The Garden of Allah

by Robert Hichens

  CHAPTER III

  It flashed upon her with the desert, with the burning heaps of carnationand orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilderness, the firstbrown villages glowing in the late radiance of the afternoon like carventhings of bronze, the first oasis of palms, deep green as a wave of thesea and moving like a wave, the first wonder of Sahara warmth and Saharadistance. She passed through the golden door into the blue country, andsaw this face, and, for a moment, moved by the exalted sensation of amagical change in all her world, she looked at it simply as a new sightpresented, with the sun, the mighty rocks, the hard, blind villages, andthe dense trees, to her eyes, and connected it with nothing. It was partof this strange and glorious desert region to her. That was all, for amoment.

  In the play of untempered golden light the face seemed pale. It wasnarrow, rather long, with marked and prominent features, a nose with ahigh bridge, a mouth with straight, red lips, and a powerful chin. Theeyes were hazel, almost yellow, with curious markings of a darker shadein 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. Therewas no hair on the face, which was closely shaved. Near the mouth weretwo faint lines that made Domini think of physical suffering, and alsoof mediaeval knights. Despite the glory of the sunshine there seemed tobe a shadow falling across the face.

  This was all that Domini noticed before the spell of change and theabrupt glory was broken, and she knew that she was staring into the faceof the man who had behaved so rudely at the station of El-Akbara. Theknowledge gave her a definite shock, and she thought that her expressionmust have changed abruptly, for a dull flush rose on the stranger's thincheeks and mounted to his rugged forehead. He glanced out of the windowand moved his hands uneasily. Domini noticed that they scarcely talliedwith his face. Though scrupulously clean, they looked like the hands ofa labourer, hard, broad, and brown. Even his wrists, and a small sectionof his left forearm, which showed as he lifted his left hand from oneknee to the other, were heavily tinted by the sun. The spaces betweenthe fingers were wide, as they usually are in hands accustomed tograsping implements, but the fingers themselves were rather delicate andartistic.

  Domini observed this swiftly. Then she saw that her neighbour wasunpleasantly conscious of her observation. This vexed her vaguely,perhaps because even so trifling a circumstance was like a thin linkbetween them. She snapped it by ceasing to look at or think of him. Thewindow was down. A delicate and warm breeze drifted in, coming fromthe thickets of the palms. In flashing out of the darkness of the gorgeDomini had had the sensation of passing into a new world and a newatmosphere. The sensation stayed with her now that she was no longerdreaming or giving the reins to her imagination, but was calmly herself.Against the terrible rampart of rock the winds beat across the land ofthe Tell. But they die there frustrated. And the rains journey thitherand fail, sinking into the absinthe-coloured pools of the gorge. And thesnows and even the clouds stop, exhausted in their pilgrimage. The gorgeis not their goal, but it is their grave, and the desert never seestheir burial. So Domini's first sense of casting away the knownremained, and even grew, but now strongly and quietly. It was wellfounded, she thought. For she looked out of the carriage window towardsthe barrier she was leaving, and saw that on this side, guarding thedesert from the world that is not desert, it was pink in the eveninglight, deepening here and there to rose colour, whereas on the far sideit had a rainy hue as of rocks in England. And there was a lustre ofgold in the hills, tints of glowing bronze slashed with a red line asthe heart of a wound, but recalling the heart of a flower. The folds ofthe earth glistened. There was flame down there in the river bed. Thewreckage of the land, the broken fragments, gleamed as if braided withprecious things. Everywhere the salt crystals sparkled with the violenceof diamonds. Everywhere there was a strength of colour that hurleditself to the gaze, unabashed and almost savage, the colour of summerthat never ceases, of heat that seldom dies, in a land where there is noautumn and seldom a flitting cold.

  Down on the road near the village there were people; old men playingthe "lady's game" with stones set in squares of sand, women peeping fromflat roofs and doorways, children driving goats. A man, like a fair andbeautiful Christ, with long hair and a curling beard, beat on the groundwith a staff and howled some tuneless notes. He was dressed in red andgreen. No one heeded him. A distant sound of the beating of drums rosein the air, mingled with piercing cries uttered by a nasal voice. Andas if below it, like the orchestral accompaniment of a dramaticsolo, hummed many blending noises; faint calls of labourers in thepalm-gardens and of women at the wells; chatter of children in duskycourts sheltered with reeds and pale-stemmed grasses; dim pipings ofhomeward-coming shepherds drowned, with their pattering charges, in thegolden vapours of the west; soft twitterings of birds beyond brown wallsin green seclusions; dull barking of guard dogs; mutter of camel driversto their velvet-footed beasts.

