



Produced by Dagny; John Bickers





THE GARDEN OF ALLAH

BY

ROBERT HICHENS


     PREPARER'S NOTE

     This text was prepared from an edition published by Grosset &
     Dunlap, New York. It was originally published in 1904.


     CONTENTS

     BOOK I.   PRELUDE
     BOOK II.  THE VOICE OF PRAYER
     BOOK III. THE GARDEN
     BOOK IV.  THE JOURNEY
     BOOK V.   THE REVELATION
     BOOK VI.  THE JOURNEY BACK




THE GARDEN OF ALLAH




BOOK I. PRELUDE



CHAPTER I

The fatigue caused by a rough sea journey, and, perhaps, the
consciousness that she would have to be dressed before dawn to catch the
train for Beni-Mora, prevented Domini Enfilden from sleeping. There was
deep silence in the Hotel de la Mer at Robertville. The French officers
who took their pension there had long since ascended the hill of Addouna
to the barracks. The cafes had closed their doors to the drinkers and
domino players. The lounging Arab boys had deserted the sandy Place de
la Marine. In their small and dusky bazaars the Israelites had reckoned
up the takings of the day, and curled themselves up in gaudy quilts
on their low divans to rest. Only two or three _gendarmes_ were still
about, and a few French and Spaniards at the Port, where, moored against
the wharf, lay the steamer _Le General Bertrand_, in which Domini had
arrived that evening from Marseilles.

In the hotel the fair and plump Italian waiter, who had drifted to North
Africa from Pisa, had swept up the crumbs from the two long tables
in the _salle-a-manger_, smoked a thin, dark cigar over a copy of the
_Depeche Algerienne_, put the paper down, scratched his blonde head, on
which the hair stood up in bristles, stared for a while at nothing in
the firm manner of weary men who are at the same time thoughtless and
depressed, and thrown himself on his narrow bed in the dusty corner of
the little room on the stairs near the front door. Madame, the landlady,
had laid aside her front and said her prayer to the Virgin. Monsieur,
the landlord, had muttered his last curse against the Jews and drunk
his last glass of rum. They snored like honest people recruiting their
strength for the morrow. In number two Suzanne Charpot, Domini's maid,
was dreaming of the Rue de Rivoli.

But Domini with wide-open eyes, was staring from her big, square pillow
at the red brick floor of her bedroom, on which stood various trunks
marked by the officials of the Douane. There were two windows in the
room looking out towards the Place de la Marine, below which lay the
station. Closed _persiennes_ of brownish-green, blistered wood protected
them. One of these windows was open. Yet the candle at Domini's bedside
burnt steadily. The night was warm and quiet, without wind.

As she lay there, Domini still felt the movement of the sea. The passage
had been a bad one. The ship, crammed with French recruits for the
African regiments, had pitched and rolled almost incessantly for
thirty-one hours, and Domini and most of the recruits had been ill.
Domini had had an inner cabin, with a skylight opening on to the lower
deck, and heard above the sound of the waves and winds their groans and
exclamations, rough laughter, and half-timid, half-defiant conversations
as she shook in her berth. At Marseilles she had seen them come on
board, one by one, dressed in every variety of poor costume, each one
looking anxiously around to see what the others were like, each one
carrying a mean yellow or black bag or a carefully-tied bundle. On the
wharf stood a Zouave, in tremendous red trousers and a fez, among great
heaps of dull brown woollen rugs. And as the recruits came hesitatingly
along he stopped them with a sharp word, examined the tickets they held
out, gave each one a rug, and pointed to the gangway that led from the
wharf to the vessel. Domini, then leaning over the rail of the upper
deck, had noticed the different expressions with which the recruits
looked at the Zouave. To all of them he was a phenomenon, a mystery of
Africa and of the new life for which they were embarking. He stood there
impudently and indifferently among the woollen rugs, his red fez pushed
well back on his short, black hair cut _en brosse_, his bronzed face
twisted into a grimace of fiery contempt, throwing, with his big and
muscular arms, rug after rug to the anxious young peasants who filed
before him. They all gazed at his legs in the billowing red trousers;
some like children regarding a Jack-in-the-box which had just sprung
up into view, others like ignorant, but superstitious, people who
had unexpectedly come upon a shrine by the wayside. One or two seemed
disposed to laugh nervously, as the very stupid laugh at anything
they see for the first time. But fear seized them. They refrained
convulsively and shambled on to the gangway, looking sideways, like
fowls, and holding their rugs awkwardly to their breasts with their
dirty, red hands.

