meet another on the wing.
And, to Domini, at any rate, it seemed as if the depth, height,
Space, colour, mystery and calm—yes, even the calm—which
were above, around and beneath them, had been placed there
by hidden hands as a setting for their encounter, even as the
abrupt pageant of the previous day, into which the train had
emerged from the blackness of the tunnel, had surely been
created as a frame for the face which had looked upon her as
if out of the heart of the sun. The assumption was absurd, un-
reasonable, yet vital. She did not combat it because she felt it
too powerful for common sense to strive against. And it seemed
to her that the stranger felt it too, that she saw her sensation
reflected in his eyes as he stood between the parapet and the
staircase wall, barring—in despite of himself—her path. The
moment seemed long while they stood motionless. Then the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 9I
man took off his soft hat awkwardly, yet with real politeness,
and stood quickly sideways against the parapet to let her pass.
She could have passed if she had brushed against him, and made
a movement to do so. Then she checked herself and looked at
him again as if she expected him to speak to her. His hat was
still in his hand, and the light desert wind faintly stirred his
short brown hair. He did not speak, but stood there crushing
himself against the plaster work with a sort of fierce timidity, as
if he dreaded the touch of her skirt against him, and longed
to make himself small, to shrivel up and let her go by in
freedom.
“Thank you,” she said in French.
She passed him, but was unable to do so without touching
him. Her left arm was hanging down, and her bare hand
knocked against the back of the hand in which he held his hat.
She felt as if at that moment she touched a furnace, and she saw
him shiver slightly, as over-fatigued men sometimes shiver in
daylight. An extraordinary, almost motherly, sensation of pity
for him came over her. She did not know why. The intense
heat of his hand, the shiver that ran over his body, his attitude
as he shrank with a kind of timid, yet ferocious, politeness
against the white wall, the expression in his eyes when their
hands touched—a look she could not analyse, but which seemed
to hold a mingling of wistfulness and repellance, as of a being
stretching out arms for succour, and crying at the same time,
“Don’t draw near to me! Leave me to myself!”—everything
about him moved her. She felt that she was face to face with a
Solitariness of Soul such as she had never encountered before, a
Solitariness that was cruel, that was weighed down with agony.
And directly she had passed the man and thanked him formally
she stopped with her usual decision of manner. She had abruptly
made up her mind to talk to him. He was already moving to
turn away. She spoke quickly, and in French.
“Isn't it wonderful here?” she said; and she made her voice
rather loud, and almost sharp, to arrest his attention.
He turned round swiftly, yet somehow reluctantly, looked at
her anxiously, and seemed doubtful whether he would reply.
After a silence that was short, but that seemed, and in such
circumstances was, long, he answered, in French:
“Very wonderful, Madame.”
The Sound of his own voice seemed to startle him. He stood
as if he had heard an unusual noise which had alarmed him,
and looked at Domini as if he expected that she would share in
92 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
his sensation. Very quietly and deliberately she leaned her
arms again on the parapet and spoke to him once more.
“We seem to be the only travellers here.”
The man's attitude became slightly calmer. He looked less
momentary, less as if he were in haste to go, but still shy, fierce
and extraordinarily unconventional.
“Yes, Madame; there are not many here.”
After a pause, and with an uncertain accent, he added:
“Pardon, Madame—for yesterday.” .
There was a sudden simplicity, almost like that of a child, in
the sound of his voice as he said that. Domini knew at once
that he alluded to the incident at the station of El-Akbara, that
he was trying to make amends. The way he did it touched her
curiously. She felt inclined to stretch out her hand to him and
say, “Of course! Shake hands on it!” almost as an honest
schoolboy might. But she only answered:
“I know it was only an accident. Don't think of it any
more.”
She did not look at him.
“Where money is concerned the Arabs are very persistent,”
she continued.
The man laid one of his brown hands on the top of the
parapet. She looked at it, and it seemed to her that she had
never before seen the back of a hand express so much of char-
acter, look so intense, so ardent, and so melancholy as his.
“Yes, Madame.”
He still spoke with an odd timidity, with an air of listening
to his own speech as if in some strange way it were phenomenal
to him. It occurred to her that possibly he had lived much in
lonely places, in which his solitude had rarely been broken, and
he had been forced to acquire the habit of silence.
“But they are very picturesque. They look almost like some
religious order when they wear their hoods. Don't you think
SO 2 ”
She saw the brown hand lifted from the parapet, and heard
her companion's feet shift on the floor of the tower. But this
time he said nothing. As she could not see his hand now she
looked out again over the panorama of the evening, which was
deepening in intensity with every passing moment, and imme-
diately she was conscious of two feelings that filled her with
wonder: a much stronger and Sweeter sense of the African magic
than she had felt till now, and the certainty that the greater
force and sweetness of her feeling were caused by the fact that
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 93
she had a companion in her contemplation. This was strange.
An intense desire for loneliness had driven her out of Europe
to this desert place, and a companion, who was an utter stranger,
emphasised the significance, gave fibre to the beauty, intensity
to the mystery of that which she looked on. It was as if the
meaning of the African evening were suddenly doubled. She
thought of a dice-thrower who throws one die and turns up six,
then throws two and turns up twelve. And she remained silent
in her surprise. The man stood silently beside her. Afterwards
she felt as if, during this silence in the tower, some powerful and
unseen being had arrived mysteriously, introduced them to one
another and mysteriously departed.
The evening drew on in their silence and the dream was
deeper now. All that Domini had felt when first she approached
the parapet she felt more strangely, and she grasped, with physi-
cal and mental vision, not only the whole, but the innumerable
parts of that which she looked on. She saw, fancifully, the circles
widen in the pool of peace, but she saw also the things that had
been hidden in the pool. The beauty of dimness, the beauty
of clearness, joined hands. The one and the other were, with
her, like sisters. She heard the voices from below, and surely
also the voices of the stars that were approaching with the night,
blending harmoniously and making a music in the air. The
glowing sky and the glowing mountains were as comrades, each
responsive to the emotions of the other. The lights in the rocky
clefts had messages for the shadowy moon, and the palm trees
for the thin, fire-tipped clouds about the west. Far off the misty
purple of the desert drew surely closer, like a mother coming to
fold her children in her arms.
The Jewess still danced upon the roof to the watching
Zouaves, but now there was something mystic in her tiny move-
ments, which no longer roused in Domini any furtive desire not
really inherent in her nature. There was something beautiful
in everything seen from this altitude in this wondrous evening
light.
Presently, without turning to her companion, she said:
“Could anything look ugly in Beni-Mora from here at this
hour, do you think?”
Again there was the silence that seemed characteristic of this
man before he spoke, as if speech were very difficult to him.
“I believe not, Madame.”
“Even that woman down there on that roof looks graceful—
the one dancing for those soldiers.”
94 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He did not answer. She glanced at him and pointed.
“Down there, do you see?”
She noticed that he did not follow her hand and that his
face became stern. He kept his eyes fixed on the trees of the
garden of the Gazelles near Cardinal Lavigerie's statue and
replied:
“Yes, Madame.”
His manner made her think that perhaps he had seen the
dance at close quarters and that it was outrageous. For a
moment she felt slightly uncomfortable, but determined not
to let him remain under a false impression, she added care-
lessly:
“I have never seen the dances of Africa. I daresay I should
think them ugly enough if I were near, but from this height
everything is transformed.”
“ That is true, Madame.”
There was an odd, muttering sound in his voice, which was
deep, and probably strong, but which he kept low. Domini
thought it was the most male voice she had ever heard. It
seemed to be full of sex, like his hands. Yet there was nothing
coarse in either the one or the other. Everything about him was
vital to a point that was so remarkable as to be not actually
unnatural but very near the unnatural.
She glanced at him again. He was a big man, but very thin.
Her experienced eyes of an athletic woman told her that he was
capable of great and prolonged muscular exertion. He was big-
boned and deep-chested, and had nervous as well as muscular
strength. The timidity in him was strange in such a man.
What could it spring from ? It was not like ordinary shyness,
the gaucherie of a big, awkward lout unaccustomed to woman's
society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a
crowd of men. Domini thought that he would be timid even
of men. Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward,
unmanly. Such a quality would have sickened her at once, and
she knew she would have at onse divined it. He did not hold
himself very well, but was inclined to stoop and to keep his
head low, as if he were in the habit of looking much on the
ground. The idiosyncrasy was rather ugly, and suggested melan-
choly to her, the melancholy of a man given to over-much
meditation and afraid to face the radiant wonder of life.
She caught herself up at this last thought. She-thinking
naturally that life was full of radiant wonder Was she then
so utterly transformed already by Beni-Mora Or had the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 95
thought come to her because she stood side by side with
someone whose sorrows had been unfathomably deeper than her
own, and so who, all unconsciously, gave her a knowledge of
her own—till then unsuspected—hopefulness?
She looked at her companion again. He seemed to have
relinquished his intention of leaving her, and was standing
quietly beside her, staring towards the desert, with his head
slightly drooped forward. In one hand he held a thick stick.
He had put his hat on again. His attitude was much calmer
than it had been. Already he seemed more at ease with her.
She was glad of that. She did not ask herself why. But the
intense beauty of evening in this land and at this height made her
wish enthusiastically that it could produce a happiness such as
it created in her in everyone. Such beauty, with its voices, its
colours, its lines of tree and leaf, of wall and mountain ridge,
its mystery of shapes and movements, stillness and dreaming dis-
tance, its atmosphere of the far off come near, chastened by
journeying, fine with the unfamiliar, its solemn changes towards
the impenetrable night, was too large a thing and fraught with
too much tender and lovable invention to be worshipped in any
selfishness. It made her feel as if she could gladly be a martyr
for unseen human beings, as if sacrifice would be an easy thing
if made for those to whom such beauty would appeal. Brother-
hood rose up and cried in her, as it surely sang in the sunset,
in the mountains, the palm groves and the desert. The flame
above the hills, their purple outline, the moving, feathery trees,
dark under the rose-coloured glory of the west, and most of
all the immeasurably remote horizons, each moment more strange
and more eternal, made her long to make this harsh stranger
happy.
“One ought to find happiness here,” she said to him very
simply.
She saw his hand strain itself round the wood of his stick.
“Why?” he said.
He turned right round to her and looked at her with a sort
of anger.
“Why should you suppose so?” he added, speaking quite
quickly, and without his former uneasiness and consciousness.
“Because it is so beautiful and so calm.”
“Calm ' " he said. “Here! ”
There was a sound of passionate surprise in his voice. Domini
was startled. She felt as if she were fighting, and must fight
hard if she were not to be beaten to the dust. But when she
96 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
looked at him she could find no weapons. She said nothing.
In a moment he spoke again.
“You find calm here,” he said slowly. “Yes, I see.”
His head dropped lower and his face hardened as he looked
over the edge of the parapet to the village, the blue, desert.
Then he lifted his eyes to the mountains and the clear sky and
the shadowy moon. Each element in the evening scene was
examined with a fierce, painful scrutiny, as if he was resolved to
wring from each its secret.
“Why, yes,” he added in a low, muttering voice full of a sort
of terrified surprise, “it is so. You are right. Why, yes, it is
calm here.”
He spoke like a man who had been suddenly convinced,
beyond power of further unbelief, of something he had never
suspected, never dreamed of. And the conviction seemed to be
bitter to him, even alarming.
“But away out there must be the real home of peace, I
think,” Domini said.
“Where?” said the man, quickly.
She pointed towards the south.
“In the depths of the desert,” she said. “Far away from
civilisation, far away from modern men and modern women,
and all the noisy trifles we are accustomed to.”
He looked towards the south eagerly. In everything he did
there was a flame-like intensity, as if he could not perform an
ordinary action, or turn his eyes upon any object, without
calling up in his mind, or heart, a violence of thought or of
feeling.
“You think it—you think there would be peace out there,
far away in the desert?” he said, and his face relaxed slightly,
as if in obedience to some thought not wholly sad.
“It may be fanciful,” she replied. “But I think there must.
Surely Nature has not a lying face.”
He was still gazing towards the south, from which the night
was slowly emerging, a traveller through a mist of blue. He
seemed to be held fascinated by the desert which was fading
away gently, like a mystery which had drawn near to the light
of revelation, but which was now slipping back into an under-
world of magic. He bent forward as one who watches a depar-
ture in which he longs to share, and Domini felt sure that he
had forgotten her. She felt, too, that this man was gripped by
the desert influence more fiercely even than she was, and that he
must have a stronger imagination, a greater force of projection
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 97
even than she had. Where she bore a taper he lifted a blazing
torch.
A roar of drums rose up immediately beneath them. From
the negro village emerged a ragged procession of thick-lipped
men, and singing, capering women tricked out in Scarlet and
yellow shawls, headed by a male dancer clad in the skins of
jackals, and decorated with mirrors, camels' skulls and chains
of animals' teeth. He shouted and leaped, rolled his bulging .
eyes, and protruded a fluttering tongue. The dust curled up
round his stamping, naked feet.
“Yah-ah-lä Yah-ah-lä ''
The howling chorus came up to the tower, with a clash of
enormous castanets, and of poles beaten rhythmically together.
“Yi-yi-yi-yi! ” went the shrill voices of the women.
The cloud of dust increased, enveloping the lower part of
the procession, till the black heads and waving arms emerged as
if from a maelstrom. The thunder of the drums was like the
thunder of a cataract in which the singers, disappearing towards
the village, seemed to be swept away.
The man at Domini’s side raised himself up with a jerk, and
all the former fierce timidity and consciousness came back to his
face. He turned round, pulled open the door behind him, and
took off his hat.
“Excuse me, Madame,” he said. “Bon Soir l’’
“I am coming too,” Domini answered.
He looked uncomfortable and anxious, hesitated, then, as if
driven to do it in spite of himself, plunged downward through
the narrow doorway of the tower into the darkness. Domini
waited for a moment, listening to the heavy sound of his tread
on the wooden stairs. She frowned till her thick eyebrows
nearly met and the corners of her lips turned down. Then she
followed slowly. When she was on the stairs and the footsteps
died away below her she fully realised that for the first time in
her life a man had insulted her. Her face felt suddenly very
hot, and her lips very dry, and she longed to use her physical
strength in a way not wholly feminine. In the hall, among the
shrouded furniture, she met the smiling doorkeeper. She
stopped.
“Did the gentleman who has just gone out give you his
card?” she said abruptly.
The Arab assumed a fawning, servile expression.
“No, Madame, but he is a very good gentleman, and I know
well that Monsieur the Count } }
g8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Domini cut him short.
“Of what nationality is he?”
“ Monsieur the Count, Madame?”
“No, no.” -
“The gentleman? I do not know. But he can speak Arabic,
Oh, he is a very nice
“Bon Soir,” said Domini, giving him a franc.
When she was out on the road in front of the hotel she saw
the Stranger striding along in the distance at the tail of the
negro procession. The dust stirred up by the dancers whirled
about him. Several small negroes skipped, round him, doubtless
making eager demands upon his generosity. He seemed to take
no notice of them, and as she watched him Domini was re-
minded of his retreat from the praying Arab in the desert that
morning.
“Is he afraid of women as he is afraid of prayer?” she
thought, and suddenly the sense of humiliation and anger left
her, and was succeeded by a powerful curiosity such as she had
never felt before about anyone. She realised that this curiosity
had dawned in her almost at the first moment when she saw the
stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance
after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete.
She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling so
unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of
all her old indifference that side which confronted people had
always been the most sturdy, the most solidly built. Without
affectation she had been a profoundly incurious woman as to the
lives and the concerns of others, even of those whom she knew
best and was supposed to care for most. Her nature had been
essentially languid in human intercourse. The excitements,
troubles, even the passions of others had generally stirred her no
more than a distant puppet-show stirs an absent-minded passer
in the street.
In Africa it seemed that her whole nature had been either
violently renewed, or even changed. She could not tell which.
But this strong stirring of curiosity would, she believed, have
been impossible in the woman she had been but a week ago, the
woman who travelled to Marseilles dulled, ignorant of herself,
longing for change. Perhaps instead of being angry she ought
to welcome it as a symptom of the re-creation she longed for.
While she changed her gown for dinner that night she debated
within herself how she would treat her fellow-guest when she
met him in the salle-à-manger. She ought to cut him after what
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 99
had occurred, she supposed. Then it seemed to her that to do
so would be undignified, and would give him the impression
that he had the power to offend her. She resolved to bow to
him if they met face to face. Just before she went downstairs
she realised how vehement her internal debate had been, and
was astonished. Suzanne was putting away something in a
drawer, bending down and stretching out her plump arms.
“Suzannel ” Domini said.
“Yes, Mam'zelle!”
“How long have you been with me?”
“Three years, Mam'zelle.” -
The maid shut the drawer and turned round, fixing her
shallow, blue-grey eyes on her mistress, and standing as if she
were ready to be photographed.
“Would you say that I am the same sort of person to-day
as I was three years ago?”
Suzanne looked like a cat that has been startled by a sudden
noise.
“The same, Mam'zelle?”
“Yes. Do you think I have altered in that time?”
Suzanne considered the question with her head slightly on one
side.
“Only here, Mam'zelle,” she replied at length.
“Here!” said Domini, rather eagerly. “Why, I have only
been here twenty-six hours.”
“That is true. But Mam'zelle looks as if she had a little life
here, a little emotion. Mon Dieu ! Mam'zelle will pardon me,
but what is a woman who feels no emotion? A packet. Is it
not so, Mam'zelle?”
“Well, but what is there to be emotional about here?”
Suzanne looked vaguely crafty.
“Who knows, Mam'zelle? Who can say? Mon Dieu !
This village is dull, but it is odd. No band plays. There are
no shops for a girl to look into. There is nothing chic except
the costumes of the Zouaves. But one cannot deny that it is
odd. When Mam'zelle was away this afternoon in the tower
Monsieur Helmuth 2.
“Who is that P ''
“The Monsieur who accompanies the omnibus to the station.
Monsieur Helmuth was polite enough to escort me through the
village. Mon Dieu, Mam'zelle, I said to myself, ‘Anything
might occur here.’”
“Anything! What do you mean?”
IOO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
But Suzanne did not seem to know. She only made her
figure look more tense than ever, tucked in her round little chin,
which was dimpled and unmeaning, and said:
“Who knows, Mam'zelle? This village is dull, that is true,
but it is odd. One does not find oneself in such places every
day.”
Domini could not help laughing at these Delphic utterances,
but she went downstairs thoughtfully. She knew Suzanne's
practical spirit. Till now the maid had never shown any
capacity of imagination. Beni-Mora was certainly beginning
to mould her nature into a slightly different shape. And
Domini seemed to see an Eastern potter at work, squatting in
the sun and with long and delicate fingers changing the outline
of the statuette of a woman, modifying a cürve here, an angle
there, till the clay began to show another woman, but with, as
it were, the shadow of the former one lurking behind the new
personality.
The stranger was not at dinner. His table was laid and
Domini sat expecting each moment to hear the shuffling tread
of his heavy boots on the wooden floor. When he did not come
she thought she was glad. After dinner she spoke for a moment
to the priest and then went upstairs to the verandah to take
coffee. She found Batouch there. He had renounced his de-
termined air, and his café-au-lait countenance and huge body
expressed enduring pathos, as of an injured, patient creature
laid out for the trampling of Domini’s cruel feet.
“Well?” she said, sitting down by the basket table.
“Well, Madame?”
He sighed and looked on the ground, lifted one white-socked
foot, removed its yellow slipper, shook out a tiny stone from the
slipper and put it on again, slowly, gracefully and very sadly.
Then he pulled the white sock up with both hands and glanced
at Domini out of the corners of his eyes.
“What's the matter?”
“Madame does not care to see the dances of Beni-Mora, to
hear the music, to listen to the story-teller, to enter the café of
El Hadj where Achmed sings to the keef smokers, or to witness
the beautiful religious ecstasies of the dervishes from Oumach.
Therefore I come to bid Madame respectfully good-night and to
take my departure.”
He threw his burnous over his left shoulder with a sudden
. of despair that was full of exaggeration, Domini
SIIlllCC1,
THE VOICE OF PRAYER IOI
“You’ve been very good to-day,” she said.
“I am always good, Madame. I am of a serious disposition.
Not one keeps Ramadan as I do.”
“I am sure of it. Go downstairs and wait for me under
the arcade.”
Batouch's large face became suddenly a rendezvous of all the
gaieties.
“Madame is coming out to-night?”
“Presently. Be in the arcade.” -
He swept away with the ample magnificence of joyous bear-
ing and movement that was like a loud Te Deum.
“Suzannel Suzannel ”
Domini had finished her coffee.
“Mam'zelle !” answered Suzanne, appearing.
“Would you like to come out with me to-night?”
“Mam'zelle is going out?”
“Yes, to see the village by night.”
Suzanne looked irresolute. Craven fear and curiosity fought
a battle within her, as was evident by the expressions that came
and went in her face before she answered.
“Shall we not be murdered, Mam'zelle, and are there in-
teresting things to see?”
“There are interesting things to see—dancers, singers, keef
smokers. But if you are afraid don’t come.”
“Dancers, Mam'zelle! But the Arabs carry knives. And is
there singing? I—I should not like Mam'zelle to go without
me. But } }
“Come and protect me from the knives then. Bring my
jacket—any one. I don’t suppose I shall put it on.”
As she spoke the distant tom-toms began. Suzanne started
nervously and looked at Domini with sincere apprehension.
“We had better not go, Mam'zelle. It is not safe out here.
Men who make a noise like that would not respect us.”
“I like it.”
“That sound? But it is always the same and there is no
music in it.”
“Perhaps there is more in it than music. The jacket?”
Suzanne went gingerly to fetch it. The faint cry of the
African hautboy rose up above the tom-toms. The evening fète
was beginning. To-night Domini felt that she must go to the
distant music and learn to understand its meaning, not only for
herself, but for those who made it and danced to it night after
night. It stirred her imagination, and made her in love with
I O2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
mystery, and anxious at least to steal to the very threshold of
the barbarous world. Did it stir those who had had it in their
ears ever since they were naked, sunburned babies rolling in the
hot sun of the Sahara? Could it seem as ordinary to them as
the cold uproar of the piano-organ to the urchins of White-
chapel, or the whine of the fiddle to the peasants of Touraine
where Suzanne was born ? She wanted to know. Suzanne
returned with the jacket. She still looked apprehensive, but she
had put on her hat and fastened a sprig of red geranium in the
front of her black gown. The curiosity was in the ascendant.
“We are not going quite alone, Mam'zelle?”
“No, no. Batouch will protect us.”
Suzanne breathed a furtive sigh.
The poet was in the white arcade with Hadj, who looked
both wicked and deplorable, and had a shabby air, in marked
contrast to Batouch's ostentatious triumph. Domini felt quite
sorry for him.
“You come with us too,” she said.
Hadj squared his shoulders and instantly looked vivacious
and almost Smart. But an undecided expression came into his
face. -
“Where is Madame going?”
“To see the village.”
Batouch shot a glance at Hadj and smiled unpleasantly.
“I will come with Madame.” -
Batouch still smiled.
“We are going to the Ouled Nails,” he said significantly to
Hadj. -
“I—I will come.”
They set out. Suzanne looked gently at the poet's legs and
seemed comforted.
“Take great care of Mademoiselle Suzanne,” Domini said
to the poet. “She is a little nervous in the dark.”
“Mademoiselle Suzanne is like the first day after the fast of
Ramadan,” replied the poet, majestically. “No one would
harm her were she to wander alone to Tombouctou.”
The prospect drew from Suzanne a startled gulp. Batouch
placed himself tenderly at her side and they set out, Domini
walking behind with Hadj.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER IO3
CHAPTER VIII
THE village was full of the wan presage of the coming of the
moon. The night was very still and very warm. As they skirted
the long gardens Domini saw a light in the priest's house. It
made her wonder how he passed his solitary evenings when he
went home from the hotel, and she fancied him sitting in some
plainly-furnished little room with Bous-Bous and a few books,
smoking a pipe and thinking sadly of the White Fathers of
Africa and of his frustrated desire for complete renunciation.
With this last thought blended the still remote sound of the
hautboy. It suggested anything rather than renunciation;
mysterious melancholy—successor to passion—the cry of long-
‘ing, the wail of the unknown that draws some men and women
to splendid follies and to ardent pilgrimages whose goal is the
mirage.
Hadj was talking in a low voice, but Domini did not listen to
him. She was vaguely aware that he was abusing Batouch, say-
ing that he was a liar, inclined to theft, a keef smoker, and in a
general way steeped to the lips in crime. But the mocn was
rising, the distant music was becoming more distinct. She could
not listen to Hadj.
As they turned into the street of the sand-diviner the first ray
of the moon fell on the white road. Far away at the end of the
street Domini could see the black foliage of the trees in the
Gazelles' garden, and beyond, to the left, a dimness of shadowy
palms at the desert edge. The desert itself was not visible. Two
Arabs passed, shrouded in burnouses, with the hoods drawn up
over their heads. Only their black beards could be seen. They
were talking violently and waving their arms. Suzanne shud-
dered and drew close to the poet. Her plump face worked and
she glanced appealingly at her mistress. But Domini was not
thinking of her, or of violence or danger. The sound of the
tom-toms and hautboys seemed suddenly much louder now that
the moon began to shine, making a whiteness among the white
houses of the village, the white robes of the inhabitants, a greater
whiteness on the white road that lay before them. And she was
thinking that the moon whiteness of Beni-Mora was more
passionate than pure, more like the blanched face of a lover than
the cool, pale cheek of a virgin. There was excitement in it,
suggestion greater even than the suggestion of the tremendous
coloured scenes of the evening that preceded such a night. And
IO4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
she mused of white heat and of what it means—the white heat of
the brain blazing with thoughts that govern, the white heat of
the heart blazing with emotions that make such thoughts seem
cold. She had never known either. Was she incapable of know-
ing them? Could she imagine them till there was physical heat
in her body if she was incapable of knowing them? Suzanne
and the two Arabs were distant shadows to her when that first
moon-ray touched their feet. The passion of the night began
to burn her, and she thought she would like to take her soul and
hold it out to the white flame.
As they passed the sand-diviner's house Domini saw his spectral
figure standing under the yellow light of the hanging lantern
in the middle of his carpet shop, which was lined from floor to
ceiling with dull red embroideries and dim with the fumes of an
incense brazier. He was talking to a little boy, but keeping a
wary eye on the street, and he came out quickly, beckoning with
his long hands, and calling softly, in a half-chuckling and yet
authoritative voice:
“Venez, Madame, venez! Come! come!”
Suzanne seized Domini’s arm.
“Not to-night!” Domini called out.
“Yes, Madame, to-night. The vie of Madame is there in
the sand to-night. Je la vois, je la vois. C'est là dans le sable
to-night.”
The moonlight showed the wound on his face. Suzanne
uttered a cry and hid her eyes with her hands. They went on
towards the trees. Hadj walked with hesitation.
“How loud the music is getting,” Domini said to him.
“It will deafen Madame's ears if she gets nearer,” said
Hadj, eagerly. “And the dancers are not for Madame. For
the Arabs, yes, but for a great lady of the most respectable
England l Madame will be red with disgust, with anger.
Madame will have mal-au-caºur.”
Batouch began to look like an idol on whose large face the
artificer had carved an expression of savage ferocity.
“Madame is my client,” he said fiercely. “Madame trusts
in me.”
Hadj laughed with a snarl.
“He who smokes the keef is like a Mehari with a swollen
tongue,” he rejoined.
The poet looked as if he were going to spring upon his
cousin, but he restrained himself and a slow, malignant smile
curled about his thick lips like a snake.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER IO5
“I shall show to Madame a dancer who is modest, who is
beautiful, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim,” he said softly.
“Fatma is sick,” said Hadj, quickly.
“It will not be Fatma.”
Hadj began suddenly to gesticulate with his thin, delicate
hands and to look fiercely excited.
“Halima is at the Fontaine Chaude,” he cried.
“Keltoum will be there.”
“She will not. Her foot is sick. She cannot dance. For a
week she will not dance. I know it.”
“And—Irena? Is she sick? Is she at the Hammam
Salahine?”
Hadj's countenance fell. He looked at his cousin sideways,
always showing his teeth.
“Do you not know, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim?”
“A na ma audi ma nek oil lek /* * growled Hadj in his
throat.
They had reached the end of the little street. The whiteness
of the great road which stretched straight through the oasis into
the desert lay before them, with the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie
staring down it in the night. At right angles was the street of
the dancers, narrow, bounded with the low white houses of the
ouleds, twinkling with starry lights, humming with voices, throb-
bing with the clashing music that poured from the rival cafés
maures, thronged with the white figures of the desert men,
strolling slowly, softly as panthers up and down. The moon-
light was growing brighter, as if invisible hands began to fan
the white flame of passion which lit up Beni-Mora. A patrol
of Tirailleurs Indigènes passed by going up the street, in yellow
and blue uniforms, turbans and white gaiters, their rifles over
their broad shoulders. The faint tramp of their marching
feet was just audible on the Sandy road. - -
“Hadj can go home if he is afraid of anything in the dancing
street,” said Domini, rather maliciously. “Let us follow the
soldiers.”
Hadj started as if he had been stung, and looked at Domini
as if he would like to strangle her.
“I am afraid of nothing,” he exclaimed proudly. “Madame
does not know Hadj-ben-Ibrahim.”
Batouch laughed soundlessly, shaking his great shoulders.
It was evident that he had divined his cousin's wish to supplant
* “I have nothing to say to you.”
IO6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
him and was busily taking his revenge. Domini was amused,
and as they went slowly up the street in the wake of the soldiers
she said:
“Do you often come here at night, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim?”
“Oh, yes, Madame, when I am alone. But with ladies
“You were here last night, weren't you, with the traveller
from the hotel?”
“No, Madame. The Monsieur of the hotel preferred to
visit the café of the story-teller, which is far more interesting.
If Madame will permit me to take her } }
But this last assault was too much for the poet's philosophy.
He suddenly threw off all pretence of graceful calm, and poured
out upon Hadj a torrent of vehement Arabic, accompanying it
with passionate gestures which filled Suzanne with horror and
Domini with secret delight. She liked this abrupt unveiling of
the raw. There had always lurked in her an audacity, a quick
spirit of adventure more boyish than feminine. She had reached
the age of thirty-two without ever gratifying it, or even fully
realising how much she longed to gratify it. But now she began
to understand it and to feel that it was imperious.
“I have a barbarian in me,” she thought.
“Batouch!” she said sharply.
The poet turned a distorted face to her.
“Madame!”
“That will do. Take us to the dancing-house.”
Batouch shot a last ferocious glance at Hadj and they went
on into the crowd of strolling men.
The little street, bright with the lamps of the small houses,
from which projected wooden balconies painted in gay colours,
and with the glowing radiance of the moon, was mysterious
despite its gaiety, its obvious dedication to the cult of pleasure.
Alive with the shrieking sounds of music, the movement and the
murmur of desert humanity made it almost solemn. This crowd
of boys and men, robed in white from head to heel, preserved
a serious grace in its vivacity, suggested besides a dignified
barbarity a mingling of angel, monk and nocturnal spirit. In
the distance of the moonbeams, gliding slowly over the dusty
road with slippered feet, there was something soft and radiant
in their moving whiteness. Nearer, their pointed hoods made
them monastical as a procession stealing from a range of cells
to chant a midnight mass. In the shadowy dusk of the tiny
side alleys they were like wandering ghosts intent on unholy
errands or returning to the graveyard.
35
THE VOICE OF PRAYER Io'7
On some of the balconies painted girls were leaning and
smoking cigarettes. Before each of the lighted doorways from
which the shrill noise of music came, Small, intent crowds were
gathered, watching the performance that was going on inside.
The robes of the Arabs brushed against the skirts of Domini and
Suzanne, and eyes stared at them from every side with a scrutiny
that was less impudent than seriously bold.
“Madame!”
Hadj's thin hand was pulling Domini's sleeve.
“Well, what is it?”
“This is the best dancing-house. The children dance
here.” - - #
Domini’s height enabled her to peer over the shoulders of
those gathered before the door, and in the lighted distance of a
white-walled room, painted with figures of soldiers and Arab
chiefs, she saw a small wriggling figure between two rows of
squatting men, two baby hands waving coloured handkerchiefs,
two little feet tapping vigorously upon an earthen floor, for back-
ground a divan crowded with women and musicians, with
inflated cheeks and squinting eyes. She stood for a moment to
look, then she turned away. There was an expression of disgust
in her eyes.
“No, I don’t want to see children,” she said. “That's
tCO 5 y
She glanced at her escort and did not finish.
“I know,” said Batouch. “Madame wishes for the real
ouleds.” -
He led them across the street. Hadj followed reluctantly.
Before going into this second dancing-house Domini stopped
again to see from outside what it was like, but only for an
instant. Then a brightness came into her eyes, an eager look.
“Yes, take me in here,” she said.
Batouch laughed softly, and Hadj uttered a word below his
breath.
“Madame will see Irena here,” said Batouch, pushing the
watching Arabs unceremoniously away.
Domini did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on a man who
was sitting in a corner far up the room, bending forward and
staring intently at a woman who was in the act of stepping
down from a raised platform decorated with lamps and small
bunches of flowers in earthen pots.
“I wish to sit quite near the door,” she whispered to Batouch
as they went in.
IO8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
3 3
“But it is much better
“Do what I tell you,” she said. “The left side of the
room.”
Hadj looked a little happier. Suzanne was clinging to his
arm. He smiled at her with something of mischief, but he took
care, when a place was cleared on a bench for their party, to sit
down at the end next the door, and he cast an anxious glance
towards the platform where the dancing-girls attached to the
café sat in a row, hunched up against the bare wall, waiting
their turn to perform. Then suddenly he shook his head, tucked
in his chim and laughed. His whole face was transformed
from craven fear to vivacious rascality. While he laughed he
looked at Batouch, who was ordering four cups of coffee from
the negro attendant. The poet took no notice. For the
moment he was intent upon his professional duties. But when
the coffee was brought, and set upon a round wooden stool
between two bunches of roses, he had time to note Hadj's Sud-
den gaiety and to realise its meaning. Instantly he spoke to
the negro in a low voice. Hadj stopped laughing. The negro
sped away and returned with the proprietor of the café, a stout
Kabyle with a fair skin and blue eyes.
Batouch lowered his voice to a guttural whisper and spoke
in Arabic, while Hadj, shifting uneasily on the end seat, glanced
at him sideways out of his almond-shaped eyes. Domini heard
the name “Irena,” and guessed that Batouch was asking the
Kabyle to send for her and make her dance. She could not
help being amused for a moment by the comedy of intrigue,
complacently malignant on both sides, that was being played by
the two cousins, but the moment passed and left her engrossed,
absorbed, and not merely by the novelty of the surroundings, by
the strangeness of the women, of their costumes, and of their
movements. She watched them, but she watched more closely,
more eagerly, rather as a spy than as a spectator, one who was
watching them with an intentness, a still passion, a fierce curi-
osity and a sort of almost helpless wonder such as she had never
seen before, and could never have found within herself to put at
the service of any human marvel.
Close to the top of the room on the right the stranger was
sitting in the midst of a mob of Arabs, whose flowing draperies
almost concealed his ugly European clothes. On the wall imme-
diately behind him was a brilliantly-coloured drawing of a fat
Ouled Nail leering at a French soldier, which made an uncon-
ventional background to his leaning figure and sunburnt face, in
THE VOICE OF PRAYER IO9
which there seemed now to be both asceticism and something
so different and so powerful that it was likely, from moment to
moment, to drive out the asceticism and to achieve the loneli-
ness of all conquering things. This fighting expression made
Domini think of a picture she had once seen representing a
pilgrim going through a dark forest attended by his angel and
his devil. The angel of the pilgrim was a weak and almost
childish figure, frail, bloodless, scarcely even radiant, while the
devil was lusty and bold, with a muscular body and a sensual,
aquiline face, which smiled craftily, looking at the pilgrim.
There was surely a devil in the watching traveller which was
pushing the angel out of him. Domini had never before seemed
to see clearly the legendary battle of the human heart. But
it had never before been manifested to her audaciously in the
human face.
All around the Arabs sat, motionless and at ease, gazing on
the curious dance of which they never tire—a dance which has
some ingenuity, much sensuality and provocation, but little
beauty and little mystery, unless—as happens now and then—
an idol-like woman of the South, with all the enigma of the
distant desert in her kohl-tinted eyes, dances it with the sultry
gloom of a half-awakened sphinx, and makes of it a barbarous
manifestation of the nature that lies hidden in the heart of the
Sun, a silent cry uttered by a savage body born in a Savage
land.
In the café of Tahar, the Kabyle, there was at present no
such woman. His beauties, huddled together on their narrow
bench before a table decorated with glasses of water and sprigs
of orange blossom in earthen vases, looked dull and cheerless in
their gaudy clothes. Their bodies were well formed, but
somnolent. Their painted hands hung down like the hands of
marionettes. The one who was dancing suggested Duty clad
in Eastern garb and laying herself out carefully to be wicked.
Her jerks and wrigglings, though violent, were inhuman, like
those of a complicated piece of mechanism devised by a morbid
engineer. After a glance or two at her Domini felt that she
was bored by her own agilities. Domini's wonder increased
when she looked again at the traveller.
For it was this dance of the ennui of the East which raised
up in him this obvious battle, which drove his secret into the
illumination of the hanging lamps and gave it to a woman, who
felt half confused, half ashamed at possessing it, and yet could
not cast it away.
I IO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
If they both lived on, without speaking or meeting, for
another half century, Domini could never know the shape
of the devil in this man, the light of the smile upon its face.
The dancing woman had observed him, and presently she
began slowly to wriggle towards him between the rows of Arabs,
fixing her eyes upon him and parting her scarlet lips in a greedy
Smile. As she came on the stranger evidently began to realise
that he was her bourne. He had been leaning forward, but
when she approached, waving her red hands, shaking her promi-
nent breasts, and violently jerking her stomach, he sat straight
up, and then, as if instinctively trying to get away from her,
pressed back against the wall, hiding the painting of the Ouled
Nail and the French soldier. A dark flush rose on his face
and even flooded his forehead to his low-growing hair. His
eyes were full of a piteous anxiety and discomfort, and he
glanced almost guiltily to right and left of him as if he expected
the hooded Arab spectators to condemn his presence there now
that the dancer drew their attention to it. The dancer noticed
his confusion and seemed pleased by it, and moved to more
energetic demonstrations of her art. She lifted her arms above
her head, half closed her eyes, assumed an expression of languid
ecstasy and slowly shuddered. Then, bending backward, she
nearly touched the floor, swung round, still bending, and showed
the long curve of her bare throat to the stranger, while the girls,
huddled on the bench by the musicians, suddenly roused them-
selves and joined their voices in a shrill and prolonged twitter.
The Arabs did not smile, but the deepness of their attention
seemed to increase like a cloud growing darker. All the
luminous eyes in the room were steadily fixed upon the man lean-
ing back against the hideous picture on the wall and the gaudy
siren curved almost into an arch before him. The musicians
blew their hautboys and beat their tom-toms more violently,
and all things, Domini thought, were filled with a sense of
climax. She felt as if the room, all the inanimate objects, and
all the animate figures in it, were instruments of an orchestra,
and as if each individual instrument was contributing to a slow,
and great, and irresistible crescendo. The stranger took his
part with the rest, but against his will, and as if under some
terrible compulsion.
His face was scarlet now, and his shining eyes looked down on
the dancer's throat and breast with a mingling of eagerness and
horror. Slowly she raised herself, turned, bent forwards quiver-
ing, and presented her face to him, while the women twittered
THE VOICE OF PRAYER II i
once more in chorus. He still stared at her without moving.
The hautboy players prolonged a wailing note, and the tom-
toms gave forth a fierce and dull murmur almost like a death-
roll.
“She wants him to give her money,” Batouch whispered to
Domini. “Why does not he give her money?”
Evidently the stranger did not understand what was expected
of him. The music changed again to a shrieking tune, the
dancer drew back, did a few more steps, jerked her stomach
with fury, stamped her feet on the floor. Then once more she
shuddered slowly, half closed her eyes, glided close to the
stranger, and falling down deliberately laid her head on his
knees, while again the women twittered, and the long note
of the hautboys went through the room like a scream of
interrogation.
Domini grew hot as she saw the look that came into the
stranger's face when the woman touched his knees.
“Go and tell him it's money she wants!” she whispered to
Batouch. “Go and tell him I ?” -
Batouch got up, but at this moment a roguish Arab boy, who
sat by the stranger, laughingly spoke to him, pointing to the
woman. The stranger thrust his hand into his pocket, found a
coin and, directed by the roguish youth, stuck it upon the
dancer's greasy forehead. At once she sprang to her feet. The
women twittered. The music burst into a triumphant melody,
and through the room there went a stir. Almost everyone in it
moved simultaneously. One man raised his hand to his hood
and settled it over his forehead. Another put his cigarette to
his lips. Another picked up his coffee-cup. A fourth, who was
holding a flower, lifted it to his nose and smelt it. No one
remained quite still. With the stranger's action a strain had
been removed, a mental tension abruptly loosened, a sense of
care let free in the room. Domini felt it acutely. The last
few minutes had been painful to her. She sighed with relief
at the cessation of another's agony. For the stranger had cer-
tainly—from shyness or whatever cause—been in agony while
the dancer kept her head upon his knees.
His angel had been in fear, perhaps, while his devil
But Domini tried resolutely to turn her thoughts from the
Smiling face.
After pressing the money on the girl's forehead the man made
a movement as if he meant to leave the room, but once again the
curious indecision which Domini had observed in him before cut
II 2 THE GARDEN OF AI, LAH
his action, as it were, in two, leaving it half finished. As the
dancer, turning, wriggled slowly to the platform, he buttoned
up his jacket with a sort of hasty resolution, pulled it down with
a jerk, glanced swiftly round, and rose to his feet. Domini kept
her eyes on him, and perhaps they drew his, for, just as he was
about to step into the narrow aisle that led to the door he saw
her. Instantly he sat down again, turned so that she could only
see part of his face, unbuttoned his jacket, took out some matches
and busied himself in lighting a cigarette. She knew he had felt
her concentration on him, and was angry with herself. Had she
really a spy in her? Was she capable of being vulgarly curious
about a man? A sudden movement of Hadj drew her attention.
His face was distorted by an expression that seemed half angry,
half fearful. Batouch was smiling Seraphically as he gazed
towards the platform. Suzanne, with a pinched-up mouth,
was looking virginally at her lap. Her whole attitude showed
her consciousness of the many blazing eyes that were intently
staring at her. The stomach dance which she had just been
watching had amazed her so much that she felt as if she were
the only respectable woman in the world, and as if no one would
suppose it unless she hung out banners white as the walls of
Beni-Mora's houses. She strove to do so, and, meanwhile,
from time to time, cast sideway glances towards the platform to
see whether another stomach dance was preparing. She did not
see Hadj's excitement or the poet's malignant satisfaction, but
she, with Domini, saw a small door behind the platform open,
and the stout Kabyle appear followed by a girl who was robed
in gold tissue, and decorated with cascades of golden coins.
Domini guessed at once that this was Irena, the returned
exile, who wished to kill Hadj, and she was glad that a new
incident had occurred to switch off the general attention from
the stranger.
Irena was evidently a favourite. There was a grave move-
ment as she came in, a white undulation as all the shrouded
forms bent slightly forward in her direction. Only Hadj
caught his burnous round him with his thin fingers, dropped his
chin, shook his hood down upon his forehead, leaned back
against the wall, and, curling his legs under him, seemed to fall
asleep. But beneath his brown lids and long black lashes his
furtive eyes followed every movement of the girl in the sparkling
robe.
She came in slowly and languidly, with a heavy and cross
expression upon her face, which was thin to emaciation and
THE VOICE OF PRAYER II 3
painted white, with scarlet lips and darkened eyes and eye-
brows. Her features were narrow and pointed. Her bones
were tiny, and her body was so slender, her waist so small,
that, with her flat breast and meagre shoulders, she looked
almost like a stick crowned with a human face and hung with
brilliant draperies. Her hair, which was thick and dark brown,
was elaborately braided and covered with a yellow silk handker-
chief. Domini thought she looked consumptive, and was bit-
terly disappointed in her appearance. For some unknown
reason she had expected the woman who wished to kill Hadj,
and who obviously inspired him with fear, to be a magnificent
and glowing desert beauty. This woman might be violent.
She looked weary, anaemic, and as if she wished to go to bed,
and Domini's contempt for Hadj increased as she looked at her.
To be afraid of a thin, tired, sleepy creature such as that was
too pitiful. But Hadj did not seem to think so. He had pulled
his hood still further forward, and was now merely a bundle
concealed in the shade of Suzanne.
Irena stepped on to the platform, pushed the girl who sat at
the end of the bench till she moved up higher, sat down in the
vacant place, drank some water out of the glass nearest to her,
and then remained quite still staring at the floor, utterly indif-
ferent to the Arabs who were devouring her with their eyes.
No doubt the eyes of men had devoured her ever since she could
remember. It was obvious that they meant nothing to her,
that they did not even for an instant disturb the current of her
dreary thoughts.
Another girl was dancing, a stout, Oriental Jewess with a
thick hooked nose, large lips and bulging eyes, that looked as if
they had been newly scoured with emery powder. While she
danced she sang, or rather shouted roughly, an extraordinary
melody that suggested battle, murder and sudden death. Care-
less of onlookers, she sometimes scratched her head or rubbed her
nose without ceasing her contortions. Domini guessed that
this was the girl whom she had seen from the tower dancing
upon the roof in the sunset. Distance and light had indeed
transformed her. Under the lamps she was the embodiment
of all that was coarse and greasy. Even the pitiful slenderness
of Irena seemed attractive when compared with her billowing
charms, which she kept in a continual commotion that was
almost terrifying.
“Hadj is nearly dead with fear,” whispered Batouch, com-
placently.
II.4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Domini’s lips curled. e
“Does not Madame think Irena beautiful as the moon on
the waters of the Oued Beni-Mora?”
“Indeed I don’t,” she replied bluntly. “And I think a man
who can be afraid of such a little thing must be afraid of the
children in the street.” &
“Little! But Irena is tall as a female palm in Ourlana.”
“Tall ''
Domini looked at her again more carefully, and saw that
Batouch spoke the truth. Irena was unusually tall, but her
excessive narrowness, her tiny bones, and the delicate way in
which she held herself deceived the eye and gave her a little
appearance.
“So she is; but who could be afraid of her? Why, I could
pick her up and throw her over that moon of yours.”
“Madame is strong. Madame is like the lioness. But Irena
is the most terrible girl in all Beni-Mora if she loves or if she
is angry, the most terrible in all the Sahara.”
Domini laughed.
“Madame does not know her,” said Batouch, imperturbably.
“But Madame can ask the Arabs. Many of the dancers of
Beni-Mora are murdered, each season two or three. But no
man would try to murder Irena. No man would dare.”
The poet's calm and unimpassioned way of alluding to the
most horrible crimes as if they were perfectly natural, and in no
way to be condemned or wondered at, amazed Domini even
more than his statement about Irena.
“Why do they murder the dancers?” she asked quickly.
“For their jewels. At night, in those little rooms with the
balconies which Madame has seen, it is easy. You enter in to
sleep there. You close your eyes, you breathe gently and a little
loud. The woman hears. She is not afraid. She sleeps. She
dreams. Her throat is like that ”—he threw back his head,
exposing his great neck. “Just before dawn you draw your
knife from your burnous. You bend down. You cut the
throat without noise. You take the jewels, the money from
the box by the bed. You go down quietly with bare feet. No
one is on the stair. You unbar the door—and there before you
is the great hiding-place.”
“The great hiding-place!”
“The desert, Madame.”
He sipped his coffee. Domini looked at him, fascinated.
Suzanne shivered. She had been listening. The loud contralto
THE VOICE OF PRAYER II5
cry of the Jewess rose up, with its suggestion of violence and of
rough indifference. And Domini repeated Softly:
“The great hiding-place.” -
With every moment in Beni-Mora the desert seemed to
become more—more full of meaning, of variety, of mystery, of
terror. Was it everything? The garden of God, the great
hiding-place of murderers! She had called it, on the tower,
the home of peace. In the gorge of El-Akbara, ere he prayed,
Batouch had spoken of it as a vast realm of forgetfulness, where
the load of memory slips from the weary shoulders and vanishes
into the soft gulf of the sands.
But was it everything then? And if it was so much to her
already, in a night and a day, what would it be when she knew
it, what would it be to her after many nights and many days?
She began to feel a sort of terror mingled with the most extraor-
dinary attraction she had ever known.
Hadj crouched right back against the wall. The voice of the
Jewess ceased in a shout. The hautboys stopped playing. Only
the tom-toms roared. -
“Hadj can be happy now,” observed Batouch in a voice of
almost satisfaction, “for Irena is going to dance. Look!
There is the little Miloud bringing her the daggers.”
An Arab boy, with a beautiful face and a very dark skin,
slipped on to the platform with two long, pointed knives in his
hand. He laid them on the table before Irena, between the
bouquets of orange blossom, jumped lightly down and dis-
appeared.
Directly the knives touched the table the hautboy players
blew a terrific blast, and then, swelling the note, till it
seemed as if they must burst both themselves and their instru-
ments, swung into a tremendous and magnificent tune, a tune
tingling with barbarity, yet such as a European could have sung
or written down. In an instant it gripped Domini and excited
her till she could hardly breathe. It poured fire into her veins
and set fire about her heart. It was triumphant as a great song
after war in a wild land, cruel, vengeful, but so strong and so
passionately joyous that it made the eyes shine and the blood
leap, and the spirit rise up and clamour within the body, clamour
for utter liberty, for action, for wide fields in which to roam,
for long days and nights of glory and of love, for intense hours
of emotion and of life lived with exultant desperation. It was
a melody that seemed to set the soul of Creation dancing before
an ark. The tom-toms accompanied it with an irregular but
II6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the deep-voiced
shouting of squadrons of fighting men.
Irena looked wearily at the knives. Her expression had not
changed, and Domini was amazed at her indifference. The eyes
of everyone in the room were fixed upon her. Even Suzanne
began to be less virginal in appearance under the influence of
this desert song of triumph. Domini did not let her eyes stray
any more towards the stranger. For the moment indeed she
had forgotten him. Her attention was fastened upon the thin,
consumptive-looking creature who was staring at the two knives
laid upon the table. When the great tune had been played
right through once, and a passionate roll of tom-toms announced
its repetition, Irena suddenly shot out her tiny arms, brought
her hands down on the knives, seized them and sprang to her
feet. She had passed from lassitude to vivid energy with an
abruptness that was almost demoniacal, and to an energy with
which both mind and body seemed to blaze. Then, as the
hautboys screamed out the tune once more, she held the knives
above her head and danced. .
Irena was not an Ouled Nail. She was a Kabyle woman
born in the mountains of Djurdjura, not far from the village of
Tamouda. As a child she had lived in one of those chimneyless
and windowless mud cottages with red tiled roofs which are so
characteristic a feature of La Grande Kabylie. She had climbed
barefoot the savage hills, or descended into the gorges yellow
with the broom plant and dipped her brown toes in the waters
of the Sebaou. How had she drifted so far from the sharp
spurs of her native hills and from the ruddy-haired, blue-eyed
people of her tribe? Possibly she had sinned, as the Kabyle
women often sin, and fled from the wrath that she would under-
stand, and that all her fierce bravery could not hope to conquer.
Or perhaps with her Kabyle blood, itself a brew composed of
various strains, Greek, Roman, as well as Berber, were mingling
some drops drawn from desert sources, which had manifested
themselves physically in her dark hair, mentally in a nomadic
instinct which had forbidden her to rest among the beauties of
Aït Ouaguennoun, whose legendary charm she did not possess.
There was the look of an exile in her face, a weariness that
dreamed, perhaps, of distant things. But now that she danced
that fled, and the gleam of flame-lit steel was in her eyes.
Tangled and vital impressions came to Domini as she watched.
Now she saw Jaël and the tent, and the nails driven into the
temples of the sleeping warrior. Now she saw Medea in the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER II 7
moment before she tore to pieces her brother and threw the
bloody fragments in Aetes's path; Clytemnestra's face while
Agamemnon was passing to the bath, Delilah's when Samson
lay sleeping on her knee. But all these imagined faces of named
women fled like sand grains on a desert wind as the dance
went on and the recurrent melody came back and back and
back with a savage and glorious persistence. They were too
small, too individual, and pinned the imagination down too
closely. This dagger dance let in upon her a larger atmosphere,
in which one human being was as nothing, even a goddess or a
siren prodigal of enchantments was a little thing not without a
narrow meanness of physiognomy.
She looked and listened till she saw a grander procession
troop by, garlanded with mystery and triumph: War as a shape
with woman's eyes: Night, without poppies, leading the stars
and moon and all the vigorous dreams that must come true:
Love of woman that cannot be set aside, but will govern the
world from Eden to the abyss into which the nations fall to
the outstretched hands of God: Death as Life's leader, with a
staff from which sprang blossoms red as the western sky: Savage
Fecundity that crushes all barren things into the silent dust:
and then the Desert.
That came in a pale cloud of sand, with a pale crowd of wor-
shippers, those who had received gifts from the Desert's hands
and sought for more: white-robed Marabouts who had found
Allah in his garden and become a guide to the faithful through
all the circling years: murderers who had gained sanctuary
with barbaric jewels in their blood-stained hands: once tortured
men and women who had cast away terrible recollections in
the wastes among the dunes and in the treeless purple distances,
and who had been granted the sweet oases of forgetfulness to
dwell in : ardent beings who had striven vainly to rest content
with the world of hills and valleys, of sea-swept verges and
murmuring rivers, and who had been driven, by the labouring
Soul, on and on towards the flat plains where roll for ever the
golden wheels of the chariot of the sun. She saw, too, the winds
that are the Desert's best-loved children: Health with shining
eyes and a skin of bronze: Passion, half faun, half black-browed
Hercules: and Liberty with upraised arms, beating cymbals
like monstrous spheres of fire.
And she saw palm trees waving, immense palm trees in the
south. It seemed to her that she travelled as far away from
Beni-Mora as she had travelled from England in coming to
II 8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Beni-Mora. She made her way towards the Sun, joining
the pale crowd of the Desert's worshippers. And always, as
she travelled, she heard the clashing of the cymbals of Liberty.
A conviction was born in her that Fate meant her to know
the Desert well, strangely well; that the Desert was waiting
calmly for her to come to it and receive that which it had to
give to her; that in the Desert she would learn more of the
meaning of life than she could ever learn elsewhere. It seemed
to her suddenly that she understood more clearly than hitherto
in what lay the intense, the over-mastering and hypnotic attrac-
tion exercised already by the Desert over her nature. In the
Desert there must be, there was—she felt it—not only light to
warm the body, but light to illuminate the dark places of the
soul. An almost fatalistic idea possessed her. She saw a
figure—one of the Messengers—standing with her beside the
corpse of her father and whispering in her ear “Beni-Mora";
taking her to the map and pointing to the word there, filling her
brain and heart with suggestions, till—as she had thought almost
without reason, and at haphazard—she chose Beni-Mora as the
place to which she would go in search of recovery, of self-
knowledge. It had been pre-ordained. The Messenger had
been sent. The Messenger had guided her. And he would
come again, when the time was ripe, and lead her on into the
Desert. She felt it. She knew it.
She looked round at the Arabs. She was as much a fatal-
ist as any one of them. She looked at the stranger, What
was he?
Abruptly in her imagination a vision rose. She gazed once
more into the crowd that thronged about the Desert having
received gifts at the Desert's hands, and in it she saw the
Stranger. . -
He was kneeling, his hands were stretched out, his head was
bowed, and he was praying. And, while he prayed, Liberty
stood by him smiling, and her fiery cymbals were like the aure-
oles that illumine the beautiful faces of the saints.
For some reason that she could not understand her heart
began to beat fast, and she felt a burning sensation behind her
eyes.
She thought that this extraordinary music, that this amazing
dance, excited her too much.
The white bundle at Suzanne's side stirred. Irena, holding
the daggers above her head, had sprung from the little platform
and was dancing on the earthen floor in the midst of the Arabs.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER II9
Her thin body shook convulsively in time to the music. She
marked the accents with her shudders. Excitement had grown
in her till she seemed to be in a feverish passion that was half
exultant, half despairing. In her expression, in her movements,
in the way she held herself, leaning backwards with her face
looking up, her breast and neck exposed as if she offered her life,
her love and all the mysteries in her, to an imagined being
who dominated her savage and ecstatic soul, there was a vivid
suggestion of the two elements in Passion—rapture and melan-
choly. In her dance she incarnated passion whole by convey-
ing the two halves that compose it. Her eyes were nearly
closed, as a woman closes them when she has seen the lips of
her lover descending upon hers. And her mouth seemed to
be receiving the fiery touch of another mouth. In this moment
she was a beautiful woman because she looked like womanhood.
And Domini understood why the Arabs thought her more
beautiful than the other dancers. She had what they had not—
genius. And genius, under whatever form, shows to the world
at moments the face of Aphrodite.
She came slowly nearer, and those by the platform turned
round to follow her with their eyes. Hadj's hood had slipped
completely down over his face, and his chin was sunk on his
chest. Batouch noticed it and looked angry, but Domini had
forgotten both the comedy of the two cousins and the tragedy
of Irena's love for Hadj. She was completely under the fasci-
nation of this dance and of the music that accompanied it.
Now that Irena was near she was able to see that, without her
genius, there would have been no beauty in her face. It was
painfully thin, painfully long and haggard. Her life had writ-
ten a fatal inscription across it as their life writes upon the faces
of poor street-bred children the one word—Want. As they
have too little this dancing woman had had too much. The
Sparkle of her robe of gold tissue covered with golden coins
was strong in the lamplight. Domini looked at it and at the
two sharp knives above her head, looked at her violent, shud-
dering movements, and shuddered too, thinking of Batouch's
story of murdered dancers. It was dangerous to have too much
in Beni-Mora. -
Irena was quite close now. She seemed so wrapped in the
ecstasy of the dance that it did not occur to Domini at first that
she was imitating the Ouled Nail who had laid her greasy head
upon the stranger’s knees. The abandonment of her perform-
ance was so great that it was difficult to remember its money
I2O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
value to her and to Tahar, the fair Kabyle. Only when she
was actually opposite to them and stayed there, still perform-
ing her shuddering dance, still holding the daggers above her
head, did Domini realise that those half-closed, passionate eyes
had marked the stranger woman, and that she must add one
to the stream of golden coins. She took out her purse but did
not give the money at once. With the pitiless scrutiny of her
sex she noticed all the dancer's disabilities. She was certainly
young, but she was very worn. Her mouth drooped. At the
corners of her eyes there were tiny lines tending downward.
Her forehead had what Domini secretly called a martyred look.
Nevertheless, she was savage and triumphant. Her thin body
suggested force; the way she held herself consuming passion.
Even so near at hand, even while she was pausing for money,
and while her eyes were, doubtless, furtively reading Domini,
she shed round her a powerful atmosphere, which stirred the
blood, and made the heart leap, and created longing for
unknown and violent things. As Domini watched her she
felt that Irena must have lived at moments magnificently, that
despite her almost shattered condition and permanent weari-
ness—only cast aside for the moment of the dance—she must
have known intense joys, that so long as she lived she would
possess the capacity for knowing them again. There was some-
thing burning within her that would burn on so long as she
was alive, a spark of nature that was eternally red hot. It
was that spark which made her the idol of the Arabs and shed
a light of beauty through her haggard frame.
The spirit blazed.
Domini put her hand at last into her purse and took out a
piece of gold. She was just going to give it to Irena when the
white bundle that was Hadj made a sudden, though slight,
movement, as if the thing inside it had shivered. Irena noticed
it with her half-closed eyes. Domini leaned forward and held
out the money, then drew back startled. Irena had changed
her posture abruptly. Instead of keeping her head thrown back
and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward.
Her meagre bosom almost disappeared as she bent over. Her
arms fell to her sides. Her eyes opened wide and became full
of a sharp, peering intensity. Her vision and dreams dropped
out of her. Now she was only fierce and questioning, and
horribly alert. She was looking at the white bundle. It
shifted again. She sprang upon it, showing her teeth, caught
hold of it. With a swift turn of her thin hands she tore back
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I 2 I
the hood, and out of the bundle came Hadj’s head and face
livid with fear. One of the daggers flashed and came up at
him. He leaped from the seat and screamed. Suzanne echoed
his cry. Then the whole room was a turmoil of white garments
and moving limbs. In an instant everybody seemed to be leap-
ing, calling out, grasping, struggling. Domini tried to get up,
but she was hemmed in, and could not make a movement upward
or free her arms, which were pressed against her sides by the
crowd around her. For a moment she thought she was going
to be severely hurt or suffocated. She did not feel afraid, but
only indignant, like a boy who has been struck in the face and
longs to retaliate. Someone screamed again. It was Hadj.
Suzanne was on her feet, but separated from her mistress.
Batouch's arm was round her. Domini put her hands on the
bench and tried to force herself up, violently setting her broad
shoulders against the Arabs who were towering over her and
covering her head and face with their floating garments as they
strove to see the fight between Hadj and the dancer. The heat
almost stifled her, and she was suddenly aware of a strong
musky smell of perspiring humanity. She was beginning to
pant for breath when she felt two burning, hot, hard hands
come down on hers, fingers like iron catch hold of hers, go
under them, drag up her hands. She could not see who had
seized her, but the life in the hands that were on hers mingled
with the life in her hands like one fluid with another, and seemed
to pass on till she felt it in her body, and had an odd sensa-
tion as if her face had been caught in a fierce grip, and her
heart too.
Another moment and she was on her feet and out in the
moonlit alley between the little white houses. She saw the stars,
and the painted balconies crowded with painted women looking
down towards the café she had left and chattering in shrill
voices. She saw the patrol of Tirailleurs Indigènes marching
at the double to the doorway in which the Arabs were still
struggling. Then she saw that the traveller was beside her.
She was not surprised.
“Thank you for getting me out,” she said rather bluntly.
“Where's my maid?”
“She got away before us with your guide, Madame.”
He held up his hands and looked at them hard, eagerly,
questioningly.
“You weren’t hurt?”
He dropped his hands quickly.
I 22 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
33
“Oh, no, it wasn’t
He broke off the sentence and was silent. Domini stood
still, drew a long breath and laughed. She still felt angry and
laughed to control herself. Unless she could be amused at
this episode she knew that she was capable of going back to the
door of the café and hitting out right and left at the men who
had nearly suffocated her. Any violence done to her body, even
an unintentional push against her in the street—if there was
real force in it—seemed to let loose a devil in her, such a devil
as ought surely only to dwell inside a man.
“What people!” she said. “What wild creatures!”
She laughed again. The patrol pushed its way roughly in at
the doorway.
“The Arabs are always like that, Madame.”
She looked at him, then she said, abruptly:
“Do you speak English?”
Her companion hesitated. It was perfectly obvious to her
that he was considering whether he should answer “Yes” or
“ No.” Such hesitation about such a matter was very strange.
At last he said, but still in French:
( & Yes.”
And directly he had said it she saw by his face that he wished
he had said “ No.” -
From the café the Arabs began to pour into the street. The
patrol was clearing the place. The women leaning over the
balconies cried out shrilly to learn the exact history of the
tumult, and the men standing underneath, and lifting up their
bronzed faces in the moonlight, replied in violent voices, gesticu-
lating vehemently while their hanging sleeves fell back from
their hairy arms. -
“I am an Englishwoman,” Domini said.
But she too felt obliged to speak still in French, as if a
sudden reserve told her to do so. He said nothing. They were
standing in quite a crowd now. It swayed, parted suddenly,
and the soldiers appeared holding Irena. Hadj followed be-
hind, shouting as if in a frenzy of passion. There was some
blood on one of his hands and a streak of blood on the front of
the loose shirt he wore under his burnous. He kept on shoot-
ing out his arms towards Irena as he walked, and frantically
appealing to the Arabs round him. When he saw the women on
their balconies he stopped for 2 moment and called out to them
like a man beside himself. A Tirailleur pushed him on. The
women, who had been quiet to hear him, burst forth again into
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I 23
a paroxysm of chatter. Irena looked utterly indifferent and
walked feebly. The little procession disappeared in the moon-
light accompanied by the crowd.
“She has stabbed Hadj,” Domini said. “Batouch will be
glad.”
She did not feel as if she were sorry. Indeed, she thought
she was glad too. That the dancer should try to do a thing
and fail would have seemed contradictory. And the streak of
blood she had just seen seemed to relieve her suddenly and to
take from her all anger. Her self-control returned.
“Thank you once more,” she said to her companion. “Good-
night.” -
She remembered the episode of the tower that afternoon, and
resolved to take a definite line this time, and not to run
the chance of a second desertion. She started off down the
street, but found him walking beside her in silence. She
stopped.
“I am very much obliged to you for getting me out,” she
said, looking straight at him. “And now, good-night.”
Almost for the first time he endured her gaze without any
uncertainty, and she saw that though he might be hesitating,
uneasy, even contemptible—as when he hurried down the road
in the wake of the negro procession—he could also be a dogged
II13.11.
“I’ll go with you, Madame,” he said. .
& & Why? 5 5
“It's night.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I’ll go with you, Madame.” -
He said it again harshly and kept his eyes on her, frowning.
“And if I refuse?” she said, wondering whether she was
going to refuse or not.
“I’ll follow you, Madame.”
She knew by the look on his face that he, too, was thinking of
what had happened in the afternoon. Why should she wish to
deprive him of the reparation he was anxious to make—obvi-
ously anxious in an almost piteously determined way? It was
poor pride in her, a mean little feeling.
“Come with me,” she said.
They went on together.
The Arabs, stirred up by the fracas in Tahar’s café, were
Seething with excitement, and several of them, gathered together
in a little crowd, were quarrelling and shouting at the end of the
I 24 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
street near the statue of the Cardinal. Domini’s escort saw
them and hesitated.
“I think, Madame, it would be better to take a side street,”
he said.
“Very well. Let us go to the left here. It is bound to bring
us to the hotel as it runs parallel to the house of the sand
diviner.”
He started.
“The sand diviner?” he said in his low, strong voice.
( & Yes.”
She walked on into a tiny alley. He followed her.
“You haven’t seen the thin man with the bag of sand 2 ”
“No, Madame.”
“He reads your past in Sand from the desert and tells what
your future will be.”
The man made no reply.
“Will you pay him a visit?” Domini asked curiously.
“No, Madame. I do not care for such things.”
Suddenly she stood still.
“Oh, look!” she said. “How strange! And there are
others all down the street.”
In the tiny alley the balconies of the houses nearly met. No
figures leaned on their railings. No chattering voices broke the
furtive silence that prevailed in this quarter of Beni-Mora. The
moonlight was fainter here, obscured by the close-set buildings,
and at the moment there was not an Arab in sight. The sense
of loneliness and peace was profound, and as the rare windows
of the houses, minute and protected by heavy gratings, were
dark, it had seemed to Domini at first as if all the inhabitants
were in bed and asleep. But, in passing on, she had seen a
faint and blanched illumination; then another; the vague vision
of an aperture; a seated figure making a darkness against white-
ness; a second aperture and seated figure. She stopped and
stood still. The man stood still beside her.
The alley was an alley of women. In every house on either
side of the way a similar picture of attentive patience was
revealed: a narrow Moorish archway with a wooden door set
back against the wall to show a steep and diminutive staircase
winding up into mystery; upon the highest stair a common
candlestick with a lit candle guttering in it, and, immediately
below, a girl, thickly painted, covered with barbarous jewels
and magnificently dressed, her hands, tinted with henna, folded
in her lap, her eyes watching under eyebrows heavily dark-
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I 25
ened, and prolonged until they met just above the bridge of
the nose, to which a number of black dots descended; her
naked, brown ankles decorated with large circlets of gold or
silver. The candle shed upon each watcher a faint light that
half revealed her and left her half concealed upon her white
staircase bounded by white walls. And in her absolute silence,
absolute stillness, each one was wholly mysterious as she gazed
ceaselessly out towards the empty, narrow street. -
The woman before whose dwelling Domini had stopped
was an Ouled Nail, with a square headdress of coloured hand-
kerchiefs and feathers, a pink and silver shawl, a blue skirt
of some thin material powdered with silver flowers, and a
broad silver belt set with squares of red coral. She was sit-
ting upright, and would have looked exactly like an idol set
up for Savage worship had not her long eyes gleamed and
moved as she solemnly returned the gaze of Domini and of
the man who stood a little behind looking over her shoulder.
When Domini stopped and exclaimed she did not realise to
what this street was dedicated, why these women sat in
watchful silence, each one alone on her stair waiting in the
night. But as she looked and saw the gaudy finery she be-
gan to understand. And had she remained in doubt an
incident now occurred which must have enlightened her.
A great gaunt Arab, one of the true desert men, almost
black, with high cheek bones, hollow cheeks, fierce falcon's
eyes shining as if with fever, long and lean limbs hard as iron,
dressed in a rough, sacklike brown garment, and wearing a
turban bound with cords of camel's hair, strode softly down
the alley, slipped in front of Domini, and went up to the
woman, holding out something in his scaly hand. There was
a brief colloquy. The woman stretched her arm up the stair-
case, took the candle, held it to the man's open hand, and bent
over counting the money that lay in the palm. She counted
it twice deliberately. Then she nodded. She got up, turned,
holding the candle above her square headdress, and went
slowly up the staircase followed by the Arab, who grasped
his coarse draperies and lifted them, showing his bare legs.
The two disappeared without noise into the darkness, leaving
the stairway deserted, its white steps, its white walls faintly
lit by the moon.
The woman had not once looked at the man, but only at the
money in his scaly hand.
Domini felt hot and rather sick. She wondered why she
I 26 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
had stood there watching. Yet she had not been able to turn
away. Now, as she stepped back into the middle of the alley
and walked on with the man beside her she wondered what
he was thinking of her. She could not talk to him any more.
She was too conscious of the lighted stairways, one after
one, succeeding each other to right and left of them, of the
still figures, of the watching eyes in which the yellow rays of
the candles gleamed. Her companion did not speak; but as
they walked he glanced furtively from one side to the other,
then stared down steadily on the white road. When they
turned to the right and came out by the gardens, and Domini
saw the great tufted heads of the palms black against the
moon, she felt relieved and was able to speak again.
“I should like you to know that I am quite a stranger to all
African things and people,” she said. “That is why I am
liable to fall into mistakes in such a place as this. Ah, there
is the hotel, and my maid on the verandah. I want to thank
you again for looking after me.”
They were at a few steps from the hotel door in the road.
The man stopped, and Domini stopped too.
“Madame,” he said earnestly, with a sort of hardly con-
trolled excitement, “I—I am glad. I was ashamed—I was
ashamed.”
( ( Why? 53
“Of my conduct—of my awkwardness. But you will for-
give it. I am not accustomed to the society of ladies—like .
you. Anything I have done I have not done out of rudeness.
That is all I can say. I have not done it out of rudeness.”
He seemed to be almost trembling with agitation.
“I know, I know,” she said. “Besides, it was nothing.”
“Oh, no, it was abominable. I understand that. I am
not so coarse-fibred as not to understand that.”
Domini suddenly felt that to take his view of the matter,
exaggerated though it was, would be the kindest course, even
the most delicate.
“You were rude to me,” she said, “but I shall forget it
from this moment.”
She held out her hand. He grasped it, and again she felt
as if a furnace were pouring its fiery heat upon her.
“Good-night.”
“Good-night, Madame. Thank you.”
She was going away to the hotel door, but she stopped.
“My name is Domini Enfilden,” she said in English.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I27
The man stood in the road looking at her. She waited.
She expected him to tell her his name. There was a silence.
At last he said hesitatingly, in English with a very slight foreign
aCCent:
“My name is Boris—Boris Androvsky.”
“Batouch told me you were English,” she said.
“My mother was English, but my father was a Russian
from Tiflis. That is my name.”
There was a sound in his voice as if he were insisting like
a man making an assertion not readily to be believed.
“Good-night,” Domini said again.
And she went away slowly, leaving him standing on the
moonlit road.
He did not remain there long, nor did he follow her into
the hotel. After she had disappeared he stood for a little
while gazing up at the deserted verandah upon which the
moonrays fell. Then he turned and looked towards the vil-
lage, hesitated, and finally walked slowly back towards the
tiny, shrouded alley in which on the narrow staircases the
painted girls sat watching in the night.
- CHAPTER IX
ON the following morning Batouch arrived with a handsome
grey Arab horse for Domini to try. He had been very peni-
tent the night before, and Domini had forgiven easily enough
his pre-occupation with Suzanne, who had evidently made a
strong impression upon his susceptible nature. Hadj had been
but slightly injured by Irena, but did not appear at the hotel
for a very sufficient reason. Both the dancer and he were
locked up for the moment, till the Guardians of Justice in
Beni-Mora had made up their minds who should be held re-
sponsible for the uproar of the previous night. That the real
culprit was the Smiling poet was not likely to occur to them,
and did not seem to trouble him. When Domini inquired
after Hadj he showed majestic indifference, and when she
hinted at his crafty share in the causing of the tragedy he
calmly replied:
“Hadj-ben-Ibrahim will know from henceforth whether
the Mehari with the swollen tongue can bite.”
Then, leaping upon the horse, whose bridle he was holding,
he forced it to rear, caracole and display its spirit and its
I 28 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
paces before Domini, sitting it superbly, and shooting many sly
glances at Suzanne, who leaned over the parapet of the ver-
andah watching, with a rapt expression on her face.
Domini admired the horse, but wished to mount it herself
before coming to any conclusion about it. She had brought
her own saddle with her and ordered Batouch to put it on
the animal. Meanwhile she went upstairs to change into her
habit. When she came out again on to the verandah Boris
Androvsky was there, standing bare-headed in the Sun and
looking down at Batouch and the horse. He turned quickly,
greeted Domini with a deep bow, then examined her costume
with wondering, startled eyes. •
“I’m going to try that horse,” she said with deliberate
friendliness. “To see if I’ll buy him. Are you a judge of a
horse?”
“I fear not, Madame.”
She had spoken in English and he replied in the same
language. She was standing at the head of the stairs holding
her whip lightly in her right hand. Her splendid figure was
defined by the perfectly-fitting, plain habit, and she saw him
look at it with a strange expression in his eyes, an admiration
that was almost ferocious, and that was yet respectful and
even pure. It was like the glance of a passionate schoolboy
verging on young manhood, whose natural instincts were astir
but whose temperament was unwarped by vice; a glance that .
was a burning tribute, and that told a whole story of sex and
Surely of hot, inquiring ignorance—strange glances of a man
no longer even very young. It made something in her leap
and quiver. She was startled and almost angered by that,
but not by the eyes that caused it.
“Au revoir,” she said, turning to go down.
“May I–might I see you get up?” said Androvsky.
“Get up!” she said.
“ Up on the horse?”
She could not help smiling at his fashion of expressing the
act of mounting. He was not a sportsman evidently, despite
his muscular strength.
“Certainly, if you like. Come along.”
Without thinking of it she spoke rather as to a schoolboy,
not with superiority, but with the sort of bluffness age some-
times uses good-naturedly to youth. He did not seem to
resent it and followed her down to the arcade.
The side saddle was on and the poet held the grey by the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I 29
bridle. Some Arab boys had assembled under the arcade to
see what was going forward. The Arab waiter lounged at
the door with the tassel of his fez swinging against his pale
cheek. The horse fidgetted and tugged against the rein, lift-
ing his delicate feet uneasily from the ground, flicking his
narrow quarters with his long tail, and glancing sideways with
his dark and brilliant eyes, which were alive with a nervous
intelligence that was almost hectic. Domini went up to him
and caressed him with her hand. He reared up and snorted.
His whole body seemed a-quiver with the desire to gallop
furiously away alone into some far distant place.
Androvsky stood near the waiter, looking at Domini and at
the horse with wonder and alarm in his eyes.
The animal, irritated by inaction, began to plunge violently
and to get out of hand.
“Give me the reins,” Domini said to the poet. “That's it.
Now put your hand for me.”
Batouch obeyed. Her foot just touched his hand and she
was in the saddle.
Androvsky sprang forward on to the pavement. His
eyes were blazing with anxiety. She saw it and laughed
gaily.
“Oh, he's not vicious,” she said. “And vice is the only
thing that's dangerous. His mouth is perfect, but he's nerv-
ous and wants handling. I'll just take him up the gardens
and back.”
She had been reining him in. Now she let him go, and
galloped up the straight track between the palms towards the
station. The priest had come out into his little garden with
Bous-Bous, and leaned over his brushwood fence to look after
her. Bous-Bous barked in a light soprano. The Arab boys
jumped on their bare toes, and one of them, who was a boot-
black, waved his board over his shaven head. The Arab waiter
smiled as if with satisfaction at beholding perfect competence.
But Androvsky stood quite still looking down the dusty road
at the diminishing forms of horse and rider, and when they
disappeared, leaving behind them a light cloud of sand films
whirling in the Sun, he sighed heavily and dropped his chin
on his chest as if fatigued.
“I can get a horse for Monsieur too. Would Monsieur
like to have a horse?”
It was the poet's amply seductive voice. Androvsky started.
“I don't ride,” he said curtly.
I3O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“I will teach Monsieur. I am the best teacher in Beni-
Mora. In three lessons Monsieur will 5 y
“I don’t ride, I tell you.”
Androvsky was looking angry. He stepped out into the
road. Bous-Bous, who was now observing Nature at the
priest's garden gate, emerged with some sprightliness and
trotted towards him, evidently with the intention of making
his acquaintance. Coming up to him the little dog raised his
head and uttered a short bark, at the same time wagging his
tail in a kindly, though not effusive manner. Androvsky
looked down, bent quickly and patted him, as only a man
really fond of animals and accustomed to them knows how to
pat. Bous-Bous was openly gratified. He began to wriggle
affectionately. The priest in his garden smiled. Androvsky
had not seen him and went on playing with the dog, who now
made preparations to lie down on his curly back in the road
in the hope of being tickled, a process he was an amateur of.
Still smiling, and with a friendly look on his face, the priest
came out of his garden and approached the playmates.
“Good morning, M'sieur,” he said politely, raising his hat.
“I see you like dogs.”
Androvsky lifted himself up, leaving Bous-Bous in a prayerful
attitude, his paws raised devoutly towards the heavens. When
he saw that it was the priest who had addressed him his face
changed, hardened to grimness, and his lips trembled slightly.
“That's my little dog,” the priest continued in a gentle voice.
“He has evidently taken a great fancy to you.”
Batouch was watching Androvsky under the arcade, and noted
the sudden change in his expression and his whole bearing.
“I—I did not know he was your dog, Monsieur, or I should
not have interfered with him,” said Androvsky.
Bous-Bous jumped up against his leg. He pushed the little
dog rather roughly away and stepped back to the arcade. The
priest looked puzzled and slightly hurt. At this moment the soft
thud of horse's hoofs was audible on the road and Domini came
cantering back to the hotel. Her eyes were sparkling, her face
was radiant. She bowed to the priest and reined up before the
hotel door, where Androvsky was standing.
“I’ll buy him,” she said to Batouch, who swelled with satis-
faction at the thought of his commission. “And I’ll go for a
long ride now—out into the desert.”
“You will not go alone, Madame?”
It was the priest's voice. She smiled down at him gaily.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I3 I
“Should I be carried off by nomads, Monsieur?”
“It would not be safe for a lady, believe me.”
Batouch swept forward to reassure the priest.
“I am Madame's guide. I have a horse ready saddled to
accompany Madame. I have sent for it already, M'sieur.”
One of the little Arab boys was indeed visible running with
all his might towards the Rue Berthe. Domini's face suddenly
clouded. The presence of the guide would take all the edge off
her pleasure, and in the short gallop she had just had she had
savoured its keenness. She was alive with desire to be happy.
“I don’t need you, Batouch,” she said.
But the poet was inexorable, backed up by the priest.
“It is my duty to accompany Madame. I am responsible for
her safety.”
“Indeed, you cannot go into the desert alone,” said the
priest.
Dómini glanced at Androvsky, who was standing silently
under the arcade, a little withdrawn, looking uncomfortable and
self-conscious. She remembered her thought on the tower of the
dice-thrower, and of how the presence of the stranger had seemed
to double her pleasure then. Up the road from the Rue Berthe
came the noise of a galloping horse. The shoeblack was re-
turning furiously, his bare legs sticking out on either side of a
fiery light chestnut with a streaming mane and tail.
“Monsieur Androvsky,” she said.
He started.
“Madame?”
“Will you come with me for a ride into the desert?”
His face was flooded with Scarlet, and he came a step forward,
looking up at her.
“Il " he said with an accent of infinite surprise.
“Yes. Will you?”
The chestnut thundered up and was pulled sharply back on
its haunches. Androvsky shot a sideways glance at it and
hesitated. Domini thought he was going to refuse and wished
she had not asked him, wished it passionately.
“Never mind,” she said, almost brutally in her vexation at
what she had done.
“Batouch ”
The poet was about to spring upon the horse when Androvsky
caught him by the arm.
“I will go,” he said.
Batouch looked vicious.
I 32 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“But Monsieur told me he did not } }
He stopped. The hand on his arm had given him a wrench
that made him feel as if his flesh were caught between steel
pincers. Androvsky came up to the chestnut.
“Oh, it's an Arab saddle,” said Domini.
“It does not matter, Madame.”
His face was stern.
“Are you accustomed to them?”
“It makes no difference.”
He took hold of the rein and put his foot in the high stirrup,
but so awkwardly that he kicked the horse in the side. It
plunged.
“Take care!” said Domini.
Androvsky hung on, and climbed somehow into the saddle,
coming down in it heavily, with a thud. The horse, now
thoroughly startled, plunged furiously and lashed out with its
hind legs. Androvsky was thrown forward against the high red
peak of the saddle with his hands on the animal's neck. There
was a struggle. He tugged at the rein violently. The horse
jumped back, reared, plunged sideways as if about to bolt.
Androvsky was shot off and fell on his right shoulder heavily.
Batouch caught the horse while Androvsky got up. He was
white with dust. There was even dust on his face and in his
short hair. He looked passionate.
“You See,” Batouch began, speaking to Domini, “that Mon-
sieur cannot y 5
“Give me the rein ’’ said Androvsky.
There was a sound in his deep voice that was terrible. He
was looking not at Domini, but at the priest, who stood a little
aside with an expression of concern on his face. Bous-Bous
barked with excitement at the conflict. Androvsky took the
rein, and, with a sort of furious determination, sprang into the
saddle and pressed his legs against the horse's flanks. It reared
up. The priest moved back under the palm trees, the Arab boys
scattered. Batouch sought the shelter of the arcade, and the
horse, with a short, whining neigh that was like a cry of temper,
bolted between the trunks of the trees, heading for the desert,
and disappeared in a flash.
“He will be killed,” said the priest.
Bous-Bous barked frantically.
“It is his own fault,” said the poet. “He told me himself
just now that he did not know how to ride.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so?” Domini exclaimed.
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I33
“Madame 3 y
But she was gone, following Androvsky at a slow canter lest
she should frighten his horse by coming up behind it. She came
out from the shade of the palms into the sun. The desert lay
before her. She searched it eagerly with her eyes and saw
Androvsky's horse far off in the river bed, still going at a gallop
towards the south, towards that region in which she had told him
on the tower she thought that peace must dwell. It was as if he
had believed her words blindly and was frantically in chase of
peace. And she pursued him through the blazing sunlight.
She was out in the desert at length, beyond the last belt of
verdure, beyond the last line of palms. The desert wind was on
her cheek and in her hair. The desert spaces stretched around
her. Under her horse's hoofs lay the sparkling crystals on the
wrinkled, sun-dried earth. The red rocks, seamed with many
shades of colour that all suggested primeval fires and the relent-
less action of heat, were heaped about her. But her eyes were
fixed on the far-off moving speck that was the horse carrying
Androvsky madly towards the south. The light and fire, the
great airs, the sense of the chase intoxicated her. She struck her
horse with the whip. It leaped, as if clearing an immense
obstacle, came down lightly and strained forward into the shin-
ing mysteries at a furious gallop. The black speck grew larger.
She was gaining. The crumbling, cliff-like bank on her left
showed a rent in which a faint track rose sharply to the flatness
beyond. She put her horse at it and came out among the tiny
humps on which grew the halfa grass and the tamarisk bushes.
A pale sand flew up here about the horse's feet. Androvsky was
still below her in the difficult ground where the water came in
the floods. She gained and gained till she was parallel with him
and could see his bent figure, his arms clinging to the peak of his
red saddle, his legs set forward almost on to his horse's withers
by the short stirrups with their metal toe-caps. The animal’s
temper was nearly spent. She could see that. The terror had
gone out of his pace. As she looked she saw Androvsky raise his
arms from the saddle peak, catch at the flying rein, draw it up,
lean against the saddle back and pull with all his force. The
horse stopped dead.
“His strength must be enormous,” Domini thought with a
startled admiration.
She pulled up too on the bank above him and gave a halloo.
He turned his head, saw her, and put his horse at the bank,
which was steep here and without any gap.
I34 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“You can’t do it,” she called.
In reply he dug the heels of his heavy boots into the horse's
flanks and came on recklessly. She thought the horse would
either refuse or try to get up and roll back on its rider. It
sprang at the bank and mounted like a wild cat. There was a
noise of falling stones, a shower of scattered earth-clods dropping
downward, and he was beside her, white with dust, streaming
with sweat, panting as if the labouring breath would rip his chest
open, with the horse's foam on his forehead, and a savage and
yet exultant gleam in his eyes.
They looked at each other in silence, while their horses,
standing quietly, lowered their narrow, graceful heads and
touched noses with delicate inquiry. Then she said:
“I almost thought 3 y
She stopped.
“Yes?” he said, on a great gasping breath that was like a
sob.
“—that you were off to the centre of the earth, or—I don’t
know what I thought. You aren't hurt?”
( & NO.” *
He could only speak in monosyllables as yet. She looked
his horse over.
“He won't give much more trouble just now. Shall we ride
back?”
As she spoke she threw a longing glance at the far desert, at
the verge of which was a dull green line betokening the distant
palms of an oasis.
Androvsky shook his head.
“But you ” She hesitated. “Perhaps you aren’t accus-
tomed to horses, and with that saddle y 3
He shook his head again, drew a tremendous breath and
said:
“I don't care, I’ll go on, I won’t go back.”
He put up one hand, brushed the foam from his streaming
forehead, and said again fiercely:
“I won’t go back.”
His face was extraordinary with its dogged, passionate ex-
pression showing through the dust and the sweat; like the face
of a man in a fight to the death, she thought, a fight with fists.
She was glad at his last words and liked the iron sound in his
voice.
“Come on then.” .
And they began to ride towards the dull green line of the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I35
oasis, slowly on the sandy waste among the little round humps
where the dusty cluster of bushes grew. -
“You weren't hurt by the fall?” she said. “It looked a bad
one.”
“I don’t know whether I was. I don’t care whether I was.”
He spoke almost roughly.
“You asked me to ride with you,” he added. “I’ll ride with
you.”
She remembered what Batouch had said. There was pluck
in this man, pluck that surged up in the blundering awkward-
ness, the hesitation, the incompetence and rudeness of him like a
black rock out of the sea. She did not answer. They rode on,
always slowly. His horse, having had its will, and having known
his strength at the end of his incompetence, went quietly, though
always with that feathery, light, tripping action peculiar to pure-
bred Arabs, an action that suggests the treading of a spring
board rather than of the solid earth. And Androvsky seemed
a little more at home on it, although he sat awkwardly on
the chair-like Saddle, and grasped the rein too much as the
drowning man seizes the straw. Domini rode without looking
at him, lest he might think she was criticising his performance.
When he had rolled in the dust she had been conscious of a
sharp sensation of contempt. The men she had been accus-
tomed to meet all her life rode, shot, played games as a
matter of course. She was herself an athlete, and, like nearly all
athletic women, inclined to be pitiless towards any man who was
not so strong and so agile as herself. But this man had killed
her contempt at once by his desperate determination not to be
beaten. She knew by the look she had just seen in his eyes that
if to ride with her that day meant death to him he would have
done it nevertheless.
The womanhood in her liked the tribute, almost more than
liked it.
“Your horse goes better now,” she said at last to break the
silence.
“Does it?” he said.
“You don’t know !”
“Madame, I know nothing of horses or riding. I have not
been on a horse for twenty-three years.”
She was amazed.
“We ought to go back then,” she exclaimed.
“Why? Other men ride—I will ride. I do it badly.
Forgive me.”
136 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Forgive you!” she said. “I admire your pluck. But why
have you never ridden all these years?”
After a pause he answered:
“I—I did not—I had not the opportunity.”
His voice was suddenly constrained. She did not pursue
the subject, but stroked her horse's neck and turned her eyes
towards the dark green line on the horizon. Now that she was
really out in the desert she felt almost bewildered by it, and as if
she understood it far less than when she looked at it from Count
Anteoni's garden. The thousands upon thousands of sand
humps, each crowned with its dusty dwarf bush, each one pre-
cisely like the others, agitated her as if she were confronted by
a vast multitude of people. She wanted some point which
would keep the eyes from travelling but could not find it, and
was mentally restless as the swimmer far out at sea who is pur-
sued by wave on wave, and who sees beyond him the unceasing
foam of those that are pressing to the horizon. Whither was
she riding? Could one have a goal in this immense expanse?
She felt an overpowering need to find one, and looked once more
at the green line.
“Do you think we could go as far as that?” she asked
Androvsky, pointing with her whip.
“Yes, Madame.”
“It must be an oasis. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes. I can go faster.”
“Keep your rein loose. Don’t pull his mouth. You don’t
mind my telling you. I've been with horses all my life.”
“Thank you,” he answered.
“And keep your heels more out. That's much better. I’m
sure you could teach me a thousand things; it will be kind of you
to let me teach you this.”
He cast a strange look at her. There was gratitude in it,
but much more; a fiery bitterness and something childlike and
helpless. -
“I have nothing to teach,” he said.
Their horses broke into a canter, and with the swifter move-
ment Domini felt more calm. There was an odd lightness in
her brain, as if her thoughts were being shaken out of it like
feathers out of a bag. The power of concentration was leaving
her, and a sensation of carelessness—surely gipsy-like—came
over her. Her body, dipped in the dry and thin air as in a
clear, cool bath, did not suffer from the burning rays of the sun,
but felt radiant yet half lazy too. They went on and on in
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I37
silence as intimate friends might ride together, isolated from the
world and content in each other's company, content enough to
have no need of talking. Not once did it strike Domini as
strange that she should go far out into the desert with a man of
whom she knew nothing, but in whom she had noticed disquiet-
ing peculiarities. She was naturally fearless, but that had little
to do with her conduct. Without saying so to herself she felt
she could trust this man.
The dark green line showed clearer through the sunshine
across the gleaming flats. It was possible now to see slight
irregularities in it, as in a blurred dash of paint flung across a
canvas by an uncertain hand, but impossible to distinguish palm
trees. The air sparkled as if full of a tiny dust of intensely
brilliant jewels, and near the ground there seemed to quiver a
maze of dancing specks of light. Everywhere there was solitude,
yet everywhere there was surely a ceaseless movement of minute
and vital things, scarce visible sun fairies eternally at play.
And Domini’s careless feeling grew. She had never before
experienced so delicious a recklessness. Head and heart were
light, reckless of thought or love. Sad things had no meaning
here and grave things no place. For the blood was full of
Sunbeams dancing to a lilt of Apollo. Nothing mattered here.
Even Death wore a robe of gold and went with an airy step.
Ah, yes, from this region of quivering light and heat the Arabs
drew their easy and lustrous resignation. Out here one was in
the hands of a God who surely sang as He created and had not
created fear.
Many minutes passed, but Domini was careless of time as of
all else. The green line broke into feathery tufts, broadened
into a still far-off dimness of palms.
“Water | *
Androvsky's voice spoke as if startled. Domini pulled up.