  The caravan which Domini had seen descending into the gorge reappeared,moving deliberately along the desert road towards the south. Awatch-tower peeped above the palms. Doves were circling round it. Manyof them were white. They flew like ivory things above this tower ofglowing bronze, which slept at the foot of the pink rocks. On the leftrose a mass of blood-red earth and stone. Slanting rays of the sunstruck it, and it glowed mysteriously like a mighty jewel.

  As Domini leaned out of the window, and the salt crystals sparkled toher eyes, and the palms swayed languidly above the waters, and the roseand mauve of the hills, the red and orange of the earth, streamed byin the flames of the sun before the passing train like a barbaricprocession, to the sound of the hidden drums, the cry of the hiddenpriest, and all the whispering melodies of these strange and unknownlives, tears started into her eyes. The entrance into this land of flameand colour, through its narrow and terrific portal, stirred her almostbeyond her present strength. The glory of this world mounted to herheart, oppressing it. The embrace of Nature was so violent that itcrushed her. She felt like a little fly that had sought to wing itsway to the sun and, at a million miles' distance from it, was beingshrivelled by its heat. When all the voices of the village faintedaway she was glad, although she strained her ears to hear their fadingechoes. Suddenly she knew that she was very tired, so tired thatemotions 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 eyesshut, but she knew that on the windows strange lights were glittering,that the carriage was slowly filling with the ineffable splendours ofthe west. Long afterwards she often wondered whether she endowed thesunset of that day with supernatural glories because she was so tired.Perhaps the salt mountain of El-Alia did not really sparkle like thecelestial mountains in the visions of the saints. Perhaps the long chainof the Aures did not really look as if all its narrow clefts had beenpowdered with the soft and bloomy leaves of unearthly violets, andthe desert was not cloudy in the distance towards the Zibans with themagical 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. Sheoften wondered, but she never knew.

  The sound of a movement made her look up. Her companion was changing hisplace and going to the other side of the compartment. He walked softly,no doubt with the desire not to disturb Domini. His back was towards herfor an instant, and she noticed that he was a powerful man, thoughvery thin, and that his gait was heavy. It made her think again of hislabourer's hands, and she began to wonder idly what was his rank andwhat he did. He sat down in the far corner on the same side as herselfand stared out of his window, crossing his legs. He wore large bootswith square toes, clumsy and unfashionable, but comfortable and good forwalking in. His clothes had obviously been made by a French tailor.The stuff of them was grey and woolly, and they were cut tighter tothe figure than English clothes generally are. He had on a black silknecktie, and a soft brown travelling hat dented in the middle. By theway in
which he looked out of the window, Domini judged that he, too,was seeing the desert for the first time. There was something almostpassionately attentive in his attitude, something of strained eagernessin that part of his face which she could see from where she wassitting. His cheek was not pale, as she had thought at first, but brown,obviously burnt by the sun of Africa. But she felt that underneath thesunburn there was pallor. She fancied he might be a painter, and wasnoting all the extraordinary colour effects with the definiteness of aman who meant, perhaps, to reproduce them on canvas.

  The light, which had now the peculiar, almost supernatural softnessand limpidity of light falling at evening from a declining sun in a hotcountry, came full upon him, and brightened his hair. Domini saw that itwas brown with some chestnut in it, thick, and cut extremely short, asif his head had recently been shaved. She felt convinced that he was notFrench. He might be an Austrian, perhaps, or a Russian from the south ofRussia. He remained motionless in that attitude of profound observation.It suggested great force not merely of body, but also of mind, an almostabnormal concentration upon the thing observed. This was a man whocould surely shut out the whole world to look at a grain of sand, if hethought it beautiful or interesting.

