The Garden Of Allah

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"One day the Reverend Pere gave me a special permission to walk with our
visitor beyond the monastery walls towards the sea. Such 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 Pere 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 Pere spoke to me thus my mouth was suddenly
contracted in a smile. Devil's smile, I think. I put up my hand to
my face. I saw the Reverend Pere 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 swinging 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. 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--?'

"'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?
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--'

"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 yourself 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 himself.

"'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.'

"'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 tortures 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!' he said. 'You don't understand. 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 himself. An intense excitement 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.

"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 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----'

"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 anything.'

"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.

"'Yes,' I said.

"I stopped, and tried to take his arm from mine.

"'Go,' I said. 'Go on!'

"'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
_hotellerie_, 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 himself 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
know that I tried--sometimes, often--I tried to--to--I tried to----"

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 praying. 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.




BOOK VI. THE JOURNEY BACK



CHAPTER XXVII

The 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 saddened to find only the sand-hill strewn with debris.
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. Forlornly 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 whirling, 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?"

He was moved by envy. But then he remembered his intercourse 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 returning 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 himself. 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. 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 moonlight 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 Androvsky there had even been a strange sensation that was not
unlike triumph in her heart. In this triumph she had felt disembodied,
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 wandered
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
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 indelible 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 bitterness, the sweet waters became acrid with salt. She had been
able a moment before to say to Androvsky, almost with tenderness, "Now
at last you can pray." Now she was on her knees hating him, hating--yes,
surely hating--God. It was a frightful 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 worship. 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 praying, that she
had meant to join with him in prayer. She had contemplated, then, a
further, deeper union with him. Was she a madwoman? 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 incidents 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 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 descending 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, destroyed 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 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
difficulty. 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.