Their horses stood side by side, and at once, with the cessation
of motion, the mysticism of the desert came upon them and the
marvel of its silence, and they seemed to be set there in a wonder-
ful dream, themselves and their horses dreamlike.
“Water | " he said again.
He pointed, and along the right-hand edge of the oasis
Domini saw grey, calm waters. The palms ran out into them
and were bathed by them softly. And on their bosom here and
there rose small, dim islets. Yes, there was water, and yet
The mystery of it was a mystery she had never known to brood
even over a white northern sea in a twilight hour of winter, was
I38 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
deeper than the mystery of the Venetian laguna morta, when the
Angelus bell chimes at sunset, and each distant boat, each bend-
ing rower and patient fisherman, becomes a marvel, an eerie thing
in the gold.
“Is it mirage?” she said to him almost in a whisper.
And suddenly she shivered.
“Yes, it is, it must be.”
He did not answer. His left hand, holding the rein, dropped
down on the saddle peak, and he stared across the waste, leaning
forward and moving his lips. She looked at him and forgot even
the mirage in a sudden longing to understand exactly what he
was feeling. His mystery—the mystery of that which is human
and is forever stretching out its arms—was as the fluid mystery
of the mirage, and seemed to blend at that moment with the
mystery she knew lay in herself. The mirage was within them
as it was far off before them in the desert, still, grey, full surely
of indistinct movement, and even perhaps of sound they could
not hear.
At last he turned and looked at her.
“Yes, it must be mirage,” he said. “The nothing that seems
to be so much. A man comes out into the desert and he finds
there mirage. He travels right out and that's what he reaches—
or at least he can't reach it, but just sees it far away. And that's
all. And is that what a man finds when he comes out into the
world P’’ -
It was the first time he had spoken without any trace of
reserve to her, for even on the tower, though there had been
tumult in his voice and a fierceness of some strange passion in his
words, there had been struggle in his manner, as if the pressure
of feeling forced him to speak in despite of something which
bade him keep silence. Now he spoke as if to someone whom
he knew and with whom he had talked of many things.
. But you ought to know better than I do,” she answered.
I "
“Yes. You are a man, and have been in the world, and must
know what it has to give—whether there's only mirage, or some-
thing that can be grasped and felt and lived in, and } }
“Yes, I'm a man and I ought to know,” he replied. “Well,
I don't know, but I mean to know.”
There was a savage sound in his voice.
“I should like to know, too,” Domini said quietly. “And I
feel as if it was the desert that was going to teach me.”
“The desert—how 2 ”
THE VOICE OF PRAYER 139
“I don’t know.”
He pointed again to the mirage.
“But that's what there is in the desert.”
“That—and what else?”
“Is there anything else?”
“Perhaps everything,” she answered. “I am like you. I
want to know.”
He looked straight into her eyes and there was something
dominating in his expression.
“You think it is the desert that could teach you whether the
world holds anything but a mirage,” he said slowly. “Well, I
don’t think it would be the desert that could teach me.”
She said nothing more, but let her horse go and rode off. He
followed, and as he rode awkwardly, yet bravely, pressing his
strong legs against his animal's flanks and holding his thin body
bent forward, he looked at Domini's upright figure and brilliant,
elastic grace—that gave in to her horse as wave gives to wind
—with a passion of envy in his eyes.
They did not speak again till the great palm gardens of the
oasis they had seen far off were close upon them. From the
desert they looked both shabby and superb, as if some millionaire
had poured forth money to create a Paradise out here, and, when
it was nearly finished, had suddenly repented of his whim and
refused to spend another farthing. The thousands upon
thousands of mighty trees were bounded by long, irregular walls
of hard earth, at the top of which were stuck distraught thorn
bushes. These walls gave the rough, penurious aspect which
was in such sharp contrast to the exotic mystery they guarded.
. Yet in the fierce blaze of the Sun their meanness was not dis-
agreeable. Domini even liked it. It seemed to her as if the
desert had thrown up waves to protect this daring oasis which
ventured to fling its green glory like a defiance in the face
of the Sahara. A wide track of earth, sprinkled with stones
and covered with deep ruts, holes and hummocks, wound in
from the desert between the earthen walls and vanished into the
heart of the oasis. They followed it.
Domini was filled with a sort of romantic curiosity. This
luxury of palms far out in the midst of desolation, untended
apparently by human hands—for no figures moved among them,
there was no one on the road—suggested some hidden purpose
and activity, Some concealed personage, perhaps an Eastern
Anteoni, whose lair lay surely somewhere beyond them. As she
had felt the call of the desert she now felt the call of the oasis.
I40 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.
In this land thrilled eternally a summons to go onward, to seek,
to penetrate, to be a passionate pilgrim. She wondered whether
her companion's heart could hear it.
“I don’t know why it is,” she said, “but out here I always
feel expectant. I always feel as if some marvellous thing might
be going to happen to me.”
She did not add “Do you?” but looked at him as if for a
reply.
“Yes, Madame,” he said.
“I suppose it is because I am new to Africa. This is my
first visit here. I am not like you. I can’t speak Arabic.”
She suddenly wondered whether the desert was new to
him as to her. She had assumed that it was. Yet as he
spoke Arabic it was almost certain that he had been much in
Africa.
“I do not speak it well,” he answered.
And he looked away towards the dense thickets of the palms.
The track narrowed till the trees on either side cast patterns of
moving shade across it and the silent mystery was deepened.
As far as the eye could see the feathery, tufted foliage swayed
in the little wind. The desert had vanished, but sent in after
them the message of its soul, the marvellous breath which
Domini had drunk into her lungs so long before she saw it.
That breath was like a presence. It dwells in all oases. The
high earth walls concealed the gardens. Domini longed to look
over and see what they contained, whether there were any
dwellings in these dim and silent recesses, any pools of water,
flowers or grassy lawns.
Her horse neighed.
“Something is coming,” she said. -
They turned a corner and were suddenly in a village. A mob
of half-naked children scattered from their horses’ feet. Rows
of seated men in white and earth-coloured robes stared upon
them from beneath the shadow of tall, windowless earth houses.
White dogs rushed to and fro upon the flat roofs, thrusting
forward venomous heads, showing their teeth and barking
furiously. Hens fluttered in agitation from one side to the
other. A grey mule, tethered to a palm-wood door and loaded
with brushwood, lashed out with its hoofs at a negro, who at
once began to batter it passionately with a pole, and a long line
of sneering camels confronted them, treading stealthily, and
turning their serpentine necks from side to side as they came
onwards with a soft and weary inflexibility. In the distance
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I4 I
there was a vision of a glaring market-place crowded with mov-
ing forms and humming with noises.
The change from mysterious peace to this vivid and con-
centrated life was startling.
With difficulty they avoided the onset of the camels by pull-
ing their horses into the midst of the dreamers against the walls,
who rolled and scrambled into places of safety, then stood up
and surrounded them, staring with an almost terrible interest
upon them, and surveying their horses with the eyes of
connoisseurs. The children danced up and began to ask for
alms, and an immense man, with a broken nose and brown teeth
like tusks, laid a gigantic hand on Domini's bridle and said, in
atrocious French:
“I am the guide, I am the guide. Look at my certificates.
Take no one else. The people here are robbers. I am the only
honest man. I will show Madame everything. I will take
Madame to the inn. Look—my certificates! Read them!
Read what the English lord says of me. I alone am honest
here. I am honest Mustapha! I am honest Mustapha!”
He thrust a packet of discoloured papers and dirty visiting-
cards into her hands. She dropped them, laughing, and they
floated down over the horse's neck. The man leaped frantically
to pick them up, assisted by the robbers round about. A second
caravan of camels appeared, preceded by some filthy men in
rags, who cried, “Oosh! oosh!” to clear the way. The immense
man, brandishing his recovered certificates, plunged forward to
encounter them, shouting in Arabic, hustled them back, kicked
them, struck at the camels with a stick till those in front re-
ceded upon those behind and the street was blocked by strug-
gling beasts and resounded with roaring snarls, the thud of
wooden bales clashing together, and the desperate protests of
the camel-drivers, one of whom was sent rolling into a noisome
dust heap with his turban torn from his head.
“The inn . This is the inn Madame will descend here.
Madame will eat in the garden. Monsieur Alphonse! Monsieur
Alphonse! Here are clients for déjeuner. I have brought
them. Do not believe Mohammed. It is I that—I will assist
Madame to descend. I will 53
Domini was standing in a tiny cabaret before a row of
absinthe bottles, laughing, almost breathless. She scarcely knew
how she had come there. Looking back she saw Androvsky
still sitting on his horse in the midst of the clamouring mob. She
went to the low doorway, but Mustapha barred her exit.
I42 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“This is Sidi-Zerzour. Madame will eat in the garden. She
is tired, fainting. She will eat and then she will see the great
Mosque of Zerzour.”
“Sidi-Zerzour!” she exclaimed. “Monsieur Androvsky,
do you know where we are? This is the famous Sidi-Zerzour,
where the great warrior is buried, and where the Arabs make
pilgrimages to worship at his tomb.”
“Yes, Madame.”
He answered in a low voice.
“As we are here we ought to see. Do you know, I think
we must yield to honest Mustapha and have déjeuner in the
garden. It is twelve o'clock and I am hungry. We might visit
the mosque afterwards and ride home in the afternoon.”
He sat there hunched up on the horse and looked at her in
silent hesitation, while the Arabs stood round staring.
“You’d rather not?”
She spoke quietly. He shook his feet out of the stirrups.
A number of brown hands and arms shot forth to help him.
Domini turned back into the cabaret. She heard a tornado of
voices outside, a horse neighing and trampling, a scuffling of
feet, but she did not glance round. In about three minutes
Androvsky joined her. He was limping slightly and bending
forward more than ever. Behind the counter on which stood
the absinthe bottle was a tarnished mirror, and she saw him .
glance quickly, almost guiltily into it, put up his hands and try
to brush the dust from his hair, his shoulders.
“Let me do it,” she said abruptly. “Turn round.”
He obeyed without a word, turning his back to her. With
her two hands, which were covered with soft, loose suede gloves,
she beat and brushed the dust from his coat. He stood quite
still while she did it. When she had finished she said:
“There, that's better.”
Her voice was practical. He did not move, but stood there.
“I’ve done what I can, Monsieur Androvsky.”
Then he turned slowly, and she saw, with amazement, that
there were tears in his eyes. He did not thank her or say a
word.
A small and scrubby-looking Frenchman, with red eyelids
and moustaches that drooped over a pendulous underlip, now
begged Madame to follow him through a small doorway beyond
which could be seen three just shot gazelles lying in a patch of
sunlight by a wired-in fowl-run. Domini went after him, and
Androvsky and honest Mustapha-still vigorously proclaiming
THE VOICE OF PRAYER ſ43
his own virtues—brought up the rear. They came into the most
curious garden she had ever seen.
It was long and narrow and dishevelled, without grass or
flowers. The uneven ground of it was bare, sun-baked earth,
hard as parquet, rising here into a hump, falling there into a
depression. Immediately behind the cabaret, where the dead
gazelles with their large glazed eyes lay by the fowl-run, was a
rough wooden trellis with vines trained over it, making an
arbour. Beyond was a rummage of Orange trees, palms, gums
and fig trees growing at their own sweet will, and casting pat-
terns of deep shade upon the earth in sharp contrast with the
intense yellow sunlight which fringed them where the leafage
ceased. An attempt had been made to create formal garden
paths and garden beds by sticking rushes into little holes drilled
in the ground, but the paths were zig-zag as a drunkard's walk,
and the round and oblong beds contained no trace of plants. On
either hand rose steep walls of earth, higher than a man, and
crowned with prickly thorn bushes. Over them looked palm
trees. At the end of the garden ran a slow stream of muddy
water in a channel with crumbling banks trodden by many naked
feet. Beyond it was yet another lower wall of earth, yet an-
other maze of palms. Heat and silence brooded here like reptiles
on the warm mud of a tropic river in a jungle. Lizards ran in
and out of the innumerable holes in the walls, and flies buzzed
beneath the ragged leaves of the fig trees and crawled in the hot
cracks of the earth.
The landlord wished to put a table under the vine close to
the cabaret wall, but Domini begged him to bring it to the end
of the garden near the stream. With the furious assistance of
honest Mustapha he carried it there and quickly laid it in the
shadow of a fig tree, while Domini and Androvsky waited in
silence on two straw-bottomed chairs.
The atmosphere of the garden was hostile to conversation.
The sluggish muddy stream, the almost motionless trees, the
imprisoned heat between the surrounding walls, the faint buzz of
the flies caused drowsiness to creep upon the spirit. The long
ride, too, and the ardent desert air, made this repose a luxury.
Androvsky's face lost its emotional expression as he gazed
almost vacantly at the brown water shifting slowly by between
the brown banks and the brown walls above which the palm
trees peered. His aching limbs relaxed. His hands hung
loose between his knees. And Domini half closed her eyes. A
curious peace descended upon her. Lapped in the heat and
I44 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
silence for the moment she wanted nothing. The faint buzz of
the flies sounded in her ears and seemed more silent than even
the silence to which it drew attention. Never before, not in
Count Anteoni's garden, had she felt more utterly withdrawn
from the world. The feathery tops of the palms were like the
heads of sentinels guarding her from contact with all that she
had known. And beyond them lay the desert, the empty, Sun-
lit waste. She shut her eyes, and murmured to herself, “I am
in far away. I am in far away.” And the flies said it in her
ears monotonously. And the lizards whispered it as they
slipped in and out of the little dark holes in the walls. She
heard Androvsky stir, and she moved her lips slowly. And the
flies and the lizards continued the refrain. But she said now,
“We are in far away.”
Honest Mustapha strode forward. He had a Bashi-Bazouk
tread to wake up a world. Déjeuner was ready. Domini
sighed. They took their places under the fig tree on either side
of the deal table covered with a rough white cloth, and
Mustapha, with tremendous gestures, and gigantic postures Sug-
gesting the untamed descendant of legions of freeborn, sun-
suckled men, served them with red fish, omelette, gazelle steaks,
cheese, oranges and dates, with white wine and Vals water.
Androvsky scarcely spoke. Now that he was sitting at a
meal with Domini he was obviously embarrassed. All his move-
ments were self-conscious. He seemed afraid to eat and refused
the gazelle. Mustapha broke out into turbulent surprise and
prolonged explanations of the delicious flavour of this desert
food. But Androvsky still refused, looking desperately discon-
certed.
“It really is delicious,” said Domini, who was eating it.
“But perhaps you don't care about meat.”
She spoke quite carelessly and was surprised to see him
look at her as if with Sudden suspicion and immediately help
himself to the gazelle.
This man was perpetually giving a touch of the whip to her
curiosity to keep it alert. Yet she felt oddly at ease with him.
He seemed somehow part of her impression of the desert, and
now, as they sat under the fig tree between the high earth walls,
and at their al fresco meal in unbroken silence—for since her
last remark Androvsky had kept his eyes down and had not
uttered a word—she tried to imagine the desert without him.
She thought of the gorge of El-Akbara, the cold, the dark-
ness, and then the Sun and the blue country. They had framed
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I45
his face. She thought of the silent night when the voice of the
African hautboy had died away. His step had broken its
silence. She thought of the garden of Count Anteoni, and of
herself kneeling on the hot sand with her arms on the white
parapet and gazing out over the regions of the sun, of her dream
upon the tower, of her vision when Irena danced. He was there,
part of the noon, part of the twilight, chief surely of the wor-
shippers who swept on in the pale procession that received gifts
from the desert's hands. She could no longer imagine the desert
without him. The almost painful feeling that had come to her
in the garden—of the human power to distract her attention
from the desert power—was dying, perhaps had completely
died away. Another feeling was surely coming to replace it;
that Androvsky belonged to the desert more even than the
Arabs did, that the desert spirits were close about him, clasping
his hands, whispering in his ears, and laying their unseen hands
about his heart. But
They had finished their meal. Domini set her chair once
more in front of the sluggish stream, while honest Mustapha
bounded, with motions suggestive of an ostentatious panther, to
get the coffee. Androvsky followed her after an instant of
hesitation.
“Do Smoke,” she said.
He lit a small cigar with difficulty. She did not wish to
watch him, but she could not help glancing at him once or twice,
and the conviction came to her that he was unaccustomed to
smoking. She lit a cigarette, and saw him look at her with a
sort of horrified surprise which changed to staring interest.
There was more boy, more child in this man than in any man
she had ever known. Yet at moments she felt as if he had pen-
etrated more profoundly into the dark and winding valleys of
experience than all the men of her acquaintance.
“Monsieur Androvsky,” she said, looking at the slow waters
of the stream slipping by towards the hidden gardens, “is the
desert new to you?”
She longed to know.
“Yes, Madame.”
“I thought perhaps—I wondered a little whether you had
travelled in it already.”
“No, Madame. I saw it for the first time the day before
yesterday.”
“When I did.”
{ { Yes.”
I46 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
So they had entered it for the first time together. She was
silent, watching the pale smoke curl up through the shade and
out into the glare of the sun, the lizards creeping over the hot
earth, the flies circling beneath the lofty walls, the palm trees
looking over into this garden from the gardens all around,
gardens belonging to Eastern people, born here, and who would
probably die here, and go to dust among the roots of the
palms.
On the earthen bank on the far side of the stream there
appeared, while she gazed, a brilliant figure. It came soundlessly
on bare feet from a hidden garden; a tall, unveiled girl, dressed
in draperies of vivid magenta, who carried in her exquisitely-
shaped brown hands a number of handkerchiefs—Scarlet, orange,
yellow green and flesh colour. She did not glance into the
auberge garden, but caught up her draperies into a bunch with
one hand, exposing her slim legs far above the knees, waded
into the stream, and bending, dipped the handkerchiefs in the
Water.
The current took them. They streamed out on the muddy
surface of the stream, and tugged as if, suddenly endowed with
life, they were striving to escape from the hand that held
them. -
The girl's face was beautiful, with small regular features and
lustrous, tender eyes. Her figure, not yet fully developed, was
perfect in shape, and seemed to thrill softly with the spirit of
youth. Her tint of bronze suggested statuary, and every fresh
pose into which she fell, while the water eddied about her,
strengthened the suggestion. With the golden sunlight stream-
ing upon her, the brown banks, the brown waters, the brown
walls throwing up the crude magenta of her bunched-up
draperies, the vivid colours of the handkerchiefs that floated
from her hand, with the feathery palms beside her, the cloudless
blue sky above her, she looked so strangely African and so com-
pletely lovely that Domini watched her with an almost breathless
attention.
She withdrew the handkerchiefs from the stream, waded out,
and spread them one by one upon the low earth wall to dry,
letting her draperies fall. When she had finished disposing
them she turned round, and, no longer preoccupied with her
task, looked under her level brows into the garden opposite and
saw Domini and her companion. She did not start, but stood
quite still for a moment, then slipped away in the direction
whence she had come. Only the brilliant patches of colour on
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I47
the wall remained to hint that she had been there and would
come again. Domini sighed.
“What a lovely creature!” she said, more to herself than to
Androvsky.
He did not speak, and his silence made her consciously
demand his acquiescence in her admiration.
“Did you ever see anything more beautiful and more char-
acteristic of Africa?” she asked.
“Madame,” he said in a slow, stern voice, “I did not look at
her.” -
Domini felt piqued.
“Why not?” she retorted.
Androvsky's face was cloudy and almost cruel.
“These native women do not interest me,” he said. “I see
nothing attractive in them.”
Domini knew that he was telling her a lie. Had she not
seen him watching the dancing girls in Tahar’s café2 Anger
rose in her. She said to herself then that it was anger at man's
hypocrisy. Afterwards she knew that it was anger at Androv-
sky's telling a lie to her.
“I can scarcely believe that,” she answered bluntly.
They looked at each other.
“Why not, Madame?” he said. “If I say it is so?”
She hesitated. At that moment she realised, with hot aston-
ishment, that there was something in this man that could make
her almost afraid, that could prevent her even, perhaps, from
doing the thing she had resolved to do. Immediately she felt
hostile to him, and she knew that, at that moment, he was feel-
ing hostile to her.
“If you say it is so naturally I am bound to take your word
for it,” she said coldly.
He flushed and looked down. The rigid defiance that had
confronted her died out of his face.
Honest Mustapha broke joyously upon them with the coffee.
Domini helped Androvsky to it. She had to make a great
effort to perform this simple act with quiet, and apparently
indifferent, composure.
“Thank you, Madame.”
His voice sounded humble, but she felt hard and as if ice
were in all her veins. She sipped her coffee, looking straight
before her at the stream. The magenta robe appeared once
more coming out from the brown wall. A yellow robe suc-
ceeded it, a scarlet, a deep purple. The girl, with three curious
148 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
young companions, stood in the sun examining the foreigners
with steady, unflinching eyes. Domini smiled grimly. Fate
gave her an opportunity. She beckoned to the girls. They
looked at each other but did not move. She held up a bit of
silver so that the sun was on it, and beckoned them again. The
magenta robe was lifted above the pretty knees it had covered.
The yellow, the scarlet, the deep purple robes rose too, making
their separate revelations. And the four girls, all staring at the
silver coin, waded through the muddy water and stood before
Domini and Androvsky, blotting out the glaring sunshine with
their young figures. Their smiling faces were now eager and
confident, and they stretched out their delicate hands hope-
fully to the silver. Domini signified that they must wait a
moment.
She felt full of malice.
The girls wore many ornaments. She began slowly and
deliberately to examine them; the huge gold earrings that were
as large as the little ears that sustained them, the bracelets and
anklets, the triangular silver skewers that fastened the draperies
across the gentle swelling breasts, the narrow girdles, worked
with gold thread, and hung with lumps of coral, that circled the
small, elastic waists. Her inventory was an adagio, and while it
lasted Androvsky-Sat on his low straw chair with this wall of
young womanhood before him, of young womanhood no longer
self-conscious and timid, but eager, hardy, natural, warm with
the sun and damp with the trickling drops of the water. The
vivid draperies touched him, and presently a little hand stole out
to his breast, caught at the silver chain that lay across it, and
jerked out of its hiding-place—a wooden cross.
Domini saw the light on it for a second, heard a low, fierce
exclamation, saw Androvsky's arm push the pretty hand roughly
away, and then a thing that was strange. -
He got up violently from his chair with the cross hanging
loose on his breast. Then he seized hold of it, snapped the
chain in two, threw the cross passionately into the stream and
walked away down the garden. The four girls, with a twitter-
ing cry of excitement, rushed into the water, heedless of draper-
ies, bent down, knelt down, and began to feel frantically in the
mud for the vanished ornament. Domini stood up and watched
them. Androvsky did not come back. Some minutes passed.
Then there was an exclamation of triumph from the stream.
The girl in magenta held up the dripping cross with the bit of
silver chain in her dripping fingers. Domini cast a Swift glance
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I49
behind her. Androvsky had disappeared. Quickly she went to
the edge of the water. As she was in riding-dress she wore no
ornaments except two earrings made of large and beautiful
turquoises. She took them hastily out of her ears and held
them out to the girl, signifying by gestures that she bartered
them for the little cross and chain. The girl hesitated, but the
clear blue tint of the turquoise pleased her eyes. She yielded,
Snatched the earrings with an eager, gave up the cross and chain
with a reluctant, hand. Domini's fingers closed round the wet
gold. She threw some coins across the stream on to the bank,
and turned away, thrusting the cross into her bosom.
And she felt at that moment as if she had saved a sacred
thing from outrage.
At the cabaret door she found Androvsky, once more sur-
rounded by Arabs, whom honest Mustapha was trying to beat
off. He turned when he heard her. His eyes were still full of
a light that revealed an intensity of mental agitation, and she
saw his left hand, which hung down, quivering against his side.
But he succeeded in schooling his voice as he asked:
“Do you wish to visit the village, Madame?”
“Yes. But don’t let me bother you if you would rather }
“I will come. I wish to come.”
She did not believe it. She felt that he was in great pain,
both of body and mind. His fall had hurt him. She knew that
by the way he moved his right arm. The unaccustomed exercise
had made him stiff. Probably the physical discomfort he was
silently enduring had acted as an irritant to the mind. She re-
membered that it was caused by his determination to be her com-
panion, and the ice in her melted away. She longed to make
him calmer, happier. Secretly she touched the little cross that
lay under her habit. He had thrown it away in a passion.
Well, some day perhaps she would have the pleasure of giving
it back to him. Since he had worn it he must surely care for it,
and even perhaps for that which it recalled.
“We ought to visit the mosque, I think,” she said.
“Yes, Madame.”
The assent sounded determined yet reluctant. She knew
this was all against his will. Mustapha took charge of them,
and they set out down the narrow street, accompanied by a little
crowd. They crossed the glaring market-place, with its booths
of red meat made black by flies, its heaps of refuse, its rows of
small and squalid hutches, in which sat serious men surrounded
by their goods. The noise here was terrific. Everyone seemed
y
I5O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
shouting, and the uproar of the various trades, the clamour of
hammers on sheets of iron, the dry tap of the shoemaker's
wooden wand on the soles of countless slippers, the thud of the
coffee-beater's blunt club on the beans, and the groaning grunt
with which he accompanied each downward stroke mingled with
the incessant roar of camels, and seemed to be made more
deafening and intolerable by the fierce heat of the sun, and by
the innumerable smells which seethed forth upon the air.
Domini felt her nerves set on edge, and was thankful when they
came once more into the narrow alleys that ran everywhere be-
tween the brown, blind houses. In them there was shade and
silence and mystery. Mustapha strode before to show the way,
Domini and Androvsky followed, and behind glided the little
mob of barefoot inquisitors in long shirts, speechless and intent,
and always hopeful of some chance scattering of money by the
wealthy travellers.
The tumult of the market-place at length died away, and
Domini was conscious of a curious, far-off murmur. At first it
was so faint that she was scarcely aware of it, and merely felt the
soothing influence of its level monotony. But as they walked on
it grew deeper, stronger. It was like the sound of countless
multitudes of bees buzzing in the noon among flowers, drowsily,
ceaselessly. She stopped under a low mud arch to listen. And
when she listened, standing still, a feeling of awe came upon her,
and she knew that she had never heard such a strangely impres-
sive, strangely suggestive sound before.
“What is that?” she said.
She looked at Androvsky.
“I don’t know, Madame. It must be people.”
“But what can they be doing?”
“They are praying in the mosque where Sidi-Zerzour is
buried,” said Mustapha. **
Domini remembered the perfume-seller. This was the sound
she had heard in his sunken chamber, infinitely multiplied.
They went on again slowly. Mustapha had lost something of
his flaring manner, and his gait was subdued. He walked with
a sort of Soft caution, like a man approaching holy ground.
And Domini was moved by his sudden reverence. It was im-
pressive in such a fierce and greedy scoundrel. The level
murmur deepened, strengthened. All the empty and dim alleys
Surrounding the unseen mosque were alive with it, as if the earth
of the houses, the palm-wood beams, the iron bars of the tiny,
shuttered windows, the very thorns of the brushwood roofs were
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I5I
praying ceaselessly and intently in secret under voices. This
was a world intense with prayer as a flame is intense with heat,
with prayer penetrating and compelling, urgent in its persist-
ence, powerful in its deep and Sultry concentration, yet almost
oppressive, almost terrible in its monotony.
“Allah-Akbar! Allah-Akbar!” It was the murmur of the
desert and the murmur of the sun. It was the whisper of the
mirage and of the airs that stole among the palm leaves. It was
the perpetual heart-beat of this world that was engulfing her,
taking her to its warm and glowing bosom with soft and
tyrannical intention.
“Allah! Allah! Allah!” Surely God must be very near,
bending to such an everlasting cry. Never before, not even
when the bell sounded and the Host was raised, had Domini felt
the nearness of God to His world, the absolute certainty of
a Creator listening to His creatures, watching them, wanting
them, meaning them some day to be one with Him, as she felt
it now while she threaded the dingy alleys towards these count-
less men who prayed.
Androvsky was walking slowly as if in pain.
“Your shoulder isn’t hurting you?” she whispered.
This long sound of prayer moved her to the soul, made her
feel very full of compassion for everybody and everything, and
as if prayer were a cord binding the world together. He shook
his head silently. She looked at him, and felt that he was moved
also, but whether as she was she could not tell. His face was
like that of a man stricken with awe. Mustapha turned round
to them. The everlasting murmur was now so near that it
seemed to be within them, as if they, too, prayed at the tomb
of Zerzour.
“Follow me into the court, Madame,” Mustapha said, “ and
remain at the door while I fetch the slippers.” -
They turned a corner, and came to an open space before an
archway, which led into the first of the courts surrounding the
mosque. Under the archway Arabs were sitting silently, as if
immersed in profound reveries. They did not move, but stared
upon the strangers, and Domini fancied that there was enmity in
their eyes. Beyond them, upon an uneven pavement surrounded
with lofty walls, more Arabs were gathered, kneeling, bowing
their heads to the ground, and muttering ceaseless words in deep,
almost growling, voices. Their fingers slipped over the beads of
the chaplets they wore round their necks, and Domini thought
of her rosary. Some prayed alone, removed in shady corners,
I 52 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
with faces turned to the wall. Others were gathered into knots.
But each one pursued his own devotions, immersed in a strange,
interior solitude to which surely penetrated an unseen ray of
sacred light. There were young boys praying, and old, wrinkled
men, eagles of the desert, with fierce eyes that did not soften as
they cried the greatness of Allah, the greatness of his Prophet,
but gleamed as if their belief were a thing of flame and bronze.
The boys sometimes glanced at each other while they prayed,
and after each glance they swayed with greater violence, and
bowed down with more passionate abasement. The vision of
prayer had stirred them to a young longing for excess. The
spirit of emulation flickered through them and turned their
worship into war.
In a second and smaller court before the portal of the mosque
men were learning the Koran. Dressed in white they sat in
circles, holding squares of some material that looked like card-
board covered with minute Arab characters, pretty, symmetrical
curves and lines, dots and dashes. The teachers squatted in the
midst, expounding the sacred text in nasal voices with a swiftness
and vivacity that seemed pugnacious. There was violence
within these courts. Domini could imagine the worshippers
springing up from their knees to tear to pieces an intruding dog
of an unbeliever, their sinking to their knees again while the
blood trickled over the sun-dried pavement and the lifeless body
lay there to rot and draw the flies.
“Allah! Allah I Allah ”
There was something imperious in such ardent, such concen-
trated and untiring worship, a demand which surely could not be
overlooked or set aside. The tameness, the half-heartedness of
Western prayer and Western praise had no place here. This
prayer was hot as the sunlight, this praise was a mounting fire.
The breath of this human incense was as the breath of a furnace
pouring forth to the gates of the Paradise of Allah. It gave to
Domini a quite new conception of religion, of the relation be-
tween Creator and created. The personal pride which, like
blood in a body, runs through all the veins of the mind of
Mohammedanism, that measureless hauteur which sets the soul
of a Sultan in the twisted frame of a beggar at a street corner,
and makes impressive, even almost majestical, the filthy mara-
bout, quivering with palsy and devoured by disease, who squats
beneath a holy bush thick with the disgoloured rags of the faith-
ful, was not abased at the shrine of the warrior Zerzour, was not
cast off in the act of adoration. These Arabs humbled them-
...ºr
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I 53
selves in the body. Their foreheads touched the stones. By
their attitudes they seemed as if they wished to make themselves
even with the ground, to shrink into the space occupied by a
grain of sand. Yet they were proud in the presence of Allah, as
if the firmness of their belief in him and his right dealing, the
fury of their contempt and hatred for those who looked not
towards Mecca nor regarded Ramadan, gave them a patent of
nobility. Despite their genuflections they were all as men who
knew, and never forgot, that on them was conferred the right
to keep on their head-covering in the presence of their King.
With their closed eyes they looked God full in the face. Their
dull and growling murmur had the majesty of thunder rolling
through the sky.
Mustapha had disappeared within the mosque, leaving Domini
and Androvsky for the moment alone in the midst of the wor-
shippers. From the shadowy interior came forth a ceaseless
sound of prayer to join the prayer without. There was a narrow
stone seat by the mosque door and she sat down upon it. She
felt suddenly weary, as one being hypnotised feels weary when
the body and spirit begin to yield to the spell of the operator.
Androvsky remained standing. His eyes were fixed on the
ground, and she thought his face looked almost phantom-like,
as if the blood had sunk away from it, leaving it white beneath
the brown tint set there by the sun. He stayed quite still. The
dark shadow cast by the towering mosque fell upon him, and his
immobile figure suggested to her ranges of infinite melancholy.
She sighed as one oppressed. There was an old man praying
near them at the threshold of the door, with his face turned
towards the interior. He was very thin, almost a skeleton, was
dressed in rags through which his copper-coloured body, sharp
with scarce-covered bones, could be seen, and had a scanty white
beard sticking up, like a brush, at the tip of his pointed chin.
His face, worn with hardship and turned to the likeness of parch-
ment by time and the action of the sun, was full of senile venom;
and his toothless mouth, with its lips folded inwards, moved per-
petually, as if he were trying to bite. With rhythmical regu-
larity, like one obeying a conductor, he shot forth his arms
towards the mosque as if he wished to strike it, withdrew them,
paused, then shot them forth again. And as his arms shot forth
he uttered a prolonged and trembling shriek, full of weak, yet
intense, fury.
He was surely crying out upon God, denouncing God for the
evils that had beset his nearly ended life. Poor, horrible old
I54 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
man! Androvsky was closer to him than she was, but did not
seem to notice him. Once she had seen him she could not take
her eyes from him. His perpetual gesture, his perpetual shriek,
became abominable to her in the midst of the bowing bodies and
the humming voices of prayer. Each time he struck at the
mosque and uttered his piercing cry she seemed to hear an
oath spoken in a sanctuary. She longed to stop him. This
one blasphemer began to destroy for her the mystic atmosphere
created by the multitudes of adorers, and at last she could no
longer endure his reiterated enmity.
She touched Androvsky's arm. He started and looked at her.
“That old man,” she whispered. “Can't you speak to
him 2 ”
Androvsky glanced at him for the first time.
“Speak to him, Madame? Why?”
“He he's horrible!”
She felt a sudden disinclination to tell Androvsky why the
old man was horrible to her.
“What do you wish me to say to him?”
“I thought perhaps you might be able to stop him from
doing that.”
Androvsky bent down and spoke to the old man in Arabic.
He shot out his arms and reiterated his trembling shriek. It
pierced the sound of prayer as lightning pierces cloud.
Domini got up quickly.
“I can’t bear it,” she said, still in a whisper. “It's as if he
were cursing God.”
Androvsky looked at the old man again, this time with pro-
found attention.
“Isn’t it?” she said. “Isn’t it as if he were cursing God
while the whole world worshipped And that one cry of hatred
seems louder than the praises of the whole world.”
“We can’t stop it.”
Something in his voice made her say abruptly:
“Do you wish to stop it?”
He did not answer. The old man struck at the mosque and
shrieked. Domini shuddered.
“I can’t stay here,” she said.
At this moment Mustapha appeared, followed by the guardian
of the mosque, who carried two pairs of tattered slippers.
“ Monsieur and Madame must take off their boots. Then I
will show the mosque.”
Domini put on the slippers hastily, and went into the mosque
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I55
without waiting to see whether Androvsky was following. And
the old man's furious cry pursued her through the doorway.
Within there was space and darkness. The darkness seemed
to be praying. Vistas of yellowish-white arches stretched away
in front, to right and left. On the floor, covered with matting,
quantities of shrouded figures knelt and swayed, stood up sud-
denly, knelt again, bowed down their foreheads. Preceded by
Mustapha and the guide, who walked on their stockinged feet,
Domini slowly threaded her way among them, following a wind-
ing path whose borders were praying men. To prevent her
slippers from falling off she had to shuffle along without lifting
her feet from the ground. With the regularity of a beating
pulse the old man's shriek, fainter now, came to her from with-
out. But presently, as she penetrated farther into the mosque,
it was swallowed up by the sound of prayer. No one seemed to
see her or to know that she was there. She brushed against the
white garments of worshippers, and when she did so she felt
as if she touched the hem of the garments of mystery, and she
held her habit together with her hands lest she should recall
even one of these hearts that were surely very far off.
Mustapha and the guardian stood still and looked round at
Domini. Their faces were solemn. The expression of greedy
anxiety had gone out of Mustapha's eyes. For the moment the
thought of money had been driven out of his mind by some
graver pre-occupation. She saw in the semi-darkness two wooden
doors set between pillars. They were painted green and red,
and fastened with clamps and bolts of hammered copper that
looked enormously old. Against them were nailed two pictures
of winged horses with human heads, and two more pictures
representing a fantastical town of Eastern houses and minarets
in gold on a red background. Balls of purple and yellow glass,
and crystal chandeliers, hung from the high ceiling above these
doors, with many ancient lamps; and two tattered and dusty
banners of pale pink and white silk, fringed with gold and
powdered with a gold pattern of flowers, were tied to the pillars
with thin cords of camel's hair.
“This is the tomb of Sidi-Zerzour,” whispered Mustapha.
“It is opened once a year.”
The guardian of the mosque fell on his knees before the tomb.
“That is Mecca.”
Mustapha pointed to the pictures of the city. Then he, too,
dropped down and pressed his forehead against the matting.
Domini glanced round for Androvsky. He was not there. She
I56 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
stood alone before the tomb of Zerzour, the only human being in
the great, dim building who was not worshipping. And she felt
a terrible isolation, as if she were excommunicated, as if she
dared not pray, for a moment almost as if the God to whom this
torrent of worship flowed were hostile to her alone.
Had her father ever felt such a sensation of unutterable
solitude?
It passed quickly, and, standing under the votive lamps before
the painted doors, she prayed too, silently. She shut her eyes
and imagined a church of her religion—the little church of Beni-
Mora. She tried to imagine the voice of prayer all about her,
the voice of the great Catholic Church. But that was not
possible. Even when she saw nothing, and turned her soul
inward upon itself, and strove to set this new world into which
she had come far off, she heard in the long murmur that filled
it a sound that surely rose from the sand, from the heart and the
spirit of the sand, from the heart and the spirit of desert places,
and that went up in the darkness of the mosque and floated
under the arches through the doorway, above the palms and the
flat-roofed houses, and that winged its fierce way, like a desert
eagle, towards the Sun. -
Mustapha's hand was on her arm. The guardian, too, had
risen from his knees and drawn from his robe and lit a candle.
She came to a tiny doorway, passed through it and began to
mount a winding stair. The sound of prayer mounted with her
from the mosque, and when she came out upon the platform en-
closed in the summit of the minaret she heard it still and it was
multiplied. For all the voices from the outside courts joined it,
and many voices from the roofs of the houses round about.
Men were praying there too, praying in the glare of the sun
upon their housetops. She saw them from the minaret, and she
saw the town that had sprung up round the tomb of the saint,
and all the palms of the oasis, and beyond them immeasurable
spaces of desert.
“Allah-Akbar! Allah-Akbar!”
She was above the eternal cry now. She had mounted like
a prayer towards the Sun, like a living, pulsing prayer, like the
soul of prayer. She gazed at the far-off desert and saw prayer
travelling, the soul of prayer travelling—whither? Where was
the end ? Where was the halting-place, with at last the pitched
tent, the camp fires, and the long, the long repose?
When she came down and reached the court she found the
THE VOICE OF PRAYER I57
old man still striking at the mosque and shrieking out his
trembling imprecation. And she found Androvsky still stand-
ing by him with fascinated eyes.
She had mounted with the voice of prayer into the sunshine,
surely a little way towards God.
Androvsky had remained in the dark shadow with a curse.
It was foolish, perhaps—a woman's vagrant fancy—but she
wished he had mounted with her. 8
B O O K III
THE GARDEN
CHAPTER X
T was noon in the desert.
The voice of the Mueddin died away on the minaret, and
the golden silence that comes out of the heart of the Sun
sank down once more softly over everything. Nature
seemed unnaturally still in the heat. The slight winds
were not at play, and the palms of Beni-Mora stood motionless
as palm trees in a dream. The day was like a dream, intense and
passionate, yet touched with something unearthly, something
almost spiritual. In the cloudless blue of the sky there seemed
a magical depth, regions of colour infinitely prolonged. In the
vision of the distances, where desert blent with sky, earth Surely
curving up to meet the downward curving heaven, the dimness
was like a voice whispering strange petitions. The ranges of
mountains slept in the burning sand, and the light slept in their
clefts like the languid in cool places. For there was a glorious
languor even in the light, as if the sun were faintly oppressed by
the marvel of his power. The clearness of the atmosphere in the
remote desert was not obscured, but was impregnated with the
mystery that is the wonder child of shadows. The far-off gold
that kept it seemed to contain a secret darkness. In the oasis
of Beni-Mora men, who had slowly roused themselves to pray,
sank down to sleep again in the warm twilight of shrouded
gardens or the warm night of windowless rooms.
In the garden of Count Anteoni Larbi's flute was silent.
“It is like noon in a mirage,” Domini said softly.
Count Anteoni nodded.
“I feel as if I were looking at myself a long way off,” she
added. “As if I saw myself as I saw the grey sea and the
islands on the way to Sidi-Zerzour. What magic there is here.
And I can’t get accustomed to it. Each day I wonder at it more
and find it more inexplicable. It almost frightens me.”
I58
THE GARDEN 1.59
“You could be frightened?”
“Not easily by outside things—at least I hope not.”
“But what then 2 ”
“I scarcely know. Sometimes I think all the outside things,
which do what are called the violent deeds in life, are tame, and
timid, and ridiculously impotent in comparison with the things
we can’t see, which do the deeds we can’t describe.”
“In the mirage of this land you begin to see the exterior life
as a mirage? You are learning, you are learning.”
There was a creeping sound of something that was almost
impish in his voice.
“Are you a secret agent?” Domini asked him.
“Of whom, Madame?”
She was silent. She seemed to be considering. He watched
her with curiosity in his bright eyes. .
“Of the desert,” she answered at length, quite seriously.
“A secret agent has always a definite object. What is
mine?”
“How can I know? How can I tell what the desert
desires?”
“Already you personify it!”
The network of wrinkles-showed itself in his brown face as he
smiled, surely with triumph. -
“I think I did that from the first,” she answered gravely.
“I know I did.” -
“And what sort of personage does the desert seem to
you?”
“You ask me a great many questions to-day.”
“Mirage questions, perhaps. Forgive me. Let us listen to
the question—or is it the demand 2–of the desert in this noon-
tide hour, the greatest hour of all the twenty-four in such a land
as this.”
They were silent again, watching the noon, listening to it,
feeling it, as they had been silent when the Mueddin's nasal voice
rose in the call to prayer.
Count Anteoni stood in the sunshine by the low white parapet
of the garden. Domini sat on a low chair in the shadow cast by
a great jamelon tree. At her feet was a bush of vivid scarlet
geraniums, against which her white linen dress looked curiously
blanched. There was a half-drowsy, yet imaginative light in her
gipsy eyes, and her motionless figure, her quiet hands, covered
with white gloves, lying loosely in her lap, looked attentive and
yet languid, as if some spell began to bind her but had not Com-
160 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
pleted its work of stilling all the pulses of life that throbbed
within her. And in truth there was a spell upon her, the spell
of the golden noon. By turns she gave herself to it consciously,
then consciously strove to deny herself to its subtle summons.
And each time she tried to withdraw it seemed to her that the
spell was a little stronger, her power a little weaker. Then her
lips curved in a smile that was neither joyous nor sad, that was
perhaps rather part perplexed and part expectant.
After a minute of this silence Count Anteoni drew back from
the sun and sat down in a chair beside Domini. He took out
his watch.
“Twenty-five minutes,” he said, “ and my guests will be
here.”
“Guests!” she said with an accent of surprise.
“I invited the priest to make an even number.”
( & Oh! } }
“You don’t dislike him 2 ”
“I like him. I respect him.”
“But I'm afraid you aren't pleased ?”
Domini looked him straight in the face.
“Why did you invite Father Roubier?” she said.
“Isn’t four better than three ?”
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“I am a little malicious. You have divined it, so why should
I not acknowledge it? I asked Father Roubier because I wished
to see the man of prayer with the man who fled from prayer.”
“Mussulman prayer,” she said quickly.
“Prayer,” he said.
His voice was peculiarly harsh at that moment. It grated
like an instrument on a rough surface. Domini knew that
secretly he was standing up for the Arab faith, that her last
words had seemed to strike against the religion of the people
whom he loved with an odd, concealed passion whose fire she
began to feel at moments as she grew to know him better.
It was plain from their manner to each other that their for-
mer slight acquaintance had moved towards something like a
pleasant friendship.
Domini looked as if she were no longer a wonder-stricken
sight-seer in this marvellous garden of the sun, but as if she had
become familiar with it. Yet her wonder was not gone. It was
only different. There was less sheer amazement, more affection
in it. As she had said, she had not become accustomed to the
magic of Africa. Its strangeness, its contrasts still startled and
THE GARDEN I6.
moved her. But she began to feel as if she belonged to Beni-
Mora, as if Beni-Mora would perhaps miss her a little if she
went away. A
Ten days had passed since the ride to Sidi-Zerzour—days
rather like a dream to Domini.
What she had sought in coming to Beni-Mora she was surely
finding. Her act was bringing forth its fruit. She had put a
gulf, in which rolled the sea, between the land of the old life and
the land in which at least the new life was to begin. The com-
pleteness of the severance had acted upon her like a blow that
does not stun, but wakens. The days went like a dream, but in
the dream there was the stir of birth. Her lassitude was perma-
nently gone. There had been no returning after the first hours
of excitement. The frost that had numbed her senses had
utterly melted away. Who could be frost-bound in this land of
fire? She had longed for peace and she was surely finding it,
but it was a peace without stagnation. Hope dwelt in it, and
expectancy, vague but persistent. As to forgetfulness, Some-
times she woke from the dream and was almost dazed, almost
ashamed to think how much she was forgetting, and how quickly.
Her European life and friends—some of them intimate and close
—were like a far-off cloud on the horizon, flying still farther be-
fore a steady wind that set from her to it. Soon it would dis-
appear, would be as if it had never been. Now and then, with a
sort of fierce obstinacy, she tried to stay the flight she had de-
sired, and desired still. She said to herself, “I will remember.
It's contemptible to forget like this. It's weak to be able to.”
Then she looked at the mountains or the desert, at two Arabs
playing the ladies' game under the shadow of a café wall, or at a
girl in dusty orange filling a goatskin pitcher at a well beneath
a palm tree, and she succumbed to the lulling influence, smiling
as they smile who hear the gentle ripple of the waters of Lethe.
She heard them perhaps most clearly when she wandered in
Count Anteoni's garden. He had made her free of it in their
first interview. She had ventured to take him at his word, know-
ing that if he repented she would divine it. He had made her
feel that he had not repented. Sometimes she did not see him as
she threaded the sandy alleys between the little rills, hearing the
distant song of Larbi's amorous flute, or sat in the dense shade of
the trees watching through a window-space of quivering golden
leaves the passing of the caravans along the desert tracks. Some-
times a little wreath of ascending smoke, curling above the purple
petals of bougainvilleas, or the red cloud of oleanders, told her of
I62 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
his presence in some retired thinking-place. Oftener he joined
her, with an easy politeness that did not conceal his oddity, but
clothed it in a pleasant garment, and they talked for a while or
stayed for a while in an agreeable silence that each felt to be
sympathetic. -
Domini thought of him as a new species of man—a hermit of
the world. He knew the world and did not hate it. His satire
was rarely quite ungentle. He did not strike her as a disap-
pointed man who fled to solitude in bitterness of spirit, but
rather as an imaginative man with an unusual feeling for ro-
mance, and perhaps a desire for freedom that the normal civi-
lised life restrained too much. He loved thought as many love
conversation, silence as some love music. Now and then he said
a sad or bitter thing. Sometimes she seemed to be near to some-
thing stern. Sometimes she felt as if there were a secret link
which connected him with the perfume-seller in his little dark-
ened chamber, with the legions who prayed about the tomb of
Sidi-Zerzour. But these moments were rare. As a rule he
was whimsical and kind, with the kindness of a good-hearted
man who was human even in his detachment from ordinary hu-
manity. His humour was a salt with plenty of savour. His
imagination was of a sort which interested and even charmed her.
She felt, too, that she interested him and that he was a man
not readily interested in ordinary human beings. He had seen
too many and judged too shrewdly and too swiftly to be easily
held for very long. She had no ambition to hold him, and had
never in her life consciously striven to attract or retain any man,
but she was woman enough to find his obvious pleasure in her
society agreeable. She thought that her genuine adoration of the
garden he had made, of the land in which it was set, had not a
little to do with the happy nature of their intercourse. For she
felt certain that beneath the light satire of his manner, his often
smiling airs of detachment and quiet independence, there was
Something that could seek almost with passion, that could cling
with resolution, that could even love with persistence. And she
fancied that he sought in the desert, that he clung to its mystery,
that he loved it and the garden he had created in it. Once she
had laughingly called him a desert spirit. He had smiled as if
with contentment.
They knew little of each other, yet they had become friends
in the garden which he never left.
One day she said to him:
“You love the desert. Why do you never go into it?”
THE GARDEN I63
“I prefer to watch it,” he replied. “When you are in the
desert it bewilders you.”
She remembered what she had felt during her first ride with
Androvsky.
~ “I believe you are afraid of it,” she said challengingly.
“Fear is sometimes the beginning of wisdom,” he answered.
“But you are without it, I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Every day I see you galloping away into the Sun.”
She thought there was a faint sound of warning—or was it of
rebuke—in his voice. It made her feel defiant.
“I think you lose a great deal by not galloping into the sun
too,” she said.
“But if I don’t ride?”
That made her think of Androvsky and his angry resolution.
It had not been the resolution of a day. Wearied and stiffened
as he had been by the expedition to Sidi-Zerzour, actually injured
by his fall—she knew from Batouch that he had been obliged to
call in the Beni-Mora doctor to bandage his shoulder—she had
been roused at dawn on the day following by his tread on the
verandah. She had lain still while it descended the staircase, but
then the sharp neighing of a horse had awakened an irresistible
curiosity in her. She had got up, wrapped herself in a fur coat
and slipped out on to the verandah. The Sun was not above the
horizon line of the desert, but the darkness of night was melting
into a luminous grey. The air was almost cold. The palms
looked spectral, even terrible, the empty and silent gardens
melancholy and dangerous. It was not an hour for activity, for
determination, but for reverie, for apprehension.
Below, a sleepy Arab boy, his hood drawn over his head, held
the chestnut horse by the bridle. Androvsky came out from the
arcade. He wore a cap pulled down to his eyebrows, which
changed his appearance, giving him, as seen from above, the look
of a groom or stable hand. He stood for a minute and stared at
the horse. Then he limped round to the left side and carefully
mounted, following out the directions Domini had given him the
previous day: to avoid touching the animal with his foot, to have
the rein in his fingers before leaving the ground, and to come
down in the saddle as lightly as possible. She noted that all her
hints were taken with infinite precaution. Once on the horse he
tried to sit up straight, but found the effort too great in his weary
and bruised condition. He leaned forward over the saddle peak,
and rode away in the luminous greyness towards the desert.
I64 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
The horse went quietly, as if affected by the mystery of the still
hour. Horse and rider disappeared. The Arab boy wandered
off in the direction of the village. But Domini remained looking
after Androvsky. She saw nothing but the grim palms and the
spectral atmosphere in which the desert lay. Yet she did not
move till a red spear was thrust up out of the east towards the
last waning star.
He had gone to learn his lesson in the desert.
Three days afterwards she rode with him again. She did not
let him know of her presence on the verandah, and he said
nothing of his departure in the dawn. He spoke very little and
seemed much occupied with his horse, and she saw that he was
more than determined—that he was apt at acquiring control of a
physical exercise new to him. His great strength stood him in
good stead. Only a man hard in the body could have so rapidly
recovered from the effects of that first day of defeat and struggle.
His absolute reticence about his efforts and the iron will that
prompted them pleased Domini. She found them worthy of
2 II).211.
She rode with him on three occasions, twice in the oasis
through the brown villages, once out into the desert on the
caravan road that Batouch had told her led at last to Tom-
bouctou. They did not travel far along it, but Domini knew at
once that this route held more fascination for her than the route
to Sidi-Zerzour. There was far more sand in this region of the
desert. The little humps crowned with the scrub the camels
feed on were fewer, so that the flatness of the ground was more
definite. Here and there large dunes of golden-coloured sand
rose, some straight as city walls, some curved like seats in an
amphitheatre, others indented, crenellated like battlements, un-
dulating in beast-like shapes. The distant panorama of desert
was unbroken by any visible oasis and powerfully suggested
Eternity to Domini. - !
“When I go out into the desert for my long journey I shall
go by this road,” she said to Androvsky.
“You are going on a journey?” he said, looking at her as if
startled.
“Some day.”
“All alone?”
“I suppose I must take a caravan, two or three Arabs, some
horses, a tent or two. It's easy to manage. Batouch will
arrange it for me.” -
Androvsky still looked startled, and half angry, she thought,
THE GARDEN I65
They had pulled up their horses among the sand dunes. It was
near sunset, and the breath of evening was in the air, making its
coolness even more ethereal, more thinly pure than in the day-
time. The atmosphere was so clear that when they glanced
back they could see the flag fluttering upon the white tower of
the great hotel of Beni-Mora, many kilometres away among the
palms; so still that they could hear the bark of a Kabyle dog far
off near a nomad’s tent pitched in the green land by the water-
springs of old Beni-Mora. When they looked in front of them
they seemed to see thousands of leagues of flatness, stretching on
and on till the pale yellowish brown of it grew darker, merged
into a strange blueness, like the blue of a hot mist above a
southern lake, then into violet, then into—the thing they could
not see, the summoning thing whose voice Domini's imagination
heard, like a remote and thrilling echo, whenever she was in
the desert.
“I did not know you were going on a journey, Madame,”
Androvsky said.
“Don’t you remember 2 " she rejoined laughingly, “that I
told you on the tower I thought peace must dwell out there.
Well, some day I shall set out to find it.”
“That seems a long time ago, Madame,” he muttered.
Sometimes, when speaking to her, he dropped his voice till
she could scarcely hear him, and sounded like a man commun-
ing with himself.
A red light from the sinking sun fell upon the dunes. As
they rode back over them their horses seemed to be wading
through a silent sea of blood. The sky in the west looked like
an enormous conflagration, in which tortured things were
struggling and lifting twisted arms.
Domini’s acquaintance with Androvsky had not progressed
as easily and pleasantly as her intercourse with Count Anteoni.
She recognised that he was what is called a “ difficult man.”
Now and then, as if under the prompting influence of some
secret and violent emotion, he spoke with apparent naturalness,
spoke perhaps out of his heart. Each time he did so she noticed
that there was something of either doubt or amazement in what
he said. She gathered that he was slow to rely, quick to mis-
trust. She gathered, too, that very many things surprised him,
and felt sure that he hid nearly all of them from her, and would
—had not his own will sometimes betrayed him—have hidden
all. His reserve was as intense as everything about him. There
was a fierceness in it that revealed its existence. He always
I66 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
conveyed to her a feeling of strength, physical and mental. Yet
he always conveyed, too, a feeling of uneasiness. To a woman
of Domini's temperament uneasiness usually implies a public or
secret weakness. In Androvsky's she seemed to be aware of pas-
sion, as if it were one to dash obstacles aside, to break through
doors of iron, to rush out into the open. And then—what then :
To tremble at the world before him? At what he had done?
She did not know. But she did know that even in his uneasi-
ness there seemed to be fibre, muscle, sinew, nerve—all which
goes to make strength, Swiftness. -
Speech was singularly difficult to him. Silence seemed to be
natural, not irksome. After a few words he fell into it and re-
mained in it. And he was less self-conscious in silence than in
speech. He seemed, she fancied, to feel himself safer, more a
man when he was not speaking. To him the use of words was
surely like a yielding.
He had a peculiar faculty of making his presence felt when
he was silent, as if directly he ceased from speaking the flame in
him was fanned and leaped up at the outside world beyond its
bars.
She did not know whether he was a gentleman or not.
If anyone had asked her, before she came to Beni-Mora,
whether it would be possible for her to take four solitary rides
with a man, to meet him—if only for a few minutes—every day
of ten days, to sit opposite to him, and not far from him, at meals
during the same space of time, and to be unable to say to herself
whether he was or was not a gentleman by birth and education—
feeling set aside—she would have answered without hesitation
that it would be utterly impossible. Yet so it was. She could
not decide. She could not place him. She could not imagine
what his parentage, what his youth, his manhood had been. She
could not fancy him in any environment—save that golden light,
that blue radiance, in which she had first consciously and fully
met him face to face. She could not hear him in converse with
any set of men or women, or invent, in her mind, what he might
be likely to say to them. She could not conceive him bound by
any ties of home, or family, mother, sister, wife, child. When
she looked at him, thought about him, he presented himself to
her alone, like a thing in the air.
Yet he was more male than other men, breathed humanity—
of some kind—as fire breathes heat.
The child there was in him almost confused her, made her
wonder whether long contact with the world had tarnished her
THE GARDEN 167
own original simplicity. But she only saw the child in him
now and then, and she fancied that it, too, he was anxious to
conceal.
This man had certainly a power to rouse feeling in others.
She knew it by her own experience. By turns he had made her
feel motherly, protecting, curious, constrained, passionate,
energetic, timid—yes, almost timid and shy. No other human
being had ever, even at moments, thus got the better of her
natural audacity, lack of Self-consciousness, and inherent, almost
boyish, boldness. Nor was she aware what it was in him which
sometimes made her uncertain of herself. ,
She wondered. But he often woke up wonder in her.
Despite their rides, their moments of intercourse in the hotel,
on the verandah, she scarcely felt more intimate with him than
she had at first. Sometimes indeed she thought that she felt
less so, that the moment when the train ran out of the tunnel
into the blue country was the moment in which they had been
nearest to each other since they trod the verges of each other's
lives.
She had never definitely said to herself: “Do I like him or
dislike him?”
Now, as she sat with Count Anteoni watching the noon, the
half-drowsy, half-imaginative expression had gone out of her
face. She looked rather rigid, rather formidable.
Androvsky and Count Anteoni had never met. The Count
had seen Androvsky in the distance from his garden more than
once, but Androvsky had not seen him. The meeting that was
about to take place was due to Domini. She had spoken to
Androvsky on several occasions of the romantic beauty of this
desert garden. -
“It is like a garden of the Arabian Nights,” she had said.
He did not look enlightened, and she was moved to ask him
abruptly whether he had ever read the famous book. He had
not. A doubt came to her whether he had ever even heard of it.
She mentioned the fact of Count Anteoni's having made the
garden, and spoke of him, sketching lightly his whimsicality, his
affection for the Arabs, his love of solitude, and of African life.
She also mentioned that he was by birth a Roman.
“But Scarcely of the black world I should imagine,” she
added.
Androvsky said nothing.
“You should go and see the garden,” she continued. “Count
Anteoni allows visitors to explore it.”
I68 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“I am sure it must be very beautiful, Madame,” he replied,
rather coldly, she thought.
He did not say that he would go.
As the garden won upon her, as its enchanted mystery, the
airy wonder of its shadowy places, the glory of its trembling
golden vistas, the restfulness of its green defiles, the strange,
almost unearthly peace that reigned within it embalmed her
spirit, as she learned not only to marvel at it, to be entranced by
it, but to feel at home in it and love it, she was conscious of a
persistent desire that Androvsky should know it too.
Perhaps his dogged determination about the riding had
touched her more than she was aware. She often saw before her
the bent figure, that looked tired, riding alone into the luminous
grey; starting thus early that his act, humble and determined,
might not be known by her. He did not know that she had seen
him, not only on that morning, but on many subsequent morn-
ings, setting forth to study the new art in the solitude of the still
hours. But the fact that she had seen, had watched till horse
and rider vanished beyond the palms, had understood why,
perhaps moved her to this permanent wish that he could share
her pleasure in the garden, know it as she did.
She did not argue with herself about the matter. She only
knew that she wished, that presently she meant Androvsky to
pass through the white gate and be met on the sand by Smain
with his rose. -
One day Count Anteoni had asked her whether she had made
acquaintance with the man who had fled from prayer.
“Yes,” she said. “You know it.”
{ { How P 5 j
“We have ridden to Sidi-Zerzour.”
“I am not always by the wall.”
“No, but I think you were that day.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I am sure you were.”
‘He did not either acknowledge or deny it.
“He has never been to see my garden,” he said.
( { No.”
“He ought to come.”
“I have told him so.”
“Ah 2 Is he coming?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Persuade him to. I have a pride in my garden—oh, you
have no idea what a pride! Any neglect of it, any indifference
THE GARDEN I69
about it rasps me, plays upon the raw nerve each one of us
possesses.” -
He spoke Smilingly. She did not know what he was feeling,
whether the remote thinker or the imp within him was at work
or play.
“I doubt if he is a man to be easily persuaded,” she said.
“Perhaps not—persuade him.”
After a moment Domini said:
“I wonder whether you recognise that there are obstacles
which the human will can’t negotiate?”
“I could scarcely live where I do without recognising that
the grains of sand are often driven by the wind. But when there
is no wind ’’
“They lie still?”
“And are the desert. I want to have a strange experience.”
“What?”
“A féte in my garden.”
“A fantasia?”
“Something far more banal. A lunch party, a déjeuner.
Will you honour me?”
“By breakfasting with you? Yes, of course. Thank
you.” -
“And will you bring—the second sun worshipper?”
She looked into the Count's small, shining eyes.
“Monsieur Androvsky 2 ”
“If that is his name. I can send him an invitation, of
course. But that's rather formal, and I don't think he is
formal.”
“On what day do you ask us?”
“Any day—Friday.”
“And why do you ask us?”
“I wish to overcome this indifference to my garden. It
hurts me, not only in my pride, but in my affections.”
The whole thing had been like a sort of serious game.
Domini had not said that she would convey the odd invitation;
but when she was alone, and thought of the way in which Count
Anteoni had said “ Persuade him,” she knew she would, and she
meant Androvsky to accept it. This was an opportunity of
Seeing him in company with another man, a man of the world,
who had read, travelled, thought, and doubtless lived.
She asked him that evening, and saw the red, that came as it
comes in a boy's face, mount to his forehead.
“Everybody who comes to Beni-Mora comes to see the
170 THE GARDEN OF • ALLAH
garden,” she said before he could reply. “Count Anteoni is
half angry with you for being an exception.”
“But—but, Madame, how can Monsieur the Count know
that I am here? I have not seen him.”
“He knows there is a second traveller, and he's a hospitable
man. Monsieur Androvsky, I want you to come; I want you to
see the garden.” -
“It is very kind of you, Madame.”
The reluctance in his voice was extreme. Yet he did not like
to say no. While he hesitated, Domini continued:
“You remember when I asked you to ride?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“That was new to you. Well, it has given you pleasure,
hasn’t it?” -
“Yes, Madame.”
“So will the garden. I want to put another pleasure into
your life.” -
She had begun to speak with the light persuasiveness of a
woman of the world wishing to overcome a man's diffidence or
obstinacy, but while she said the words she felt a sudden earnest-
ness rush over her. It went into the voice, and surely smote
upon him like a gust of the hot wind that sometimes blows out
of the desert.
“I shall come, Madame,” he said quickly. -
“Friday. I may be in the garden in the morning. I'll meet
you at the gate at half-past twelve.” -
“Friday?” he said.
Already he seemed to be wavering in his acceptance. Domini
did not stay with him any longer.
“I’m glad,” she said in a finishing tone.
And she went away.
Now Count Anteoni told her that he had invited the priest.
She felt vexed, and her face showed that she did. A cloud came
down and immediately she looked changed and disquieting. Yet
she liked the priest. As she sat in silence her vexation became
more profound. She felt certain that if Androvsky had known
the priest was coming he would not have accepted the invitation.
She wished him to come, yet she wished he had known. He
might think that she had known the fact and had concealed it.
She did not suppose for a moment that he disliked Father
Roubier personally, but he certainly avoided him. He bowed to
him in the coffee-room of the hotel, but never spoke to him.
Batouch had told her about the episode with Bous-Bous. And
THE GARDEN 171
she had seen Bous-Bous endeavour to renew the intimacy and
repulsed with determination. Androvsky must dislike the priest-
hood. He might fancy that she, a believing Catholic, had—a
number of disagreeable suppositions ran through her mind.
She had always been inclined to hate the propagandist since the
tragedy in her family. It was a pity Count Anteoni had not in-
dulged his imp in a different fashion. The beauty of the noon
seemed spoiled.
“Forgive my malice,” Count Anteoni said. “It was really a
thing of thistledown. Can it be going to do harm? I can
scarcely think so.”
“No, no.”
She roused herself, with the instinct of a woman who has lived
much in the world, to conceal the vexation that, visible, would
cause a depression to stand in the natural place of cheerfulness.
“The desert is making me abominably natural,” she thought.
At this moment the black figure of Father Roubier came out
of the shadows of the trees with Bous-Bous trotting importantly
beside it.
“Ah, Father,” said Count Anteoni, going to meet him, while
Domini got up from her chair, “it is good of you to come out in
the sun to eat fish with such a bad parishioner as I am. Your
little companion is welcome.”
He patted Bous-Bous, who took little notice of him.
“You know Miss Enfilden, I think?” continued the Count.
“Father Roubier and I meet every day,” said Domini, smiling.
“Mademoiselle has been good enough to take a kind interest
in the humble work of the Church in Beni-Mora,” said the priest
with the serious simplicity characteristic of him.
He was a sincere man, utterly without pretension, and, as such
men often are, quietly at home with anybody of whatever class
or creed.
“I must go to the garden gate,” Domini said. “Will you
excuse me for a moment?”
“To meet Monsieur Androvsky? Let us accompany you if
Father Roubier } }
“Please don’t trouble. I won't be a minute.”
Something in her voice made Count Anteoni at once acquiesce,
defying his courteous instinct.
“We will wait for you here,” he said.
There was a whimsical plea for forgiveness in his eyes.
Domini's did not reject it; they did not answer it. She walked
away, and the two men looked after her tall figure with admira-
172 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
tion. As she went along the sand paths between the little
streams, and came into the deep shade, her vexation seemed to
grow darker like the garden ways. For a moment she thought
she understood the sensations that must surely sometimes beset a
treacherous woman. Yet she was incapable of treachery. Smain
was standing dreamily on the great sweep of sand before the
villa. She and he were old friends now, and every day he
calmly gave her a flower when she came into the garden.
“What time is it, Smain P’’
“Nearly half-past twelve, Madame.”
“Will you open the door and see if anyone is coming?”
He went towards the great door, and Domini sat down on a
bench under the evergreen roof to wait. She had seldom felt
more discomposed, and began to reason with herself almost
angrily. Even if the presence of the priest was unpleasant to
Androvsky, why should she mind? Antagonism to the priest-
hood was certainly not a mental condition to be fostered, but a
prejudice to be broken down. But she had wished—she still
wished with ardour—that Androvsky's first visit to the garden
should be a happy one, should pass off delightfully. She had a
dawning instinct to make things smooth for him. Surely they
had been rough in the past, rougher even than for herself. And
she wondered for an instant whether he had come to Beni-Mora,
as she had come, vaguely Seeking for a happiness scarcely
embodied in a definite thought.
“There is a gentleman coming, Madame.”
It was the soft voice of Smain from the gate. In a moment
Androvsky stood before it. Domini saw him framed in the white
wood, with a brilliant blue behind him and a narrow glimpse of
the watercourse. He was standing still and hesitating.
“ Monsieur Androvsky | " she called.
He started, looked across the sand, and stepped into the garden
with a sort of reluctant caution that pained her, she scarcely
knew why. She got up and went towards him, and they met
full in the sunshine.
“I came to be your cicerone.”
“Thank you, Madame.”
There was the click of wood striking against wood as Smain
closed the gate. Androvsky turned quickly and looked behind
him. His demeanour was that of a man whose nerves were tor-
menting him. Domini began to dread telling him of the pres-
ence of the priest, and, characteristically, did without hesitation
what she feared to do.
THE GARDEN I 73
“This is the way,” she said.
Then, as they turned into the shadow of the trees and began
to walk between the rills of water, she added abruptly:
“Father Roubier is here already, so our party is com-
plete.”
Androvsky stood still.
“Father Roubier | You did not tell me he was coming.”
“I did not know it till five minutes ago.”
She stood still too, and looked at him. There was a flaming
of distrust in his eyes, his lips were compressed, and his whole
body betokened hostility.
“I did not understand. I thought Señor Anteoni would be
alone here.”
“Father Roubier is a pleasant companion, sincere and simple.
Everyone likes him.”
“No doubt, Madame. But—the fact is I’—he hesitated,
then added, almost with violence—“I do not care for priests.”
“I am sorry. Still, for once—for an hour—you can
surely } }
She did not finish the sentence. While she was speaking she
felt the banality of such phrases spoken to such a man, and
suddenly changed tone and manner.
“Monsieur Androvsky,” she said, laying one hand on his arm,
“I knew you would not like Father Roubier's being here. If I
had known he was coming I should have told you in order that
you might have kept away if you wished to. But now that you
are here—now that Smain has let you in and the Count and
Father Roubier must know of it, I am sure you will stay and
govern your dislike. You intend to turn back. I see that.
Well, I ask you to stay.”
She was not thinking of herself, but of him. Instinct told
her to teach him the way to conceal his aversion. Retreat would
proclaim it.
“For yourself I ask you,” she added. “If you go, you tell
them what you have told me. You don't wish to do that.”
They looked at each other. Then, without a word, he walked
on again. As she kept beside him she felt as if in that moment
their acquaintanceship had sprung forward, like a thing that had
been forcibly restrained and that was now sharply released.
They did not speak again till they saw, at the end of an alley, the
Count and the priest standing together beneath the jamelon tree.
Bous-Bous ran forward barking, and Domini was conscious that
Androvsky braced himself up, like a fighter stepping into the
I 74 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
arena. Her keen sensitiveness of mind and body was so infected
by his secret impetuosity of feeling that it seemed to her as if his
encounter with the two men framed in the sunlight were a great
event which might be fraught with strange consequences. She
almost held her breath as she and Androvsky came down the path
and the fierce sunrays reached out to light up their faces.
Count Anteoni stepped forward to greet them.
“Monsieur Androvsky—Count Anteoni,” she said.
The hands of the two men met. She saw that Androvsky's
was lifted reluctantly.
“Welcome to my garden,” Count Anteoni said with his
invariable easy courtesy. “Every traveller has to pay his tribute
to my domain. I dare to exact that as the oldest European
inhabitant of Beni-Mora.”
Androvsky said nothing. His eyes were on the priest. The
Count noticed it, and added:
“Do you know Father Roubier?”
“We have often seen each other in the hotel,” Father Roubier
said with his usual straightforward simplicity.
He held out his hand, but Androvsky bowed hastily and
awkwardly and did not seem to see it. Domini glanced at Count
Anteoni, and surprised a piercing expression in his bright eyes.
It died away at once, and he said:
“Let us go to the salle-à-manger. Déjeuner will be ready,
Miss Enfilden.”
She joined him, concealing her reluctance to leave Androvsky
with the priest, and walked beside him down the path, preceded
by Bous-Bous.
“Is my föte going to be a failure?” he murmured.
She did not reply. Her heart was full of vexation, almost of
bitterness. She felt angry with Count Anteoni, with Androvsky,
with herself. She almost felt angry with poor Father Roubier.
“Forgive mel do forgive me!” the Count whispered. “I
meant no harm.”
She forced herself to smile, but the silence behind them,
where the two men were following, oppressed her. If only
Androvsky would speak! He had not said one word since
they were all together. Suddenly she turned her head and
said:
“Did you ever see such palms, Monsieur Androvsky? Aren't
they magnificent?”
Her voice was challenging, imperative. It commanded him
to rouse himself, to speak, as a touch of the lash commands a
THE GARDEN I75
horse to quicken his pace. Androvsky raised his head, which
had been sunk on his breast as he walked.
“Palmsl " he said confusedly. “Yes, they are wonderful.”
“You care for trees?” asked the Count, following Domini’s
lead and speaking with a definite intention to force a conver-
sation.
“Yes, Monsieur, certainly.”
“I have some wonderful fellows here. After déjeuner you
must let me show them to you. I spent years in collecting my
children and teaching them to live rightly in the desert.”
Very naturally, while he spoke, he had joined Androvsky, and
now walked on with him, pointing out the different varieties of
trees. Domini was conscious of a sense of relief and of a strong
feeling of gratitude to their host. Following upon the gratitude
came a less pleasant consciousness of Androvsky's lack of good
breeding. He was certainly not a man of the world, whatever
he might be. To-day, perhaps absurdly, she felt responsible for
him, and as if he owed it to her to bear himself bravely and
govern his dislikes if they clashed with the feelings of his com-
panions. She longed hotly for him to make a good impression,
and, when her eyes met Father Roubier's, was almost moved to
ask his pardon for Androvsky's rudeness. But the Father seemed
unconscious of it, and began to speak about the splendour of the
African vegetation. t
“Does not its luxuriance surprise you after England 2 ” he
said.
“No,” she replied bluntly. “Ever since I have been in
Africa I have felt that I was in a land of passionate growth.”
“But—the desert?” he replied with a gesture towards the
long flats of the Sahara, which were still visible between the
treCS.
“I should find it there too,” she answered. “There, perhaps,
most of all.”
He looked at her with a gentle wonder. She did not explain
that she was no longer thinking of growth in Nature.
The salle-à-manger stood at the end of a broad avenue of
palms not far from the villa. Two Arab servants were waiting
on each side of the white step that led into an ante-room filled
with divans and coffee-tables. Beyond was a lofty apartment
with an arched roof, in the centre of which was an oval table
laid for breakfast, and decorated with masses of trumpet-shaped
scarlet flowers in silver vases. Behind each of the four high-
backed chairs stood an Arab motionless as a statue. Evidently
176 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
the Count's féte was to be attended by a good deal of ceremony.
Domini felt sorry, though not for herself. She had been ac-
customed to ceremony all her life, and noticed it, as a rule, almost
as little as the air she breathed. But she feared that to
Androvsky it would be novel and unpleasant. As they came
into the shady room she saw him glance swiftly at the walls
covered with dark Persian hangings, at the servants in their
embroidered jackets, wide trousers, and snow-white turbans, at
the vivid flowers on the table, then at the tall windows, over
which flexible outside blinds, dull green in colour, were drawn;
and it seemed to her that he was feeling like a trapped animal,
full of a fury of uneasiness. Father Roubier's unconscious
serenity in the midst of a luxury to which he was quite unac-
customed emphasised Androvsky's secret agitation, which was no
secret to Domini, and which she knew must be obvious to Count
Anteoni. She began to wish ardently that she had let Androvsky
follow his impulse to go when he heard of Father Roubier's
presence.
They sat down. She was on the Count's right hand, with
Androvsky opposite to her and Father Roubier on her left. As
they took their places she and the Father said a silent grace
and made the sign of the Cross, and when she glanced up after
doing so she saw Androvsky's hand lifted to his forehead. For
a moment she fancied that he had joined in the tiny prayer,
and was about to make the Sacred sign, but as she looked at him
his hand fell heavily to the table. The glasses by his plate
jingled.
“I only remembered this morning that this is a jour maigre,”
said Count Anteoni as they unfolded their napkins. “I am
afraid, Father Roubier, you will not be able to do full justice to
my chef, Hamdane, although he has thought of you and done
his best for you. But I hope Miss Enfilden and 3 y
“I keep Friday,” Domini interrupted quietly.
“Yes? Poor Hamdane ! ”
He looked in grave despair, but she knew that he was really
pleased that she kept the fast day.
“Anyhow,” he continued, “I hope that you, Monsieur
Androvsky, will be able to join me in testing Hamdane's powers
to the full. Or are you too } }
He did not continue, for Androvsky at once said, in a loud
and firm voice:
“I keep no fast days.”
The words Sounded like a defiance flung at the two Catholics,
THE GARDEN 177
and for a moment Domini thought that Father Roubier was
going to treat them as a challenge, for he lifted his head and
there was a flash of sudden fire in his eyes. But he only said,
turning to the Count:
“I think Mademoiselle and I shall find our little Ramadan a
very easy business. I once breakfasted with you on a Friday—
two years ago it was, I think—and I have not forgotten the
banquet you gave me.”
Domini felt as if the priest had snubbed Androvsky, as a
saint might snub, without knowing that he did so. She was
angry with Androvsky, and yet she was full of pity for him.
Why could he not meet courtesy with graciousness? There was
something almost inhuman in his demeanour. To-day he had
returned to his worst self, to the man who had twice treated her
with brutal rudeness.
“Do the Arabs really keep Ramadan strictly?” she asked,
looking away from Androvsky.
“Very,” said Father Roubier. “Although, of course, I am
not in sympathy with their religion, I have often been moved by
their adherence to its rules. There is something very grand in
the human heart deliberately taking upon itself the yoke of
discipline.”
“Islām—the very word means the surrender of the human
will to the will of God,” said Count Anteoni. “That word and
its meaning lie like the shadow of a commanding hand on the
Soul of every Arab, even of the absinthe-drinking renegades one
sees here and there who have caught the vices of their
conquerors. In the greatest scoundrel that the Prophet's robe
covers there is an abiding and acute sense of necessary surrender.
The Arabs, at any rate, do not buzz against their Creator, like
midges raging at the sun in whose beams they are dancing.”
“No,” assented the priest. “At least in that respect they
are Superior to many who call themselves Christians. Their
pride is immense, but it never makes itself ridiculous.”
“You mean by trying to defy the Divine Will?” said
Domini. *
“Exactly, Mademoiselle.”
She thought of her dead father.
The servants stole round the table, handing various dishes
noiselessly. One of them, at this moment, poured red wine into
Androvsky's glass. He uttered a low exclamation that sounded
like the beginning of a protest hastily checked.
“You prefer white wine?” said Count Anteoni.
178 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“No, thank you, Monsieur.”
He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.
“Are you a judge of wine?” added the Count. “That is
made from my own grapes. I have vineyards near Tunis.”
“It is excellent,” said Androvsky.
Domini noticed that he spoke in a louder voice than usual,
as if he were making a determined effort to throw off the uneasi-
ness that evidently oppressed him. He ate heartily, choosing
almost ostentatiously dishes in which there was meat. But
everything that he did, even this eating of meat, gave her the
impression that he was—subtly, how she did not know—defying
not only the priest, but himself. Now and then she glanced
across at him, and when she did so he was always looking away
from her. After praising the wine he had relapsed into silence,
and Count Anteoni—she thought moved by a very delicate sense
of tact—did not directly address him again just then, but re-
sumed the interrupted conversation about the Arabs, first ex-
plaining that the servants understood no French. He discussed
them with a minute knowledge that evidently sprang from a
very real affection, and presently she could not help alluding to
this.
“I think you love the Arabs far more than any Europeans,”
she said.
He fixed his bright eyes upon her, and she thought that just
then they looked brighter than ever before.
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“Do you know the sound that comes into the voice of a lover
of children when it speaks of a child 2 ”
“Ah!—the note of a deep indulgence?”
“I hear it in yours whencver you speak of the Arabs.”
She spoke half jestingly. For a moment he did not reply.
Then he said to the pricst:
“You have lived long in Africa, Father. Have not you some-
thing of the same feeling towards these children of the sun ?”
“Yes, and I have noticed it in our dead Cardinal.”
“Cardinal Lavigerie.”
Androvsky bent over his plate. He seemed suddenly to
withdraw his mind forcibly from this conversation in which he
was taking no active part, as if he refused even to listen to it.
“He is your hero, I know,” the Count said sympathetically.
“He did a great deal for me.”
“And for Africa. And he was wise.”
“You mean in some special way?” Domini said.
THE GARDEN I 79
“Yes. He looked deep enough into the dark Souls of the
desert men to find out that his success with them must come
chiefly through his goodness to their dark bodies. You aren't
shocked, Father?”
“No, no. There is truth in that.”
But the priest assented rather sadly.
“Mahomet thought too much of the body,” he added.
Domini saw the Count compress his lips. Then he turned to
Androvsky and said:
“Do you think so, Monsieur?” -
It was a definite, a resolute attempt to draw his guest into the
conversation. Androvsky could not ignore it. He looked up
reluctantly from his plate. His eyes met Domini's, but immedi-
ately travelled away from them.
“I doubt ” he said.
He paused, laid his hands on the table, clasping its edge, and
continued firmly, even with a sort of hard violence:
“I doubt if most good men, or men who want to be good,
think enough about the body, consider it enough. I have thought
that. I think it still.”
As he finished he stared at the priest, almost menacingly.
Then, as if moved by an after-thought, he added:
“As to Mahomet, I know very little about him. But perhaps
he obtained his great influence by recognising that the bodies
of men are of great importance, of tremendous—tremendous
importance.”
Domini saw that the interest of Count Anteoni in his guest
was suddenly and vitally aroused by what he had just said, per-
haps even more by his peculiar way of saying it, as if it were
forced from him by some secret, irresistible compulsion. And the
Count's interest seemed to take hands with her interest, which
had had a much longer existence. Father Roubier, however,
broke in with a slightly cold :
“It is a very dangerous thing, I think, to dwell upon the
importance of the perishable. One runs the risk of detracting
from the much greater importance of the imperishable.”
“Yet it's the starved wolves that devour the villages,” said
Androvsky. x
For the first time Domini felt his Russian origin. There was
a silence. Father Roubier looked straight before him, but
Count Anteoni's eyes were fixed piercingly upon Androvsky. At
last he said: -
“ May I ask, Monsieur, if you are a Russian P’’
I8C THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“My father was. But I have never set foot in Russia.”
“The soul that I find in the art, music, literature of your
country is, to me, the most interesting soul in Europe,” the
Count said with a ring of deep earnestness in his grating voice.
Spoken as he spoke it, no compliment could have been more
gracious, even moving. But Androvsky only replied abruptly:
“I’m afraid I know nothing of all that.”
Domini felt hot with a sort of shame, as at a close friend's
public display of ignorance. She began to speak to the Count
of Russian music, books, with an enthusiasm that was sincere.
For she, too, had found in the soul from the Steppes a meaning
and a magic that had taken her soul prisoner. And suddenly,
while she talked, she thought of the Desert as the burning brother
of the frigid Steppes. Was it the wonder of the eternal flats that
had spoken to her inmost heart sometimes in London concert-
rooms, in her room at night when she read, forgetting time,
which spoke to her now more fiercely under the palms of Africa?
At the thought something mystic seemed to stand in her en-
thusiasm. The mystery of space floated about her. But she
did not express her thought. Count Anteoni expressed it for her.
“The Steppes and the Desert are akin, you know,” he said.
“Despite the opposition of frost and fire.”
“Just what I was thinking!” she exclaimed. “That must be
wh 5 y
She stopped short.
“Yes?” said the Count.
Both Father Roubier and Androvsky looked at her with
expectancy. But she did not continue her sentence, and her
failure to do so was covered, or at the least excused, by a
diversion that secretly she blessed. At this moment, from the
ante-room, there came a sound of African music, both soft and
barbarous. First there was only one reiterated liquid note, clear
and glassy, a note that suggested night in a remote place. Then,
beneath it, as foundation to it, rose a rustling sound as of a forest
of reeds through which a breeze went rhythmically. Into this
stole the broken song of a thin instrument with a timbre rustic
and antique as the timbre of the oboe, but fainter, frailer. A
twang of softly-plucked strings supported its wild and pathetic
utterance, and presently the almost stifled throb of a little tom-
tom that must have been placed at a distance. It was like a
beating heart.
The Count and his guests sat listening in silence. Domini
began to feel curiously expectant, yet she did not recognise the
THE GARDEN I8 I
odd melody. Her sensation was that some other music must be
coming which she had heard before, which had moved her deeply
at Some time in her life. She glanced at the Count and found
him looking at her with a whimsical expression, as if he were a
kind conspirator whose plot would soon be known.
“What is it?” she asked in a low voice.
He bent towards her.
“Wait!” he whispered. “Listen!”
She saw Androvsky frown. His face was distorted by an
expression of pain, and she wondered if he, like some Europeans,
found the barbarity of the desert music ugly and even distressing
to the nerves. While she wondered a voice began to sing, always
accompanied by the four instruments. It was a contralto voice,
but sounded like a youth's.
“What is that song?” she asked under her breath. “Surely
I must have heard it!”
“You don’t know?”
“Wait '' - ~
She searched her heart. It seemed to her that she knew the
song. At some period of her life she had certainly been deeply
moved by it—but when P where? The voice died away, and
was succeeded by a soft chorus singing monotonously:
“Wurra–Wurra.”
Then it rose once more in a dreamy and reticent refrain, like
the voice of a soul communing with itself in the desert, above the
instruments and the murmuring chorus.
“You remember?” whispered the Count.
She moved her head in assent but did not speak. She could
not speak. It was the song the Arab had sung as he turned into
the shadow of the palm trees, the song of the freed negroes of
Touggourt:
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
The priest leaned back in his chair. His dark eyes were cast
down, and his thin, sun-browned hands were folded together in
a way that suggested prayer. Did this desert song of the black
men, children of God like him as their song affirmed, stir his
soul to some grave petition that embraced the wants of all
humanity?
Androvsky was sitting quite still. He was also looking down
182 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
and the lids covered his eyes. An expression of pain still
lingered on his face, but it was less cruel, no longer tortured,
but melancholy. And Domini, as she listened, recalled the
strange cry that had risen within her as the Arab disappeared
in the Sunshine, the cry of the soul in life surrounded by
mysteries, by the hands, the footfalls, the voices of hidden
things—“What is going to happen to me here?” But that cry
had risen in her, found words in her, only when confronted by
the desert. Before it had been perhaps hidden in the womb.
Only then was it born. And now the days had passed and the
nights, and the Song brought with it the cry once more, the cry
and Suddenly something else, another voice that, very far away,
seemed to be making answer to it. That answer she could not
hear. The words of it were hidden in the womb as, once, the
words of her intense question. Only she felt that an answer
had been made. The future knew, and had begun to try to tell
her. She was on the very edge of knowledge while she listened,
but she could not step into the marvellous land.
Presently Count Anteoni spoke to the priest.
“You have heard this song, no doubt, Father?”
Father Roubier shook his head.
“I don’t think so, but I can never remember the Arab
music.”
“Perhaps you dislike it?”
“No, no. It is ugly in a way, but there seems a great deal
of meaning in it. In this song especially there is—one might
almost call it beauty.”
“Wonderful beauty,” Domini said in a low voice, still listen-
ing to the song. -
“The words are beautiful,” said the Count, this time address-
ing himself to Androvsky. “I don’t know them all, but they
begin like this:
“‘The gazelle dies in the water,
The fish dies in the air,
And I die in the dunes of the desert sand
For my love that is deep and sad.”
And when the chorus sounds, as now ’—and he made a gesture
toward the inner room, in which the low murmur of “Wurra-
Wurra " rose again—“ the singer reiterates always the same
refrain: -
“‘No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.’”
THE GARDEN I83
Almost as he spoke the contralto voice began to sing the
refrain. Androvsky turned pale. There were drops of sweat
on his forehead. He lifted his glass of wine to his lips and his
hand trembled so that some of the wine was spilt upon the table-
cloth. And, as once before, Domini felt that what moved her
deeply moved him even more deeply, whether in the same way
or differently she could not tell. The image of the taper and
the torch recurred to her mind. She saw Androvsky with fire
round about him. The violence of this man surely resembled
the violence of Africa. There was something terrible about it,
yet also something noble, for it suggested a male power, which
might make for either good or evil, but which had nothing to do
with littleness. For a moment Count Anteoni and the priest
were dwarfed, as if they had come into the presence of a
giant.
The Arabs handed round fruit. And now the song died
softly away. Only the instruments went on playing. The
distant tom-tom was surely the beating of that heart into whose
mysteries no other human heart could look. Its reiterated and
dim throbbing affected Domini almost terribly. She was re-
lieved, yet regretful, when at length it ceased.
“Shall we go into the ante-room?” the Count said. “Coffee
will be brought there.” º
“Oh, but—don't let us see them!” Domini exclaimed.
“The musicians?”
She nodded.
“You would rather not hear any more music?”
“If you don’t mind!”
He gave an order in Arabic. One of the servants slipped
away and returned almost immediately. - -
“Now we can go,” the Count said. “They have van-
ished.”
The priest sighed. It was evident that the music had moved
him too. As they got up he said:
“Yes, there was beauty in that song and something more.
Some of these desert poets can teach us to think.”
“A dangerous lesson, perhaps,” said the Count. “What do
you say, Monsieur Androvsky P’’
Androvsky was on his feet. His eyes were turned toward
the door through which the sound of the music had come.
“Il " he answered. “I—Monsieur, I am afraid that to me
this music means very little. I cannot judge of it.”
“But the words?” asked the Count with a certain pressure.
I84 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH .
“They do not seem to me to suggest much more than the
music.”
The Count said no more. As she went into the outer room
Domini felt angry, as she had felt angry in the garden at Sidi-
Zerzour when Androvsky said:
“These native women do not interest me. I see nothing
attractive in them.”
For now, as then, she knew that he had lied.
CHAPTER XI
DOMINI came into the ante-room alone. The three men had
paused for a moment behind her, and the sound of a match
struck reached her ears as she went listlessly forward to the door
which was open to the broad garden path, and stood looking
out into the sunshine. Butterflies were flitting here and there
through the riot of gold, and she heard faint bird-notes from the
shadows of the trees, echoed by the more distant twitter of
Larbi's flute. On the left, between the palms, she caught
glimpses of the desert and of the hard and brilliant mountains,
and, as she stood there, she remembered her sensations on first
entering the garden and how soon she had learned to love it. It
had always seemed to her a sunny paradise of peace until this
moment. But now she felt as if she were compassed about by
clouds.
The vagrant movement of the butterflies irritated her
eyes, the distant sound of the flute distressed her ears, and all
the peace had gone. Once again this man destroyed the spell
Nature had cast upon her. Because she knew that he had lied,
her joy in the garden, her deeper joy in the desert that embraced
it, were stricken. Yet why should he not lie? Which of us
does not lie about his feelings? Has reserve no right to
armour?
She heard her companions entering the room and turned
round. At that moment her heart was swept by an emotion
almost of hatred to Androvsky. Because of it she smiled. A
forced gaiety dawned in her. She sat down on one of the low
divans, and, as she asked Count Anteoni for a cigarette and lit
it, she thought, “How shall I punish him?” That lie, not even
told to her and about so slight a matter, seemed to her an attack
which she resented and must return. Not for a moment did she
ask herself if she were reasonable. A voice within her said, “I
THE GARDEN I85
will not be lied to, I will not even bear a lie told to another in
my presence by this man.” And the voice was imperious.
Count Anteoni remained beside her, smoking a cigar.
Father Roubier took a seat by the little table in front of her.
But Androvsky went over to the door she had just left, and
stood, as she had, looking out into the sunshine. Bous-Bous
followed him, and snuffed affectionately round his feet, trying to
gain his attention.
“My little dog seems very fond of your friend,” the priest
said to Domini. -
“My friend ”
“Monsieur Androvsky.”
She lowered her voice.
“He is only a travelling acquaintance. I know nothing of
him.”
The priest looked gently surprised and Count Anteoni blew
forth a fragrant cloud of smoke.
“He seems a remarkable man,” the priest said mildly.
“Do you think so?”
She began to speak to Count Anteoni about some absurdity
of Batouch, forcing her mind into a light and frivolous mood,
and he echoed her tone with a clever obedience for which
secretly she blessed him. In a moment they were laughing
together with apparent merriment, and Father Roubier smiled
innocently at their light-heartedness, believing in it sincerely.
But Androvsky suddenly turned around with a dark and morose
COuntenan Ce.
“Come in out of the sunshine,” said the Count. “It is too
strong. Try this chair. Coffee will be—ah, here it is!”
Two servants appeared, carrying it.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” Androvsky said with reluctant
courtesy.
