Читать книгу The Garden of Allah - Robert Hichens - Страница 8

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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 Desert,” Domini continued. “Is it far?”

“Only a few minutes, Madame.”

“I shall like to walk there.”

Suzanne collapsed. Her bones became as wax with apprehension. She saw herself toiling over leagues of sand towards some nameless hovel.

“Suzanne, you can get into the omnibus and take the handbags.”

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 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 majestically 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 permission.”

“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 whimsical, 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 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 tremendous 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 disturbed 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 monologue.

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 marechale 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 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 celebrated 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 warriors 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 naive 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 striding 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 chocolate-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 moustache 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 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 consciousness 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 difference 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?”

“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?”

“Stabbing.”

Batouch gave this piece of information with quiet indifference, 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.”

“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 own.

“Yes, he is. And he is going to the Hotel du Desert. 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 fete 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 walking—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 attaches 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 presently.

“He can talk in French and in Arabic, but Hadj says he is English.”

“How should Hadj know?”

“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 Cure 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. 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 and 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 the 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 Desert. 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 armchair had been placed. A subdued 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 obligation. 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?

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 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 herself 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.

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?

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 cafe was installed there, and two or three soldiers were taking their aperitif 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 confession. 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 possibilities 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 again she saw the long and luminous pathway of the tunnel, flickering with light and shade, carpeted with the pale reflections 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 something horrible to her, something alarming.

She wished he was not standing behind her, and her discomfort increased. She could still hear the voices of the soldiers in the cafe. 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.

“Suzanne!” she called.

Her maid appeared, yawning, with various parcels in her hands.

“Yes, Mademoiselle.”

“I sha’n’t go down to the salle-a-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 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 costume for the fete 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—”

“I shall not get up early to-morrow.”

Batouch assumed an expression that was tragically submissive 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, 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 differing 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 provocative, 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.