The Garden Of Allah

R >> Robert Hichens >> The Garden Of Allah


"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 blossoms. Domini and the Count
walked into the darkness of the trees.

"What is his name?" she asked.

"Aloui."

"Aloui."

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 instantly, 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 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 expectant 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
desert 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 desert 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 breathless 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 Diviner. He
began to talk rapidly, but as if to himself, and as he talked he moved
again, broke up with his fingers the patterns 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."

"Yes?"

"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 darkness like night. In
this darkness he sees a train of camels waiting by a church."

"A mosque?"

"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 Tombouctou."

"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, protected 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 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 somewhere 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? Yes?"

"Very far away in a sandy place. There are immense dunes, immense white
dunes of sand on every side, like mountains. 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----"

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 skeletons 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 tomtoms 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?"

"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 tomtoms 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 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 inclination, 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 maintained--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 unborn child.

Under the jamelon tree she sat down once more.

"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 Aloui's powers."

"Why?"

"Because I fear they made an unpleasant impression upon you."

"That was not why I made you stop him."

"No?"

"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 you?"

"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 tenderness, 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? 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, with burning brands under
their armpits, and not be burned? How can they pierce themselves with
skewers and cut themselves 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--Aloui?"

"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."

"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?"

"I!" 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?"

"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. 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, making 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
suggested 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.

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.

"You are going out, Madame?" he said.

"Yes."

"Not alone?"

"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 suspicious,
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 answered:

"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." 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 hurried 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 something 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 Aloui.
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 possession 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 la Terre! Lion du
Soir! Grande Ame divine, vivante a toujours."

Why had she not ordered her horse to ride a little way with Count
Anteoni? She might have pretended that she was starting on her great
journey.