He came towards them with determination and sat down,
drawing forward his chair till he was facing Domini. Directly
he was quiet Bous-Bous sprang upon his knee and lay down
hastily, blinking his eyes, which were almost concealed by hair,
and heaving a sigh which made the priest look kindly at him,
even while he said deprecatingly:
“Bous-Bous! Bous-Bous! Little rascal, little pig–down,
down l’’
“Oh, leave him, Monsieur ! ” muttered Androvsky. “It’s
all the same to me.”
“He really has no shame where his heart is concerned.”
y
I86 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Arab l’’ said the Count. “He has learnt it in Beni-
Mora.”
“Perhaps he has taken lessons from Larbi,” said Domini.
“Hark! He is playing to-day. For whom?”
“I never ask now,” said the Count. “The name changes so
often.” -
“Constancy is not an Arab fault?” Domini asked.
“You say ‘fault,' Madame,” interposed the priest.
“Yes, Father,” she returned with a light touch of conscious
cynicism. “Surely in this world that which is apt to bring
inevitable misery with it must be accounted a fault.”
“But can constancy do that?”
“Don’t you think so, into a world of ceaseless change?”
“Then how shall we reckon truth in a world of lies?” asked
the Count. “Is that a fault, too?”
“Ask Monsieur Androvsky,” said Domini, quickly.
“I obey,” said the Count, looking over at his guest.
“Ah, but I am sure I know,” Domini added. “I am sure
you think truth a thing we should all avoid in such a world as
this. Don’t you, Monsieur?” g
“If you are sure, Madame, why ask me?” Androvsky
replied. - -
There was in his voice a sound that was startling. Suddenly
the priest reached out his hand and lifted Bous-Bous on to his
knee, and Count Anteoni very lightly and indifferently inter-
posed.
“Truth-telling among Arabs becomes a dire necessity to
Europeans. One cannot out-lie them, and it doesn't pay to run
second to Orientals. So one learns, with tears, to be sincere.
Father Roubier is shocked by my apologia for my own blatant
truthfulness.”
The priest laughed.
“I live so little in what is called ‘the world' that I'm afraid
I’m very ready to take drollery for a serious expression of
opinion.” -
He stroked Bous-Bous's white back, and added, with a simple
geniality that seemed to spring rather from a desire to be kind
than from any temperamental source:
“But I hope I shall always be able to enjoy innocent fun.”
As he spoke his eyes rested on Androvsky's face, and suddenly
he looked grave and put Bous-Bous gently down on the floor.
“I’m afraid I must be going,” he said.
“Already ?” said his host.
THE GARDEN 187
“I dare not allow myself too much idleness. If once I began
to be idle in this climate I should become like an Arab and do
nothing all day but sit in the Sun.”
“As I do. Father, we meet very seldom, but whenever we
do I feel myself a cumberer of the earth.”
Domini had never before heard him speak with such humble-
ness. The priest flushed like a boy.
“We each serve in our own way,” he said quickly. “The
Arab who sits all day in the Sun may be heard as a song of praise
where He is.”
And then he took his leave. This time he did not extend his
hand to Androvsky, but only bowed to him, lifting his white
helmet. As he went away in the sun with Bous-Bous the three
he had left followed him with their eyes. For Androvsky had
turned his chair sideways, as if involuntarily.
“I shall learn to love Father Roubier,” Domini said.
Androvsky moved his seat round again till his back was to
the garden, and placed his broad hands palm downward on his
knees.
“Yes?” said the Count.
“He is so transparently good, and he bears his great dis-
appointment so beautifully.”
“What great disappointment?”
“He longed to become a monk.”
Androvsky got up from his seat and walked back to the
garden doorway. His restless demeanour and lowering expres-
sion destroyed all sense of calm and leisure. Count Anteoni
looked after him, and then at Domini, with a sort of playful
surprise. He was going to speak, but before the words came
Smain appeared, carrying reverently a large envelope covered
with Arab writing.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” the Count said.
“Of course.”
He took the letter, and at once a vivid expression of excite-
ment shone in his eyes. When he had read it there was a glow
upon his face as if the flames of a fire played over it.
“Miss Enfilden,” he said, “will you think me very dis-
courteous if I leave you for a moment? The messenger who
brought this has come from far and starts to-day on his return
journey. He has come out of the south, three hundred kilo-
metres away, from Beni-Hassan, a sacred village—a sacred
village.”
He repeated the last words, lowering his voice.
I 88 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Of course go and see him.”
“And you?” -
He glanced towards Androvsky, who was standing with his
back to them.
“Won't you show Monsieur Androvsky the garden?”
Hearing his name Androvsky turned, and the Count at once
made his excuses to him and followed Smain towards the garden
gate, carrying the letter that had come from Beni-Hassan in his
hand. -
When he had gone Domini remained on the divan, and
Androvsky by the door, with his eyes on the ground. She took
another cigarette from the box on the table beside her, struck a
match and lit it carefully. Then she said:
“Do you care to see the garden?” º
She spoke indifferently, coldly. The desire to show her
Paradise to him had died away, but the parting words of the
Count prompted the question, and so she put it as to a
Stranger.
“Thank you, Madame—yes,” he replied, as if with an effort.
She got up, and they went out together on to the broad
walk.
“Which way do you want to go?” she asked.
She saw him glance at her quickly, with anxiety in his eyes.
“You know best where we should go, Madame.”
“I daresay you won't care about it. Probably you are not
interested in gardens. It does not matter really which path we
take. They are all very much alike.”
“I am sure they are all very beautiful.”
Suddenly he had become humble, anxious to please her.
But now the violent contrasts in him, unlike the violent con-
trasts of nature in this land, exasperated her. She longed to be
left alone. She felt ashamed of Androvsky, and also of herself;
she condemned herself bitterly for the interest she had taken in
him, for her desire to put some pleasure into a life she had
deemed sad, for her curiosity about him, for her wish to share
joy with him. She laughed at herself secretly for what she now
called her folly in having connected him imaginatively with the
desert, whereas in reality he made the desert, as everything he
approached, lose in beauty and wonder. His was a destructive
personality. She knew it now. Why had she not realised it
before? He was a man to put gall in the cup of pleasure, to
create uneasiness, self-consciousness, constraint round about him,
to call up spectres at the banquet of life. Well, in the future she
THE GARDEN 189
could avoid him. After to-day she need never have any more
intercourse with him. With that thought, that interior sense of
her perfect freedom in regard to this man, an abrupt, but always
cold, content came to her, putting him a long way off where
surely all that he thought and did was entirely indifferent to her.
“Come along then,” she said. “We’ll go this way.”
And she turned down an alley which led towards the home of
the purple dog. She did not know at the moment that anything
had influenced her to choose that particular path, but very soon
the sound of Larbi's flute grew louder, and she guessed that in
reality the music had attracted her. Androvsky walked beside
her without a word. She felt that he was not looking about him,
not noticing anything, and all at once she stopped decisively.
“Why should we take all this trouble?” she said bluntly.
“I hate pretence and I thought I had travelled far away from it.
But we are both pretending.”
“Pretending, Madame?” he said in a startled voice.
“Yes. I that I want to show you this garden, you that you
want to see it. I no longer wish to show it to you, and you have
never wished to see it. Let us cease to pretend. It is all
my fault. I bothered you to come here when you didn’t want
to come. You have taught me a lesson. I was inclined to con-
demn you for it, to be angry with you. But why should I be?
You were quite right. Freedom is my fetish. I set you free,
Monsieur Androvsky. Good-bye.”
As she spoke she felt that the air was clearing, the clouds
were flying. Constraint at least was at an end. And she had
really the sensation of setting a captive at liberty. She turned to
leave him, but he said:
“Please, stop, Madame.”
& C Why? 3 y
“You have made a mistake.”
“In what?”
“I do want to see this garden.” 2"
“Really Well, then, you can wander through it.”
“I do not wish to see it alone.”
“Larbi shall guide you. For half a franc he will gladly give
up his serenading.”
“Madame, if you will not show me the garden I will not see
it at all. I will go now and will never come into it again. I do
not pretend.”
“Ah! ” she said, and her voice was quite changed. “But
you do worse.”
I90 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Worse ''
“Yes. You lie in the face of Africa.”
She did not wish or mean to say it, and yet she had to say
it. She knew it was monstrous that she should speak thus to
him. What had his lies to do with her? She had been told a
thousand, had heard a thousand told to others. Her life had
been passed in a world of which the words of the Psalmist,
though uttered in haste, are a clear-cut description. And she
had not thought she cared. Yet really she must have cared.
For, in leaving this world, her soul had, as it were, fetched a
long breath. And now, at the hint of a lie, it instinctively
recoiled as from a gust of air laden with some poisonous and
Suffocating vapour.
“Forgive me,” she added. “I am a fool. Out here I do
love truth.”
Androvsky dropped his eyes. His whole body expressed
humiliation, and something that suggested to her despair.
“Oh, you must think me mad to speak like this l’ she ex-
claimed. “Of course people must be allowed to arm themselves
against the curiosity of others. I know that. The fact is I am
under a spell here. I have been living for many, many years in
the cold. I have been like a woman in a prison without any
light, and } }
“You have been in a prison l’’ he said, lifting his head and
looking at her eagerly.
“I have been living in what is called the great world.”
“And you call that a prison?”
“Now that I am living in the greater world, really living at
last. I have been in the heart of insincerity, and now I have
come into the heart, the fiery heart of sincerity. It's there—
there "—she pointed to the desert. “And it has intoxicated me;
I think it has made me unreasonable. I expect everyone—not
an Arab–to be as it is, and every little thing that isn't quite
frank, every pretence, is like a horrible little hand tugging at me,
as if trying to take me back to the prison I have left. I think,
deep down, I have always loathed lies, but never as I have
loathed them since I came here. It seems to me as if only in
the desert there is freedom for the body, and only in truth there
is freedom for the soul.”
She stopped, drew a long breath, and added:
“You must forgive me. I have worried you. I have made
you do what you didn't want to do. And then I have attacked
you. It is unpardonable.”
THE GARDEN I9 I
“Show me the garden, Madame,” he said in a very low
voice.
Her outburst over, she felt a slight self-consciousness. She
wondered what he thought of her and became aware of her
unconventionality. His curious and persistent reticence made
her frankness the more marked. Yet the painful sensation of
oppression and exasperation had passed away from her and she
no longer thought of his personality as destructive. In obedi-
ence to his last words she walked on, and he kept heavily beside
her, till they were in the deep shadows of the closely-growing
trees and the spell of the garden began to return upon her,
banishing the thought of self.
“Listen!” she said presently.
Larbi's flute was very near.
“He is always playing,” she whispered.
“Who is he P’’
“One of the gardeners. But he scarcely ever works. He is
perpetually in love. That is why he plays.”
“Is that a love-tune then?” Androvsky asked.
“Yes. Do you think it sounds like one?”
“How should I know, Madame?”
He stood looking in the direction from which the music
came, and now it seemed to hold him fascinated. After his
question, which sounded to her almost childlike, and which she
did not answer, Domini glanced at his attentive face, to which
the green shadows lent a dimness that was mysterious, at his tall
figure, which always suggested to her both weariness and
strength, and remembered the passionate romance to whose
existence she awoke when she first heard Larbi's flute. It was as
if a shutter, which had closed a window in the house of life, had
been suddenly drawn away, giving to her eyes the horizon of a
new world. Was that shutter now drawn back for him? No
doubt the supposition was absurd. Men of his emotional and
virile type have travelled far in that world, to her mysterious,
ere they reach his length of years. What was extraordinary
to her, in the thought of it alone, was doubtless quite ordinary
to him, translated into act. Not ignorant, she was nevertheless
a perfectly innocent woman, but her knowledge told her that
no man of Androvsky's strength, power and passion is innocent
at Androvsky's age. Yet his last dropped-out question was very
deceptive. It had sounded absolutely natural and might have
come from a boy's pure lips. Again he made her wonder.
There was a garden bench close to where they were standing.
192 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“If you like to listen for a moment we might sit down,”
she said.
He started.
“Yes. Thank you.”
When they were sitting side by side, closely guarded by the
gigantic fig and chestnut trees which grew in this part of the
garden, he added:
“Whom does he love?”
“No doubt one of those native women whom you consider
utterly without attraction,” she answered with a faint touch of
malice which made him redden.
“But you come here every day ?” he said.
& & II 3 y -
“Yes. Has he ever seen you?” -
“Larbi 2 Often. What has that to do with it?”
He did not reply.
Odd and disconnected as Larbi's melodies were, they created
an atmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled
up out of the heart of the Eastern world and, when the player
was invisible as now, suggested an ebon faun couched in hot
sand at the foot of a palm tree and making music to listening
Sunbeams and amorous spirits of the waste.
“Do you like it?” she said presently in an under voice.
“Yes, Madame. And you?”
“I love it, but not as I love the song of the freed negroes.
That is a song of all the secrets of humanity and of the desert
too. And it does not try to tell them. It only says that they
exist and that God knows them. But, I remember, you do not
like that song.”
“Madame,” he answered slowly, and as if he were choosing
his words, “I see that you understood. The song did move me
though I said not. But no, I do not like it.”
“Do you care to tell me why?”
“Such a song as that seems to me an—it is like an intrusion.
There are things that should be let alone. There are dark places
that should be left dark.”
“You mean that all human beings hold within them secrets,
and that no allusion even should ever be made to those secrets? "
( { Yes.”
“I understand.”
After a pause he said, anxiously, she thought:
“Am I right, Madame, or is my thought ridiculous * *
He asked it so simply that she felt touched.
THE GARDEN I93
“I’m sure you could never be ridiculous,” she said quickly.
“And perhaps you are right. I don't know. That song makes
me think and feel, and so I love it. Perhaps if you heard it
alone } }
“Then I should hate it,” he interposed.
His voice was like an uncontrolled inner voice speaking.
“And not thought and feeling she began.
But he interrupted her. *
“They make all the misery that exists in the world.”
“And all the happiness.”
“Do they?”
“They must.”
“Then you want to think deeply, to feel deeply?”
“Yes. I would rather be the central figure of a world-
tragedy than die without having felt to the uttermost, even if it
were sorrow. My whole nature revolts against the idea of
being able to feel little or nothing really. It seems to me that
when we begin to feel acutely we begin to grow, like the palm
tree rising towards the African sun.”
“I do not think you have ever been very unhappy,” he said.
The sound of his voice as he said it made her suddenly feel
as if it were true, as if she had never been utterly unhappy. Yet
she had never been really happy. Africa had taught her that.
“Perhaps not,” she answered. “But—some day 5 y
She stopped.
“Yes, Madame?”
“Could one stay long in such a world as this and not be
either intensely happy or intensely unhappy? I don’t feel as if
it would be possible. Fierceness and fire beat upon one day
after day and—one must learn to feel here.”
As she spoke a sensation of doubt, almost of apprehension,
came to her. She was overtaken by a terror of the desert. For
a moment it seemed to her that he was right, that it were better
never to be the prey of any deep emotion.
“If one does not wish to feel one should never come to such
a place as this,” she added.
And she longed to ask him why he was here, he, a man whose
philosophy told him to avoid the heights and depths, to shun the
ardours of nature and of life.
“Or, having come, one should leave it.”
A sensation of lurking danger increased upon her, bringing
with it the thought of flight.
“One can always do that,” she said, looking at him.
I94 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
She saw fear in his eyes, but it seemed to her that it was not
fear of peril, but fear of flight. So strongly was this idea borne
in upon her that she bluntly exclaimed:
“ Unless it is one's nature to face things, never to turn one's
back. Is it yours, Monsieur Androvsky?”
“Fear could never drive me to leave Beni-Mora,” he
answered.
“Sometimes I think that the only virtue in us is courage,” she
said, “that it includes all the others. I believe I could forgive
everything where I found absolute courage.”
Androvsky's eyes were lit up as if by a flicker of inward
fire.
“You might create the virtue you love,” he said hoarsely.
They looked at each other for a moment. Did he mean that
she might create it in him?
Perhaps she would have asked, or perhaps he would have told
her, but at that moment something happened. Larbi stopped
playing. In the last few minutes they had both forgotten that
he was playing, but when he ceased the garden changed. Some-
thing was withdrawn in which, without knowing it, they had
been protecting themselves, and when the music faded their
armour dropped away from them. With the complete silence
came an altered atmosphere, the tenderness of mysticism instead
of the tenderness of a wild humanity. The love of man seemed
to depart out of the garden and another love to enter it, as when
God walked under the trees in the cool of the day. And they
sat quite still, as if a common impulse muted their lips. In the
long silence that followed Domini thought of her mirage of the
palm tree growing towards the African sun, feeling growing in
the heart of a human being. But was it a worthy image? For
the palm tree rises high. It soars into the air. But presently
it ceases to grow. There is nothing infinite in its growth. And
the long, hot years pass away and there it stands, never nearer
to the infinite gold of the sun. But in the intense feeling of a
man or woman is there not infinitude? Is there not a move-
ment that is ceaseless till death comes to destroy—or to trans-
late? -
That was what she was thinking in the silence of the garden.
And Androvsky? He sat beside her with his head bent, his
hands hanging between his knees, his eyes gazing before him at
the ordered tangle of the great trees. His lips were slightly
parted, and on his strongly-marked face there was an expression
as of emotional peace, as if the soul of the man were feeling
THE GARDEN I95
deeply in calm. The restlessness, the violence that had made his
demeanour so embarrassing during and after the déjeuner had
vanished. He was a different man. And presently, noticing it,
feeling his sensitive serenity, Domini seemed to see the great
Mother at work about this child of hers, Nature at her tender
task of pacification. The shared silence became to her like a
song of thanksgiving, in which all the green things of the garden
joined. And beyond them the desert lay listening, the Garden
of Allah attentive to the voices of man's garden. She could
hardly believe that but a few minutes before she had been full of
irritation and bitterness, not free even from a touch of pride that
was almost petty. But when she remembered that it was so she
realised the abysses and the heights of which the heart is mingled,
and an intense desire came to her to be always upon the heights
of her own heart. For there only was the light of happiness.
Never could she know joy if she forswore nobility. Never
could she be at peace with the love within her—love of some-
thing that was not self, of something that seemed vaguer than
God, as if it had entered into God and made him Love—unless
she mounted upwards during her little span of life. Again, as
before in this land, in the first sunset, on the tower, on the
minaret of the mosque of Sidi-Zerzour, Nature spoke to her
intimate words of inspiration, laid upon her the hands of heal-
ing, giving her powers she surely had not known or conceived
of till now. And the passion that is the chiefest grace of good-
ness, making it the fire that purifies, as it is the little sister of the
poor that tends the suffering, the hungry, the groping beggar-
world, stirred within her, like the child not yet born, but whose
destiny is with the angels. And she longed to make some great
offering at the altar on whose lowest step she stood, and she
was filled, for the first time consciously, with woman's sacred
desire for sacrifice.
A soft step on the sand broke the silence and scattered her
aspirations. Count Anteoni was coming towards them between
the trees. The light of happiness was still upon his face and
made him look much younger than usual. His whole bearing,
in its elasticity and buoyant courage, was full of anticipation.
As he came up to them he said to Domini:
“Do you remember chiding me?”
“Il ‘’ she said. “For what?”
Androvsky sat up and the expression of Serenity passed away
from his face.
“For never galloping away into the sun.”
I96 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Oh!—yes, I do remember.”
“Well, I am going to obey you. I am going to make a
journey.”
“Into the desert?”
“Three hundred kilometers on horseback. I start to-mor-
row.” -
She looked up at him with a new interest. He saw it and
laughed, almost like a boy.
“Ah, your contempt for me is dying!”
“How can you speak of contempt?” **
“But you were full of it.” He turned to Androvsky. “Miss
Enfilden thought I could not sit a horse, Monsieur, unlike you.
Forgive me for saying that you are almost more dare-devil than
the Arabs themselves. I saw you the other day set your stallion
at the bank of the river bed. I did not think any horse could
have done it, but you knew better.” .’
“I did not know at all,” said Androvsky. “I had not ridden
for over twenty years until that day.”
He spoke with a blunt determination which made Domini
remember their recent conversation on truth-telling,
“ Dio mio !” said the Count, slowly, and looking at him with
undisguised wonder. “You must have a will and a frame of
iron.”
“I am pretty strong.”
He spoke rather roughly. Since the Count had joined them
Domini noticed that Androvsky had become a different man.
Once more he was on the defensive. The Count did not seem to
notice it. Perhaps he was too radiant.
“I hope I shall endure as well as you, Monsieur,” he said.
“I go to Beni-Hassan to visit Sidi El Hadj Aissa, one of the
mightiest marabouts in the Sahara. In your Church,” he
added, turning again to Domini, “he would be a powerful
Cardinal.”
She noticed the “ your.” Evidently the Count was not a pro-
fessing Catholic. Doubtless, like many modern Italians, he was
a free-thinker in matters of religion.
“I am afraid I have never heard of him,'
which direction does Beni-Hassan lie?”
“To go there one takes the caravan route that the natives call
the route to Tombouctou.”
An eager look came into her face.
“My road ’’ she said.
“Yours ?”
’ she said. “In
THE GARDEN I97
“The one I shall travel on. You remember, Monsieur
Androvsky 2 ”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Let me into your secret,” said the Count, laughingly, yet
with interest too.
“It is no secret. It is only that I love that route. It
fascinates me, and I mean some day to make a desert journey
along it.”
“What a pity that we cannot join forces,” the Count said.
“I should feel it an honour to show the desert to one who has
the reverence for it, the understanding of its spell, that you
have.”
He spoke earnestly, paused, and then added:
“But I know well what you are thinking.”
“What is that 2 ''
“That you will go to the desert alone. You are right. It is
the only way, at any rate the first time. I went like that many
years ago.”
She said nothing in assent, and Androvsky got up from the
bench.
“I must go, Monsieur.”
“Already! But have you seen the garden?”
“It is wonderful. Good-bye, Monsieur. Thank you.”
“But—let me see you to the gate. On Fridays j 3
He was turning to Domini when she got up too.
“Don’t you distribute alms on Fridays?” she said.
“How should you know it?”
“I have heard all about you. But is this the hour?”
( ( Yes.”
“Let me see the distribution.”
“And we will speed Monsieur Androvsky on his way at the
same time.”
She noticed that there was no question in his mind of her
going with Androvsky. Did she mean to go with him? She had
not decided yet.
They walked towards the gate and were soon on the great
sweep of sand before the villa. A murmur of many voices was
audible outside in the desert, nasal exclamations, loud guttural
cries that sounded angry, the twittering of flutes and the snarl
of camels. .
“Do you hear my pensioners?” said the Count. “They are
always impatient.”
There was the noise of a tom-tom and of a whining shriek.
I98 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“That is old Bel Cassem's announcement of his presence. He
has been living on me for years, the old ruffian, ever since his
right eye was gouged out by his rival in the affections of the
Maréchale of the dancing-girls. Smain ”
He blew his silver whistle. Instantly Smain came out of the
villa carrying a money-bag. The Count took it and weighed it
in his hand, looking at Domini with the joyous expression still
upon his face.
“Have you ever made a thank-offering?” he said.
( ſ. No.” *-
“That tells me something. Well, to-day I wish to make a
thank-offering to the desert.”
“What has it done for you?”
“Who knows? Who knows?” -
He laughed aloud, almost like a boy. Androvsky glanced at
him with a sort of wondering envy.
“And I want you to share in my little distribution,” he added.
“And you, Monsieur, if you don’t mind. There are moments
when—Open the gate, Smain l’’
His ardour was infectious and Domini felt stirred by it to a
sudden sense of the joy of life. She looked at Androvsky, to in-
clude him in the rigour of gaiety which swept from the Count to
her, and found him staring apprehensively at the Count, who was
now loosening the string of the bag. Smain had reached the
gate. He lifted the bar of wood and opened it. Instantly a
crowd of dark faces and turbaned heads were thrust through
the tall aperture, a multitude of dusky hands fluttered fran-
tically, and the cry of eager voices, saluting, begging, calling
down blessings, relating troubles, shrieking wants, proclaiming
virtues and necessities, rose into an almost deafening uproar.
But not a foot was lifted over the lintel to press the sunlit sand.
The Count's pensioners might be clamorous, but they knew
what they might not do. As he saw them the wrinkles in his
face deepened and his fingers quickened to achieve their pur-
pose.
“My pensioners are very hungry to-day, and, as you see,
they don't mind saying so. Hark at Bel Cassem ”
The tom-tom and the shriek that went with it made it a
fierce crescendo.
“That means he is starving—the old hypocrite! Aren't they
like the wolves in your Russia, Monsieur? But we must
feed them. We mustn't let them devour our Beni-Mora.
That’s it ! ” + -
THE GARDEN I99
He threw the string on to the sand, plunged his hand into the
bag and brought it out full of copper coins. The mouths opened
wider, the hands waved more frantically, and all the dark eyes
gleamed with the light of greed. -
“Will you help me?” he said to Domini.
“Of course. What fun!”
Her eyes were gleaming too, but with the dancing fires of a
gay impulse of generosity which made her wish that the bag con-
tained her money. He filled her hands with coins.
- “Choose whom you will. And now, Monsieur !”
For the moment he was so boyishly concentrated on the im-
mediate present that he had ceased to observe whether the whim
of others jumped with his own. Otherwise he must have been
struck by Androvsky's marked discomfort, which indeed almost
amounted to agitation. The sight of the throng of Arabs at the
gateway, the clamour of their voices, evidently roused within him
something akin to fear. He looked at them with distaste, and
had drawn back several steps upon the sand, and now, as the
Count held out to him a hand filled with money, he made no
motion to take it, and half turned as if he thought of retreating
into the recesses of the garden.
“Here, Monsieur ! here!” exclaimed the Count, with his eyes
on the crowd, towards which Domini was walking with a sort of
mischievous slowness, to whet those appetites already so vora-
cious.
Androvsky set his teeth and took the money, dropping one or
two pieces on the ground. For a moment the Count seemed
doubtful of his guest's participation in his own lively mood.
“Is this boring you?” he asked. “Because if so 5 J
“No, no, Monsieur, not at all! What am I to do?”
“Those hands will tell you.”
The clamour grew more exigent.
“And when you want more come to me!”
Then he called out in Arabic, “Gently Gently ’’ as the
vehement scuffling seemed about to degenerate into actual fight-
ing at Domini's approach, and hurried forward, followed more
slowly by Androvsky.
Smain, from whose velvety eyes the dreams were not banished
by the uproar, stood languidly by the porter's tent, gazing at
Androvsky. Something in the demeanour of the new visitor
seemed to attract him. Domini, meanwhile, had reached the
gateway. Gently, with a capricious deftness and all a woman's
passion for personal choice, she dropped the bits of money into
2OO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.
the hands belonging to the faces that attracted her, disregarding
the bellowings of those passed over. The light from all these
gleaming eyes made her feel warm, the clamour that poured
from these brown throats excited her. When her fingers were
empty she touched the Count's arm eagerly.
“More, more, please!”
“ Ecco, Signora.”
He held out to her the bag. She plunged her hands into it
and came nearer to the gate, both hands full of money and held
high above her head. The Arabs leapt up at her like dogs at a
bone, and for a moment she waited, laughing with all her heart.
Then she made a movement to throw the money over the heads
of the near ones to the unfortunates who were dancing and
shrieking on the outskirts of the mob. But suddenly her hands
dropped and she uttered a startled exclamation.
The sand diviner of the red bazaar, slipping like a reptile
under the waving arms and between the furious bodies of the
beggars, stood up before her with a smile on his wounded face,
stretched out to her his emaciated hands with a fawning, yet
half satirical, gesture of desire.
CHAPTER XII
THE money dropped from Domini's fingers and rolled upon
the sand at the Diviner's feet. But though he had surely come
to ask for alms, he took no heed of it. While the Arabs
round him fell upon their knees and fought like animals for the
plunder, he stood gaping at Domini. The smile still flickered
about his lips. His hand was still stretched out.
Instinctively she had moved backwards. Something that was
like a thrill of fear, mental, not physical, went through her, but
she kept her eyes steadily on his, as if, despite the fear, she
fought against him.
The contest of the beggars had become so passionate that
Count Anteoni's commands were forgotten. Urged by the
pressure from behind those in the front scrambled or fell over
the sacred threshold. The garden was invaded by a shrieking
mob. Smain ran forward, and the autocrat that dwelt in the
Count side by side with the benefactor suddenly emerged. He
blew his whistle four times. At each call a stalwart Arab
appeared.
“Shut the gate!” he commanded sternly.
THE GARDEN. 2O I
The attendants furiously repulsed the mob, using their fists
and feet without mercy. In the twinkling of an eye the sand
was cleared and Smain had his hand upon the door to shut it.
But the Diviner stopped him with a gesture, and in a fawning
yet imperious voice called out something to the Count.
The Count turned to Domini.
“This is an interesting fellow. Would you like to know
him P’’
Her mind said no, yet her body assented. For she bowed
her head. The Count beckoned. The Diviner stepped
stealthily on to the sand with an air of subtle triumph, and
Smain swung forward the great leaf of palm wood.
“Wait!” the Count cried, as if suddenly recollecting some-
thing. “Where is Monsieur Androvsky P”
“Isn’t he ?” Domini glanced round. “I don’t know.’
He went quickly to the door and looked out. The Arabs,
silent now and respectful, crowded about him, salaaming. He
Smiled at them kindly, and spoke to one or two. They answered
gravely. An old man with one eye lifted his hand, in which
was a tom-tom of stretched goatskin, and pointed towards the
oasis, rapidly moving his toothless jaws. The Count stepped
back into the garden, dismissed his pensioners with a masterful
wave of the hand, and himself shut the door.
“Monsieur Androvsky has gone—without saying good-bye,”
he said.
Again Domini felt ashamed for Androvsky.
“I don’t think he likes my pensioners,” the Count added,
in amused voice, “ or me.”
“I am sure ” Domini began.
But he stopped her.
“Miss Enfilden, in a world of lies I look to you for truth.”
His manner chafed her, but his voice had a ring of
earnestness. She said nothing. All this time the Diviner was
standing on the sand, still smiling, but with downcast eyes. His
thin body looked satirical and Domini felt a strong aversion from
him, yet a strong interest in him too. Something in his appear-
ance and manner suggested power and mystery as well as
cunning. The Count said some words to him in Arabic, and
at once he walked forward and disappeared among the trees,
going so silently and smoothly that she seemed to watch a
panther gliding into the depths of a jungle where its prey lay
hid. She looked at the Count interrogatively.
“He will wait in the fumoir.”
y
2O2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Where we first met?”
{ { Yes.”
“What for P ''
“For us, if you choose.”
“Tell me about him. I have seen him twice. He followed
me with a bag of sand.”
“He is a desert man. I don’t know his tribe, but before he
settled here he was a nomad, one of the wanderers who dwell in
tents, a man of the sand; as much of the sand as a viper or a
scorpion. One would suppose such beings were bred by the
marriage of the sand-grains. The sand tells him secrets.”
“He says. Do you believe it?”
“Would you like to test it?”
“How P '’
“By coming with me to the fumoirſ?”
She hesitated obviously.
“Mind,” he added, “I do not press it. A word from me
and he is gone. But you are fearless, and you have spoken
already, will speak much more intimately in the future, with the
desert spirits.”
“How do you know that?”
“The ‘much more intimately ’7”
( ( Yes.”
“I do not know it, but—which is much more—I feel it.”
She was silent, looking towards the trees where the Diviner
had disappeared. Count Anteoni's boyish merriment had faded
away. He looked grave, almost sad.
“I am not afraid,” she said at last. “No, but—I will con-
fess it—there is something horrible about that man to me. I
felt it the first time I saw him. His eyes are too intelligent.
They look diseased with intelligence.”
“Let me send him away. Smain ”
But she stopped him. Directly he made the suggestion she
felt that she must know more of this man.
“ No. Let us go to the fumoir.”
“Very well. Go, Smain ”
Smain went into the little tent by the gate, sat down on
his haunches and began to smell at a sprig of orange blos-
Soms. Domini and the Count walked into the darkness of the
treeS.
“What is his name?” she asked.
“Alouí.”
“Alouí.”
THE GARDEN - 2O3
She repeated the word slowly. There was a reluctant and
yet fascinated sound in her voice.
“There is melody in the name,” he said.
“Yes. Has he—has he ever looked in the sand for you?”
“Once—a long time ago.”
“May I–dare I ask if he found truth there?”
“He found nothing for all the years that have passed since
then.”
“Nothing!”
There was a sound of relief in her voice.
“For those years.”
She glanced at him and saw that once again his face had lit
up into ardour.
“He found what is still to come?” she said.
And he repeated: -
“He found what is still to come.”
Then they walked on in silence till they saw the purple
blossoms of the bougainvillea clinging to the white walls of the
fumoir. Domini stopped on the narrow path.
“Is he in there?” she asked almost in a whisper.
“No doubt.”
“Larbi was playing the first day I came here.”
( ( Yes.”
“I wish he was playing now.”
The silence seemed to her unnaturally intense.
“Even his love must have repose.”
She went on a step or two till, but still from a distance, she
could look over the low plaster wall beneath the nearest window
space into the little room.
“Yes, there he is!” she whispered.
The Diviner was crouching on the floor with his back
towards them and his head bent down. Only his shoulders
could be seen, covered with a white gandoura. They moved
perpetually but slightly.
“What is he doing?”
“Speaking with his ancestor.”
“His ancestor?”
“The sand. Aloui ! ”
He called softly. The figure rose, without sound and in-
stantly, and the face of the Diviner smiled at them through the
purple flowers. Again Domini had the sensation that her
body was a glass box in which her thoughts, feelings and desires
were ranged for this man's inspection; but she walked resolutely
2O4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
through the narrow doorway and sat down on one of the
divans. Count Anteoni followed.
She now saw that in the centre of the room, on the ground,
there was a symmetrical pyramid of sand, and that the Diviner
was gently folding together a bag in his long and flexible
fingers. -
“You see! ” said the Count.
She nodded, without speaking. The little sand heap held
her eyes. She strove to think it absurd and the man who had
shaken it out a charlatan of the desert, but she was really
gripped by an odd feeling of awe, as if she were secretly ex-
pectant of some magical demonstration.
The Diviner squatted down once more on his haunches,
stretched out his fingers above the sand heap, looked at her and
Smiled. -
“La vie de Madame—I see it in the sable—la vie de
Madame dans le grand désert du Sahara.”
His eyes seemed to rout out the secrets from every corner of
her being, and to Scatter them upon the ground as the sand was
scattered.
“Dans le grand désert du Sahara,” Count Anteoni repeated,
as if he loved the music of the words. “Then there is a desert
life for Madame?” -
The Diviner dropped his fingers on to the pyramid, lightly
pressing the sand down and outward. He no longer looked at
Domini. The searching and the satire slipped away from his
eyes and body. He seemed to have forgotten the two watchers
and to be concentrated upon the grains of sand. Domini
noticed that the tortured expression, which had come into his
face when she met him in the street and he stared into the bag.
had returned to it. After pressing down the sand he spread
the bag which had held it at Domini’s feet, and deftly transferred
the sand to it, scattering the grains loosely over the sacking, in
a sort of pattern. Then, bending closely over them, he stared
at them in silence for a long time. His pock-marked face was
set like stone. His emaciated hands, stretched out, rested above
the grains like carven things. His body seemed entirely breath-
less in its absolute immobility.
The Count stood in the doorway, still as he was, surrounded
by the motionless purple flowers. Beyond, in their serried ranks,
stood the motionless trees. No incense was burning in the
little brazier to-day. This cloistered world seemed spell-bound.
A low murmur at last broke the silence. It came from the
THE GARDEN 2O5
Diviner. He began to talk rapidly, but as if to himself, and as
he talked he moved again, broke up with his fingers the pat-
terns in the sand, formed fresh ones; spirals, circles, snake-like
lines, series of mounting dots that reminded Domini of spray
flung by a fountain, curves, squares and oblongs. So Swiftly
was it done and undone that the sand seemed to be endowed
with life, to be explaining itself in these patterns, to be presenting
deliberate glimpses of hitherto hidden truths. And always the
voice went on, and the eyes were downcast, and the body, save
for the moving hands and arms, was absolutely motionless.
Domini looked over the Diviner to Count Anteoni, who came
gently forward and sat down, bending his head to listen to the
voice.
“Is it Arabic?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Can you understand it?”
“Not yet. Presently it will get slower, clearer. He always
begins like this.”
“Translate it for me.”
“Exactly as it is?”
“Exactly as it is.”
“Whatever it may be?”
“Whatever it may be.”
He glanced at the tortured face of the Diviner and looked
grave. -
“Remember you have said I am fearless,” she said.
He answered: -
“Whatever it is you shall know it.”
Then they were silent again. Gradually the Diviner's voice
grew clearer, the pace of its words less rapid, but always it
sounded mysterious and inward, less like the voice of a man
than the distant voice of a secret.
“I can hear now,” whispered the Count.
“What is he saying?”
“He is speaking about the desert.”
& 4 Yes? y 3 -
“He sees a great storm. Wait a moment!”
The voice spoke for some seconds and ceased, and once
again the Diviner remained absolutely motionless, with his hands
extended above the grains like carven things.
“He sees a great sand-storm, one of the most terrible that
has ever burst over the Sahara. Everything is blotted out. The
desert vanishes. Beni-Mora is hidden. It is day, yet there is a
2O6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
darkness like night. In this darkness he sees a train of camels
waiting by a church.”
“A mosque P’’
“No, a church. In the church there is a sound of music.
The roar of the wind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the
chanting and drowns it. He cannot hear it any more. It is as
if the desert is angry and wishes to kill the music. In the church
your life is beginning.”
“My life?”
“Your real life. He says that now you are fully born, that
till now there has been a veil around your soul like the veil of
the womb around a child.”
“He says that!”
There was a sound of deep emotion in her voice.
“That is all. The roar of the wind from the desert has
silenced the music in the church, and all is dark.”
The Diviner moved again, and formed fresh patterns in the
sand with feverish rapidity, and again began to speak swiftly.
“He sees the train of camels that waited by the church
starting on a desert journey. The storm has not abated. They
pass through the oasis into the desert. He sees them going
towards the south.”
Domini leaned forward on the divan, looking at Count
Anteoni above the bent body of the Diviner.
“By what route?” she whispered.
“By the route which the natives call the road to Tom-
bouctou.”
“But—it is my journey!”
“ Upon one of the camels, in a palanquin such as the great
sheikhs use to carry their women, there are two people, pro-
tected against the storm by curtains. They are silent, listening
to the roaring of the wind. One of them is you.”
“Two people!”
“Two people.”
“But—who is the other?”
“He cannot see. It is as if the blackness of the storm
were deeper round about the other and hid the other from him.
The caravan passes on and is lost in the desolation and the
storm.”
She said nothing, but looked down at the thin body of the
Diviner crouched close to her knees. Was this pock-marked
face the face of a prophet? Did this skin and bone envelop the
Soul of a Seer? She no longer wished that Larbi was playing
THE GARDEN 2O7
upon his flute or felt the silence to be unnatural. For this man
had filled it with the roar of the desert wind. And in the wind
there struggled and was finally lost the sound of voices of her
Faith chanting—what? The wind was too strong. The voices
were too faint. She could not hear.
Once more the Diviner stirred. For some minutes his fingers
were busy in the sand. But now they moved more slowly and
no words came from his lips. Domini and the Count bent low
to watch what he was doing. The look of torture upon his face
increased. It was terrible, and made upon Domini an indelible
impression, for she could not help connecting it with his vision
of her future, and it suggested to her formless phantoms of
despair. She looked into the sand, as if she, too, would be able
to see what he saw and had not told, looked till she began to feel
almost hypnotised. The Diviner's hands trembled now as they
made the patterns, and his breast heaved under his white
robe. Presently he traced in the sand a triangle and began to
Speak.
The Count bent down till his ear was almost at the Diviner's
lips, and Domini held her breath. That caravan lost in the
desolation of the desert, in the storm and the darkness—where
was it? What had been its fate? Sweat ran down over the
Diviner's face, and dropped upon his robe, upon his hands, upon
the sand, making dark spots. And the voice whispered on
huskily till she was in a fever of impatience. She saw upon the
face of the Count the Diviner's tortured look reflected. Was it
not also on her face? A link surely bound them all together in
this tiny room, close circled by the tall trees and the intense
silence. She looked at the triangle in the sand. It was very
distinct, more distinct than the other patterns had been. What
did it represent? She searched her mind, thinking of the
desert, of her life there, of man's life in the desert. Was it not
tent-shaped? She saw it as a tent, as her tent pitched some-
where in the waste far from the habitations of men. Now the
trembling hands were still, the voice was still, but the sweat did
not cease from dropping down upon the sand.
“Tell me!” she murmured to the Count.
He obeyed, seeming now to speak with an effort.
“It is far away in the desert—”
He paused.
“Yes P Yes?”
“Very far away in a sandy place. There are immense dunes,
immense white dunes of sand on every side, like mountains.
2O8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Near at hand there is a gleam of many fires. They are lit in the
market-place of a desert city. Among the dunes, with camels
picketed behind it, there is a tent y 3
She pointed to the triangle traced upon the sand.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “It is my tent.”
“He sees you there, as he saw you in the palanquin. But
now it is night and you are quite alone. You are not asleep.
Something keeps you awake. You are excited. You go out
of the tent upon the dunes and look towards the fires of the city.
He hears the jackals howling all around you, and sees the skele-
tons of dead camels white under the moon.”
She shuddered in spite of herself.
“There is something tremendous in your soul. He says it is
as if all the date palms of the desert bore their fruit together,
and in all the dry places, where men and camels have died of
thirst in bygone years, running springs burst forth, and as if the
sand were covered with millions of golden flowers big as the
flower of the aloe.”
“But then it is joy, it must be joy!”
“He says it is great joy.”
“Then why does he look like that, breathe like that?”
She indicated the Diviner, who was trembling where he
crouched, and breathing heavily, and always sweating like one in
agony.
“There is more,” said the Count, slowly.
“Tell me.”
“You stand alone upon the dunes and you look towards the
city. He hears the tom-toms beating, and distant cries as if
there were a fantasia. Then he sees a figure among the dunes
coming towards you.” **
“Who is it?” she asked.
He did not answer. But she did not wish him to answer.
She had spoken without meaning to speak.
“You watch this figure. It comes to you, walking heavily.”
“Walking heavily P”
“That's what he says. The dates shrivel on the palms, the
streams dry up, the flowers droop and die in the sand. In the
city the tom-toms faint away and the red fires fade away. All is
dark and silent. And then he sees
“Wait!” Domini said almost sharply.
He sat looking at her. She pressed her hands together.
In her dark face, with its heavy eyebrows and strong, generous
mouth, a contest showed, a struggle between some quick desire
THE GARDEN 2O9
and some more sluggish but determined reluctance. In a
moment she spoke again.
“I won't hear anything more, please.”
“But you said ‘whatever it may be.’”
“Yes. But I won’t hear anything more.”
She spoke very quietly, with determination.
The Diviner was beginning to move his hands again, to make
fresh patterns in the sand, to speak swiftly once more.
“Shall I stop him?”
“ Please.” -
“Then would you mind going out into the garden? I will
join you in a moment. Take care not to disturb him.”
She got up with precaution, held her skirts together with her
hands, and slipped softly out on to the garden path. For a
moment she was inclined to wait there, to look back and see
what was happening in the fumoir. But she resisted her in-
clination, and walked on slowly till she reached the bench where
she had sat an hour before with Androvsky. There she sat
down and waited. In a few minutes she saw the Count coming
towards her alone. His face was very grave, but lightened with
a slight smile when he saw her.
“He has gone?” she asked.
( ( Yes.”
He was about to sit beside her, but she said quickly:
“Would you mind going back to the jamelon tree?”
“Where we sat this morning?”
“Was it only—yes.”
“Certainly.”
“Oh, but you are going away to-morrow ! You have a lot to
do probably?” -
“Nothing. My men will arrange everything.”
She got up, and they walked in silence till they saw once
more the immense spaces of the desert bathed in the afternoon
sun. As Domini looked at them again she knew that their
wonder, their meaning, had increased for her. The steady
crescendo that was beginning almost to frighten her was main-
tained—the crescendo of the voice of the Sahara. To what
tremendous demonstration was this crescendo tending, to what
ultimate glory or terror? She felt that her soul was as yet too
undeveloped to conceive. The Diviner had been right. There
was a veil around it, like the veil of the womb that hides the un-
born child.
|Under the jamelon tree she sat down once more.
2 IO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“May I light a cigar?” the Count asked.
( ( DO.”
He struck a match, lit a cigar, and sat down on her left, by
the garden wall.
“Tell me frankly,” he said. “Do you wish to talk or to be
silent?”
“I wish to speak to you.”
“I am sorry now I asked you to test Alouí's powers.”
{ { Why? } }
“Because I fear they made an unpleasant impression upon
you.”
“That was not why I made you stop him.”
& & No P 3 y
“You don’t understand me. I was not afraid. I can only
say that, but I can't give you my reason for stopping him. I
wished to tell you that it was not fear.”
“I believe—I know that you are fearless,” he said with an
unusual warmth. “You are sure that I don't understand
P 3 y
you e tº y 3 y
Remember the refrain of the Freed Negroes' song!
“Ah, yes—those black fellows. But I know something of
you, Miss Enfilden—yes, I do.”
“I would rather you did—you and your garden.”
“And—some day—I should like you to know a little more
of me.”
“Thank you. When will you come back?”
“I can’t tell. But you are not leaving?”
“Not yet.”
The idea of leaving Beni-Mora troubled her heart strangely.
“No, I am too happy here.”
“Are you really happy?”
“At any rate I am happier than I have ever been before.”
“You are on the verge.”
He was looking at her with eyes in which there was tender-
ness, but suddenly they flashed fire, and he exclaimed:
“My desert land must not bring you despair.”
She was startled by his sudden vehemence.
“What I would not hear!” she said. “You know it!”
“It is not my fault. I am ready to tell it to you.”
“No. But do you believe it? Do you believe that man can
read the future in the sand 2 How can it be?”
“How can a thousand things be? How can these desert
men stand in fire, with their naked feet set on burning brands,
THE GARDEN 2 II
with burning brands under their armpits, and not be burned 2
How can they pierce themselves with skewers and cut them-
selves with knives and no blood flow But I told you the first
day I met you; the desert always makes me the same gift when I
return to it.”
“What gift?”
“The gift of belief.”
“Then you do believe in that man—Alouif "
“Do you?”
“I can only say that it seemed to me as if it might be
divination. If I had not felt that I should not have stopped
it. I should have treated it as a game.” g
“It impressed you as it impresses me. Well, for both of us
the desert has gifts. Let us accept them fearlessly. It is the
will of Allah.”
She remembered her vision of the pale procession. Would
she walk in it at last?
“You are as fatalistic as an Arab,” she said.
“And you?”
“Il " she answered simply. “I believe that I am in the
hands of God, and I know that perfect love can never harm
me.”
After a moment he said, gently:
“Miss Enfilden, I want to ask something of you.”
( ( Yes? y 5
“Will you make a sacrifice? To-morrow I start at dawn.
Will you be here to wish me God speed on my journey?”
“Of course I will.”
“It will be good of you. I shall value it from you. And—
and when—if you ever make your long journey on that road—
the route to the south—I will wish you Allah's blessing in the
Garden of Allah.”
He spoke with solemnity, almost with passion, and she felt
the tears very near her eyes. Then they sat in silence, looking
out over the desert.
And she heard its voices calling.
CHAPTER XIII
ON the following morning, before dawn, Domini awoke, stirred
from sleep by her anxiety, persistent even in what seemed
unconsciousness, to speed Count Anteoni upon his desert journey.
2 I 2 . THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
She did not know why he was going, but she felt that some great
issue in his life hung upon the accomplishment of the purpose
with which he set out, and without affectation she ardently
desired that accomplishment. As soon as she awoke she lit a
candle and glanced at her watch. She knew by the hour that
the dawn was near, and she got up at once and made her toilet.
She had told Batouch to be at the hotel door before sunrise to
accompany her to the garden, and she wondered if he were
below. A stillness as of deep night prevailed in the house, mak-
ing her movements, while she dressed, seem unnaturally loud.
When she put on her hat, and looked into the glass to see if it
were just at the right angle, she thought her face, always white,
was haggard. This departure made her a little sad. It sug-
gested to her the instability of circumstance, the perpetual
change that occurs in life. The going of her kind host made
her own going more possible than before, even more likely.
Some words from the Bible kept on running through her brain:
“Here have we no continuing city.” In the silent darkness
their cadence held an ineffable melancholy. Her mind heard
them as the ear, in a pathetic moment, hears sometimes a distant
strain of music wailing like a phantom through the invisible.
And the everlasting journeying of all created things oppressed
her heart.
When she had buttoned her jacket and drawn on her gloves
she went to the French window and pushed back the shutters.
A wan semi-darkness looked in upon her. Again she wondered
whether Batouch had come. It seemed to her unlikely. She
could not imagine that anyone in all the world was up and
purposeful but herself. This hour seemed created as a curtain
for unconsciousness. Very softly she stepped out upon the
verandah and looked over the parapet. She could see the white
road, mysteriously white, below. It was deserted. She leaned
down.
“Batouch ” she called softly. “Batouch
He might be hidden under the arcade, sleeping in his burnous.
“Batouch | Batouch ”
No answer came. She stood by the parapet, waiting and
looking down the road.
All the stars had faded, yet there was no suggestion of the
sun. She faced an unrelenting austerity. For a moment she
thought of this atmosphere, this dense stillness, this gravity of
vague and shadowy trees, as the environment of those who had
erred, of the lost spirits of men who had died in mortal sin.
| y,
THE GARDEN 2 I 3
Almost she expected to see the desperate shade of her dead
father pass between the black stems of the palm trees, vanish into
the grey mantle that wrapped the hidden world.
“Batouch | Batouch ”
He was not there. That was certain. She resolved to set
out alone and went back into her bedroom to get her revolver.
When she came out again with it in her hand Androvsky was
standing on the verandah just outside her window. He took off
his hat and looked from her face to the revolver. She was
startled by his appearance, for she had not heard his step, and
had been companioned by a sense of irreparable solitude. This
was the first time she had seen him since he vanished from the
garden on the previous day. º
“You are going out, Madame?” he said.
{ { Yes.”
“Not alone P’’
“I believe so. Unless I find Batouch below.” *
She slipped the revolver into the pocket of the loose coat she
WOre.
“But it is dark.”
“It will be day very soon. Look!”
She pointed towards the east, where a light, delicate and
mysterious as the distant lights in the opal, was gently pushing’
in the sky.
“You ought not to go alone.”
“ Unless Batouch is there I must. I have given a promise
and I must keep it. There is no danger.”
He hesitated, looking at her with an anxious, almost a sus-
picious, expression.
“Good-bye, Monsieur Androvsky.”
She went towards the staircase. He followed her quickly to
the head of it. -
“Don’t trouble to come down with me.” *
“If–if Batouch is not there—might not I guard you,
Madame?” She remembered the Count's words and an-
swered:
“Let me tell you where I am going. I am going to say
good-bye to Count Anteoni before he starts for his desert
journey.”
Androvsky stood there without a word.
“Now, do you care to come if I don’t find Batouch?, Mind,
I'm not the least afraid.”
“Perhaps he is there—if you told him.”
2I4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He muttered the words. His whole manner had changed.
Now he looked more than suspicious—cloudy and fierce.
“Possibly.”
She began to descend the stairs. He did not follow her, but
stood looking after her. When she reached the arcade it was
deserted. Batouch had forgotten or had overslept himself.
She could have walked on under the roof that was the floor
of the verandah, but instead she stepped out into the road.
Androvsky was above her by the parapet. She glanced up and
said: -
“He is not here, but it is of no consequence. Dawn is
breaking. Au revoir/*
Slowly he took off his hat. As she went away down the road
he was holding it in his hand, looking after her.
“He does not like the Count,” she thought.
At the corner she turned into the street where the sand
diviner had his bazaar, and as she neared his door she was
aware of a certain trepidation. She did not want to see those
piercing eyes looking at her in the semi-darkness, and she hur-
ried her steps. But her anxiety was needless. All the doors
were shut, all the inhabitants doubtless wrapped in sleep. Yet,
when she had gained the end of the street, she looked back, half
expecting to see an apparition of a thin figure, a tortured face, to
hear a voice, like a goblin's voice, calling after her. Midway
down the street there was a man coming slowly behind her. For
a moment she thought it was the Diviner in pursuit, but some-
thing in the gait soon showed her her mistake. There was a
heaviness in the movement of this man quite unlike the lithe and
serpentine agility of Alouí. Although she could not see the face,
or even distinguish the costume in the morning twilight, she
knew it for Androvsky. From a distance he was watching over
her. She did not hesitate, but walked on quickly again. She did
not wish him to know that she had seen him. When she came
to the long road that skirted the desert she met the breeze of
dawn that blows out of the east across the flats, and drank in
its celestial purity. Between the palms, far away towards Sidi-
Zerzour, above the long indigo line of the Sahara, there rose a
curve of deep red gold. The sun was coming up to take posses-
Sion of his waiting world. She longed to ride out to meet him,
to give him a passionate welcome in the sand, and the opening
words of the Egyptian “Adoration of the Sun by the Perfect
Souls' came to her lips:
“Hommage a Toi. Dieu Soleil. Seigneur du Ciel, Roi sur
THE GARDEN 2I 5
la Terre! Lion du Soir! Grande Ame divine, vivante à
toujours.”
Why had she not ordered her horse to ride a little way with
Count Anteoni? She might have pretended that she was start-
ing on her great journey.
The red gold curve became a semi-circle of burnished glory
resting upon the deep blue, then a full circle that detached itself
majestically and mounted calmly up the cloudless sky. A stream
of light poured into the oasis, and Domini, who had paused for a
moment in silent worship, went on swiftly through the negro
village which was all astir, and down the track to the white villa.
She did not glance round again to see whether Androvsky was
still following her, for, since the sun had come, she had the
confident sensation that he was no longer near.
He had surely given her into the guardianship of the sun.
The door of the garden stood wide open, and, as she entered,
she saw three magnificent horses prancing upon the sweep of
sand in the midst of a little group of Arabs. Smain greeted her
with graceful warmth and begged her to follow him to the
fumoir, where the Count was waiting for her.
“It is good of you!” the Count said, meeting her in the
doorway. “I relied on you, you see! ”
Breakfast for two was scattered upon the little smoking-
tables; coffee, eggs, rolls, fruit, sweetmeats. And everywhere
sprigs of orange blossom filled the cool air with delicate
SWCetneSS.
“How delicious!” she exclaimed. “A breakfast here! But
—no, not there!”
“Why not?”
“That is exactly where he was.”
“Alouil How superstitious you are!”
He moved her table. She sat down near the doorway and
poured out coffee for them both.
“You look workmanlike.”
She glanced at his riding-dress and long whip. Smoked
glasses hung across his chest by a thin cord.
“I shall have some hard riding, but I’m tough, though you
may not think it. I’ve covered many a league of my friend in
bygone years.”
He tapped an eggshell smartly, and began to eat with
appetite.
“How gravely gay you are!” she said, lifting the steaming
coffee to her lips.
2I 6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He smiled. -
“Yes. To-day I am happy, as a pious man is happy when,
after a long illness, he goes once more to church.”
“The desert seems to be everything to you.”
“I feel that I am going out to freedom, to more than free-
dom.” He stretched out his arms above his head.
“Yet you have stayed always in this garden all these days.”
“I was waiting for my summons, as you will wait for yours.”
“What summons could I have?”
“It will come!” he said with conviction. “It will come!”
She was silent, thinking of the diviner's vision in the sand, of the
caravan of camels disappearing in the storm towards the south.
Presently she asked him:
“Are you ever coming back?”
He looked at her in surprise, then laughed.
“Of course. What are you thinking?”
“That perhaps you will not come back, that perhaps the
desert will keep you.”
“And my garden?”
She looked out across the tiny sand-path and the running
rill of water to the great trees stirred by the cool breeze of
dawn.
“It would miss you.”
After a moment, during which his bright eyes followed hers,
he said: - -
“Do you know, I have a great belief in the intuitions of
good women?”
( ( Yes? } }
“An almost fanatical belief. Will you answer me a question
at once, without consideration, without any time for thought?”
“If you ask me to.”
“I do ask you.”
“Then ? »
“Do you see me in this garden any more?”
A voice answered:
( { No.” -
It was her own, yet it seemed another's voice, with which sh
had nothing to do.
A great feeling of sorrow swept over her as she heard it.
“Do come back! ” she said.
The Count had got up. The brightness of his eyes was
obscured.
“If not here, we shall meet again,” he said slowly.
THE GARDEN 217
“Where 2 ”
“In the desert.”
“Did the Diviner
She got up too.
“It is time for you to start?”
“Nearly.”
A sort of constraint had settled over them. She felt it pain-
fully for a moment. Did it proceed from something in his
mind or in hers? She could not tell. They walked slowly
down one of the little paths and presently found themselves
before the room in which sat the purple dog.
“If I am never to come back I must say good-bye to him,”
the Count said.
“But you will come back.”
“That voice said ‘No.'”
“It was a lying voice.”
“Perhaps.”
They looked in at the window and met the ferocious eyes of
the dog. -
“And if I never come back will he bay the moon for his
old master?” said the Count with a whimsical, yet sad, smile.
“I put him here. And will these trees, many of which I
planted, whisper a regret? Absurd, isn’t it, Miss Enfilden I
never can feel that the growing things in my garden do not
know me as I know them.”
“Someone will regret you if
“Will you? Will you really * *
{ { Yes.”
“I believe it.”
He looked at her. She could see, by the expression of
his eyes, that he was on the point of saying something, but
was held back by some fighting sensation, perhaps by some
TeSC1 VC.
“What is it?”
“May I speak frankly to you without offence?” he asked.
“I am really rather old, you know.”
“Do speak.”
“That guest of mine yesterday
“Monsieur Androvsky P”
“Yes. He interested me enormously, profoundly.”
“Really 1. Yet he was at his worst yesterday.”
“Perhaps that was why. At any rate, he interested me more
than any man I have seen for years. But—”
P No, don’t tell me.”
5 y
y )
2 I 8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He paused, looking in at the little chamber where the dog
kept guard.
“But my interest was complicated by a feeling that I
was face to face with a human being who was at odds
with life, with himself, even with his Creator—a man who
had done what the Arabs never do—defied Allah in Allah's
garden.”
{ { Oh! } }
She uttered a little exclamation of pain. It seemed to her
that he was gathering up and was expressing scattered, half
formless thoughts of hers.
“You know,” he continued, looking more steadily into the
room of the dog, “ that in Algeria there is a floating population
composed of many mixed elements. I could tell you strange
stories of tragedies that have occurred in this land, even here in
Beni-Mora, tragedies of violence, of greed, of tragedies that
were not brought about by Arabs.”
He turned suddenly and looked right into her eyes.
“But why am I saying all this?” he suddenly exclaimed.
“What is written is written, and such women as you are
guarded.”
“Guarded ? By whom?”
“By their own souls.”
“I am not afraid,” she said quietly.
“Need you tell me that? Miss Enfilden, I scarcely know
why I have said even as little as I have said. For I am, as you
know, a fatalist. But certain people, very few, so awaken our
regard that they make us forget our own convictions, and might
even lead us to try to tamper with the designs of the Almighty.
Whatever is to be for you, you will be able to endure. That
I know. Why should I, or anyone, seek to know more for you?
But still there are moments in which the bravest want a human
hand to help them, a human voice to comfort them. In the
desert, wherever I may be—and I shall tell you—I am at your
service.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
She gave him her hand. He held it almost as a father or a
guardian might have held it. ---
“And this garden is yours day and night—Smain knows.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
The shrill whinnying of a horse came to them from a distance.
Their hands fell apart. Count Anteoni looked round him
slowly at the great cocoanut tree, at the shaggy grass of the
THE GARDEN 2 IQ
lawn, at the tall bamboos and the drooping mulberry trees. She
saw that he was taking a silent farewell of them.
“This was a waste,” he said at last with a half-stifled sigh.
“I turned it into a little Eden and now I am leaving it.”
“For a time.” -
“And if it were for ever? Well, the great thing is to let the
waste within one be turned into an Eden, if that is possible.
And yet how many human beings strive against the great
Gardener. At any rate I will not be one of them.”
“And I will not be one.”
“Shall we say good-bye here?”
“No. Let us say it from the wall, and let me see you ride
away into the desert.”
She had forgotten for the moment that his route was the
road through the oasis. He did not remind her of it. It was
easy to ride across the desert and join the route where it came
out from the last palms.
“So be it. Will you go to the wall then?”
He touched her hand again and walked away towards the
villa, slowly on the pale silver of the sand. When his figure
was hidden by the trunks of the trees Domini made her way to
the wide parapet. She sat down on one of the tiny seats cut in
it, leaned her cheek in her hand and waited. The sun was
gathering strength, but the air was still deliciously cool, almost
cold, and the desert had not yet put on its aspect of fiery desola-
tion. It looked dreamlike and romantic, not only in its dis-
tances, but near at hand. There must surely be dew, she
fancied, in the Garden of Allah. She could see no one travelling
in it, only some far away camels grazing. In the dawn the
desert was the home of the breeze, of gentle sunbeams and of
liberty. Presently she heard the noise of horses cantering near
at hand, and Count Anteoni, followed by two Arab attendants,
came round the bend of the wall and drew up beneath her. He
rode on a high red Arab saddle, and a richly-ornamented gun
was slung in an embroidered case behind him on the right-hand
side. A broad and soft brown hat kept the sun from his fore-
head. The two attendants rode on a few paces and waited in
the shadow of the wall.
“Don’t you wish you were going out?” he said. “Out into
that?” And he pointed with his whip towards the dreamlike
blue of the far horizon. She leaned over, looking down at him
and at his horse, which fidgeted and arched his white neck and
dropped foam from his black flexible lips.
22O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“No,” she answered after a moment of thought. “I must
speak the truth, you know.”
“To me, always.”
“I feel that you were right, that my summons has not yet
come to me.”
“And when it comes?”
“I shall obey it without fear, even if I go in the storm and
the darkness.”
He glanced at the radiant sky, at the golden beams Slanting
down upon the palms.
“The Coran says: ‘The fate of every man have We bound
about his neck.’ May yours be as Serene, as beautiful, as a
string of pearls.”
“But I have never cared to wear pearls,” she answered.
“No 2 What are your stones?”
“Rubies.”
“Blood | No others?”
“Sapphires.”
“The sky at night.”
“And opals.”
“Fires gleaming across the white of moonlit dunes. Do you
remember?”
“I remember.”
“And you do not ask me for the end of the Diviner's vision
even now * *
( ( NO.”
She hesitated for an instant. Then she added:
“I will tell you why. It seemed to me that there was
another's fate in it as well as my own, and that to hear would be
to intrude, perhaps, upon another's secrets.”
“That was your reason 2 ” *
“My only reason.” And then she added, repeating con-
sciously Androvsky's words: “I think there are things that
should be let alone.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
A stronger breath of the cool wind came over the flats, and all
the palm trees rustled. Through the garden there was a delicate
stir of life.
“My children are murmuring farewell,” said the Count. “I
hear them. It is time! Good-bye, Miss Enfilden—my friend, if
I may call you so. May Allah have you in his keeping, and,
when your summons comes, obey it—alone.”
As he said the last word his grating voice dropped to a deep
THE GARDEN 22 I
note of earnest, almost solemn, gravity. Then he lifted his hat,
touched his horse with his heel, and galloped away into the sun.
Domini watched the three riders till they were only specks
on the surface of the desert. Then they became one with it, and
were lost in the dreamlike radiance of the morning. But she did
not move. She sat with her eyes fixed up on the blue horizon.
A great loneliness had entered into her spirit. Till Count
Anteoni had gone she did not realise how much she had become
accustomed to his friendship, how near their sympathies had been.
But directly those tiny, moving specks became one with the
desert she knew that a gap had opened in her life. It might be
small, but it seemed dark and deep. For the first time the desert,
which she had hitherto regarded as a giver, had taken something
from her. And now, as she sat looking at it, while the sun grew
stronger and the light more brilliant, while the mountains
gradually assumed a harsher aspect, and the details of things, in
the dawn so delicately clear, became, as it were, more piercing in
their sharpness, she realised a new and terrible aspect of it. That
which has the power to bestow has another power. She had seen
the great procession of those who had received gifts of the desert's
hands. Would she some day, or in the night when the sky was
like a Sapphire, see the procession of those from whom the desert
had taken away perhaps their dreams, perhaps their hopes,
perhaps even all that they passionately loved and had desper-
ately clung to?
And in which of the two processions would she walk?
She got up with a sigh. The garden had become tragic to
her for the moment, full of a brooding melancholy. As she
turned to leave it she resolved to go to the priest. She had never
yet entered his house. Just then she wanted to speak to some-
one with whom she could be as a little child, to whom she could
liberate some part of her spirit simply, certain of a simple, yet not
foolish, reception of it by one to whom she could look up. She
desired to be not with the friend so much as with the spiritual
director. Something was alive within her, something of distress,
almost of apprehension, which needed the soothing hand, not of
human love, but of religion.
When she reached the priest's house Beni-Mora was astir with
a pleasant bustle of life. The military note pealed through its
Symphony. Spahis were galloping along the white roads.
Tirailleurs went by bearing despatches. Zouaves stood under
the palms, staring calmly at the morning, their sunburned hands
loosely clasped upon muskets whose butts rested in the sand.
222 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
But Domini scarcely noticed the brilliant gaiety of the life
about her. She was preoccupied, even sad. Yet, as she entered
the little garden of the priest, and tapped gently at his door, a
sensation of hope sprang up in her heart, born of the Sustaining
power of her religion.
An Arab boy answered her knock, said that the Father was in
and led her at once to a small, plainly-furnished room, with
whitewashed walls, and a window opening on to an enclosure at
the back, where several large palm trees reared their tufted heads
above the smoothly-raked sand. In a moment the priest came
in, Smiling with pleasure and holding out his hands in welcome.
“Father,” she said at once, “I am come to have a little talk
with you. Have you a few moments to give me?”
“Sit down, my child,” he said.
He drew forward a straw chair for her and took one opposite.
“You are not in trouble?” -
“I don’t know why I should be, but 3 J.
She was silent for a moment. Then she said:
“I want to tell you a little about my life.”
He looked at her kindly without a word.
His eyes were an invitation for her to speak, and, without
further invitation, in as few and simple words as possible, she
told him why she had come to Beni-Mora, and something of her
parents' tragedy and its effect upon her.
“I wanted to renew my heart, to find myself,” she said.
“My life has been cold, careless. I never lost my faith, but I
almost forgot that I had it. I made little use of it. I let it
rust.”
“Many do that, but a time comes when they feel that the
great weapon with which alone we can fight the sorrows and
dangers of the world must be kept bright, or it may fail us in the
hour of need.”
( { Yes.”
“And this is an hour of need for you. But, indeed, is there
ever an hour that is not?”
“I feel to-day, I y 3
She stopped, suddenly conscious of the vagueness of her appre-
hension. It made her position difficult, speech hard for her.
She felt that she wanted something, yet scarcely knew what, or
exactly why she had come. -
“I have been saying good-bye to Count Anteoni,” she re-
sumed. “He has gone on a desert journey.”
“For long?”
THE GARDEN - 223
“I don’t know, but I feel that it will be.”
“He comes and goes very suddenly. Often he is here and I
do not even know it.” -
“He is a strange man, but I think he is a good man.”
As she spoke about him she began to realise that something
in him had roused the desire in her to come to the priest.
“And he sees far,” she added.
She looked steadily at the priest, who was waiting quietly to
hear more. She was glad he did not trouble her mind just then
by trying to help her to go on, to be explicit.
“I came here to find peace,” she continued. “And I thought
I had found it. I thought so till to-day.”
“We only find peace in one place, and only there by our own
will according with God’s.”
“You mean within ourselves.”
“Is it not so?”
“Yes. Then I was foolish to travel in search of it.”
“I would not say that. Place assists the heart, I think, and
the way of life. I thought so once.”
“When you wished to be a monk?”
A deep sadness came into his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “And even now I find it very difficult to
say, ‘ It was not thy will, and so it is not mine.' But would you
care to tell me if anything has occurred recently to trouble you?”
“Something has occurred, Father.”
More excitement came into her face and manner.
“Do you think,” she went on, “that it is right to try to avoid
what life seems to be bringing to one, to seek shelter from—from
the storm? Don’t monks do that? Please forgive me if y )
“Sincerity will not hurt me,” he interrupted quietly. “If it
did I should indeed be unworthy of my calling. Perhaps it is
not right for all. Perhaps that is why I am here instead of 5 y
“Ah, but I remember, you wanted to be one of the frères
armés.”
“That was my first hope. But you ’’—very simply he turned
from his troubles to hers—“ you are hesitating, are you not,
between two courses?”
“I scarcely know. But I want you to tell me. Ought we
not always to think of others more than of ourselves?”
“So long as we take care not to put ourselves in too great
danger. The soul should be brave, but not foolhardy.”
His voice had changed, had become stronger, even a little
Stern.
224 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“There are risks that no good Christian ought to run: it is
not cowardice, it is wisdom that avoids the Evil One. I have
known people who seemed almost to think it was their mission
to convert the fallen angels. They confused their powers with
the powers that belong to God only.”
“Yes, but—it is so difficult to—if a human being were pos-
sessed by the devil, would not you try—would you not go near to
that person?”
“If I had prayed, and been told that any power was given me
to do what Christ did.”
“To cast out—yes, I know. But sometimes that power is
given—even to women.”
“Perhaps especially to them. I think the devil has more fear
of a good mother than of many saints.”
Domini realised almost with agony in that moment how her
own soul had been stripped of a precious armour. A feeling of
bitter helplessness took possession of her, and of contempt for
what she now suddenly looked upon as foolish pride. The priest
saw that his words had hurt her, yet he did not just then try to
pour balm upon the wound.
“You came to me to-day as to a spiritual director, did you
not?” he asked.
“Yes, Father.”
“Yet you do not wish to be frank with me. Isn’t that
true?”
There was a piercing look in the eyes he fixed upon her.
“Yes,” she answered bravely.
“Why? Cannot you—at least will not you tell me?”
A similar reason to that which had caused her to refuse to
hear what the Diviner had seen in the sand caused her now to
anSWer:
“There is something I cannot say. I am sure I am right not
to say it.”
“Do you wish me to speak frankly to you, my child?”
“Yes, you may.”
“You have told me enough of your past life to make me feel
sure that for some time to come you ought to be very careful in
regard to your faith. By the mercy of God you have been pre-
served from the greatest of all dangers—the danger of losing
your belief in the teachings of the only true Church. You have
come here to renew your faith which, not killed, has been
stricken, reduced, may I not say? to a sort of invalidism. Are
you sure you are in a condition yet to help *—he hesitated obvi-
THE GARDEN 225
ously, then slowly—“others? There are periods in which one
cannot do what one may be able to do in the far future. The
convalescent who is just tottering in the new attempt to walk is
not wise enough to lend an arm to another. To do so may seem
nobly unselfish, but is it not folly? And then, my child, we
ought to be scrupulously aware what is our real motive for wish-
ing to assist another. Is it of God, or is it of ourselves? Is it a
personal desire to increase a perhaps unworthy, a worldly happi-
ness? Egoism is a parent of many children, and often they do
not recognise their father.”
Just for a moment Domini felt a heat of anger rise within her.
She did not express it, and did not know that she had shown a
sign of it till she heard Father Roubier say:
“If you knew how often I have found that what for a mo-
ment I believed to be my noblest aspirations had sprung from a
tiny, hidden seed of egoism I ?”
At once her anger died away.
“That is terribly true,” she said. “Of us all, I mean.”
She got up.
“You are going?”
“Yes. I want to think something out. You have made me
want to. I must do it. Perhaps I’ll come again.”
“ Do. I want to help you if I can.”
There was such a heartfelt sound in his voice that impulsively
she held out her hand.
“I know you do. Perhaps you will be able to.”
But even as she said the last words doubt crept into her
mind, even into her voice.
The priest came to his gate to see Domini off, and directly
she had left him she noticed that Androvsky was under the
arcade and had been a witness of their parting. As she went
past him and into the hotel she saw that he looked greatly dis-
turbed and excited. His face was lit up by the now fiery glare
of the sun, and when, in passing, she nodded to him, and he
took off his hat, he cast at her a glance that was like an accusa-
tion. As soon as she gained the verandah she heard his heavy
step upon the stair. For a moment she hesitated. Should she go
into her room and so avoid him, or remain and let him speak to
her? She knew that he was following her with that purpose.
Her mind was almost instantly made up. She crossed the veran-
dah and sat down in the low chair that was always placed out-
side her French window. Androvsky followed her and stood
beside her. He did not say anything for a moment, nor did she.
226 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Then he spoke with a sort of passionate attempt to sound care-
less and indifferent.
“Monsieur Anteoni has gone, I suppose, Madame?”
“Yes, he has gone. I reached the garden safely, you
see.”
“Batouch came later. He was much ashamed when he found
you had gone. I believe he is afraid, and is hiding himself till
your anger shall have passed away.”
She laughed.
“Batouch could not easily make me angry. I am not like
you, Monsieur Androvsky.”
Her sudden challenge startled him, as she had meant it
should. He moved quickly, as at an unexpected touch.
“I, Madame?”
“Yes; I think you are very often angry. I think you are
angry now.” *,
His face was flooded with red.
“Why should I be angry 2 º’ he stammered, like a man com-
pletely taken aback. -
“How can I tell? But, as I came in just now, you looked at
me as if you wanted to punish me.”
“I—I am afraid—it seems that my face says a great deal that
—that } }
“Your lips would not choose to say. Well, it does. Why
are you angry with me?” She gazed at him mercilessly, study-
ing the trouble of his face. The combative part of her nature
had been roused by the glance he had cast at her. What right
had he, had any man, to look at her like that?
Her blunt directness lashed him back into the firmness he had
lost. She felt in a moment that there was a fighting capacity in
him equal, perhaps superior, to her own.
“When I saw you come from the priest's house, Madame, I
felt as if you had been there speaking about me——about my con-
duct of yesterday.”
“Indeed! Why should I do that?”
“I thought as you had kindly wished me to come
He stopped.
“Well?” she said, in rather a hard voice.
“Madame, I don't know what I thought, what I think—only
I cannot bear that you should apologise for any conduct of mine.
Indeed, I canot bear it.”
He looked fearfully excited and moved two or three steps
away, then returned.
} }
THE GARDEN 227
“Were you doing that?” he asked. “Were you, Madame?”
“I never mentioned your name to Father Roubier, nor did he
to me,” she answered.
For a moment he looked relieved, then a sudden suspicion
seemed to strike him.
“But without mentioning my name?” he said.
“You wish to accuse me of quibbling, of insincerity, then!”
she exclaimed with a heat almost equal to his own.
“No, Madame, no! Madame, I–I have suffered much. I
am suspicious of everybody. Forgive me, forgive me!”
He spoke almost with distraction. In his manner there was
Something desperate. º
“I am sure you have suffered,” she said more gently, yet
with a certain inflexibility at which she herself wondered, yet
which she could not control. “You will always suffer if you
cannot govern yourself. You will make people dislike you, be
suspicious of you.” -
“Suspicious! Who is suspicious of me?” he asked sharply.
“Who has any right to be suspicious of me?”
She looked up and fancied that, for an instant, she saw some-
thing as ugly as terror in his eyes.
“Surely you know that people don't ask permission to be
suspicious of their fellow-men 2 ” she said.
“No one here has any right to consider me or my actions,” he
said, fierceness blazing out of him. “I am a free man, and can
do as I will. No one has any right—no one!”
Domini felt as if the words were meant for her, as if he had
struck her. She was so angry that she did not trust herself to
speak, and instinctively she put her hand up to her breast, as a
woman might who had received a blow. She touched something
small and hard that was hidden beneath her gown. It was the
little wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown into the stream at
Sidi-Zerzour. As she realised that her anger died. She was
humbled and ashamed. What was her religion if, at a word, she
could be stirred to such a feeling of passion ?
“I, at least, am not suspicious of you,” she said, choosing the
very words that were most difficult for her to say just then.
“And Father Roubier—if you included him—is too fine-hearted
to cherish unworthy suspicions of anyone.”
She got up. Hg voice was full of a subdued, but strong,
emotion. &
“Oh, Monsieur Androvsky!” she said. “ Do go over and see
him. Make friends with him. Never mind yesterday. I want
228 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
you to be friends with him, with everyone here. Let us make
Beni-Mora a place of peace and good will.” .
Then she went across the verandah quickly to her room, and
passed in, closing the window behind her.
Déjeuner was brought into her sitting-room. She ate it in
solitude, and late in the afternoon she went out on the verandah.
She had made up her mind to spend an hour in the church. She
had told Father Roubier that she wanted to think something out.
Since she had left him the burden upon her mind had become
heavier, and she longed to be alone in the twilight near the altar.
Perhaps she might be able to cast down the burden there. In
the verandah she stood for a moment and thought how wonder-
ful was the difference between dawn and sunset in this land.
The gardens, that had looked like a place of departed and un-
happy spirits when she rose that day, were now bathed in the
luminous rays of the declining sun, were alive with the softly-
calling voices of children, quivered with romance, with a dream-
like, golden charm. The stillness of the evening was intense,
enclosing the children's voices, which presently died away; but
while she was marvelling at it she was disturbed by a sharp noise
of knocking. She looked in the direction from which it came
and saw Androvsky standing before the priest's door. As she
looked, the door was opened by the Arab boy and Androvsky
went in. -
Then she did not think of the gardens any more. With a
radiant expression in her eyes she went down and crossed over
to the church. It was empty. She went softly to a prie-dieu
near the altar, knelt down and covered her eyes with her
hands.
At first she did not pray, or even think consciously, but just
rested in the attitude which always seems to bring humanity
nearest its God. And, almost immediately, she began to feel a
quietude of spirit, as if something delicate descended upon her,
and lay lightly about her, shrouding her from the troubles of the
world. How sweet it was to have the faith that brings with it
such tender protection, to have the trust that keeps alive through
the swift passage of the years the spirit of the little child. How
Sweet it was to be able to rest. There was at this moment a
sensation of deep joy within her. It grew in the silence of the
church, and, as it grew, brought with it presently a growing con-
Sciousness of the lives beyond those walls, of other spirits
capable of Suffering, of conflict, and of peace, not far away; till
she knew that this present blessing of happiness came to her, not
THE GARDEN 229
only from the scarce-realised thought of God, but also from the
scarce-realised thought of man.
Close by, divided from her only by a little masonry, a
few feet of Sand, a few palm trees, Androvsky was with the
priest.
Still kneeling, with her face between her hands, Domini be-
gan to think and pray. The memory of her petition to Notre
Dame de la Garde came back to her. Before she knew Africa
she had prayed for men wandering, and perhaps unhappy, there,
for men whom she would probably never see again, would never
know. And now that she was growing familiar with this land,
divined something of its wonders and its dangers, she prayed for
a man in it whom she did not know, who was very near to her
making a sacrifice of his prejudices, perhaps of his fears, at her
desire. She prayed for Androvsky without words, making of
her feelings of gratitude to him a prayer, and presently, in the
darkness framed by her hands, she seemed to see Liberty once
more, as in the shadows of the dancing-house, standing beside a
man who prayed far out in the glory of the desert. The storm,
spoken of by the Diviner, did not always rage. It was stilled to
hear his prayer. And the darkness had fled, and the light drew
near to listen. She pressed her face more strongly against her
hands, and began to think more definitely.
Was this interview with the priest the first step taken by
Androvsky towards the gift the desert held for him?
He must surely be a man who hated religion, or thought he
hated it.
Perhaps he looked upon it as a chain, instead of as the hammer
that strikes away the fetters from the slave.
Yet he had worn a crucifix.
She lifted her head, put her hand into her breast, and drew
out the crucifix. What was its history She wondered as she
looked at it. Had someone who loved him given it to him,
someone, perhaps, who grieved at his hatred of holiness, and
who fancied that this very humble symbol might one day, as the
humble symbols sometimes do, prove itself a little guide towards
shining truth? Had a woman given it to him?
She laid the cross down on the edge of the prie-dieu.
There was red fire gleaming now on the windows of the
church. She realised the pageant that was marching up the
west, the passion of the world as well as the purity which lay be-
yond the world. Her mind was disturbed. She glanced from
the red radiance on the glass to the dull brown wood of the
23O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
cross. Blood and agony had made it the mystical symbol that
it was—blood and agony.
She had something to think out. That burden was still upon
her mind, and now again she felt its weight, a weight that her
interview with the priest had not lifted. For she had not been
able to be quite frank with the priest. Something had held her
back from absolute sincerity, and so he had not spoken quite
plainly all that was in his mind. His words had been a little
vague, yet she had understood the meaning that lay behind them.
Really, he had warned her against Androvsky. There were
two men of very different types. One was unworldly as a child.
The other knew the world. Neither of them had any acquaint-
ance with Androvsky's history, and both had warned her. It
was instinct then that had spoken in them, telling them that he
was a man to be shunned, perhaps feared. And her own instinct?
What had it said? What did it say?
For a long time she remained in the church. But she could
not think clearly, reason calmly, or even pray passionately. For
a vagueness had come into her mind like the vagueness of
twilight that filled the space beneath the starry roof, softening
the crudeness of the ornaments, the garish colours of the plaster
saints. It seemed to her that her thoughts and feelings lost their
outlines, that she watched them fading like the shrouded forms
of Arabs fading in the tunnels of Mimosa. But as they vanished
surely they whispered, “That which is written is written.”
The mosques of Islam echoed these words, and surely this
little church that bravely stood among them.
“That which is written is written.”
Domini rose from her knees, hid the wooden cross once amore
in her breast, and went out into the evening.
As she left the church door something occurred which struck
the vagueness from her. She came upon Androvsky and the
priest. They were standing together at the latter's gate, which
he was in the act of opening to an accompaniment of joyous
barking from Bous-Bous. Both men looked strongly expressive,
as if both had been making an effort of some kind. She stopped
in the twilight to speak to them.
“Monsieur Androvsky has kindly been paying me a visit,”
said Father Roubier.
“I am glad,” Domini said. “We ought all to be friends
here.” -
There was a perceptible pause. Then Androvsky lifted his
hat.
THE GARDEN 23.I
“Good-evening, Madame,” he said. “Good-evening,
Father.” And he walked away quickly.
The priest looked after him and sighed profoundly.
“Oh, Madame!” he exclaimed, as if impelled to liberate his
mind to someone, “what is the matter with that man? What
is the matter?”
He stared fixedly into the twilight after Androvsky's retreat-
ing form.
“With Monsieur Androvsky P”
She spoke quietly, but her mind was full of apprehension, and
she looked searchingly at the priest.
“Yes. What can it be P’’
“But—I don’t understand.”
“Why did he come to see me?”
“I asked him to come.”
She blurted out the words without knowing why, only feeling
that she must speak the truth.
“You asked him I ?”
“Yes. I wanted you to be friends—and I thought perhaps
you might 5 y
{ { Yes? } }
“I wanted you to be friends.” She repeated it almost
stubbornly.
“I have never before felt so ill at ease with any human being,”
exclaimed the priest with tense excitement. “And yet I could
not let him go. Whenever he was about to leave me I was
impelled to press him to remain. We spoke of the most ordi-
nary things, and all the time it was as if we were in a great
tragedy. What is he? What can he be?” (He still looked
down the road.)
“I don’t know. I know nothing. He is a man travelling, as
other men travel.”
“Oh, no!”
“What do you mean, Father?”
“I mean that other travellers are not like this man.”
He leaned his thin hands heavily on the gate, and she saw,
by the expression of his eyes, that he was going to Say Something
startling.
“Madame,” he said, lowering his voice, “I did not speak
quite frankly to you this afternoon. You may, or you may not,
have understood what I meant. But now I will speak plainly.
As a priest I warn you, I warn you most solemnly, not to make
friends with this man,”
232 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
There was a silence, then Domini said:
“Please give me your reason for this warning.”
“That I can’t do.”
“Because you have no reason, or because it is not one you
care to tell me?”
“I have no reason to give. My reason is my instinct. I
know nothing of this man—I pity him. I shall pray for him.
He needs prayers, yes, he needs them. But you are a woman
out here alone. You have spoken to me of yourself, and I feel
it my duty to say that I advise you most earnestly to break off
your acquaintance with Monsieur Androvsky.”
“Do you mean that you think him evil?”
“I don’t know whether he is evil, I don’t know what he is.”
“I know he is not evil.”
The priest looked at her, wondering.
“You know—how 2 ”
“My instinct,” she said, coming a step nearer, and putting
her hand, too, on the gate near his. “Why should we desert
him 2 ”
“Desert him, Madame!”
Father Roubier's voice sounded amazed.
“Yes. You say he needs prayers. I know it. Father, are
not the first prayers, the truest, those that go most swiftly to
Heaven—acts?”
The priest did not reply for a moment. He looked at her
and seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Why did you send Monsieur Androvsky to me this after-
noon?” he said at last abruptly.
“I knew you were a good man, and I fancied if you became
friends you might help him.”
His face softened.
“A good man,” he said. “Ah!” He shook his head sadly,
with a sound that was like a little pathetic laugh. “I—a good
man | And I allow an almost invincible personal feeling to con-
quer my inward sense of right! Madame, come into the garden
for a moment.”
He opened the gate, she passed in, and he led her round the
house to the enclosure at the back, where they could talk in
greater privacy. Then he continued :
“You are right, Madame. I am here to try to do God's
work, and sometimes it is better to act for a human being, per-
haps, even than to pray for him. I will tell you that I feel an
almost invincible repugnance to Monsieur Androvsky, a repug-
THE GARDEN 233
nance that is almost stronger than my will to hold it in check.”
He shivered slightly. “But, with God's help, I’ll conquer that.
If he stays on here I’ll try to be his friend. I’ll do all I can. If
he is unhappy, far away from good, perhaps—I say it humbly,
Madame, I assure you—I might help him. But "-and here his
face and manner changed, became firmer, more dominating—
“you are not a pricst, and } }
“No, only a woman,” she said, interrupting him.
Something in her voice arrested him. There was a long
silence in which they paced slowly up and down on the sand
between the palm trees. The twilight was dying into night.
Already the tom-toms were throbbing in the street of the
dancers, and the shriek of the distant pipes was faintly heard.
At last the priest spoke again.
“Madame,” he said, “when you came to me this afternoon
there was something that you could not tell me.”
{ { Yes.”
“Had it anything to do with Monsieur Androvsky?”
“I meant to ask you to advise me about myself.”
“My advice to you was and is—be strong but not too fool-
hardy.”
“Believe me I will try not to be foolhardy. But you said
Something else too, something about women. Don't you re-
member?”
She stopped, took his hands impulsively and pressed them.
“Father, I’ve scarcely ever been of any use all my life. I've
scarcely ever tried to be. Nothing within me said, ‘You could
be,’ and if it had I was so dulled by routine and sorrow that I
don’t think I should have heard it. But here it is different. I
am not dulled. I can hear. And—suppose I can be of use for
the first time! You wouldn't say to me, ‘Don’t try!”. You
couldn’t say that?”
He stood holding her hands and looking into her face for a
moment. Then he said, half-humorously, half-sadly:
“My child, perhaps you know your own strength best. Per-
haps your safest spiritual director is your own heart. Who
knows? But whether it be so or not you will not take advice
from me.”
She knew that was true now and, for a moment, felt almost
ashamed.
“Forgive me,” she said. “But—it is strange, and may seem
to you ridiculous or even wrong—ever since I have been here I
have felt as if everything that happened had been arranged
234. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
beforehand, as if it had to happen. And I feel that, too, about
the future.”
“Count Anteoni's fatalism ” the priest said with a touch of
impatient irritation. “I know. It is the guiding spirit of this
land. And you too are going to be led by it. Take care! You
have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of
fire.”
For a moment she saw a fanatical expression in his eyes. She
thought of it as the look of the monk crushed down within his
soul. He opened his lips again, as if to pour forth upon her
a torrent of burning words. But the look died away, and they
parted quietly like two good friends. Yet, as she went to the
hotel, she knew that Father Roubier could not give her the kind
of help she wanted, and she even fancied that perhaps no priest
could. Her heart was in a turmoil, and she seemed to be in the
midst of a crowd.
Batouch was at the door, looking elaborately contrite and
ready with his lie. He had been seized with fever in the night,
in token whereof he held up hands which began to shake like
wind-swept leaves. Only now had he been able to drag himself
from his quilt and, still afflicted as he was, to creep to his
honoured patron and crave her pardon. Domini gave it with an
abstracted carelessness that evidently hurt his pride, and was
passing into the hotel when he said:
“Irena is going to marry Hadj, Madame.”
Since the fracas at the dancing-house both the dancer and her
victim had been under lock and key.
“To marry her after she tried to kill him ” said Domini.
“Yes, Madame. He loves her as the palm tree loves the sun.
He will take her to his room, and she will wear a veil, and work
for him and never go out any more.” -
“What! She will live like the Arab women?”
“Of course, Madame. But there is a very nice terrace on
the roof outside Hadj's room, and Hadj will permit her to take
the air there, in the evening or when it is hot.”
“She must love Hadj very much.”
“She does, or why should she try to kill him?”
So that was an African love—a knife-thrust and a taking of
the veil! The thought of it added a further complication to the
disorder that was in her mind.
“I will see you after dinner, Batouch,” she said.
She felt that she must do something, go somewhere that
night. She could not remain quiet.
THE GARDEN 235
Batouch drew himself up and threw out his broad chest. His
air gave place to importance, and, as he leaned against the white
pillar of the arcade, folded his ample burnous round him, and
glanced up at the sky he saw, in fancy, a five-franc piece glitter-
ing in the chariot of the moon.
The priest did not come to dinner that night, but Androvsky
was already at his table when Domini came into the salle-à-
manger. He got up from his seat and bowed formally, but did
not speak. Remembering his outburst of the morning she
realised the suspicion which her second interview with the priest
had probably created in his mind, and now she was not free from
a feeling of discomfort that almost resembled guilt. For now
she had been led to discuss Androvsky with Father Roubier, and
had it not been almost an apology when she said, “I know he is
not evil'? Once or twice during dinner, when her eyes met
Androvsky's for a moment, she imagined that he must know why
she had been at the priest's house, that anger was steadily in-
creasing in him. -
He was a man who hated to be observed, to be criticised.
His sensitiveness was altogether abnormal, and made her wonder
afresh where his previous life had been passed. It must surely
have been a very sheltered existence. Contact with the world
blunts the fine edge of our feeling with regard to others’ opinion
of us. In the world men learn to be heedless of the everlasting
buzz of comment that attends their goings out and their comings
in. But Androvsky was like a youth, alive to the tiniest whisper,
set on fire by a glance. To such a nature life in the world must
be perpetual torture. She thought of him with a sorrow that—
strangely in her—was not tinged with contempt. That which
manifested by another man would certainly have moved her to
impatience, if not to wrath, in this man woke other sensations—
curiosity, pity, terror.
Yes—terror. To-night she knew that. The long day, begun
in the semi-darkness before the dawn and ending in the semi-
darkness of the twilight, had, with its events that would have
seemed to another ordinary and trivial enough, carried her for-
ward a stage on an emotional pilgrimage. The half-veiled warn-
ings of Count Anteoni and of the priest, followed by the latter's
almost passionately abrupt plain speaking, had not been without
effect. To-night something of Europe and her life there, with
its civilised experience and drastic training in the management of
woman's relations with humanity in general, crept back under
the palm trees and the brilliant stars of Africa; and despite the
236 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
fatalism condemned by Father Roubier, she was more conscious
than she had hitherto been of how others—the outside world—
would be likely to regard her acquaintance with Androvsky.
She stood, as it were, and looked on at the events in which she
herself had been and was involved, and in that moment she was
first aware of a thrill of something akin to terror, as if, perhaps,
without knowing it, she had been moving amid a great darkness,
as if perhaps a great darkness were approaching. Suddenly she
saw Androvsky as some strange and ghastly figure of legend; as
the wandering Jew met by a traveller at cross roads and distin-
guished for an instant in an oblique lightning flash; as Vander-
decken passing in the hurricane and throwing a blood-red illu-
mination from the sails of his haunted ship; as the everlasting
climber of the Brocken, as the shrouded Arab of the Eastern
legend, who announced coming disaster to the wanderers in the
desert by beating a death-roll on a drum among the dunes.