  They were near Beni-Mora now. Its palms appeared far off, and in themidst 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 ifthey had been covered with a soft powder of bronze. A long spur ofrose-coloured mountains stretched away towards the south. The sun wasvery near his setting. Small, red clouds floated in the western quarterof the sky, and the far desert was becoming mysteriously dim and blue,like a remote sea. Here and there thin wreaths of smoke ascended fromit, 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 theEast she saw arise the naked soul of Africa; no faded, gentle thing,fearful of being seen, fearful of being known and understood; but aphenomenon vital, bold and gorgeous, like the sound of a trumpet pealinga great _reveille_. As she looked on this flaming land laid fearlesslybare before her, disdaining the clothing of grass, plant and flower, ofstream and tree, displaying itself with an almost brazen _insouciance_,confident in its spacious power, and in its golden pride, her heartleaped up as if in answer to a deliberate appeal. The fatigue in herdied. She responded to this _reveille_ like a young warrior who, sosoon as he is wakened, stretches out his hand for his sword. The sunsetflamed on her clear, white cheeks, giving them its hue of life. Andher nature flamed to meet it. In the huge spaces of the Sahara her soulseemed to hear the footsteps of Freedom treading towards the south.And all her dull perplexities, all her bitterness of _ennui_, all herquestionings and doubts, were swept away on the keen desert windinto the endless plains. She had come from her last confession askingherself, "What am I?" She had felt infinitely small confronted with thepettiness of modern, civilised life in a narrow, crowded world. Now shedid not torture herself with any questions, for she knew that somethinglarge, something capable, something perhaps even noble, rose up withinher to greet all this nobility, all this mighty frankness and fierce,undressed sincerity of nature. This desert and this sun would be hercomrades, and she was not afraid of them.

  Without being aware of it she breathed out a great sigh, feeling thenecessity of liberating her joy of spirit, of letting the body, howeverinadequately and absurdly, make some demonstration in response to thesecret stirring of the soul. The man in the far corner of the carriageturned and looked at her. When she heard this movement Domini rememberedher irritation against him at El-Akbara. In this splendid moment thefeeling seemed to her so paltry and contemptible that she had a livelyimpulse 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. Thevoice of conventionality would have made itself heard. But Domini couldact vigorously, and quite carelessly, when she was moved. And she wasdeeply moved now, and longed to lavish the humanity, the sympathy andardour that were quick in her. In answer to the stranger's movement sheturned towards him, opening her lips to speak to him. Afterwards shenever knew what she meant to say, whether, if she had spoken, the wordswould have been French or English. For she did not speak.

  The man's face was illuminated by the setting sun as he sat half roundon 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 lefthand gripped the top of the carriage door. The large, knotted veinson it, the stretched sinews, were very perceptible. The hand lookedviolent. Domini's eyes fell on it as she turned. The impulse to speakbegan to fail, and when she glanced up at the man's face she no longerfelt it at all. For, despite the glory of the sunset on him, thereseemed to be a cold shadow in his eyes. The faint lines near hismouth looked deeper than before, and now suggested most powerfully thedreariness, the harshness of long-continued suffering. The mouth itselfwas compressed and grim, and the man's whole expression was fierce andstartling as the expression of a criminal bracing himself to endureinevitable detection. So crude and piercing indeed was this maskconfronting her that Domini started and was inclined to shudder. Fora minute the man's eyes held hers, and she thought she saw in themunfathomable depths of misery or of wickedness. She hardly knew which.Sorrow was like crime, and crime like the sheer desolation of grief toher just then. And she thought of the outer darkness spoken of in theBible. It came before her in the sunset. Her father was in it, and thisstranger stood by him. The thing was as vital, and fled as swiftly as ahallucination in a madman's brain.

  Domini looked down. All the triumph died out in her, all the exquisiteconsciousness of the freedom, the colour, the bigness of life. For therewas a black spot on the sun--humanity, God's mistake in the great planof Creation. And the shadow cast by humanity tempered, even surelyconquered, the light. She wondered whether she would always feel thecold of the sunless places in the golden dominion of the sun.

  The man had dropped his eyes too. His hand fell from the door to hisknee. He did not move till the train ran into Beni-Mora, and the eagerfaces of countless Arabs stared in upon them from the scorched field ofmanoeuvres where Spahis were exercising in the gathering twilight.