And with Count Anteoni and the priest she set another figure,
that of the sand diviner, whose tortured face had suggested a
man looking on a fate that was terrible. Had not he, too,
warned her? Had not the warning been threefold, been given
to her by the world, the Church, and the under-world—the
world beneath the veil 2
She met Androvsky's eyes. He was getting up to leave the
room. His movement caught her away from things visionary,
but not from worldly things. She still looked on herself moving
amid these events at which her world would laugh or wonder,
and perhaps for the first time in her life she was uneasily self-
conscious because of the self that watched herself, as if that self
held something coldly satirical that mocked at her and marvelled.
CHAPTER XIV
“WHAT shall I do to-night?”
Alone in the now empty salle-à-manger Domini asked herself
the question. She was restless, terribly restless in mind, and
wanted distraction. The idea of going to her room, of reading,
even of sitting quietly in the verandah, was intolerable to her.
She longed for action, Swiftness, excitement, the help of outside
things, of that exterior life which she had told Count Anteoni
she had begun to see as a mirage. Had she been in a city she
would have gone to a theatre to witness some tremendous drama,
or to hear some passionate or terrible opera. Beni-Mora might
THE GARDEN 237
have been a place of many and strange tragedies, would be no
doubt again, but it offered at this moment little to satisfy her
mood. The dances of the Cafés Maures, the songs of the
smokers of the keef, the long histories of the story-tellers between
the lighted candles—she wanted none of these, and, for a mo-
ment, she wished she were in London, Paris, any great capital
that spent itself to suit the changing moods of men. With a
sigh she got up and went out to the Arcade. Batouch joined
her immediately. -
“What can I do to-night, Batouch?” she said.
“There are the femmes mauresques,” he began.
“No, no.”
“Would Madame like to hear the story-teller?”
“ No. I should not understand him.”
“I can explain to Madame.”
( & No.”
She stepped out into the road.
“There will be a moon to-night, won’t there?” she said,
looking up at the starry sky.
“Yes, Madame, later.”
“What time will it rise?”
“Between nine and ten.”
She stood in the road, thinking. It had occurred to her that
she had never seen moonrise in the desert.
“And now it is ”—she looked at her watch—“only eight.”
“Does Madame wish to see the moon come up pouring upon
the palms 3 5
“Don’t talk so much, Batouch,” she said brusquely.
To-night the easy and luscious imaginings of the poet worried
her like the cry of a mosquito. His presence even disturbed
her. Yet what could she do without him? After a pause she
said:
“Can one go into the desert at night?” -
“On foot, Madame? It would be dangerous. One cannot
tell what may be in the desert by night.”
These words made her long to go. They had a charm, a
violence perhaps, of the unknown.
“One might ride,” she said. “Why not? Who could hurt
us if we were mounted and armed * *
“Madame is brave as the panther in the forests of the
Djurdjurah.”
“And you, Batouch? Aren’t you brave?”
“Madame, I am afraid of nothing.”
238 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He did not say it boastfully, like Hadj, but calmly, almost
loftily.
“Well, we are neither of us afraid. Let us ride out on the
Tombouctou road and see the moon rise. I’ll go and put on my
habit.”
“Madame should take her revolver.”
“Of course. Bring the horses round at nine.”
When she had put on her habit it was only a few minutes
after eight. She longed to be in the saddle, going at full speed
up the long, white road between the palms. Physical movement
was necessary to her, and she began to pace up and down the
verandah quickly. She wished she had ordered the horses at
once, or that she could do something definite to fill up the time
till they came. As she turned at the end of the verandah she
saw a white form approaching her; when it drew near she recog-
nised Hadj, looking self-conscious and mischievous, but a little
triumphant too. At this moment she was glad to see him. He
received her congratulations on his recovery and approaching
marriage with a sort of skittish gaiety, but she soon discovered
that he had come with a money-making reason. Having seen his
cousin safely off the premises, it had evidently occurred to him
to turn an honest penny. And pennies were now specially
needful to him in view of married life.
“Does Madame wish to see something strange and wonderful
to-night?” he asked, after a moment, looking at her sideways out
of the corners of his wicked eyes, which, as Domini could see,
were swift to read character and mood.
“I am going out riding.”
He looked astonished.
“In the night?”
“Yes. Batouch has gone to fetch the horses.”
Hadj's face became a mask of sulkiness.
“If Madame goes out with Batouch she will be killed. There
are robbers in the desert, and Batouch is afraid of—”
“Could we see the strange and wonderful thing in an hour?”
she interrupted.
The gay and skittish expression returned instantly to his
face.
“Yes, Madame.”
“What is it?”
He shook his head and made an artful gesture with his hand
in the air.
“Madame shall see.”
THE GARDEN 239
His long eyes were full of mystery, and he moved towards the
staircase. -
“Come, Madame.”
Domini laughed and followed him. She felt as if she were
playing a game, yet her curiosity was roused. They went softly
down and slipped out of the hotel like children fearing to be
caught.
“Batouch will be angry. There will be white foam on his
lips,” whispered Hadj, dropping his chin and chuckling low in .
his throat. “This way, Madame.”
He led her quickly across the gardens to the Rue Berthe, and
down a number of small streets, till they reached a white house
before which, on a hump, three palm trees grew from one trunk.
Beyond was waste ground, and further away a stretch of sand
and low dunes lost in the darkness of the, as yet, moonless night.
Domini looked at the house and at Hadj, and wondered if it
would be foolish to enter.
“What is it?” she asked again. -
But he only replied, “Madame will see!” and struck his flat
hand upon the door. It was opened a little way, and a broad
face covered with little humps and dents showed, the thick lips
parted and muttering quickly. Then the face was withdrawn,
the door opened wider, and Hadj beckoned to Domini to go in.
After a moment's hesitation she did so, and found herself in a
small interior court, with a tiled floor, pillars, and high up a
gallery of carved wood, from which, doubtless, dwelling-rooms
opened. In the court, upon cushions, were seated four vacant-
looking men, with bare arms and legs and long matted hair,
before a brazier, from which rose a sharply pungent perfume.
Two of these men were very young, with pale, ascetic faces and
weary eyes. They looked like young priests of the Sahara. At
a short distance, upon a red pillow, sat a tiny boy of about three
years old, dressed in yellow and green. When Domini and
Hadj came into the court no one looked at them except the child,
who stared with slowly-rolling, solemn eyes, slightly shifting on
the pillow. Hadj beckoned to Domini to seat herself upon some
rugs between the pillars, sat down beside her and began to make
a cigarette. Complete silence prevailed. The four men stared
at the brazier, holding their nostrils over the incense fumes which
rose from it in airy spirals. The child continued to stare at
Domini. Hadj lit his cigarette. And time rolled on.
Domini had desired violence, and had been conveyed into a
dumbness of mystery, that fell upon her turmoil of Spirit like a
24O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
blow. What struck her as especially strange and unnatural was
the fact that the men with whom she was sitting in the dim court
of this lonely house had not looked at her, did not appear to
know that she was there. Hadj had caught the aroma of their
meditations with the perfume of the incense, for his eyes had lost
their mischief and become gloomily profound, as if they stared
on bygone centuries or watched a far-off future. Even the child
began to look elderly, and worn as with fastings and with watch-
ings. As the fumes perpetually ascended from the red-hot coals
of the brazier the sharp smell of the perfume grew stronger.
There was in it something provocative and exciting that was like
a sound, and Domini marvelled that the four men who crouched .
over it and drank it in perpetually could be unaffected by its
influence when she, who was at some distance from it, felt dawn-
ing on her desires of movement, of action, almost a physical
necessity to get up and do something extraordinary, absurd or
passionate, such as she had never done or dreamed of till this
In Oment.
A low growl like that of a wild beast broke the silence.
Domini did not know at first whence it came. She stared at the
four men, but they were all gazing vacantly into the brazier,
their naked arms dropping to the floor. She glanced at Hadj.
He was delicately taking a cigarette paper from a little case.
The child—no, it was absurd even to think of a child emitting
such a sound. & -
Someone growled again more fiercely, and this time Domini
saw that it was the palest of the ascetic-looking youths. He
shook back his long hair, rose to his feet with a bound, and
moving into the centre of the court gazed ferociously at his com-
panions. As if in obedience to the glance, two of them stretched
their arms backwards, found two tom-toms, and began to beat
them loudly and monotonously. The young ascetic bowed to
the tom-toms, dropping his lower jaw and jumping on his bare
feet. He bowed again as if saluting a fetish, and again and
again. Ceaselessly he bowed to the tom-toms, always jumping
softly from the pavement. His long hair fell over his face and
back upon his shoulders with a monotonous regularity that
imitated the tom-toms, as if he strove to mould his life in accord
with the fetish to which he offered adoration. Flecks of foam
appeared upon his lips, and the asceticism in his eyes changed
to a bestial glare. His whole body was involved in a long and
snake-like undulation, above which his hair flew to and fro.
Presently the second youth, moving reverently like a priest about
THE GARDEN 24. I
the altar, stole to a corner and returned with a large and curved
sheet of glass. Without looking at Domini he came to her and
placed it in her hands. When the dancer saw the glass he stood
still, growled again long and furiously, threw himself on his
knees before Domini, licked his lips, then, abruptly thrusting
forward his face, set his teeth in the sheet of glass, bit a large
piece off, crunched it up with a loud noise, swallowed it with a
gulp, and growled for more. She fed him again, while the tom-
toms went on roaring, and the child in its red pillow watched
with its weary eyes. And when he was full fed, only a frag-
ment of glass remained between her fingers, he fell upon the
ground and lay like one in a trance. .
Then the second youth bowed to the tom-toms, leaping gently
on the pavement, foamed at the mouth, growled, snuffed up the
incense fumes, shook his long mane, and placed his naked feet
in the red-hot coals of the brazier. He plucked out a coal and
rolled his tongue round it. He placed red coals under his bare
armpits and kept them there, pressing his arms against his sides.
He held a coal, like a monocle, in his eye socket against his eye.
And all the time he leaped and bowed and foamed, undulating
his body like a snake. The child looked on with a still gravity,
and the tom-toms never ceased. From the gallery above painted
faces peered down, but Domini did not see them. Her attention
was taken captive by the young priests of the Sahara. For so
she called them in her mind, realising that there were religious
fanatics whose half-crazy devotion seemed to lift them above the
ordinary dangers to the body. One of the musicians now took
his turn, throwing his tom-tom to the eater of glass, who had
wakened from his trance. He bowed and leaped; thrust spikes
behind his eyes, through his cheeks, his lips, his arms; drove a
long nail into his head with a wooden hammer; stood upon the
sharp edge of an upturned sword blade. With the spikes pro-
truding from his face in all directions, and his eyes bulging out
from them like balls, he spun in a maze of hair, barking like a
dog. The child regarded him with a still attention, and the
incense fumes were cloudy in the court. Then the last of the
four men Sprang up in the midst of a more passionate uproar
from the tom-toms. He wore a filthy burnous, and, with a
shriek, he plunged his hand into its hood and threw some squirm-
ing things upon the floor. They began to run, rearing stiff tails
into the air. He sank down, blew upon them, caught them,
letting them set their tail weapons in his fingers, and lifting them
thus, imbedded, high above the floor. Then again he put them
242 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
down, breathed upon each one, drew a circle round each with his
forefinger. His face had suddenly become intense, hypnotic.
The scorpions, as if mesmerised, remained utterly still, each in
its place within its imaginary circle, that had become a cage;
and their master bowed to the fetish of the tom-toms, leaped,
grinned, and bowed again, undulating his body in a maze of
hair.
Domini felt as if she, like the scorpions, had been mesmerised.
She, too, was surely bound in a circle, breathed upon by some
arrogant breath of fanaticism, commanded by some horrid power.
She looked at the scorpions and felt a sort of pity for them.
From time to time the bowing fanatic glanced at them through
his hair out of the corners of his eyes, licked his lips, shook his
shoulders, and uttered a long howl, thrilling with the note of
greed. The tom-toms pulsed faster and faster, louder and
louder, and all the men began to sing a fierce chant, the song
surely of desert souls driven crazy by religion. One of the
Scorpions moved slightly, reared its tail, began to run. Instantly,
as if at a signal, the dancer fell upon his knees, bent down his
head, seized it in his teeth, munched it and swallowed it. At
the same moment with the uproar of the tom-toms there mingled
a loud knocking on the door.
Hadj's lips curled back from his pointed teeth and he looked
dangerous. -
“It is Batouch! ” he snarled.
Domini got up. Without a word, turning her back upon the
court, she made her way out, still hearing the howl of the
Scorpion-eater, the roar of the tom-toms, and the knocking
on the door. Hadj followed her quickly, protesting. At
the door was the man with the pitted white face and the
thick lips. When he saw her he held out his hand. She
gave him some money, he opened the door, and she came
out into the night by the triple palm tree. Batouch stood
there looking furious, with the bridles of two horses across
his arm. He began to speak in Arabic to Hadj, but she
stopped him with an imperious gesture, gave Hadj his fee,
and in a moment was in the saddle and cantering away into
the dark. She heard the gallop of Batouch's horse coming up
behind her and turned her head. -
“Batouch,” she said, “ you are the smartest”—she used the
word chic—“Arab here. Do you know what is the fashion
in London when a lady rides out with the attendant who guards
her—the really smart thing to do?”
THE GARDEN 243
She was playing on his vanity. He responded with a ready
Smile.
“No, Madame.” .
“The attendant rides at a short distance behind her, so that
no one can come up near her without his knowledge.”
Batouch fell back, and Domini cantered on, congratulating
herself on the success of her expedient.
She passed through the village, full of strolling white figures,
lights and the sound of music, and was soon at the end of the
long, straight road that was significant to her as no other road
had ever been. Each time she saw it, stretching on till it was
lost in the serried masses of the palms, her imagination was
stirred by a longing to wander through barbaric lands, by a
nomad feeling that was almost irresistible. This road was a
track of fate to her. When she was on it she had a strange
sensation as if she changed, developed, drew near to some ideal.
It influenced her as one person may influence another. Now
for the first time she was on it in the night, riding on the
crowded shadows of its palms. She drew rein and went more
slowly. She had a desire to be noiseless.
In the obscurity the thickets of the palms looked more exotic
than in the light of day. There was no motion in them. Each
tree stood like a delicately carven thing, silhouetted against the
remote purple of the void. In the profound firmament the
stars burned with a tremulous ardour they never show in north-
ern skies. The mystery of this African night rose not from
vaporous veils and the long movement of winds, but was
breathed out by clearness, brightness, stillness. It was the
deepest of all mystery—the mystery of vastness and of peace.
No one was on the road. The sound of the horse's feet were
sharply distinct in the night. On all sides, but far off, the
guard dogs were barking by the hidden homes of men. The
air was warm as in a hothouse, but light and faintly impreg-
nated with perfume shed surely by the mystical garments of
night as she glided on with Domini towards the desert. From
the blackness of the palms there came sometimes thin notes of
the birds of night, the whizzing noise of insects, the glassy pipe
of a frog in the reeds by a pool behind a hot brown wall.
She rode through one of the villages of old Beni-Mora, silent,
unlighted, with empty streets and closed cafés maures, touched
her horse with the whip, and cantered on at a quicker pace. As
she drew near to the desert her desire to be in it increased.
There was some coarse grass here. The palm trees grew less
244. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
thickly. She heard more clearly the barking of the Kabyle
dogs, and knew that tents were not far off. Now, between the
trunks of the trees, she saw the twinkling of distant fires, and
the sound of running water fell on her ears, mingling with the
persistent noise of the insects, and the faint cries of the birds
and frogs. In front, where the road came out from the shadows
of the last trees, lay a vast dimness, not wholly unlike another
starless sky, stretched beneath the starry sky in which the moon
had not yet risen. She set her horse at a gallop and came into
the desert, rushing through the dark.
“Madame! Madame!”
Batouch's voice was calling her. She galloped faster, like one
in flight. Her horse's feet padded over sand almost as softly as
a camel's. The vast dimness was Surely coming to meet her, to
take her to itself in the night. But suddenly Batouch rode
furiously up beside her, his burnous flying out behind him over
his red saddle.
“Madame, we must not go further, we must keep near the
oasis.”
( [ Why? 35 -
“It is not safe at night in the desert, and besides
His horse plunged and nearly rocketed against hers. She
pulled in. His company took away her desire to keep on.
“Besides 2 ”
Leaning over his saddle peak he said, mysteriously:
“Besides, Madame, someone has been following us all the
way from Beni-Mora.”
“Who? "
“A horseman. I have heard the beat of the hoofs on the
hard road. Once I stopped and turned, but I could see nothing,
and then I could hear nothing. He, too, had stopped. But
when I rode on again soon I heard him once more. Someone
found out we were going and has come after us.”
She looked back into the violet night without speaking. She
heard no sound of a horse, saw nothing but the dim track and
the faint, shadowy blackness where the palms began. Then she
put her hand into the pocket of her saddle and silently held up a
tiny revolver.
“I know, but there might be more than one. I am not
afraid, but if anything happens to Madame no one will ever take
me as a guide any more.”
She smiled for a moment, but the Smile died away, and again
she looked into the night. She was not afraid physically, but
} }
THE GARDEN 245
she was conscious of a certain uneasiness. The day had been
long and troubled, and had left its mark upon her. Restlessness
had driven her forth into the darkness, and behind the restless-
ness there was a hint of the terror of which she had been aware
when she was left alone in the salle-à-manger. Was it not that
vague terror which, shaking the restlessness, had sent her to the
white house by the triple palm tree, had brought her now to the
desert? she asked herself, while she listened, and the hidden
horseman of whom Batouch had spoken became in her imagina-
tion one with the legendary victims of fate; with the Jew by the
cross roads, the mariner beating ever about the rock-bound
shores of the world, the climber in the witches' Sabbath, the
phantom Arab in the sand. Still holding her revolver, she
turned her horse and rode slowly towards the distant fires, from
which came the barking of the dogs. At some hundreds of yards
from them she paused.
“I shall stay here,” she said to Batouch. “Where does the
moon rise?”
He stretched his arm towards the desert, which sloped gently,
almost imperceptibly, towards the east.
“Ride back a little way towards the oasis. The horseman
was behind us. If he is still following you will meet him.
Don’t go far. Do as I tell you, Batouch.”
With obvious reluctance he obeyed her. She saw him pull
up his horse at a distance where he had her just in sight. Then
she turned so that she could not see him and looked towards the
desert and the east. The revolver seemed unnaturally heavy in
her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and listened with
intensity for the beat of horse's hoofs, and her wakeful imagina-
tion created a sound that was non-existent in her ears. With it
she heard a gallop that was spectral as the gallop of the black
horses which carried Mephistopheles and Faust to the abyss. It
died away almost at once, and she knew it for an imagination.
To-night she was peopling the desert with phantoms. Even the
fires of the nomads were as the fires that flicker in an abode of
witches, the shadows that passed before them were as goblins
that had come up out of the sand to hold revel in the moonlight.
Were they, too, waiting for a signal from the sky?
At the thought of the moon she drew up the reins that had
been lying loosely on her horse's neck and rode some paces
forward and away from the fires, still holding the revolver in her
hand. Of what use would it be against the spectres of the
Sahara? The Jew would face it without fear. Why not the
246 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
horseman of Batouch? She dropped it into the pocket of the
saddle.
Far away in the east the darkness of the sky was slowly
fading into a luminous mystery that rose from the underworld, a
mystery that at first was faint and tremulous, pale with a pallor
of silver and primrose, but that deepened slowly into a live and
ardent gold against which a group of three palm trees detached
themselves from the desert like messengers sent forth by it to
give a salutation to the moon. They were jet black against the
gold, distinct though very distant. The night, and the vast plain
from which they rose, lent them a significance that was un-
earthly. Their long, thin stems and drooping, feathery leaves
were living and pathetic as the night thoughts of a woman who
has suffered, but who turns, with a gesture of longing that
will not be denied, to the luminance that dwells at the heart of
the world. And those black palms against the gold, that still-
ness of darkness and light in immensity, banished Domini's faint
sense of horror. The spectres faded away. She fixed her eyes
on the palms.
Now all the notes of the living things that do not sleep by
night, but make music by reedy pools, in underwood, among the
blades of grass and along the banks of streams, were audible to
her again, filling her mind with the mystery of existence. The
glassy note of the frogs was like a falling of something small and
pointed upon a sheet of crystal. The whirs of the insects
suggested a ceaselessly active mentality. The faint cries of the
birds dropped down like jewels slipping from the trees. And
suddenly she felt that she was as nothing in the vastness and the
complication of the night. Even the passion that she knew lay,
like a dark and silent flood, within her soul, a flood that, once
released from its boundaries, had surely the power to rush
irresistibly forward to submerge old landmarks and change the
face of a world—even that seemed to lose its depth for a moment,
to be shallow as the first ripple of a tide upon the sand. And
she forgot that the first ripple has all the ocean behind it.
Red deepened and glowed in the gold behind the three
palms, and the upper rim of the round moon, red too as blood,
crept about the desert. Domini, leaning forward with one hand
upon her horse's warm neck, watched until the full circle was
poised for a moment on the horizon, holding the palms in its
frame of fire. She had never seen a moon look so immense and
So vivid as this moon that came up into the night like a portent,
fierce yet Serene, moon of a barbaric world, such as might have
THE GARDEN 247
shone upon Herod when he heard the voice of the Baptist in his
dungeon, or upon the wife of Pilate when in a dream she was
troubled. It suggested to her the powerful watcher of tragic
events fraught with long chains of consequence that would last
on through centuries, as it turned its blood-red gaze upon the
desert, upon the palms, upon her, and, leaning upon her horse's
neck, she too—like Pilate's wife—fell into a sort of strange and
troubled dream for a moment, full of strong, yet ghastly, light
and of shapes that flitted across a background of fire.
In it she saw the priest with a fanatical look of warning in his
eyes, Count Anteoni beneath the trees of his garden, the per-
fume-seller in his dark bazaar, Irena with her long throat
exposed and her thin arms drooping, the sand diviner spreading
forth his hands, Androvsky galloping upon a horse as if pursued.
This last vision returned again and again. As the moon rose a
stream of light that seemed tragic fell across the desert and was
woven mysteriously into the light of her waking dream. The
three palms looked larger. She fancied that she saw them
growing, becoming monstrous as they stood in the very centre of
the path of the nocturnal glory, and suddenly she remembered
her thought when she sat with Androvsky in the garden, that
feeling grew in human hearts like palms rising in the desert.
But these palms were tragic and aspired towards the blood-red
moon. Suddenly she was seized with a fear of feeling, of the
growth of an intense sensation within her, and realised, with an
almost feverish vividness, the impotence of a soul caught in the
grip of a great passion, swayed hither and thither, led into
strange paths, along the edges, perhaps into depths of im-
measurable abysses. She had said to Androvsky that she would
rather be the centre of a world tragedy than die without
having felt to the uttermost even if it were sorrow. Was that
not the speech of a mad woman, or at least of a woman who was
so ignorant of the life of feeling that her words were idle and
ridiculous? Again she felt desperately that she did not know
herself, and this lack of the most essential of all knowledge
reduced her for a moment to a bitterness of despair that seemed
worse than the bitterness of death. The vastness of the desert
appalled her. The red moon held within its circle all the blood
of the martyrs, of life, of ideals. She shivered in the saddle.
Her nature seemed to shrink and quiver, and a cry for protection
rose within her, the cry of the woman who cannot face life alone,
who must find a protector, and who must cling to a strong arm,
who needs man as the world needs God.
248 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Then again it seened to her that she saw Androvsky galloping
upon a horse as if pursued.
Moved by a desire to do something to combat this strange
despair, born of the moonrise and the night, she sat erect in her
saddle, and resolutely looked at the desert, striving to get away
from herself in a hard contemplation of the details that sur-
rounded her, the outward things that were coming each moment
into clearer view. She gazed steadily towards the palms that
sharply cut the moonlight. As she did so something black
moved away from them, as if it had been part of them and now
detached itself with the intention of approaching her along the
track. At first it was merely a moving blot, formless and small,
but as it drew nearer she saw that it was a horseman riding
slowly, perhaps stealthily, across the sand. She glanced be-
hind her, and saw Batouch not far off, and the fires of the
nomads. Then she turned again to watch the horseman. He
came steadily forward.
“Madame!”
It was the voice of Batouch.
“Stay where you are ” she called out to him.
She heard the soft sound of the horse's feet and could see the
attitude of its rider. He was leaning forward as if searching
the night. She rode to meet him, and they came to each other in
the path of the light she had thought tragic.
“You followed me?”
“I cannot see you go out alone into the desert at night,”
Androvsky replied.
“But you have no right to follow me.”
“I cannot let harm come to you, Madame.”
She was silent. A moment before she had been longing for a
protector. One had come to her, the man whom she had been
setting with those legendary figures who have saddened and
appalled the imagination of men. She looked at the dark figure
of Androvsky leaning forward on the horse whose feet were set
on the path of the moon, and she did not know whether she felt
confidence in him or fear of him. All that the priest had said
rose up in her mind, all that Count Anteoni had hinted and that
had been visible in the face of the sand diviner. This man had
followed her into the night as a guardian. Did she need some-
one, something, to guard her from him? A faint horror was
still upon her. Perhaps he knew it and resented it, for he
drew himself upright on his horse and spoke again, with a
decision that was rare in him.
sº THE GARDEN 249
“Let me send Batouch back to Beni-Mora, Madame.”
“Why?” she asked, in a low voice that was full of hesita-
tion.
“You do not need him now.”
He was looking at her with a defiant, a challenging expression
that was his answer to her expression of vague distrust and
apprehension.
“How do you know that?”
He did not answer the question, but only said:
“It is better here without him. May I send him away,
Madame?”
She bent her head. Androvsky rode off and she saw him
speaking to Batouch, who shook his head as if in contradiction.
“Batouch ” she called out. “You can ride back to Beni-
Mora. We shall follow directly.”
The poet cantered forward.
“Madame, it is not safe.”
The Sound of his voice made Domini suddenly know what
she had not been sure of before—that she wished to be alone
with Androvsky.
“Go, Batouch!” she said. “I tell you to go.”
Batouch turned his horse without a word, and disappeared
into the darkness of the distant palms.
When they were alone together Domini and Androvsky sat
silent on their horses for some minutes. Their faces were turned
towards the desert, which was now luminous beneath the moon.
Its loneliness was overpowering in the night, and made speech
at first an impossibility, and even thought difficult. At last
Androvsky said:
“Madame, why did you look at me like that just now, as if
you—as if you hesitated to remain alone with me?”
Suddenly she resolved to tell him of her oppression of the
night. She felt as if to do so would relieve her of something
that was like a pain at her heart.
“Has it never occurred to you that we are strangers to each
other?” she said. “That we know nothing of each other's
lives? What do you know of me or I of you?”
He shifted in his saddle and moved the reins from one hand
to the other, but said nothing.
“Would it seem strang to you if I did hesitate—if even
11OW } }
"Yes," he interrupted violently,
Iſle,
“it would seem strange to
25O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
( { Why?”
“You would rely on an Arab and not rely upon me,” he said
with intense bitterness.
“I did not say so.”
“Yet at first you wished to keep Batouch.”
( { Yes.”
( { Then 5 y
“Batouch is my attendant.”
“And I? Perhaps I am nothing but a man whom you dis-
trust; whom—whom others tell you to think ill of.”
“I judge for myself.”
“But if others speak ill of me?”
“It would not influence me—for long.”
She added the last words after a pause. She wished to be
strictly truthful, and to-night she was not sure that the words of
the priest had made no impression upon her.
“For long!” he repeated. Then he said abruptly, “The
priest hates me.”
( { NO.”
“And Count Anteoni?”
“You interested Count Anteoni greatly.”
“Interested him ’’
His voice sounded intensely suspicious in the night.
“Don’t you wish to interest anyone? It seems to me that
to be uninteresting is to live eternally alone in a sunless
desert.” - - -
“I wish—I should like to think that I ” He stopped,
then said, with a sort of ashamed determination: “Could I
ever interest you, Madame?”
“Yes,” she answered quietly.
“But you would rather be protected by an Arab than by me.
The priest has } }
“To-night I do not seem to be myself,” she said, interrupting
him. “ Perhaps there is some physical reason. I got up very
early, and—don't you ever feel oppressed, suspicious, doubtful
of life, people, yourself, everything, without apparent rea-
son? Don’t you know what it is to have nightmare without
sleeping?”
“Il But you are different.”
“To-night I have felt—I do feel as if there were tragedy near
me, perhaps coming towards me,” she said simply, “ and I am
oppressed, I am almost afraid.”
When she had said it she felt happier, as if a burden she
THE GARDEN 25I
carried were suddenly lighter. As he did not speak she glanced
at him. The moon rays lit up his face. It looked ghastly,
drawn and old, so changed that she scarcely recognised it and
felt, for a moment, as if she were with a stranger. She looked
away quickly, wondering if what she had seen was merely some
strange effect of the moon, or whether Androvsky was really
altered for a moment by the action of some terrible grief, one
of those sudden sorrows that rush upon a man from the hidden
depths of his nature and tear his soul, till his whole being is
lacerated and he feels as if his soul were flesh and were streaming
with the blood from mortal wounds. The silence between them
was long. In it she presently heard a reiterated noise that
sounded like struggle and pain made audible. It was Androv-
sky's breathing. In the soft and exquisite air of the desert he
was gasping like a man shut up in a cellar. She looked again
towards him, startled. As she did so he turned his horse side-
ways and rode away a few paces. Then he pulled up his horse.
He was now merely a black shape upon the moonlight, motion-
less and inaudible. She could not take her eyes from this
shape. Its blackness suggested to her the blackness of a gulf.
Her memory still heard that sound of deep-drawn breathing or
gasping, heard it and quivered beneath it as a tender-hearted
person quivers seeing a helpless creature being ill-used. She
hesitated for a moment, and then, carried away by an irresistible
impulse to try to soothe this extremity of pain which she was
unable to understand, she rode up to Androvsky. When she
reached him she did not know what she had meant to say or do.
She felt suddenly impotent and intrusive, and even horribly
shy. But before she had time for speech or action he turned
to her and said, lifting up his hands with the reins in them and
then dropping them down heavily upon his horse's neck:
“Madame, I wanted to tell you that to-morrow I ” He
stopped.
“Yes?” she said.
He turned his head away from her till she could not see
his face. -
“To-morrow I am leaving Beni-Mora.”
“To-morrow!” she said.
She did not feel the horse under her, the reins in her hand.
She did not see the desert or the moon. Though she was look-
ing at Androvsky she no longer perceived him. At the Sound of
his words it seemed to her as if all outside things she had ever
known had foundered, like a ship whose bottom is ripped up by
252 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
a razor-edged rock, as if with them had foundered, too, all things
within herself: thoughts, feelings, even the bodily powers that
were of the essence of her life; sense of taste, Smell, hearing,
sight, the capacity of movement and of deliberate repose.
Nothing seemed to remain except the knowledge that she was
still alive and had spoken.
“Yes, to-morrow I shall go away.”
His face was still turned from her, and his voice sounded as
if it spoke to someone at a distance, someone who could hear as
man cannot hear.
“To-morrow,” she repeated.
She knew she had spoken again, but it did not seem to her as
if she had heard herself speak. She looked at her hands holding
the reins, knew that she looked at them, yet felt as if she were
not seeing them while she did so. The moonlit desert was surely
flickering round her, and away to the horizon in waves that were
caused by the disappearance of that ship which had suddenly
foundered with all its countless lives. And she knew of the
movement of these waves as the soul of one of the drowned,
already released from the body, might know of the movement on
the surface of the sea beneath which its body was hidden.
But the soul was evidently nothing without the body, or, at
most, merely a continuance of power to know that all which
had been was no more. All which had been was no more.
At last her mind began to work again, and those words went
through it with persistence. She thought of the fascination of
Africa, that enormous, overpowering fascination which had taken
possession of her body and spirit. What had become of it?
What had become of the romance of the palm gardens, of the
brown villages, of the red mountains, of the white town with its
lights, its white figures, its throbbing music? And the mystical
attraction of the desert—where was it now? Its voice, that had
called her persistently, was suddenly silent. Its hand, that had
been laid upon her, was removed. She looked at it in the moon-
light and it was no longer the desert, sand with a soul in it, blue
distances full of a music of summons, spaces, peopled with spirits
from the sun. It was only a barren waste of dried-up matter,
arid, featureless, desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that
had died.
She heard the dogs barking by the tents of the nomads and
the noises of the insects, but still she did not feel the horse under-
neath her. Yet she was gradually recovering her powers, and
their recovery brought with it sharp, physical pain, such as is
}
THE GARDEN. 253
felt by a person who has been nearly drowned and is restored
from unconsciousness.
Androvsky turned round. She saw his eyes fastened upon
her, and instantly pride awoke in her, and, with pride, her whole
self.
She felt her horse under her, the reins in her hands, the
stirrup at her foot. She moved in her saddle. The blood
tingled in her veins fiercely, bitterly, as if it had become sud-
denly acrid. She felt as if her face were scarlet, as if her
whole body flushed, and as if the flush could be seen by her
companion. For a moment she was clothed from head to foot
in a fiery garment of shame. But she faced Androvsky with
calm eyes, and her lips Smiled.
“You are tired of it?” she said.
“I never meant to stay long,” he answered, looking down.
“There is not very much to do here. Shall we ride back to
the village now 2 ”
She turned her horse, and as she did so cast one more glance
at the three palm trees that stood far out on the path of the
moon. They looked like three malignant fates lifting up their
hands in malediction. For a moment she shivered in the saddle.
Then she touched her horse with the whip and turned her
eyes away. Androvsky followed her and rode by her side in
silence.
To gain the oasis they passed near to the tents of the nomads,
whose fires were dying out. The guard dogs were barking
furiously, and straining at the cords which fastened them to the
tent pegs, by the short hedges of brushwood that sheltered the
doors of filthy rags. The Arabs were all within, no doubt hud-
dled up on the ground asleep. One tent was pitched alone,
at a considerable distance from the others, and under the first
palms of the oasis. A fire Smouldered before it, casting a flicker-
ing gleam of light upon something dark which lay upon the
ground between it and the tent. Tied to the tent was a large
white dog, which was not barking, but which was howling as
if in agony of fear. Before Domini and Androvsky drew near
to this tent the howling of the dog reached them and startled
them. There was in it a note that seemed humanly expressive,
as if it were a person trying to scream out words but unable
to from horror. Both of them instinctively pulled up their
horses, listened, then rode forward. When they reached the tent
they saw the dark thing lying by the fire.
“What is it?” Domini whispered.
254 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“An Arab asleep, I suppose,” Androvsky answered, staring
at the motionless object.
“But the dog ” She looked at the white shape leaping
frantically against the tent. “Are you sure?”
“It must be. Look, it is wrapped in rags and the head is
covered.”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at it. The howling of the dog grew louder,
as if it were straining every nerve to tell them something
dreadful.
“Do you mind getting off and seeing what it is? I'll hold
the horse.”
He swung himself out of the saddle. She caught his rein
and watched him go forward to the thing that lay by the fire,
bend down over it, touch it, recoil from it, then—as if with a
determined effort—kneel down beside it on the ground and
take the rags that covered it in his hands. After a moment of
contemplation of what they had hidden he dropped the rags—
or rather threw them from him with a violent gesture—got up
and came back to Domini, and looked at her without speaking.
She bent down.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a
dead woman.” -
It seemed to her as if the dark thing lying by the fire was
herself.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a woman who has been strangled.”
“Poor woman ’’ she said. “Poor—poor woman | *
And it seemed to her as if she said it of herself.
CHAPTER XV
LYING in bed in the dark that night Domini heard the church
clock chime the hours. She was not restless, though she was
wakeful. Indeed, she felt like a woman to whom an injection
of morphia had been administered, as if she never wished to
move again. She lay there counting the minutes that made the
passing hours, counting them calmly, with an inexorable and
almost cold self-possession. The process presently became
mechanical, and she was able, at the same time, to dwell upon
the events that had followed upon the discovery of the murdered
woman by the tent: Androvsky's pulling aside of the door of
the tent to find it empty, their short ride to the encampment
THE GARDEN 255
close by, their rousing up of the sleeping Arabs within, filthy
nomads clothed in patched garments, unveiled women with
wrinkled, staring faces and huge plaits of false hair and amulets.
From the tents the strange figures had streamed forth into the
light of the moon and the fading fires, gesticulating, talking
loudly, furiously, in an uncouth language that was unintelligible
to her. Led by Androvsky they had come to the corpse, while
the air was rent by the frantic barking of all the guard dogs and
the howling of the dog that had been a witness of the murder.
Then in the night had risen the shrill wailing of the women,
a wailing that seemed to pierce the stars and shudder out to the
remotest confines of the desert, and in the cold white radiance
of the moon a savage vision of grief had been presented to her
eyes: naked arms gesticulating as if they strove to summon
vengeance from heaven, claw-like hands casting earth upon the
heads from which dangled Fatma hands, chains of tarnished
silver and lumps of coral that reminded her of congealed blood,
bodies that swayed and writhed as if stricken with convulsions
or rent by seven devils. She remembered how strange had
seemed to her the vast calm, the vast silence, that encompassed
this noisy outburst of humanity, how inflexible had looked the
enormous moon, how unsympathetic the brightly shining stars,
how feverish and irritable the flickering illumination of the
flames that spurted up and fainted away like things still living
but in the agonies of death. -
Then had followed her silent ride back to Beni-Mora with
Androvsky along the straight road which had always fascinated
her spirit of adventure. They had ridden slowly, without
looking at each other, without exchanging a word. She had
felt dry and weary, like an old woman who had passed through
a long life of suffering and emerged into a region where any
acute feeling is unable to exist, as at a certain altitude from the
earth human life can no longer exist. The beat of the horses'
hoofs upon the road had sounded hard, as her heart felt, cold as
the temperature of her mind. Her body, which usually swayed
to her horse's slightest movement, was rigid in the saddle. She
recollected that once, when her horse stumbled, she had thrilled
with an abrupt anger that was almost ferocious, and had lifted
her whip to lash it. But the hand had slipped down nervelessly,
and she had fallen again into her frigid reverie.
When they reached the hotel she had dropped to the ground
heavily, and heavily had ascended the steps of the verandah,
followed by Androvsky. Without turning to him or bidding
256 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
him good-night she had gone to her room. She had not acted
with intentional rudeness or indifference—indeed, she had felt
incapable of an intention. Simply, she had forgotten, for the
first time perhaps in her life, an ordinary act of courtesy, as an
old person sometimes forgets you are there and withdraws into
himself. Androvsky had said nothing, had not tried to attract
her attention to himself. She had heard his steps die away on
the verandah. Then, mechanically, she had undressed and got
into bed, where she was now mechanically counting the passing
InnCInnC11tS.
Presently she became aware of her own stillness and con-
nected it with the stillness of the dead woman by the tent. She
lay, as it were, watching her own corpse as a Catholic keeps vigil
beside a body that has not yet been put into the grave. But in
this chamber of death there were no flowers, no lighted candles,
no lips that moved in prayer. She had gone to bed without
praying. She remembered that now, but with indifference.
Dead people do not pray. The living pray for them. But even
the watcher could not pray. Another hour struck in the belfry
of the church. She listened to the chime and left off counting
the moments, and this act of cessation made more perfect the
peace of the dead woman.
When the sun rose her sensation of death passed away,
leaving behind it, however, a lethargy of mind and body such as
she had never known before the previous night. Suzanne,
coming in to call her, exclaimed:
“Mam'selle is ill?”
“No. Why should I be ill?”
“Mann'selle looks so strange,” the maid said, regarding her
with round and curious eyes. “As if } )
She hesitated.
“Give me my tea,” Domini said.
When she was drinking it she asked:
“Do you know at what time the train leaves Beni-Mora—the
passenger train?”
“Yes, Mam'sellc. There is only one in the day. It goes
soon after twelve. Monsieur Helmuth told me.”
{ { Oh! } }
“What gown will 2 ”
“Any gown—the white linen one I had on yesterday.”
“Yes, Mam'selle.”
“No, not that. Any other gown. Is it to be hot?”
“Very hot, Mam'selle. There is not a cloud in the sky.”
THE GARDEN 257
“How strange!” Domini said, in a low voice that Suzanne
did not hear. When she was up and dressed she said:
“I am going out to Count Anteoni's garden. I think I'll—
yes, I'll take a book with me.”
She went into her little salon and looked at the volumes
scattered about there, some books of devotion, travel, books on
sport, Rossetti's and Newman's poems, some French novels, and
the novels of Jane Austen, of which, oddly, considering her
nature, she was very fond. For the first time in her life they
struck her as shrivelled, petty chronicles of shrivelled, bloodless,
artificial lives. She turned back into her bedroom, took up the
little white volume of the Imitation, which lay always near her
bed, and went out into the verandah. She looked neither to
right nor left, but at once descended the staircase and took her
way along the arcade.
When she reached the gate of the garden she hesitated
before knocking upon it. The sight of the villa, the arches, the
white walls and clustering trees she knew so well hurt her so
frightfully, so unexpectedly, that she felt frightened and sick, and
as if she must go away quickly to some place which she had
never seen, and which could call up no reminiscences in her
mind.
Perhaps she would have gone into the oasis, or along the
path that skirted the river bed, had not Smain softly opened the
gate and come out to meet her, holding a great velvety rose in his
slim hand.
He gave it to her without a word, smiling languidly with eyes
in which the sun seemed caught and turned to glittering dark-
ness, and as she took it and moved it in her fingers, looking at
the wine-coloured petals on which lay tiny drops of water
gleaming with thin and silvery lights, she remembered her first
visit to the garden, and the mysterious enchantment that had
floated out to her through the gate from the golden vistas and the
dusky shadows of the trees, the feeling of romantic expectation
that had stirred within her as she stepped on to the sand and
saw before her the winding ways disappearing into dimness
between the rills edged by the pink geraniums.
How long ago that seemed, like a remembrance of early
childhood in the heart of one who is old.
Now that the gate was open she resolved to go into the
garden. She might as well be there as elsewhere. She stepped
in, holding the rose in her hand. One of the drops of water
slipped from an outer petal and fell upon the sand. She
258 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
thought of it as a tear. The rose was weeping, but her eyes
were dry. She touched the rose with her lips.
To-day the garden was like a stranger to her, but a stranger
with whom she had once—long, long ago—been intimate, whom
she had trusted, and by whom she had been betrayed. She
looked at it and knew that she had thought it beautiful and
loved it. From its recesses had come to her troops of dreams.
The leaves of its trees had touched her as with tender hands.
The waters of its rills had whispered to her of the hidden things
that lie in the breast of joy. The golden rays that played
through its scented alleys had played, too, through the shadows
of her heart, making a warmth and light there that seemed to
come from heaven. She knew this as one knows of the apparent
humanity that greeted one's own humanity in the friend who is
a friend no longer, and she sickened at it as at the thought of
remembered intimacy with one proved treacherous. There
seemed to her nothing ridiculous in this personification of the
garden, as there had formerly seemed to her nothing ridiculous
in her thought of the desert as a being; but the fact that she
did thus instinctively personify the nature that surrounded her
gave to the garden in her eyes an aspect that was hostile and
even threatening, as if she faced a love now changed to hate,
a cold and inimical watchfulness that knew too much about her,
to which she had once told all her happy secrets and mur-
mured all her hopes. She did not hate the garden, but she felt
as if she feared it. The movements of its leaves conveyed to
her uneasiness. The hidden places, which once had been to her
retreats peopled with tranquil blessings, were now become am-
bushes in which lay lurking enemies.
Yet she did not leave it, for to-day something seemed to tell
her that it was meant that she should suffer, and she bowed in
spirit to the decree.
She went on slowly till she reached the fumoir. She entered
it and sat down.
She had not seen any of the gardeners or heard the note of a
flute. The day was very still. She looked at the narrow door-
way and remembered exactly the attitude in which Count
Anteoni had stood during their first interview, holding a trailing
branch of the bougainvillea in his hand. She saw him as a
shadow that the desert had taken. Glancing down at the carpet
Sand she imagined the figure of the sand diviner crouching
there and recalled his prophecy, and directly she did this she
knew that she had believed in it. She had believed that one
THE GARDEN 259
day she would ride out into the desert in a storm, and that
with her, enclosed in the curtains of a palanquin, there would be
a companion. The Diviner had not told her who would be this
companion. Darkness was about him rendering him invisible
to the eyes of the seer. But her heart had told her. She had
seen the other figure in the palanquin. It was a man. It was
Androvsky.
She had believed that she would go out into the desert with
Androvsky, with this traveller of whose history, of whose soul,
she knew nothing. Some inherent fatalism within her had told
her so. And no P
The darkness of the shade beneath the trees in this inmost
recess of the garden fell upon her like the darkness of that storm
in which the desert was blotted out, and it was fearful to her
because she felt that she must travel in the storm alone. Till
now she had been very much alone in life and had realised that
such solitude was dreary, that in it development was difficult,
and that it checked the steps of the pilgrim who should go up-
ward to the heights of life. But never till now had she felt the
fierce tragedy of solitude, the utter terror of it. As she sat
in the fumoir, looking down on the smoothly-raked sand, she
said to herself that till this moment she had never had any idea
of the meaning of Solitude. It was the desert within a human
soul, but the desert without the sun. And she knew this because
at last she loved. The dark and silent flood of passion that lay
within her had been released from its boundaries, the old land-
marks were swept away for ever, the face of the world was
changed.
She loved Androvsky. Everything in her loved him; all that
she had been, all that she was, all that she could ever be loved
him; that which was physical in her, that which was spiritual,
the brain, the heart, the soul, body and flame burning within
it—all that made her the wonder that is woman, loved him.
She was love for Androvsky. It seemed to her that she was
nothing else, had never been anything else. The past years
were nothing, the pain by which she was stricken when her
mother fled, by which she was tormented when her father died
blaspheming, were nothing. There was no room in her for
anything but love of Androvsky. At this moment even her
love of God seemed to have been expelled from her. After-
wards she remembered that. She did not think of it now. For
her there was a universe with but one figure in it—Androvsky.
She was unconscious of herself except as love for him. She was
26O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
unconscious of any Creative Power to whom she owed the fact
that he was there to be loved by her. She was passion, and
he was that to which passion flowed.
The world was the stream and the sea.
As she sat there with her hands folded on her knees, her eyes
bent down, and the purple flowers all about her, she felt sim-
plified and cleansed, as if a mass of little things had been swept
from her, leaving space for the great thing that henceforth
must for ever dwell within her and dominate her life. The
burning shame of which she had been conscious on the previous
night, when Androvsky told her of his approaching departure
and she was stricken as by a lightning flash, had died away from
her utterly. She remembered it with wonder. How should
she be ashamed of love? She thought that it would be impossi-
ble to her to be ashamed, even if Androvsky knew all that she
knew. Just then the immense truth of her feeling conquered
everything else, made every other thing seem false, and she
said to herself that of truth she did not know how to be ashamed.
But with the knowledge of the immense truth of her love came
the knowledge of the immense sorrow that might, that must,
dwell side by side with it.
Suddenly she moved. She lifted her eyes from the sand and
looked out into the garden. Besides this truth within her there
was one other thing in the world that was true. Androvsky
was going away. While she sat there the moments were pass-
ing. They were making the hours that were bent upon de-
struction. She was sitting in the garden now and Androvsky
was close by. A little time would pass noiselessly. She
would be sitting there and Androvsky would be far away,
gone from the desert, gone out of her life no doubt for ever.
And the garden would not have changed. Each tree would
stand in its place, each flower would still give forth its scent.
The breeze would go on travelling through the lacework of the
branches, the streams slipping between the Sandy walls of the
rills. The inexorable sun would shine, and the desert would
whisper in its blue distances of the unseen things that always
dwell beyond. And Androvsky would be gone. Their short
intercourse, so full of pain, uneasiness, reserve, so fragmentary,
so troubled by abrupt violences, by ignorance, by a sense of
horror even on the one side, and by an almost constant suspicion
on the other, would have come to an end.
She was stunned by the thought, and looked round her as if
she expected inanimate Nature to take up arms for her against
THE GARDEN 26I
this fate. Yet she did not for a moment think of taking up arms
herself. She had left the hotel without trying to see Androvsky.
She did not intend to return to it till he was gone. The idea of
seeking him never came into her mind. There is an intensity of
feeling that generates action, but there is a greater intensity of
feeling that renders action impossible, the feeling that seems to
turn a human being into a shell of stone within which burn all
the fires of creation. Domini knew that she would not move out
of the fumoir till the train was creeping along the river-bed on its
way from Beni-Mora.
She had laid down the Imitation upon the seat by her side,
and now she took it up. The sight of its familiar pages made
her think for the first time, “Do I love God any more?” And
immediately afterwards came the thought: “Have I ever loved
him P’’ The knowledge of her love for Androvsky, for this body
that she had seen, for this soul that she had seen through the
body like a flame through glass, made her believe just then that
if she had ever thought—and certainly she had thought—that
she loved a being whom she had never seen, never even im-
aginatively projected, she had deceived herself. The act of faith
was not impossible, but the act of love for the object on which
that faith was concentrated now seemed to her impossible. For
her body, that remained passive, was full of a riot, a fury of life.
The flesh that had slept was awakened and knew itself. And
she could no longer feel that she could love that which her flesh
could not touch, that which could not touch her flesh. And she
said to herself, without terror, even without regret, “I do not
love, I never have loved, God.”
She looked into the book:
“ Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation,
which thou bestowest on them that love thee.”
The sweetness of thy contemplation | She remembered
Androvsky's face looking at her out of the heart of the sun as
they met for the first time in the blue country. In that moment
she put him consciously in the place of God, and there was
nothing within her to say, “You are committing mortal sin.”
She looked into the book once more and her eyes fell upon
the words which she had read on her first morning in Beni-
Mora:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary
it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when
frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a
burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth
262 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this
voice.”
She had always loved these words and thought them the most
beautiful in the book, but now they came to her with the newness
of the first spring morning that ever dawned upon the world.
The depth of them was laid bare to her, and, with that depth, the
depth of her own heart. The paralysis of anguish passed from
her. She no longer looked to Nature as one dumbly seeking
help. For they led her to herself, and made her look into herself
and her own love and know it. “When frightened it is not dis-
turbed—it securely passeth through all.” That was absolutely
true—true as her love. She looked down into her love, and she
saw there the face of God, but thought she saw the face of
human love only. And it was so beautiful and so strong that
even the tears upon it gave her courage, and she said to herself:
“Nothing matters, nothing can matter so long as I have this
love within me. He is going away, but I am not sad, for I am
going with him—my love, all that I am—that is going with
him, will always be with him.” -
Just then it seemed to her that if she had seen Androvsky
lying dead before her on the sand she could not have felt un-
happy. Nothing could do harm to a great love. It was the
one permanent, eternally vital thing, clad in an armour of fire
that no weapon could pierce, free of all terror from outside
things because it held its safety within its own heart, everlast-
ingly enough, perfectly, flawlessly complete for and in itself.
For that moment fear left her, restlessness left her. Anyone
looking in upon her from the garden would have looked in upon
a great, calm happiness.
Presently there came a step upon the sand of the garden
walks. A man, going slowly, with a sort of passionate reluct-
ance, as if something immensely strong was trying to hold him
back, but was conquered with difficulty by something still
stronger that drove him on, came out of the fierce sunshine into
the shadow of the garden, and began to search its silent recesses.
It was Androvsky. He looked bowed and old and guilty.
The two lines near his mouth were deep. His lips were work-
ing. His thin cheeks had fallen in like the cheeks of a man
devoured by a wasting illness, and the strong tinge of sunburn
on them seemed to be but an imperfect mark to a pallor that,
fully visible, would have been more terrible than that of a
Corpse. In his eyes there was a fixed expression of ferocious
grief that seemed mingled with ferocious anger, as if he were
THE GARDEN 263
suffering from some dreadful misery, and cursed himself because
he suffered, as a man may curse himself for doing a thing that he
chooses to do but need not do. Such an expression may some-
times be seen in the eyes of those who are resisting a great
temptation.
He began to search the garden, furtively but minutely.
Sometimes he hesitated. Sometimes he stood still. Then he
turned back and went a little way towards the wide sweep of
sand that was bathed in sunlight where the villa stood. Then
with more determination, and walking faster, he again made his
way through the shadows that slept beneath the densely-growing
trees. As he passed between them he several times stretched
out trembling hands, broke off branches and threw them on the
sand, treading on them heavily and crushing them down below
the surface. Once he spoke to himself in a low voice that
shook as if with difficulty dominating sobs that were rising in
his throat.
“De profundis—” he said. “De profundis—de profun-
dis
His voice died away. He took hold of one hand with the
other and went on silently. -
Presently he made his way at last towards the fumoir in
which Domini was still sitting, with one hand resting on the
open page whose words had lit up the darkness in her spirit.
He came to it so softly that she did not hear his step. He saw
her, stood quite still under the trees, and looked at her for a
long time. As he did so his face changed till he seemed to be-
come another man. The ferocity of grief and anger faded from
his eyes, which were filled with an expression of profound won-
der, then of flickering uncertainty, then of hard, manly resolu-
tion—a fighting expression that was full of sex and passion. The
guilty, furtive look which had been stamped upon all his
features, specially upon his lips, vanished. Suddenly he became
younger in appearance. His figure straightened itself. His
hands ceased from trembling. He moved away from the trees,
and went to the doorway of the fumoir.
Domini looked up, saw him, and got up quietly, clasping her
fingers round the little book.
Androvsky stood just beyond the doorway, took off his hat,
kept it in his hand, and said:
“I came here to say good-bye.”
He made a movement as if to come into the fumoir, but she
stopped it by coming at once to the opening. She felt that she
264 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
could not speak to him enclosed within walls, under a roof. He
drew back, and she came out and stood beside him on the
Sand.
“Did you know I should come?” he said.
She noticed that he had ceased to call her “Madame,” and
also that there was in his voice a sound she had not heard in it
before, a note of new self-possession that suggested a spirit Con-
centrating itself and aware of its own strength to act.
“No,” she answered.
“Were you coming back to the hotel this morning?” he
asked.
( ( No.” -
He was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly:
“Then—then you did not wish—you did not mean to see
me again before I went?”
“It was not that. I came to the garden—I had to come—I
had to be alone.”
“You want to be alone?” he said. “You want to be
alone?”
Already the strength was dying out of his voice and face, and
the old uneasiness was waking up in him. A dreadful ex-
pression of pain came into his eyes.
“Was that why you—you looked so happy?” he said in a
harsh, trembling voice.
“When P ''
“I stood for a long while looking at you when you were in
there *-he pointed to the fumoir—“ and your face was happy—
your face was happy.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You will be happy alone?—alone in the desert?”
When he said that she felt suddenly the agony of the water-
less spaces, the agony of the unpeopled wastes. Her whole
spirit shrank and quivered, all the great joy of her love died
within her. A moment before she had stood upon the heights
of her heart. Now she shrank into its deepest, blackest abysses.
She looked at him and said nothing.
“You will not be happy alone.”
His voice no longer trembled. He caught hold of her left
hand, awkwardly, nervously, but held it strongly with his close
to his side, and went on speaking.
“Nobody is happy alone. Nothing is—men and women—
children—animals.” A bird flew across the shadowy space
under the trees, followed by another bird; he pointed to them;
3.
THE GARDEN 265
they disappeared. “The birds, too, they must have compan-
ionship. Everything wants a companion.”
( & Yes.” -
“But then—you will stay here alone in the desert?”
“What else can I do?” she said.
“And that journey,” he went on, still holding her hand fast
against his side, “ your journey into the desert—you will take it
alone?”
“What else can I do?” she repeated in a lower voice.
It seemed to her that he was deliberately pressing her down
into the uttermost darkness.
“You will not go.”
“Yes, I shall go.”
She spoke with conviction. Even in that moment—most of
all in that moment—she knew that she would obey the summons
of the desert. -
“I—I shall never know the desert,” he said. “I thought—
it seemed to me that I, too, should go out into it. I have
wanted to go. You have made me want to go.”
{ { I? 5 y
“Yes. Once you said to me that peace must dwell out
there. It was on the tower the—the first time you ever spoke
to me.”
“I remember.” -
“I wondered—I often wonder why you spoke to me.”
She knew he was looking at her with intensity, but she kept
her eyes on the sand. There was something in them that she
felt he must not see, a light that had just come into them as she
realised that already, on the tower before she even knew him,
she had loved him. It was that love, already born in her heart
but as yet unconscious of its own existence, which had so
strangely increased for her the magic of the African evening .
when she watched it with him. But before—suddenly she knew
that she had loved Androvsky from the beginning, from the
moment when his face looked at her as if out of the heart of the
sun. That was why her entry into the desert had been full of
such extraordinary significance. This man and the desert were,
had always been, as one in her mind. Never had she thought
of the one without the other. Never had she been mysteriously
called by the desert without hearing as a far-off echo the voice
of Androvsky, or been drawn onward by the mystical summons
of the blue distances without being drawn onward, too, by the
mystical summons of the heart to which her own responded.
266 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
The link between the man and the desert was indissoluble.
She could not conceive of its being severed, and as she realised
this, she realised also something that turned her whole nature
into flame.
She could not conceive of Androvsky's not loving her, of his
not having loved her from the moment when he saw her in the
sun. To him, too, the desert had made a revelation—the reve-
lation of her face, and of the soul behind it looking through it.
In the flames of the sun, as they went into the desert, the flames
of their two spirits had been blended. She knew that certainly
and for ever. Then how could it be possible that Androvsky
should not go out with her into the desert?
“Why did you speak to me?” he said.
“We came into the desert together,” she answered simply.
“We had to know each other.”
“And now—now—we have to say
His voice ceased. Far away there was the thin sound of a
chime. Domini had never before heard the church bell in the
garden, and now she felt as if she heard it, not with her ears, but
with her spirit. As she heard she felt Androvsky's hand, which
had been hot upon hers, turn cold. He let her hand go, and
again she was stricken by the horrible sound she had heard the
previous night in the desert, when he turned his horse and rode
away with her. And now, as then, he turned away from her in
silence, but she knew that this time he was leaving her, that this
movement was his final good-bye. With his head bowed down
he took a few steps. He was near to a turning of the path. She
watched him, knowing that within less than a moment she would
be watching only the trees and the sand. She gazed at the bent
figure, calling up all her faculties, crying out to herself passion-
ately, desperately, “Remember it—remember it as it is—there
—before you—just as it is—for ever.” As it reached the turn-
ing, in the distance of the garden rose the twitter of the flute of
Larbi. Androvsky stopped, stood still with his back turned
towards her. And Larbi, hidden and far off, showered out his
little notes of African love, of love in the desert where the sun is
everlasting, and the passion of man is hot as the sun, where
Liberty reigns, lifting her cymbals that are as spheres of fire, and
the footsteps of Freedom are heard upon the sand, treading
towards the south.
Larbi played—played on and on, untiring as the love that
ºned with the world, but that will not die when the world
16S.
5 J
THE GARDEN 267
Then Androvsky came back quickly till he reached the place
where Domini was standing. He put his hands on her shoul-
ders. Then he sank down on the sand, letting his hands slip
down over her breast and along her whole body till they clasped
themselves round her knees. He pressed his face into her dress
against her knees.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you—but don't listen to me
—you mustn't hear it—you mustn't. But I must say it. I
can't—I can't go till I say it. I love you—I love you.”
She heard him sobbing against her knees, and the sound was
as the sound of strength made audible. She put her hands
against his temples.
“I am listening,” she said. “I must hear it.”
He looked up, rose to his feet, put his hands behind her
shoulders, held her, and set his lips on hers, pressing his whole
body against hers.
“Hear it!” he said, muttering against her lips. “Hear it.
I love you—I love you.”
The two birds they had seen flew back beneath the trees,
turned in an airy circle, rose above the trees into the blue sky,
and, side by side, winged their way out of the garden to the
desert.
B O O K IV
THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER XVI
N the evening before the day of Domini’s marriage with
Androvsky there was a strange sunset, which attracted
even the attention and roused the comment of the
Arabs. The day had been calm and beautiful, one
of the most lovely days of the North African spring,
and Batouch, resting from the triumphant labour of super- -
intending the final preparations for a long desert journey,
augured a morning of Paradise for the departure along the
straight road that led at last to Tombouctou. But as the
radiant afternoon drew to its end there came into the blue
sky a whiteness that suggested a heaven turning pale in the
contemplation of some act that was piteous and terrible. And
under this blanching heaven the desert, and all things and people
of the oasis of Beni-Mora, assumed an aspect of apprehension,
as if they felt themselves to be in the thrall of some power whose
omnipotence they could not question and whose purpose they
feared. This whiteness was shot, at the hour of sunset, with
streaks of sulphur yellow and dappled with small, ribbed clouds
tinged with yellow-green, a bitter and cruel shade of green that
distressed the eyes as a merciless light distresses them, but these
colours quickly faded, and again the whiteness prevailed for a
brief space of time before the heavy falling of a darkness un-
pierced by stars. With this darkness came a faint moaning of
hollow wind from the desert, a lamentable murmur that shud-
dered over the great spaces, crept among the palms and the flat-
roofed houses, and died away at the foot of the brown mountains
beyond the Hammam Salahine. The succeeding silence, short
and intense, was like a sound of fear, like the cry of a voice
lifted up in protest against the approach of an unknown, but
dreaded, fate. Then the wind came again with a stronger
moaning and a lengthened life, not yet forceful, not yet with
268
THE JOURNEY 269
all its powers, but more tenacious, more acquainted with itself
and the deeds that it might do when the night was black
among the vast Sands which were its birth-place, among the
crouching plains and the trembling palm groves that would
be its battle-ground.
Batouch looked grave as he listened to the wind and the creak-
ing of the palm stems one against another. Sand came upon his
face. He pulled the hood of his burnous over his turban and
across his cheeks, covered his mouth with a fold of his haik and
stared into the blackness, like an animal in search of something
his instinct has detected approaching from a distance.
Ali was beside him in the doorway of the Café Maure, a slim
Arab boy, bronze-coloured and serious as an idol, who was a
troubadour of the Sahara, singer of “Janat" and many love-
songs, player of the guitar backed with sand tortoise and faced
with stretched goatskin. Behind them swung an oil lamp
fastened to a beam of palm, and the red ashes glowed in the
coffee niche and shed a ray upon the shelf of small white cups
with faint designs of gold. In a corner, his black face and arms
faintly relieved against the wall, an old negro crouched, gazing
into vacancy with bulging eyes, and beating with a curved palm
stem upon an oval drum, whose murmur was deep and hollow
as the murmur of the wind, and seemed indeed its echo prisoned
within the room and striving to escape. -
“There is sand on my eyelids,” said Batouch. “It is bad
for to-morrow. When Allah sends the sands we should cover
the face and play the ladies' game within the café, we should not
travel on the road towards the south.”
Ali said nothing, but drew up his haik over his mouth and
nose, and looked into the night, folding his thin hands in his
burnous.
“Achmed will sleep in the Bordj of Arba,” continued Batouch
in a low, murmuring voice, as if speaking to himself. “And the
beasts will be in the court. Nothing can remain outside, for
there will be a greater roaring of the wind at Arba. Can it be
the will of Allah that we rest in the tents to-morrow?”
Ali made no answer. The wind had suddenly died down.
The sand grains came no more against their eyelids and the folds
of their haiks. Behind them the negro's drum gave out mono-
tonously its echo of the wind, filling the silence of the night,
“Whatever Allah sends,” Batouch went on softly after a
pause, “Madame will go. She is brave as the lion. There is
no jackal in Madame. Irena is not more brave than she is. But
27O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Madame will never wear the veil for a man's sake. She will
not wear the veil, but she could give a knife-thrust if he were to
look at another woman as he has looked at her, as he will look
at her to-morrow. She is proud as a Touareg and there is
fierceness in her. But he will never look at another woman as
he will look at her to-morrow. The Roumi is not as we are.”
The wind came back to join its sound with the drum, im-
prisoning the two Arabs in a muttering circle.
“They will not care,” said Batouch. “They will go out into
the storm without fear.”
The sand pattered more sharply on his eyelids. He drew
back into the café. Ali followed him, and they squatted down
side by side upon the ground and looked before them seriously.
The noise of the wind increased till it nearly drowned the noise
of the negro's drum. Presently the one-eyed owner of the café
brought them two cups of coffee, setting the cups near their
stockinged feet. They rolled two cigarettes and smoked in
silence, sipping the coffee from time to time. Then Ali began
to glance towards the negro. Half shutting his eyes, and assum-
ing a languid expression that was almost sickly, he stretched
his lips in a smile, gently moving his head from side to side.
Batouch watched him. Presently he opened his lips and began
to Sing:
“The love of women is like a date that is golden in the sun,
That is golden—
The love of women is like a gazelle that comes to drink—
To drink at the water springs—
The love of women is like the nargileh, and like the dust of the keef.
That is mingled with tobacco and with honey.
Put the reed between thy lips, O loving man
And draw dreams from the haschish that is the love of women
“Janat 1 Janat 1 Janat! ”
The wind grew louder and sand was blown along the café
floor and about the coffee-cups.
“The love of women is like the rose of the Caid’s garden
That is full of silver tears—
The love of women is like the first day of the spring
When the children play at Cora—
The love of wºn is like the Derbouka that has been warmed at
- the fire
And gives out a sweet sound.
Take it in thy hands, O loving man
And sing to the Derbouka that is the love of women.
Janat 1 Janat 1 Janatl "
THE JOURNEY 271
In the doorway, where the lamp swung from the beam, a
man in European dress stood still to listen. The wind wailed
behind him and stirred his clothes. His eyes shone in the faint
light with a fierceness of emotion in which there was a joy that
was almost terrible, but in which there seemed also to be some-
thing that was troubled. When the song died away, and only
the voices of the wind and the drum spoke to the darkness, he
disappeared into the night. The Arabs did not see him.
“Janat! Janat 1 Janat!”
The night drew on and the storm increased. All the doors
of the houses were closely shut. Upon the roofs the guard dogs
crouched, shivering and whining, against the earthen parapets.
The camels groaned in the fondouks, and the tufted heads of
the palms swayed like the waves of the sea. And the Sahara
seemed to be lifting up its voice in a summons that was tremen-
dous as a summons to Judgment.
Domini had always known that the desert would summon
her. She heard its summons now in the night without fear.
The roaring of the tempest was sweet in her ears as the sound
of the Derbouka to the loving man of the sands. It accorded
with the fire that lit up the cloud of passion in her heart. Its
wildness marched in step with a marching wildness in her veins
and pulses. For her gipsy blood was astir to-night, and the
recklessness of the boy in her seemed to clamour with the
storm. The sound of the wind was as the sound of the clashing
cymbals of Liberty, calling her to the adventure that love would
glorify, to the far-away life that love would make perfect, to
the untrodden paths of the sun of which she had dreamed in
the shadows, and on which she would set her feet at last with
the comrade of her soul.
To-morrow her life would begin, her real life, the life of
which men and women dream as the prisoner dreams of freedom.
And she was glad, she thanked God, that her past years had
been empty of joy, that in her youth she had been robbed of
youth's pleasures. She thanked God that she had come to
maturity without knowing love. It seemed to her that to love
in early life was almost pitiful, was a catastrophe, an experience
for which the soul was not ready, and so could not appreciate
at its full and wonderful value. She thought of it as of a child
being taken away from the world to Paradise without having
known the pain of existence in the world, and at that moment
272 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
she worshipped suffering. Every tear that she had ever shed she
loved, every weary hour, every despondent thought, every cruel
disappointment. She called around her the congregation of her
past sorrows, and she blessed them and bade them depart from
her for ever.
As she heard the roaring of the wind she smiled. The
Sahara was fulfilling the words of the Diviner. To-morrow
she and Androvsky would go out into the storm and the dark-
ness together. The train of camels would be lost in the desola-
tion of the desert. And the people of Beni-Mora would see
it vanish, and, perhaps, would pity those who were hidden by
the curtains of the palanquin. They would pity her as Suzanne
pitied her, openly, with eyes that were tragic. She laughed
aloud.
It was late in the night. Midnight had sounded yet she did
not go to bed. She feared to sleep, to lose the consciousness of
her joy of the glory which had come into her life. She was a
miser of the golden hours of this black and howling night. To
sleep would be to be robbed. A splendid avarice in her rebelled
against the thought of sleep.
Was Androvsky sleeping? She wondered and longed to
know.
To-night she was fully aware for the first time of the inherent
fearlessness of her character, which was made perfect at last by
her perfect love. Alone, she had always had courage. Even in
her most listless hours she had never been a craven. But now
she felt the completeness of a nature clothed in armour that
rendered it impregnable. It was a strange thing that man
should have the power to put the finishing touch to God’s work,
that religion should stoop to be a handmaid to faith in a human
being, but she did not think it strange. Everything in life
seemed to her to be in perfect accord because her heart was in
perfect accord with another heart.
And she welcomed the storm. She even welcomed something
else that came to her now in the storm: the memory of the sand
diviner's tortured face as he gazed down reading her fate in the
sand. For what was an untroubled fate? Surely a life that
crept along the hollows and had no impulse to call it to the
heights. Knowing the flawless perfection of her armour she had
a wild longing to prove it. She wished that there should be
assaults upon her love, because she knew she could resist them
one and all, and she wished to have the keen joy of resisting
them. There is a health of body so keen and vital that it de-
THE JOURNEY - 273
sires combat. The soul sometimes knows a precisely similar
health and is filled with a similar desire.
“Put my love to the proof, O God!” was Domini's last
prayer that night when the storm was at its wildest. “Put my
love to the uttermost proof that he may know it, as he can never
know it otherwise.”
And she fell asleep at length, peacefully, in the tumult of the
night, feeling that God had heard her prayer.
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 some-
thing 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 palm-wood 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.
274. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 every-
thing that savoured of Ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedi-
tion, 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
THE JOURNEY 275
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 cafés 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.
The priest came from his little house, bending forward against
the wind, his eyes partially protected from the driving sand by
blue spectacles. His face, which was habitually grave, to-day
looked sad and stern, like the face of a man about to perform a
task that was against his inclination, even perhaps against his
conscience. He glanced at the waiting Arabs and hastened into
the church, taking off his spectacles as he did so, and wiping his
eyes, which were red from the action of the sand-grains, with a
silk pocket-handkerchief. When he reached the sacristy he shut
himself into it alone for a moment. He sat down on a chair
and, leaning his arms upon the wooden table that stood in the
centre of the room, bent forward and stared before him at the
wall opposite, listening to the howling of the wind.
Father Roubier had an almost passionate affection for his
little church of Beni-Mora. So long and ardently had he prayed
and taught in it, so often had he passed the twilight hours in it
alone wrapped in religious reveries, or searching his conscience
for the shadows of sinful thoughts, that it had become to him as
a friend, and more than a friend. He thought of it sometimes as
his confessor and sometimes as his child. Its stones were to him
as flesh and blood, its altars as lips that whispered consolation in
answer to his prayers. The figures of its saints were heavenly
companions. In its ugliness he perceived only beauty, in its
tawdriness only the graces that are sweet offerings to God. The
love that, had he not been a priest, he might have given to a
woman he poured forth upon his church, and with it that other
love which, had it been the design of his Heavenly Father, would
have fitted him for the ascetic, yet impassioned, life of an ardent
and devoted monk. To defend this consecrated building against
outrage he would, without hesitation, have given his last drop of
blood. And now he was to perform in it an act against which
his whole nature revolted; he was to join indissolubly the
276 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
l
lives of these two strangers who had come to Beni-Mora—
Domini Enfilden and Boris Androvsky. He was to put on the
surplice and white stole, to say the solemn and irreparable “Ego
Jungo,” to sprinkle the ring with holy water and bless it.
As he sat there alone, listening to the howling of the storm
outside, he went mentally through the coming ceremony. He
thought of the wonderful grace and beauty of the prayers of
benediction, and it seemed to him that to pronounce them with
his lips, while his nature revolted against his own utterance, was
to perform a shameful act, was to offer an insult to this little
church he loved.
Yet how could he help performing this act? He knew that
he would do it. Within a few minutes he would be standing
before the altar, he would be looking into the faces of this man
and woman whose love he was called upon to consecrate. He
would consecrate it, and they would go out from him into the
desert man and wife. They would be lost to his sight in the
tCWn.
His eye fell upon a silver crucifix that was hanging upon the
wall in front of him. He was not a very imaginative man, not
a man given to fancies, a dreamer of dreams more real to him
than life, or a seer of visions. But to-day he was stirred, and
perhaps the unwonted turmoil of his mind acted subtly upon his
nervous system. Afterward he felt certain that it must have
been so, for in no other way could he account for a fantasy that
beset him at this moment.
As he looked at the crucifix there came against the church a
more furious beating of the wind, and it seemed to him that the
Christ upon the crucifix shuddered.
He saw it shudder. He started, leaned across the table and
stared at the crucifix with eyes that were full of an amazement
that was mingled with horror. Then he got up, crossed the
room and touched the crucifix with his finger. As he did so, the
acolyte, whose duty it was to help him to robe, knocked at the
sacristy door. The sharp noise recalled him to himself. He
knew that for the first time in his life he had been the slave of an
optical delusion. He knew it, and yet he could not banish the
feeling that God himself was averse from the act that he was on
the point of committing in this church that confronted Islam,
that God himself shuddered as surely even He, the Creator,
must shudder at some of the actions of his creatures. And this
feeling added immensely to the distress of the priest’s mind. In
performing this ceremony he now had the dreadful sensation that
THE JOURNEY 277
he was putting himself into direct antagonism with God. His
instinctive horror of Androvsky had never been so great as it was
to-day. In vain he had striven to conquer it, to draw near to
this man who roused all the repulsion of his nature. His efforts
had been useless. He had prayed to be given the sympathy for
this man that the true Christian ought to feel towards every
human being, even the most degraded. But he felt that his
prayers had not been answered. With every day his antipathy
for Androvsky increased. Yet he was entirely unable to ground
it upon any definite fact in Androvsky's character. He did not
know that character. The man was as much a mystery to him
as on the day when they first met. And to this living mystery
from which his soul recoiled he was about to consign, with all
the beautiful and solemn blessings of his Church, a woman whose
character he respected, whose innate purity, strength and nobility
he had quickly divined, and no less quickly learned to love.
It was a bitter, even a horrible, moment to him.
The little acolyte, a French boy, son of the postmaster of
Beni-Mora, was startled by the sight of the Father's face when
he opened the sacristy door. He had never before seen such an
expression of almost harsh pain in those usually kind eyes, and
he drew back from the threshold like one afraid. His movement
recalled the priest to a sharp consciousness of the necessities of
the moment, and with a strong effort he conquered his pain
sufficiently to conceal all outward expression of it. He smiled
gently at the little boy and said:
“Is it time?”
The child looked reassured.
“Yes, Father.”
He came into the sacristy and went towards the cupboard
where the vestments were kept, passing the silver crucifix. As
he did so he glanced at it. He opened the cupboard, then stood
for a moment and again turned his eyes to the Christ. The
Father watched him. -
“What are you looking at, Paul ?” he asked.
“Nothing, Father,” the boy replied, with a sudden expression
of reluctance that was almost obstinate.
And he began to take the priest's robes out of the cupboard.
Just then the wind wailed again furiously about the church,
and the crucifix fell down upon the floor of the sacristy.
The priest started forward, picked it up, and stood with it in
his hand. He glanced at the wall, and saw at once that the nail
to which the crucifix had been fastened had come out of its hole.
278 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
A flake of plaster had been detached, perhaps some days ago,
and the hole had become too large to retain the nail. The ex-
planation of the matter was perfect, simple and comprehensible.
Yet the priest felt as if a catastrophe had just taken place. As
he stared at the cross he heard a little noise near him. The
acolyte was crying.
“Why, Paul, what's the matter?” he said.
“Why did it do that?” exclaimed the boy, as if alarmed.
“Why did it do that?”
“Perhaps it was the wind. Everything is shaking. Come,
come, my child, there is nothing to be afraid of.”
He laid the crucifix on the table. Paul dried his eyes with
his fists. -
“I don’t like to-day,” he said. “I don’t like to-day.”
The priest patted him on the shoulder.
“The weather has upset you,” he said, smiling.
But the nervous behaviour of the child deepened strangely his
own sense of apprehension. When he had robed he waited
for the arrival of the bride and bridegroom. There was to be
no mass, and no music except the Wedding March, which the
harmonium player, a Marseillais employed in the date-packing
trade, insisted on performing to do honour to Mademoiselle
Enfilden, who had taken such an interest in the music of the
church. Androvsky, as the priest had ascertained, had been
brought up in the Catholic religion, but, when questioned, he had
said quietly that he was no longer a practising Catholic and that
he never went to confession. Under these circumstances it was
not possible to have a nuptial mass. The service would be short
and plain, and the priest was glad that this was so. Presently
the harmonium player came in.
“I may play my loudest to-day, Father,” he said, “but no one
will hear me.”
He laughed, settled the pin–Joan of Arc's face in metal—
in his azure blue necktie, and added: -
“Nom d’un chien, the wind's a cruel wedding guest!”
The priest nodded without speaking. -
“Would you believe, Father,” the man continued, “that
Mademoiselle and her husband are going to start for Arba from
the church door in all this storm | Batouch is getting the
palanquin on to the camel. How they will ever } }
“Hush ' " said the priest, holding up a warning finger.
This idle chatter displeased him in the church, but he had
another reason for wishing to stop the conversation. It re-
THE JOURNEY 279
newed his dread to hear of the projected journey, and made him
See, as in a shadowy vision, Domini Enfilden's figure disappear-
ing into the windy desolation of the desert protected by the living
mystery he hated. Yes, at this moment, he no longer denied it
to himself. There was something in Androvsky that he actually
hated with his whole soul, hated even in his church, at the very
threshold of the altar where stood the tabernacle containing the
sacred Host. As he thoroughly realised this for a moment he
was shocked at himself, recoiled mentally from his own feeling.
But then something within him seemed to rise up and say,
“Perhaps it is because you are near to the Host that you hate
this man. Perhaps you are right to hate him when he draws
nigh to the body of Christ.” -
Nevertheless when, some minutes later, he stood within the
altar rails and saw the face of Domini, he was conscious of
another thought, that came through his mind, dark with doubt,
like a ray of gold: “Can I be right in hating what this good
woman—this woman whose confession I have received, whose
heart I know—can I be right in hating what she loves, in fearing
what she trusts, in secretly condemning what she openly en-
thrones?” And almost in despite of himself he felt reassured
for an instant, even happy in the thought of what he was
about to do.
Domini’s face at all times suggested strength. The mental
and emotional power of her were forcibly expressed, too, through
her tall and athletic body, which was full of easy grace, but full,
too, of well-knit firmness. To-day she looked not unlike a
splendid Amazon who could have been a splendid nun had she
entered into religion. As she stood there by Androvsky, simply
dressed for the wild journey that was before her, the slight hint
in her personality of a Spartan youth, that stamped her with a
very definite originality, was blended with, even transfigured by,
a womanliness so intense as to be almost fierce, a womanliness
that had the fervour, the glowing vigour of a glory that had
suddenly become fully aware of itself, and of all the deeds that
it could not only conceive, but do. She was triumph embodied
in the flesh, not the triumph that is a shool-bully, but that
spreads wings, conscious at last that the human being has kinship
with the angels, and need not, should not, wait for death to seek
bravely their comradeship. She was love triumphant, woman
utterly fearless because instinctively aware that she was fulfilling
her divine mission. .
As he gazed at her the priest had a strange thought—of how
28O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Christ's face must have looked when he said, “Lazarus, come
forth ! ”
Androvsky stood by her, but the priest did not look at him.
The wind roared round the church, the narrow windows
rattled, and the clouds of sand driven against them made a
pattering as of fingers tapping frantically upon the glass. The
buff-coloured curtains trembled, and the dusty pink ribands tied
round the ropes of the chandeliers shook incessantly to and fro,
as if striving to escape and to join the multitudes of torn and
disfigured things that were swept through space by the breath
of the storm. Beyond the windows, vaguely seen at moments
through the clouds of sand, the outlines of the palm leaves
wavered, descended, rose, darted from side to side, like hands of
the demented.
Suzanne, who was one of the witnesses, trembled, and moved
her full lips nervously. She disapproved utterly of her mistress'
wedding, and still more of a honeymoon in the desert. For
herself she did not care, very shortly she was going to marry
Monsieur Helmuth, the important person in livery who ac-
companied the hotel omnibus to the station, and meanwhile she
was to remain at Beni-Mora under the chaperonage of Madame
Armande, the proprietor of the hotel. But it shocked her that
a mistress of hers, and a member of the English aristocracy,
should be married in a costume suitable for a camel ride, and
should start off to go to le Bon Dieu alone knew where, shut up
in a palanquin like any black woman covered with lumps of coral
and bracelets like handcuffs.
The other witnesses were the mayor of Beni-Mora, a middle-
aged doctor, who wore the conventional evening-dress of French
ceremony, and looked as if the wind had made him as sleepy as
a bear on the point of hibernating, and the son of Madame
Armande, a lively young man, with a bullet head and eager,
black eyes. The latter took a keen interest in the ceremony,
but the mayor blinked pathetically, and occasionally rubbed his
large hooked nose as if imploring it to keep his whole person
from drooping down into a heavy doze.
The priest, speaking in a conventional voice that was strangely
inexpressive of his inward emotion, asked Androvsky and Domini
whether they would take each other for wife and husband, and
listened to their replies. Androvsky's voice sounded to him hard
and cold as ice when it replied, and suddenly he thought of the
storm as raging in Some northern land over snow-bound wastes
whose scanty trees were leafless. But Domini’s voice was clear,
THE JOURNEY 28r
and warm as the sun that would shine again over the desert when
the storm was past. The mayor, constraining himself to keep
awake a little longer, gave Domini away, while Suzanne dropped
tears into a pocket-handkerchief edged with rose-coloured frill-
ing, the gift of Monsieur Helmuth. Then, when the troths had
been plighted in the midst of a more passionate roaring of the
wind, the priest, conquering a terrible inward reluctance that
beset him despite his endeavour to feel detached and formal,
merely a priest engaged in a ceremony that it was his office to
carry out, but in which he had no personal interest, spoke the
fateful words:
“Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium in nomine Patris et Filii
et Spiritus Sancti. A men.”
He said this without looking at the man and woman who
stood before him, the man on the right hand and the woman on
the left, but when he lifted his hand to sprinkle them with holy
water he could not forbear glancing at them, and he saw Domini
as a shining radiance, but Androvsky as a thing of stone. With
a movement that seemed to the priest sinister in its oppressed
deliberation, Androvsky placed gold and silver upon the book
and the marriage ring.
The priest spoke again, slowly, in the uproar of the wind, after
blessing the ring:
“Adjutorium mostrum in nomine Domini.”
After the reply the “Domine, exaudi orationem meam,” the
“Et clamor,” the “ Dominus vobiscum,” and the “Et cum
spiritu tuo,” the “ Oremus,” and the prayer following, he sprin-
kled the ring with holy water in the form of a cross and gave it
to Androvsky to give with gold and silver to Domini. Androvsky
took the ring, repeated the formula, “With this ring,” etc., then
still, as it seemed to the priest, with the same sinister delibera-
tion, placed it on the thumb of the bride's uncovered hand, say-
ing, “ In the name of the Father,” then on her second finger,
saying, “Of the Son,” then on her third finger, saying, “Of the
Holy Ghost,” then on her fourth finger. But at this moment,
when he should have said “A men,” there was a long pause of
silence. During it—why he did not know—the priest found
himself thinking of the saying of St. Isidore of Seville that the
ring of marriage is left on the fourth finger of the bride's hand
because that finger contains a vein directly connected with the
heart.
“A men.”
Androvsky had spoken. The priest started, and went on
282 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
with the “Confirma, hoc, Deus.” And from this point until the
“Per Christum Dominum mostrum, A men,” which, since there
was no Mass, closed the ceremony, he felt more master of him-
self and his emotions than at any time previously during this
day. A sensation of finality, of the irrevocable, came to him.
He said within himself, “This matter has passed out of my
hands into the hands of God.” And in the midst of the violence
of the storm a calm stole upon his spirit. “God knows best!”
he said within himself. “God knows best!”
Those words and the state of feeling that was linked with
them were and had always been to him as mighty protecting arms
that uplifted him above the beating waves of the sea of life. The
Wedding March sounded when the priest bade good-bye to the
husband and wife whom he had made one. He was able to do
it tranquilly. He even pressed Androvsky's hand.
“Be good to her,” he said. “She is—she is a good woman.”
To his surprise Androvsky suddenly wrung his hand almost
passionately, and the priest saw that there were tears in his
eyes.
That night the priest prayed long and earnestly for all wan-
derers in the desert. - *
When Domini and Androvsky came out from the church they
saw vaguely a camel lying down before the door, bending its
head and snarling fiercely. Upon its back was a palanquin of
dark-red stuff, with a roof of stuff stretched upon strong, curved
sticks, and curtains which could be drawn or undrawn at pleas-
ure. The desert men crowded about it like eager phantoms in
the wind, half seen in the driving mist of sand. Clinging to
Androvsky's arm, Domini struggled forward to the camel. As
she did so, Smain, unfolding for an instant his burnous, pressed
into her hands his mass of roses. She thanked him with a smile
he scarcely saw and a word that was borne away upon the wind.
At Larbi's lips she saw the little flute and his thick fingers flut-
tering upon the holes. She knew that he was playing his love-
song for her, but she could not hear it except in her heart. The
perfume-seller sprinkled her gravely with essence, and for a mo-
ment she felt as if she were again in his dark bazaar, and seemed
to catch among the voices of the storm the sound of men mut-
tering prayers to Allah as in the mosque of Sidi-Zazan.
Then she was in the palanquin with Androvsky close beside
her. .
At this moment Batouch took hold of the curtains of the
palanquin to draw them close, but she put out her hand and
THE JOURNEY 283
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 snarl-
ing with a sort of dreary passion.
“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
284 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
from Beni-Mora, came a little nearer to that liberty of which
Domini had 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 move-
ment, 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 con-
ceive 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 flaw-
less 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
€2.I.S. -
“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, passions, 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
THE JOURNEY 285
her life now when she felt no longer that she was a woman, but
only that she was a living praise winging upward to God.
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 attitude rendered
necessary by the peculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the move-
ment 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 passionately
at work. Had he, too, been silently praising God for his happi-
ness, and was he now wishing the body to join in the soul's
delight?
She left her hand in his passively. The sense of her woman-
hood, 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 imag-
ined him pressing her hand each time his heart pulsed. She did
not want to return the pressure. As she felt his hand thus clos-
ing 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 passive 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 thou-
sands 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
286 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 min-
utes, 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 passing, 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 passionate expecta-
tion, 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 cres-
cendo of its voice. She was anticipating 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 in-
stant, 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 her-
self, 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
THE JOURNEY 287
world, a world in which a great knowledge ruled instead of a
great ignorance. With the consciousness of exactly what An-
drovsky's touch meant to her came a multiple consciousness of a
thousand other things, all connected with him and her conse-
crated 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
space of the palanquin, that was slowly carried onward through
the passion 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 di-
vinely 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 Ba-
touch'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.
288 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 1 Janat Janat l”
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 1 Janat 1 Janat l”
Domini could not see the light in the south, and no premoni-
tion 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 Androv-
sky 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 passion, 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 spaces, 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
THE JOURNEY 289
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 hol-
low place. It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softer
hush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly grow-
ing 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 anticipation 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 nobilities 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 passing 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 passing 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
29O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 passion 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 assertion 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,
transmuted by Sex. 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 passed, but they did not feel it to be long. When
their camel halted they unclasped their hands slowly like sleepers
reluctantly awaking.
. They heard Batouch's voice outside the palanquin.
“Madame!” he called. “Madame!”
“What is it?” asked Domini, stifling a sigh.
“Madame should draw the curtains. We are halfway to
Arba. It is time for déjeuner. I will make the camel of
Madame lie down.” -
A loud “A-a-ah!” rose up, followed by a fierce groaning
from the camel, and a lethargic, yet violent, movement that
threw them forward and backward. They sank. A hand from
without pulled back the curtains and light streamed over them.
They set their feet in sand, stood up, and looked about them.
Already they were far out in the desert, though not yet
beyond the limit of the range of red mountains, which stretched
THE JOURNEY 29I
forward upon their left but at no great distance beyond them
ended in the sands. The camels were lying down in a faintly
defined track which was bordered upon either side by the plain
covered with little humps of sandy soil on which grew dusty
shrub. Above them was a sky of faint blue, heavy with banks
of clouds towards the east, and oyer their heads dressed in wispy
veils of vaporous white, through, which the blue peered in sec-
tions that grew larger as they looked. Towards the south,
where Arba lay on a low hill of earth, without grass or trees,
beyond a mound covered thickly with tamarisk bushes, which
was a feeding-place for immense herds of camels, the blue was
clear and the light of the sun intense. A delicate breeze trav-
elled about them, stirring the bushes and the robes of the Arabs,
who were throwing back their hoods, and uncovering their
mouths, and smiling at them, but seriously, as Arabs alone can
smile. Beside them stood two white and yellow guard dogs,
blinking and looking weary.
For a moment they stood still, blinking too, almost like the
dogs. The change to this immensity and light from the narrow
darkness of the palanquin overwhelmed their senses. They said
nothing, but only stared silently. Then Domini, with a large
gesture, stretched her arms above her head, drawing a deep
breath which ended in a little, almost sobbing, laugh of
exultation.
“Out of prison,” she said disconnectedly. “Out of prison—
into this!” Suddenly she turned upon Androvsky and caught
his arm, and twined both of her arms round it with a strong
confidence that was careless of everything in the intensity of its
happiness.
“All my life I’ve been in prison,” she said. “You’ve un-
locked the door!” And then, as suddenly as she had caught his
arm, she let it go. Something surged up in her, making her
almost afraid, or, if not that, confused. It was as if her nature
were a horse taking the bit between its teeth preparatory to a
tremendous gallop. Whither? She did not know. She was
intoxicated by the growing light, the sharp, delicious air, the
huge spaces around her, the solitude with this man who held her
soul Surely in his hands. She had always connected him with
the desert. Now he was hers into the desert, and the desert was
hers with him. But was it possible? Could such a fate have
been held in reserve for her? She scarcely dared even to try to
realise the meaning of her situation, lest at a breath it should be
changed. Just then she felt that if she ventured to weigh and
292 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
measure her wonderful gift Androvsky would fall dead at her
feet and the desert be folded together like a scroll.
“There is Beni-Mora, Madame,” said Batouch.
She was glad he spoke to her, turned and followed with her
eyes his pointing hand. Far off she saw a green darkness of
palms, and above it a white tower, small, from here, as the
tower of a castle of dolls.
“The tower!” she said to Androvsky. “We first spoke in
it. We must bid it good-bye.”
She made a gesture of farewell towards it. Androvsky
watched the movement of her hand. She noticed now that she
made no movement that he did not observe with a sort of
passionate attention. The desert did not exist for him. She
saw that in his eyes. He did not look towards the tower even
when she repeated:
“We must—we owe it that.”
Batouch and Ali were busy spreading a cloth upon the sand,
making it firm with little stones, taking out food, plates, knives,
glasses, bottles from a great basket slung on one of the camels.
They moved deftly, seriously intent upon their task. The camel-
drivers were loosening the cords that bound the loads upon their
beasts, who roared venomously, opening their mouths, showing
long decayed teeth, and turning their heads from side to side
with a serpentine movement. Domini and Androvsky were not
watched for a moment.
“Why won’t you look? Why won’t you say good-bye?” she
asked, coming nearer to him on the sand Softly, with a woman's
longing to hear him explain what she understood.
“What do I care for it, or the palms, or the sky, or the
desert?” he answered almost savagely. “What can I care?
If you were mine behind iron bars in that prison you spoke of—
don't you think it's enough for me—too much—a cup running
over ?”
And he added some words under his breath, words she could
not hear. *
“Not even the desert!” she said with a catch in her voice.
“It's all in you. Everything's in you—everything that
brought us together, that we’ve watched and wanted together.”
“But then,” she said, and now her voice was very quiet, “am
I peace for you?”
“Peace!” said Androvsky.
“Yes. Don't you remember once I said that there must be
peace in the desert. Then is it in me—for you?”
THE JOURNEY 293
“Peace!” he repeated. “To-day I can’t think of peace, or
want it. Don't you ask too much of me! Let me live to-day,
live as only a man can who—let me live with all that is in me
to-day—Domini. Men ask to die in peace. Oh, Domini—
Domini! ”
His expression was like arms that crushed her, lips that pressed
her mouth, a heart that beat on hers.
“Madame est servie!” cried Batouch in a merry voice.
His mistress did not seem to hear him. He cried again:
“Madame est servie!”
Then Domini turned round and came to the first meal in the
sand. Two cushions lay beside the cloth upon an Arab quilt of
white, red, and orange colour. Upon the cloth, in vases of
rough pottery, stained with designs in purple, were arranged the
roses brought by Smain from Count Anteoni's garden.
“Our wedding breakfast!” Domini said under her breath.
She felt just then as if she were living in a wonderful
IOIY) 2111CC.
They sat down side by side and ate with a good appetite,
served by Batouch and Ali. Now and then a pale yellow
butterfly, yellow as the sand, flitted by them. Small yellow
birds with crested heads ran swiftly among the scrub, or flew
low over the flats. In the sky the vapours gathered themselves
together and moved slowly away towards the east, leaving the
blue above their heads unflecked with white. With each mo-
ment the heat of the sun grew more intense. The wind had
gone. It was difficult to believe that it had ever roared over
the desert. A little way from them the camel-drivers squatted
beside the beasts, eating flat loaves of yellow bread, and talking
together in low, guttural voices. The guard dogs roamed
round them, uneasily hungry. In the distance, before a tent of
patched rags, a woman, scantily clad in bright red cotton, was
suckling a child and staring at the caravan.
Domini and Androvsky scarcely spoke as they ate. Once she
said:
“Do you realise that this is a wedding breakfast?”
She was thinking of the many wedding receptions she had
attended in London, of crowds of smartly-dressed women staring
enviously at tiaras, and sets of jewels arranged in cases upon
tables, of brides and bridegrooms, looking flushed and anxious,
standing under canopies of flowers and forcing their tired lips
into smiles as they replied to stereotyped-congratulations, while
detectives—poorly disguised as gentlemen—hovered in the back-
294 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
ground to see that none of the presents mysteriously disappeared.
Her presents were the velvety roses in the earthen vases, the
breezes of the desert, the sand humps, the yellow butterflies, the
silence that lay around like a blessing pronounced by the God
who made the still places where souls can learn to know them-
selves and their great destiny.
“A wedding breakfast,” Androvsky said.
“Yes. But perhaps you have never been to one.”
“Never.”
“Then you can’t love this one as much as I do.”
“Much more,” he answered.
She looked at him, remembering how often in the past, when
she had been feeling intensely, she had it borne in upon her that
he was feeling even more intensely than herself. But could that
be possible now P
“Do you think,” she said, “that it is possible for you, who
have never lived in cities, to love this land as I love it?”
Androvsky moved on his cushion and leaned down till his
elbow touched the sand. Lying thus, with his chin in his hand,
and his eyes fixed upon her, he answered:
“But it is not the land I am loving.”
His absolute concentration upon her made her think that,
perhaps, he misunderstood her meaning in speaking of the desert,
her joy in it. She longed to explain how he and the desert were
linked together in her heart, and she dropped her hand upon his
left hand, which lay palm downwards in the warm sand.
“I love this land,” she began, “ because I found you in it,
because I feel } }
She stopped.
“Yes, Domini?” he said.
“No, not now. I can't tell you. There's too much light.”
“ Domini,” he repeated.
Then they were silent once more, thinking of how the dark-
ness would come to them at Arba.
In the late afternoon they drew near to the Bordj, moving
along a difficult route full of deep ruts and holes, and bordered
on either side by bushes so tall that they looked almost like
trees. Here, tended by Arabs who stared gravely at the
Strangers in the palanquin, were grazing immense herds of
Camels. Above the bushes to the horizon on either side of the
way appeared the serpentine necks flexibly moving to and fro,
now bending deliberately towards the dusty twigs, now stretched
straight forward as if in patient search for some solace of the
THE JOURNEY 295
camel's fate that lay in the remoteness of the desert. Baby
camels, many of them only a few days old, yet already vowed to
the eternal pilgrimages of the wastes, with mild faces and long,
disobedient-looking legs, ran from the caravan, nervously seeking
their morose mothers, who cast upon them glances that seemed
expressive of a disdainful pity. In front, beyond a watercourse,
now dried up, rose the low hill on which stood the Bordj, a huge
square building, with two square towers pierced with loopholes.
From a distance it resembled a fort threatening the desert in
magnificent isolation. Its towers were black against the clear
lemon of the failing sunlight. Pigeons, that looked also black,
flew perpetually about them, and the telegraph posts, that
bordered the way at regular intervals on the left, made a dimin-
ishing series of black vertical lines sharply cutting the yellow till
they were lost to sight in the south. To Domini these posts
were like pointing fingers beckoning her onward to the farthest
distances of the Sun. Drugged by the long journey over the
flats, and the unceasing caress of the air, that was like an impor-
tunate lover ever unsatisfied, she watched from the height on
which she was perched this evening scene of roaming, feeding
animals, staring nomads, monotonous herbage and vague,
Surely-retreating mountains, with quiet, dreamy eyes. Every-
thing which she saw seemed to her beautiful, a little remote
and a little fantastic. The slow movement of the camels, the
Swifter movements of the circling pigeons about the square
towers on the hill, the motionless, or gently-gliding, Arabs with
their clubs held slantwise, the telegraph poles, one smaller than
the other, diminishing till—as if magically—they disappeared in
the lemon that was growing into gold, were woven together for
her by the shuttle of the desert into a softly brilliant tapestry—
one of those tapestries that is like a legend struck to sleep as
the Beauty in her palace. As they began to mount the hill, and
the radiance of the sky increased, this impression faded, for the
life that centred round the Bordj was vivid, though sparse in
Comparison with the eddying life of towns, and had that air of
peculiar concentration which may be noted in pictures represent-
ing a halt in the desert.
No longer did the strongly-built Bordj seem to Domini like a
fort threatening the oncomer, but like a stalwart host welcoming
him, a host who kept open house in this treeless desolation that
yet had, for her, no feature that was desolate. It was earth-
coloured, built of stone, and had in the middle of the façade that
faced them an immense hospitable doorway with a white arch
296 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
above it. This doorway gave a partial view of a vast courtyard,
in which animals and people were moving to and fro. Round
about, under the sheltering shadow of the windowless wall, were
many Arabs, some squatting on their haunches, some standing
upright with their backs against the stone, some moving from one
group to another, gesticulating and talking vivaciously. Boys
were playing a game with stones set in an ordered series of Small
holes scooped by their fingers in the dust. A negro crossed
the flat space before the Bordj carrying on his head a huge
earthen vase to the well near by, where a crowd of black don-
keys, just relieved of their loads of brushwood, was being
watered. From the south two Spahis were riding in on white
horses, their scarlet cloaks floating out over their saddles; and
from the west, moving slowly to a wailing Sound of indistinct
music, a faint beating of tom-toms, was approaching a large
caravan in a cloud of dust which floated back from it and melted
away into the radiance of the Sunset.
When they gained the great open space before the building
they were bathed in the soft golden light, in which all these
figures of Africans, and all these animals, looked mysterious and
beautiful, and full of that immeasurable significance which the
desert sheds upon those who move in it, specially at dawn or at
sundown. From the plateau they dominated the whole of the
plain they had traversed as far as Beni-Mora, which on the
morrow would fade into the blue horizon. Its thousands of
palms made a darkness in the gold, and still the tower of the
hotel was faintly visible, pointing like a needle towards the sky.
The range of mountains showed their rosy flanks in the distance.
They, too, on the morrow would be lost in the desert spaces, the
last outposts of the world of hill and valley, of stream and sea.
Only in the deceptive dream of the mirage would they appear
once more, looming in a pearl-coloured shaking veil like a fluid
on the edge of Some visionary lagune.
Domini was glad that on this first night of their journey they
could still see Beni-Mora, the place where they had found each
other and been given to each other by the Church. As the
camel stopped before the great doorway of the Bordj she turned
in the palanquin and looked down upon the desert, motioning to
the camel-driver to leave the beast for a moment. She put her
arm through Androvsky's and made his eyes follow hers across
the vast Spaces made magical by the sinking sun to that darkness
of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place for ever.
And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her
THE JOURNEY 297
came upon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat
of noon. She saw Androvsky at her feet on the sand. She
heard the chiming church bell and the twitter of Larbi's flute.
The dark blue of trees was as the heart of the world to her and
as the heart of life. It had seen the birth of her soul and given
to her another newborn soul. There was a pathos in seeing it
fade like a thing sinking down till it became one with the im-
measurable sands, and at that moment she said to herself,
“When shall I see Beni-Mora again—and how 2 ” She looked
at Androvsky, met his eyes, and thought: “When I see it again
how different I shall bel. How I shall be changed ” And in
the Sunset she seemed to be saying a mute good-bye to one who
was fading with Beni-Mora.
As soon as they had got off the camel and were standing in
the group of staring Arabs, Batouch begged them to come to
their tents, where tea would be ready. He led them round the
angle of the wall towards the west, and there, pitched in the full
radiance of the sunset, with a wide space of hard earth gleaming
with gypse around it, was a white tent. Before it, in the open
air, was stretched a handsome Arab carpet, and on this carpet
were set a folding table and two folding chairs. The table held
a japanned tray with tea-cups, a milk jug and plates of biscuits,
and by it, in an attitude that looked deliberately picturesque,
stood Ouardi, the youth selected by Batouch to fill the office of
butler in the desert.
Ouardi smiled a broad welcome as they approached, and,
having made sure that his pose had been admired, retired to the
cook's abode to fetch the teapot, while Batouch invited Domini
and Androvsky to inspect the tent prepared for them. Domini
assented with a dropped-out word. She still felt in a dream.
But Androvsky, after casting towards the tent door a glance that
was full of a sort of fierce shyness, moved away a few steps, and
stood at the edge of the hill looking down upon the incoming
caravan, whose music was now plainly audible in the stillness of
the waste.
Domini went into the tent that was to be their home for
many weeks, alone. And she was glad just then that she was
alone. For she too, like Androvsky, felt a sort of exquisite
trouble moving, like a wave, in her heart. On some pretext, but
only after an expression of admiration, she got rid of Batouch.
Then she stood and looked round.
From the big tent opened a smaller one, which was to serve
Androvsky as a dressing-room and both of them as a baggage
298 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
room. She did not go into that, but saw, with one glance of
soft inquiry, the two small, low beds, the strips of gay carpet, the
dressing-table, the washhand-stand and the two cane chairs
which furnished the sleeping-tent. Then she looked back to the
aperture. In the distance, standing alone at the edge of the hill,
she saw Androvsky, bathed in the Sunset, looking out over the
hidden desert from which rose the wild sound of African music,
steadily growing louder. It seemed to her as if he must be
gazing at the plains of heaven, so magically brilliant and tender,
so pellucidly clear and delicate was the atmosphere and the
colour of the sky. She saw no other form, only his, in this
poem of light, in this wide world of the sinking sun. And the
music seemed to be about his feet, to rise from the sand and
throb in its breast.
At that moment the figure of Liberty, which she had seen in
the shadows of the dancing-house, came in at the tent door and
laid, for the first time, her lips on Domini’s. That kiss was
surely the consecration of the life of the sands. But to-day there
had been another consecration. Domini had a sudden impulse
to link the two consecrations together.
She drew from her breast the wooden crucifix Androvsky had
thrown into the stream at Sidi-Zerzour, and, softly going to one
of the beds, she pinned the crucifix above it on the canvas of the
tent. Then she turned and went out into the glory of the sunset
to meet the fierce music that was rising from the desert.
CHAPTER XVIII
NIGHT had fallen over the desert, a clear purple night, starry
but without a moon. Around the Bordj, and before a Café
Maure built of brown earth and palm-wood, opposite to it, the
Arabs who were halting to sleep at Arba on their journeys to
and from Beni-Mora were huddled, sipping coffee, playing
dominoes by the faint light of an oil lamp, smoking cigarettes
and long pipes of keef. Within the court of the Bordj the mules
were feeding tranquilly in rows. The camels roamed the plain
among the tamarisk bushes, watched over by shrouded shadowy
guardians sleepless as they were. The mountains, the palms
of Beni-Mora, were lost in the darkness that lay over the
desert.
On the low hill, at some distance beyond the white tent of
Domini and Androvsky, the obscurity was lit up fiercely by the
THE JOURNEY 299
blaze of a huge fire of brushwood, the flames of which towered
up towards the stars, flickering this way and that as the breeze
took them, and casting a wild illumination upon the wild faces
of the rejoicing desert men who were gathered about it, telling
stories of the wastes, singing songs that were melancholy and
remote to Western ears, even though they hymned past victories
over the infidels, or passionate ecstasies of love in the golden
regions of the sun. The steam from bowls of cous-cous and
stews of mutton and vegetables curled up to join the thin Smoke
that made a light curtain about this fantasia, and from time
to time, with a shrill cry of exultation, a half-naked form, all
gleaming eyes and teeth and polished bronze-hued limbs, rushed
out of the blackness beyond the fire, leaped through the tongues
of flame and vanished like a spectre into the embrace of the
night.
All the members of the caravan, presided over by Batouch
in glory, were celebrating the wedding night of their master and
mistress.
Domini and Androvsky had already visited them by their
bonfire, had received their compliments, watched the Sword
dance and the dance of the clubs, touched with their lips, or
pretended to touch, the stem of a keef, listened to a marriage
song warbled by Ali to the accompaniment of a flute and little
drums, and applauded Ouardi's agility in leaping through the
flames. Then, with many good-nights, pressures of the hand,
and auguries for the morrow, they had gone away into the cool
darkness, silently towards their tent.
They walked slowly, a little apart from each other. Domini
looked up at the stars and saw among them the star of Liberty.
Androvsky looked at her and saw all the stars in her face.
When they reached the tent door they stopped on the warm
earth. A lamp was lit within, casting a soft light on the simple
furniture and on the whiteness of the two beds, above one of
which Domini imagined, though from without she could not
See, the wooden crucifix Androvsky had once worn in his
breast.
“Shall we stay here a little?” Domini said in a low voice.
“Out here?” There was a long pause. Then Androvsky
answered:
“Yes. Let us feel it all—all. Let us feel it to the full.”
He caught hold of her hand with a sort of tender roughness
and twined his fingers between hers, pressing his palm against
hers.
3OO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Don’t let us miss anything to-night,” he said. “All my
life is to-night. I’ve had no life yet. To-morrow—who knows
whether we shall be dead to-morrow? Who knows? But
we're alive to-night, flesh and blood, heart and soul. And
there's nothing here, there can be nothing here to take our
life from us, the life of our love to-night. For we’re out in the
desert, we're right away from anyone, everything. We're in
the great freedom. Aren’t we, Domini? Aren’t we?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
He took her other hand in the same way. He was facing her,
and he held his hands against his heart with hers in them, then
pressed her hands against her heart, then drew them back again
to his.
“Then let us realise it. Let us forget our prison. Let us
forget everything, everything that we ever knew before Beni-
Mora, Domini. It's dead, absolutely dead, unless we make it
live by thinking. And that's mad, crazy. Thought's the great
madness. Domini, have you forgotten everything before we
knew each other?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now—but only now. You've made me
forget it all.”
There was a deep breathing under her voice. He held up
her hands to his shoulders and looked closely into her eyes, as
if he were trying to send all himself into her through those doors
of the soul opened to seeing him. And now, in this moment,
she felt that her fierce desire was realised, that he was rising
above her on eagle's wings. And as on the night before the
wedding she had blessed all the sorrows of her life, now she
blessed silently all the long silence of Androvsky, all his strange
reticence, his uncouthness, his avoidance of her in the beginning
of their acquaintance. That which had made her pain by being,
now made her joy by having been and being no more. The
hidden man was rushing forth to her at last in his love. She
seemed to hear in the night the crash of a great obstacle, and the
voice of the flood of waters that had broken it down at length
and were escaping into liberty. His silence of the past now
made his speech intensely beautiful and wonderful to her. She
wanted to hear the waters more intensely, more intensely.
“Speak to me,” she said. “You’ve spoken so little. Do
you know how little? Tell me all you are. Till now I’ve only
felt all you are. And that's so much, but not enough for a
woman—not enough. I’ve taken you, but now—give me all
I’ve taken. Give—keep on giving and giving. From to-night
THE JOURNEY 3OI
to receive will be my life. Long ago I’ve given all I had to you.
Give to me, give me everything. You know I’ve given all.”
“All?” he said, and there was a throb in his deep voice, as
if some intense feeling rose from the depths of him and shook it.
“Yes, all,” she whispered. “Already—and long ago—that
day in the garden. When I–when I put my hands against your
forehead—do you remember? I gave you all, for ever.”
And as she spoke she bent down her face with a sort of proud
submission and put her forehead against his heart. -
The purity in her voice and in her quiet, simple action
dazzled him like a flame shining suddenly in his eyes out of
blackness. And he, too, in that moment saw far up above him
the beating of an eagle's wings. To each one the other seemed
to be on high, and as both looked up that was their true
marriage.
“I felt it,” he said, touching her hair with his lips. “I felt
it in your hands. When you touched me that day it was as if
you were giving me the world and the stars. It frightened me
to receive so much. I felt as if I had no place to put my
gift in.”
“Did your heart seem so small?” she said.
“You make everything I have and am seem small—and yet
great. What does it mean?”
“That you are great, as I am, because we love. No one is
small who loves. No one is poor, no one is bad, who loves.
Love burns up evil. It's the angel that destroys.”
Her words seemed to send through his whole body a quivering
joy. He took her face between his hands and lifted it from his
heart.
“Is that true? Is that true?” he said. “I’ve—I’ve tried
to think that. If you know how I’ve tried.”
“And don’t you know it is true?”
“I don’t feel as if I knew anything that you do not tell me
to-night. I don't feel as if I have, or am, anything but what you
give me, make me to-night. Can you understand that? Can
you understand what you are to me? That you are everything,
that I have nothing else, that I have never had anything else in
all these years that I have lived and that I have forgotten? Can
you understand it? You said just now Speak to me, tell me
all you are.’ That's what I am, all I am, a man you have made
a man. You, Domini–you have made me a man, you have
created me.”
She was silent. The intensity with which he spoke, the
3O2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
intensity of his eyes while he was speaking, made her hear those
rushing waters as if she were being swept away by them.
“And you?” he said. “You?”
( & I? 5 y
“This afternoon in the desert, when we were in the sand
looking at Beni-Mora, you began to tell me something and then
you stopped. And you said, ‘I can’t tell you. There's too
much light.' Now the sun has gone.”
“Yes. But—but I want to listen to you. I want
She stopped. In the distance, by the great fire where the
Arabs were assembled, there rose a sound of music which
arrested her attention. Ali was singing, holding in his hand a
brand from the fire like a torch. She had heard him sing before,
and had loved the timbre of his voice, but only now did she
realise when she had first heard him and who he was. It was
he who, hidden from her, had sung the song of the freed negroes
of Touggourt in the gardens of Count Anteoni that day when
she had been angry with Androvsky and had afterwards been
reconciled with him. And she knew now it was he, because,
once more hidden from her—for against the curtain of darkness
she only saw the flame from the torch he held and moved
rhythmically to the burden of his song—he was singing it again.
Androvsky, when she ceased to speak, suddenly put his arms
round her, as if he were afraid of her escaping from him in
her silence, and they stood thus at the tent door listening:
2 3
“The gazelle dies in the water,
The fish dies in the air,
And I die in the dunes of the desert sand
For my love that is deep and sad.”
The chorus of hidden men by the fire rose in a low murmur
that was like the whisper of the desert in the night. Then the
contralto voice of Ali came to Domini and Androvsky again,
but very faintly, from the distance where the flaming torch was
moving:
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
When the voice died away for a moment Domini whispered the
refrain. Then she said:
“But is it true? Can it be true for us to-night?”
Androvsky did not reply. •
THE JOURNEY 3O3
“I don’t think it is true,” she added. “You know—don't
you?”
The voice of Ali rose again, and his torch flickered on the
soft wind of the night. Its movement was slow and eerie. It
seemed like his voice made visible, a voice of flame in the black-
ness of the world. They watched it. Presently she said once
II].O1 e :
“You know what is in my heart—don't you?”
“Do I?’’ he said. “All P ''
“All. My heart is full of one thing—quite full.”
“Then I know.”
“And,” she hesitated, then added, “and yours?”
“Mine too.”
“I know all that is in it then?”
She still spoke questioningly. He did not reply, but held her
more closely, with a grasp that was feverish in its intensity.
“Do you remember,” she went on, “in the garden what you
said about that song?”
{ { No.”
“You have forgotten?”
“I told you,” he said, “I mean to forget everything.”
“Everything before we came to Beni-Mora?”
“And more. Everything before you put your hands against
my forehead, Domini. Your touch blotted out the past.”
“Even the past at Beni-Mora 2 ”
“Yes, even that. There are many things I did and left un-
done, many things I said and never said that—I have forgotten
—I have forgotten for ever.”
There was a sternness in his voice now, a fiery intention.
“I understand,” she said. “I have forgotten them too, but
not some things.”
“Which 2 ''
“Not that night when you took me out of the dancing-house,
not our ride to Sidi-Zerzour, not—there are things I shall re-
member. When I am dying, after I am dead, I shall remember
them.” .
The song faded away. The torch was still, then fell down-
wards and became one with the fire. Then Androvsky drew
Domini down beside him on to the warm earth before the tent
door, and held her hand in his against the earth.
“Feel it,” he said. “It’s our home, it's our liberty. Does it
feel alive to you?”
“Yes.”
3O4 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“As if it had pulses, like the pulses in our hearts, and knew
what we know?”
“Yes. Mother Earth—I never understood what that meant
till to-night.”
“We are beginning to understand together. Who can un-
derstand anything alone?”
He kept her hand always in his pressed against the desert as
against a heart. They both thought of it as a heart that was full
of love and protection for them, of understanding of them.
Going back to their words before the song of Ali, he said:
“Love burns up evil, then love can never be evil.”
“Not the act of loving.”
“Or what it leads to,” he said.
And again there was a sort of sternness in his voice, as if he
were insisting on something, were bent on conquering some
reluctance, or some voice contradicting.
“I know that you are right,” he added.
She did not speak, but—why she did not know—her thought
went to the wooden crucifix fastened in the canvas of the tent
close by, and for a moment she felt a faint creeping sadness in
her. But he pressed her hand more closely, and she was
conscious only of these two warmths—of his hand above her
hand and of the desert beneath it. Her whole life seemed
set in a glory of fire, in a heat that was life-giving, that domi-
nated her and evoked at the same time all of power that
was in her, causing her dormant fires, physical and spiritual, to
blaze up as if they were sheltered and fanned. The thought of
the crucifix faded. It was as if the fire destroyed it and it
became ashes—then nothing. She fixed her eyes on the distant
fire of the Arabs, which was beginning to die down slowly as
the night grew deeper.
“I have doubted many things,” he said. “I’ve been afraid.”
“You ! ” she said.
“Yes. You know it.”
“How can I? Haven’t I forgotten everything—since that
day in the garden?”
He drew up her hand and put it against his heart.
“I’m jealous of the desert even,” he whispered. “I won’t let
you touch it any more to-night.”
He looked into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the
distant fire, steadily, with an intense eagerness.
“Why do you do that?” he said.
“To-night I like to look at fire,” she answered.
THE JOURNEY 3O5
“Tell me why.”
It is as if I looked at you, at all that there is in you that you
have never said, never been able to say to me, all that you never
can say to me but that I know all the same.”
“But,” he said, “ that fire is } }
He did not finish the sentence, but put up his hand and
turned her face till she was looking, not at the fire, but at him.
“It is not like me,” he said. “Men made it, and—it's a fire
that can sink into ashes.” -
An expression of sudden exaltation shone in her eyes.
“And God made you,” she said. “And put into you the
spark that is eternal.”
And now again she thought, she dared, she loved to think of
the crucifix and of the moment when he would see it in the
tent.
“And God made you love me,” she said. “What is it?”
Androvsky had moved suddenly, as if he were going to get up
from the warm ground.
“Did you ? "
“No,” he said in a low voice. “Go on, Domini. Speak to
me.”
He sat still.
A sudden longing came to her to know if to-night he were
feeling as she was the sacredness of their relation to each other.
Never had they spoken intimately of religion or of the mysteries
that lie beyond and around human life. Once or twice, when
she had been about to open her heart to him, to let him under-
stand her deep sense of the things unseen, something had checked
her, something in him. It was as if he had divined her inten-
tion and had subtly turned her from it, without speech, merely
by the force of his inward determination that she should not
break through her reserve. But to-night, with his hand on hers
and the starry darkness above them, with the waste stretching
around them, and the cool air that was like the breath of liberty
upon their faces, she was unconscious of any secret, combative
force in him. It was impossible to her to think there could have
been any combat, however inward, however subtle, between
them. Surely if it were ever permitted to two natures to be
in perfect accord theirs were in perfect accord to-night.
“I never felt the presence of God in his world so keenly as I
feel it to-night,” she went on, drawing a little closer to him.
“Even in the church to-day he seemed farther away than to-
night. But somehow—one has these thoughts without know-
306 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
ing why—I have always believed that the farther I went into the
desert the nearer I should come to God.” p
Androvsky moved again. The clasp of his hand on hers
loosened, but he did not take his hand away.
“Why should—what should make you think that?” he asked
slowly.
“Don’t you know what the Arabs call the desert?”
“No. What do they call it?”
“The Garden of Allah.”
“The Garden of Allah! ” he repeated.
There was a sound like fear in his voice. Even her great joy
did not prevent her from noticing it, and she remembered, with a
thrill of pain, where and under what circumstances she had first
heard the Arab's name for the desert.
Could it be that this man she loved was secretly afraid of
something in the desert, some influence, some ? Her
thought stopped short, like a thing confused.
“Don’t you think it a very beautiful name?” she asked, with
an almost fierce longing to be reassured, to be made to know
that he, like her, loved the thought that God was specially near
to those who travelled in this land of solitude.
“Is it beautiful ?”
“To me it is. It makes me feel as if in the desert I were
specially watched over and protected, even as if I were specially
loved there.” -
Suddenly Androvsky put his arm round her and strained her
to him.
“By me! By me!” he said. “Think of me to-night, only
of me, as I think only of you.”
He spoke as if he were jealous even of her thought of God, as
if he did not understand that it was the very intensity of her
love for him that made her, even in the midst of the passion of
the body, connect their love of each other with God's love of
them. In her heart this overpowering human love which, in
the garden, when first she realised it fully, had seemed to leave
no room in her for love of God, now in the moment when it
was close to absolute satisfaction seemed almost to be one with
her love of God. Perhaps no man could understand how, in
a good woman, the two streams of the human love which implies
the intense desire of the flesh, and the mystical love which is
absolutely purged of that desire, can flow the one into the other
and mingle their waters. She tried to think that, and then she
ceased to try. Everything was forgotten as his arms held he,
THE JOURNEY 3O7
fast in the night, everything except this great force of human
love which was like iron, and yet soft about her, which was
giving and wanting, which was concentrated upon her to the ex-
clusion of all else, plunging the universe in darkness and setting
her in light.
“There is nothing for me to-night but you,” he said, crush-
ing her in his arms. “The desert is your garden. To me it
has always been your garden, only that, put here for you, and
for me because you love me—but for me only because of that.”
The Arabs' fire was rapidly dying down.
“When it goes out, when it goes out! ” Androvsky whispered
in her ear.
His breath stirred the thick tresses of her hair.
“Let us watch it!” he whispered. -
She pressed his hand but did not reply. She could not
speak any more. At last the something wild and lawless, the
something that was more than passionate, that was hot and even
savage in her nature, had risen up in its full force to face a
similar force in him, which insistently called it and which it
answered without shame.
“It is dying,” Androvsky said. “It is dying. Look how
small the circle of the flame is, how the darkness is creeping up
about it! Domini—do you see?”
She pressed his hand again.
“Do you long for the darkness?” he asked. “Do you,
Domini? The desert is sending it. The desert is sending it
for you, and for me because you love me.”
A log in the fire, charred by the flames, broke in two. Part
of it fell down into the heart of the fire, which sent up a long
tongue of red gold flame. -
“That is like us,” he said. “Like us together in the
darkness.” -
She felt his body trembling, as if the vehemence of the spirit
confined within it shook it. In the night the breeze slightly
increased, making the flame of the lamp behind them in the
tent flicker. And the breeze was like a message, brought to
them from the desert by some envoy in the darkness, telling
them not to be afraid of their wonderful gift of freedom with
each other, but to take it open-handed, open-hearted, with the
great courage of joy.
“Domini, did you feel that gust of the wind It carried
away a cloud of sparks from the fire and brought them a little
way towards us. Did you see? Fire wandering on the wind
3O8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
through the night calling to the fire that is in us. Wasn't it
beautiful? Everything is beautiful to-night. There were never
such stars before.”
She looked up at them. Often she had watched the stars,
and known the vague longings, the almost terrible aspirations
they wake in their watchers. But to her also they looked
different to-night, nearer to the earth, she thought, brighter,
more living than ever before, like strange tenderness made visi-
ble, peopling the night with an unconquerable sympathy. The
vast firmament was surely intent upon their happiness. Again
the breeze came to them across the waste, cool and breathing
of the dryness of the sands. Not far away a jackal laughed.
After a pause it was answered by another jackal at a distance.
The voices of these desert beasts brought home to Domini with
an intimacy not felt by her before the exquisite remoteness of
their situation, and the shrill, discordant noise, rising and fall-
ing with a sort of melancholy and sneering mirth, mingled with
bitterness, was like a delicate music in her ears.
“Hark!” Androvsky whispered.
The first jackal laughed once more, was answered again. A
third beast, evidently much farther off, lifted up a faint voice like
a dismal echo. Then there was silence.
“You loved that, Domini. It was like the calling of free-
dom to you—and to me. We've found freedom; we've found
it. Let us feel it. Let us take hold of it. It is the only thing,
the only thing. But you can’t know that as I do, Domini.”
Again she was conscious that his intensity surpassed hers, and
the consciousness, instead of saddening or vexing, made her thrill
with joy.
“I am maddened by this freedom,” he said; “maddened by
it, Domini. I can’t help—I can't 5 5 *
He laid his lips upon hers in a desperate caress that almost
Suffocated her. Then he took his lips away from her lips and
kissed her throat, holding her head back against his shoulder.
She shut her eyes. He was indeed teaching her to forget. Even
the memory of the day in the garden when she heard the church
bell chime and the sound of Larbi's flute went from her. She
remembered nothing any more. The past was lost or laid in
sleep by the spell of sensation. Her nature galloped like an
Arab horse across the sands towards the Sun, towards the fire
that sheds warmth afar but that devours all that draws near to
it. At that moment she connected Androvsky with the tremen-
dous fires eternally blazing in the Sun. She had a desire that he
THE JOURNEY 3O9
should hurt her in the passionate intensity of his love for her.
Her nature, which till now had been ever ready to spring into
hostility at an accidental touch, which had shrunk instinctively
from physical contact with other human beings, melted, was
utterly transformed. She felt that she was now the opposite of
all that she had been—more woman than any other woman who
had ever lived. What had been an almost cold strength in
her went to increase the completeness of this yielding to one
stronger than herself. What had seemed boyish and almost
hard in her died away utterly under the embrace of this fierce
manhood.
“Domini,” he spoke, whispering while he kissed her,
“ Domini, the fire's gone out. It's dark.”
He lifted her a little in his arms, still kissing her.
“Domini, it's dark, it's dark.”
He lifted her more. She stood up, with his arms about
her, looking towards where the fire had been. She put her
hands against his face and softly pressed it back from hers,
but with a touch that was a caress. He yielded to her at
O1) Ce.
“Look!” he said. “Do you love the darkness? Tell me—
tell me that you love it.”
She let her hand glide over his cheek in answer.
“Look at it. Love it. All the desert is in it, and our love
in the desert. Let us stay in the desert, let us stay in it for ever
—for ever. It is your garden—yours. It has brought us every-
thing, Domini.”
He took her hand and pressed it again and again over his
cheek lingeringly. Then, abruptly, he dropped it.
“Come!” he said. “ Domini.”
And he drew her in through the tent door almost violently.
A stronger gust of the night wind followed them. Androvsky
took his arms slowly from Domini and turned to let down the
flap of the tent. While he was doing this she stood quite still.
The flame of the lamp flickered, throwing its light now here,
now there, uneasily. She saw the crucifix lit up for an instant
and the white bed beneath it. The wind stirred her dark hair
and was cold about her neck, But the warmth there met and
defied it. In that brief moment, while Androvsky was fasten-
ing the tent, she seemed to live through centuries of intense and
complicated emotion. When the light flickered over the cruci-
fix she felt as if she could spend her life in passionate adoration
at its foot; but when she did not see it, and the wind, coming
3 IO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in from the desert through the tent door, where she heard the
movement of Androvsky, stirred in her hair, she felt reckless,
wayward, savage—and something more. A cry rose in her
that was like the cry of a stranger, who yet was of her and
in her, and from whom she would not part.
Again the lamp flame flickered upon the crucifix. Quickly,
while she saw the crucifix plainly, she went forward to the bed
and fell on her knees by it, bending down her face upon its
whiteness.
When Androvsky had fastened the tent door he turned round
and saw her kneeling. He stood quite still as if petrified,
staring at her. Then, as the flame, now sheltered from
the wind, burned steadily, he saw the crucifix. He started as if
someone had struck him, hesitated, then, with a look of fierce
and concentrated resolution on his face, went swiftly to the
crucifix and pulled it from the canvas roughly. He held it in
his hand for an instant, then moved to the tent door and
stooped to unfasten the cords that held it to the pegs, evidently
with the intention of throwing the crucifix out into the night.
But he did not unfasten the cords. Something—some sudden
change of feeling, some secret and powerful reluctance—checked
him. He thrust the crucifix into his pocket. Then, returning
to where Domini was kneeling, he put his arms round her and
drew her to her feet. -
She did not resist him. Still holding her in his arms he
blew out the lamp.
CHAPTER XIX
THE Arabs have a saying, “In the desert one forgets every-
things, one remembers nothing any more.”
To Domini it sometimes seemed the truest of all the true and
beautiful sayings of the East. Only three weeks had passed
away since the first halt at Arba, yet already her life at Beni-
Mora was faint in her mind as the dream of a distant past.
Taken by the vast solitudes, journeying without definite aim
from one oasis to another through empty regions bathed in
eternal Sunshine, camping often in the midst of the sand by one
of the wells sunk for the nomads by the French engineers,
strengthened perpetually, yet perpetually soothed, by airs that
were Soft and cool, as if mingled of silk and snow, they lived
Surely in a desert dream with only a dream behind them. They
had become as one with the nomads, whose home is the moving
THE JOURNEY 3II
tent, whose hearthstone is the yellow sand of the dunes, whose
God is liberty.
Domini loved this life with a love which had already become
a passion. All that she had imagined that the desert might be to
her she found that it was. In its so-called monotony she dis-
covered eternal interest. Of old she had thought the sea the
most wonderful thing in Nature. In the desert she seemed to
possess the sea with something added to it, a calm, a complete-
ness, a mystical tenderness, a passionate serenity. She thought
of the sea as a soul striving to fulfil its noblest aspirations, to be
the splendid thing it knew how to dream of. But she thought
of the desert as a soul that need strive no more, having attained.
And she, like the Arabs, called it always in her heart the Garden
of Allah. For in this wonderful calm, bright as the child’s idea
of heaven, clear as a crystal with a sunbeam caught in it, silent
as a prayer that will be answered silently, God seemed to draw
very near to his wandering children. In the desert was the still,
small voice, and the still, small voice was the Lord.
Often at dawn or sundown, when, perhaps in the distance of
the sands, or near at hand beneath the shade of the palms of
some oasis by a waterspring, she watched the desert men in their
patched rags, with their lean, bronzed faces and eagle eyes turned
towards Mecca, bowing their heads in prayer to the soil that the
sun made hot, she remembered Count Anteoni's words, “I like
to see men praying in the desert,” and she understood with all
her heart and soul why. For the life of the desert was the most
perfect liberty that could be found on earth, and to see men thus
worshipping in liberty set before her a vision of free will upon
the heights. When she thought of the world she had known
and left, of the men who would always live in it and know no
other world, she was saddened for a moment. Could she ever
find elsewhere such joy as she had found in the simple and
unfettered life of the wastes? Could she ever exchange this
life for another life, even with Androvsky?
One day she spoke to him of her intense joy in the wandering
fate, and the pain that came to her whenever she thought of ex-
changing it for a life of civilisation in the midst of fixed groups
of men.
They had halted for the noonday rest at a place called Sidi-
Hamdam, and in the afternoon were going to ride on to a Bordj
called Mogar, where they meant to stay two or three days, as
Batouch had told them it was a good halting-place, and near to
haunts of the gazelle. The tents had already gone forward, and
312 ... THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Domini and Androvsky were lying upon a rug spread on the
sand, in the shadow of the grey wall of a traveller's house beside
a well. Behind them their horses were tethered to an iron ring
in the wall. Batouch and Ali were in the court of the house,
talking to the Arab guardian who dwelt there, but their voices
were not audible by the well, and absolute silence reigned, the
intense yet light silence that is in the desert at noontide, when the
sun is at the zenith, when the nomad sleeps under his low-pitched
tent, and the gardeners in the oasis cease even from pretending
to work among the palms. From before the well the ground
sank to a plain of pale grey sand, which stretched away to a
village hard in aspect, as if carved out of bronze and all in one
piece. In the centre of it rose a mosque with a minaret and
a number of cupolas, faintly gilded and shining modestly under
the fierce rays of the sun.
At the foot of the village the ground was white with salt-
petre, which resembled a covering of new-fallen snow. To
right and left of it were isolated groups of palms growing in
threes and fours, like trees that had formed themselves into
cliques and set careful barriers of sand between themselves and
their despised brethren. Here and there on the grey sand dark
patches showed where nomads had pitched their tents. But
there was no movement of human life. No camels were visible.
No guard dogs barked. The moon held all things in its golden
grip.
“Boris!” Domini said, breaking a long silence.
“Yes, Domini?”
He turned towards her on the rug, stretching his long, thin
body lazily as if in Supreme physical contentment.
“You know that saying of the Arabs about forgetting every-
thing in the desert?”
“Yes, Domini, I know it.”
“How long shall we stay in this world of forgetfulness?”
He lifted himself up on his elbow quickly, and fixed his eyes
on hers.
“How long!”
& C Yes.”
“But—do you wish to leave it? Are you tired of it?”
There was a note of sharp anxiety in his voice.
“I don't answer such a question,” she said, smiling at
him.
“Ah, then, why do you try to frighten me?”
She put her hand in his.
THE JOURNEY 3I 3
“How burnt you are!” she said. “You are like an Arab of
the South.”
“Let me become more like one. There's health here.”
“And peace, perfect peace.”
He said nothing. He was looking down now at the sand.
She laid her lips on his warm brown hand.
“There's all I want here,” she added.
“Let us stay here.”
“But some day we must go back, mustn't we?”
& ( Why? 3 y
“Can anything be lifelong—even our honeymoon?”
“Suppose we choose that it shall be?”
“Can we choose such a thing? Is anybody allowed to
choose to live always quite happily without duties? Sometimes
I wonder. I love this wandering life so much, I am so happy in
it, that I sometimes think it cannot last much longer.”
He began to sift the sand through his fingers swiftly.
“Duties?” he said in a low voice.
“Yes. Oughtn't we to do something presently, something
besides being happy?”
“What do you mean, Domini?”
“I hardly know, I don’t know. You tell me.”
There was an urging in her voice, as if she wanted, almost
demanded, something of him.
“You mean that a man must do some work in his life if he is
to keep himself a man,” he said, not as if he were asking a
question.
He spoke reluctantly but firmly.
“You know,” he added, “that I have worked hard all my
life, hard like a labourer.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
She stroked his hand, that was worn and rough, and spoke
eloquently of manual toil it had accomplished in the past.
“I know. Before we were married, that day when we sat
in the garden, you told me your life and I told you mine. How
different they have been | *
“Yes,” he said.
He lit a cigar and watched the smoke curling up into the
gold of the sunlit atmosphere.
“Mine in the midst of the world and yours so far away from
it. I often imagine that little place, El Krori, the garden,
your brother, your twin-brother Stephen, that one-eyed Arab
servant—what was his name?”
3I4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“El Magin.”
“Yes, El Magin, who taught you to play Cora and to sing
Arab songs, and to eat cous-cous with your fingers. I can
almost see Father André, from whom you learnt to love the
Classics, and who talked to you of philosophy. He's dead too,
isn’t he, like your mother?”
“I don’t know whether Père André is dead. I have lost
sight of him,” Androvsky said.
He still looked steadily at the rings of smoke curling up into
the golden air. There was in his voice a sound of embarrass-
ment. She guessed that it came from the consciousness of the
pain he must have caused the good priest who had loved him
when he ceased from practising the religion in which he had been
brought up. Even to her he never spoke frankly on religious
subjects, but she knew that he had been baptised a Catholic and
been educated for a time by priests. She knew, too, that he was
no longer a practising Catholic, and that, for some reason, he
dreaded any intimacy with priests. He never spoke against
them. He had scarcely ever spoken of them to her. But she
remembered his words in the garden, “I do not care for priests.”
She remembered, too, his action in the tunnel on the day of his
arrival in Beni-Mora. And the reticence that they both pre-
served on the subject of religion, and its reason, were the only
causes of regret in this desert dream of hers. Even this regret, .
too, often faded in hope. For in the desert, the Garden of
Allah, she had it borne in upon her that Androvsky would dis-
cover what he must surely secretly be seeking—the truth that
each man must find for himself, truth for him of the eventual
existence in which the mysteries of this present existence will
be made plain, and of the Power that has fashioned all
things.
And she was able to hope in silence, as women do for the
men they love. --
“Don’t think I do not realise that you have worked,” she
went on after a pause. “You told me how you always culti-
vated the land yourself, even when you were still a boy, that
you directed the Spanish labourers in the vineyards, that—you
have earned a long holiday. But should it last for ever?”
“You are right. Well, let us take an oasis; let us become
palm gardeners like that Frenchman at Meskoutine.”
“And build ourselves an African house, white, with a terrace
roof.”
“And sell our dates. We can give employment to the Arabs.
THE JOURNEY 3I 5
We can choose the poorest. We can improve their lives. After
all, if we owe a debt to anyone it is to them, to the desert. Let
us pay our debt to the desert men and live in the desert.”
“It would be an ideal life,” she said with her eyes shining
on his. .
“And a possible life. Let us live it. I could not bear to
leave the desert. Where should we go?”
“Where should we go! ” she repeated.
She was still looking at him, but now the expression of her
eyes had quite changed. They had become grave, and examined
him seriously with a sort of deep inquiry. He sat upon
the Arab rug, leaning his back against the wall of the traveller's
house.
“Why do you look at me like that, Domini?” he asked with
a sudden stirring of something that was like uneasiness.
“Il I was wondering what you would like, what other life
would suit you.”
“Yes?” he said quickly. “Yes?”
“It’s very strange, Boris, but I cannot connect you with any-
thing but the desert, or see you anywhere but in the desert. I
cannot even imagine you among your vines in Tunisia.”
“They were not altogether mine,” he corrected, still with a
certain excitement which he evidently endeavoured to repress.
“I—I had the right, the duty of cultivating the land.”
“Well, however it was, you were always at work; you were
responsible, weren't you?” -
( ( Yes.”
“I can't see you even in the vineyards or the wheat-fields.
Isn’t it strange?”
She was always looking at him with the same deep and wholly
unself-conscious inquiry.
“And as to London, Paris 35
Suddenly she burst into a little laugh and her gravity
vanished. .
“I think you would hate them,” she said. “And they—they
wouldn’t like you because they wouldn’t understand you.”
“Let us buy our oasis,” he said abruptly. “Build our
African house, sell our dates and remain in the desert. I hear
Batouch. It must be time to ride on to Mogar. Batouch!
Batouch! ”
Batouch came from the courtyard of the house wiping the
remains of a cous-cous from his languid lips.
“ Untie the horses,” said Androvsky.
316 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“But, Monsieur, it is still too hot to travel. Look! No one
is stirring. All the village is asleep.”
He waved his enormous hand, with henna-tinted nails, towards
the distant town, carved surely out of one huge piece of bronze.
“ Untie the horses. There are gazelle in the plain near
Mogar. Didn't you tell me?”
“Yes, Monsieur, but } )
“We'll get there early and go out after them at Sunset.
Now, Domini.” &
They rode away in the burning heat of the noon towards the
southwest across the vast plains of grey sand, followed at a
short distance by Batouch and Ali.
“Monsieur is mad to start in the noon,” grumbled Batouch.
“But Monsieur is not like Madame. He may live in the desert
till he is old and his hair is grey as the sand, but he will never
be an Arab in his heart.”
“Why, Batouch-ben-Brahim 2 ”
“He cannot rest. To Madame the desert gives its calm, but
to Monsieur ” He did not finish his sentence. In front
Domini and Androvsky had put their horses to a gallop. The
sand flew up in a thin cloud around them.
“Nom d’un chien | * said Batouch, who, in unpoetical
moments, occasionally indulged in the expletives of the French
infidels who were his country's rulers. “What is there in the
mind of Monsieur which makes him ride as if he fled from an
enemy?”
“I know not, but he goes like a hare before the sloughi,
Batouch-ben Brahim,” answered Ali, gravely.
Then they sent their horses on in chase of the cloud of sand
towards the southwest.
About four in the afternoon they reached the camp at Mogar.
As they rode in slowly, for their horses were tired and stream-
ing with heat after their long canter across the sands, both
Domini and Androvsky were struck by the novelty of this halt-
ing-place, which was quite unlike anything they had yet seen.
The ground rose gently but continuously for a considerable time
before they saw in the distance the pitched tents with the dark
forms of the camels and mules. Here they were out of the
Sands, and upon hard, sterile soil covered with small stones em-
bedded in the earth. Beyond the tents they could see nothing
but the sky, which was now covered with small, ribbed grey
clouds, sad-coloured and autumnal, and a lonely tower built of
stone, which rose from the waste at about two hundred yards
THE JOURNEY 317
from the tents to the east. Although they could see so little,
however, they were impressed with a sensation that they were
on the edge of some vast vision, of some grandiose effect of
Nature, that would bring to them a new and astonishing knowl-
edge of the desert. Perhaps it was the sight of the distant tower
pointing to the grey clouds that stirred in them this almost
excited feeling of expectation.
“It is like a watch-tower,” Domini said, pointing with her
whip. “But who could live in such a place, far from any
oasis?”
“And what can it overlook?” said Androvsky. “This is the
nearest horizon line we have seen since we came into the desert.”
“Yes, but j }
She glanced at him as they put their horses into a gentle
canter. Then she added:
“You, too, feel that we are coming to something tremendous,
don't you?”
Her horse whinnied shrilly. Domini stroked his foam-
flecked neck with her hand.
“Abou is as full of anticipation as we are,” she said.
Androvsky was looking towards the tower.
“That was built for French soldiers,” he said. A moment
afterwards he added:
“I wonder why Batouch chose this place for us to camp in?”
There was a faint sound as of irritation in his voice.
“Perhaps we shall know in a minute,” Domini answered.
They cantered on. Their horses' hoofs rang with a hard sound
on the stony ground.
“It’s inhospitable here,” Androvsky said. . She looked at
him in surprise.
“I never knew you to take a dislike to any halting-place
before,” she said. “What's the matter, Boris?”
He smiled at her, but almost immediately his face was clouded
by the shadow of a gloom that seemed to respond to the gloom
of the sky. And he fixed his eyes again upon the tower.
“I like a far horizon,” he answered. “And there's no sun
to-day.”
“I suppose even in the desert we cannot have it always,” she
said. And in her voice, too, there was a touch of melancholy, as
if she had caught his mood. A minute later she added:
“I feel exactly as if I were on a hill top and were coming to
a view of the sea.”
Almost as she spoke they cantered in among the tents of the
3I8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
attendants, and reined in their horses at the edge of a slope that
was almost a precipice. Then they sat still in their saddles,
gazing.
They had been living for weeks in the midst of vastness, and
had become accustomed to see stretched out around them
immense tracts of land melting away into far blue distances, but
this view from Mogar made them catch their breath and stirred
their pulses. -
It was gigantic. There was even something unnatural in its
appearance of immensity, as if it were, perhaps, deceptive, and
existed in their vision of it only. So, surely, might look a plain
to one who had taken haschish, which enlarges, makes monstrous
and threateningly terrific. Domini had a feeling that no human
eyes could really see such infinite tracts of land and water as
those she seemed to be seeing at this moment. For there was
water here, in the midst of the desert. Infinite expanses of sea
met infinite plains of snow. Or so it seemed to both of them.
And the sea was grey and calm as a winter sea, breathing its
plaint along a winter land. From it, here and there, rose islets
whose low cliffs were a deep red like the red of sandstone, a sad
colour that suggests tragedy, islets that looked desolate, and as
if no life had ever been upon them, or could be. Back from the
snowy plains stretched sand dunes of the palest primrose colour,
sand dunes innumerable, myriads and myriads of them, rising
and falling, rising and falling, till they were lost in the grey
distance of this silent world. In the foreground, at their horses'
feet, wound from the hill summit a broad track faintly marked
in the deep Sand, and flanked by huge dunes shaped, by the action
of the winds, into grotesque semblances of monsters, leviathans,
beasts with prodigious humps, sphinxes, whales. This track was
presently lost in the blanched plains. Far away, immeasurably
far, sea and snow blended and faded into the cloudy grey.
Above the near dunes two desert eagles were slowly wheeling in
a weary flight, occasionally sinking towards the sand, then rising
again towards the clouds. And the track was strewn with the
bleached bones of camels that had perished, or that had been
slaughtered, on Some long desert march.
To the left of them the solitary tower commanded this terrific
vision of desolation, seemed to watch it steadily, yet furtively,
with its tiny loophole eyes.
“We have come into winter,” Domini murmured.
She looked at the white of the camels' bones, of the plains,
at the grey white of the sky, at the yellow pallor of the dunes.
THE JOURNEY 3I9
“How wonderful! How terrible!” she said.
She drew her horse to one side, a little nearer to Androvsky's.
“Does the Russian in you greet this land?” she asked him.
He did not reply. He seemed to be held in thrall by the sad
immensity before them.
“I realise here what it must be to die in the desert, to be
killed by it—by hunger, by thirst in it,” she said presently,
speaking, as if to herself, and looking out over the mirage sea,
the mirage snow. “This is the first time I have really felt the
terror of the desert.”
Her horse drooped its head till its nose nearly touched the
earth, and shook itself in a long shiver. She shivered too, as if
constrained to echo an animal's distress.
“Things have died here,” Androvsky said, speaking at last in
a low voice and pointing with his long-lashed whip towards the
camels’ skeletons. “Come, Domini, the horses are tired.”
He cast another glance at the tower, and they dismounted by
their tent, which was pitched at the very edge of the steep slope
that sank down to the beast-like shapes of the near dunes.
An hour later Domini said to Androvsky:
“You won’t go after gazelle this evening surely 2 ”
They had been having coffee in the tent and had just
finished. Androvsky got up from his chair and went to the tent
door. The grey of the sky was pierced by a gleaming shaft
from the sun.
“Do you mind if I go?” he said, turning towards her after a
glance to the desert.
“No, but aren't you tired 2 ”
He shook his head.
“I couldn't ride, and now I can ride. I couldn’t shoot, and
I'm just beginning -
“Go,” she said quickly. “Besides, we want gazelle for
dinner, Batouch says, though I don’t suppose we should starve
without it.” She came to the tent door and stood beside him,
and he put his arm around her.
“If I were alone here, Boris,” she said, leaning against his
shoulder, “I believe I should feel horribly sad to-day.”
“Shall I stay?”
He pressed her against him.
“No, I shall know you are coming back. Oh, how extraor-
dinary it is to think we lived so many years without knowing
of each other's existence, that we lived alone. Were you ever
happy?”
32O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He hesitated before he replied.
“I sometimes thought I was.”
“But do you think now you ever really were?”
“I don't know—perhaps in a lonely sort of way.”
“You can never be happy in that way now?”
He said nothing, but, after a moment, he kissed her long and
hard, and as if he wanted to draw her being into his through
the door of his lips.
“Good-bye,” he said, releasing her. “I shall be back directly
after sundown.”
“Yes. Don’t wait for the dark down there. If you were
lost in the dunes!”
She pointed to the distant sand hills rising and falling
monotonously to the horizon.
“If you are not back in good time,” she said, “I shall stand
by the tower and wave a brand from the fire.”
“Why by the tower?” -
“The ground is highest by the tower.”
She watched him ride away on a mule, with two Arabs carry-
ing guns. They went towards the plains of saltpetre that looked
like snow beside the sea that was only a mirage. Then she
turned back into the tent, took up a volume of Fromentin's, and
sat down in a folding-chair at the tent door. She read a little,
but it was difficult to read with the mirage beneath her. Per-
petually her eyes were attracted from the book to its mystery
and plaintive sadness, that was like the sadness of something
unearthly, of a spirit that did not move but that suffered. She
did not put away the book, but presently she laid it down on her
knees, open, and sat gazing. Androvsky had disappeared with
the Arabs into some fold of the sands. The sun-ray had van-
ished with him. Without Androvsky and the sun—she still con-
nected them together, and knew she would for ever.
The melancholy of this desert scene was increased for her till
it became oppressive and lay upon her like a heavy weight. She
was not a woman inclined to any morbid imaginings. Indeed,
all that was morbid roused in her an instinctive disgust. But
the sudden greyness of the weather, coming after weeks of ardent
sunshine, and combined with the fantastic desolation of the
landscape, which was half real and half unreal, turned her for
the moment towards a dreariness of spirit that was rare in her.
She realised suddenly, as she looked and did not see
Androvsky even as a black and moving speck upon the plain,
what the desert would seem to her without him, even in sunshine,
THE JOURNEY 32 I
the awfulness of the desolation of it, the horror of its distances.
And realising this she also realised the uncertainty of the human
life in connection with any other human life. To be dependent
on another is to double the sum of the terrors of uncertainty.
She had done that. - *
If the immeasurable sands took Androvsky and never gave
him back to her What would she do?
She gazed at the mirage sea with its dim red islands, and at
the sad white plains along its edge.
Winter—she would be plunged in eternal winter. And each
human life hangs on a thread. All deep love, all consuming
passion, holds a great fear within the circle of a great glory.
To-day the fear within the circle of her glory seemed to grow.
But she suddenly realised that she ought to dominate it, to
confine it—as it were—to its original and permanent pro-
portions.
She got up, came out upon the edge of the hill, and walked
along it slowly towards the tower.
Outside, freed from the shadow of the tent, she felt less
oppressed, though still melancholy, and even slightly appre-
hensive, as if some trouble were coming to her and were near at
hand. Mentally she had made the tower the limit of her walk,
and therefore when she reached it she stood still.
It was a squat, Square tower, strongly constructed, with loop-
holes in the four sides, and now that she was by it she saw built
out at the back of it a low house with small shuttered windows
and a narrow courtyard for mules. No doubt Androvsky was
right and French soldiers had once been here to work the optic
telegraph. She thought of the recruits and of Marseilles, of
Notre Dame de la Garde, the Mother of God, looking towards
Africa. Such recruits came to live in such strange houses as
this tower lost in the desert and now abandoned. She glanced
at the shuttered windows and turned back towards the tent; but
something in the situation of the tower—perhaps the fact that it
was set on the highest point of the ground—attracted her, and
she presently made Batouch bring her out some rugs and en-
sconced herself under its shadow, facing the mirage sea.
How long she sat there she did not know. Mirage hypnotises
the imaginative and suggests to them dreams strange and
ethereal, sad sometimes, as itself. How long she might have
sat there dreaming, but for an interruption, she knew still less.
It was towards evening, however, but before evening had fallen,
that a weary and travel-stained party of three French soldiers,
322 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Zouaves, and an officer rode slowly up the sandy track from the
dunes. They were mounted on mules, and carried their small
baggage with them on two led mules. When they reached the
top of the hill they turned to the right and came towards the
tower. The officer was a little in advance of his men. He was
a smart-looking, fair man of perhaps thirty-two, with blonde
moustaches, blue eyes with blonde lashes, and hair very much
the colour of the sand dunes. His face was bright red, burnt,
as a fair delicate skin burns, by the sun. His eyes, although pro-
tected by large sun spectacles, were inflamed. The skin was
peeling from his nose. His hair was full of sand, and he rode
leaning forward over his animal's neck, holding the reins loosely
in his hands, that seemed nerveless from fatigue. Yet he looked
Smart and well-bred despite his evident exhaustion, as if on
parade he would be a dashing officer. It was evident that both
he and his men were riding in from some tremendous journey.
The latter looked dog-tired, scarcely human in their collapse.
They kept on their mules with difficulty, shaking this way and
that like sacks, with their unshaven chins wagging loosely up and
down. But as they saw the tower they began to sing in chorus
half under their breath, and leaning their broad hands on the
necks of the beasts for support they looked with a sort of
haggard eagerness in its direction.
Domini was roused from her contemplation of the mirage
and the day-dreams it suggested by the approach of this small
cavalcade. The officer was almost upon her ere she heard the
clatter of his mule among the stones. She looked up, startled,
and he looked down, even more surprised, apparently, to see a
lady ensconced at the foot of the tower. His astonishment and
exhaustion did not, however, get the better of his instinctive
good breeding, and sitting straight up in the saddle he took off
his sun helmet and asked Domini’s pardon for disturbing her.
“But this is my home for the night, Madame,” he added, at
the same time drawing a key from the pocket of his loose trousers.
“And I’m thankful to reach it. Ma foil there have been several
moments in the last days when I never thought to see Mogar.”
Slowly he swung himself off his mule and stood up, catching
on to the saddle with one hand.
“F-f-f-fl” he said, pursing his lips. “I can hardly stand.
Excuse me, Madame.” -
Domini had got up.
“You are tired out,” she said, looking at him and his men,
who had now come up, with interest.
THE JOURNEY 323
“Pretty well indeed. We have been three days lost in the
great dunes in a sand-storm, and hit the track here just as we
were preparing for a-well, a great event.”
“A great event?” said Domini.
“The last in a man’s life, Madame.”
He spoke simply, even with a light touch of humour that was .
almost cynical, but she felt beneath his words and manner a
solemnity and a thankfulness that attracted and moved her.
“Those terrible dunes!” she said.
And, turning, she looked out over them. -
There was no sunset, but the deepening of the grey into a
dimness that seemed to have blackness behind it, the more
ghastly hue of the white plains of saltpetre, and the fading of
the mirage sea, whose islands now looked no longer red, but dull
brown specks in a pale mist, hinted at the rapid falling of night.
“My husband is out in them,” she added.
“Your husband, Madame!”
He looked at her rather narrowly, shifted from one leg to the
other as if tryng his strength, then added:
“Not far, though, I suppose. For I see you have a camp
here.”
“He has only gone after gazelle.”
As she said the last word she saw one of the soldiers, a mere
boy, lick his lips and give a sort of tragic wink at his companions.
A sudden thought struck her.
“Don’t think me impertinent, Monsieur, but—what about
provisions in your tower?”
“Oh, as to that, Madame, we shall do well enough. Here,
open the door, Marelle!”
And he gave the key to a soldier, who wearily dismounted
and thrust it into the door of the tower.
“But after three days in the dunes! Your provisions must
be exhausted unless you’ve been able to replenish them.”
“You are too good, Madame. We shall manage a cous-
cous.” w
“And wine? Have you any wine?”
She glanced again at the exhausted soldiers covered with sand
and saw that their eyes were fixed upon her and were shining
eagerly. All the “good fellow ’’ in her nature rose up.
“You must let me send you some,” she said. “We have
plenty.”
She thought of some bottles of champagne they had brought
with them and never opened.
324. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
y
“In the desert we are all comrades,” she added, as if speak-
ing to the soldiers.
They looked at her with an open adoration which lit up their
tired faces.
“Madame,” said the officer, “you are much too good; but I
accept your offer as frankly as you have made it. A little wine
will be a godsend to us to-night. Thank you, Madame.”
The soldiers looked as if they were going to cheer.
“I’ll go to the camp 5 y
“Cannot one of the men go for you, Madame? You were
sitting here. Pray, do not let us disturb you.”
“But night is falling and I shall have to go back in a moment.”
While they had been speaking the darkness had rapidly
increased. She looked towards the distant dunes and no longer
saw them. At once her mind went to Androvsky. Why had he
not returned She thought of the signal. From the camp,
behind their sleeping-tent, rose the flames of a newly-made fire.
“If one of your men can go and tell Batouch—Batouch—to
come to me here I shall be grateful,” she answered. “And I
want him to bring me a big brand from the fire over there.”
She saw wonder dawning in the eyes fixed upon her, and
smiled. . -
“I want to signal to my husband,” she said, “ and this is the
highest point. He will see it best if I stand here.”
“Go, Marelle, ask for Batouch, and be sure you bring the
brand from the fire.”
The man saluted and rode off with alacrity. The thought of
wine had infused a gaiety into him and his companions.
“Now, Monsieur, don't stand on ceremony,” Domini said to
the officer. “Go in and make your toilet. You are longing to,
I know.”
“I am longing to look a little more decent—now, Madame,”
he said gallantly, and gazing at her with a sparkle of admiration
in his inflamed eyes. “You will let me return in a moment to
escort you to the camp.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you permit me—my name is De Trevignac.”
“And mine is Madame Androvsky.”
“Russian | " the officer said. “The alliance in the desert!
Vive la Russie!”
She laughed.
“That is for my husband, for I am English.”
“Vive l’Angleterre!” he said.
THE JOURNEY 325
The two soldiers echoed his words impulsively, lifting up in
the gathering darkness hoarse voices.
“Vive l’Angleterre!” -
“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “Now, Monsieur, please
don’t let me keep you.”
“I shall be back directly,” the officer replied.
And he turned and went into the tower, while the soldiers
rode round to the court, tugging at the cords of the led mules.
Domini waited for the return of Marelle. Her mood had
changed. A glow of cordial humanity chased away her melan-
choly. The hostess that lurks in every woman—that housewife-
hostess sense which goes hand-in-hand with the mother sense—
was alive in her. She was keenly anxious to play the good fairy
simply, unostentatiously, to these exhausted men who had come
to Mogar out of the jaws of Death, to see their weary faces shine
under the influence of repose and good cheer. But the tower
looked desolate. The camp was gayer, cosier. Suddenly she
resolved to invite them all to dine in the camp that night.
Marelle returned with Batouch. She saw them from a
distance coming through the darkness with blazing torches in
their hands. When they came to her she said:
“Batouch, I want you to order dinner in camp for the
soldiers.”
A broad and radiant smile irradiated the blunt Breton features
of Marelle.
“And Monsieur the officer will dine with me and Monsieur.
Give us all you can. Perhaps there will be some gazelle.”
She saw him opening his lips to say that the dinner would be
poor and stopped him.
“You are to open some of the champagne—the Pommery.
We will drink to all safe returns. Now, give me the brand and
go and tell the cook.”
As he took his torch and disappeared into the darkness De
Trevignac came out from the tower. He still looked exhausted
and walked with some difficulty, but he had washed the sand
from his face with water from the artesian well behind the
tower, changed his uniform, brushed the sand from his yellow
hair, and put on a smart gold-laced cap instead of his sun-helmet.
The spectacles were gone from his eyes, and between his lips was
a large Havana—his last, kept by him among the dunes as a
possible solace in the dreadful hour of death.
“Monsieur de Trevignac, I want you to dine with us in camp
to-night—only to dine. We won't keep you from your bed one
326 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
moment after the coffee and the cognac. You must seal the
triple alliance—France, Russia, England—in some champagne.”
She had spoken gaily, cordially. She added more gravely:
“One doesn’t escape from death among the dunes every day.
Will you come?”
She held out her hand frankly, as a man might to another
man. He pressed it as a man presses a woman's hand when he
is feeling very soft and tender. -
“Madame, what can I say, but that you are too good to us
poor fellows and that you will find it very difficult to get rid of
us, for we shall be so happy in your camp that we shall forget all
about our tower.”
“That's settled then.”
With the brand in her hand she walked to the edge of the hill.
De Trevignac followed her. He had taken the other brand
from Marelle. They stood side by side, overlooking the im-
mense desolation that was now almost hidden in the night.
“You are going to signal to your husband, Madame?”
& C Yes.”
“Let me do it for you. See, I have the other brand l’’
“Thank you—but I will do it.”
In the light of the flame that leaped up as if striving to touch
her face he saw a light in her eyes that he understood, and he
drooped his torch towards the earth while she lifted hers on high
and waved it in the blackness.
He watched her. The tall, strong, but exquisitely supple
figure, the uplifted arm with the torch sending forth a long
tongue of golden flame, the ardent and unconscious pose, that
set before him a warm passionate heart calling to another heart
without shame, made him think of her as some Goddess of the
Sahara. He had let his torch droop towards the earth, but, as
she waved hers, he had an irresistible impulse to join her in the
action she made heroic and superb. And presently he lifted his
torch, too, and waved it beside hers in the night.
She smiled at him in the flames.
“He must see them surely,” she said.
From below, in the distance of the desert, there rose a loud
cry in a strong man's voice.
“Aha!” she exclaimed.
She called out in return in a warm, powerful voice. The
man's voice answered, nearer. She dropped her brand to the
earth.
“Monsieur, you will come then—in half an hour?”
THE JOURNEY 327
“Madame, with the most heartfelt pleasure. But let me
accompany 5 y
“No, I am quite safe. And bring your men with you. We’ll
make the best feast we can for them. And there's enough cham-
pagne for all.”
Then she went away quickly, eagerly, into the darkness.
“To be her husband l’ murmured De Trevignac. “Lucky—
lucky fellow !” And he dropped his brand beside hers on the
ground, and stood watching the two flames mingle.
“Lucky—lucky fellow!” he said again aloud. “I wonder
what he's like.”
CHAPTER XX
WHEN Domini reached the camp she found it in a bustle.
Batouch, resigned to the inevitable, had put the cook upon his
mettle. Ouardi was already to be seen with a bottle of Pom-
mery in each hand, and was only prevented from instantly un-
corking them by the representations of his mistress and an
elaborate exposition of the peculiar and evanescent virtues of
champagne. Ali was humming a mysterious song about a love-
sick camel-man, with which he intended to make glad the hearts
of the assembly when the halting time was over. And the
dining-table was already set for three.
When Androvsky rode in with the Arabs Domini met him at
the edge of the hill.
“You saw my signal, Boris?”
( & Yes } }
He was going to say more, when she interrupted him eagerly.
“Have you any gazelle? Ah–” 4.
Across the mule of one of the Arabs she saw a body drooping,
a delicate head with thin, pointed horns, tiny legs with exquisite
little feet that moved as the mule moved.
“We shall want it to-night. Take it quickly to the cook's
tent, Ahmed.” Androvsky got off his mule.
“There's a light in the tower!” he said, looking at her and
then dropping his eyes.
‘Yes.”
“And I saw two signals. There were two brands being
waved together.”
“To-night we have comrades in the desert.”
“Comrades!” he said.
His voice sounded startled.
328 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Men who have escaped from a horrible death in the
dunes.” -
“Arabs?”
“French.”
Quickly she told him her story. He listened in silence. When
she had finished he said nothing. But she saw him look at the
dining-table laid for three and his expression was dark and
gloomy.
“Boris, you don’t mind ' " she said in surprise. “Surely
you would not refuse hospitality to these poor fellows!”
She put her hand through his arm and pressed it.
“Have I done wrong? But I know I haven't!”
“Wrong! How could you do that?”
He seemed to make an effort, to conquer something within
him.
“It’s I who am wrong, Domini. The truth is, I can’t bear
our happiness to be intruded upon even for a night. I want to
be alone with you. This life of ours in the desert has made
me desperately selfish. I want to be alone, quite alone, with
you.”
“It’s that! How glad I am!”
She laid her cheek against his arm.
“Then,” he said, “that other signal?”
“Monsieur de Trevignac gave it.”
Androvsky took his arm from hers abruptly.
“Monsieur de Trevignacl” he said. “Monsieur de
Trevignacſ’ ”
He stood as if in deep and anxious thought.
“Yes, the officer. That's his name. What is it, Boris?”
“Nothing.”
There was a sound of voices approaching the camp in the
darkness. They were speaking French.
“I must,” said Androvsky, “I must
He made an uncertain movement, as if to go towards the
dunes, checked it, and went hurriedly into the dressing-tent. As
he disappeared De Trevignac came into the camp with his men.
Batouch conducted the latter with all ceremony towards the fire
which burned before the tents of the attendants, and, for the
moment, Domini was left alone with De Trevignac.
“My husband is coming directly,” she said. “He was late in
returning, but he brought gazelle. Now you must sit down at
once.” -
She led the way to the dining-tent. De Trevignac glanced
| 2:
3 y
THE JOURNEY 329
at the table laid for three with an eager anticipation which he
was far too natural to try to conceal. -
“Madame,” he said, “if I disgrace myself to-night, if I eat
like an ogre in a fairy tale, will you forgive me?”
“I will not forgive you if you don't.”
She spoke gaily, made him sit down in a folding-chair, and
insisted on putting a soft cushion at his back. Her manner was
cheerful, almost eagerly kind and full of a camaraderie rare in a
woman, yet he noticed a change in her since they stood together
waving the brands by the tower. And he said to himself:
“The husband—perhaps he's not so pleased at my appear-
ance. I wonder how long they've been married?”
And he felt his curiosity to see “Monsieur Androvsky’’
deepen. ..'
While they waited for him Domini made De Trevignac tell
her the story of his terrible adventure in the dunes. He did so
simply, like a soldier, without exaggeration. When he had
finished she said:
“You thought death was certain then?”
“Quite certain, Madame.”
She looked at him earnestly.
“To have faced a death like that in utter desolation, utter
loneliness, must make life seem very different afterwards.”
“Yes, Madame. But I did not feel utterly alone.”
“Your men | *
“No, Madame.”
After a pause he added, simply:
“My mother is a devout Catholic, Madame. I am her only
child, and—she taught me long ago that in any peril one is never
quite alone.”
Domini's heart warmed to him. She loved this trust in God
so frankly shown by a soldier, member of an African regiment,
in this wild land. She loved this brave reliance on the unseen in
the midst of the terror of the seen. Before they spoke again
Androvsky crossed the dark space between the tents and came
slowly into the circle of the lamplight.
De Trevignac got up from his chair, and Domini introduced
the two men. As they bowed each shot a swift glance at the
other. Then Androvsky looked down, and two vertical lines
appeared on his high forehead above his eyebrows. They gave
to his face a sudden look of acute distress. De Trevignac
thanked him for his proffered hospitality with the ease of a man
of the world, assuming that the kind invitation to him and to his
33O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
men came from the husband as well as from the wife. When he
had finished speaking, Androvsky, without looking up, said, in a
voice that sounded to Domini new, as if he had deliberately
assumed it:
“I am glad, Monsieur. We found gazelle, and so I hope—I
hope you will have a fairly good dinner.”
The words could scarcely have been more ordinary, but the
way in which they were uttered was so strange, sounded indeed
so forced, and so unnatural, that both De Trevignac and Domini
looked at the speaker in surprise. There was a pause. Then
Batouch and Ouardi came in with the soup.
“Come!” Domini said. “Let us begin. Monsieur de
Trevignac, will you sit here on my right?”
They sat down. The two men were opposite to each other at
the ends of the small table, with a lamp between them. Domini
faced the tent door, and could see in the distance the tents
of the attendants lit up by the blaze of the fire, and the forms of
the French soldiers sitting at their table close to it, with the
Arabs clustering round them. Sounds of loud conversation and
occasional roars of laughter, that was almost childish in its frank
lack of all restraint, told her that one feast was a success. She
looked at her companions and made a sudden resolve—almost
fierce—that the other, over which she was presiding, should be a
success, too. But why was Androvsky so strange with other
men 2 Why did he seem to become almost a different human
being directly he was brought into any close contact with his
kind? Was it shyness? Had he a profound hatred of all
society P She remembered Count Anteoni's luncheon and the
distress Androvsky had caused her by his cold embarrassment,
his unwillingness to join in conversation on that occasion. But
then he was only her friend. Now he was her husband. She
longed for him to show himself at his best. That he was not a
man of the world she knew. Had he not told her of his simple
upbringing in El Kreir, a remote village of Tunisia, by a mother
who had been left in poverty after the death of his father, a
Russian who had come to Africa to make a fortune by vine-
growing, and who had had his hopes blasted by three years of
drought and by the visitation of the dreaded phylloxera º Had he
not told her of his own hard work on the rich uplands among the
Spanish workmen, of how he had toiled early and late in all
kinds of weather, not for himself, but for a company that drew a
fortune from the land and gave him a bare livelihood P Till she
met him he had never travelled—he had never seen almost any-
THE JOURNEY 33 I
thing of life. A legacy from a relative had at last enabled him
to have some freedom and to gratify a man's natural taste for
change. And, strangely, perhaps, he had come first to the desert.
She could not—she did not—expect him to show the sort of easy
cultivation that a man acquires only by long contact with all
sorts and conditions of men and women. But she knew that he
was not only full of fire and feeling—a man with a great tem-
perament, but also that he was a man who had found time to
study, whose mind was not empty. He was a man who had
thought profoundly. She knew this, although even with her,
even in the great intimacy that is born of a great mutual pas-
sion, she knew him for a man of naturally deep reserve, who
could not perhaps speak all his thoughts to anyone, even to the
woman he loved. And knowing this, she felt a fighting temper
rise up in her. She resolved to use her will upon this man who
loved her, to force him to show his best side to the guest who
had come to them out of the terror of the dunes. She would
be obstinate for him.
Her lips went down a little at the corners. De Trevignac
glanced at her above his soup-plate, and then at Androvsky. He
was a man who had seen much of Society, and who divined at
once the gulf that must have separated the kind of life led
in the past by his hostess from the kind of life led by his
host. Such gulfs, he knew, are bridged with difficulty. In this
case a great love must have been the bridge. His interest in
these two people, encountered by him in the desolation of the
wastes, and when all his emotions had been roused by the near-
ness of peril, would have been deep in any case. But there was
something that made it extraordinary, something connected with
Androvsky. It seemed to him that he had seen, perhaps known
Androvsky at some time in his life. Yet Androvsky's face was
not familiar to him. He could not yet tell from what he drew
this impression, but it was strong. He searched his memory.
Just at first fatigue was heavy upon him, but the hot soup, the
first glass of wine revived him. When Domini, full of her
Secret obstinacy, began to talk gaily he was soon able easily to
take his part, and to join her in her effort to include Androvsky
in the conversation. The cheerful noise of the camp came to
them from without. -
“I’m afraid my men are lifting up their voices rather loudly,”
said De Trevignac.
“We like it,” said Domini. “Don’t we, Boris?”
There was a long peal of laughter from the distance. As it
332 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
died away Batouch's peculiar guttural chuckle, which had some-
thing negroid in it, was audible, prolonging itself in a loneliness
that spoke his pertinacious sense of humour.
“Certainly,” said Androvsky, still in the same strained and
unnatural voice which had surprised Domini when she intro-
duced the two men. “We are accustomed to gaiety round the
camp fire.”
“You are making a long stay in the desert, Monsieur?”
asked De Trevignac.
“I hope so, Monsieur. It depends on my—it depends on
Madame Androvsky.”
“Why didn’t he say ‘my wife’?” thought De Trevignac.
And again he searched his memory. Had he ever met this man?
If so, where?
“I should like to stay in the desert for ever,” Domini said
quickly, with a long look at her husband.
“I should not, Madame,” De Trevignac said.
“I understand. The desert has shown you its terrors.”
“Indeed it has.” - |
“But to us it has only shown its enchantment. Hasn’t it?”
She *: to Androvsky. After a pause he replied:
“Yes.”
The word, when it came, sounded like a lie.
For the first time since her marriage Domini felt a cold, like
a cold of ice about her heart. Was it possible that Androvsky
had not shared her joy in the desert? Had she been alone in
her happiness? For a moment she sat like one stunned by a
blow. Then knowledge, reason, spoke in her. She knew of
Androvsky's happiness with her, knew it absolutely. There are
some things in which a woman cannot be deceived. When
Androvsky was with her he wanted no other human being.
Nothing could take that certainty from her.
“Of course,” she said, recovered, “there are places in the
desert in which melancholy seems to brood, in which one has a
sense of the terrors of the wastes. Mogar, I think, is one of
them, perhaps the only one we have been in yet. This evening,
when I was sitting under the tower, even I’—and as she said
“even I’” she smiled happily at Androvsky—“knew some fore-
bodings.”
“Forebodings?” Androvsky said quickly. “Why should
you ?” He broke off.
“Not of coming misfortune, I hope, Madame?” said De
Trevignac in a voice that was now irresistibly cheerful.
THE JOURNEY 333.
He was helping himself to some gazelle, which sent forth an
appetising odour, and Ouardi was proudly pouring out for him
the first glass of blithely winking champagne.
“I hardly know, but everything looked sad and strange; I
began to think about the uncertainties of life.”
Domini and De Trevignac were sipping their champagne.
Ouardi came behind Androvsky to fill his glass.
“Non! non!” he said, putting his hand over it and shaking
his head.
De Trevignac started.
Ouardi looked at Domini and made a distressed grimace,
pointing with a brown finger at the glass.
“Oh, Boris' you must drink champagne to-night!” she ex-
claimed.
“I would rather not,” he answered. “I am not accustomed
to it.”
“But to drink our guest's health after his escape from
death!”
Androvsky took his hand from the glass and Ouardi filled it
with wine.
Then Domini raised her glass and drank to De Trevignac.
Androvsky followed her example, but without geniality, and
when he put his lips to the wine he scarcely tasted it. Then
he put the glass down and told Ouardi to give him red wine.
And during the rest of the evening he drank no more cham-
pagne. He also ate very little, much less than usual, for in
the desert they both had the appetites of hunters.
After thanking them cordially for drinking his health, De
Trevignac said:
“I was nearly experiencing the certainty of death. But was
it Mogar that turned you to such thoughts, Madame?”
“I think so. There is something sad, even portentous
about it.”
She looked towards the tent door, imagining the immense
desolation that was hidden in the darkness outside, the white
plains, the mirage sea, the sand dunes like monsters, the
bleached bones of the dead camels with the eagles hovering
above them.
“Don’t you think so, Boris? Don't you think it looks like
a place in which—like a tragic place, a place in which tragedies
ought to occur?” -
“It is not places that make tragedies,” he said, “ or at least
they make tragedies far more seldom than the people in them.”
334 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He stopped, seemed to make an effort to throw off his taci-
turnity, and suddenly to be able to throw it off, at least par-
tially. For he continued speaking with greater naturalness
and ease, even with a certain dominating force.
“If people would use their wills they need not be influenced
by place, they need not be governed by a thousand things, by
memories, by fears, by fancies—yes, even by fancies that are the
merest shadows, but out of which they make phantoms. Half
the terrors and miseries of life lie only in the minds of men.
They even cause the very tragedies they would avoid by expect-
ing them.”
He said the last words with a sort of strong contempt—then,
more quietly, he added:
“You, Domini, why should you feel the uncertainty of life,
especially at Mogar? You need not. You can choose not to.
Life is the same in its chances here as everywhere?”
“But you,” she answered—“ did you not feel a tragic
influence when we arrived here? Do you remember how you
looked at the tower?” •
“The tower!” he said, with a quick glance at De Trevig-
nac. “I—why should I look at the tower?”
“I don't know, but you did, almost as if you were afraid
of it.”
“My tower l’” said De Trevignac.
Another roar of laughter reached them from the camp fire.
It made Domini Smile in Sympathy, but De Trevignac and
Androvsky looked at each other for a momcnt, the one with a
sort of earnest inquiry, the other with hostility, or what seemed
hostility, across the circle of lamplight that lay between them.
“A tower rising in the desert emphasises the desolation. I
suppose that was it,” Androvsky said, as the laugh died down
into Batouch's throaty chuckle. “It suggests lonely people
watching.”
“For something that never comes, or something terrible that
comes,” De Trevignac said.
As he spoke the last words Androvsky moved uneasily in his
chair, and looked out towards the camp, as if he longed to get
up and go into the open air, as if the tent roof above his head
oppressed him.
De Trevignac turned to Domini.
“In this case, Madame, you were the lonely watcher, and I
was the something terrible that came.”
She laughed. While she laughed De Trevignac noticed that
THE JOURNEY 335
Androvsky looked at her with a sort of sad intentness, not re-
proachful or wondering, as an older person might look at a
child playing at the edge of some great gulf into which a false
step would precipitate it. He strove to interpret this strange
look, so obviously born in the face of his host in connection
with himself. It seemed to him that he must have met An-
drovsky, and that Androvsky knew it, knew—what he did not
yet know—where it was and when. It seemed to him, too, that
Androvsky thought of him as the “something terrible" that
had come to this woman who sat between them out of the
desert.
But how could it be?
A profound curiosity was roused in him and he mentally
cursed his treacherous memory—if it were treacherous. For
possibly he might be mistaken. He had perhaps never met his
host before, and this strange manner of his might be due to some
inexplicable cause, or perhaps to some cause explicable and even
commonplace. This Monsieur Androvsky might be a very
jealous man, who had taken this woman away into the desert
to monopolise her, and who resented even the chance intrusion
of a stranger. De Trevignac knew life and the strange pas-
Sions of men, knew that there are Europeans with the Arab
temperament, who secretly long that their women should wear
the veil and live secluded in the harem. Androvsky might be
one of these.
When she had laughed Domini said:
“On the contrary, Monsieur, you have turned my thoughts
into a happier current by your coming.”
“How So P '’
“You made me think of what are called the little things
of life that are more to us women than to you men, I sup-
pose.” -
“Ah,” he said. “This food, this wine, this chair with a
cushion, this gay light—Madame, they are not little things I
have to be grateful for. When I think of the dunes they seem
to me—they seem 3 y
Suddenly he stopped. His gay voice was choked. She saw
that there were tears in his blue eyes, which were fixed on her
with an expression of ardent gratitude. He cleared his throat.
“Monsieur,” he said to Androvsky, “you will not think me
presuming on an acquaintance formed in the desert if I say that
till the end of my life I—and my men—can only think of
Madame as of the good Goddess of the desolate Sahara! ”
336 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He did not know how Androvsky would take this remark, he
did not care. For the moment in his impulsive nature there was
room only for admiration of the woman and gratitude for her
frank kindness. Androvsky said:
“Thank you, Monsieur.”
He spoke with an intensity, even a fervour, that were start-
ling. For the first time since they had been together his voice
was absolutely natural, his manner was absolutely unconstrained,
he showed himself as he was, a man on fire with love for the
woman who had given herself to him, and who received a warm
word of praise of her as a gift made to himself. De Trevignac
no longer wondered that Domini was his wife. Those three
words, and the way they were spoken, gave him the man and
what he might be in a woman's life. Domini looked at her
husband silently. It seemed to her as if her heart were flooded
with light, as if desolate Mogar were the Garden of Eden before
the angel came. When they spoke again it was on some
indifferent topic. But from that moment the meal went more
merrily. Androvsky seemed to lose his strange uneasiness. De
Trevignac met him more than half-way. Something of the
gaiety round the camp fire had entered into the tent. A chain
of sympathy had been forged between these three people. Possi-
bly a touch might break it, but for the moment it seemed
Strong.
At the end of the dinner Domini got up.
“We have no formalities in the desert,” she said. “But I'm
going to leave you together for a moment. Give Monsieur de
Trevignac a cigar, Boris. Coffee is coming directly.”
She went out towards the camp fire. She wanted to leave the
men together to seal their good fellowship. Her husband's
change from taciturnity to cordiality had enchanted her.
Happiness was dancing within her. She felt gay as a child.
Between the fire and the tent she met Ouardi carrying a tray.
On it were a coffee-pot, cups, little glasses and a tall bottle of a
peculiar shape with a very thin neck and bulging sides.
“What's that, Ouardi 2" she asked, touching it with her
finger. -
“That is an African liqueur, Madame, that you have never
tasted. Batouch told me to bring it in honour of Monsieur the
officer. They call it y 5
“Another surprise of Batouch's l’ she interrupted gaily.
“Take it in Monsieur the officer will think we have quite a
Scellar in the desert.”
THE JOURNEY 337
He went on, and she stood for a few minutes looking at the
blaze of the fire, and at the faces lit up by it, French and Arab.
The happy soldiers were singing a French song with a chorus
for the delectation of the Arabs, who swayed to and fro, wagging
their heads and smiling in an effort to show appreciation of the
barbarous music of the Roumis. Dreary, terrible Mogar and its
influences were being defied by the wanderers halting in it. She
thought of Androvsky's words about the human will overcoming
the influence of place, and a sudden desire came to her to go as
far as the tower where she had felt sad and apprehensive, to
stand in its shadow for an instant and to revel in her happi-
116SS.
She yielded to the impulse, walked to the tower, and stood
there facing the darkness which hid the dunes, the white plains,
the phantom sea, seeing them in her mind, and radiantly defying
them. Then she began to return to the camp, walking lightly,
as happy people walk. When she had gone a very short way
she heard someone coming towards her. It was too dark to see
who it was. She could only hear the steps among the stones.
They were hasty. They passed her and stopped behind her at
the tower. She wondered who it was, and supposed it must be
one of the soldiers come to fetch something, or perhaps tired and
hastening to bed.
As she drew near to the camp she saw the lamplight shining
in the tent, where doubtless De Trevignac and Androvsky were
Smoking and talking in frank good fellowship. It was like a
bright star, she thought, that gleam of light that shone out of her
home, the brightest of all the stars of Africa. She went towards
it. As she drew near she expected to hear the voices of the two
men, but she heard nothing. Nor did she see the blackness of
their forms in the circle of the light. Perhaps they had gone out
to join the soldiers and the Arabs round the fire. She hastened
on, came to the tent, entered it, and was confronted by her
husband, who was standing back in an angle formed by the
canvas, in the shadow, alone. On the floor near him lay a
quantity of fragments of glass.
“Boris!” she said. “Where is Monsieur de Trevignac: ”
“Gone,” replied Androvsky in a loud, firm voice.
She looked up at him. His face was grim and powerful,
hard like the face of a fighting man.
“Gone already? Why?”
“He’s tired out. He told me to make his excuses to you.”
338 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
& 4 Bu 35
She saw on the table the coffee cups. Two of them were
full of coffee. The third, hers, was clean.
“But he hasn’t drunk his coffeel ” she said.
She was astonished and showed it. She could not understand
a man who had displayed such warm, even touching, apprecia-
tion of her kindness leaving her without a word, taking the
opportunity of her momentary absence to disappear, to shirk
away—for she put it like that to herself.
“No—he did not want coffee.”
“But was anything the matter?”
She looked down at the broken glass, and saw stains upon
the ground among the fragments.
“What's this?” she said. “Oh, the African liqueur ! ”
Suddenly Androvsky put his arm round her with an iron
grip, and led her away out of the tent. They crossed the space
to the sleeping-tent in silence. She felt governed, and as if she
must yield to his will, but she also felt confused, even almost
alarmed mentally. The sleeping-tent was dark. When they
reached it Androvsky took his arm from her, and she heard him
searching for the matches. She was in the tent door and could
see that there was a light in the tower. De Trevignac must be
there already. No doubt it was he who had passed her in the
night when she was returning to the camp. Androvsky struck a
match and lit a candle. Then he came to the tent door and
saw her looking at the light in the tower.
“Come in, Domini,” he said, taking her by the hand, and
speaking gently, but still with a firmness that hinted at com-
mand.
She obeyed, and he quickly let down the flap of canvas,
and shut out the night.
“What is it, Boris?” she asked.
She was standing by one of the beds.
“What has happened?”
“Why—happened?” se
“I don't understand. Why did Monsieur de Trevignac go
away so suddenly 2 ”
“Domini, do you care whether he is here or gone? Do you
care?” He sat on the edge of the bed and drew her down
beside him.
“Do you want anyone to be with us, to break in upon our
lives? Aren’t we happier alone?”
THE JOURNEY 339
“Boris!” she said, “you—did you let him see that you
wanted him to go?”
It occurred to her suddenly that Androvsky, in his lack of
worldly knowledge, might perhaps have shown their guest that
he secretly resented the intrusion of a stranger upon them even
for one evening, and that De Trevignac, being a sensitive man,
had been hurt and had abruptly gone away. Her social sense
revolted at this idea.
“You didn’t let him see that, Boris!” she exclaimed.
“After his escape from death ! It would have been in-
human.”
“Perhaps my love for you might even make me that, Domini.
And if it did—if you knew why I was inhuman—would you
blame me for it? Would you hate me for it?”
There was a strong excitement dawning in him. It recalled
to her the first night in the desert when they sat together on the
ground and watched the waning of the fire.
“Could you—could you hate me for anything, Domini?” he
said. “Tell me—could you?”
His face was close to hers. She looked at him with
º: long, steady eyes, that had truth written in their dark
re.
“No,” she answered. “I could never hate you—now.”
“Not if—not if I had done you harm? Not if I had done
you a wrong?”
“Could you ever do me a wrong?” she asked.
She sat, looking at him as if in deep thought, for a moment.
“I could almost as easily believe that God could,” she said
at last simply.
“Then you—you have perfect trust in me?”
“But—have you ever thought I had not?” she asked. There
was wonder in her voice.
“But I have given my life to you,” she added still with
wonder. “I am here in the desert with you. What more can
I give? What more can I do?”
He put his arms about her and drew her head down on his
shoulder. ... --
“Nothing, nothing. You have given, you have done every-
thing—too much, too much. I feel myself below you, I know
myself below you—far, far down.” *.
“How can you say that? I couldn't have loved you if it
were so.” She spoke with complete conviction,
34O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Perhaps,” he said, in a low voice, “perhaps women never
realise what their love can do. It might—it might 3 y
“What, Boris?”
“It might do what Christ did—go down into hell to preach
to the-to the spirits in prison.”
His voice had dropped almost to a murmur. With one hand
on her cheek he kept her face pressed down upon his shoulder
so that she could not see his face.
“It might do that, Domini.”
“Boris,” she said, almost whispering too, for his words and
manner filled her with a sort of awe, “I want you to tell
me something.”
“What is it 2 ”
“Are you quite happy with me here in the desert? If you
are I want you to tell me that you are. Remember—I shall
believe you.”
( ( e e wº
No other human being could ever give me the happiness
you give me.” --
( & But 55
He interrupted her.
“No other human being ever has. Till I met you I had no
conception of the happiness there is in the world for man and
woman who love each other.”
“Then you are happy?”
“Don’t I seem so?” -
She did not reply. She was searching her heart for the
answer—searching it with an almost terrible sincerity. He
waited for her answer, sitting quite still. His hand was always
against her face. After what seemed to him an eternity she
said:
“ Boris | *
{ { Yes.”
“Why did you say that about a woman's love being able even
to go down into hell to preach to the spirits in prison?”
He did not answer. His hand seemed to her to lie more
heavily on her cheek.
“I—I am not sure that you are quite happy with me,” she
said.
She spoke like one who reverenced truth, even though it slew
her. There was a note of agony in her voice.
“ Hush ' " he said. “ Hush, Domini ’’
They were both silent, Beyond the canvas of the tent that
THE JOURNEY 34 I
shut out from them the camp they heard a sound of music.
Drums were being beaten. The African pipe was wailing.
Then the voice of Ali rose in the song of the “Freed Negroes '':
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
At that moment Domini felt that the words were true—
horribly true. f
“Boris,” she said. “Do you hear?”
“ Hush, Domini.” dº
“I think there is something in your heart that sometimes
makes you sad even with me. I think perhaps I partly guess
what it is.” -
He took his hand away from her face, his arm from her
shoulder, but she caught hold of him, and her arm was strong
like a man's.
“Boris, you are with me, you are close to me, but do you
sometimes feel far away from God?”
He did not answer.
“I don't know; I oughtn't to ask, perhaps. I don't ask—no,
I don’t. But, if it's that, don’t be too sad. It may all come
right—here in the desert. For the desert is the Garden of
Allah. And, Boris—put out the light.”
He extinguished the candle with his hand.
“You feel, perhaps, that you can't pray honestly now, but
some day you may be able to. You will be able to. I know
it. Before I knew I loved you I saw you—praying in the
desert.”
“I' " he whispered. “You saw me praying in the desert!”
It seemed to her that he was afraid. She pressed him more
closely with her arms.
“It was that night in the dancing-house. I seemed to see a
crowd of people to whom the desert had given gifts, and to you
it had given the gift of prayer. I saw you far out in the desert
praying.”
She heard his hard breathing, felt it against her cheek.
“If–if it is that, Boris, don’t despair. It may come. Keep
the crucifix. I am sure you have it. And I always pray for
you.”
They sat for a long while in the dark, but they did not speak
again that night.
Domini did not sleep, and very early in the morning, just as
342 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
dawn was beginning, she stole out of the tent, shutting down the
canvas flap behind her.
It was cold outside—cold almost as in a northern winter.
The wind of the morning, that blew to her across the wavelike
dunes and the white plains, seemed impregnated with ice. The
sky was a pallid grey. The camp was sleeping. What had been
a fire, all red and gold and leaping beauty, was now a circle of
ashes, grey as the sky. She stood on the edge of the hill and
looked towards the tower.
As she did so, from the house behind it came a string of mules,
picking their way among the stones over the hard earth. De
Trevignac and his men were already departing from Mogar.
They came towards her slowly. They had to pass her to
reach the track by which they were going on to the north and
civilisation. She stood to see them pass.
When they were quite near De Trevignac, who was riding,
with his head bent down on his chest, muffled in a heavy cloak,
looked up and saw her. She nodded to him. He sat up and
saluted. For a moment she thought that he was going on with-
out stopping to speak to her. She saw that he hesitated what to
do. Then he pulled up his mule and prepared to get off.
“No, don't, Monsieur,” she said.
She held out her hand.
“Good-bye,” she added.
He took her hand, then signed to his men to ride on. When
they had passed, saluting her, he let her hand go. He had not
spoken a word. His face, burned scarlet by the Sun, had a look
of exhaustion on it, but also another look—of horror, she
thought, as if in his soul he was recoiling from her. His in-
flamed blue eyes watched her, as if in a search that was intense.
She stood beside the mule in amazement. She could hardly be-
lieve that this was the man who had thanked her, with tears in
his eyes, for her hospitality the night before. “Good-bye,” he
said, speaking at last, coldly. She saw him glance at the tent
from which she had come. The horror in his face surely
deepened. “Good-bye, Madame,” he repeated. “Thank you
for your hospitality.” He pulled up the rein to ride on. The
mule moved a step or two. Then suddenly he checked it and
turned in the saddle. “Madame!” he said. “Madame!”
She came up to him. It seemed to her that he was going to
say something of tremendous importance to her. His lips,
blistered by the Sun, opened to speak. But he only looked again
THE JOURNEY 343
towards the tent in which Androvsky was still sleeping, then at
her.
A long moment passed.
Then De Trevignac, as if moved by an irresistible impulse,
leaned from the saddle and made over Domini the sign of the
cross. His hand dropped down against the mule's side, and
without another word, or look, he rode away to the north,
following his men.
CHAPTER XXI
THAT same day, to the surprise of Batouch, they left Mogar.
To both Domini and Androvsky it seemed a tragic place, a place
where the desert showed them a countenance that was menacing.
They moved on towards the south, wandering aimlessly
through the warm regions of the sun. Then, as the spring drew
into summer, and the heat became daily more intense, they
turned again northwards, and on an evening in May pitched
their camp on the outskirts of the Sahara city of Amara.
This city, although situated in the northern part of the
desert, was called by the Arabs “The belly of the Sahara,” and
also “The City of Scorpions.” It lay in the midst of a vast
region of soft and shifting sand that suggested a white sea, in
which the oasis of date palms, at the edge of which the city
stood, was a green island. From the south, whence the wan-
derers came, the desert sloped gently upwards for a long dis-
tance, perhaps half a day's march, and many kilometres before
the city was reached, the minarets of its mosques were visible,
pointing to the brilliant blue sky that arched the whiteness of
the sands. Round about the city, on every side, great sand-hills
rose like ramparts erected by Nature to guard it from the
assaults of enemies. These hills were black with the tents of
desert tribes, which, from far off, looked like multitudes of flies
that had settled on the sands. The palms of the oasis, which
stretched northwards from the city, could not be seen from the
south till the city was reached, and in late spring this region
was a strange and barbarous pageant of blue and white and gold;
crude in its intensity, fierce in its crudity, almost terrible in its
blazing splendour that was like the splendour about the portals
of the sun. *
Domini and Androvsky rode towards Amara at a foot's pace,
344 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
looking towards its distant towers. A quivering silence lay
around them, yet already they seemed to hear the cries of the
voices of a great multitude, to be aware of the movement of
thronging crowds of men. This was the first Sahara city they
had drawn near to, and their minds were full of memories of the
stories of Batouch, told to them by the camp fire at night in the
uninhabited places which, till now, had been their home: stories
of the wealthy date merchants who trafficked here and dwelt in
Oriental palaces, poor in aspect as seen from the dark and nar-
row streets, or zgags, in which they were situated, but within
full of the splendours of Eastern luxury; of the Jew money-
lenders who lived apart in their own quarter, rapacious as
wolves, hoarding their gains, and practising the rites of their
ancient and—according to the Arabs—detestable religion; of
the marabouts, or sacred men, revered by the Mohammedans,
who rode on white horses through the public ways, followed by
adoring fanatics who sought to touch their garments and
amulets, and demanded importunately miraculous blessings at
their hands—the hedgehog's foot to protect their women in the
peril of childbirth; the scroll, covered with verses of the Koran
and enclosed in a sheaf of leather, that banishes ill dreams at
night and stays the uncertain feet of the sleep-walker; the
camel's skull that brings fruit to the palm trees; the red coral
that stops the flow of blood from a knife-wound—of the dancing-
girls glittering in an armour of golden pieces, their heads tied
with purple and red and yellow handkerchiefs of silk, crowned
with great bars of solid gold and tufted with ostrich feathers;
of the dwarfs and jugglers who by night perform in the market-
place, contending for custom with the sorceresses who tell the
fates from shells gathered by mirage seas; with the snake-
charmers who are immune from the poison of serpents and the
acrobats who come from far-off Persia and Arabia to spread
their carpets in the shadow of the Agha's dwelling and delight
the eyes of negro and Kabyle, of Soudanese and Touareg with
their feats of strength; of the haschish smokers who, assembled
by night in an underground house whose ceiling and walls were
black as ebony, gave themselves up to day-dreams of shifting
glory, in which the things of earth and the joys and passions of
men reappeared, but transformed by the magic influence of the
drug, made monstrous or fairylike, intensified or turned to
voluptuous languors, through which the Ouled Nail floated like
a Syren, promising ecstasies unknown even in Baghdad, where
THE JOURNEY 345
the pale Circassian lifts her lustrous eyes, in which the palms
were heavy with dates of solid gold, and the streams were glid-
ing silver. -
Often they had smiled over Batouch's opulent descriptions of
the marvels of Ain-Amara, which they suspected to be very far
away from the reality, and yet, nevertheless, when they saw the
minarets soaring above the sands to the brassy heaven, it seemed
to them both as if, perhaps, they might be true. The place
looked intensely barbaric. The approach to it was grandiose.
Wide as the sands had been, they seemed to widen out into a
greater immensity of arid pallor before the city gates as yet un-
seen. The stretch of blue above looked vaster here, the horizons
more remote, the radiance of the sun more vivid, more inex-
orable. Nature surely expanded as if in an effort to hold her
arm against some tremendous spectacle set in its bosom by the
activity of men, who were strong and ardent as the giants of
old, who had powers and a passion for employing them per-
sistently not known in any other region of the earth. The
immensity of Mogar brought sadness to the mind. The im-
mensity of Ain-Amara brought excitement. Even at this
distance from it, when its minarets were still like shadowy
fingers of an unlifted hand, Androvsky and Domini were con-
scious of influences streaming forth from its battlements over
the sloping sands like a procession that welcomed them to a new
phase of desert life. &
“And people talk of the monotony of the Sahara! ” Domini
said speaking out of their mutual thought. “Everything is
here, Boris; you’ve never drawn near to London. Long before
you reach the first suburbs you feel London like a great influence
brooding over the fields and the woods. Here you feel Amara
in the same way brooding over the sands. It's as if the sands
were full of voices. Doesn’t it excite you?”
“Yes,” he said. “But ’’—and he turned in his saddle and
looked back—“I feel as if the solitudes were safer.”
“We can return to them.”
& C Yes.”
“We are splendidly free. There's nothing to prevent us
leaving Amara to-morrow.”
“Isn't there?” he answered, fixing his eyes upon the min-
aretS.
“What can there be?”
“Who knows?”
“What do you mean, Boris? Are you superstitious? But
346 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
you reject the influence of place. Don't you remember—at
Mogar?” -
At the mention of the name his face clouded and she was
sorry she had spoken it. Since they had left the hill above the
mirage sea they had scarcely ever alluded to their night there.
They had never once talked of the dinner in camp with De
Trevignac and his men, or renewed their conversation in the tent
on the subject of religion. But since that day, since her words
about Androvsky's lack of perfect happiness even with her far
out in the freedom of the desert, Domini had been conscious
that, despite their great love for each other, their mutual passion
for the solitude in which it grew each day more deep and more
engrossing, wrapping their lives in fire and leading them on to
the inner abodes of sacred understanding, there was at moments
a barrier between them. *
At first she had striven not to recognise its existence. She
had striven to be blind. But she was essentially a brave woman
and an almost fanatical lover of truth for its own sake, think-
ing that what is called an ugly truth is less ugly than the love-
liest lie. To deny truth is to play the coward. She could not
long do that. And so she quickly learned to face this truth with
steady eyes and an unflinching heart.
At moments Androvsky retreated from her, his mind became
remote—more, his heart was far from her, and, in its distant
place, was suffering. Of that she was assured.
But she was assured, too, that she stood to him for perfection
in human companionship. A woman's love is, perhaps, the only
true divining rod. Domini knew instinctively where lay the
troubled waters, what troubled them in their subterranean
dwelling. She was certain that Androvsky was at peace with
her but not with himself. She had said to him in the tent that
she thought he sometimes felt far away from God. The con-
viction grew in her that even the satisfaction of his great human
love was not enough for his nature. He demanded, sometimes
imperiously, not only the peace that can be understood glori-
ously, but also that other peace which passeth understanding.
And because he had it not he suffered.
In the Garden of Allah he felt a loneliness even though she
was with him, and he could not speak with her of this loneliness.
That was the barrier between them, she thought.
She prayed for him: in the tent by night, in the desert under
the burning sky by day. When the muezzin cried from the
minaret of some tiny village lost in the desolation of the wastes,
THE JOURNEY 347
turning to the north, south, east and west, and the Mussulmans
bowed their shaven heads, facing towards Mecca, she prayed to
the Catholics' God, whom she felt to be the God, too, of all the
devout, of all the religions of the world, and to the Mother of
God, looking towards Africa. She prayed that this man whom
she loved, and who she believed was seeking, might find. And
she felt that there was a strength, a passion in her prayers, which
could not be rejected. She felt that some day Allah would show
himself in his garden to the wanderer there. She dared to feel
that because she dared to believe in the endless mercy of God.
And when that moment came she felt, too, that their love—hers
and his—for each other would be crowned. Beautiful and
intense as it was it still lacked something. It needed to be
encircled by the protecting love of a God in whom they both
believed in the same way, and to whom they both were equally
near. While she felt close to this love and he far from it they
were not quite together.
There were moments in which she was troubled, even sad, but
they passed. For she had a great courage, a great confidence.
The hope that dwells like a flame in the purity of prayer com-
forted her.
“I love the solitudes,” he said. “I love to have you to
myself.”
“If we lived always in the greatest city of the world it would
make no difference,” she said quietly. “You know that,
Boris.”
He bent over from his saddle and clasped her hand in his,
and they rode thus up the great slope of the sands, with their
horses close together. -
The minarets of the city grew more distinct. They domi-
nated the waste as the thought of Allah dominates the Mo-
hammedan world. Presently, far away on the left, Domini and
Androvsky saw hills of sand, clearly defined like small moun-
tains delicately shaped. On the summits of these hills were
Arab villages of the hue of bronze gleaming in the sun. No
trees stood near them. But beyond them, much farther off, was
the long green line of the palms of a large oasis. Between them
and the riders moved slowly towards the minarets dark things
that looked like serpents writhing through the sands. These
were caravans coming into the city from long journeys. Here
and there, dotted about in the immensity, were solitary horse-
men, camels in twos and threes, small troops of donkeys. And
all the things that moved went towards the minarets as if
348 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
irresistibly drawn onwards by some strong influence that sucked
them in from the solitudes of the whirlpool of human life.
Again Domini thought of the approach to London, and of
the dominion of great cities, those octopus monsters created by
men, whose tentacles are strong to seize and stronger still to
keep. She was infected by Androvsky's dread of a changed
life, and through her excitement, that pulsed with interest and
curiosity, she felt a faint thrill of something that was like fear.
“Boris,” she said, “I feel as if your thoughts were being con-
veyed to me by your touch. Perhaps the solitudes are best.”
By a simultaneous impulse they pulled in their horses and
listened. Sounds came to them over the sands, thin and remote.
They could not tell what they were, but they knew that they
heard something which suggested the distant presence of life.
“What is it?” said Domini.
“I don’t know, but I hear something. It travels to us from
the minarets.”
They both leaned forward on their horses' necks, holding
each other's hand. -
“I feel the tumult of men,” Androvsky said presently.
“And I. But it seems as if no men could have elected to
build a city here.”
“Here in the ‘Belly of the desert,’” he said, quoting the
Arabs' name for Amara.
“Boris’—she spoke in a more eager voice, clasping his hand
strongly—“you remember the fumoir in Count Anteoni's
garden. The place where it stood was the very heart of the
garden.”
( ( Yes.”
“We understood each other there.”
He pressed her hand without speaking.
“Amara seems to me the heart of the Garden of Allah.
Perhaps—perhaps we shall 3 y
She paused. Her eyes were fixed on his face.
“What, Domini?” he asked.
He looked expectant, but anxious, and watched her, but
with eyes that seemed ready to look away from her at a word.
“Perhaps we shall understand each other even better there.”
He looked down at the white sand.
“Better!” he repeated. “Could we do that?”
She did not answer. The far-off villages gleamed mys-
teriously on their little mountains, like unreal things that might
fade away as castles fade in the fire. The sky above the min-
THE JOURNEY 349
arets was changing in colour slowly. Its blue was being
invaded by a green that was a sister colour. A curious light,
that seemed to rise from below rather than to descend from
above, was transmuting the whiteness of the sands. A lemon
yellow crept through them, but they still looked cold and
strange, and immeasurably vast. Domini fancied that the
silence of the desert deepened so that, in it, they might hear
the voices of Amara more distinctly.
“You know,” she said, “when one looks out over the desert
from a height, as we did from the tower of Beni-Mora, it
seems to call one. There's a voice in the blue distance that
seems to say, ‘Come to me! I am here—hidden in my retreat,
beyond the blue, and beyond the mirage, and beyond the farthest
verge!’” -
“Yes, I know.”
“I have always felt, when we travelled in the desert, that the
calling thing, the soul of the desert, retreated as I advanced, and
still summoned me onward but always from an infinite distance.”
“And I too, Domini.”
“Now I don’t feel that. I feel as if now we were coming
near to the voice, as if we should reach it at Amara, as if there
it would tell us its secret.”
“Imagination ’’ he said.
But he spoke seriously, almost mystically. His voice was at
odds with the word it said. She noticed that and was sure that
he was secretly sharing her sensation. She even suspected that
he had perhaps felt it first.
“Let us ride on,” he said. “Do you see the change in the
light? Do you see the green in the sky? It is cooler, too.
This is the wind of evening.”
Their hands fell apart and they rode slowly on, up the long
slope of the sands.
Presently they saw that they had come out of the trackless
waste and that though still a long way from the city they were
riding on a desert road which had been trodden by multitudes
of feet. There were many footprints here. On either side
were low banks of sand, beaten into a rough symmetry by
implements of men, and shallow trenches through which no
water ran. In front of them they saw the numerous caravans,
now more distinct, converging from left and right slowly to this
great isle of the desert which stretched in a straight line to the
minarets.
“We are on a highway,” Domini said.
35O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Androvsky sighed. -
“I feel already as if we were in the midst of a crowd,” he
answered.
“Our love for peace oughtn't to make us hate our fellow-
men l’” she said. “Come, Boris, let us chase away our selfish
mood | *
She spoke in a more cheerful voice and drew her rein a little
tighter. Her horse quickened its pace.
“And think how our stay at Amara will make us love the
solitudes when we return to them again. Contrast is the salt
of life.”
“You speak as if you didn't believe what you are saying.”
She laughed.
“If I were ever inclined to tell you a lie,” she said. “I
should not dare to. Your mind penetrates mine too deeply.”
“You could not tell me a lie.”
“Do you hear the dogs barking?” she said, after a moment.
“They are among those tents that are like flies on the sands
around the city. That is the tribe of the Ouled Nails, I
suppose. Batouch says they camp here. What multitudes of
tents! Those are the suburbs of Amara. I would rather live
in them than in the suburbs of London. Oh, how far away
we are, as if we were at the end of the world!”
Either her last words, or her previous change of manner to a
lighter cheerfulness, almost a briskness, seemed to rouse An-
drovsky to a greater confidence, even to anticipation of possible
pleasure.
“Yes. After all it is only the desert men who are here.
Amara is their Metropolis, and in it we shall only see their
life.”
His horse plunged. He had touched it sharply with his heel.
“I believe you hate the thought of civilisation,” she ex-
claimed.
“And you?”
“I never think of it. I feel almost as if I had never known
it, and could never know it.”
“Why should you? You love the wilds.”
“They make my whole nature leap. Even when I was
a child it was so. I remember once reading Maud. In it I
came upon a passage—I can't remember it well, but it was about
the red man 5 y
She thought for a moment, looking towards the city.
“I don't know how it is quite,” she murmured. “‘When
THE JOURNEY 35I
the red man laughs by his cedar tree, and the red man's babe
leaps beyond the sea —something like that. But I know that
it made my heart beat, and that I felt as if I had wings and
were spreading them to fly away to the most remote places of
the earth. And now I have spread my wings, and—it's glori-
ous. Come, Boris!” t
They put their horses to a canter, and soon drew near to the
caravans. They had sent Batouch and Ali, who generally ac-
companied them, on with the rest of the camp. Both had many
friends in Amara, and were eager to be there. It was obvious
that they and all the attendants, servants and camel-men,
thought of it as the provincial Frenchman thinks of Paris, as a
place of all worldly wonders and delights. Batouch was to
meet them at the entrance to the city, and when they had seen
the marvels of its market-place was to conduct them to the tents
which would be pitched on the sand-hills outside.
Their horses pulled as if they, too, longed for a spell of city
life after the life of the wastes, and Domini’s excitement grew.
She felt vivid animal spirits boiling up within her, the sane and
healthy sense that welcomes a big manifestation of the ceaseless
enterprise and keen activity of a brotherhood of men. The
loaded camels, the half-naked running drivers, the dogs sensi-
tively sniffing, as if enticing smells from the city already
reached their nostrils, the chattering desert merchants discussing
coming gains, the wealthy and richly-dressed Arabs, mounted
on fine horses, and staring with eyes that glittered up the broad
track in search of welcoming friends, were sympathetic to her
mood. Amara was sucking them all in together from the soli-
tary places as quiet waters are sucked into the turmoils of a
mill-race. Although still out in the sands they were already
in the midst of a noise of life flowing to meet the roar of life that
rose up at the feet of the minarets, which now looked tall and
majestic in the growing beauty of the Sunset.
They passed the caravans one by one, and came on to the
crest of the long sand slope just as the sky above the city was
flushing with a bright geranium red. The track from here was
level to the city wall, and was no longer soft with sand. A
broad, hard road rang beneath their horses' hoofs, startling
them with a music that was like a voice of civilised life. Before
them, under the red sky, they saw a dark blue of distant houses,
towers, and great round cupolas glittering like gold. Forests
of palm trees lay behind, the giant date palms for which Amara
was famous. To the left stretched the sands dotted with
352 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
gleaming Arab villages, to the right again the sands covered
with hundreds of tents among which quantities of figures moved
lively like ants, black on the yellow, arched by the sky that was
alive with lurid colour, red fading into gold, gold into primrose,
primrose into green, green into the blue that still told of the fad-
ing day. And to this multi-coloured sky, from the barbaric city
and the immense sands in which it was set, rose a great chorus of
life; voices of men and beasts, cries of naked children playing
Cora on the sand-hills, of mothers to straying infants, shrill
laughter of unveiled girls wantonly gay, the calls of men, the
barking of multitudes of dogs, the guard dogs of the nomads
that are never silent night or day, the roaring of hundreds of
camels now being unloaded for the night, the gibbering of the
mad beggars who roam perpetually on the outskirts of the en-
campments like wolves seeking what they may devour, the bray-
ing of donkeys, the whinnying of horses. And beneath these
voices of living things, foundation of their uprising vitality,
pulsed barbarous music, the throbbing tom-toms that are for
ever heard in the lands of the sun, fetish music that suggests
fatalism, and the grand monotony of the enormous spaces, and
the crude passion that repeats itself, and the untiring, Sultry
loves and the untired, Sultry languors of the children of the
SUl Iſl.
The silence of the sands, which Domini and Androvsky had
known and loved, was merged in the tumult of the sands. The
one had been mystical, laying the soul to rest. The other was
provocative, calling the soul to wake. At this moment the
sands themselves seemed to stir with life and to cry aloud with
voices. *
“The very sky is barbarous to-night!” Domini exclaimed.
“Did you ever see such colour, Boris?”
“Over the minarets it is like a great wound,” he answered.
“No wonder men are careless of human life in such a land as
this. All the wildness of the world seems to be concentrated
here. Amara is like the desert city of some tremendous dream.
It looks wicked and unearthly, but how superb!”
“Look at those cupolas!” he said. “Are there really
Oriental palaces here? Has Batouch told us the truth for
once?”
“Or less than the truth? I could believe anything of Amara
at this moment. What hundreds of camels! They remind me
of Arba, our first halting-place.”
She looked at him and he at her.
THE JOURNEY 353
“How long ago that seems!” she said.
“A thousand years ago.”
They both had a memory of a great silence, in the midst of
this growing tumult in which the sky seemed now to take its
part, calling with the voices of its fierce colours, with the voices
of the fires that burdened it in the west.
“Silence joined us, Domini,” Androvsky said.
“Yes. Perhaps silence is the most beautiful voice in the
world.”
Far off, along the great white road, they saw two horsemen
galloping to meet them from the city, one dressed in brilliant
saffron yellow, the other in the palest blue, both crowned with
large and snowy turbans.
“Who can they be?” said Domini, as they drew near.
“They look like two princes of the Sahara.”
Then she broke into a merry laugh.
“Batouch! and Ali !” she exclaimed.
The servants galloped up then, without slackening speed,
deftly wheeled their horses in a narrow circle, and were beside
them, going with them, one on the right hand, the other on the
left.
“Bravo!” Domini cried, delighted at this feat of horse-
manship. “But what have you been doing? You are trans-
formed !”
“Madame, we have been to the Bain Maure,” replied
Batouch, calmly, swelling out his broad chest under his yellow
jacket laced with gold. “We have had our heads shaved till
they are smooth and beautiful as polished ivory. We have been
to the perfumer'—he leaned confidentially towards her, ex-
haling a pungent odour of amber—“ to the tailor, to the ba-
boosh bazaar’—he kicked out a foot cased in a slipper that
was bright almost as a gold piece—“to him who sells the cher-
chia.” He shook his head till the spangled muslin that flowed
about it trembled. “Is it not right that your servants should
do you honour in the city ?”
“Perfectly right,” she answered with a careful seriousness.
“I am proud of you both.”
“And Monsieur?” asked Ali, speaking in his turn.
Androvsky withdrew his eyes from the city, which was now
near at hand.
“Splendid ” he said, but as if attending to the Arabs with
difficulty. “You are splendid.”
As they came towards the old wall which partially surrounds
354 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Amara, and which rises from a deep natural moat of sand, they
saw that the ground immediately before the city which, from a
distance, had looked almost flat, was in reality broken up into a
series of wavelike dunes, some small with depressions like deep
crevices between them, others large with summits like plateaux.
These dunes were of a sharp lemon yellow in the evening light,
a yellow that was cold in its clearness, almost setting the teeth on
edge. They went away into great rolling slopes of sand on
which the camps of the nomads and the Ouled Nails were
pitched, some near to, some distant from, the city, but they them-
selves were solitary. No tents were pitched close to the city,
under the shadow of its wall. As Androvsky spoke, Domini
exclaimed: -
“Boris—look! That is the most extraordinary thing I have
ever seen ’’ -
She put her hand on his arm. He obeyed her eyes and
looked to his right, to the small lemon-yellow dunes that were
close to them. At perhaps a hundred yards from the road was
a dune that ran parallel with it. The fire of the sinking sun
caught its smooth crest, and above this crest, moving languidly
towards the city, were visible the heads and busts of three
women, the lower halves of whose bodies were concealed by
the sand of the farther side of the dune. They were dancing-
girls. On their heads, piled high with gorgeous handkerchiefs,
were golden crowns which glittered in the sun-rays, and tufts of
scarlet feathers. Their oval faces, covered with paint, were
partially concealed by long strings of gold coins, which flowed
from their crowns down over their large breasts and disappeared
towards their waists, which were hidden by the sand. Their
dresses were of Scarlet, apple-green and purple silks, partially
covered by floating shawls of Spangled muslin. Beneath their
crowns and handkerchiefs burgeoned forth plaits of false hair
decorated with coral and silver ornaments. Their hands, which
they held high, gesticulating above the crest of the dune, were
painted blood red.
These busts and heads glided slowly along in the setting sun,
and presently sank down and vanished into some depression of
the dunes. For an instant one blood-red hand was visible alone,
waving a signal above the sand to someone unseen. Its fingers
fluttered like the wings of a startled bird. Then it, too, van-
ished, and the sharply-cold lemon yellow of the dunes stretched
in vivid loneliness beneath the evening sky.
To both of them this brief vision of women in the sand
THE JOURNEY - 355
brought home the solitude of the desert and the barbarity of the
life it held, the ascetism of this supreme manifestation of
Nature and the animal passion which fructifies in its heart.
“Do you know what that made me think of, Boris?” Domini
said, as the red hand with its swiftly-moving fingers disappeared.
“You’ll smile, perhaps, and I scarcely know why. It made me
think of the Devil in a monastery.”
Androvsky did not smile. Nor did he answer. She felt sure
that he, too, had been strongly affected by that glimpse of Sahara
life. His silence gave Batouch an opportunity of pouring forth
upon them a flood of poetical description of the dancing-girls of
Amara, all of whom he seemed to know as intimate friends.
Before he ceased they came into the city.
The road was still majestically broad. They looked with
interest at the first houses, one on each side of the way. And
here again they were met by the sharp contrast which was evi-
dently to be the keynote of Amara. The house on the left was
European, built of white stone, clean, attractive, but uninterest-
ing, with stout white pillars of plaster supporting an arcade that
afforded shade from the sun, windows with green blinds, and
an open doorway showing a little hall, on the floor of which
lay a smart rug glowing with gay colours; that on the right,
before which the sand lay deep as if drifted there by some
recent wind of the waste, was African and barbarous, an im-
mense and rambling building of brown earth, brushwood and
palm, windowless, with a flat-terraced roof, upon which were
piled many strange-looking objects like things collapsed, red
and dark green, with fringes and rosettes, and tall sticks of
palm pointing vaguely to the sky.
“Why, these are like our palanquin' " Domini said.
“They are the palanquins of the dancing-girls, Madame,”
said Batouch. “That is the café of the dancers, and that ”—
he pointed to the neat house opposite—“ is the house of Mon-
sieur the Aumonier of Amara.”
“Aumonier,” said Androvsky, sharply. “Here!”
He paused, then added more quietly:
“What should he do here?”
“But, Monsieur, he is for the French officers.”
“There are French officers?”
“Yes, Monsieur, four or five, and the commandant. They
live in the palace with the cupolas.”
“I forgot,” Androvsky said to Domini. “We are not out of
the sphere of French influence. This place looks so remote
356 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
and so barbarous that I imagined it given over entirely to the
desert men.”
“We need not see the French,” she said. “We shall be
encamped outside in the sand.”
“And we need not stay here long,” he said quickly.
“Boris,” she asked him, half in jest, half in earnest, “shall
we buy a desert island to live in P’’
“Let us buy an oasis,” he said. “That would be the
perf the safest life for us.”
“The safest?”
“The safest for our happiness. Domini, I have a horror of
the world!” He said the last words with a strong, almost fierce,
emphasis.
“Had you it always, or only since we have been married?”
“I—perhaps it was born in me, perhaps it is part of me.
Who knows?”
He had relapsed into a gravity that was heavy with gloom,
and looked about him with eyes that seemed to wish to reject
all that offered itself to their sight.
“I want the desert and you in it,” he said. “The lonely
desert, with you.”
“And nothing else?”
“I want that. I cannot have that taken from me.”
He looked about him quickly from side to side as they rode
up the street, as if he were a scout sent in advance of an army
and suspected ambushes. His manner reminded her of the way
he had looked towards the tower as they rode into Mogar. And
he had connected that tower with the French. She remembered
his saying to her that it must have been built for French soldiers.
As they rode into Mogar he had dreaded something in Mogar.
The strange incident with De Trevignac had followed. She
had put it from her mind as a matter of Small, or no, importance,
had resolutely forgotten it, had been able to forget it in their
dream of desert life and desert passion. But the entry into a
city for the moment destroyed the dreamlike atmosphere woven
by the desert, recalled her town sense, that quick-wittedness,
that sharpness of apprehension and swiftness of observation
which are bred in those who have long been accustomed to a life
in the midst of crowds and movement, and changing scenes and
passing fashions. Suddenly she seemed to herself to be reading
Androvsky with an almost merciless penetration, which yet she
could not check. He had dreaded something in Mogar. He
dreaded something here in Amara, An unusual incident—for
THE JOURNEY 357
the coming of a stranger into their lives out of their desolation
of the sand was unusual—had followed close upon the first
dread. Would another such incident follow upon this second
dread P And of what was this dread born ?
Batouch drew her attention to the fact that they were coming
to the market-place, and to the curious crowds of people who
were swarming out of the tortuous, narrow streets into the main
thoroughfare to watch them pass, or to accompany them, run-
ning beside their horses. She divined at once, by the passionate
curiosity their entry aroused, that he had misspent his leisure in
spreading through the city lying reports of their immense im-
portance and fabulous riches.
“Batouch,” she said, “ you have been talking about us.”
“No, Madame, I merely said that Madame is a great lady in
her own land, and that Monsieur 3 ×
“I forbid you ever to speak about me, Batouch,” said Androv-
sky, brusquely.
He seemed worried by the clamour of the increasing mob
that surrounded them. Children in long robes like night-gowns
skipped before them, calling out in shrill voices. Old beggars,
with diseased eyes and deformed limbs, laid filthy hands upon
their bridles and demanded alms. Impudent boys, like bronze
statuettes suddenly endowed with a fury of life, progressed back-
wards to keep them full in view, shouting information at them
and proclaiming their own transcendent virtues as guides. Lithe
desert men, almost naked, but with carefully-covered heads,
strode beside them, keeping pace with the horses, saying nothing,
but watching them with a bright intentness that seemed to hint
at unutterable designs. And towards them, through the air
that seemed heavy and almost suffocating now that they were
among buildings, and through clouds of buzzing flies, came the
noise of the larger tumult of the market-place.
Looking over the heads of the throng Domini saw the wide
road opening out into a great space, with the first palms of the
oasis thronging on the left, and a cluster of buildings, many
with small cupolas, like down-turned white cups, on the right.
On the farther side of this space, which was black with people
clad for the most in dingy garments, was an arcade jutting out
from a number of hovel-like houses, and to the right of them,
where the market-place, making a wide sweep, continued up hill
and was hidden from her view, was the end of the great build-
ing whose gilded cupolas they had seen as they rode in from
the desert, rising above the city with the minarets of its mosques,
358 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
The flies buzzed furiously about the horses' heads and flanks,
and the people buzzed more furiously, like larger flies, about
the riders. It seemed to Domini as if the whole city was intent
upon her and Androvsky, was observing them, considering them,
wondering about them, was full of a thousand intentions all
connected with them.
..When they gained the market-place the noise and the watch-
ful curiosity made a violent crescendo. It happened to be market
day and, although the Sun was setting, buying and selling were
not yet over. On the hot earth over which, whenever there is
any wind from the desert, the white sand grains sift and settle,
were laid innumerable rugs of gaudy colours on which were
disposed all sorts of goods for sale; heavy ornaments for women,
piles of burnouses, haiks, gandouras, gaiters of bright red leather,
slippers, weapons—many jewelled and gilt, or rich with pat-
terns in silver—pyramids of the cords of camels’ hair that bind
the turbans of the desert men, handkerchiefs and cottons of all
the colours of the rainbow, cheap perfumes in azure flasks
powdered with golden and silver flowers and leaves, incense
twigs, panniers of henna to dye the finger-nails of the faithful,
innumerable comestibles, vegetables, corn, red butcher's meat
thickly covered with moving insects, pale yellow cakes crisp and
shining, morsels of liver Spitted on skewers—which, cooked with
dust of keef, produce a dreamy drunkenness more overwhelming
even than that produced by haschish—musical instruments, der-
boukas, guitars, long pipes, and strange fiddles with two strings,
tom-toms, skins of animals with heads and claws, live birds,
tortoise backs, and plaits of false hair.
The sellers squatted on the ground, their brown and hairy
legs crossed, calmly gazing before them, or, with frenzied voices
and gestures, driving bargains with the buyers, who moved to
and fro, treading carelessly among the merchandise. The tellers
of fates glided through the press, fingering the amulets that hung
upon their hearts. Conjurors proclaimed the merits of their
miracles, bawling in the faces of the curious. Dwarfs went to
and fro, dressed in bright colours with green and yellow turbans
on their enormous heads, tapping with long staves, and relating
their deformities. Water-sellers sounded their gongs. Before
pyramids of Oranges and dates, neatly arranged in patterns, sat
boys crying in shrill voices the luscious virtues of their fruits.
Idiots, with blear eyes and protending under-lips, gibbered and
whined. Dogs barked. Bakers hurried along with trays of
loaves upon their heads. From the low and smoky arcades to
THE JOURNEY 359
right and left came the reiterated grunt of negroes pounding
coffee. A fanatic was roaring out his prayers. Arabs in scarlet
and blue cloaks passed by to the Bain Maure, under whose white
and blue archway lounged the Kabyle masseurs with folded,
muscular arms. A marabout, black as a coal, rode on a white
. towards the great mosque, followed by his servant on
OOt.
Native soldiers went by to the Kasba on the height, or strolled
down towards the Cafés Maures smoking cigarettes. Circles of
grave men bent over card games, dominoes and draughts—called
by the Arabs the Ladies' Game. Khodjas made their way with
dignity towards the Bureau Arabe. Veiled women, fat and
lethargic, jingling with ornaments, waddled through the arches
of the arcades, carrying in their painted and perspiring hands
blocks of sweetmeats which drew the flies. Children played in
the dust by little heaps of refuse, which they stirred up into
clouds with their dancing, naked feet. In front, as if from the
first palms of the oasis, rose the roar of beaten drums from the
negroes' quarter, and from the hill-top at the feet of the minarets
came the fierce and piteous noise that is the leit-motif of the
desert, the multitudinous complaining of camels dominating all
other sounds.
As Domini and Androvsky rode into this whirlpool of
humanity, above which the sky was red like a great wound, it
flowed and eddied round them, making them its centre. The
arrival of a stranger-woman was a rare, if not an unparalleled,
event in Amara, and Batouch had been very busy in spreading
the fame of his mistress. -
“Madame should dismount,” said Batouch. “Ali will take
the horses, and I will escort Madame and Monsieur up the
hill to the place of the fountain. Shabah will be there to
greet Madame.”
“What an uproar!” Domini exclaimed, half laughing, half
confused. “Who on earth is Shabah?” .
“Shabah is the Caid of Amara,” replied Batouch with dig-
nity. “The greatest man of the city. He awaits Madame by
the fountain.” Domini cast a glance at Androvsky.
“Well?” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders like a man who thinks strife useless
and the moment come for giving in to Fate.
“The monster has opened his jaws for us,” he said, forcing
a laugh. “We had better walk in, I suppose. But—O
Domini!—the silence of the wastes!”
36O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“We shall know it again. This is only for the moment.
We shall have all its joy again.”
“Who knows?” he said, as he had said when they were
riding up the sand slope. “Who knows?”
Then they got off their horses and were taken by the crowd.
CHAPTER XXII
THE tumult of Amara waked up in Domini the town-sense that
had been slumbering. All that seemed to confuse, to daze, to
repel Androvsky, even to inspire him with fear, the noise of the
teeming crowds, their perpetual movement, their contact, startled
her into a vividness of life and apprehension of its various
meanings, that sent a thrill through her. And the thrill was
musical with happiness. To the sad a great vision of human life
brings sadness because they read into the hearts of others their
own misery. But to the happy such a vision brings exultation,
for everywhere they find dancing reflections of their own joy.
Domini had lived much in crowds, but always she had been
actively unhappy, or at least coldly dreary in them. Now, for
the first time, she was surrounded by masses of fellow-beings
in her splendid contentment. And the effect of this return, as
it were, to something like the former material conditions of her
life, with the mental and affectional conditions of it transformed
by joy, was striking even to herself. Suddenly she realised to
the full her own humanity, and the living warmth of sympathy
that is fanned into flame in a human heart by the presence of
human life with its hopes, desires, fears, passions, joys, that leap
to the eye. Instead of hating this fierce change from solitude
with the man she loved to a crowd with the man she loved she
rejoiced in it. Androvsky was the cause of both her joys, joy
in the waste and joy in Amara, but while he shared the one
he did not share the other.
This did not surprise her because of the conditions in which
he had lived. He was country-bred and had always dwelt far
from towns. She was returning to an old experience—old, for
the London crowd and the crowd of Amara were both crowds of
men, however different—with a mind transformed by happi-
ness. To him the experience was new. Something within her
told her that it was necessary, that it had been ordained because
he needed it. The recalled town-sense, with its sharpness of
observation, persisted. As she rode in to Amara she had seemed
THE JOURNEY 36I
to herself to be reading Androvsky with an almost merciless
penetration which yet she could not check. Now she did not
wish to check it, for the penetration that is founded on perfect
love can only yield good fruit. It seemed to her that she was
allowed to see clearly for Androvsky what he could not see him-
self, almost as the mother sees for the child. This contact with
the crowds of Amara was, she thought, one of the gifts the desert
made to him. He did not like it. He wished to reject it. But
he was mistaken. For the moment his vision was clouded, as
our vision for ourselves so often is. She realised this, and, for
the first time since the marriage service at Beni-Mora, perhaps
seemed to be selfish. She opposed his wish. Hitherto there
had never been any sort of contest between them. Their desires,
like their hearts, had been in accord. Now there was not a
contest, for Androvsky yielded to Domini’s preference, when
she expressed it, with a quickness that set his passion before her
in a new and beautiful light. But she knew that, for the
moment, they were not in accord. He hated and dreaded what
she encountered with a vivid sensation of sympathy and joy.
She felt that there was something morbid in his horror of
the crowd, and the same strength of her nature said to her,
“Uproot it!”
Their camp was pitched on the sand-hills, to the north of the
city near the French and Arab cemeteries. They reached it
only when darkness was falling, going out of the city on foot
by the great wall of dressed stone which enclosed the Kasba of
the native soldiers, and ascending and descending various slopes
of deep sand, over which the airs of night blew with a peculiar
thin freshness that renewed Domini's sense of being at the end
of the world. Everything here whispered the same message,
said, “We are the denizens of far-away.”
In their walk to the camp they were accompanied by a little
procession. Shabah, the Caid of Amara, a shortish man whose
immense dignity made him almost gigantic, insisted upon attend-
ing them to the tents, with his young brother, a pretty, libertine
boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor, an Arab black as a negro but
without the negro's look of having been freshly oiled, and two
attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of the Nomads,
a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was, im-
mense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like
a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and
Androvsky, and behind streamed the curious, the envious, the
greedy and the desultory Arabs, who follow in the trail of every
362 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
stranger, hopeful of the crumbs that are said to fall from the
rich man's table. Shabah spoke French and led the conversa-
tion, which was devoted chiefly to his condition of health. Some
years before an attempt had been made upon his life by poison,
and since that time, as he himself expressed it, his stomach had
been “perturbed as a guard dog in the night when robbers are
approaching.” All efforts to console or to inspire him with hope
of future cure were met with a stern hopelessness, a brusque
certainty of perpetual suffering. The idea that his stomach
could again know peace evidently shocked and distressed him,
and as they all waded together through the sand, pioneered by
the glorified Batouch, Domini was obliged to yield to his em-
phatic despair, and to join with him in his appreciation of the
perpetual indigestion which set him apart from the rest of the
world like some God within a shrine. The skittish boy, his
brother, who wore kid gloves, cast at her sly glances of admira-
tion which asked for a return. The black tutor grinned. And
the Caid of the Nomads punctuated their progress with loud
grunts of heavy satisfaction, occasionally making use of Batouch
as interpreter to express his hopes that they would visit his
palace in the town, and devour a cous-cous on his carpet.
When they came to the tents it was necessary to entertain
these personages with coffee, and they finally departed promising
a speedy return, and full of invitations, which were cordially
accepted by Batouch on his employer's behalf before either
Domini or Androvsky had time to say a word.
As the cortège disappeared over the sands towards the city
Domini burst into a little laugh, and drew Androvsky out to the
tent door to see them go.
“Society in the sands!” she exclaimed gaily. “Boris, this is
a new experience. Look at our guests making their way to their
palaces!”
Slowly the potentates progressed across the white dunes
towards the city. Shabah wore a long red cloak. His brother
was in pink and gold, with white billowing trousers. The Caid
of the Nomads was in green. They all moved with a large and
Conscious majesty, surrounded by their obsequious attendants.
Above them the purple sky showed a bright evening star. Near
it was visible the delicate silhouette of the young moon. Scat-
tered over the waste rose many koubbahs, grey in the white,
with cupolas of gypse. Hundreds of dogs were barking in the
distance. To the left, on the vast, rolling slopes of sand, glared
the innumerable fires kindled before the tents of the Ouled
THE JOURNEY 363
Nails. Before the sleeping tent rose the minarets and the gilded
cupolas of the city which it dominated from its mountain of sand.
Behind it was the blanched immensity of the plain, of the lonely
desert from which Domini and Androvsky had come to face this
barbaric stir of life. And the city was full of music, of tom-
toms throbbing, of bugles blowing in the Kasba, of pipes shriek-
ing from hidden dwellings, and of the faint but multitudinous
voices of men, carried to them on their desolate and treeless
height by the frail wind of night that seemed a white wind,
'twin-brother of the sands. -
“Let us go a step or two towards the city, Boris,” Domini
said, as their guests sank magnificently down into a fold of the
dunes.
“Towards the city!” he answered. “Why not
glanced behind him to the vacant, noiseless sands.
She set her impulse against his for the first time.
“No, this is our town life, our Sahara season. Let us give
ourselves to it. The loneliness will be its antidote some day.”
“Very well, Domini,” he answered. -
They went a little way towards the city, and stood still in the
sand at the edge of their height.
“Listen, Boris! Isn’t it strange in the night all this barbaric
music? It excites me.”
“You are glad to be here.”
She heard the note of disappointment in his voice, but did
not respond to it.
“And look at all those fires, hundreds of them in the sand l’’
“Yes,” he said, “it is wonderful, but the solitudes are best.
This is not the heart of the desert, this is what the Arabs call it,
‘The belly of the Desert.” In the heart of the desert there is
silence.”
She thought of the falling of the wind when the Sahara took
them, and knew that her love of the silence was intense. Never-
theless, to-night the other part of her was in the ascendant. She
wanted him to share it. He did not. Could she provoke him
to share it?
“Yet, as we rode in, I had a feeling that the heart of the
desert was here,” she said. “You know I said so.”
“Do you say so still?”
“The heart, Boris, is the centre of life, isn’t it?”
He was silent. She felt his inner feeling fighting hers. -
“To-night,” she said, putting her arm through his, and look-
ing towards the city, “I feel a tremendous sympathy with human
P’’ He
364 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
life such as I never felt before. Boris, it comes to me from you.
Yes, it does. It is born of my love for you, and seems to link
me, and you with me, to all these strangers, to all men and
women, to everything that lives. It is as if I was not quite
human before, and my love for you had made me completely
human, had done something to me that even—even my love for
God had not been able to do.” * ,
She lowered her voice at the last words. After a moment she
added: -
“Perhaps in isolation, even with you, I could not come to
completeness. Perhaps you could not in isolation even with me.
Boris, I think it's good for us to be in the midst of life for a
time.”
“You wish to remain here, Domini?”
“Yes, for a time.”
The fatalistic feeling that had sometimes come upon her in
this land entered into her at this moment. She felt, “It is
written that we are to remain here.”
“Let us remain here, Domini,” he said quietly.
The note of disappointment had gone out of his voice,
deliberately banished from it by his love for her, but she seemed
to hear it, nevertheless, echoing far down in his soul. At that
moment she loved him like a woman he had made a lover, but
also like a woman he had made a mother by becoming a child.
“Thank you, Boris,” she answered very quietly. “You are
good to me.”
“You are good to me,” he said, remembering the last words
of Father Roubier. “How can I be anything else?”
Directly he had spoken the words his body trembled violently.
“Boris, what is it?” she exclaimed, startled.
He took his arm away from hers.
“These—these noises of the city in the night coming across
the sand-hills are extraordinary. I have become so used to
silence that perhaps they get upon my nerves. I shall grow
accustomed to them presently.”
He turned towards the tents, and she went with him. It
seemed to her that he had evaded her question, that he had not
wished to answer it, and the sense sharply awakened in her by a
return to life near a city made her probe for the reason of this.
She did not find it, but in her mental search she found herself
presently at Mogar. It seemed to her that the same sort of
uneasiness which had beset her husband at Mogar beset him
now more fiercely at Amara, that, as he had just said, his nerves
THE JOURNEY 365
were being tortured by something. But it could not be the
noises from the city.
After dinner Batouch came to the tent to suggest that they
should go down with him into the city. Domini, feeling certain
that Androvsky would not wish to go, at once refused, alleging
that she was tired. Batouch then asked Androvsky to go with
him, and, to Domini's astonishment, he said that if she did not
mind his leaving her for a short time he would like a stroll.
“Perhaps,” he said to her, as Batouch and he were starting,
“perhaps it will make me more completely human; perhaps
there is something still to be done that even you, Domini, have
not accomplished.” -
She knew he was alluding to her words before dinner. He
stood looking at her with a slight Smile that did not suggest
happiness, then added:
“That link you spoke of between us and these strangers ”—
he made a gesture towards the city—“ I ought perhaps to feel it
more strongly than I do. I—I will try to feel it.” -
Then he turned away, and went with Batouch across the
sand-hills, walking heavily.
As Domini watched him going she felt chilled, because there
was something in his manner, in his smile, that seemed for the
moment to set them apart from each other, something she did
not understand. -
Soon Androvsky disappeared in a fold of the sands as he had
disappeared in a fold of the sands at Mogar, not long before De
Trevignac came. She thought of Mogar once more, steadily,
reviewing mentally—with the renewed sharpness of intellect
that had returned to her, brought by contact with the city—all
that had passed there, as she never reviewed it before.
It had been a strange episode.
She began to walk slowly up and down on the sand before
the tent. Ouardi came to walk with her, but she sent him away.
Before doing so, however, something moved her to ask him:
“That African liqueur, Ouardi—you remember that you
brought to the tent at Mogar—have we any more of it?”
“The monk’s liqueur, Madame?”
“What do you mean—monk's liqueur?” -
“It was invented by a monk, Madame, and is sold by the
monks of El-Largani.”
“Oh! Have we any more of it?”
“There is another bottle, Madame, but I should not dare to
bring it if 5 3
366 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He paused.
“If what, Ouardi 2 °
“If Monsieur were there.”
Domini was on the point of asking him why, but she checked
herself and told him to leave her. Then she walked up and
down once more on the sand. She was thinking now of the
broken glass on the ground at Androvsky's feet when she found
him alone in the tent after De Trevignac had gone. Ouardi's
words made her wonder whether this liqueur, brought to cele-
brate De Trevignac's presence in the camp, had turned the con-
versation upon the subject of the religious orders; whether
Androvsky had perhaps said something against them which had
offended De Trevignac, a staunch Catholic; whether there had
been a quarrel between the two men on the subject of religion.
It was possible. She remembered De Trevignac's strange,
almost mystical, gesture in the dawn, following his look of
horror towards the tent where her husband lay sleeping.
To-night her mind—her whole nature—felt terribly alive.
She tried to think no more of Mogar, but her thoughts cen-
tred round it, linked it with this great city, whose lights shone
in the distance below her, whose music came to her from afar
over the silence of the sands. -
Mogar and Amara; what had they to do with one another?
Leagues of desert divided them. One was a desolation, the
other was crowded with men. What linked them together in
her mind?
Androvsky's fear of both—that was the link. She kept on
thinking of the glance he had cast at the watch-tower, to which
Trevignac had been even then approaching, although they knew
it not. De Trevignac! She walked faster on the sand, to and
fro before the tent. Why had he looked at the tent in which
Androvsky slept with horror? Was it because Androvsky had
denounced the religion that he reyerenced and loved 2 Could
it have been that? But then—did Androvsky actively hate
religion? Perhaps he hated it, and concealed his hatred from
her because he knew it would cause her pain. Yet she had
sometimes felt as if he were seeking, perhaps with fear, perhaps
with ignorance, perhaps with uncertainty, but still seeking to
draw near to God. That was why she had been able to hope
for him, why she had not been more troubled by his loss of the
faith in which he had been brought up, and to which she be-
longed heart and soul. Could she have been wrong in her feel-
ing—deceived There were men in the world, she knew, who
THE JOURNEY 367
denied the existence of a God, and bitterly ridiculed all faith.
She remembered the blasphemies of her father. Had she mar-
ried a man who, like him, was lost, who, as he had, furiously
denied God?
A cold thrill of fear came into her heart. Suddenly she felt
as if, perhaps, even in her love, Androvsky had been a stranger
to her.
She stood upon the sand. It chanced that she looked towards
the camp of the Ouled Nails, whose fires blazed upon the
dunes. While she looked she was presently aware of a light
that detached itself from the blaze of the fires, and moved from
them, coming towards the place where she was standing, slowly.
The young moon only gave a faint ray to the night. This light
travelled onward through the dimness like an earth-bound star.
She watched it with intentness, as people watch any moving
thing when their minds are eagerly at work, staring, yet scarcely
conscious that they see.
The little light moved steadily on over the sands, now
descending the side of a dune, now mounting to a crest, and
always coming towards the place where Domini was standing.
And presently this determined movement towards her caught
hold of her mind, drew it away from other thoughts, fixed it on
the light. She became interested in it, intent upon it.
Who was bearing it? No doubt some desert man, some
Arab. She imagined him tall, brown, lithe, half-naked, holding
the lamp in his muscular fingers, treading on bare feet silently
over the deep sand. Why had he left the camp? What was
his purpose?
The light drew near. It was now moving over the flats and
seemed, she thought, to travel more quickly. And always it
came straight towards where she was standing. A conviction
dawned in her that it was travelling with an intention of reach-
ing her, that it was carried by someone who was thinking of her.
But how could that be? She thought of the light as a thing
with a mind and a purpose, borne by someone who backed up
its purpose, helping it to do what it wanted. And it wanted
to come to her.
In Mogar! Androvsky had dreaded something in Mogar.
De Trevignac had come. He dreaded something in Amara.
This light came. For an instant she fancied that the light was
a lamp carried by De Trevignac. Then she saw that it gleamed
upon a long black robe, the soutane of a priest.
As she and Androvsky rode into Amara she had asked her-
368 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
self whether his second dread would be followed, as his first
dread had been, by an unusual incident. When she saw the
soutane of a priest, black in the lamplight, moving towards her
over the whiteness of the sand, she said to herself that it was
to be so followed. This priest stood in the place of De Tre-
vignac.
Why did he come to her?
CHAPTER XXIII
WHEN the priest drew close to the tent Domini saw that it was
not he who carried the lantern, but a native soldier, one of the
Tirailleurs, formerly called Turcos, who walked beside him.
The soldier saluted her, and the priest took off his broad, fluffy
black hat.
“Good-evening, Madame,” he said, speaking French with the
accent of Marseilles. “I am the Aumonier of Amara, and have
just heard of your arrival here, and as I was visiting my friends
on the sand-hills yonder, I thought I would venture to call and
ask whether I could be of any service to you. The hour is in-
formal, I know, but to tell the truth, Madame, after five years in
Amara one does not know how to be formal any longer.” -
His eyes, which had a slightly impudent look, rare in a priest
but not unpleasing, twinkled cheerfully in the lamplight as he
spoke, and his whole expression betokened a highly social dis-
position and the most genuine pleasure at meeting with a
stranger. While she looked at him, and heard him speak,
Domini laughed at herself for the imaginations she had just been
cherishing. He had a broad figure, long arms, large feet en-
cased in stout, comfortable boots. His face was burnt brown
by the Sun and partially concealed by a heavy black beard,
whiskers and moustache. His features were blunt and looked
boyish, though his age must have been about forty. The nose
was snub, and accorded with the expression in his eyes, which
were black like his hair and full of twinkling lights. As he
Smiled genially on Domini he showed two rows of small,
square white teeth. His Marseilles accent exactly suited his
appearance, which was rough but honest. Domini welcomed
him gladly. Indeed, her reception of him was more than
cordial, almost eager. For she had been vaguely expecting some
tragic figure, some personality suggestive of mystery or sorrow,
as she thought of the incidents at Mogar, and associated the
THE JOURNEY 369
moving light with the approach of further strange events. This
homely figure of her religion, beaming satisfaction and comfort-
able anticipation of friendly intercourse, laid to rest fears which
only now, when she was conscious of relief, she knew she had
been entertaining. She begged the priest to come into the din-
ing-tent, and, taking up the little bell which was on the table,
went out into the sand and rang it for Ouardi.
He came at once, like a shadow gliding over the waste.
“Bring us coffee for two, Ouardi, biscuits "-she glanced at
her visitor—“bon-bons, yes, the bon-bons in the white box, and
the cigars. And take the soldier with you and entertain him
well. Give him whatever he likes.”
Ouardi went away with the soldier, talking frantically, and
Domini returned to the tent, where she found the priest gleam-
ing with joyous anticipation. They sat down in the comfortable
basket chairs before the tent door, through which they could see
the shining of the city's lights and hear the distant sound of its
throbbing and wailing music.
“My husband has gone to see the city,” Domini said after
she had told the priest her name and been informed that his
was Max Beret.
“We only arrived this evening.”
“I know, Madame.”
He beamed on her, and stroked his thick beard with his
broad, Sunburnt hand. “Everyone in Amara knows, and every-
one in the tents. We know, too, how many tents you have, how
many servants, how many camels, horses, dogs.”
He broke into a hearty laugh.
“We know what you've just had for dinner!”
Domini laughed too.
“Not really ”
“Well, I heard in the camp that it was soup and stewed
mutton. But never mind! You must forgive us. We are
barbarians! We are sand-rascals! We are ruffians of the
sun l’’
His laugh was infectious. He leaned back in his chair and
shook with the mirth his own remarks had roused.
“We are ruffians of the sun' " he repeated with gusto. “And
we must be forgiven everything.”
Although clad in a soutane he looked, at that moment, like a
type of the most joyous tolerance, and Domini could not help
mentally comparing him with the priest of Beni-Mora, What
would Father Roubier think of Father Beret?
370 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“It is easy to forgive in the sun,” Domini said.
The priest laid his hands on his knees, setting his feet well
apart. She noticed that his hands were not scrupulously clean.
“Madame,” he said, “it is impossible to be anything but
lenient in the sun. That is my experience. Excuse me, but
are you a Catholic?”
( { Yes.” -
“So much the better. You must let me show you the
chapel. It is in the building with the cupolas. The congrega-
tion consists of five on a full Sunday.” His laugh broke out
again. “I hope the day after to-morrow you and your husband
will make it seven. But, as I was saying, the sun teaches one a
lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the
midst of the sand-rascals—eh, Madame!—I suppose as a priest
I ought to have been shocked by their goings-on. And indeed
I tried to be, I conscientiously did my best. But it was no good.
I couldn't be shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I
could only say, ‘It is not for me to question le bon Dieu, and
le bon Dieu has created these people and set them here in the
sand to behave as they do. What is my business? I can’t
convert them. I can’t change their morals. I must just be a
friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them a bit
if they’re starving, doctor them a little. I’m a first-rate hand at
making an Arab take a pill or a powder!—when they are ill, and
make them at home with the white marabout.' That's what the
Sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal's child
in Amara is a friend of mine.”
He stretched out his legs as if he wished to elongate his
satisfaction, and stared Domini full in the face with eyes that
confidently, naïvely, asked for her approval of his doctrine of the
sun. She could not help liking him, though she felt more as if
she were sitting with a jolly, big, and rather rowdy boy than
with a priest.
“You are fond of the Arabs then?” she said.
“Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and
I’m as much at home in their tents, and more, than I should ever
be at the Vatican—with all respect to the Holy Father.”
He got up, went out into the sand, expectorated noisily,
then returned to the tent, wiping his bearded mouth with a large
red cotton pocket-handkerchief.
“Are you staying here long, Madame?”
He sat down again in his chair, making it creak with his
Substantial weight.
THE JOURNEY - 37 I
“I don’t know. If my husband is happy here. But he
prefers the solitudes, I think.”
“Does he? And yet he's gone into the city. Plenty of
bustle there at night, I can tell you. Well, now, I don't agree
with your husband. I know it's been said that solitude is good
for the sad, but I think just the contrary. Ah!”
The last sonorously joyous exclamation jumped out of
Father Beret at the sight of Ouardi, who at this moment
entered with a large tray, covered with a coffee-pot, cups,
biscuits, bonbons, cigars, and a bulging flask of some liqueur
flanked by little glasses.
“You fare generously in the desert I see, Madame,” he
exclaimed. “And so much the better. What's your servant's
name?”
Domini told him.
“Ouardil that means born in the time of the roses.” He
addressed Ouardi in Arabic and sent him off into the darkness
chuckling gaily. “These Arab names all have their meanings
—Onlagareb, mother of Scorpions, Omteoni, mother of eagles,
and so on. So much the better! Comforts are rare here, but
you carry them with you. Sugar, if you please.”
Domini put two lumps into his cup.
“If you allow me!”
He added two more.
“I never refuse a good cigar. These harmless joys are
excellent for man. They help his Christianity. They keep
him from bitterness, harsh judgments. But harshness is for
northern climes—rainy England, eh? Forgive me, Madame.
I speak in joke. You come from England perhaps. It didn't
occur to me that 5 5
They both laughed. His garrulity was irresistible and made
Domini feel as if she were sitting with a child. Perhaps he
caught her feeling, for he added:
“The desert has made me an enfant terrible, I fear. What
have you there?”
His eyes had been attracted by the flask of liqueur, to which
Domini was stretching out her hand with the intention of
giving him some.
“I don’t know.”
She leaned forward to read the name on the flask.
“Lou a r in e,” she said.
“Pst!” exclaimed the priest, with a start.
“Will you have some? I don’t know whether it's good.
372 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
I’ve never tasted it, or seen it before. Will you have
some?”
She felt so absolutely certain that he would say “Yes” that
she lifted the flask to pour the liqueur into one of the little
glasses, but, looking at him, she saw that he hesitated.
“After all—why not?” he ejaculated. “Why not?”
She was holding the flask over the glass. He saw that his
remark surprised her.
“Yes, Madame, thanks.”
She poured out the liqueur and handed it to him. He set
it down by his coffee-cup.
“The fact is, Madame—but you know nothing about this
liqueur?”
“No, nothing. What is it?”
Her curiosity was roused by his hesitation, his words, but still
more by a certain gravity which had come into his face.
“Well, this liqueur comes from the Trappist monastery of
El-Largani.”
“The monks' liqueur ! ” she exclaimed.
And instantly she thought of Mogar.
“You do know then 2 ”
“Ouardi told me we had with us a liqueur made by some
monks.”
“This is it, and very excellent it is. I have tasted it in Tunis.”
“But then why did you hesitate to take it here?”
He lifted his glass up to the lamp. The light shone on its
contents, showing that the liquid was pale green.
“Madame,” he said, “ the Trappists of El-Largani have a
fine property. They grow every sort of things, but their vine-
yards are specially famous, and their wines bring in a splendid
revenue. This is their only liqueur, this Louarine. It, too, has
brought in a lot of money to the community, but when what they
have in stock at the monastery now is exhausted they will never
make another franc by Louarine.”
“But why not?”
“The secret of its manufacture belonged to one monk only.
At his death he was to confide it to another whom he had
chosen.”
“And he died suddenly without 35
“Madame, he didn’t die.”
The gravity had returned to the priest's face and deepened
there, transforming it. He put the glass down without touch-
ing it with his lips.
THE JOURNEY 373
“Then—I don’t understand.”
“He disappeared from the monastery.”
“Do you mean he left it—a Trappist?”
{ { Yes.”
“After taking the final vows?”
“Oh, he had been a monk at El-Largani for over twenty
years.”
“How horrible!” Domini said. She looked at the pale-
green liquid. “How horrible!” she repeated.
“Yes. The monks would have kept the matter a secret,
but a servant of the hôtellerie—who had taken no vow of
eternal silence—spoke, and—well, I know it here in the ‘belly
of the desert.’”
“ Horrible | ?”
She said the word again, and as if she felt its meaning more
acutely each time she spoke it.
“After twenty years to go! ” she added after a moment.
“And was there no reason, no—no excuse—no, I don't mean
excuse! But had nothing exceptional happened 2 °
“What exceptional thing can happen in a Trappist monas-
tery P’’ said the priest. “One day is exactly like another there,
and one year exactly like another.”
“Was it long ago?”
“No, not very long. Only some months. Oh, perhaps it
may be a year by now, but not more. Poor fellow ! I suppose
he was a man who didn't know himself, Madame, and the devil
tempted him.”
“But after twenty years!” said Domini.
The thing seemed to her almost incredible.
“That man must be in hell now,” she added. “In the hell
a man can make for himself by his own act. Oh, here is my
husband.”
Androvsky stood in the tent door, looking in upon them with
startled, scrutinising eyes. He had come over the deep sand
without noise. Neither Domini nor the priest had heard a
footstep. The priest got up from his chair and bowed gen-
ially.
“Good-evening, Monsieur,” he said, not waiting for any
introduction. “I am the Aumonier of Amara, and y 3
He paused in the full flow of his talk. Androvsky's eyes had
wandered from his face to the table, upon which stood the coffee,
the liqueur, and the other things brought by Ouardi. It was
evident even to the self-centred priest that his host was not
374. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
listening to him. There was a moment's awkward pause.
Then Domini said:
“Boris, Monsieur l'Aumonier] '' &
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 3 y
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 embarrassment, 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 naïve 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:
“Belgassem Belgassem l’’
He paused, then called again:
“Belgassem ”
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.”
THE JOURNEY 375
“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 Belgassem l’’
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 went 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 never
refuse a fine cigar, and these—upon my word—are 5 y
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, à 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 tom-toms in the city, the faint
Screaming of the pipes that sounded almost like human beings in
distress, the passionate barking of the guard dogs tied up to the
tents on the sand-slopes where the multitudes 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
376 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 1 ''
She was at the door of the sleeping-tent. He did not answer.
“Boris | ?” 4
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 fore-
head.
“Your forehead is burning, and your pulses—how they are
beating! Like hammers! I must 5 y
“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 reject-
ing 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 sur-
rounded 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?”
THE JOURNEY 377
“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.”
“And—and did he ask for anything?”
( & Ask? } }
“I saw—on the table—coffee and—and there was liqueur.”
“Naturally I offered him something.” -
“He didn’t ask?”
“But, Boris, how could he?”
After a moment of silence he said:
“No, of course not.”
He shifted in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, put
his hands on the arms of it, and continued:
“What did he talk about?”
“A little about Amara.”
“That was all 2 ”
He hadn't been here long when you came—”
C Oh! } }
“But he told me one thing that was horrible,” she added,
obedient to her instinct always to tell the complete truth to him,
even about trifles which had nothing to do with their lives or
their relation to each other.
“Horrible!” Androvsky said, uncrossing his legs and leaning
forward in his chair.
She sat down by him. They both had their backs to the
light and were in shadow.
{ { Yes.”
“What was it about—some crime here?”
“Oh, no! It was about that liqueur you saw on the table.”
Androvsky was sitting upon a basket chair. As she spoke it
creaked under a violent movement that he made.
“How could—what could there be that was horrible con-
nected with that?” he asked, speaking slowly.
“It was made by a monk, a Trappist 3 y
He got up from his chair and went to the opening of the
tent.
“What ” she began, thinking he was perhaps feeling the
pain in his head more severely.
“I only want to be in the air. It's rather hot there. Stay
where you are, Domini, and—well, what else?”
He stepped out into the sand, and stood just outside the tent
in its shadow.
378 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“It was invented by a Trappist monk of the monastery of
El-Largani, who disappeared from the monastery. He had
taken the final vows. He had been there for over twenty
years.” - -
“He-he disappeared—did the priest say?”
{ { Yes.”
“Where???
“I don’t think—I am sure he doesn't know. But what does
it matter? The awful thing is that he should leave the monas-
tery after taking the eternal vows—vows made to God.”
After a moment, during which neither of them spoke and
Androvsky stood quite still in the Sand, she added:
“Poor man | *
Androvsky came a step towards her, then paused.
“Why do you say that, Domini?”
“I was thinking of the agony he must be enduring if he is
still alive.”
{ { Agony? } } -
“Of mind, of heart. You—I know, Boris, you can’t feel
with me on certain subjects—yet
“Yet !” he said.
“Boris "-she got up and came to the tent door, but
not out upon the sand—“I dare to hope that some day
perhaps } }
She was silent, looking towards him with her brave, steady
eyes.
“Agony of heart?” Androvsky said, recurring to her words.
“You think—what—you pity that man then?”
“And don't you?”
“I—what has he to do with—us? Why should we–?”
“I know. But one does sometimes pity men one never has
seen, never will see, if one hears something frightful about them.
Perhaps—don't Smile, Boris—perhaps it was seeing that liqueur,
which he had actually made in the monastery when he was at
peace with God, perhaps it was seeing that, that has made me
realise—such trifles stir the imagination, set it working—at any
rate 5 y
She broke off. After a minute, during which he said nothing,
she continued:
“I believe the priest felt something of the same sort. He
could not drink the liqueur that man had made, although he
intended to.”
“But—that might have been for a different reason,” An-
THE JOURNEY 379
drovsky said in a harsh voice; “priests have strange ideas. They
often judge things cruelly, very cruelly.”
“Perhaps they do. Yes; I can imagine that Father Roubier
of Beni-Mora might, though he is a good man and leads a saintly
life.”
“Those are sometimes the most cruel. They do not under-
stand.”
“Perhaps not. It may be so. But this priest—he's not like
that.”
She thought of his genial, bearded face, his expression when
he said, “We are ruffians of the sun,” including himself with the
desert men, his boisterous laugh.
“His fault might be the other way.”
“Which way?”
“Too great a tolerance.”
“Can a man be too tolerant towards his fellow-man?” said
Androvsky. .
There was a strange sound of emotion in his deep voice which
moved her. It seemed to her—why, she did not know—to steal
out of the depth of something their mutual love had created.
“The greatest of all tolerance is God's,” she said. “I’m
sure—quite sure—of that.”
Androvsky came in out of the shadow of the tent, took her in
his arms with passion, laid his lips on hers with passion, hot,
burning force and fire, and a hard tenderness that was hard
because it was intense.
“God will bless you,” he said. “God will bless you. What-
ever life brings you at the end you must—you must be blessed
by Him.”
“But He has blessed me,” she whispered, through tears that
rushed from her eyes, stirred from their well-springs by his sud-
den outburst of love for her. “He has blessed me. He has
given me you, your love, your truth.”
Androvsky released her as abruptly as he had taken her in his
arms, turned, and went out into the desert.
CHAPTER XXIV
TRUE to his promise, on the following day the priest called to
inquire after Androvsky's health. He happened to come just
before déjeuner was ready, and met Androvsky on the sand
before the tent door.
38O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“It’s not fever then, Monsieur,” he said, after they had
shaken hands. *
“No, no,” Androvsky replied. “I am quite well this morn-
tº y 3
Ing. -
The priest looked at him closely with an unembarrassed
scrutiny.
“Have you been long in the desert, Monsieur?” he asked.
“Some weeks.”
“The heat has tired you. I know the look 3 y
“I assure you, Monsieur, that I am accustomed to heat. I
have lived in North Africa all my life.”
“Indeed. And yet by your appearance I should certainly
suppose that you needed a change from the desert. The air of
the Sahara is magnificent, but there are people »
“I am not one of them,” Androvsky said abruptly. “I have
never felt so strong physically as since I have lived in the
sand.”
The priest still looked at him closely, but said nothing fur-
ther on the subject of health. Indeed, almost immediately his
attention was distracted by the apparition of Ouardi bearing
dishes from the cook's tent.
“I am afraid I have called at a very unorthodox time,” he
remarked, looking at his watch; “but the fact is that here
in Amara we 3 y
“I hope you will stay to déjeuner,” Androvsky said.
“It is very good of you. If you are certain that I shall not
put you out.”
“Please stay.”
“I will, then, with pleasure.”
He moved his lips expectantly, as if only a sense of politeness
prevented him from Smacking them. Androvsky went towards
the sleeping-tent, where Domini, who had been into the city,
was washing her hands.
“The priest has called,” he said. “I have asked him to
déjeuner.”
She looked at him with frank astonishment in her dark
eyes.
“You—Boris!”
“Yes, I. Why not?”
“I don't know. But generally you hate people.”
“He seems a good sort of man.”
She still looked at him with some surprise, even with curi-
OS1ty.
THE JOURNEY 381
“Have you taken a fancy to a priest?” she asked, smiling.
“Why not? This man is very different from Father Rou-
bier, more human.”
“Father Beret is very human, I think,” she answered.
She was still Smiling. It had just occurred to her that the
priest had timed his visit with some forethought.
“I am coming,” she added.
A sudden cheerfulness had taken possession of her. All the
morning she had been feeling grave, even almost apprehensive,
after a bad night. When her husband had abruptly left her
and gone away into the darkness she had been overtaken by a
sudden wave of acute depression. She had felt, more painfully
than ever before, the mental separation which existed between
them despite their deep love, and a passionate but almost hopeless
longing had filled her heart that in all things they might be
one, not only in love of each other, but in love of God. When
Androvsky had taken his arms from her she had seemed to
feel herself released by a great despair, and this certainty—for
as he vanished into the darkness she was no more in doubt that
his love for her left room within his heart for such an agony—
had for a moment brought her soul to the dust. She had been
overwhelmed by a sensation that instead of being close together
they were far apart, almost strangers, and a great bitterness
had entered into her. It was accompanied by a desire for
action. She longed to follow Androvsky, to lay her hand on
his arm, to stop him in the sand and force him to confide in
her. For the first time the idea that he was keeping some-
thing from her, a sorrow, almost maddened her, even made her
feel jealous. The fact that she divined what that sorrow
was, or believed she divined it, did not help her just then. She
waited a long while, but Androvsky did not return, and at last
she prayed and went to bed. But her prayers were feeble, dis-
jointed, and sleep did not come to her, for her mind was travel-
ling with this man who loved her and who yet was out there
alone in the night, who was deliberately separating himself
from her. Towards dawn, when he stole into the tent, she
was still awake, but she did not speak or give any sign of con-
sciousness, although she was hot with the fierce desire to spring
up, to throw her arms round him, to draw his head down upon
her heart, and say, “I have given myself, body, heart and soul,
to you. Give yourself to me; give me the thing you are keep-
ing back—your sorrow. Till I have that I have not all of you,
and till I have all of you I am in hell.”
382 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
It was a mad impulse. She resisted it and lay quite still.
And when he lay down and was quiet she slept at length.
Now, as she heard him speak in the sunshine and knew that
he had offered hospitality to the comfortable priest her heart
suddenly felt lighter, she scarcely knew why. It seemed to her
that she had been a little morbid, and that the cloud which had
settled about her was lifted, revealing the blue.
At déjeuner she was even more reassured. Her husband
seemed to get on with the priest better than she had ever seen
him get on with anybody. He began by making an effort to be
agreeable that was obvious to her; but presently he was agree-
able without effort. The simple geniality and lack of self-
consciousness in Father Beret evidently set him at his ease.
Once or twice she saw him look at his guest with an earnest
scrutiny that puzzled her, but he talked far more than usual
and with greater animation, discussing the Arabs and listening
to the priest's account of the curiosities of life in Amara. When
at length Father Beret rose to go Androvsky said he would
accompany him a little way, and they went off together, evi-
dently on the best of terms.
She was delighted and surprised. She had been right, then.
It was time that Androvsky was subjected to another influence
than that of the unpeopled wastes. It was time that he came
into contact with men whose minds were more akin to his than
the minds of the Arabs who had been their only companions.
She began to imagine him with her in civilised places, to be able
to imagine him. And she was glad they had come to Amara
and confirmed in her resolve to stay on there. She even began
to wish that the French officers quartered there—few in num-
ber, some five or six—would find them in the sand, and that
&ndrovsky would offer them hospitality. It occurred to her
that it was not quite wholesome for a man to live in isolation
from his fellow-men, even with the woman he loved, and she
determined that she would not be selfish in her love, that she
would think for Androvsky, act for him, even against her own
inclination. Perhaps his idea of life in an oasis apart from
Europeans was one she ought to combat, though it fascinated
her. Perhaps it would be stronger, more sane, to face a more
ordinary, less dreamy, life, in which they would meet with
people, in which they would inevitably find themselves con-
fronted with duties. She felt powerful enough in that moment
to do anything that would make for Androvsky's welfare of
soul. His body was strong and at ease. She thought of him
THE JOURNEY 383
going away with the priest in friendly conversation. How
splendid it would be if she could feel some day that the health
of his soul accorded completely with that of his body!
“Batouch!” she called almost gaily.
Batouch appeared, languidly smoking a cigarette, and with
a large flower tied to a twig protending from behind his
C2I.
“Saddle the horses. Monsieur has gone with the Père
Beret. I shall take a ride, just a short ride round the camp
over there—in at the city gate, through the market-place, and
home. You will come with me.”
Batouch threw away his cigarette with energy. Poet though
he was, all the Arab blood in him responded to the thought of
a gallop over the sands. Within a few minutes they were off.
When she was in the saddle it was at all times difficult for
Domini to be sad or even pensive. She had a native passion for
a good horse, and riding was one of the joys, and almost the
keenest, of her life. She felt powerful when she had a spirited,
fiery animal under her, and the wide spaces of the desert sum-
moned speed as they summoned dreams. She and Batouch went
away at a rapid pace, circled round the Arab cemetery, made a
detour towards the south, and then cantered into the midst
of the camps of the Ouled Nails. It was the hour of the siesta.
Only a few people were stirring, coming and going over the
dunes to and from the city on languid errands for the women of
the tents, who reclined in the shade of their brushwood arbours
upon filthy cushions and heaps of multi-coloured rags, smok-
ing cigarettes, playing cards with Arab and negro admirers,
or staring into vacancy beneath their heavy eyebrows as they
listened to the Sound of music played upon long pipes of reed.
No dogs barked in their camp. The only guardians were old
women, whose sandy faces were scored with innumerable
wrinkles, and whose withered hands drooped under their loads
of barbaric rings and bracelets. Batouch would evidently have
liked to dismount here. Like all Arabs he was fascinated by
the sight of these idols of the waste, whose painted faces called
to the surface the fluid poetry within him, but Domini rode on,
descending towards the city gate by which she had first entered
Amara. The priest's house was there and Androvsky was with
the priest. She hoped he had perhaps gone in to return the
visit paid to them. As she rode into the city she glanced at the
house. The door was open and she saw the gay rugs in the
little hall. She had a strong inclination to stop and ask if her
384 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
husband were there. He might mount Batouch's horse and
accompany her home.
“Batouch,” she said, “will you ask if Monsieur Androvsky
is with Père Beret. I think y y
She stopped speaking. She had just seen her husband's face
pass across the window-space of the room on the right-hand side
of the hall door. She could not see it very well. The arcade
built out beyond the house cast a deep shade within, and in this
shade the face had flitted like a shadow. Batouch had sprung
from his horse. But the sight of the shadowy face had changed
her mind. She resolved not to interrupt the two men. Long
ago at Beni-Mora she had asked Androvsky to call upon a priest.
She remembered the sequel to that visit. This time Androvsky
had gone of his own will. If he liked this priest, if they became
friends, perhaps—she remembered her vision in the dancing-
house, her feeling that when she drew near Amara she was
drawing near to the heart of the desert. If she should see
Androvsky praying here! Yet Father Beret hardly seemed a
man likely to influence her husband, or anyone with a strong
and serious personality. He was surely too fond of the things
of this world, too obviously a lover and cherisher of the body.
Nevertheless, there was something attractive in him, a kindness,
a geniality. In trouble he would be sympathetic. Certainly
her husband must have taken a liking to him, and the chances
of life and the influences of destiny were strange and not to be
foreseen.
“No, Batouch,” she said. “We won’t stop.”
“But, Madame,” he cried, “ Monsieur is in there. I saw his
face at the window.”
“Never mind. We won’t disturb them. I daresay they
have something to talk about.”
They cantered on towards the market-place. It was not
market-day, and the town, like the camp of the Ouled Nails,
was almost deserted. As she rode up the hill towards the place
of the fountain, however, she saw two handsomely-dressed
Arabs, followed by a servant, slowly strolling towards her
from the doorway of the Bureau Arabe. One, who was very
tall, was dressed in green, and carried a long staff, from which
hung green ribbons. The other wore a more ordinary costume
of white, with a white burnous and a turban spangled with
gold.
“Madame!” said Batouch.
( & Yes,”
THE JOURNEY 385
“Do you see the Arab dressed in green?”
He spoke in an almost awestruck voice.
“Yes. Who is he?”
“The great marabout who lives at Beni-Hassan.”
The name struck upon Domini’s ear with a strange famili-
arity.
“But that's where Count Anteoni went when he rode away
from Beni-Mora that morning.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Is it far from Amara?”
“Two hours' ride across the desert.”
“But then Count Anteoni may be near us. After he left
he wrote to me and gave me his address at the marabout's
house.”
“If he is still with the marabout, Madame.”
They were close to the fountain now, and the marabout and
his companion were coming straight towards them.
“If Madame will allow me I will salute the marabout,” said
Batouch.
“Certainly.”
He sprang off his horse immediately, tied it up to the railing
of the fountain, and went respectfully towards the approaching
potentate to kiss his hand. Domini saw the marabout stop and
Batouch bend down, then lift himself up and suddenly move
back as if in surprise. The Arab who was with the marabout
seemed also surprised. He held out his hand to Batouch, who
took it, kissed it, then kissed his own hand, and turning, pointed
towards Domini. The Arab spoke a word to the marabout,
then left him, and came rapidly forward to the fountain. As
he drew close to her she saw a face browned by the sun, a very
small, pointed beard, a pair of intensely bright eyes surrounded
by wrinkles. These eyes held her. It seemed to her that
she knew them, that she had often looked into them and seen
their changing expressions. Suddenly she exclaimed:
“Count Anteoni! ”
“Yes, it is Il "
He held out his hand and clasped hers.
“So you have started upon your desert journey,” he added,
looking closely at her, as he had often looked in the garden.
{ { Yes.”
“And as I ventured to advise—that last time, do you re-
member 2 ° -
She recollected his words.
386 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“No,” she replied, and there was a warmth of joy, almost
of pride, in her voice. “I am not alone.”
Count Anteoni was standing with one hand on her horse's
neck. As she spoke, his hand dropped down.
“I have been away from Beni-Hassan,” he said slowly.
“The marabout and I have been travelling in the south and
only returned yesterday. I have heard no news for a long
time from Beni-Mora, but I know. You are Madame
Androvsky.”
“Yes,” she answered; “I am Madame Androvsky.”
There was a silence between them. In it she heard the
dripping water in the fountain. At last Count Anteoni spoke
again. w
“It was written,” he said quietly. “It was written in the
sand.” -
She thought of the sand-diviner and was silent. An oppres-
sion of spirit had suddenly come upon her. It seemed to her
connected with something physical, something obscure, unusual,
such as she had never felt before. It was, she thought, as if
her body at that moment became more alive than it had ever
been, and as if that increase of life within her gave to her a
peculiar uneasiness. She was startled. She even felt alarmed,
as at the faint approach of something strange, of something that
was going to alter her life. She did not know at all what it
was. For the moment a sense of confusion and of pain beset
her, and she was scarcely aware with whom she was, or where.
The sensation passed and she recovered herself and met Count
Anteoni's eyes quietly.
“Yes,” she answered; “all that has happened to me here in
Africa was written in the sand and in fire.”
“You are thinking of the sun.”
( { Yes.”
“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 formid-
able approach came over her, but this time she fought it reso-
lutely.
“Will you come and see me?” she said.
• THE JOURNEY 387
She had meant to say “us,” but did not say it.
“If you will allow me.”
“When P ''
“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 2 ”
“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 recog-
nise 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,
C ( Yes.”
“With the priest.”
She saw an expression of surprise flit over Count Anteoni's
face. It went away instantly.
“Père 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 pass. 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
” she said.
388 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
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 sur-
prised. 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 w, th the Sicilian blood in
my veins? I cannot understand why. What I can under-
stand 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
passion 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 compli-
cation, 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 wishing 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?”
THE JOURNEY 389
“None.”
She looked at his bright eyes and sighed, thinking of her
husband.
“You will go back to Beni-Mora?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I am inclined to go farther into the
desert, farther among the people of my own faith. I don't
want to be surrounded by French. Some day perhaps I may
return. But at present everything draws me onward. Tell
me’—he dropped the earnest tone in which he had been
speaking, and she heard once more the easy, half-ironical man
of the world—“ do you think me a half-crazy eccentric?”
{ { No || y 3
“You look at me very gravely, even sadly.”
“I was thinking of the men who cannot pray,'
“even in the desert.”
“They should not come into the Garden of Allah. Don’t
you remember that day by the garden wall, when 53
He suddenly checked himself.
“Forgive me,” he said simply. “And now tell me about
yourself. You never wrote that you were going to be mar-
ried.”
“I knew you would know it in time—when we met again.”
“And you knew we should meet again?”
“Did not you?”
He nodded.
“In the heart of the desert. And you—where are you going?
You are not returning to civilisation?”
“I don't know. I have no plans. I want to do what my
husband wishes.”
“And he P’’
“He loves the desert. He has suggested our buying an oasis
and setting up as date merchants. What do you think of
the idea?”
She spoke with a smile, but her eyes were serious, even sad.
“I cannot judge for others,” he answered.
When he got up to go he held her hand fast for a moment.
“May I speak what is in my heart?” he asked.
“Yes—do.”
“I feel as if what I have told you to-day about myself, about
my having come to the open door of a home I had long been
wearily seeking, had made you sad. Is it so?”
“Yes,” she answered frankly.
“Can you tell me why?”
she said,
390 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“It has made me realise more sharply than perhaps I did
before what must be the misery of those who are still homeless.”
There was in her voice a sound as if she suppressed a sob.
“Hope for them, remembering my many years of wander-
ing.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Good-bye.”
“Will you come again?”
“You are here for long?”
“Some days, I think.”
“Whenever you ask me I will come.”
“I want you and my husband to meet again. I want that
very much.” She spoke with a pressure of eagerness.
“Send for me and I will come at any hour.”
“I will send—soon.”
When he was gone, Domini sat in the shadow of the tent.
From where she was she could see the Arab cemetery at a little
distance, a quantity of stones half drowned in the sand. An
old Arab was wandering there alone, praying for the dead in a
loud, persistent voice. Sometimes he paused by a grave, bowed
himself in prayer, then rose and walked on again. His voice
was never silent. The sound of it was plaintive and monoto-
nous. Domini listened to it, and thought of homeless men, of
those who had lived and died without ever coming to that open
door through which Count Anteoni had entered. His words
and the changed look in his face had made a deep impression
upon her. She realised that in the garden, when they were
together, his eyes, even when they twinkled with the slightly
ironical humour peculiar to him, had always held a shadow.
Now that shadow was lifted out of them. How deep was the
shadow in her husband's eyes. How deep had it been in the
eyes of her father. He had died with that terrible darkness
in his eyes and in his soul. If her husband were to die thus!
A terror came upon her. She looked out at the stones in the
sand and imagined herself there—as the old Arab was—pray-
ing for Androvsky buried there, hidden from her on earth for
ever. And suddenly she felt, “I cannot wait, I must act.”
Her faith was deep and strong. Nothing could shake it.
But might it not shake the doubt from another's soul, as a
great, pure wind shakes leaves that are dead from a tree that
will blossom with the spring? Hitherto a sense of intense.
delicacy had prevented her from ever trying to draw near
'definitely to her husband's sadness. But her interview with
THE JOURNEY 39 I
Count Anteoni, and the sound of this voice praying, praying
for the dead men in the sand, stirred her to an almost fierce
resolution. She had given herself to Androvsky. He had
given himself to her. They were one. She had a right to
draw near to his pain, if by so doing there was a chance that
she might bring balm to it. She had a right to look closer
into his eyes if hers, full of faith, could lift the shadow from
them.
She leaned back in the darkness of the tent. The old Arab
had wandered further on among the graves. His voice was
faint in the sand, faint and surely piteous, as if, even while he
prayed, he felt that his prayers were useless, that the fate
of the dead was pronounced beyond recall. Domini listened
to him no more. She was praying for the living as she had
never prayed before, and her prayer was the prelude not to
patience but to action. It was as if her conversation with
Count Anteoni had set a torch to something in her soul, some-
thing that gave out a great flame, a flame that could surely
burn up the sorrow, the fear, the secret torture in her hus-
band's soul. All the strength of her character had been roused
by the sight of the peace she desired for the man she loved
enthroned in the heart of this other man who was only her
friend.
The voice of the old Arab died away in the distance, but
before it died away Domini had ceased from hearing it.
She heard only a voice within her, which said to her, “If
you really love be fearless. Attack this sorrow which stands
like a figure of death between you and your husband. Drive
it away. You have a weapon—faith. Use it.”
It seemed to her then that through all their intercourse she
had been a coward in her love, and she resolved that she
would be a coward no longer.
CHAPTER XXV
DOMINI had said to herself that she would speak to her hus-
band that night. She was resolved not to hesitate, not to be
influenced from her purpose by anything. Yet she knew that
a great difficulty would stand in her way—the difficulty of
Androvsky's intense, almost passionate, reserve. This reserve
was the dominant characteristic in his nature. She thought
of it sometimes as a wall of fire that he had set round about
392 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
the secret places of his soul to protect them even from her
eyes. Perhaps it was strange that she, a woman of a singu-
larly frank temperament, should be attracted by reserve in
another, yet she knew that she was so attracted by the reserve
of her husband. Its existence hinted to her depths in him
which, perhaps, some day she might sound, she alone, strength
which was hidden for her some day to prove.
Now, alone with her purpose, she thought of this reserve.
Would she be able to break it down with her love? For an
instant she felt as if she were about to enter upon a contest with
her husband, but she did not coldly tell over her armoury and
select weapons. . There was a heat of purpose within her that
beckoned her to the unthinking, to the reckless way, that told
her to be self-reliant and to trust to the moment for the method.
When Androvsky returned to the camp it was towards even-
ing. A lemon light was falling over the great white spaces of
the sand. Upon their little round hills the Arab villages
glowed mysteriously. Many horsemen were riding forth from
the city to take the cool of the approaching night. From the
desert the caravans were coming in. The nomad children
played, half-naked, at Cora before the tents, calling shrilly to
each other through the light silence that floated airily away into
the vast distances that breathed out the spirit of a pale eternity.
Despite the heat there was an almost wintry romance in this
strange land of white sands and yellow radiance, an ethereal
melancholy that stole with the twilight noiselessly towards the
tentS.
As Androvsky approached Domini saw that he had lost the
energy which had delighted her at déjeuner. He walked
towards her slowly with his head bent down. His face was
grave, even sad, though when he saw her waiting for him he
smiled.
“You have been all this time with the priest?” she said.
“Nearly all. I walked for a little while in the city. And
you?”
“I rode out and met a friend.”
“A friend?” he said, as if startled. .
“Yes, from Beni-Mora—Count Anteoni. He has been
here to pay me a visit.”
She pulled forward a basket-chair for him. He sank into
it heavily.
“Count Anteoni here!” he said slowly. “What is he doing
here?”
THE JOURNEY 393
“He is with the marabout at Beni-Hassan. And, Boris,
he has become a Mohammedan.”
He lifted his head with a jerk and stared at her in silence.
“You are surprised ?”
“A Mohammedan—Count Anteoni?”
“Yes. Do you know, when he told me I felt almost as if I
had been expecting it.”
“But—is he changed then? Is he
He stopped. His voice had sounded to her bitter, almost
fierce.
“Yes, Boris, he is changed. Have you ever seen anyone
who was lost, and the same person walking along the road
home? Well, that is Count Anteoni.”
They said no more for some minutes. Androvsky was the
first to speak again.
“You told him?” he asked.
“About ourselves?”
& 4 Yes.”
“I told him.”
“What did he say?” *
“He had expected it. When we ask him he is coming here
again to see us both together.”
Androvsky got up from his chair. His face was troubled.
Standing before Domini, he said:
“Count Anteoni is happy then, now that he-now that he
has joined this religion?”
“Very happy.” -
“And you—a Catholic—what do you think?”
“I think that, since that is his honest belief, it is a blessed
thing for him.”
He said no more, but went towards the sleeping-tent.
In the evening, when they were dining, he said to her:
“Domini, to-night I am going to leave you again for a short
time.” -
He saw a look of keen regret come into her face, and added
quickly:
“At nine I have promised to go to see the priest. He—he
is rather lonely here. He wants me to come. Do you mind?”
“No, no. I am glad—very glad. Have you finished?”
“Quite.”
“Let us take a rug and go out a little way in the sand—that
way towards the cemetery. It is quiet there at night.”
“Yes. I will get a rug.”
3 3
394 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
He went to fetch it, threw it over his arm, and they set out
together. She had meant the Arab cemetery, but when they
reached it they found two or three nomads wandering there.
“Let us go on,” she said.
They went on, and came to the French cemetery, which was
surrounded by a rough hedge of brushwood, in which there
were gaps here and there. Through one of these gaps they
entered it, spread out the rug, and lay down on the sand. The
night was still and silence brooded here. Faintly they saw the
graves of the exiles who had died here and been given to
the sand, where in summer vipers glided to and fro, and the
pariah dogs wandered stealthily, seeking food to still the desires .
in their starving bodies. They were mostly very simple, but
close to Domini and Androvsky was one of white marble, in
the form of a broken column, hung with wreaths of everlastin
flowers, and engraved with these words: -
ICI REPOSE
JEAN BAPTISTE FABRIANI
Priez pour lui.
When they lay down they both looked at this grave, as if
moved by a simultaneous impulse, and read the words.
“Priez pour lui !” Domini said in a low voice. - -
She put out her hand and took hold of her husband's, and
pressed it down on the sand. gº
“Do you remember that first night, Boris,” she said, “at
Arba, when you took my hand in yours and laid it against the
desert as against a heart?”
“Yes, Domini, I remember.”
“That night we were one, weren’t we?”
“Yes, Domini.”
“Were we’—she was almost whispering in the night—
“were we truly one?”
“Why do you—truly one, you say?”
“Yes—one in soul? That is the great union, greater than
the union of our bodies. Were we one in soul? Are we
now 2 ”
“Domini, why do you ask me such questions? Do you
doubt my love?”
“No. But I do ask you. Won't you answer me?”
He was silent. His hand lay in hers, but did not press it.
THE JOURNEY 395
“Boris’—she spoke the cruel words very quietly,– “we
are not truly one in soul. We have never been. I know that.”
He said nothing.
“Shall we ever be? Think—if one of us were to die, and
the other—the one who was left—were left with the knowledge
that in our love, even ours, there had always been separation—
could you bear that? Could I bear it?”
“ Domini -
( & Yes.”
“Why do you speak like this? We are one. You have all
my love. You are everything to me.”
“And yet you are sad, and you try to hide your sadness, your
misery, from me. Can you not give it me? I want it—more
than I want anything on earth. I want it, I must have it, and
I dare to ask for it because I know how deeply you love me and
that you could never love another.”
“I never have loved another,” he said.
“I was the very first.” -
“The very first. When we married, although I was a man I
was as you were.”
She bent down her head and laid her lips on his hand that
was in hers.
“Then make our union perfect, as no other union on earth
has eyer been. Give me your sorrow, Boris. I know what
it is.”
“How can—you cannot know,” he said in a broken voice.
“Yes. Love is a diviner, the only true diviner. I told you
once what it was, but I want you to tell me. Nothing that
we take is beautiful to us, only what we are given.”
“I cannot,” he said.
He tried to take his hand from hers, but she held it fast.
And she felt as if she were holding the wall of fire with which
he surrounded the secret places of his soul.
“To-day, Boris, when I talked to Count Anteoni, I felt that
I had been a coward with you. I had seen you suffer and I
had not dared to draw near to your suffering. I have been
afraid of you. Think of that.”
& 4 No.”
“Yes, I have been afraid of you, of your reserve. When
you withdrew from me I never followed you. If I had, per-
haps I could have done something for you.”
“Domini, do not speak like this. Our love is happy. Leave
it as it is.” * . * ~ *
396 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“I can’t. I will not. Boris, Count Anteoni has found a
home. But you are wandering. I can’t bear that, I can't bear
it. It is as if I were sitting in the house, warm, safe, and you
were out in the storm. It tortures me. It almost makes me
hate my own safety.”
Androvsky shivered. He took his hand forcibly from
Domini’s. -
“I have almost hated it, too,” he said passionately. “I
have hated it. I’m a-I’m y 5
His voice failed. He bent forward and took Domini's face
between his hands.
“And yet there are times when I can bless what I have hated.
I do bless it now. I—I love your safety. You—at least you
are safe.”
“You must share it. I will make you share it.”
“You cannot.”
“I can. I shall. I feel that we shall be together in soul,
and perhaps to-night, perhaps even to-night.”
Androvsky looked profoundly agitated. His hands dropped
down. r
“I must go,” he said. “I must go to the priest.”
He got up from the sand.
“Come to the tent, Domini.”
She rose to her feet.
“When you come back,” she said, “I shall be waiting for
you, Boris.”
He looked at her. There was in his eyes a piercing wistful-
ness. He opened his lips. At that moment Domini felt that
he was on the point of telling her all that she longed to know.
But the look faded. The lips closed. He took her in his arms
and kissed her almost desperately. v -
“No, no,” he said. “I’ll keep your love—I’ll keep it.”
“You could never lose it.” -
“I might.” -
“Never.”
“If I believed that.”
“Boris | ?”
Suddenly burning tears rushed from her eyes.
“Don’t ever say a thing like that to me again!” she said
with passion.
She pointed to the grave close to them. *
“If you were there,” she said, “and I was living, and you
had died before—before you had told me—I believe—God for-
THE JOURNEY 397
give me, but I do believe that if, when you died, I were taken
to heaven I should find my hell there.” -
She looked through her tears at the words: “Priez pour
lui.”
“To pray for the dead,” she whispered, as if to herself.
“To pray for my dead—I could not do it—I could not. Boris,
if you love me you must trust me, you must give me your
sorrow.”
The night drew on. Androvsky had gone to the priest.
Domini was alone, sitting before the tent waiting for his return.
She had told Batouch and Ouardi that she wanted nothing
more, that no one was to come to the tent again that night.
The young moon was rising over the city, but its light as yet
was faint. It fell upon the cupolas of the Bureau Arabe, the
towers of the mosque and the white sands, whose whiteness
it seemed to emphasise, making them pale as the face of one
terror-stricken. The city wall cast a deep shadow over the
moat of sand in which, wrapped in filthy rags, lay nomads
sleeping. Upon the sand-hills the camps were alive with
movement. Fires blazed and smoke ascended before the tents
that made patches of blackness upon the waste. Round the
fires were seated groups of men devouring cous-cous and the
red soup beloved of the nomad. Behind them circled the dogs
with quivering nostrils. Squadrons of camels lay crouched
in the sand, resting after their journeys. And everywhere,
from the city and from the waste, rose distant sounds of music,
thin, aerial flutings like voices of the night winds, acrid cries
from the pipes, and the far-off rolling of the African drums
that are the foundation of every desert symphony.
Although she was now accustomed to the music of Africa,
Domini could never hear it without feeling the barbarity of the
land from which it rose, the wildness of the people who made
and who loved it. Always it suggested to her an infinite re-
moteness, as if it were music sounding at the end of the world,
full of half-defined meanings, melancholy yet fierce passion,
longings that, momentarily satisfied, continually renewed them-
selves, griefs that were hidden behind thin veils like the women
of the East, but that peered out with expressive eyes, hinting
their story and desiring assuagement. And to-night the mean-
ing of the music seemed deeper than it had been before. She
thought of it as an outside echo of the voices murmuring in
her mind and heart, and the voices murmuring in the mind
and heart of Androvsky, broken voices some of them, but some
398 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
strong, fierce, tense and alive with meaning. And as she sat
there alone she thought this unity of music drew her closer to
the desert than she had ever been before, and drew Androvsky
with her, despite his great reserve. In the heart of the desert
he would surely let her see at last fully into his heart. When
he came back in the night from the priest he would speak. She
was waiting for that.
The moon was mounting. Its light grew stronger. She
looked across the sands and saw fires in the city, and suddenly
she said to herself, “This is the vision of the sand-diviner
realised in my life. He saw me as I am now, in this place.”
And she remembered the scene in the garden, the crouching
figure, the extended arms, the thin fingers tracing Swift pat-
terns in the sand, the murmuring voice.
To-night she felt deeply expectant, but almost sad, encom-
passed by the mystery that hangs in clouds about human life
and human relations. What could be that great joy of which
the Diviner had spoken? A woman's great joy that starred the
desert with flowers and made the dry places run with sweet
waters. What could it be?
Suddenly she felt again the oppression of spirit she had been
momentarily conscious of in the afternoon. It was like a load
descending upon her, and, almost instantly, communicated itself
to her body. She was conscious of a sensation of unusual
weariness, uneasiness, even dread, then again of an intensity of
life that startled her. This intensity remained, grew in her.
It was as if the principle of life, like a fluid, were being poured
into her out of the vials of God, as if the little cup that was
all she had were too small to contain the precious liquid. That
seemed to her to be the cause of the pain of which she was con-
scious. She was being given more than she felt herself capable
of possessing. She got up from her chair, unable to remain
still. The movement, slight though it was, seemed to remove
a veil of darkness that had hung over her and to let in upon
her a flood of light. She caught hold of the canvas of the tent.
For a moment she felt weak as a child, then strong as an Ama-
zon. And the sense of strength remained, grew. She walked
out upon the sand in the direction by which Androvsky would
return. The fires in the city and the camps were to her as
illuminations for a festival. The music was the music of a
great rejoicing. The vast expanse of the desert, wintry white
under the moon, dotted with the fires of the nomads, blossomed
as the rose. After a few moments she stopped. She was on
THE JOURNEY 399
the crest of a sand-bank, and could see below her the faint
track in the sand which wound to the city gate. By this track
Androvsky would surely return. From a long distance she
would be able to see him, a moving darkness upon the white.
She was near to the city now, and could hear voices coming
to her from behind its rugged walls, voices of men singing, and
calling one to another, the twang of plucked instruments, the
click of negroes' castanets. The city was full of joy as the
desert was full of joy. The glory of life rushed upon her
like a flood of gold, that gold of the sun in which thousands
of tiny things are dancing. And she was given the power of
giving life, of adding to the sum of glory. She looked out over
the sands and saw a moving blot upon them coming slowly
towards her, very slowly. It was impossible at this distance
to see who it was, but she felt that it was her husband. For
a moment she thought of going down to meet him, but she did
not move. The new knowledge that had come to her made
her, just then, feel shy even of him, as if he must come to her,
as if she could make no advance towards him.
As the blackness upon the sand drew nearer she saw that it
was a man walking heavily. The man had her husband's gait.
When she saw that she turned. She had resolved to meet him
at the tent door, to tell him what she had to tell him at the
threshold of their wandering home. Her sense of shyness died
when she was at the tent door. She only felt now her oneness
with her husband, and that to-night their unity was to be made
more perfect. If it could be made quite perfect! If he would
Speak too ! Then nothing more would be wanting. At last
every veil would have dropped from between them, and as they
had long been one flesh they would be one in spirit. -
She waited in the tent door.
After what seemed a long time she saw Androvsky coming
across the moonlit sand. He was walking very slowly, as if
wearied out, with his head drooping. He did not appear to see
her till he was quite close to the tent. Then he stopped and
gazed at her. The moon—she thought it must be the moon—
made his face look strange, like a dying man’s face. In this
white face the eyes glittered feverishly.
“Boris!” she said.
“Domini | *
“Come here, close to me. I have something to tell you—
Something wonderful.”
He came quite up to her.
4OO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Domini,” he said, as if he had not heard her. “ Domini, I
—I’ve been to the priest to-night. I meant to confess to him.”
“To confess!” she said.
“This afternoon I asked him to hear my confession, but to-
night I could not make it. I can only make it to you,
Domini—only to you. Do you hear, Domini? Do you hear?”
Something in his face and in his voice terrified her heart.
Now she felt as if she would stop him from speaking if she
dared, but that she did not dare. His spirit was beyond domi-
nation. He would do what he meant to do regardless of her—
of anyone.
“What is it, Boris?” she whispered. “Tell me. Perhaps
I can understand best because I love best.”
He put his arms round her and kissed her, as a man kisses
the woman he loves when he knows it may be for the last time,
long and hard, with a desperation of love that feels frustrated
by the very lips it is touching. At last he took his lips from
hers.
“Domini,” he said, and his voice was steady and clear, almost
hard, “you want to know what it is that makes me unhappy
even in our love—desperately unhappy. It is this. I believe
in God, I love God, and I have insulted Him. I have tried to
forget God, to deny Him, to put human love higher than love
for Him. But always I am haunted by the thought of God,
and that thought makes me despair. Once, when I was young,
I gave myself to God solemnly. I have broken the vows I
made. I have—I have } }
The hardness went out of his voice. He broke down for a
moment and was silent.
“You gave yourself to God,” she said. “How 2 ”
He tried to meet her questioning eyes, but could not.
“I—I gave myself to God as a monk,” he answered after a
pause.
As he spoke Domini saw before her in the moonlight De
Trevignac. He cast a glance of horror at the tent, bent over
her, made the sign of the Cross, and vanished. In his place
stood Father Roubier, his eyes shining, his hand upraised, warn-
ing her against Androvsky. Then he, too, vanished, and she
seemed to see Count Anteoni dressed as an Arab and muttering
words of the Koran.
“ Domini | *
“Domini, did you hear me? Dominil Domini
She felt his hands on her wrists.
| y,
THE JOURNEY . . 4OI
“You are the Trappist!” she said quietly, “ of whom the
priest told me. You are the monk from the Monastery of El-
Largani who disappeared after twenty years.”
“Yes,” he said, “I am he.”
“What made you tell me? What made you tell me?”
There was agony now in her voice.
“You asked me to speak, but it was not that. . Do you
remember last night when I said that God must bless you?
You answered, He has blessed me. He has given me you, your
love, your truth.’ It is that which makes me speak. You have
had my love, not my truth. Now take my truth. I’ve kept it
from you. Now I’ll give it you. It's black, but I’ll give it you.
Domini! Dominil Hate me to-night, but in your hatred believe
that I never loved you as I love you now.”
“Give me your truth!” she said.
B O O K V
THE REVELATION
CHAPTER XXVI

HEY remained standing at the tent door, with the
growing moonlight about them. The camp was
hushed in sleep, but sounds of music still came to
them from the city below them, and fainter music
from the tents of the Ouled Nails on the sand-
hill to the south. After Domini had spoken Androvsky moved a
step towards her, looked at her, then moved back and dropped
his eyes. If he had gone on looking at her he knew he could
not have begun to speak. -->
“Domini,” he said, “I’m not going to try and excuse myself
for what I have done. I’m not going to say to you what I
daren’t say to God—" Forgive me.” How can such a thing be
forgiven f That's part of the torture I’ve been enduring, the
knowledge of the unforgivable nature of my act. It can never
be wiped out. It’s black on my judgment book for ever. But I
wonder if you can understand—oh, I want you to understand,
Domini, what has made the thing I am, a renegade, a breaker of
oaths, a liar to God and you. It was the passion of life that
burst up in me after years of tranquillity. It was the waking of
my nature after years of sleep. And you—you do understand
the passion of life that's in some of us like a monster that must
rule, must have its way. Even you in your purity and goodness
—you have it, that desperate wish to live really and fully, as we
have lived, Domini, together. For we have lived out in the
desert. We lived that night at Arba when we sat and watched
the fire and I held your hand against the earth. We lived then.
Even now, when I think of that night, I can hardly be sorry for
what I’ve done, for what I am.”
He looked up at her now and saw that her eyes were fixed on
him. She stood motionless, with her hands joined in front of
4O2
THE REVELATION 4O3
her. Her attitude was calm and her face was untortured. He
could not read any thought of hers, any feeling that was in her
heart.
“You must understand,” he said almost violently. “You
must understand or I My father, I told you, was a Rus-
sian. He was brought up in the Greek Church, but became a
Freethinker when he was still a young man. My mother was an
Englishwoman and an ardent Catholic. She and my father were
devoted to each other in spite of the difference in their views.
Perhaps the chief effect my father's lack of belief had upon my
mother was to make her own belief more steadfast, more ardent.
I think disbelief acts often as a fan to the faith of women, makes
the flame burn more brightly than it did before. My mother
tried to believe for herself and for my father too, and I could
almost think that she succeeded. He died long before she did,
and he died without changing his views. On his death-bed he
told my mother that he was sure there was no other life, that he
was going to the dust. That made the agony of his farewell.
The certainty on his part that he and my mother were parting
for ever. I was a little boy at the time, but I remember that,
when he was dead, my mother said to me, ‘Boris, pray for your
father every day. He is still alive.” She said nothing more, but
I ran upstairs crying, fell upon my knees and prayed—trying to
think where my father was and what he could be looking like.
And in that prayer for my father, which was also an act of obe-
dience to my mother, I think I took the first step towards the
monastic life. For I remember that then, for the first time, I
was conscious of a great sense of responsibility. My mother's
command made me say to myself, ‘Then perhaps my prayer can
do something in heaven. Perhaps a prayer from me can make
God wish to do something He had not wished to do before.’
That was a tremendous thought! It excited me terribly. I
remember my cheeks burned as I prayed, and that I was hot all
over as if I had been running in the sun. From that day my
mother and I seemed to be much nearer together than we had
ever been before. I had a twin brother to whom I was devoted,
and who was devoted to me. But he took after my father.
Religious things, ceremonies, church music, processions—even
the outside attractions of the Catholic Church, which please and
stimulate emotional people who have little faith—never meant
much to him. All his attention was firmly fixed upon the life
of the present. He was good to my mother and loved her de-
votedly, as he loved me, but he never pretended to be what he
4O4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
was not. And he was never a Catholic. He was never
anything.
“My father had originally come to Africa for his health,
which needed a warm climate. He had some money and bought
large tracts of land suitable for vineyards. Indeed, he sunk
nearly his whole fortune in land. I told you, Domini, that the
vines were devoured by the phylloxera. Most of the money was
lost. When my father died we were left very poor. We lived
quietly in a little village—I told you its name, I told you that
part of my life, all I dared tell, Domini–but now—why did I
enter the monastery I was very young when I became a novice,
just seventeen. You are thinking, Domini, I know, that I was
too young to know what I was doing, that I had no vocation,
that I was unfitted for the monastic life. It seems so. The
whole world would think so. And yet—how am I to tell you?
Even now I feel that then I had the vocation, that I was fitted
to enter the monastery, that I ought to have made a faithful and
devoted monk. My mother wished the life for me, but it was
not only that. I wished it for myself then. With my whole
heart I wished it. I knew nothing of the world. My youth
had been one of absolute purity. And I did not feel longings
after the unknown. My mother's influence upon me was strong;
but she did not force me into anything. Perhaps my love for
her led me more than I knew, brought me to the monastery
door. The passion of her life, the human passion, had been my
father. After he was dead the passion of her life was prayer
for him. My love for her made me share that passion, and the
sharing of that passion eventually led me to become a monk. I
became as a child, a devotee of prayer. Oh! Domini—think—
I loved prayer—I loved it 5 y
His voice broke. When he stopped speaking Domini was
again conscious of the music in the city. She remembered that
earlier in the night she had thought of it as the music of a great
festival.
“I resolved to enter the life of prayer, the most perfect life of
prayer. I resolved to become a ‘religious.’ It seemed to me
that by So doing I should be proving in the finest way my love
for my mother. I should be, in the strongest way, helping her.
Her life was prayer for my dead father and love for her children.
By devoting myself to the life of prayer I should show to her
that I was as she was, as she had made me, true son of her
womb. Can you understand? I had a passion for my mother,
Domini—I had a passion. My brother tried to dissuade me
THE REVELATION 4O5
from the monastic life. He himself was going into business in
Tunis. He wanted me to join him. But I was firm. I felt
driven towards the cloister then as other men often feel driven
towards the vicious life. The inclination was irresistible. I
yielded to it. I had to bid good-bye to my mother. I told you
—she was the passion of my life. And yet I hardly felt sad at
parting from her. Perhaps that will show you how I was then.
It seemed to me that we should be even closer together when I
wore the monk's habit. I was in haste to put it on. I went to
the monastery of El-Largani and entered it as a novice of the
Trappistine order. I thought in the great silence of the Trap-
pists there would be more room for prayer. When I left my
home and went to El-Largani I took with me one treasure only.
Domini, it was the little wooden crucifix you pinned upon the
tent at Arba. My mother gave it to me, and I was allowed to
keep it. Everything else in the way of earthly possessions I, of
course, had to give up.
“You have never seen El-Largani, my home for nineteen
years, my prison for one. It is lonely, but not in the least
desolate. It stands on a high upland, and, from a distance, looks
upon the sea. Far off there are mountains. The land was a
desert. The monks have turned it, if not into an Eden, at least
into a rich garden. There are vineyards, cornfields, orchards,
almost every fruit-tree flourishes there. The springs of sweet
waters are abundant. At a short way from the monastery is a
large village for the Spanish workmen whom the monks super-
vise in the labours of the fields. For the Trappist life is not
only a life of prayer, but a life of diligent labour. When I be-
came a novice I had not realised that. I had imagined myself
continually upon my knees. I found instead that I was perpet-
ually in the fields, in Sun, and wind, and rain—that was in the
winter time—working like the labourers, and that often when
we went into the long, plain chapel to pray I was so tired—
being only a boy—that my eyes closed as I stood in my stall, and
I could scarcely hear the words of Mass or Benediction. But I
had expected to be happy at El-Largani, and I was happy.
Labour is good for the body and better for the soul. And the
silence was not hard to bear. The Trappists have a book of
gestures, and are often allowed to converse by signs. We
novices were generally in little bands, and often, as we walked
in the garden of the monastery, we talked together gaily with
our hands. Then the silence is not perpetual. In the fields we
often had to give directions to the labourers. In the school,
4O6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
where we studied Theology, Latin, Greek, there was heard the
voice of the teacher. It is true that I have seen men in the mon-
astery day by day for twenty years with whom I have never
exchanged a word, but I have had permission to speak with
monks. The head of the monastery, the Reverend Père, has the
power to loose the bonds of silence when he chooses, and to
allow monks to walk and speak with each other beyond the
white walls that hem in the garden of the monastery. Now and
then we spoke, but I think most of us were not unhappy in our
silence. It became a habit. And then we were always occu-
pied. We had no time allowed us for sitting and being sad.
Domini, I don’t want to tell you about the Trappists, their life
—only about myself, why I was as I was, how I came to change.
For years I was not unhappy at El-Largani. When my time of
novitiate was over I took the eternal vows without hesitation.
Many novices go out again into the world. It never occurred
to me to do so. I scarcely ever felt a stirring of worldly desire.
I scarcely ever had one of those agonising struggles which many
people probably attribute to monks. I was contented nearly
always. Now and then the flesh spoke, but not strongly. Re-
member, our life was a life of hard and exhausting labour in the
fields. The labour kept the flesh in subjection, as the prayer
lifted up the spirit. And then, during all my earlier years at
the monastery, we had an Abbé who was quick to understand
the characters and dispositions of men—Dom André Herceline.
He knew me far better than I knew myself. He knew, what I
did not suspect, that I was full of sleeping violence, that in my
purity and devotion—or beneath it rather—there was a strong
strain of barbarism. The Russian was sleeping in the monk,
but sleeping soundly. That can be. Half a man's nature, if all
that would call to it is carefully kept from it, may sleep, I be-
lieve, through all his life. He might die and never have known,
or been, what all the time he was. For years it was so with me.
I knew only part of myself, a real vivid part—but only a part.
I thought it was the whole. And while I thought it was the
whole I was happy. If Dom André Herceline had not died, to-
day I should be a monk at El-Largani, ignorant of what I know,
contented.
“He never allowed me to come into any sort of contact with
the many strangers who visited the monastery. Different monks
have different duties. Certain duties bring monks into connec-
tion with the travellers whom curiosity sends to El-Largani.
The monk whose business it is to look after the cemetery on the
THE REVELATION 4O7
hill, where the dead Trappists are laid to rest, shows visitors
round the little chapel, and may talk with them freely so long as
they remain in the cemetery. The monk in charge of the dis-
tillery also receives visitors and converses with them. So does
the monk in charge of the parlour at the great door of the mon-
astery. He sells the souvenirs of the Trappists, photographs of
the church and buildings, statues of Saints, bottles of perfumes
made by the monks. He takes the orders for the wines made at
the monastery, and for—for the-what I made, Domini, when
I was there.” -
She thought of De Trevignac and the fragments of glass lying
upon the ground in the tent at Mogar. -
“Had De Trevignac ” she said in a low, inward voice.
“He had seen me, spoken with me at the monastery. When
Ouardi brought in the liqueur he remembered who I was.”
She understood De Trevignac's glance towards the tent where
Androvsky lay sleeping, and a slight shiver ran through her.
Androvsky saw it and looked down.
“But the—the Jy
He cleared his throat, turned, looked out across the white
sand as if he longed to travel away into it and be lost for ever,
then went on, speaking quickly:
“But the monk who has most to do with travellers is the
monk who is in charge of the hôtellerie of the monastery. He
is the host to all visitors, to those who come over for the day
and have déjeuner, and to any who remain for the night, or
for a longer time. For when I was at El-Largani it was per-
mitted for people to stay in the hôtellerie, on payment of a small
weekly sum, for as long as they pleased. The monk of the
hôtellerie is perpetually brought into contact with the outside
world. He talks with all sorts and conditions of men—women,
of course, are not admitted. The other monks, many of them,
probably envy him. I never did. I had no wish to see stran-
gers. When, by chance, I met them in the yard, the out-build-
ings, or the grounds of the monastery, I seldom even raised my
eyes to look at them. They were not, would never be, in my
life. Why should I look at them? What were they to me?
Years went on—quickly they passed—not slowly. I did not
feel their monotony. I never shrank from anything in the life.
My health was splendid. I never knew what it was to be ill
for a day. My muscles were hard as iron. The pallet on
which I lay in my cubicle, the heavy robe I wore day and night,
the scanty vegetables I ate, the bell that called me from my sleep
408 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in the darkness to go to the chapel, the fastings, the watchings,
the perpetual sameness of all I saw, all I did, neither saddened
nor fatigued me. I never sighed for change. Can you believe
that, Domini? It is true. So long as Dom André Herceline
lived and ruled my life I was calm, happy, as few people in the
world, or none, can ever be. But Dom André died, and
then 3 y -
His face was contorted by a spasm.
“My mother was dead. My brother lived on in Tunis, and
was successful in business. He remained unmarried. So far as
I was concerned, although the monastery was but two hours'
drive from the town, he might almost have been dead too. I
scarcely ever saw him, and then only by a special permission from
the Reverend Père, and for a few moments. Once I visited him
at Tunis, when he was ill. When my mother died I seemed to
sink down a little deeper into the monastic life. That was all.
It was as if I drew my robe more closely round me and pulled
my hood further forward over my face. There was more reason
for my prayers, and I prayed more passionately. I lived in
prayer like a sea-plant in the depths of the ocean. Prayer was
about me like a fluid. But Dom André Herceline died, and a
new Abbé was appointed, he who, I suppose, rules now at El-
Largani. He was a good man, but, I think, apt to misunder-
stand men. The Abbé of a Trappist monastery has complete
power over his community. He can order what he will. Soon
after he came to El-Largani—for some reason that I cannot
divine—he removed the Père Michel, who had been for years in
charge of the cemetery, from his duties there, and informed me
that I was to undertake them. I obeyed, of course, without a
word. -
“The cemetery of El-Largani is on a low hill, the highest
part of the monastery grounds. It is surrounded by a white wall
and by a hedge of cypress trees. The road to it is an avenue of
cypresses, among which are interspersed niches containing carv-
ings of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross. At the entrance to
this avenue, on the left, there is a high yellow pedestal, sur-
mounted by a black cross, on which hangs a silver Christ.
Underneath is written:
“FACTUS OBEDIENs
“ USOUE
“AD MORTEM
" CRUCIS.
THE REVELATION 469
“I remember, on the first day when I became the guardian of
the cemetery, stopping on my way to it before the Christ and
praying. My prayer—my prayer was, Domini, that I might die,
as I had lived, in innocence. I prayed for that, but with a sort
of—yes, now I think so—insolent certainty that my prayer
would of course be granted. Then I went on to the cemetery.
“My work there was easy. I had only to tend the land about
the graves, and sweep out the little chapel where was buried the
founder of La Trappe of El-Largani. This done I could wan-
der about the cemetery, or sit on a bench in the sun. The Père
Michel, who was my predecessor, had some doves, and had left
them behind in a little house by my bench. I took care of and
fed them. They were tame, and used to flutter to my shoulders
and perch on my hands. To birds and animals I was always a
friend. At El-Largani there are all sorts of beasts, and, at one
time or another, it had been my duty to look after most of them.
I loved all living things. Sitting in the cemetery I could see a
great stretch of country, the blue of the lakes of Tunis with the
white villages at their edge, the boats gliding upon them towards
the white city, the distant mountains. Having little to do, I sat
day after day for hours meditating, and looking out upon this
distant world. I remember specially one evening, at sunset, just
before I had to go to the chapel, that a sort of awe came upon
me as I looked across the lakes. The sky was golden, the waters
were dyed with gold, out of which rose the white sails of boats.
The mountains were shadowy purple. The little minarets of
the mosques rose into the gold like sticks of ivory. As I watched
my eyes filled with tears, and I felt a sort of aching in my heart,
and as if—Domini, it was as if at that moment a hand was laid
on mine, but very gently, and pulled at my hand. It was as if
at that moment someone was beside me in the cemetery wishing
to lead me out to those far-off waters, those mosque towers,
those purple mountains. Never before had I had such a sensa-
tion. It frightened me. I felt as if the devil had come into the
cemetery, as if his hand was laid on mine, as if his voice were
whispering in my ear, ‘Come out with me into that world, that
beautiful world, which God made for men. Why do you
reject it?’
“That evening, Domini, was the beginning of this—this end.
Day after day I sat in the cemetery and looked out over the
world, and wondered what it was like: what were the lives of
the men who sailed in the white-winged boats, who crowded on
the steamers whose smoke I could see sometimes faintly trailing
4IO THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
away into the track of the sun; who kept the sheep upon the
mountains; who—who—Domini, can you imagine—no, you
cannot—what, in a man of my age, of my blood, were these first,
very first, stirrings of the longing for life? Sometimes I think
they were like the first birth-pangs of a woman who is going to
be a mother.”
Domini's hands moved apart, then joined themselves again.
“There was something physical in them. I felt as if my
limbs had minds, and that their minds, which had been asleep,
were waking. My arms twitched with a desire to stretch them-
selves towards the distant blue of the lakes on which I should
never sail. My—I was physically stirred. And again and again
I felt, that hand laid closely upon mine, as if to draw me away
into something I had never known, could never know. Do not
think that I did not strive against these first stirrings of the na-
ture that had slept so long! For days I refused to let myself
look out from the cemetery. I kept my eyes, upon the ground,
upon the plain crosses that marked the graves. I played with
the red-eyed doves. I worked. But my eyes at last rebelled. I.
said to myself, ‘It is not forbidden to look.’ And again the
sails, the seas, the towers, the mountains, were as voices whis-
pering to me, ‘Why will you never know us, draw near to us?
Why will you never understand our meaning? Why will you
be ignorant for ever of all that has been created for man to
know?' Then the pain within me became almost unbearable.
At night I could not sleep. In the chapel it was difficult to
pray. I looked at the monks around me, to most of whom I had
never addressed a word, and I thought, ‘Do they, too, hold such
longings within them? Are they, too, shaken with a desire of
knowledge?’ It seemed to me that, instead of a place of peace,
the monastery was, must be, a place of tumult, of the silent
tumult that has its home in the souls of men. But then I remem-
bered for how long I had been at peace. Perhaps all the silent
men by whom I was surrounded were still at peace, as I had
been, as I might be again. -
“A young monk died in the monastery and was buried in the
cemetery. I made his grave against the outer wall, beneath a
Cypress tree. Some days afterwards, when I was sitting on the
bench by the house of the doves, I heard a sound, which came
from beyond the wall. It was like sobbing. I listened, and
heard it more distinctly, and knew that it was someone crying
and sobbing desperately, and near at hand. But now it seemed
to me to come from the wall itself. I got up and listened.
\
THE REVELATION 4 I Y
Someone was crying bitterly behind, or above, the wall, just
where the young monk had been buried. Who could it be? I
stood listening, wondering, hesitating what to do. There was
something in this sound of lamentation that moved one to the
depths. For years I had not looked on a woman, or heard a
woman's voice—but I knew that this was a woman mourning.
Why was she there? What could she want? I glanced up. All
round the cemetery, as I have said, grew cypress trees. As I
glanced up I saw one shake just above where the new grave was,
and a woman's voice said, ‘I cannot see it, I cannot see it!”
“I do not know why, but I felt that someone was there who
wished to see the young monk’s grave. For a moment I stood
there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my
work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping
the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall,
mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped
some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs fell
down from the tree I saw a woman's face, tear-stained, staring at
me. It seemed to me a lovely face.
“‘Which is his grave?” she said. I pointed to the grave of
the young monk, which could now be seen through the gap I had
made, descended the ladder, and went away to the farthest cor-
ner of the cemetery. And I did not look again in the direction
of the woman's face. -
“Who she was I do not know. When she went away I did
not see. She loved the monk who had died, and knowing that
women cannot enter the precincts of the monastery, she had
come to the outside wall to cast, if she might, a despairing glance
at his grave.
“Domini, I wonder—I wonder if you can understand how
that incident affected me. To an ordinary man it would seem
nothing, I suppose. But to a Trappist monk it seemed tremen-
dous. I had seen a woman. I had done something for a
woman. I thought of her, of what I had done for her, perpet-
ually. The gap in the cypress tree reminded me of her every
time I looked towards it. When I was in the cemetery I could
hardly turn my eyes from it. But the woman never came again.
I said nothing to the Reverend Père of what I had done... I
ought to have spoken, but I did not. I kept it back when I con-
fessed. From that moment I had a secret, and it was a secret
connected with a woman.
“Does it seem strange to you that this secret seemed to me
to set me apart from all the other monks—nearer the world?
4 I2 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
It was so. I felt sometimes as if I had been out into the world
for a moment, had known the meaning that women have for
men. I wondered who the woman was. I wondered how she
had loved the young monk who was dead. He used to sit beside
me in the chapel. He had a pure and beautiful face, such a face,
I supposed, as a woman might well love. Had this woman loved
him, and had he rejected her love for the life of the monastery?
I remember one day thinking of this and wondering how it had
been possible for him to do so, and then suddenly realising the
meaning of my thought and turning hot with shame. I had put
the love of woman above the love of God, woman's service above
God’s service. That day I was terrified of myself. I went back
to the monastery from the cemetery quickly, asked to see the
Reverend Père, and begged him to remove me from the ceme-
tery, to give me some other work. He did not ask my reason
for wishing to change, but three days afterwards he sent for me,
and told me that I was to be placed in charge of the hôtellerie of
the monastery, and that my duties there were to begin upon the
II].OTTOW. -
“Domini, I wonder if I can make you realise what that
change meant to a man who had lived as I had for so many
years. The hôtellerie of El-Largani is a long, low, one-storied
building standing in a garden full of palms and geraniums. It
contains a kitchen, a number of little rooms like cells for visitors,
and two large parlours in which guests are entertained at meals.
In one they sit to eat the fruit, eggs, and vegetables provided by
the monastery, with wine. If after the meal they wish to take
coffee they pass into the second parlour. Visitors who stay in
the monastery are free to do much as they please, but they must
conform to certain rules. They rise at a certain hour, feed at
fixed times, and are obliged to go to their bedrooms at half-past
seven in the evening in winter, and at eight in summer. The
monk in charge of the hôtellerie has to see to their comfort.
He looks after the kitchen, is always in the parlour at some
moment or another during meals. He visits the bedrooms and
takes care that the one servant keeps everything spotlessly clean.
He shows people round the garden. His duties, you see, are
light and social. He cannot go into the world, but he can mix
with the world that comes to him. It is his task, if not his
pleasure, to be cheerful, talkative, sympathetic, a good host, with
a genial welcome for all who come to La Trappe. After my
years of labour, Solitude, silence, and prayer, I was abruptly
put into this new life.
THE REVELATION 4 I 3
“Domini, to me it was like rushing out into the world. I
was almost dazed by the change. At first I was nervous, timid,
awkward, and, especially, tongue-tied. The habit of silence had
taken such a hold upon me that I could not throw it off. I
dreaded the coming of visitors. I did not know how to receive
them, what to say to them. Fortunately, as I thought, the
tourist season was over, the Summer was approaching. Very few
people came, and those only to eat a meal. I tried to be polite
and pleasant to them, and gradually I began to fall into the way
of talking without the difficulty I had experienced at first. In
the beginning I could not open my lips without feeling as if I
were almost committing a crime. But presently I was more
natural, less taciturn. I even, now and then, took some pleas-
ure in speaking to a pleasant visitor. I grew to love the garden
with its flowers, its orange trees, its groves of eucalyptus, its
vineyard which sloped towards the cemetery. Often I wan-
dered in it alone, or sat under the arcade that divided it from
the large entrance court of the monastery, meditating, listening
to the bees humming, and watching the cats basking in the
sunshine.
“Sometimes, when I was there, I thought of the woman’s
face above the cemetery wall. Sometimes I seemed to feel the
hand tugging at mine. But I was more at peace than I had been
in the cemetery. For from the garden I could not see the dis-
tant world, and of the chance visitors none had as yet set a
match to the torch that, unknown to me, was ready—at the
coming of the Smallest spark—to burst into a flame.
“One day, it was in the morning towards half-past ten, when
I was sitting reading my Greek Testamenton a bench just inside
the doorway of the hôtellerie, I heard the great door of the
monastery being opened, and then the rolling of carriage wheels
in the courtyard. Some visitor had arrived from Tunis, perhaps
Some visitors—three or four. It was a radiant morning of late
May. The garden was brilliant with flowers, golden with sun-
shine, tender with shade, and quiet—quiet and peaceful, Domini!
There was a wonderful peace in the garden that day, a peace
that seemed full of safety, of enduring cheerfulness. The flowers
looked as if they had hearts to understand it, and love it, the
roses along the yellow wall of the house that clambered to the
brown red tiles, the geraniums that grew in masses under the
shining leaves of the orange trees, the—I felt as if that day I
were in the Garden of Eden, and I remember that when I heard
the carriage wheels I had a moment of selfish sadness. I
4I4. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
thought: ‘Why does anyone come to disturb my blessed peace,
my blessed solitude?’ Then I realised the egoism of my
thought and that I was there with my duty. I got up, went
into the kitchen and said to François, the servant, that someone
had come and no doubt would stay to déjeuner. And, as I
spoke, already I was thinking of the moment when I should
hear the roll of wheels once more, the clang of the shutting gate,
and know that the intruders upon the peace of the Trappists
had gone back to the world, and that I could once more be alone
in the little Eden I loved.
“Strangely, Domini, strangely, that day, of all the days of
my life, I was most in love—it was like that, like being in love—
with my monk’s existence. The terrible feeling that had begun
to ravage me had completely died away. I adored the peace in
which my days were passed. I looked at the flowers and com-
pared my happiness with theirs. They blossomed, bloomed,
faded, died in the garden. So would I wish to blossom, bloom,
fade—when my time came—die in the garden—always in peace,
always in safety, always isolated from the terrors of life, always
under the tender watchful eye of of Domini, that day I was
happy, as perhaps they are—perhaps—the Saints in Paradise. I
was happy because I felt no inclination to evil. I felt as if my
joy lay entirely in being innocent. Oh, what an ecstasy such a
feeling is ‘My will accord with Thy design—I love to live
as Thou intendest me to live! Any other way of life would be
to me a terror, would bring to me despair.’ *
“And I felt that—intensely I felt it at that moment in heart
and Soul. It was as if I had God's arms round me, caressing me
as a father caresses his child.”
He moved away a step or two in the sand, came back, and
went on with an effort:
“Within a few minutes the porter of the monastery came
through the archway of the arcade followed by a young man.
As I looked up at him I was uncertain of his nationality. But I
scarcely thought about it—except in the first moment. For
Something else seized my attention—the intense, active misery
in the stranger's face. He looked ravaged, eaten by grief. I
said he was young—perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven. His
face was rather dark-complexioned, with small, good features.
He had thick brown hair, and his eyes shone with intelligence,
with an intelligence that was almost painful—somehow. His
eyes always looked to me as if they were seeing too much, had
always seen too much. There was a restlessness in the swift-
THE REVELATION 415
ness of their observation. One could not conceive of them closed
in sleep. An activity that must surely be eternal blazed in them.
“The porter left the stranger in the archway. It was now
my duty to attend to him. I welcomed him in French. He
took off his hat. When he did that I felt sure he was an
Englishman—by the look of him bareheaded—and I told him
that I spoke English as well as French. He answered that he
was at home in French, but that he was English. We talked
English. His entrance into the garden had entirely destroyed
my sense of its peace—even my own peace was disturbed at once
by his appearance.
“I felt that I was in the presence of a misery that was like a
devouring element. Before we had time for more than a very
few halting words the bell was rung by François.
“‘What's that for, Father?’ the stranger said, with a start,
which showed that his nerves were shattered.
“‘It is time for your meal,” I answered.
“‘One must eat!” he said. Then, as if conscious that he
was behaving oddly, he added politely:
“‘I know you entertain us too well here, and have sometimes
been rewarded with coarse ingratitude. Where do I go?”
“I showed him into the parlour. There was no one there
that day. He sat at the long table.
“‘ I am to eat alone?’ he asked.
“‘Yes; I will serve you.’
“François always waited on the guests, but that day—mind-
ful of the selfishness of my thoughts in the garden—I resolved
to add to my duties. I therefore brought the soup, the lentils,
the omelette, the oranges, poured out the wine, and urged the
young man cordially to eat. When I did so he looked up at me.
His eyes were extraordinarily expressive. It was as if I heard
them say to me, ‘Why, I like you!' and as if, just for a mo-
ment, his grief were lessened.
“In the empty parlour, long, clean, bare, with a crucifix on
the wall and the name ‘Saint Bernard' above the door, it was
very quiet, very shady. The outer blinds of green wood were
drawn over the window-Spaces, shutting out the gold of the
garden. But its murmuring tranquillity seemed to filter in, as if
the flowers, the insects, the birds were aware of our presence and
were trying to say to us, ‘Are you happy as we are? Be happy
as we are.’ -
“The stranger looked at the shady room, the open windows.
He sighed.
4I6 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“‘How quiet it is here!' he said, almost as if to himself.
‘How quiet it is!”
“‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Summer is beginning. For months
now scarcely anyone will come to us here.'
“‘Us?’ he said, glancing at me with a sudden Smile.
“‘I meant to us who are monks, who live always here.”
“‘May I—is it indiscreet to ask if you have been here
long?'
“I told him.
“‘ More than nineteen years!' he said.
( { { Yes.’
“‘And always in this silence?’
He sat as if listening, resting his head on his hand.
‘How extraordinary 1” he said at last. ‘How wonderful!
Is it happiness?’
“I did not answer. The question seemed to me to be
addressed to himself, not to me. I could leave him to seek for
the answer. After a moment he went on eating and drinking in
silence. When he had finished I asked him whether he would
take coffee. He said he would, and I made him pass into the
St. Joseph Salle. There I brought him coffee and—and that
liqueur. I told him that it was my invention. He seemed to be
interested. At any rate, he took a glass and praised it strongly.
I was pleased. I think I showed it. From that moment I felt
as if we were almost friends. Never before had I experienced
such a feeling for anyone who had come to the monastery,
or for any monk or novice in the monastery. Although I
had been vexed, irritated, at the approach of a stranger I now
felt regret at the idea of his going away. Presently the time
came to show him round the garden. We went out of the
shadowy parlour into the Sunshine. No one was in the garden.
Only the bees were humming, the birds were passing, the cats
were basking on the broad path that stretched from the arcade
along the front of the hôtellerie. As we came out a bell chimed,
breaking for an instant the silence, and making it seem the
sweeter when it returned. We strolled for a little while. We
did not talk much. The stranger's eyes, I noticed, were every-
where, taking in every detail of the scene around us. Presently
we came to the vineyard, to the left of which was the road that
led to the cemetery, passed up the road and arrived at the
Cemetery gate.
“‘Here I must leave you,' I said.
“‘Why?’ he asked quickly.
& &
& C
THE REVELATION 4 I 7
“‘There is another Father who will show you the chapel. I
shall wait for you here.”
“I sat down and waited. When the stranger returned it
seemed to me that his face was calmer, that there was a quieter
expression in his eyes. When we were once more before the
hôtellerie I said:
“‘You have seen all my small domain now.’
“He glanced at the house. -
“‘But there seems to be a number of rooms,” he said.
“‘Only the bedrooms.’
“‘Bedrooms? Do people stay the night here?’
“‘Sometimes. If they please they can stay for longer than
a night.’
“‘How much longer?’
“‘For any time they please, if they conform to one or two
simple rules and pay a small fixed sum to the monastery.’
“‘Do you mean that you could take anyone in for the
Summer?” he said abruptly. &
“‘Why not? The consent of the Revernd Père has to be
obtained. That is all.’
“‘ I should like to see the bedrooms.’
“I took him in and showed him one.
“‘All the others are the same,' I said.
“He glanced round at the white walls, the rough bed, the
crucifix above it, the iron basin, the paved floor, then went to
the window and looked out.
“‘Well,” he said, drawing back into the room, ‘ I will go
now to see the Père Abbé, if it is permitted.’
“On the garden path I bade him good-bye. He shook my
hand. There was an odd Smile in his face. Half-an-hour
later I saw him coming again through the arcade.
“‘Father,’ he said, ‘ I am not going away. I have asked
the Père Abbé's permission to stay here. He has given it to
me. To-morrow such luggage as I need will be sent over
from Tunis. Are you—are you very vexed to have a stranger
to trouble your peace?’
“His intensely observant eyes were fixed upon me while he
spoke. I answered:
“‘I do not think you will trouble my peace.”
“And my thought was:
“‘ I will help you to find the peace which you have lost.’
Was it a presumptuous thought, Domini? Was it inso-
lent? At the time it seemed to me absolutely sincere, one of
4I8 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
the best thoughts I had ever had—a thought put into my heart
by God. I didn’t know then—I didn't know.”
He stopped speaking, and stood for a time quite still, looking
down at the sand, which was silver white under the moon. At
last he lifted his head and said, speaking slowly:
“It was the coming of this man that put the spark to that
torch. It was he who woke up in me the half of myself which,
unsuspected by me, had been slumbering through all my life,
slumbering and gathering strength in slumber—as the body
does—gathering a strength that was tremendous, that was to
overmaster the whole of me, that was to make of me one mad
impulse. He woke up in me the body and the body was to
take possession of the soul. I wonder—can I make you feel
why this man was able to affect me thus? Can I make you
know this man? -
“He was a man full of secret violence, violence of the mind
and violence of the body, a volcanic man. He was English—he
said so—but there must have been blood that was not English
in his veins. When I was with him I felt as if I was with fire.
There was the restlessness of fire in him. There was the in-
tensity of fire. He could be reserved. He could appear to be
cold. But always I was conscious that if there was stone with-
out there was scorching heat within. He was watchful of him-
self and of everyone with whom he came into the slightest
contact. He was very clever. He had an immense amount
of personal charm, I think, at any rate for me. He was very
human, passionately interested in humanity. He was—and this
was specially part of him, a dominant trait—he was savagely,
yes, savagely, eager to be happy, and when he came to live in
the hôtellerie he was Savagely unhappy. An egoist he was, a
thinker, a man who longed to lay hold of something beyond
this world, but who had not been able to do so. Even his
desire to find rest in a religion seemed to me to have greed in
it, to have something in it that was akin to avarice. He was a
human storm, Domini, as well as a human fire. Think! what
a man to be cast by the world—which he knew as they know
it only who are voracious for life and free—into my quiet
existence.
“Very soon he began to show himself to me as he was,
with a sort of fearlessness that was almost impudent. The
conditions of our two lives in the monastery threw us per-
petually together in a curious isolation. And the Reverend
Père, Domini, the Reverend Père, set my feet in the path of
THE REVELATION 419
my own destruction. On the day after the stranger had arrived
the Reverend Père sent for me to his private room, and said to
me, “Our new guest is in a very unhappy state. He has been
attracted by our peace. If we can bring peace to him it will be
an action acceptable to God. You will be much with him.
Try to do him good. He is not a Catholic, but no matter.
He wishes to attend the services in the chapel. He may be
influenced. God may have guided his feet to us, we cannot
tell. But we can act—we can pray for him. I do not know
how long he will stay. It may be for only a few days or for
the whole summer. It does not matter. Use each day well for
him. Each day may be his last with us.' I went out from the
Reverend Père full of enthusiasm, feeling that a great, a
splendid interest had come into my life, an interest such as it
had never held before.
“Day by day I was with this man. Of course there were
many hours when we were apart, the hours when I was at
prayer in the chapel or occupied with study. But each day we
passed much time together, generally in the garden. Scarcely
any visitors came, and none to stay, except, from time to time,
a passing priest, and once two young men from Tunis, one of
whom had an inclination to become a novice. And this man,
as I have said, began to show himself to me with a tremendous
frankness. -
“Domini, he was suffering under what I suppose would be
called an obsession, an immense domination such as one human
being sometimes obtains over another. At that time I had never
realised that there were such dominations. Now I know that
there are, and, Domini, that they can be both terrible and
splendid. He was dominated by a woman, by a woman who
had come into his life, seized it, made it a thing of glory,
broken it. He described to me the dominion of this woman.
He told me how she had transformed him. Till he met her he
had been passionate but free, his own master through many
experiences, many intrigues. He was very frank, Domini. He
did not attempt to hide from me that his life had been evil. It
had been a life devoted to the acquiring of experience, of all
possible experience, mental and bodily. I gathered that he had
shrunk from nothing, avoided nothing. His nature had
prompted him to rush upon everything, to grasp at everything.
At first I was horrified at what he told me. I showed it. I
remember the second evening after his arrival we were sitting
together in a little arbour at the foot of the vineyard that
42O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
sloped up to the cemetery. It was half an hour before the last
service in the chapel. The air was cool with breath from the
distant sea. An intense calm, a heavenly calm, I think, filled
the garden, floated away to the cypresses beside the graves,
along the avenue where stood the Fourteen Stations of the
Cross. And he told me, began to tell me something of his life.
“‘You thought to find happiness in such an existence?' I
exclaimed, almost with incredulity I believe.
“He looked at me with his shining eyes.
“‘Why not, Father? Do you think I was a madman to
do so?' -
“‘Surely.”
“‘Why? Is there not happiness in knowledge?’
“‘Knowledge of evil?”
“‘Knowledge of all things that exist in life. I have never
sought for evil specially; I have sought for everything. I
wished to bring everything under my observation, everything
connected with human life.’
“‘But human life,' I said more quietly, ‘passes away from
this world. It is a shadow in a world of shadows.’
“‘You say that,’ he answered abruptly. ‘I wonder if you
feel it—feel it as you feel my hand on yours.”
“He laid his hand on mine. It was hot and dry as if with
fever. Its touch affected me painfully.
“‘Is that hand the hand of a shadow P' he said. ‘Is this
body that can enjoy and suffer, that can be in heaven or in
hell—here—here—a shadow P’
“‘Within a week it might be less than a shadow.’
“‘And what of that? This is now, this is now. Do you
mean what you say? Do you truly feel that you are a shadow—
that this garden is but a world of shadows? I feel that I,
that you, are terrific realities, that this garden is of immense
significance. Look at that sky.’
“The sky above the cypresses was red with sunset. The
trees looked black beneath it. Fireflies were flitting near the
arbour where we sat.
“‘That is the sky that roofs what you would have me believe
a world of shadows. It is like the blood, the hot blood that
flows and Surges in the veins of men—in our veins. Ah, but
you are a monk!’
“The way he said the last words made me feel suddenly a
Sense of shame, Domini. It was as if a man said to another
man, ‘You are not a man.” Can you—can you understand the
THE REVELATION 42 I
feeling I had just then? Something hot and bitter was in me.
A sort of desperate sense of nothingness came over me, as if I
were a skeleton sitting there with flesh and blood and trying to
believe, and to make it believe, that I, too, was and had been
flesh and blood. -
“‘Yes, thank God, I am a monk,' I answered quietly.
“Something in my tone, I think, made him feel that he had
been brutal.
“‘ I am a brute and a fool,’ he said vehemently. “But it is
always so with me. I always feel as if what I want others must
want. I always feel universal. It's folly. You have your
vocation, I mine. Yours is to pray, mine is to live.’
“Again I was conscious of the bitterness. I tried to put it
from me.
“‘Prayer is life,” I answered, to me, to us who are here.”
“‘Prayer | Can it be? Can it be vivid as the life of ex-
perience, as the life that teaches one the truth of men and
women, the truth of creation—joy, Sorrow, aspiration, lust,
ambition of the intellect and the limbs? Prayer
“‘It is time for me to go,' I said. “Are you coming to the
chapel?'
“‘Yes,’ he answered almost eagerly. ‘ I shall look down on
you from my lonely gallery. Perhaps I shall be able to feel
the life of prayer.’
“‘ May it be so,' I said.
“But I think I spoke without confidence, and I know that
that evening I prayed without impulse, coldly, mechanically.
The long, dim chapel, with its lines of monks facing each other
in their stalls, seemed to me a sad place, like a valley of dry
bones—for the first time, for the first time.
“I ought to have gone on the morrow to the Reverend Père.
I ought to have asked him, begged him to remove me from the
hôtellerie. I Ought to have foreseen what was coming—that
this man had a strength to live greater than my strength to pray;
that his strength might overcome mine. I began to sin that
night. Curiosity was alive in me, curiosity about the life that I
had never known, was—so I believed, so I thought I knew—
never to know. -
“When I came out of the chapel into the hôtellerie I met
our guest—I do not say his name. What would be the use?—
in the corridor. It was almost dark. There were ten minutes
before the time for locking up the door and going to bed.
François, the servant, was asleep under the arcade.
422 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“‘Shall we go on to the path and have a last breath of air?'
the stranger said.
“We stepped out and walked slowly up and down.
“‘ Do you not feel the beauty of peace?' I asked.
“I wanted him to say yes. I wanted him to tell me that
peace, tranquillity, were beautiful. He did not reply for a
moment. I heard him sigh heavily.
“‘If there is peace in the world at all,” he said at length, ‘it
is only to be found with the human being one loves. With the
human being one loves one might find peace in hell.’
“We did not speak again before we parted for the night.
“Domini, I did not sleep at all that night. It was the first
of many sleepless nights, nights in which my thoughts travelled
like winged Furies—horrible, horrible nights. In them I strove
to imagine all the stranger knew by experience. It was like a
ghastly, physical effort. I strove to conceive of all that he had
done—with the view, I told myself at first, of bringing myself
to a greater contentment, of realising how worthless was all
that I had rejected and that he had grasped at. In the dark I,
as it were, spread out his map of life and mine and examined
them. When, still in the dark, I rose to go to the chapel I was
exhausted. I felt unutterably melancholy. That was at first.
Presently I felt an active, gnawing hunger. But—but—I have
not come to that yet. This strange, new melancholy was the
forerunner. It was a melancholy that seemed to be caused by a
sense of frightful loneliness such as I had never previously
experienced. Till now I had almost always felt God with me,
and that He was enough. Now, suddenly, I began to feel that
I was alone. I kept thinking of the stranger's words: ‘If
there is peace in the world at all it is only to be found with
the human being one loves.’
“‘That is false,' I said to myself again and again. “Peace
is only to be found by close union with God. In that I have
found peace for many, many years.’
“I knew that I had been at peace. I knew that I had been
happy. And yet, when I looked back upon my life as a novice
and a monk, I now felt as if I had been happy vaguely, fool-
ishly, bloodlessly, happy only because I had been ignorant of
what real happiness was—not really happy. I thought of a bird
born in a cage and singing there. I had been as that bird. And
then, when I was in the garden, I looked at the swallows wing-
ing their way high in the sunshine, between the garden trees
and the radiant blue, winging their way towards sea and moun-
THE REVELATION 423
tains and plains, and that bitterness, like an acid that burns
and eats away fine metal, was once more at my heart.
“But the sensation of loneliness was the most terrible of all.
I compared unior, with God, such as I thought I had known,
with that other union spoken of by my guest—union with the
human being one loves. I set the two unions as it were in
comparison. Night after night I did this. Night after night
I told over the joys of union with God—joys which I dared to
think I had known—and the joys of union with a loved human
being. On the one side I thought of the drawing near to God
in prayer, of the sensation of approach that comes with earnest
prayer, of the feeling that ears are listening to you, that the
great heart is loving you, the great heart that loves all living
things, that you are being absolutely understood, that all you
cannot say is comprehended, and all you say is received as some-
thing precious. I recalled the joy, the exaltation, that I had
known when I prayed. That was union with God. In such
union I had sometimes felt that the world, with all that it con-
tained of wickedness, suffering and death, was utterly devoid
of power to sadden or alarm the humblest human being who
was able to draw near to God.
“I had had a conquering feeling—not proud—as of one
upborne, protected for ever, lifted to a region in which no
enemy could ever be, no sadness, no faint anxiety even.
“Then I strove to imagine—and this, Domini, was surely a
deliberate sin—exactly what it must be to be united with a be-
loved human being. I strove and I was able. For not only
did instinct help me, instinct that had been long asleep, but—I
have told you that the stranger was suffering under an obsession,
a terrible dominion. This dominion he described to me with
an openness that perhaps—that indeed I believe—he would not
have shown had I not been a monk. He looked upon me as a
being apart, neither man nor woman, a being without sex.
I am sure he did. And yet he was immensely intelligent. But
he knew that I had entered the monastery as a novice, that I
had been there through all my adult life. And then my manner
probably assisted him in his illusion. For I gave—I believe—no
sign of the change that was taking place within me under his
influence. I seemed to be calm, detached, even in my sympathy
for his suffering. For he suffered frightfully. This woman he
loved was a Parisian, he told me. He described her beauty to
me, as if in order to excuse himself for having become the slave
to her he was. I suppose she was very beautiful. He said that
424. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
she had a physical charm so intense that few men could resist
it, that she was famous throughout Europe for it. He told me
that she was not a good woman. I gathered that she lived
for pleasure, admiration, that she had allowed many men to
love her before he knew her. But she had loved him genuinely.
She was not a very young woman, and she was not a married
woman. He said that she was a woman men loved but did not
marry, a woman who was loved by the husbands of married
women, a woman to marry whom would exclude a man from
the society of good women. She had never lived, or thought of
living, for one man till he came into her life. Nor had he ever
dreamed of living for one woman. He had lived to gain experi-
ence; she too. But when he met her—knowing thoroughly all
she was—all other women ceased to exist for him. He became
her slave. Then jealousy awoke in him, jealousy of all the men
who had been in her life, who might be in her life again. He
was tortured by loving such a woman—a woman who had be-
longed to many, who would no doubt in the future belong to
others. For despite the fact that she loved him he told me that
at first he had no illusions about her. He knew the world
too well for that, and he cursed the fate that had bound him
body and soul to what he called a courtesan. Even the fact that
she loved him at first did not blind him to the effect upon char-
acter that her life must inevitably have had. She had dwelt in
an atmosphere of lies, he said, and to lie was nothing to her.
Any original refinement of feeling as regards human relations
that she might have had had become dulled, if it had not been
destroyed. At first he blindly, miserably, resigned himself to
this. He said to himself, ‘Fate has led me to love this sort of
woman. I must accept her as she is, with all her defects,
with her instinct for treachery, with her passion for the admira-
tion of the world, with her incapability for being true to an
ideal, or for isolating herself in the adoration of one man. I
cannot get away from her. She has me fast. I cannot live
without her. Then I must bear the torture that jealousy of
her will certainly bring me in silence. I must conceal it. I
must try to kill it. I must make the best of whatever she will
give me, knowing that she can never, with her nature and her
training, be exclusively mine as a good woman might be.’ This
he said to himself. This plan of conduct he traced for him-
self. But he soon found that he was not strong enough to keep
to it. His jealousy was a devouring fire, and he could not con-
ceal it. Domini, he described to me minutely the effect of
THE REVELATION 425'
jealousy in a human heart. I had never imagined what it was,
and, when he described it, I felt as if I looked down into a
bottomless pit lined with the flames of hell. By the depth of
that pit I measured the depth of his passion for this woman,
and I gained an idea of what human love—not the best sort of
human love, but still genuine, intense love of some kind—could
be. Of this human love I thought at night, putting it in com-
parison with the love God’s creature can have for God. And
my sense of loneliness increased, and I felt as if I had always
been lonely. Does this seem strange to you? In the love of
God was calm, peace, rest, a lying down of the soul in the
Almighty arms. In the other love described to me was rests
lessness, agitation, torture, the Soul spinning like an atom
driven by winds, the heart devoured as by a disease, a cancer.
On the one hand was a beautiful trust, on the other a ceaseless
agony of doubt and terror. And yet I came to feel as if the one
were unreal in comparison with the other, as if in the one
were a loneliness, in the other a fierce companionship. I thought
of the Almighty arms, Domini, and of the arms of a woman,
and—Domini, I longed to have known, if only once, the press-
ure of a woman's arms about my neck, about my breast, the
touch of a woman's hand upon my heart.
“And of all this I never spoke at confession. I committed
the deadly sin of keeping back at confession all that.” He
stopped. Then he said, “Till the end my confessions were
incomplete, were false.
“The stranger told me that as his love for this woman grew
he found it impossible to follow the plan he had traced for him-
self of shutting his eyes to the sight of other eyes admiring,
desiring her, of shutting his ears to the voices that whispered,
‘This it will always be, for others as well as for you.’ He
found it impossible. His jealousy was too importunate, and
he resolved to make any effort to keep her for himself alone.
He knew she had love for him, but he knew that love would
not necessarily, or even probably, keep her entirely faithful to
him. She thought too little of passing intrigues. To her they
Seemed trifles, meaningless, unimportant. She told him so,
when he spoke his jealousy. She said, ‘ I love you. I do not
love these other men. They are in my life for a moment only.’
“‘And that moment plunges me into hell!” he said. +
“He told her he could not bear it, that it was impossi-
ble, that she must belong to him entirely and solely. He
asked her to marry him. She was surprised, touched. She
426 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
understood what a sacrifice such a marriage would be to a
man in his position. He was a man of good birth. His re-
quest, his vehement insistence on it, made her understand his
love as she had not understood it before. Yet she hesitated.
For so long had she been accustomed to a life of freedom, of
changing amours, that she hesitated to put her neck under the
yoke of matrimony. She understood thoroughly his character
and his aim in marrying her. She knew that as his wife she
must bid an eternal farewell to the life she had known. And
it was a life that had become a habit to her, a life that she was
fond of. For she was enormously vain, and she was a-she
was a very physical woman, subject to physical caprices. There
are things that I pass over, Domini, which would explain still
more her hesitation. He knew what caused it, and again he
was tortured. But he persisted. And at last he overcame.
She consented to marry him. They were engaged. Domini, I
need not tell you much more, only this fact—which had driven
him from France, destroyed his happiness, brought him to the
monastery. Shortly before the marriage was to take place he
discovered that, while they were engaged, she had yielded to
the desires of an old admirer who had come to bid her farewell
and to wish her joy in her new life. He was cempted, he said,
to kill her. But he governed himself and left her. He
travelled. He came to Tunis. He came to La Trappe. He
saw the peace there. He thought, ‘Can I Scize it? Can it do
something for me?' He saw me. He thought, ‘ I shall not
be quite alone. This monk—he has lived always in peace,
he has never known the torture of women. Might not inter-
course with him help me?’
“Such was his history, such was the history poured, with
infinite detail that I have not told you, day by day, into my
ears. It was the history, you see, of a passion that was mainly
physical. I will not say entirely. I do not know whether any
great passion can be entirely physical. But it was the history
of the passion of one body for another body, and he did not
attempt to present it to me as anything else. This man made
me understand the meaning of the body. I had never under-
stood it before. I had never suspected the immensity of the
meaning there is in physical things. I had never comprehended
the flesh. Now I comprehended it. Loneliness rushed upon
me, devoured me—loneliness of the body. “God is a spirit
and those that worship him must worship him in spirit.” Now
I felt that to worship in spirit was not enough. I even felt
THE REVELATION 427
that it was scarcely anything. Again I thought of my life
as the life of a skeleton in a world of skeletons. Again the
chapel was as a valley of dry bones. It was a ghastly sensation.
I was plunged in the void. I—I—I can’t tell you my exact
sensation, but it was as if I was the loneliest creature in the
whole of the universe, and as if I need not have been lonely,
as if I, in my ignorance and fatuity, had selected loneliness
thinking it was the happiest fate.
“And yet you will say I was face to face with this man's
almost frantic misery. I was, and it made no difference. I
envied him, even in his present state. He wanted to gain con-
solation from me if that were possible. Oh, the irony of my
consoling him | In secret I laughed at it bitterly. When I
strove to console him I knew that I was an incarnate lie. He
had told me the meaning of the body and, by so doing, had
snatched from me the meaning of the spirit. And then he
said to me, ‘Make me feel the meaning of the spirit. If I
can grasp that I may find comfort.' He called upon me to give
him what I no longer had—the peace of God that passeth
understanding. Domini, can you feel at all what that was to
me? Can you realise? Can you—is it any wonder that I
could do nothing for him, for him who had done such a fright-
ful thing for me? Is it any wonder? Soon he realised that he
would not find peace with me in the garden. Yet he stayed
on. Why? He did not know where to go, what to do. Life
offered him nothing but horror. His love of experiences was
dead. His love of life had completely vanished. He saw the
worldly life as a nightmare, yet he had nothing to put in the
place of it. And in the monastery he was ceaselessly tormented
by jealousy. Ceaselessly his mind was at work about this
woman, picturing her in her life of change, of intrigue, of new
lovers, of new hopes and aims in which he had no part, in which
his image was being blotted out, doubtless from her memory
even. He suffered, he suffered as few suffer. But I think I
suffered more. The melancholy was driven on into a gnawing
hunger, the gnawing hunger of the flesh wishing to have lived,
wishing to live, wishing to—to know.
“Domini, to you I can’t say more of that—to you whom I-
whom I love with spirit and flesh. I will come to the end, to
the incident which made the body rise up, strike down the
soul, trample out over it into the world like a wolf that was
starving.
“One day the Reverend Père gave me a special permission
428 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
to walk with our visitor beyond the monastery walls towards
the sea. Such a permission was an event in my life. It excited
me more than you can imagine. I found that the stranger had
begged him to let me come.
“‘Our guest is very fond of you,' the Reverend Père said to
me. “I think if any human being can bring him to a calmer,
happier state of mind and spirit, you can. You have obtained a
good influence over him.’
“ Domini, when the Reverend Père spoke to me thus my
mouth was suddenly contracted in a smile. Devils smile, I
think. I put up my hand to my face. I saw the Reverend
Père looking at me with a dawning of astonishment in his
kind, grave eyes, and I controlled myself at once. But I said
nothing. I could not say anything, and I went out from the
parlour quickly, hot with a sensation of shame.
“‘You are coming?” the stranger said.
“‘Yes,’ I answered.
“It was a fiery day of late June. Africa was bathed in a
glare of light that hurt the eyes. I went into my cell and put
on a pair of blue glasses and my wide straw hat, the hat in
which I formerly used to work in the fields. When I came
out my guest was standing on the garden path. He was Swing-
ing a stick in one hand. The other hand, which hung down
by his side, was twitching nervously. In the glitter of the sun
his face looked ghastly. In his eyes there seemed to be terrors
watching without hope.
“‘You are ready?’ he said. ‘Let us go.”
“We set off, walking quickly. *-
“‘ Movement—pace—sometimes that does a little good,” he
said. ‘If one can exhaust the body the mind sometimes lies
almost still for a moment. If it would only lie still for ever.’
“I said nothing. I could say nothing. For my fever was
surely as his fever.
“‘Where are we going?” he asked when we reached the
little house of the keeper of the gate by the cemetery.
“‘We cannot walk in the sun,” I answered. ‘Let us go
into the eucalyptus woods.’
“The first Trappists had planted forests of eucalyptus to
keep off the fever that sometimes comes in the African summer.
We made our way along a tract of open land and came into a
deep wood. Here we began to walk more slowly. The wood
was empty of men. The hot silence was profound. He took
off his white helmet and walked on, carrying it in his hand.
THE REVELATION 429
Not till we were far in the forest did he speak. Then he said,
“Father, I cannot struggle on much longer.’
“He spoke abruptly, in a hard voice.
“‘You must try to gain courage,' I said.
“‘From where?’ he exclaimed. ‘No, no, don’t say from
God. If there is a God he hates me.’
“When he said that I felt as if my soul shuddered, hearing
a frightful truth spoken about itself. My lips were dry. My
heart seemed to shrivel up, but I made an effort and answered:
“‘God hates no being whom he has created.’
“‘How can you know? Almost every man, perhaps every
living man, hates someone. Why not 2
“‘To compare God with a man is blasphemous,” I answered.
“‘Aren’t we made in his image? Father, it's as I said—I
can’t struggle on much longer. I shall have to end it. I wish
now—I often wish that I had yielded to my first impulse and
killed her. What is she doing now 2 What is she doing now—
at this moment?’
“He stood still and beat with his stick on the ground.
“‘You don’t know the infinite torture there is in knowing
that, far away, she is still living that cursed life, that she is
free to continue the acts of which her existence has been full.
Every moment I am imagining—I am seeing y
“He forced his stick deep into the ground.
“‘If I had killed her,’ he said in a low voice, “at least I
should know that she was sleeping—alone—there—there—
under the earth. I should know that her body was dissolved
into dust, that her lips could kiss no man, that her arms could
never hold another as they have held me!’
“‘Hush ' ' I said sternly. ‘You deliberately torture your-
self and me.’ He glanced up sharply.
“‘You! What do you mean?’
“‘I must not listen to such things,” I said. “They are bad
for you and for me.’ -
“‘How can they be bad for you—a monk?’
“‘Such talk is evil—evil for everyone.’
“‘I’ll be silent then. I’ll go into the silence. I’ll go soon.’
“I understood that he thought of putting an end to him-
self.
“‘There are few men,' I said, speaking with deliberation,
with effort, ‘who do not feel at some period of life that all is
over for them, that there is nothing to hope for, that happiness
is a dream which will visit them no more.”
43O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“‘Have you ever felt like that? You speak of it calmly,
but have you ever experienced it?’
“I hesitated. Then I said:
( & & Yes.’
“‘You, who have been a monk for so many years!'
& ( & Yes.’
“‘Since you have been here?’
“‘Yes, since then.’
“‘And you would tell me that the feeling passed, that hope
came again, and the dream as you call it?’
“‘I would say that what has lived in a heart can die, as we
who live in this world shall die.’ -
“‘Ah, that—the sooner the better! But you are wrong.
Sometimes a thing lives in the heart that cannot die so long as
the heart beats. Such is my passion, my torture. Don't you, a
monk—don't dare to say to me that this love of mine could
die.’ -
“‘Don’t you wish it to die?’ I asked. ‘You say it tor-
tures you.’
“‘Yes. But no—no—I don't wish it to die. I could never
wish that.” -
“I looked at him, I believe, with a deep astonishment.
“‘Ah, you don’t understand l’ he said. “You don’t under-
stand. At all costs one must keep it—one's love. With it I am
—as you see. But without it—man, without it, I should be
nothing—no more than that.'
“He picked up a rotten leaf, held it to me, threw it down on
the ground. I hardly looked at it. He had said to me:
‘Man!' That word, thus said by him, seemed to me to mark
the enormous change in me, to indicate that it was visible to
the eyes of another, the heart of another. I had passed from
the monk—the sexless being—to the man. He set me beside
himself, spoke of me as if I were as hir. Iself. An intense ex-
citement surged up in me. I think—I don’t know what I
should have said—done—but at that moment a boy, who acted
as a servant at the monastery, came running towards us with
a letter in his hand.
“‘It is for Monsieur !” he said. “It was left at the gate.’
“‘A letter for me!’ the stranger said. w"
“He held out his hand and took it indifferently. The boy
gave it, and turning, went away through the wood. Then the
Stranger glanced at the envelope. Domini, I wish I could make
you see what I saw then, the change that came. I can’t. There
THE REVELATION 43 I
are things the eyes must see. The tongue can't tell them. The
ghastly whiteness went out of his face. A hot flood of scarlet
rushed over it up to the roots of his hair. His hands and his
whole body began to tremble violently. His eyes, which were
fixed on the envelope, shone with an expression—it was like all
the excitement in the world condensed into two sparks. He
dropped his stick and sat down on the trunk of a tree, fell down
almost.
“‘Father!' he muttered, ‘it’s not been through the post—
it's not been through the post!'
“I did not understand.
“‘What do you mean?' I asked.
{ { { What y
“The flush left his face. He turned deadly white again. He
held out the letter.
“‘ Read it for me!’ he said. “I can’t see—I can't see any-
thing.’
“I took the letter. He covered his eyes with his hands. I
opened it and read:
“‘GRAND HOTEL, TUNIs.
“‘ I have found out where you are. I have come. Forgive
me—if you can. I will marry you—or I will live with you. As
you please; but I cannot live without you. I know women
are not admitted to the monastery. Come out on the road that
leads to Tunis. I am there. At least come for a moment and
speak to me. VERONIQUE.”
“ Domini, I read this slowly; and it was as if I read my own
fate. When I had finished he got up. He was still pale as
ashes and trembling.
“‘Which is the way to the road?’ he said. “Do you know?'
( & & Yes.’
“‘Take me there. Give me your arm, Father.’
“He took it, leaned on it heavily. We walked through the
wood towards the highroad. I had almost to support him. The
way seemed long. I felt tired, sick, as if I could scarcely move,
as if I were bearing—as if I were bearing a cross that was too
heavy for me. We came at last out of the shadow of the trees
into the glare of the sun. A flat field divided us from the white
road.
“‘Is there—is there a carriage?’ he whispered in my ear.
“I looked across the field and saw on the road a carriage
waiting.
4.32 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“‘Yes,' I said.
“I stopped, and tried to take his arm from mine.
“‘Go,” I said. “Go on 1 °
“‘I can’t. Come with me, Father.’
“We went on in the blinding sun. I looked down on the dry
earth as I walked. Presently I saw at my feet the white dust of
the road. At the same time I heard a woman's cry. The
stranger took his arm violently from mine.
“‘Father,’ he said. ‘Good-bye—God bless you!”
“He was gone. I stood there. In a moment I heard a
roll of wheels. Then I looked up. I saw a man and a woman
together, Domini. Their faces were like angels' faces—with
happiness. The dust flew up in the sunshine. The wheels died
away—I was alone. -
“Presently—I think after a very long time—I turned and
went back to the monastery. Domini, that night I left the
monastery. I was as one mad. The wish to live had given
place to the determination to live. I thought of nothing else.
In the chapel that evening I heard nothing—I did not see the
monks. I did not attempt to pray, for I knew that I was going.
To go was an easy matter for me. I slept alone in the hôtellerie,
of which I had the key. When it was night I unlocked the
door. I walked to the cemetery—between the Stations of the
Cross. Domini, I did not see them. In the cemetery was a
ladder, as I told you.
“Just before dawn I reached my brother's house outside of
Tunis, not far from the Bardo. I knocked. My brother him-
self came down to know who was there. He, as I told you, was
without religion, and had always hated my being a monk. I told
him all, without reserve. I said, ‘Help me to go away. Let me
go anywhere—alone.’ He gave me clothes, money. I shaved
off my beard and moustache. I shaved my head, so that the
tonsure was no longer visible. In the afternoon of that day I
left Tunis. I was let loose into life. Domini—Domini, I won’t
tell you where I wandered till I came to the desert, till I met
yOu.
“I was let loose into life, but, with my freedom, the wish
to live seemed to die in me. I was afraid of life. I was
haunted by terrors. I had been a monk so long that I did not
know how to live as other men. I did not live, I never lived—
till I met you. And then—then I realised what life may be.
And then, too, I realised fully what I was. I struggled, I
fought myself. You know—now, if you look back, I think you
THE REVELATION 433
know that I tried—sometimes, often—I tried to–to–I tried
tC) } }
His voice broke.
“That last day in the garden I thought that I had conquered
myself, and it was in that moment that I fell for ever. When I.
knew you loved me I could fight no more. Do you understand?
You have seen me, you have lived with me, you have divined my
misery. But don't—don't think, Domini, that it ever came from
you. It was the consciousness of my lie to you, my lie to God,
that—that—I can’t go on—I can’t tell you—I can't tell you—
you know.”
He was silent. Domini said nothing, did not move. He did
not look at her, but her silence seemed to terrify him. He drew
back from it sharply and turned to the desert. He stared across
the vast spaces lit up by the moon. Still she did not move.
“I’ll go—I’ll go! ” he muttered.
And he stepped forward. Then Domini spoke.
“Boris!” she said.
He stopped.
“What is it?” he murmured hoarsely.
“Boris, now at last you—you can pray.”
He looked at her as if awe-stricken.
“Pray!” he whispered. “You tell me I can pray—now !”
“Now at last.”
She went into the tent and left him alone. He stood where
he was for a moment. He knew that, in the tent, she was pray-
ing. He stood, trying to listen to her prayer. Then, with an
uncertain hand, he felt in his breast. He drew out the wooden
crucifix. He bent down his head, touched it with his lips, and
fell upon his knees in the desert.
The music had ceased in the city. There was a great silence.
B O O K V I
THE JOURNEY BACK
CHAPTER XXVII
* HE good priest of Amara, strolling by chance at the
dinner-hour of the following day towards the camp
of the hospitable strangers, was surprised and Sad-
dened to find only the sand-hill strewn with débris.
º-- The tents, the camels, the mules, the horses—
all were gone. No servants greeted him. No cook was busy.
No kind hostess bade him come in and stay to dine. For-
lornly he glanced around and made inquiry. An Arab told
him that in the morning the camp had been struck and ere noon
was far on its way towards the north. The priest had been on
horseback to an neighbouring oasis, so had heard nothing of this
flitting. He asked its explanation, and was told a hundred lies.
The one most often repeated was to the effect that Monsieur,
the husband of Madame, was overcome by the heat, and that for
this reason the travellers were making their way towards the
cooler climate that lay beyond the desert.
As he heard this a sensation of loneliness came to the priest.
His usually cheerful countenance was overcast with gloom. For
a moment he loathed his fate in the sands and sighed for the
fleshpots of civilisation. With his white umbrella spread above
his helmet he stood still and gazed towards the north across the
vast spaces that were lemon-yellow in the sunset. He fancied
that on the horizon he saw faintly a cloud of sand grains whirl-
ing, and imagined it stirred up by the strangers' caravan. Then
he thought of the rich lands of the Tell, of the olive groves of
Tunis, of the blue Mediterranean, of France, his country which
he had not seen for many years. He sighed profoundly.
“Happy people,” he thought to himself. “Rich, free, able
to do as they like, to go where they will Why was I born to
live in the sand and to be alone?” -

434
THE JOURNEY BACK 435
He was moved by envy. But then he remembered his inter-
course with Androvsky on the previous day.
“After all,” he thought more comfortably, “he did not look
a happy man!” And he took himself to task for his sin of
envy, and strolled to the inn by the fountain where he paid his
pension.
The same day, in the house of the marabout of Beni-Hassan,
Count Anteoni received a letter brought from Amara by an
Arab. It was as follows: -
“AMARA.
“My DEAR FRIEND: Good-bye. We are just leaving. I
had expected to be here longer, but we must go. We are return-
ing to the north and shall not penetrate farther into the desert.
I shall think of you, and of your journey on among the people
of your faith. You said to me, when we sat in the tent door,
that now you could pray in the desert. Pray in the desert for
us. And one thing more. If you never return to Beni-Mora,
and your garden is to pass into other hands, don’t let it go into
the hands of a stranger. I could not bear that. Let it come
to me. At any price you name. Forgive me for writing thus.
Perhaps you will return, or perhaps, even if you do not, you will
keep your garden.—Your Friend, DOMINI.”
In a postscript was an address which would always find her.
Count Anteoni read this letter two or three times carefully,
with a grave face.
“Why did she not put Domini Androvsky?” he said to him-
self. He locked the letter in a drawer. All that night he was
haunted by thoughts of the garden. Again and again it seemed
to him that he stood with Domini beside the white wall and saw,
in the burning distance of the desert, at the call of the Mueddin,
the Arabs bowing themselves in prayer, and the man—the man
to whom now she had bound herself by the most holy tie—fleeing
from prayer as if in horror. -
“But it was written,” he murmured to himself. “It was
written in the sand and in fire: ‘The fate of every man have
we bound about his neck.’” -
In the dawn when, turning towards the rising sun, he prayed,
he remembered Domini and her words: “Pray in the desert for
us.” And in the Garden of Allah he prayed to Allah for her,
and for Androvsky.
Meanwhile the camp had been struck, and the first stage of
the journey northward, the journey back, had been accomplished.
436 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
Domini had given the order of departure, but she had first
spoken with Androvsky.
After his narrative, and her words that followed it, he did
not come into the tent. She did not ask him to. She did not
see him in the moonlight beyond the tent, or when the moon-
light waned before the coming of the dawn. She was upon her
knees, her face hidden in her hands, striving as surely few human
beings have ever had to strive in the difficult paths of life. At
first she had felt almost calm. When she had spoken to An-
drovsky there had even been a strange sensation that was not
unlike triumph in her heart. In this triumph she had felt dis-
embodied, as if she were a spirit standing there, removed from
earthly suffering, but able to contemplate, to understand, to pity
it, removed from earthly sin, but able to commit an action that
might help to purge it.
When she said to Androvsky, “Now you can pray,” she had
passed into a region where self had no existence. Her whole
soul was intent upon this man to whom she had given all the
treasures of her heart and whom she knew to be writhing as
souls writhe in Purgatory. He had spoken at last, he had laid
bare his misery, his crime, he had laid bare the agony of one who
had insulted God, but who repented his insult, who had wan-
dered far away from God, but who could never be happy in his
wandering, who could never be at peace even in a mighty human
love unless that love was consecrated by God’s contentment with
it. As she stood there Domini had had an instant of absolutely
clear sight into the depths of another's heart, another's nature.
She had seen the monk in Androvsky, not slain by his
act of rejection, but alive, Sorrow-stricken, quivering, scourged.
And she had been able to tell this monk—as God seemed to be
telling her, making of her his messenger—that now at last he
might pray to a God who again would hear him, as he had heard
him in the garden of El-Largani, in his cell, in the chapel, in the
fields. She had been able to do this. Then she had turned
away, gone into the tent and fallen upon her knees.
But with that personal action her sense of triumph passed
away. As her body sank down her soul seemed to sink down
with it into bottomless depths of blackness where no light had
ever been, into an underworld, airless, peopled with invisible
violence. And it seemed to her as if it was her previous flight
upward which had caused this descent into a place which had
surely never before been visited by a human soul. All the
selflessness suddenly vanished from her, and was replaced by a
THE JOURNEY BACK 437
burning sense of her own personality, of what was due to it, of
what had been done to it, of what it now was. She saw it like a
cloth that had been white and that now was stained with in-
delible filth. And anger came upon her, a bitter fury, in which
she was inclined to cry out, not only against man, but against
God. The strength of her nature was driven into a wild bitter-
ness, the sweet waters became acrid with salt. She had been
able a moment before to say to Androvsky, almost with tender-
ness, “Now at last you can pray.” Now she was on her knees
hating him, hating—yes, surely hating—God. It was a fright-
ful sensation.
Soul and body felt defiled. She saw Androvsky coming into
her clean life, seizing her like a prey, rolling her in filth that
could never be cleansed. And who had allowed him to do her
this deadly wrong? God. And she was on her knees to this
God who had permitted this! She was in the attitude of wor-
ship. Her whole being rebelled against prayer. It seemed to
her as if she made a furious physical effort to rise from her knees,
but as if her body was paralysed and could not obey her will.
She remained kneeling, therefore, like a woman tied down, like
a blasphemer bound by cords in the attitude of prayer, whose
soul was shrieking insults against heaven.
Presently she remembered that outside Androvsky was pray-
ing, that she had meant to join with him in prayer. She had
contemplated, then, a further, deeper union with him. Was she
a madwoman 2 Was she a slave? Was she as one of those
women of history who, seized in a rape, resigned themselves to
love and obey their captors? She began to hate herself. And
still she knelt. Anyone coming in at the tent door would have
seen a woman apparently entranced in an ecstasy of worship.
This great love of hers, to what had it brought her? This
awakening of her soul, what was its meaning? God had sent a
man to rouse her from sleep that she might look down into hell.
Again and again, with ceaseless reiteration, she recalled the in-
cidents of her passion in the desert. She thought of the night at
Arba when Androvsky blew out the lamp. That night had been
to her a night of consecration. Nothing in her soul had risen up
to warn her. No instinct, no woman's instinct, had stayed her
from unwitting sin. The sand-diviner had been wiser than she;
Count Anteoni more far-seeing; the priest of Beni-Mora more
guided by holiness, by the inner flame that flickers before the
wind that blows out of the caverns of evil. God had blinded
her in order that she might fall, had brought Androvsky to her
438 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
in order that her religion, her Catholic faith, might be made
hideous to her for ever. She trembled all over as she knelt.
Her life had been sad, even tormented. And she had set out
upon a pilgrimage to find peace. She had been led to Beni-
Mora. She remembered her arrival in Africa, its spell descend-
ing upon her, her sensation of being far off, of having left her
former life with its sorrows for ever. She remembered the
entrancing quiet of Count Anteoni's garden, how as she entered
it she seemed to be entering an earthly Paradise, a place prepared
by God for one who was weary as she was weary, for one who
longed to be renewed as she longed to be renewed. And in that
Paradise, in the inmost recess of it, she had put her hands against
Androvsky's temples and given her life, her fate, her heart into
his keeping. That was why the garden was there, that she
might be led to commit this frightful action in it. Her soul
felt physically sick. As to her body—but just then she scarcely
thought of the body. For she was thinking of her soul as of a
body, as if it were the core of the body blackened, sullied, de-
stroyed for ever. She was hot with shame, she was hot with
a fiery indignation. Always, since she was a child, if she were
suddenly touched by anyone whom she did not love, she had had
an inclination to strike a blow on the one who touched her.
Now it was as if an unclean hand had been laid on her soul.
And the soul quivered with longing to strike back.
Again she thought of Beni-Mora, of all that had taken place
there. She realised that during her stay there a crescendo
of calm had taken place within her, calm of the spirit, a
crescendo of strength, spiritual strength, a crescendo of faith
and of hope. The religion which had almost seemed to be
slipping from her she had grasped firmly again. Her soul had
arrived in Beni-Mora an invalid and had become a convalescent.
It had been reclining wearily, fretfully. In Beni-Mora it
had stood up, walked, sung as the morning stars sang together.
But then—why? If this was to be the end—why—why?
And at this question she paused, as before a great portal that
was shut. She went back. She thought again of this beautiful
crescendo, of this gradual approach to the God from whom she
had been if not entirely separated at any rate set a little apart.
Could it have been only in order that her catastrophe might be
the more complete, her downfall the more absolute?
And then, she knew not why, she seemed to see in the hands
that were pressed against her face words written in fire, and to
read them slowly as a child spelling out a great lesson, with an
THE JOURNEY BACK 439
intense attention, with a labour whose result would be eternal
recollection:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary
it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when
frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a
burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth through
all. Whosover loveth knoweth the cry of this voice.”
The cry of this voice! At that moment, in the vast silence of
the desert, she seemed to hear it. And it was the cry of her own
voice. It was the cry of the voice of her own soul. Startled,
she lifted her face from her hands and listened. She did not
look out at the tent door, but she saw the moonlight falling upon
the matting that was spread upon the sand within the tent,
and she repeated, “Love watcheth—Love watcheth—Love
watcheth,” moving her lips like the child who reads with diffi-
culty. Then came the thought, “I am watching.”
The passion of personal anger had died away as suddenly as
it had come. She felt numb and yet excited. She leaned
forward and once more laid her face in her hands.
“Love watcheth—I am watching.” Then a moment—theit
—“God is watching me.”
She whispered the words over again and again. And the
numbness began to pass away. And the anger was dead.
Always she had felt as if she had been led to Africa for some
definite end. Did not the freed negroes, far out in the Desert,
sing their song of the deeper mysteries—“No one but God and
I knows what is in my heart ºf And had not she heard it again
and again, and each time with a sense of awe ? She had always
thought that the words were wonderful and beautiful. But she
had thought that perhaps they were not true. She had said to
Androvsky that he knew what was in her heart. And now, in
this night, in its intense stillness, close to the man who for so
long had not dared to pray but who now was praying, again she
thought that they were not quite true. It seemed to her that she
did not know what was in her heart, and that she was waiting.
there for God to come and tell her. Would He come? She
waited. Patience entered into her.
The silence was long. Night was travelling, turning her
thoughts to a distant world. The moon waned, and a faint
breath of wind that was almost cold stole over the Sands, among
the graves in the cemetery, to the man and the woman who were
keeping vigil upon their knees. The wind died away almost
ere it had risen, and the rigid silence that precedes the dawn held
44O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
the desert in its grasp. And God came to Domini in the silence,
Allah through Allah's garden that was shrouded still in the
shadows of night. Once, as she journeyed through the roaring
of the storm, she had listened for the voice of the desert. And
as the desert took her its voice had spoken to her in a sudden
and magical silence, in a falling of the wind. Now, in a more
magical silence, the voice of God spoke to her. And the voice
of the desert and of God were as one. As she knelt she heard
God telling her what was in her heart. It was a strange and
passionate revelation. She trembled as she heard. And some-
times she was inclined to say, “It is not so.” And sometimes
she was afraid, afraid of what this—all this that was in her heart
—would lead her to do. For God told her of a strength which
she had not known her heart possessed, which—so it seemed to
her—she did not wish it to possess, of a strength from which
something within her shrank, against which something within
her protested. But God would not be denied. He told her she
had this strength. He told her that she must use it. He told
her that she would use it. And she began to understand some-
thing of the mystery of the purposes of God in relation to her-
self, and to understand, with it, how closely companioned even
those who strive after effacement of self are by selfishness—how
closely companioned she had been on her African pilgrimage.
Everything that had happened in Africa she had quietly taken to
herself, as a gift made to her for herself. -
The peace that had descended upon her was balm for her
soul, and was sent merely for that, to stop the pain she suffered
from old wounds that she might be comfortably at rest. The
crescendo—the beautiful crescendo—of calm, of strength, of
faith, of hope which she had, as it were, heard like a noble music
within her spirit had been the David sent to play upon the harp
to her Saul, that from her Saul the black demon of unrest, of
despair, might depart. That was what she had believed. She
had believed that she had come to Africa for herself, and now
God, in the silence, was telling her that this was not so, that He
had brought her to Africa to sacrifice herself in the redemption
of another. And as she listened—listened, with bowed head,
and eyes in which tears were gathering, from which tears were
falling upon her clasped hands—she knew that it was true, she
knew that God meant her to put away her selfishness, to rise
above it. Those eagle's wings of which she had thought—she
must spread them. She must soar towards the place of the
angels, whither good women. Soar in the great moments of their
THE JOURNEY BACK 44:
love, borne up by the winds of God. On the minaret of the
mosque of Sidi-Zerzour, while Androvsky remained in the dark
shadow with a curse, she had mounted, with prayer, Surely a
little way towards God. And now God said to her, “ Mount
higher, come nearer to me, bring another with you. That was
my purpose in leading you to Beni-Mora, in leading you far out
into the desert, in leading you into the heart of the desert.”
She had been led to Africa for a definite end, and now she
knew what that end was. On the mosque of the minaret of
Sidi-Zerzour she had surely seen prayer travelling, the soul of
prayer travelling. And she had asked herself—“Whither?”
She had asked herself where was the halting-place, with at last
the pitched tent, the camp fires, and the long, the long repose?
And when she came down into the court of the mosque and
found Androvsky watching the old Arab who struck against
the mosque and cursed, she had wished that Androvsky had
mounted with her a little way towards God.
He should mount with her. Always she had longed to see
him above her. Could she leave him below She knew she
could not. She understood that God did not mean her to. She
understood perfectly. And tears streamed from her eyes. For
now there came upon her a full comprehension of her love for
Androvsky. His revelation had not killed it, as, for a moment,
in her passionate personal anger, she had been inclined to think.
Indeed it seemed to her now that, till this hour of silence, she
had never really loved him, never known how to love. Even in
the tent at Arba she had not fully loved him, perfectly loved him.
For the thought of self, the desires of self, the passion of self,
had entered into and been mingled with her love. But now she
loved him perfectly, because she loved as God intended her to
love. She loved him as God’s envoy sent to him.
She was still weeping, but she began to feel calm, as if the
stillness of this hour before the dawn entered into her soul. She
thought of herself now only as a vessel into which God was
pouring his purpose and his love.
Just as dawn was breaking, as the first streak of light stole
into the east and threw a frail spear of gold upon the sands, she
was conscious again of a thrill of life within her, of the move-
ment of her unborn child. Then she lifted her head from her
hand, looking towards the east, and whispered:
“Give me strength for one more thing—give me strength to
be silent!”
She waited as if for an answer. Then she rose from her
442 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
knees, bathed her face and went out to the tent door to
Androvsky.
“Boris!” she said.
He rose from his knees and looked at her, holding the little
wooden crucifix in his hand.
“Domini?” he said in an uncertain voice.
“Put it back into your breast. Keep it for ever, Boris.”
As if mechanically, and not removing his eyes from her, he
put the crucifix into his breast. After a moment she spoke
again, quietly.
“Boris, you never wished to stay here. You meant to stay
here for me. Let us go away from Amara. Let us go to-day,
now, in the dawn.”
“ Us! ” he said.
There was a profound amazement in his voice.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Away from Amara—you and I–together?”
“Yes, Boris, together.”
“Where—where can we go?”
The amazement seemed to deepen in his voice. His eyes
were watching her with an almost fierce intentness. In a flash
of insight she realised that, just then, he was wondering about
her as he had never wondered before, wondering whether she
was really the good woman at whose feet his sin-stricken soul
had worshipped. Yes, he was asking himself that question.
“Boris,” she said, “will you leave yourself in my hands?
We have talked of our future life. We have wondered what we
should do. Will you let me do as I will, let the future be as I
choose?” -
In her heart she said “as God chooses.”
“Yes, Domini,” he answered. “I am in your hands, utterly
in your hands.”
“No,” she said.
Neither of them spoke after that till the sunlight lay above
the towers and minarets of Amara. Then Domini said:
“We will go to-day—now.”
And that morning the camp was struck, and the new journey
began—the journey back. -
CHAPTER XXVIII
A SILENCE had fallen between Domini and Androvsky which
neither seemed able to break. They rode on side by side across
THE JOURNEY BACK 443
the sands towards the north through the long day. The towers
of Amara faded in the sunshine above the white crests of the
dunes. The Arab villages upon their little hills disappeared in
the quivering gold. New vistas of desert opened before them,
oases crowded with palms, salt lakes and stony ground. They
passed by native towns. They saw the negro gardeners laughing
among the rills of yellow water, or climbing with bare feet the
wrinkled tree trunks to lop away dead branches. They heard
tiny goatherds piping, solitary, in the wastes. Dreams of the
mirage rose and faded far off on the horizon, rose and faded
mystically, leaving no trembling trace behind. And they were
silent as the mirage, she in her purpose, he in his wonder. And
the long day waned, and towards evening the camp was pitched
and the evening meal was prepared. And still they could not
Speak.
Sometimes Androvsky watched her, and there was a great
calm in her face, but there was no rebuke, no smallness of anger,
no hint of despair. Always he had felt her strength of mind and
body, but never so much as now. Could he rest on it? Dared
he He did not know. And the day seemed to him to become
a dream, and the silence recalled to him the silence of the
monastery in which he had worshipped God before the stranger
came. He thought that in this silence he ought to feel that she
was deliberately raising barriers between them, but—it was
Strange—he could not feel this. In her silence there was no
bitterness. When is there bitterness in strength? He rode on
and on beside her, and his sense of a dream deepened, helped by
the influence of the desert. Where were they going? He did
not know. What was her purpose? He could not tell. But he
felt that she had a purpose, that her mind was resolved. Now
and then, tearing himself with an effort from the dream, he
asked himself what it could be. What could be in store for him,
for them, after the thing he had told 2 What could be their
mutual life? Must it not be for ever at an end ? Was it not
shattered 2 Was it not dust, like the dust of the desert that rose
round their horses’ feet? The silence did not tell him, and
again he ceased from wondering and the dream closed round
him. Were they not travelling in a mirage, mirage people,
unreal, phantom-like, who would presently fade away into the
spaces of the Sun ? The sand muffled the tread of the horses’
feet. The desert understood their silence, clothed it in a silence
more vast and more impenetrable. And Androvsky had made
his effort. He had spoken the truth at last. He could do no
444 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
more. He was incapable of any further action. As Domini
felt herself to be in the hands of God, he felt himself to be in
the hands of this woman who had received his confession with
this wonderful calm, who was leading him he knew not whither
in this wonderful silence.
When the camp was pitched, however, he noticed something
that caught him sharply away from the dreamlike, unreal feel-
ing, and set him face to face with fact that was cold as steel.
Always till now the dressing-tent had been pitched beside their
sleeping-tent, with the flap of the entrance removed so that the
two tents communicated. To-night it stood apart, near the
sleeping-tent, and in it was placed one of the Small camp beds.
Androvsky was alone when he saw this. On reaching the halt-
ing-place he had walked a little way into the desert. When
he returned he found this change. It told him something of
what was passing in Domini’s mind, and it marked the trans-
formation of their mutual life. As he gazed at the two tents he
felt stricken, yet he felt a curious sense of something that was
like—was it not like—relief? It was as if his body had re-
ceived a frightful blow and on his soul a saint's hand had been
gently laid, as if something fell about him in ruins, and at the
same time a building which he loved, and which for a moment
he had thought tottering, stood firm before him founded upon
rock. He was a man capable of a passionate belief, despite his
sin, and he had always had a passionate belief in Domini’s
religion. That morning, when she came out to him in the sand,
a momentary doubt had assailed him. He had known the
thought, “Does she love me still—does she love me more than
she loves God, more than she loves his dictates manifested in
the Catholic religion?” When she said that word “together ”
that had been his thought. Now, as he looked at the two tents,
a white light seemed to fall upon Domini’s character, and in this
white light stood the ruin and the house that was founded upon
a rock. He was torn by conflicting sensations of despair and
triumph. She was what he had believed. That made the
triumph. But since she was that where was his future with
her? The monk and the man who had fled from the monastery
stood up within him to do battle. The monk knew triumph,
but the man was in torment.
Presently, as Androvsky looked at the two tents, the monk
in him seemed to die a new death, the man who had left the
monastery to know a new resurrection. He was seized by a
"furious desire to go backward in time, to go backward but a few
THE JOURNEY BACK 445
hours, to the moment when Domini did not know what now she
knew. He cursed himself for what he had done. At last he
had been able to pray. Yes, but what was prayer now, what
was prayer to the man who looked at the two tents and under-
stood what they meant? He moved away and began to walk up
and down near to the two tents. He did not know where
Domini was. At a little distance he saw the servants busy
preparing the evening meal. Smoke rose. up before the cook's
tent, curling away stealthily among a group of palm trees,
beneath which some Arab boys were huddled, staring with wide
eyes at the unusual sight of travellers. They came from a tiny
village at a short distance off, half hidden among palm gardens.
The camels were feeding. A mule was rolling voluptuously
in the sand. At a well a shepherd was watering his flocks,
which crowded about him baaing expectantly. The air seemed
to breathe out a subtle aroma of peace and of liberty. And this
apparent presence of peace, this vision of the calm of others,
human beings and animals, added to the torture of Androvsky.
As he walked to and fro he felt as if he were being devoured
by his passions, as if he were losing the last vestiges of self-
control. Never in the monastery, never even in the night when
he left it, had he been tormented like this. For now he had a
terrible companion whom, at that time, he had not known.
Memory walked with him before the tents, the memory of
his body, recalling and calling for the past.
He had destroyed that past himself. But for him it might
have been also the present, the future. It might have lasted for
years, perhaps till death took him or Domini. Why not? He
had only had to keep silence, to insist on remaining in the desert,
far from the busy ways of men. They could have lived as cer-
tain others lived, who loved the free, the solitary life, in an oasis
of their own, tending their gardens of palms. Life would have
gone like a sunlit dream. And death? At that thought he
shuddered. Death—what would that have been to him?
What would it be now when it came? He put the thought
from him with force, as a man thrusts away from him the filthy
hand of a clamouring stranger assailing him in the street.
This evening he had no time to think of death. Life was
enough, life with this terror which he had deliberately placed
1In 11.
He thought of himself as a madman for having spoken to
Domini. He cursed himself as a madman. For he knew,
although he strove furiously not to know, how irrevocable was
446 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
his act, in consequence of the great strength of her nature. He
knew that though she had been to him a woman of fire she might
be to him a woman of iron—even to him whom she loved.
How she had loved him
He walked faster before the tents, to and fro.
How she had loved him! How she loved him still, at this
moment after she knew what he was, what he had done to her.
He had no doubt of her love as he walked there. He felt it,
like a tender hand upon him. But that hand was inflexible too.
In its softness there was firmness—firmness that would never
yield to any strength in him.
Those two tents told him the story of her strength. As he
looked at them he was looking into her soul. And her soul was
in direct conflict with his. That was what he felt. She had
thought, she had made up her mind. Quietly, silently she had
acted. By that action, without a word, she had spoken to him,
told him a tremendous thing. And the man—the passionate
man who had left the monastery—loose in him now was aflame
with an impotent desire that was like a heat of fury against her,
while the monk, hidden far down in him, was secretly worship-
ping her cleanliness of spirit. -
But the man who had left the monastery was in the ascendant
in him, and at last drove him to a determination that the monk
secretly knew to be utterly vain. He made up his mind to enter
into conflict with Domini’s strength. He felt that he must, that
he could not quietly, without a word, accept this sudden new life
of separation symbolised for him by the two tents standing
apart.
He stood still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw
Batouch laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing
on a mat, moving his head from side to side, smiling with half-
shut, vacant eyes, and singing a languid song.
This music maddened him.
“Batouch! ” he called out sharply. “Batouch!”
Batouch stopped laughing, glanced round, then came towards
him with a large pace, swinging from his hips.
“Monsieur 2 ”
“Batouch!” Androvsky said.
But he could not go on. He could not say anything about
the two tents to a servant. -
“Where—where is Madame?” he said almost stammering.
“Out there, Monsieur.”
With a Sweeping arm the poet pointed towards a hump of
THE JOURNEY BACK 447
sand crowned by a few palms. Domini was sitting there, Sur-
rounded by Arab children, to whom she was giving Sweets out of
a box. As Androvsky saw her the anger in him burnt up more
fiercely. This action of Domini’s, simple, natural though it
was, seemed to him in his present condition cruelly heartless.
He thought of her giving the order about the tents and then
going calmly to play with these children, while he—while
he
“You can go, Batouch,” he said. “Go away.”
The poet stared at him with a superb surprise, then moved
slowly towards Ouardi, holding his burnous with his large
hands.
Androvsky looked again at the two tents as a man looks at
two enemies. Then, walking quickly, he went towards the
hump of sand. As he approached it Domini had her side face
turned towards him. She did not see him. The little Arabs
were dancing round her on their naked feet, laughing, show-
ing their white teeth and opening their mouths wide for the
sugar-plums—gaiety incarnate. Androvsky gazed at the woman
who was causing this childish joy, and he saw a profound sad-
ness. Never had he seen Domini's face look like this. It was
always white, but now its whiteness was like a whiteness of
marble. She moved her head, turning to feed one of the little
gaping mouths, and he saw her eyes, tearless, but sadder than if
they had been full of tears. She was looking at these children
as a mother looks at her children who are fatherless. He did
not—how could he?—understand the look, but it went to his
heart. He stopped, watching. One of the children saw him,
shrieked, pointed. Domini glanced round. As she saw him
she smiled, threw the last sugar-plums and came towards him.
“Do you want me?” she said, coming up to him.
His lips trembled.
“Yes,” he said, “I want you.”
Something in his voice seemed to startle her, but she said
nothing more, only stood looking at him. The children, who
had followed her, crowded round them, touching their clothes
curiously.
“Send them away,” he said.
She made the children go, pushing them gently, pointing to
the village, and showing the empty box to them. Reluctantly
at last they went towards the village, turning their heads to
stare at her till they were a long way off, then holding up their
skirts and racing for the houses.
448 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“Domini—Domini,” he said. “You can—you can play with
children—to-day.”
“I wanted to feel I could give a little happiness to-day,” she
answered—“ even to-day.”
“To-day when—when to me—to me—you are giving
But before her steady gaze all the words he had meant to
say, all the words of furious protest, died on his lips.
“To me—to me ” he repeated.
Then he was silent. .
“Boris,” she said, “I want to give you one thing, the thing
that you have lost. I want to give you back peace.”
“You never can.”
“I must try. Even if I cannot I shall know that I have
tried.”
“You are giving me—you are giving me not peace, but a
sword,” he said.
She understood that he had seen the two tents.
“Sometimes a sword can give peace.”
“The peace of death.”
“Boris—my dear one—there are many kinds of deaths.
Try to trust me. Leave me to act as I must act. Let me try
to be guided—only let me try.”
He did not say another word.
That night they slept apart for the first time since their
marriage.
“ Domini, where are you taking me? Where are we going?”
The camp was struck once more and they were riding
through the desert. Domini hesitated to answer his question.
It had been put with a sort of terror.
“I know nothing,” he continued. “I am in your hands
like a child. It cannot be always so. I must know, I must
understand. What is our life to be? What is our future? A
IIlan Cann Ot 3 y
He paused. Then he said:
“I feel that you have come to some resolve. I feel it per-
petually. It is as if you were in light and I in darkness, you
in knowledge and I in ignorance. You—you must tell me. I
have told you all now. You must tell me.”
But she hesitated.
“Not now,” she answered. “Not yet.”
“We are to journey on day by day like this, and I am not to
know where we are going! I cannot, Domini—I will not.”
THE JOURNEY BACK 449
“Boris, I shall tell you.”
“When 2 °
“Will you trust me, Boris, completely? Can you?”
& 4 How P } }
“Boris, I have prayed so much for you that at last I feel that
I can act for you. Don't think me presumptuous. If you could
see into my heart you would see that—indeed, I don’t think it
would be possible to feel more humble than I do in regard to
you.”
“ Humble—you, Dominil You can feel humble when you
think of me, when you are with me.” -
“Yes. You have suffered so terribly. God has led you. I
feel that He has been—oh, I don’t know how to say it quite
naturally, quite as I feel it—that He has been more intent on
you than on anyone I have ever known. I feel that his meaning
in regarding to you is intense, Boris, as if he would not let
you go.”
“He let me go when I left the monastery.”
“Does one never return ?” -
Again a sensation almost of terror assailed him. He felt as
if he were fighting in darkness something that he could not
See.
“Return l’’ he said. “What do you mean?”
She saw the expression of almost angry fear in his face. It
warned her not to give the reins to her natural impulse, which
was always towards a great frankness. sº
“Boris, you fled from God, but do you not think it possible
that you could ever return to Him? Have you not taken the
first step? Have you not prayed 2 ”
His face changed, grew slightly calmer.
“You told me I could pray,” he answered, almost like a
child. “Otherwise I—I should not have dared to. I should
have felt that I was insulting God.” -
“If you trusted me in such a thing, can you not trust me
now 2 ”
“But "--he said uneasily—“but this is different, a worldly
matter, a matter of daily life. I shall have to know.”
& C Yes.”
“Then why should I not know now? At any moment I
could ask Batouch.”
“Batouch only knows from day to day. I have a map of the
desert. I got it before we left Beni-Mora.” -
Something—perhaps a very slight hesitation in her voice just
45C, THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
before she said the last words—startled him. He turned on his
horse and looked at her hard.
“Domini,” he said, “are we—we are not going back to
Beni-Mora?”
“I will tell you to-night,” she replied in a low voice. “Let
me tell you to-night.”
He said no more, but he gazed at her for a long time as if
striving passionately to read her thoughts. But he could not.
Her white face was calm, and she rode looking straight before
her, as one that looked towards some distant goal to which all
her soul was journeying with her body. There was something
mystical in her face, in that straight, far-seeing glance, that
surely pierced beyond the blue horizon line and reached a far-
off world. What world 2 He asked himself the question, but
no answer came, and he dropped his eyes. A new and horrible
sadness came to him, a new sensation of separation from Domini.
She had set their bodies apart, and he had yielded. Now, was
she not setting something else apart? For, in spite of all, in
spite of his treacherous existence with her, he had so deeply and
entirely loved her that he had sometimes felt, dared to feel,
that in their passion in the desert their souls had been fused
together. His was black—he knew it—and hers was white.
But had not the fire and the depth of their love conquered all
differences, made even their souls one as their bodies had been
one? And now was she not silently, subtly, withdrawing her
Soul from his? A sensation of acute despair swept over him,
of utter impotence. -
“Domini ’’ he said, “Dominil "
“Yes,” she answered.
And this time she withdrew her eyes from the blue distance
and looked at him.
“ Domini, you must trust me.”
He was thinking of the two tents set the one apart from the
other.
“Domini, I’ve borne something in silence. I haven’t spoken.
I wanted to speak. I tried—but I did not. I bore my punish-
ment—you don't know, you’ll never know what I felt last—last
night—when—I’ve borne that. But there's one thing I can’t
bear. I’ve lived a lie with you. My love for you overcame me.
I fell. I have told you that I fell. Don't—don't because of
that—don't take away your heart from me entirely. Domini—
Domini—don't do that.”
She heard a sound of despair in his voice.
THE JOURNEY BACK 45I
“Oh, Boris,” she said, “if you knew There was only one
moment when I fancied my heart was leaving you. It passed
almost before it came, and now 3.
“But,” he interrupted, “do you know—do you know that
since—since I spoke, since I told you, you've—you've never
touched me?”
“Yes, I know it,” she replied quietly. -
Something told him to be silent then. Something told him
to wait till the night came and the camp was pitched once more.
They rested at noon for several hours, as it was impossible to
travel in the heat of the day. The camp started an hour before
they did. Only Batouch remained behind to show them the
way to Ain-la-Hammam, where they would pass the following
night. When Batouch brought the horses he said:
“Does Madame know the meaning of Ain-la-Hammam 2 ”
“No,” said Domini. “What is it?”
“Source des tourterelles,” replied Batouch. “I was there
once with an English traveller.”
“Source des tourterelles,” repeated Domini. “Is it beauti-
ful, Batouch? It sounds as if it ought to be beautiful.”
She scarcely knew why, but she had a longing that Ain-la-
Hammam might be tender, calm, a place to soothe the spirit, a
place in which Androvsky might be influenced to listen to what
she had to tell him without revolt, without despair. Once he
had spoken about the influence of place, about rising superior
to it. But she believed in it, and she waited, almost anxiously,
for the reply of Batouch. As usual it was enigmatic.
“Madame will see,” he answered. “Madame will see. But
the Englishman 5 y
“Yes?”
“The Englishman was ravished. ‘This,” he said to me,
‘this, Batouch, is a little Paradise!” And there was no moon
then. To-night there will be a moon.”
“Paradise!” exclaimed Androvsky.
He sprang upon his horse and pulled up the reins. Domini
said no more. They had started late. It was night when they
reached Ain-la-Hammam. As they drew near Domini looked
before her eagerly through the pale gloom that hung over the
sand. She saw no village, only a very small grove of palms and
near it the outline of a bordj. The place was set in a cup of
the Sahara. All around it rose low hummocks of sand. On
two or three of them were isolated clumps of palms. Here the
eyes roamed over no vast distances. There was little suggestion,
452 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
of space. She drew up her horse on one of the hummocks and
gazed down. She heard doves murmuring in their soft voices
among the trees. The tents were pitched near the bordj.
“What does Madame think?” asked Batouch. “Does
Madame agree with the Englishman?”
“It is a strange little place,” she answered.
She listened to the voices of the doves. A dog barked by
the bordj.
“It is almost like a hiding-place,” she added.
Androvsky said nothing, but he, too, was gazing intently at
the trees below them, he, too, was listening to the voices of the
doves. After a moment he looked at her.
“Domini,” he whispered. “Here—won’t you—won't you
let me touch your hand again here?”
“Come, Boris,” she answered. “It is late.”
They rode down into Ain-la-Hammam.
The tents had all been pitched near together on the south of
the bordj, and separated by it from the tiny oasis. Opposite to
them was a Café Maure of the humblest kind, a hovel of baked
earth and brushwood, with earthen divans and a coffee niche.
Before this was squatting a group of five dirty desert men,
the sole inhabitants of Ain-la-Hammam. Just before dinner
Domini gave an order to Batouch, and, while they were dining,
Androvsky noticed that their people were busy unpegging the
two sleeping-tents.
“What are they doing?” he said to Domini, uneasily. In
his present condition everything roused in him anxiety. In
every unusual action he discerned the beginning of some tragedy
which might affect his life. -
“ I told Batouch to put our tents on the other side of the
bordj,” she answered.
“Yes. But why?”
“I thought that to-night it would be better if we were a little
more alone than we are here, just opposite to that Café Maure,
and with the servants. And on the other side there are the
palms and the water. And the doves were talking there as we
rode in. When we have finished dinner we can go and sit
there and be quiet.”
“Together,” he said.
An eager light had come into his eyes. He leaned forward
towards her over the little table and stretched out his hand.
“Yes, together,” she said.
But she did not take his hand,
THE JOURNEY BACK 453
“Domini ' " he said, still keeping his hand on the table,
“ Domini | * •
An expression, that was like an expression of agony, flitted
over her face and died away, leaving it calm.
“Let us finish,” she said quietly. “Look, they have taken
the tents! In a moment we can go.”
The doves were silent. The night was very still in this nest
of the Sahara. Ouardi brought them coffee, and Batouch came
to say that the tents were ready.
“We shall want nothing more to-night, Batouch,” Domini
said. “Don’t disturb us.”
Batouch glanced towards the Café Maure. A red light
gleamed through its low doorway. One or two Arabs were
moving within. Some of the camp attendants had joined the
squatting men without. A noise of busy voices reached the
tentS.
“To-night, Madame,” Batouch said proudly, “I am going to
tell stories from the Thousand and One Nights. I am going to
tell the story of the young Prince of the Indies, and the story of
Ganem, the Slave of Love. It is not often that in Ain-la-
Hammam a poet 5 J
“No, indeed. Go to them, Batouch. They must be im-
patient for you.”
Batouch smiled broadly.
“Madame begins to understand the Arabs,” he rejoined.
“Madame will soon be as the Arabs.” -
“Go, Batouch. Look—they are longing for you.”
She pointed to the desert men, who were gesticulating and
gazing towards the tents.
“It is better so, Madame,” he answered. “They know that
I am here only for one night, and they are eager as the hungry
jackal is eager for food among the yellow dunes of the sand.”
He threw his burnous over his shoulder and moved away
Smiling, and murmuring in a luscious voice the first words of
Ganem, the Slave of Love.
“Let us go now, Boris,” Domini said. *
He got up at once from the table, and they walked together
round the bordj.
On its further side there was no sign of life. No traveller
was resting there that night, and the big door that led into the
inner court was closed and barred. The guardian had gone to
join the Arabs at the Café Maure. Between the shadow cast by
the bordj and the shadow cast by the palm trees stood the two
454 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
tents on a patch of sand. The oasis was enclosed in a low earth
wall, along the top of which was a ragged edging of brushwood.
In this wall were several gaps. Through one, opposite to the
tents, was visible a shallow pool of still water by which tall
reeds were growing. They stood up like spears, absolutely
motionless. A frog was piping from some hidden place, giving
forth a clear flute-like note that suggested glass. It reminded
Domini of her ride into the desert at Beni-Mora to see the
moon rise. On that night Androvsky had told her that he was
going away. That had been the night of his tremendous
struggle with himself. When he had spoken she had felt a
sensation as if everything that supported her in the atmosphere
of life and of happiness had foundered. And now—now she
was going to Speak to him—to tell him—what was she going to
tell him? How much could she, dared she, tell him? She
prayed silently to be given strength.
In the clear sky the young moon hung. Beneath it, to the
left, was one star like an attendant, the star of Venus. The
faint light of the moon fell upon the water of the pool. Un-
ceasingly the frog uttered its nocturne. -
Domini stood for a moment looking at the water listening.
Then she glanced up at the moon and the solitary star.
Androvsky stood by her.
“Shall we—let us sit on the wall, where the gap is,” she said.
“The water is beautiful, beautiful with that light on it, and the
palms—palms are always beautiful, especially at night. I shall
never love any other trees as I love palm trees.”
“Nor I,” he answered.
They sat down on the wall. At first they did not speak any
more. The stillness of the water, the stillness of reeds and
palms, was against speech. And the little flute-like note that
came to them again and again at regular intervals was like a
magical measuring of the silence of the night in the desert. At
last Domini said, in a low voice:
“I heard that note on the night when I rode out of Beni-
Mora to see the moon rise in the desert. Boris, you remember
that night?”
“Yes,” he answered.
He was gazing at the pool, with his face partly averted from
her, one hand on the wall, the other resting on his knee.
“You were brave that night, Boris,” she said.
“I—I wished to be—I tried to be, And if I had been } |
He stopped, then went on:
| THE JOURNEY BACK 455
“If I had been, Domini, really brave, if I had done what I
meant to do that night, what would our lives have been to-
day?”
“I don’t know. We mustn't think of that to-night. We
must think of the future. Boris, there's no life, no real life
without bravery. No man or woman is worthy of living who is
not brave.”
He said nothing.
“Boris, let us—you and I–be worthy of living to-night—and
in the future.”
“Give me your hand then,” he answered. “Give it me,
Domini.”
But she did not give it to him. Instead she went on, speak-
ing a little more rapidly:
“Boris, don’t rely too much on my strength. I am only a
woman, and I have to struggle. I have had to struggle more
than perhaps you will ever know. You must not make—make
things impossible for me. I am trying—very hard—to—I'm—
you must not touch me to-night, Boris.”
She drew a little farther away from him. A faint breath of
air made the leaves of the palm trees rustle slightly, made the
reeds move for an instant by the pool. He laid his hand again
on the wall from which he had lifted it. There was a pleading
sound in her voice which made him feel as if it were speaking
close against his heart.
“I said I would tell you to-night where we are going.”
“Tell me now.”
“We are going back to Beni-Mora. We are not very far off
from Beni-Mora to-night—not very far.”
“We are going to Beni-Mora! ” he repeated in a dull voice.
“We are—”
He sat up on the wall, looking straight into her face.
“Why?” he said. His voice was sharp now, sharp with
fear. -
“Boris, do you want to be at peace, not with me, but with
God? Do you want to get rid of your burden of misery, which
increases—I know it—day by day?”
“How can I?” he said hopelessly.
“Isn't expiation the only way? I think it is.”
“Expiation How—how can—I can never expiate my sin.”
“There's no sin that cannot be expiated. God isn’t merciless.
Come back with me to Beni-Mora. That little church—where
you married me—come back to it with me. You could not con-
456 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
fess to the to Father Beret. I feel as if I knew why. Where
you married me you will—you must—make your confession.”
“To the priest who—to Father Roubier | * -
There was fierce protest in his voice.
“It does not matter who is the priest who will receive your
confession. Only make it there—make it in the church at
Beni-Mora where you married me.”
“That was your purpose! That is where you are taking me!
I can’t go, I won't! Domini, think what you are doing! You
are asking too much 5 y
“I feel that God is asking that of you. Don’t refuse Him.”
“I cannot go—at Beni-Mora where we–where everything
will remind us 5 y
“Ah, don't you think I shall feel it too? Don’t you think I
shall suffer?”
He felt horribly ashamed when she said that, bowed down
with an overwhelming weight of shame.
“But our lives "--he stammered—“ but—if I go—afterwards
—if I make my confession—afterwards—afterwards?”
“Isn't it enough to think of that one thing? Isn't it better
to put everything else, every other thought, away? It seems so
clear to me that we should go to Beni-Mora. I feel as if I had
been told—as a child is told to do something by its father.”
She looked up into the clear sky.
“I am sure I have been told,” she added. “I know I have.”
There was a long silence between them. Androvsky felt that
he did not dare to break it. Something in Domini's face and
voice cast out from him the instinct of revolt, of protest. He
began to feel exhausted, without power, like a sick man who is
being carried by bearers in a litter, and who looks at the land-
Scape through which he is passing with listless eyes, and who
scarcely has the force to care whither he is being borne.
“Domini,” he said at last, and his voice sounded very tired,
“if you say I must go to Beni-Mora I will go. I have done you
a great wrong and—and } }
“Don’t think of me any more,” she said. “Think—think
as I do—of-of What am I? I have loved you, I shall
always love you, but I am as you are, here for a little while,
elsewhere for all eternity. You told him—that man in the
monastery—that we are shadows set in a world of shadows.”
“That was a lie,” he interrupted, and the weariness had gone
out of his voice. “When I said that I had never loved, I had
never loved you.”
THE JOURNEY BACK 457
“Or was it a half-truth? Aren't we, perhaps, shadow now
in comparison to what we shall be? Isn't this world, even this
—this desert, this pool with the light on it, this silence of the
night around us—isn't all this a shadow in comparison to the
world where we are going, you and I? Boris, I think if we are
brave now we shall be together in that world. But if we are
cowards now, I think, I am sure, that in that world—the real
world—we shall be separated for ever. You and I, whatever
we may be, whatever we may have done, at least are one thing—
we are believers. We don’t think this is all. If we did it
would be different. But we can’t change the truth that is in
our souls, and as we can't change it we must live by it, we
must act by it. We can’t do anything else. I can't—and
you? Don't you feel, don't you know, that you can’t?”
“To-night,” he said, “I feel that I know nothing—nothing
except that I am suffering.”
His voice broke on the last words. Tears were shining in
his eyes. After a long silence he said:
“Domini, take me where you will. If it is to Beni-Mora I
will go. But—but—afterwards?”
“Afterwards ” she said.
Then she stopped.
The little note of the frog sounded again and again by the
still water among the reeds. The moon was higher in the
sky.
“Don’t let us think of afterwards, Boris,” she said at length.
“That song we have heard together, that song we love—“No
one but God and I knows what is in my heart.' I hear it now
so often, always almost. It seems to gather meaning, it seems
to—God knows what is in your heart and mine. He will
take care of the—afterwards. Perhaps in our hearts already He
has put a secret knowledge of the end.” -
“Has He—has He put it—that knowledge—into yours?”
“Hush ' " she said.
They spoke no more that night.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.
Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the
mules, were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in
the direction of the mountains and the dark shadow which
458 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
indicated the oasis of Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them.
Domini and Androvsky were going to be alone on this last stage
of their desert journey. They had mounted their horses before
the great door of the bordj, said good-bye to the Sheikh of Arba,
scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to
watch them go, and cast one last look behind them.
In that mutual, instinctive look back they were both bidding
a silent farewell to the desert, that had sheltered their passion,
surely taken part in the joy of their love, watched the sorrow
and the terror grow in it to the climax at Amara, and was now
whispering to them a faint and mysterious farewell.
To Domini the desert had always been as a great and signifi-
cant personality, a personality that had called her persistently
to come to it. Now, as she turned on her horse, she felt as if it
were calling her no longer, as if its mission to her were ac-
complished, as if its voice had sunk into a deep and breathless
silence. She wondered if Androvsky felt this too, but she did
not ask him. His face was pale and severe. His eyes stared
into the distance. His hands lay on his horse's neck like tired
things with no more power to grip and hold. His lips were
slightly parted, and she heard the sound of his breath coming
and going like the breath of a man who is struggling. This
sound warned her not to try his strength or hers.
“Come, Boris,” she said, and her voice held none of the pas-
sionate regret that was in her heart, “we mustn't linger, or it
will be night before we reach Beni-Mora.”
“Let it be night,” he said. “Dark night!”
The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which
stood the bordj.
“Dark—dark night!” he said again.
She said nothing. They rode into the plain. When they
were there he said: - -
“Domini, do you understand—do you realise?”
“What, Boris?” she asked quietly.
“All that we are leaving to-day ?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Are we–are we leaving it for ever?”
“We must not think of that.” -
“How can we help it? What else can we think of Can
one govern the mind?”
“Surely, if we can govern the heart.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes I wonder
He looked at her. Something in her face made it impossible
y )
THE JOURNEY BACK 4.59
for him to go on, to say what he had been going to say. But
she understood the unfinished sentence. ... ."
“If you can wonder, Boris,” she said, “ you don't know me,
you don’t know me at all!”
“Domini,” he said, “I don’t wonder. But sometimes I
understand your strength, and sometimes it seems to me scarcely
human, Scarcely the strength of a woman.”
She lifted her whip and pointed to the dark shadow far
aWay.
“I can just see the tower,” she said. “Can't you?”
“I will not look,” he said. “I cannot. If you can, you are
stronger than I. When I remember that it was on that tower
you first spoke to me—oh, Domini, if we could only go back!
It is in our power. We have only to draw a rein and—
and 3 y -
“I look at the tower,” she said, “as once I looked at the
desert. It calls us, the shadow of the palm trees calls us, as
once the desert did.”
“But the voice—what a different voice! Can you listen
to it?” & -
“I have been listening to it ever since we left Amara. Yes,
it is a different voice, but we must obey it as we obeyed the
voice of the desert. Don't you feel that?”
“If I do it is because you tell me to feel it; you tell me that
I must feel it.”
His words seemed to hurt her. An expression of pain came
into her face. -
“Boris,” she said, “don’t make me regret too terribly that
I ever came into your life. When you speak like that I feel
almost as if you were putting me in the place of of I feel
as if you were depending upon me for everything that you are
doing, as if you were letting your own will fall asleep. The
desert brings dreams. I know that. But we, you and I, we
must not dream any more.”
“A dream, you call it—the life we have lived together, our
desert life?”
“Boris, I only mean that we must live strongly now, act
strongly now, that we must be brave. I have always felt that
there was strength in you.” -
“Strength !” he said bitterly.
“Yes. Otherwise I could never have loved you. Don’t ever
prove to me that I was utterly wrong. I can bear a great deal.
But that—I don't feel as if I could bear that.”
y
46O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
After a moment he answered:
“I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me.”
And he lifted his eyes and fixed them upon the tower with a
sort of stern intentness, as a man looks at something cruel,
terrible. -
She saw him do this.
“Let us ride quicker,” she said. “To-night we must be in
Beni-Mora.”
He said nothing, but he touched his horse with his heel. His
eyes were always fixed upon the tower, as if they feared to look
at the desert any more. She understood that when he had said
“I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me,” he had
not spoken idly. He had waked up from the egoism of his
despair. He had been able to see more clearly into her heart, to
feel more rightly what she was feeling than he had before. As
she watched him watching the tower, she had a sensation that
a bond, a new bond between them, was chaining them together
in a new way. Was it not a bond that would be strong and
lasting, that the future, whatever it held, would not be able to
break? Ties, sacred ties, that had bound them together might,
must, be snapped asunder. And the end was not yet. She saw,
as she gazed at the darkness of the palms of Beni-Mora, a
greater darkness approaching, deeper than any darkness of
palms, than any darkness of night. But now she saw also a ray
of light in the gloom, the light of the dawning strength, the
dawning unselfishness in Androvsky. And she resolved to fix
her eyes upon it as he fixed his eyes upon the tower.
Just after sunset they rode into Beni-Mora in advance of the
camp, which they had passed upon their way. To the right were
the trees of Count Anteoni's garden. Domini felt them, but she
did not look towards them. Nor did Androvsky. They kept
their eyes fixed upon the distance of the white road. Only
when they reached the great hotel, now closed and deserted, did
she glance away. She could not pass the tower without seeing
it. But she saw it through a mist of tears, and her hands trem-
bled upon the reins they held. For a moment she felt that she
must break down, that she had no more strength left in her.
But they came to the statue of the Cardinal holding the double
cross towards the desert like a weapon. And she looked at it
and saw the Christ.
“Boris,” she whispered, “there is the Christ. Let us think
only of that to-night.”
She saw him look at it steadily.
THE JOURNEY BACK 46 I
“You remember,” she said, “at the bottom of the avenue of
cypresses—at El-Largani—Factus obediens usque ad mortem
Crucis?”
“Yes, Domini.”
“We can be obedient too. Let us be obedient too.”
When she said that, and looked at him, Androvsky felt as if
he were on his knees before her, as he was upon his knees in the
garden when he could not go away. But he felt, too, that then,
though he had loved her, he had not known how to love her,
how to love anyone. She had taught him now. The lesson
sank into his heart like a sword and like balm. It was as if he
were slain and healed by the same stroke.
That night, as Domini lay in the lonely room in the hotel,
with the French windows open to the verandah, she heard the
church clock chime the hour and the distant sound of the Afri-
can hautboy in the street of the dancers, she heard again the
two voices. The hautboy was barbarous and provocative, but
she thought that it was no more shrill with a persistent triumph.
Presently the church bell chimed again.
Was it the bell of the church of Beni-Mora, or the bell of the
chapel of El-Largani? Or was it not rather the voice of the
great religion to which she belonged, to which Androvsky was
returning?
When it ceased she whispered to herself, “Factus obediens
wsque ad mortem Crucis.” And with these words upon her lips
towards dawn she fell asleep. They had dined upstairs in the
little room that had formerly been Domini’s salon, and had not
seen Father Roubier, who always came to the hotel to take his
evening meal. In the morning, after they had breakfasted,
Androvsky said:
“Domini, I will go. I will go now.”
He got up and stood by her, looking down at her. In his
face there was a sort of sternness, a set expression.
“To Father Roubier, Boris?” she said.
“Yes. Before I go won't you—won't you give me your
hand P’’
She understood all the agony of spirit he was enduring, all
the shame against which he was fighting. She longed to spring
up, to take him in her arms, to comfort him as only the woman
he loves and who loves him can comfort a man, without words,
by the pressure of her arms, the pressure of her lips, the beating
of her heart against his heart. She longed to do this so ardently
that she moved restlessly, looking up at him with a light in her
462 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
eyes that he had never seen in them before, not even when they
watched the fire dying down at Arba. But she did not lift her
hand to his. -
“Boris,” she said, “go. God will be with you.”
After a moment she added:
“And all my heart.”
He stood, as if waiting, a long time. She had ceased from
moving and had withdrawn her eyes from his. In his soul a
voice was saying, “If she does not touch you now she will
never touch you again.” And he waited. He could not help
waiting. -
“Boris,” she whispered, “good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” he said.
“Come to me—afterwards. Come to me in the garden. I
shall be there where we–I shall be there waiting for you.”
He went out without another word.
When he was gone she went on to the verandah quickly and
looked over the parapet. She saw him come out from beneath
the arcade and walk slowly across the road to the little gate of
the enclosure before the house of the priest. As he lifted his
hands to open the gate there was the sound of a bark, and she
saw Bous-Bous run out with a manner of stern inquiry, which
quickly changed to joyful welcome as he recognised an old
acquaintance. Androvsky bent down, took up the little dog in
his arms, and, holding him, walked to the house door. In a
moment it was opened and he went in. Then Domini set out
towards the garden, avoiding the village street, and taking a
byway which skirted the desert. She walked quickly. She
longed to be within the shadows of the garden behind the white
wall. She did not feel much, think much, as she walked.
Without self-consciously knowing it she was holding all her
nature, the whole of herself, fiercely in check. She did not look
about her, did not see the sunlit reaches of the desert, or the
walls of the houses of Beni-Mora, or the palm trees. Only
when she had passed the hotel and the negro village and turned
to the left, to the track at the edge of which the villa of Count
Anteoni stood, did she lift her eyes from the ground. They
rested on the white arcade framing the fierce blue of the cloud-
less sky. She stopped short. Her nature seemed to escape
from the leash by which she had held it in with a rush, to leap
forward, to be in the garden and in the past, in the past with
its passion and its fiery hopes, its magnificent looking forward,
its holy desires of joy that would crown her woman's life, of
THE JOURNEY BACK 463
love that would teach her all the depth, and the height, and
the force, and the submission of her womanhood. And then,
from that past, it strove on into the present. The shock was as
the shock of battle. There were noises in her ears, voices clam-
ouring in her heart. All her pulses throbbed like hammers, and
then suddenly she felt as weak as a little sick child, and as if she
must lie down there on the dust of the white road in the sun-
shine, lie down and die at the edge of the desert that had treated
her cruelly, that had slain the hopes it had given to her and
brought into her heart this terrible despair.
For now she knew a moment of utter despair, in which all
things seemed to dissolve into atoms and sink down out of
her sight. She stood quivering in blackness. She stood
absolutely alone, more absolutely alone than any woman had
ever been, than any human being had ever been. She seemed
presently, as the blackness faded into something pale, like a
ghastly twilight, to see herself—her wraith, as it were-stand-
ing in a vast landscape, vast as the desert, companionless, lost,
forgotten, out of mind, watching for something that would
never come, listening for some voice that was hushed in eternal
silence. *
That was to be her life, she thought—could she face it?
Could she endure it? And everything within her said to her
that she could not. 8
And then, just then, when she felt that she must sink down
and give up the battle of life, she seemed to see by her side a
shape, a little shape like a child. And it lifted up a hand to her
hand.
And she knew that the vast landscape was God’s garden, the
Garden of Allah, and that no day, no night could ever pass
without God walking in it.
Hearing a knock upon the great gate of the garden Smain
uncurled himself on his mat within the tent, rose lazily to his
feet, and, without a rose, strolled languidly to open to the
visitor. Domini stood without. When he saw her he smiled
quietly, with no surprise.
“Madame has returned 2 ”
Domini Smiled at him, but her lips were trembling, and she
said nothing.
Smain observed her with a dawning of curiosity.
“Madame is changed,” he said at length. “Madame looks
tired. The Sun is hot in the desert now. It is better here in the
garden.”
464 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
With an effort she controlled herself.
“Yes, Smain,” she answered, “it is better here. But I can-
not stay here long.”
“You are going away?”
“Yes, I am going away.”
She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and
added:
“And now I want to walk in the garden alone.”
He waved his hand towards the trees.
“It is all for Madame. Monsieur the Count has always
said so. But Monsieur?” -
“He is in Beni-Mora. He is coming presently to fetch me.”
Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great
sweep of sand towards the trees and was taken by their dark-
ness. She heard again the liquid bubbling of the hidden water-
fall, and was again companioned by the mystery of this desert
Paradise, but it no longer whispered to her of peace for her. It
murmured only its own personal peace and accentuated her own
personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it still was,
but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the
full terror of Nature's equanimity environing the fierce and tor-
tured lives of men.
As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden
along the winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation
of approaching the hidden home of the Geni of the garden.
Yet she remembered acutely all her first feelings there. Not one
was forgotten. They returned to her like spectres stealing
across the sand. They lurked like spectres among the dense
masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes, not
to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more
from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring
towards the sun. But with each step she took the torment in
her heart increased. At last she came to the deeper darkness
and the blanched sand, and saw pine needles strewed about her
feet. Then she stood still, instinctively listening for a sound
that would complete the magic of the garden and her own
despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she
wanted, that she needed it—the sound of the flute of Larbi
playing his amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent.
Had he fallen out of an old love and not yet found a new 2 or
had he, perhaps, gone away? or was he dead? For a long time
she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and his flute and his
love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she felt
THE JOURNEY BACK 465
that she could not leave the desert without bidding them fare-
well.
But the silence lasted and she went on and came to the
fumoir. She went into it at once and sat down. She was
going to wait for Androvsky here.
Her mind was straying curiously to-day. Suddenly she found
herself thinking of the fanatical religious performance she had
seen with Hadj on the night when she had ridden out to watch
the moon rise. She saw in imagination the bowing bodies, the
foaming mouths, the glassy eyes of the young priests of the
Sahara. She saw the spikes behind their eyeballs, the struggling
scorpions descending into their throats, the flaming coals under
their arm-pits, the nails driven into their heads. She heard them
growling as they saw the glass, like hungry beasts at the sight of
meat. And all this was to them religion. This madness was
their conception of worship. A voice seemed to whisper to her:
“And your madness?”
It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the
cemetery of El-Largani, “Come out with me into that world,
that beautiful world which God made for men. Why do you
reject it?”
For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the re-
nunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of
madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the
fetish worship of the savage. And a wild thrill of something
that was almost like joy rushed through her, the joy that some-
times comes to the unbelievers when they are about to commit
some act which they feel would be contrary to God’s will if
there were a God. It was a thrill of almost insolent human
emancipation. The soul cried out: “I have no master. When
I thought I had a master I was mad. Now I am sane.”
But it passed almost as it came, like a false thing slinking
from the sunlight, and Domini bowed her head in the obscurity
of Count Anteoni's thinking-place and returned to her true self.
That moment had been like the moment upon the tower when
she saw below her the Jewess dancing upon the roof for the
soldiers, a black Speck settling for an instant upon whiteness,
then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she
would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a
human being, that there would always be in her blood some-
thing that was self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already
in Paradise? She sat and prayed for strength in the battle of
life, that could never be anything else but a battle.
466 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
At last something within her told her to look up, to look out
through the window-space into the garden. She had not heard
a step, but she knew that Androvsky was approaching, and, as
she looked up, she prepared herself for a sight that would be
terrible. She remembered his face when he came to bid her
good-bye in the garden, and she feared to see his face now. But
she schooled herself to be strong, for herself and for him.
He was near her on the path coming towards her. As she
saw him she uttered a little cry and stood up. An immense Sur-
prise came to her, followed in a moment by an immense joy—
the greatest joy, she thought, that she had ever experienced.
For she looked on a face in which she saw for the first time a
pale dawning of peace. There was sadness in it, there was awe,
but there was a light of calm, such as sometimes settles upon the
faces of men who have died quietly without agony or fear. And
she felt fully, as she saw it, the rapture of having refused cow-
ardice and grasped the hand of bravery. Directly afterwards
there came to her a sensation of wonder that at this moment of
their lives she and Androvsky should be capable of a feeling.
of joy, of peace. When the wonder passed it was as if she had
seen God and knew for ever the meaning of His divine
compensations.
Androvsky came to the doorway of the fumoir without look-
ing up, stood still there—just where Count Anteoni had stood
during his first interview with Domini—and said:
“Domini, I have been to the priest. I have made my con-
fession.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Boris!”
He came into the fumoir and sat down near her, but not close
to her, on one of the divans. Now the sad look in his face had
deepened and the peace seemed to be fading. She had thought
of the dawn—that pale light which is growing into day. Now
she thought of the twilight which is fading into night. And
the terrible knowledge struck her, “I am the troubler of his
peace. Without me only could he ever regain fully the peace
which he has lost.”
“Domini,” he said, looking up at her, “you know the rest.
You meant it to be as it will be when we left Amara.”
“Was there any other way? Was there any other possible
life for us—for you—for me?”
“For you!” he said, and there was a sound almost of despair
in his voice. “But what is to be your life? I have never pro-
tected you—you have protected me. I have never been strong
THE JOURNEY BACK 467
for you—you have been strong for me. But to leave you—all
alone, Domini, must I do that? Must I think of you out in the
world alone?”
For a moment she was tempted to break her silence, to tell
him the truth, that she would perhaps not be alone, that another
life, sprung from his and hers, was coming to be with her, was
coming to share the great loneliness that lay before her. But
she resisted the temptation and only said:
“Do not think of me, Boris.”
“You tell me not to think of you!” he said with an almost
fierce wonder. “Do you—do you wish me not to think of
you?”
“What I wish—that is so little, but—no, Boris, I can't say—
I don’t think I could ever truly say that I wish you to think no
more of me. After all, one has a heart, and I think if it's worth
anything it must be often a rebellious heart. I know mine is
rebellious. But if you don’t think too much of me—when you
are there } }
She paused, and they looked at each other for a moment in
silence. Then she continued:
“Surely it will be easier for you, happier for you.”
Androvsky clenched his right hand on the divan and turned
round till he was facing her full. His eyes blazed.
“Domini,” he said, “you are truthful. I’ll be truthful to
you. Till the end of my life I’ll think of you—every day, every
hour. If it were mortal sin to think of you I would commit it—
yes, Domini, deliberately, I would commit it. But—God
doesn’t ask so much of us; no, God doesn't. I’ve made my
confession. I know what I must do. I’ll do it. You are right
—you are always right—you are guided, I know that. But I
will think of you. And I’ll tell you something—don't shirk
from it, because it's truth, the truth of my soul, and you
love truth. Domini } } -
Suddenly he got up from the divan and stood before her,
looking down at her steadily.
“Domini, I can’t regret that I have seen you, that we have
been together, that we have loved each other, that we do love
each other for ever. I can’t regret it; I can’t even try or wish
to. I can’t regret that I have learned from you the meaning of
life. I know that God has punished me for what I have done.
In my love for you—till I told you the truth, that other truth—
I never had a moment of peace—of exultation, yes, of passion-
ate exultation; but never, never a moment of peace. For always,
468 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
even in the most beautiful moments, there has been agony for
me. For always I have known that I was sinning against God
and you, against myself, my eternal vows. And yet now I tell
you, Domini, as I have told God since I have been able to pray
again, that I am glad, thankful, that I have loved you, been
loved by you. Is it wicked 2 I don't know. I can Scarcely
even care, because it's true. And how can I deny the truth,
strive against truth? I am as I am, and I am that. God has
made me that. God will forgive me for being as I am. I'm
not afraid. I believe—I dare to believe—that He wishes me
to think of you always till the end of my life. I dare to believe
that He would almost hate me if I could ever cease from loving
you. That's my other confession—my confession to you. I
was born, perhaps, to be a monk. But I was born, too, that I
might love you and know your love, your beauty, your tender-
ness, your divinity. If I had not known you, if I had died a
monk, a good monk who had never denied his vows, I should
have died—I feel it, Domini—in a great, a terrible ignorance.
I should have known the goodness of God, but I should never
have known part, a beautiful part, of His goodness. For I
should never have known the goodness that He has put into
you. He has taught me through you. He has tortured me
through you; yes, but through you, too, He has made me un-
derstand Him. When I was in the monastery, when I was at
peace, when I lost myself in prayer, when I was absolutely
pure, absolutely—so I thought—the child of God, I never
really knew God. Now, Domini, now I know Him. In the
worst moments of the new agony that I must meet at least I
shall always have that help. I shall always feel that I know
what God is. I shall always, when I think of you, when I re-
member you, be able to say, ‘God is love.’”
He was silent, but his face still spoke to her, his eyes read her
eyes. And in that moment at last they understood each other
fully and for ever. “It was written "-that was Domini’s
thought—“it was written by God.” Far away the church bell
chimed.
“Boris,” Domini said quietly, “we must go to-day. We
must leave Beni-Mora. You know that?”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
He looked out into the garden. The almost fierce resolution,
that had something in it of triumph, faded from him.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the end, the real end, for—there, it
will all be different—it will be terrible,” .
THE JOURNEY BACK 469
“Let us sit here for a little while together,” Domini said,
“ and be quiet. Is it like the garden of El-Largani, Boris?”
“No. But when I first came here, when I saw the white
walls, the great door, when I saw the poor Arabs gathered there
to receive alms, it made me feel almost as if I were at El-
Largani. That was why—” he paused.
“I understand, Boris, I understand everything now.”
And then they were silent. Such a silence as theirs was then
could never be interpreted to others. In it the sorrows, the
aspirations, the struggles, the triumphs, the torturing regrets,
the brave determinations of poor, great, feeble, noble humanity
were enclosed as in a casket—a casket which contains many
kinds of jewels, but surely none that are not precious.
And the garden listened, and beyond the garden the desert
listened—that other garden of Allah. And in this garden was
not Allah, too, listening to this silence of his children, this last
mutual silence of theirs in the garden where they had wandered,
where they had loved, where they had learned a great lesson
and drawn near to a great victory?
They might have sat thus for hours; they had lost all count
of time. But presently, in the distance among the trees, there
rose a light, frail sound that struck into both their hearts like a
thin weapon. It was the flute of Larbi, and it reminded them—
of what did it not remind them? All their passionate love of
the body, all their lawlessness, all the joy of liberty and of life,
of the barbaric life that is liberty, all their wandering in the
great spaces of the sun, were set before them in Larbi's flutter-
ing tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call of danger, the
call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to abandon
the summons of the spirit. Domini got up swiftly.
“Come, Boris,” she said, without looking at him.
He obeyed her and rose to his feet.
“Let us go to the wall,” she said, “ and look out once more
on the desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps—perhaps we
shall hear the call to prayer.”
They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of
the garden. The sound of the flute of Larbi died away grad-
ually into silence. Soon they saw before them the great spaces
of the Sahara flooded with the blinding glory of the summer
sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the shelter
of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs
were visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over,
naked, to the dominion of the sun. While they stood there the
47O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
nasal voice of the Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque
of Beni-Mora, uttered its fourfold cry, and died away.
“Boris,” Domini said, “that is for the Arabs, but for us, too,
for we belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even
more than they.”
“Yes, Domini.”
“She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood
there with her and repeated the words of the angel to the
Prophet, and she murmured them now : *
“O thou that art covered, arise, and magnify thy Lord, and
purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness.” -
Then, standing side by side, they prayed, looking at the
desert.
CHAPTER XXX
IN the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.
Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she
feared it would be impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid
Batouch in the hotel and thanked him for all his services, she
said:
“We'll say adieu here, Batouch.”
The poet displayed a large surprise.
“But I will accompany Madame to the station. I
will } }
“It is not necessary.”
Batouch looked offended but obstinate. His ample person
became almost rigid.
“If I am not at the station, Madame, what will Hadj think,
and Ali, and Ouardi, and—”
“They will be there?”
“Of course, Madame. Where else should they be? Does
Madame wish to leave us like a thief in the night, or like y 3
“No, no, Batouch. I am very grateful to you all, but espe-
cially to you.”
Batouch began to smile.
“Madame has entered into our hearts as no other stranger
has ever done,” he remarked. “Madame understands the
Arabs. We shall all come to say au revoir and to wish Madame
and Monsieur a happy journey.”
For the moment the irony of her situation struck Domini so
forcibly that she could say nothing. She only looked at Batouch
in silence. -
THE JOURNEY BACK 47 I
“What is it? But I know. Madame is sad at leaving the
desert, at leaving Beni-Mora.”
“Yes, Batouch. I am sad at leaving Beni-Mora.”
“But Madame will return ?”
“Who knows?”
“I know. The desert has a spell. He who has once seen
the desert must see it again. The desert calls and its voice is
always heard. Madame will hear it when she is far away, and
some day she will feel, ‘ I must come back to the land of the sun
and to the beautiful land of forgetfulness.’”
“I shall see you at the station, Batouch,” Domini said
quickly. “Good-bye till then.”
The train for Tunis started at sundown, in order that the
travellers might avoid the intense heat of the day. All the
afternoon they kept within doors. The Arabs were sleeping in
dark rooms. The gardens were deserted. Domini could not
sleep. She sat near the French window that opened on to the
verandah and said a silent good-bye to life. For that was
what she felt—that life was leaving her, life with its intensity,
its fierce meaning. She had come out of a sort of death to find
life in Beni-Mora, and now she felt that she was going back
again to something that would be like death. After her strife
there came a numbness of the spirit, a heavy dullness. Time
passed and she sat there without moving. Sometimes she looked
at the trunks lying on the floor ready for the journey, at the
labels on which was written “ Tunis via Constantine.” And
then she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel in the
train after her long travelling in the desert, and what it would
be like to be in a city. But she could not. The heat was in-
tense. Perhaps it affected her mind through her body. Faintly,
far down in her mind and heart, she knew that she was wishing,
even longing, to realise all that these last hours in Beni-Mora
meant, to gather up in them all the threads of her life and her
sensations there, to survey, as from a height, the panorama of
the change that had come to her in Africa. But she was frus-
trated.
The hours fled, and she remained cold, listless. Often
she was hardly, thinking at all. When the Arab servant came in
to tell her that it was time to start for the station she got up
slowly and looked at him vaguely.
“Time to go already?” she asked.
“Yes, Madame. I have told Monsieur.”
“Very well.”
472 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
At this moment Androvsky came into the room.
“The carriage is waiting,” he said.
She felt almost as if a stranger was speaking to her.
“I am ready,” she said.
And without looking round the room she went downstairs
and got into the carriage.
They drove to the station without speaking. She had not
seen Father Roubier. Androvsky took the tickets. When they
came out upon the platform they found there a small crowd of
Arab friends, with Batouch in command. Among them were
the servants who had accompanied them upon their desert jour-
ney, and Hadj. He came forward Smiling to shake hands.
When she saw him Domini remembered Irena, and, forgetting
that it is not etiquette to inquire after an Arab's womenfolk,
she said:
“Ah, Hadj, and are you happy now? How is Irena?”
Hadj's face fell, and he showed his pointed teeth in a snarl.
For a moment he hesitated, looking round at the other Arabs.
Then he said:
“I am always happy, Madame.”
Domini saw that she had made a mistake. She took out her
purse and gave him five francs.
“A parting present,” she said.
Hadj shook his head with recovered cheerfulness, tucked in
his chin and laughed. Domini turned away, shook hands with
all her dark acquaintances, and climbed up into the train, fol-
lowed by Androvsky. Batouch sprang upon the step as the
porter shut the door.
“Madame!” he exclaimed.
“What is it, Batouch?”
“To-day you have put Hadj to shame.”
He smiled broadly.
“IP How P What have I done?”
“Irena is dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert beyond
Amara.”
“Irenal Bu } }
“She could not live shut up in a room. She could not wear
the veil for Hadj.”
“But then—?”
“She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a
few francs one can 5 J
The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her
hand, seized Androvsky's, sprang back to the platform.
THE JOURNEY BACK 473
“Good-bye, Batouch! Good-bye, Ouardil Good-bye,
Smain ''
The train moved on. As it reached the end of the platform
Domini saw an emaciated figure standing there alone, a thin
face with glittering eyes turned towards her with a glaring
scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. He smiled at her, and his
smile contracted the wound upon his face, making it look
wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down
on the seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he
personified Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora's fare-
well to her and to Androvsky.
And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert.
She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena's
attack upon Hadj.
That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at
an end? Yet Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of
Count Anteoni, still played the little tune that was as the leit
motif of the eternal renewal of life. And within herself she
carried God's mystery of renewal, even she, with her numbed
mind, her tired heart. She, too, was to help to carry forward
the banner of life. -
She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the
sunset, she was leaving it. But she did not lean from the car-
riage window to watch the pageant that was flaming in the
west. Instead, she shut her eyes and remembered it as it was
on that evening when they, who now were journeying away
from the desert together, had been journeying towards it
together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And
the evening came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-
Akbara, and still she kept her eyes closed. Only when the
desert was finally left behind, divided from them by the great
wall of rock, did she look up and speak to Androvsky.
“We met here, Boris,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, “at the gate of the desert. I shall never
be here again.”
Soon the night fell around them.
In the evening of the following day they reached Tunis, and
drove to the Hôtel d’Orient, where they had written to engage
rooms for one night. They had expected that the city would be
almost deserted by its European inhabitants now the summer
had set in, but when they drove up to the door of the hotel the
proprietor came out to inform them that, owing to the arrival of
474 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
a ship full of American tourists who, personally conducted, were
“viewing ” Tunis after an excursion to the East and to the
Holy Land, he had been unable to keep for them a private sit-
ting-room. With many apologies he explained that all the
sitting-rooms in the house had been turned into bedrooms, but
only for one night. On the morrow the personally-conducted
ones would depart and Madame and Monsieur could have a
charming salom. They listened silently to his explanations
and apologies, standing in the narrow entrance hall, which was
blocked up with piles of luggage. “To-morrow,” he kept on
repeating, “to-morrow ’’ all would be different.
Domini glanced at Androvsky, who stood with his head bent
down, looking on the ground.
“Shall we try another hotel?” she asked.
“If you wish,” he answered in a low voice.
“It would be useless, Madame,” said the proprietor. “All
the hotels are full. In the others you will not find even a
bedroom.”
“Perhaps we had better stay here,” she said to Androvsky.
Her voice, too, was low and tired. In her heart something
seemed to say, “Do not strive any more. In the garden it was
finished. Already you are face to face with the end.”
When she was alone in her small bedroom, which was full of
the noises of the street, and had washed and put on another
dress, she began to realise how much she had secretly been
counting on one more evening alone with Androvsky. She had
imagined herself dining with him in their sitting-room un-
watched, sitting together afterwards, for an hour or two, in
silence perhaps, but at least alone. She had imagined a last
solitude with him with the darkness of the African night around
them. She had counted upon that. She realised it now. Her
whole heart and soul had been asking for that, believing that at
least that would be granted to her. But it was not to be. She
must go down with him into a crowd of American tourists,
must—her heart sickened. It seemed to her for a moment that
if only she could have this one more evening quietly with the
man she loved she could brace herself to bear anything after-
wards, but that if she could not have it she must break down.
She felt desperate.
A gong sounded below. She did not move, though she heard
it, knew what it meant. After a few minutes there was a tap
at the door.
“What is it?” she said.
THE JOURNEY BACK 475
“Dinner is ready, Madame,” said a voice in English with a
strong foreign accent.
Domini went to the door and opened it.
“Does Monsieur know?”
“Monsieur is already in the hall waiting for Madame.”
She went down and found Androvsky.
They dined at a small table in a room fiercely lit up with
electric light and restless with revolving fans. Close to them,
at an immense table decorated with flowers, dined the American
tourists. The women wore hats with large hanging veils. The
men were in travelling suits. They looked sunburnt and gay,
and talked and laughed with an intense vivacity. Afterwards
they were going in a body to see the dances of the Almées.
Androvsky shot one glance at them as he came in, then looked
away quickly. The lines near his mouth deepened. For a
moment he shut his eyes. Domini did not speak to him, did
not attempt to talk. Enveloped by the nasal uproar of the gay
tourists they ate in silence. When the short meal was over they
got up and went out into the hall. The public drawing-room
opened out of it on the left. They looked into it and saw red
plush settees, a large centre table covered with a rummage of
newspapers, a Jew with a bald head writing a letter, and two
old German ladies with caps drinking coffee and knitting
stockings.
“The desert!” Androvsky whispered.
Suddenly he drew away from the door and walked out into
the street. Lines of carriages stood there waiting to be
hired. He beckoned to one, a victoria with a pair of small
Arab horses. When it was in front of the hotel he said to
Domini:
“Will you get in, Domini?” -
She obeyed. Androvsky said to the mettse driver:
“Drive to the Belvedere. Drive round the park till I tell
you to return.” -
The man whipped his horses, and they rattled down the broad
street, past the brilliantly-lighted cafés, the Cercle Militaire, the
palace of the Resident, where Zouaves were standing, turned to
the left and were soon out on a road where a tram line stretched
between villas, waste ground and flat fields. In front of them
rose a hill with a darkness of trees scattered over it. They
reached it, and began to mount it slowly. The lights of the
city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawns dotted
with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to
476 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
her in the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they
mounted, and presently reached the top of the hill.
“Stop!” said Androvsky to the driver.
He drew up his horses.
“Wait for us here.”
Androvsky got out.
“Shall we walk a little way?” he said to Domini.
“Yes—yes.”
She got out too, and they walked slowly along the deserted
road. Below them she saw the lights of ships gliding upon the
lakes, the bright eyes of a lighthouse, the distant lamps of
scattered villages along the shores, and, very far off, a yellow
gleam that dominated the sea beyond the lakes and seemed to
watch patiently all those who came and went, the pilgrims to
and from Africa. That gleam shone in Carthage.
From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a
savour of freshness, of cool and delicate life.
They walked for some time without speaking, then Domini
said:
“From the cemetery of El-Largani you looked out over this,
didn't you, Boris?”
“Yes, Domini,” he answered. “It was then that the voice
spoke to me.”
“It will never speak again. God will not let it speak
again.”
“How can you know that?”
“We are tried in the fire, Boris, but we are not burnt to
death.”
She said it for herself, to reassure herself, to give a little com-
fort to her own soul. -
“To-night I feel as if it were not so,” he answered. “When
we came to the hotel it seemed—I thought that I could not
go on.”
“And now P’’
“Now I do not know anything except that this is my last
night with you. And, Domini, that seems to me to be abso-
lutely incredible although I know it. I cannot imagine any
future away from you, any life in which I do not see you. I feel
as if in parting from you I am parting from myself, as if the
thing left would be no more a man, but only a broken husk.
Can I pray without you, love God without you?”
“Best without me.”
“But can I live without you, Domini 2 Can I wake day after
THE JOURNEY BACK 477
day to the Sunshine, and know that I shall never see you again,
and go on living? Can I do that? I don’t feel as if it could be.
Perhaps, when I have done my penance, God will have mercy.”
“How, Boris?”
“Perhaps He will let me die.”
“Let us fix all the thoughts of our hearts on the life in which
He may let us be together once more. Look, Boris, there are
lights in the darkness, there will always be lights.”
“I can’t see them,” he said.
She looked at him and saw that tears were running down his
cheeks. Again, on this last night of companionship, God
summoned her to be strong for him. On the edge of the hill,
close to them, she saw a Moorish temple built of marble, with
narrow arches and columns, and marble seats. .
“Let us sit here for a moment, Boris,” she said.
He followed her up the marble steps. Two or three times he
stumbled, but she did not give him her hand. They sat down
between the slender columns and looked out over the city, whose
blanched domes and minarets were faintly visible in the night.
Androvsky was shaken with sobs.
“How can I part from you?” he said brokenly. “How am
I to do it? How can I—how can I? Why was I given this
love for you, this terrible thing, this crying out, this reaching out
of the flesh and heart and soul to you? Domini–Domini—
what does it all mean—this mystery of torture—this scourging
of the body—this tearing in pieces of my soul and yours?
Domini, shall we know—shall we ever know?”
“I am sure we shall know, we shall all know some day, the
meaning of the mystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then
surely, we shall each of us be glad that we have suffered. The
suffering will make the glory of our happiness. Even now
sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as if there were a
kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I am doing, as
if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God has
put into me. Boris, let us—you and I–learn to say in all this
terror, ‘ I am unconquered, I am unconquerable.’”
“I feel that I could say that, be it in the most frightful cir-
cumstances, if only I could sometimes see you—even far away as
now I see those lights.”
“You will see me in your prayers every day, and I shall see
you in mine.”
“But the cry of the body, Domini, of the eyes, of the hands,
to see, to touch—it's so fierce, it's so—it's so 5 y
478 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
“I know, I hear it too, always. But there is and ther voice,
which will be strong when the other has faded into eternal
silence. Small bodily things, even the most beautiful, there is
something finite. We must reach out our poor, feeble, trem-
bling hands to the infinite. I think everyone who is born does
that through life, often without being conscious of it. We shall
do it consciously, you and I. We shall be able to do it because
of our dreadful suffering. We shall want, we shall have to do
it, you—where you are going, and I 5 y
“Where will you be?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I won’t think of the after-
wards now, in these last few hours—in these last y 3
Her voice faltered and broke. Then the tears came to her
also, and for a while she could not see the distant lights.
Then she spoke again; she said:
“Boris, let us go now.”
He got up without a word. They found the carriage and
drove back to Tunis.
When they reached the hotel they came into the midst of the
American tourists, who were excitedly discussing the dances they
had seen, and calling for cooling drinks to allay the thirst created
by the heat of the close rooms of Oriental houses.
Early next morning a carriage was at the door. When they
had got into it the coachman looked round.
“Where shall I drive to, Monsieur 2 ”
Androvsky looked at him and made no reply.
“To El-Largani,” Domini said.
“To the monastery, Madame?”
& C Yes.”
He whistled to his horses gaily. As they trotted on bells
chimed about their necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine
that lay over the land. They passed soldiers marching, and
heard the call of bugles, the rattle of drums. And each sound
seemed distant and each moving figure far away. This world
of Africa, fiercely distinct in the clear air under the cloudless
sky, was unreal to them both, was vague as a northern land
wrapped in a mist of autumn. The unreal was about them.
Within themselves was the real. They sat beside each other
without speaking. Words to them now were useless things.
What more had they to say? Everything and nothing. Life-
times would not have been long enough for them to speak their
thoughts for each other, of each other, to speak their emotions,
all that was in their minds and hearts during that drive from the
THE JOURNEY BACK 479
city to the monastery that stood upon the hill. Yet did not their
mutual action of that morning say all that need be said : The
silence of the Trappists surely floated out to them over the
plains and the pale waters of the bitter lakes and held them
silent.
But the bells on the horses' necks rang always gaily, and the
coachman, who would presently drive Domini back alone to
Tunis, whistled and sang on his high seat.
Presently they came to a great wooden cross standing on a
pedestal of stone by the roadside at the edge of a grove of olive
trees. It marked the beginning of the domain of El-Largani.
When Domini saw it she looked at Androvsky, and his eyes
answered her silent question. The coachman whipped his horses
into a canter, as if he were in haste to reach his destination. He
was thinking of the good red wine of the monks. In a cloud of
white dust the carriage rolled onwards between vineyards in
which, here and there, labourers were working, sheltered from
the Sun by immense straw hats. A long line of waggons, laden
with barrels and drawn by mules covered with bells, sheltered
from the flies by leaves, met them. - In the distance Domini
saw forests of eucalyptus trees. Suddenly it seemed to her as if
she saw Androvsky coming from them towards the white road,
helping a man who was pale, and who stumbled as if half-faint-
ing, yet whose face was full of a fierce passion of joy—the
stranger whose influence had driven him out of the monastery
into the world. She bent down her head and hid her face in
her hands, praying, praying with all her strength for courage in
this supreme moment of her life. But almost directly the pray-
ers died on her lips and in her heart, and she found herself re-
peating the words of The Imitation:
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary
it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when
frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burn-
ing torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth through all.
Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this voice.”
Again and again she said the words: “It securely passeth
through all—it securely passeth through all.” Now, at last,
she was to know the uttermost truth of those words which she
had loved in her happiness, which she clung to now as a little
child clings to its father's hand.
The carriage turned to the right, went on a little way, then
stopped.
Domini lifted her face from her hands. She saw before her
48O THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
a great door which stood open. Above it was a statue of the
Madonna and Child, and on either side were two angels with
swords and stars. Underneath was written, in great letters:
JANUA COELI.
Beyond, through the doorway, she saw an open space upon
which the sunlight streamed, three palm trees, and a second door
which was shut. Above this second door was written:
“Les dames m'entrent pas ici.”
As she looked the figure of a very old monk with a long white
beard shuffled slowly across the patch of sunlight and
disappeared.
The coachman turned round.
“You descend here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Madame
will be entertained in the parlour on the right of the first door,
but Monsieur can go on to the hôtellerie. It's over there.”
He pointed with his whip and turned his back to them again.
Domini sat quite still. Her lips moved, once more repeating
the words of The Imitation. Androvsky got up from his seat,
stepped heavily out of the carriage, and stood beside it. The
coachman was busy lighting a long cigar. Androvsky leaned
forward towards Domini with his arms on the carriage and
looked at her with tearless eyes.
“ Domini,” at last he whispered. “Domini
Then she turned to him, bent towards him, put her hands on
his shoulders and looked into his face for a long time, as if she
were trying to see it now for all the years that were perhaps to
Come. Her eyes, too, were tearless.
li At last she leaned down and touched his forehead with her
1pS.
She said nothing. Her hands dropped from his shoulders,
she turned away and her lips moved once more.
Then Androvsky moved slowly in through the doorway of
the monastery, crossed the patch of sunlight, lifted his hand and
rang the bell at the second door.
“Drive back to Tunis, please.”
“Madame!” said the coachman.
“Drive back to Tunis.”
“Madame is not going to enter! But Monsieur 33
“Drive back to Tunis. "
| 2,
THE JOURNEY BACK 481
Something in the voice that spoke to him startled the coach-
man. He hesitated a moment, staring at Domini from his seat,
then, with a muttered curse, he turned his horses' heads and
plied the whip ferociously.
“Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary
it is not tired. When weary—it—is not—tired.”
Domini’s lips ceased to move. She could not speak any
more. She could not even pray without words.
Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone.
CHAPTER XXXI
IN the garden of Count Anteoni, which has now passed into
other hands, a little boy may often be seen playing. He is gay,
as children are, and sometimes he is naughty and, as if out of
sheer wantonness, he destroys the pyramids of sand erected by
the Arab gardeners upon the narrow paths between the hills, or
tears off the petals of the geraniums and scatters them to the
breezes that whisper among the trees. But when Larbi's flute
calls to him he runs to hear. He sits at the feet of that per-
sistent lover, and watches the big fingers fluttering at the holes
of the reed, and his small face becomes earnest and dreamy, as if
it looked on far-off things, or watched the pale pageant of the
mirages rising mysteriously out of the sunlit spaces of the sands
to fade again, leaving no trace behind.
Only one other song he loves more than the twittering tune
of Larbi.
Sometimes, when twilight is falling over the Sahara, his
mother calls him to her, to the white wall where she is sitting be-
neath a jamelon tree.
“Listen, Boris!” she whispers.
The little boy climbs up on her knee, leans his face against
her breast and obeys. An Arab is passing below on the desert
track, singing to himself as he goes towards his home in the oasis:
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
He is singing the song of the freed negroes. When his voice
has died away the mother puts the little boy down. It is bed-
482 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
time, and Smain is there to lead him to the white villa, where he
will sleep dreamlessly till morning. -
But the mother stays alone by the wall till the night falls and
the desert is hidden.
“No one but God and I
Knows what is in my heart.”
She whispers the words to herself. The cool wind of the night
blows over the vast spaces of the Sahara and touches her cheek,
reminding her of the wind that, at Arba, carried fire towards her
as she sat before the tent, reminding her of her glorious days of
liberty, of the passion that came to her soul like fire in the desert.
But she does not rebel.
For always, when night falls, she sees the form of a man
praying who once fled from prayer in the desert; she sees a
wanderer who at last has reached his home.
THE END

Lili
iii.
3 9015 O
5 O5937
DD NOT REMOVE
[]R
MUTILATE CARD
937 7625
-،№ ： • • ¶···• _ � ~ ~).*º****© *： * C ： ■ ■ ■ ■ ■-Waelº>{·}
：:：：：：：:：：：:：.*）?）.*¿¿.*ººººº:::：:::::};;;;;;;;;;;;;;;¿?|－{{!}}{！!！ķ#ſº:#:::::::::::::::::::：：:：:::::：:::::ſſſſſſſſſº};};}}{（ſ）}{ſ-**º
ºwº， „f. ſ.•، ، ،}ț¢t.ſ.º.º.，gºººººººº：į.År： ºſºrºſz „ºſº, º：}ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ！！！ſ · Pae¿?∞
© ： » +ſ.s. •';№ſſº）};º ： •***， ** 5.* ſ;8-9%ſºțºłºżº}：}:}}};};};}}{{ſiſ}:© ： Tº ！
…• ... *H∞ºſ ſºlº， !º.ſae§§ſº：§§
aeĶſſiſſſſſſsſſſſſiſae
{ſ.ſ. （V），~; ~， ，ſºº.
ſ.º.º.|×} （º
• • • • •ae∞∞∞
yº.¿!, ſºnº
ſºt”，! ！！”
ſº: :：::::
?
-，
...ºººººº
ſ.t.， &#333;
ſae:
*∞
¿
3，8¿∞
Kº
∞ſºlº）; ∞∞∞e aº
∞#############
№: ， ， , ， ， ， ， ， ; • ºº ， ººk
№f! ±§§§§§2;$$$$$$$$$$$$$
• • • • •}，§§§§§a º C.ſº:Ķºſ•• •
þaeſae：：Pºſº，ſi¿:
ſae{{!&#:（5，3%ſfiºſiſſ:）∞， ∞№sſº, ſaesae:¿??¿?
§§§§§§§.“;$;':·ſºſºſ，：:：:::：}}ſ}}};{{#########¿fiſ
#:##########iſ;#88;§§§§§§;&###########§####################################
！∞ √°√∞ . . .■∞ √° √№ egº: , ， ， ， ， ， , ， < ， sºrº， * * * ***tr * I ** ** ： ， ！， ， ，sae sºo • • • • • •* •* • • • • • № tº， a ******·
###############:::::::::};！ºsſ#:|{{!}}{{{5|}}};};};}:}:}}}########$$$$$$$$$$$ĒĒĖĖĘĘĢĢ##########
#:#######2ſºſ;șº.ſ.ſººſºſ，Ō
B ）ſaevaº aw ， ！ſººſ}[7]
§§§§######$£§§§:ſſſſſſſſſſſ:::::::::::
(）
}}#####ſae################¿ſºlº
• • ×, ， ，|×ſºr ： ， !：●， ， ， ，(）∞Ü：ſaeº.• • •∞0∞∞∞∞∞, ∞№aeae • • • • • •ſ'，
،ſººſ:Ķķ:}∞#####ºi::::::：:∞};;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;： C#####################ºſſºſ§§§:ſſ.ſi
$$$$$$#############};{{{8}}}####################################åſ#######################ËËĚĚĒĒĖ;
•####}};};};};};};};：################################iſ.###################%#################################
£ººſ¿??¿??¿?§:ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſº，ſae）:¿:{{{2}，•Rºſſºſiſtººpiſ:Cºst， pºsą， wyrºr};¿:，ſaeº，№ tº№ſſºſ
ķīſiſ.∞ √∞Šī£2}，-¿•)，sºţºşº????:№gſiſtſ;ººººº， №8|ſººſ#:：∞∞∞-}}}};eae.ºſſºſ1.ſºſ¿&& ！ºwºwºsºvº.ºgº:•r•eºcrae saer •*w*） ***
：ſaeº， ， ，; *s; eſae$$$$$##:;$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$§§§§§§§§;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;ſ::::：：}}};};&#####}&{;;;;;;ſ<！}£§！ Oe-
##################################################################################################ffff;ĚĖĒ3EĒĖĘĘĢĒ
::：::}}s\ſ*$'}，}5;&#39;，&#Łſtſ§§§§§§§ț¢i::ſººs ºs º sºnº:w';;;;;;;§§§####iſſºſ§§§§§:ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ:：:：:：::ſſſſſſſſſſ¿?ſå¿¿.*）$'，§§§§§§∞§§
*（8.） º， włºſa¿№fºrſiſſä:ſae#Rºſſºſºſ:#88;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;∞º ºſº№ſſº:ſae? №»， ſºļºņºſ ríº; º, ºſae§:ſſae:¿ſaeſiſºffiķ• • •º ：*（* ， ， ！ſaeſae∞ √ √¿?，
• №wºsº，ſºſſaesaeºſº}}}}#####ſaeſae}:Riſſº，¿?jºſſaeſ)|×Ķſi• Mºſſ， ſ.ſ. ſae，Urſae ſaBºy ºgºgº; №ſſºſſºſºſ|ſaeį:№ſ:}}K§§§§:ſſaeſaeiºſº§§$#：:¿
:}; };######{{，}{ſ\;\;{№gº（）;};};#：:Rºſae！!!!!!！!！!!!！:）?:??ſºſy·∞∞∞∞∞∞∞:：:::::::}}};{{{8}{8}\，\！ſaeſiſſiĢģĞğ∞ºff，ſſſſſ！！！º.º.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$;;;;;;;;;;;;;&};};};};}}{{{ſ}}{ſ}\;\;\;&###########}}&{3}&{}{};#########################Ę#######§§§§§§:#############ë:#ffffff;
#############################################################################################################ſaeae：§§§*
¿{{###################ț¢;############ķ##########};|-#########;;;;;;;ſ####Ëſ;#####§§§#######;ſaeiſſae-
º, ， ， , ， ºrºſeſ e ºs ºsºțºſ，ſºgº; ºſgºiſſzaeſº! ??！!！！！！!！！!！！！!！！ſaeae，ſººſ| 0：’， ：’∞∞∞∞→ ∞， ∞， ∞|×∞∞∞∞ √°.）ſae،••••• • • • • • • • •
::::#############################################################5::::}}ſ###}};{{#####{i}{##########§§§§§§§§§§;######
. ， ！ſ.∞•ſae
0·ſºț¢;ºg ºg：::：rº
º tº sº,ſººſ №ſſº№ſ aegaeſº:ſae§.§ （1） ：, ， ，ſººſ ºſſº--， -3-fººtaesſ-ºsºtU-，∞pºr eºs （ººw ºț¢º.
######################################################################################Ę########
ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ:::::::：:::::::::&###~№aerºs-
-º oiſſae№ſ:48，№§§§§， ， ſººs ºſsº§§
ſiſt:#############::::::::::ſºſ:：::：:::#############→
§§§§§§####};};}}};{{###########ºſ
#####################¿?
∞|－C
-Œ œŒ œĐ→∞∞∞：----ºrºvº！！！！！！！！！
∞∞∞）∞ſae£5*：\;]）;º=}##：ºſ№s •）<ae-ſaer， ºſaeae -: -Tºe №ºrs， aer， wºwº wºsſaeºſºfae• №ºaeºsºwegº，¿№ſſºi;i■■■■
■·H∞ √• • • •■ ■>.■.aerº∞∞∞ -tº： ºff • ** ***:：• • •£La：œ<！--№ſſº, º●№ſ:∞ √∞D！ ：） -№ſae
::::::::::::：：：::::::::::::::::::::::::ſae;§§$########8¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ſſſſſſſſſ:8:（$###############vaeſſa º:::：::::::::ț¢; ſi№ffſ§§:::：:::::::::::#ffffffff;"țg:cr:ſ'，C#############C
●··(）-
∞
:35，::::::}}ſ}{№:-ſae ſae¿№ſ:（5）::：::::::ſººſ
#####################################################################
№.
º
}|-sh ：<> <>№ eſºpº， º ºſ •MººſiĶī£∞
seº. ſaeº，∞， ∞ =:：:::}}ſ}{№R:ſſä，[×å ºrſe»， sºnº:šºšºſłaesſa ºtºrºgº: «¿№ſſºſºſ ºſſ??!?！?eºlae，
∞ √§§§§:ſſi##########№!！!！!#####¿ſºſiłËĒĖĘĚſººſ：#########ſiſi:#########Ķiſſºſ§§
:：::::::：:::::：：:::::::::§§- ∞::::::::§:55¿ºgſå::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::§§
--•ſae！∞∞∞, ∞; ∞,º ， +∞ √°.'，****** • * ſ;，
-#################Ę######################################
###############################¿######################
，
·~№ ºw crºsºg¿№
ſºſiºſaesºț#§§§§§§§§§§§§§Ķī£§§3;;;gt;ițăți:№ſſae;};§§§§§§§§§！！！！!！！!'， ºrº，##Rºſſºſ
###############Ķīſiſ，############ºſºſ:::::::*№fſ§;#8Ë;################ſiſſae soºs
∞№ſºv}
ºº.ººr，
• ！ºººb ：=）
t.”
©·■ ■，∞ √∞a º،№， º№ſºſCaeae,∞∞∞∞ √≠ ≤ ∞∞
$， $4.'，ſae|׿ëſſaeuaesº•p• • • • ¶№， º●###，
ſºr ： : ： »###################################################################################################
Ч;};};&#::::####ſiſi:##################:::iſ:!！！!！!! :::::::::###§§§##################################################∞ √æ√∞
， ， ，ſººcº »::|×∞، ſ► ：[×£< ∞， ∞£ € © · • ¶√∞ f√≠√≠√∞∞∞∞ºr <>）</<;ºrº º ſº：}∞：ſae∞€.|×&∞ → ∞ºrº， №ºr C.Đ
24:ſſ;#88;;;;;;;:::ffff;"¿！${ºſ:（!ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ;;;;;;;;;;;ºſſºſiaew ºgºnºyº， º ºſĶī£3;&#fffff;#####∞∞∞¿
Hºſſºſ， eſºſ. Pºſºčºſ！!!!！）:ſae;#353;:！!！！!！!！！！！！！Jºiſſae;！！！№， №º!！！！！!！!！!!!！!！！¿:，:.，，，，，，，,saesaeelºwºrºtſ89§§R]
#########caeſ{&####¿??¿?;:}}°{32; Rºſſºſſºſ，*|－¿№ sºuſ№ ， ， ， ，§§§535######ſºſ，£
¿•）› ‹› ‹‹”›º:::}}ſ}{№ſº;?№ſſae;ºſſiſſae$3$4$$$$$$$$§ſiſtſ:§:ſſiſſiſk:$3$2:'，fºſſſſſſſsſ！！！#::§§§§§§:№ſ
¿####################################Ę#####################################################
###################################################################ffffffff;#####Ę
|-ſae، ،， ，·..)ſi sae∞ſaet-aeŒ∞№×£
#§###########################$5），$$$$#- {，∞###########gººgºșºſºſ;##########
Œ œ
ºſº;ſae:
ķ###############
∞∞∞،©，
§§:ſſä;####∞§§ºſſº#####
：
∞
·ſº;§§§~º： ºſſaeºſ： ºſ ºſſă;&??:??∞ √≠ ≠-
ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ};###########§§§§:::::}}ſ}}!ºſi§§
############################
aeſººſ, ºſººſŌ§:ſſ:#####
§§§###}};};ſºs#############
:ſ::i ºvº: aſ#ffffff;ſºgº;º: ſ
tº
§§§§§§§:ſſſſſſſſ
ºr
º
º
º
º
º
####ſaeſae
## ſae∞№ſſaeW32:2438##::::：::::::ſºſ§§。¿∞§§§§§§§±（√2
∞ √∞ √∞ºrſſs！！！!!！???ºrae egº， e ºs ſe º}′{ſ}{ſ}\}\，|－0HÆ, ， ， ！ſae∞∞∞Þaeeae： |-ſae-ſae|- ）;·-！
##############################################################################################）######ĒĢĒĘ
ſae§§§ſſſſſſſſſ}; »Rºſaſ ſaesaesºrº, №.}，{ºffſ##############§§§§§§§§§§§tºº!!! :º）;$;ſ&aeſae，C
####################################################Ë###################țĘË
！！！!！!！!！！！!！!!！！!!！！!!！!！!！!!！!!!!！！！!!！!?#ſſſſſſſ:ſae№ſsºſ[×· <！---••• • • • <re ºſ§），º:© ： • • •***«?！∞！！！！！
::::::::::::::::::::::::}）;ķī№ſſºſſiſ&tº}ķ∞b}|-:::::::：::::::#########£;8，1§§§38）£ Ķ§§\，• ：šËSae:§§
∞ √~~~~ ſa######32，Ķišķ3 ºp grºs， aeĶ}}}}}}};tſºſ.§:（55;ŒMºſi$$$$$$CŌ∞■■■■■!∞∞∞∞waeſae
•* •5：5：3:3:ſſae;:}:}}};{{{ſiſ#####ſiſtſ№;ſț¢;&#;&&&&5;#355;ſiſ&{};∞∞∞∞∞∞∞§5Œœé ， Cºrºaerº∞
∞） =（ - ）ſaeſuae taeºg ºve ſºtwaewaeſae wºº·…！ſºſºſ∞[ ]ſººſ：3·● ！，•r•|-（==）© ，
ſ， ſº：ſiſi|¿ſºſ:¿eſsº， ºsłººſ eſſar,Ķīķiſ.∞∞∞ººſ0¿1385::：};########）§3~eſsºs∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
::::::：:::::::::::::::####Raekſºſſ################################··
44•
∞ √≠√∞
ſae:ry
∞¿gºgºr}}
º №ſ:（－8,5)iſſº::：:::::::#######،ķ§§§§¿;i;§595;&#555;ſſſſſſſ！
ºſe ºff，، ، ، ،Iſ basae s.ſſſſſſſ:º ， ， , ， ， ！{##ł{*{{!！!！!!！!！！！!!！！!！!ſae●■
############################################################|-∞####################
№ № № eſ#######::::::：::::::ºff;&#3wae$$$$$$$$U####$§5ſſſſſsºrtae: s= <<<=wº###±eſſe##########№ſſºſºſºſººf?
::::};$i;33:Aſ∞ √：’， ：， ：，：ſſſſſſſſ.|||-##########§§§:ſſä:ºlËĚĚĒĒĖĘĚĖ∞####§§§ºbſaže:•■ſr$i;~#####
}}81
∞， ∞， ∞© ： »
ſºpe:º:º' sºfº: ºrºgº:%，∞ √ſ kºsi ， isºisſae ſtae: sae aerºs e º sºrº:si »ſº prº
:::::：:::::::::::}}};$;':·};|º ，№
¿¿.*;;;;;;;;;ſ:::::::::：:：:::::：}}ſ§：ſſaei::::：:::.ae[× •awaewaeſsºsiºstº:！ſº№ſ：（*·№， №.¿?
#######################################################################################Ę########################
。 、C)ſ№ º， ， º■ ■ ■ ■ſaeoºº ！ſae№ aºsſaeae ：∞∞∞！ !！ ！！ ！!©
C∞ſiſ;}}§§ſae§§§§§§§§§§§§§::::::::：::::::#####################Pſſſ!!!œ •••§§§
ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ::№ſi####
aeſ,
###########***¿¿•）› ‹› ‹› ‹›Sº
ſ.saeº.：::：:：:：::::∞
ſae ſaeºſº!!！！！！！!!ſae：§§|ק§§©®ſaesºrºr##########§§№.
###################};############º;§;#####::::::}}∞∞∞∞∞∞∞№ſiſC）ºrºs●r
Ō
wºwº，{s-a:eło ºsº ºoººººººº∞ºſ！
！ №. ！！！！!!！！！！！!！!！! ！! ！！31 ！！”！ cºa|×ſºrſtſae;،●
#######################################ſae##########################
:::::}}};{{{ſyſł:ºſſºſ###############№ºrſiſ;…; ſae
#####ſae####Ē####§§！§#######U•
ſſſſſſſſſſſ:::##§§§Daeae
ºſſºſ：~(， ſ.ſſſſſw ºrº
¿;Đ#§§§§§§§§§;;;;;&#8ſſſſſſſſſſſſſ:
#########################################
#########################################§§ğ###i
##############################################ſſſſſſſſſſſſſſ:::::::};
######################################################################№ți:#;####
ſae∞ √≠ √∞C●ſº ſ№ ºe ：）№ ，∞
， ，
∞， ， ， ！:ſ:::::Œſ.œ ·
##########################################
№ſºſ，·ſ[]
• • • • • ► ► ► ► ► ► ►
œ • • • • • • •#########::::：::::::::：:::：::
|-{ſſſſſſſſ:<！--ºr eſ sºoſ aer
º
rº- tº dºes tº “ºw-º-º:
& º -
• • •ſºſ»， pºr dºszºſº， ººr∞∞∞■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■suae„8, saesºſ ºs ºſ sae，T！№----
|4|-， rºſsº， ºss！ſae，ºſº，ſt:ae（）Jſ.$1Daeae -： dºwºlaeºse ºsaeae
}|ſſſsſſſ::::：::::::：:::::：::：:ț¢;$$5;ºſſ，###############ſaeſ###########§§§;##############
∞ex ºr waer • R • • • • • ºrºe ºp escº cºcº： ， ！<！?!！?！！?！！?！！?！！?！！?！！?！!！ſººſ: ¿?ſaei§§§§Praeessaesh， ºg etº！！！）:ſaeºsº，ſiſ，，，，，，，，，，
∞ſiſiſ! ！！ ！！ C:~~ĒĒĖĖĘĘ££§§§§5:::::#####::::::::::::}}};{{{ſ:Ëſ;######ºg bo-ººt,¿ſe，:J:ſſiſsae！！！！！！！！！→ ∞--eae};kaeº-
----tae ºšešeržų r.; oſ ºs ºſ ºs • b ， ！»， «ºe ſºwº •::：::[×] ©fºresÆſſºſ∞∞∞∞∞© ® ° ：·ſiſŌ∞ √°r √≠ ≤ ∞， ∞ stºf∞•■ ■ ■ ■ ■0#####∞∞■Ë№
！ ） ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■paeſae ae, histºłºwie， wº sºrºtaeae ºr ºzºxºs∞∞∞， ∞, ， ，ſaeºſ§），•p•-，*，∞∞∞• №keſºg， ºg§§∞§:eſt
∞::::::::::############################################################################################Ę#####Ę###