To Domini there was something pitiful in the sight of all these lads,
uprooted from their homes in France, stumbling helplessly on board this
ship that was to convey them to Africa. They crowded together. Their
poor bundles and bags jostled one against the other. With their clumsy
boots they trod on each other's feet. And yet all were lonely strangers.
No two in the mob seemed to be acquaintances. And every lad, each in
his different way, was furtively on the defensive, uneasily wondering
whether some misfortune might not presently come to him from one of
these unknown neighbours.

A few of the recruits, as they came on board, looked up at Domini as she
leant over the rail; and in all the different  and shaped eyes
she thought she read a similar dread and nervous hope that things might
turn out pretty well for them in the new existence that had to be faced.
The Zouave, wholly careless or unconscious of the fact that he was
an incarnation of Africa to these raw peasants, who had never before
stirred beyond the provinces where they were born, went on taking
the tickets, and tossing the woollen rugs to the passing figures, and
pointing ferociously to the gangway. He got very tired of his task
towards the end, and showed his fatigue to the latest comers, shoving
their rugs into their arms with brusque violence. And when at length the
wharf was bare he spat on it, rubbed his short-fingered, sunburnt hands
down the sides of his blue jacket, and swaggered on board with the air
of a dutiful but injured man who longed to do harm in the world. By this
time the ship was about to cast off, and the recruits, ranged in line
along the bulwarks of the lower deck, were looking in silence towards
Marseilles, which, with its tangle of tall houses, its forest of masts,
its long, ugly factories and workshops, now represented to them the
whole of France. The bronchial hoot of the siren rose up menacingly.
Suddenly two Arabs, in dirty white burnouses and turbans bound with
cords of camel's hair, came running along the wharf. The siren hooted
again. The Arabs bounded over the gangway with grave faces. All the
recruits turned to examine them with a mixture of superiority and
deference, such as a schoolboy might display when observing the
agilities of a tiger. The ropes fell heavily from the posts of the
quay into the water, and were drawn up dripping by the sailors, and _Le
General Bertrand_ began to move out slowly among the motionless ships.

Domini, looking towards the land with the vague and yet inquiring glance
of those who are going out to sea, noticed the church of Notre dame de
la Garde, perched on its high hill, and dominating the noisy city,
the harbour, the cold, grey squadrons of the rocks and Monte Cristo's
dungeon. At the time she hardly knew it, but now, as she lay in bed in
the silent inn, she remembered that, keeping her eyes upon the church,
she had murmured a confused prayer to the Blessed Virgin for the
recruits. What was the prayer? She could scarcely recall it. A woman's
petition, perhaps, against the temptations that beset men shifting for
themselves in far-off and dangerous countries; a woman's cry to a woman
to watch over all those who wander.

When the land faded, and the white sea rose, less romantic
considerations took possession of her. She wished to sleep, and drank a
dose of a drug. It did not act completely, but only numbed her senses.
Through the long hours she lay in the dark cabin, looking at the faint
radiance that penetrated through the glass shutters of the skylight.
The recruits, humanised and drawn together by misery, were becoming
acquainted. The incessant murmur of their voices dropped down to her,
with the sound of the waves, and of the mysterious cries and creaking
shudders that go through labouring ships. And all these noises seemed to
her hoarse and pathetic, suggestive, too, of danger.

When they reached the African shore, and saw the lights of houses
twinkling upon the hills, the pale recruits were marshalled on the white
road by Zouaves, who met them from the barracks of Robertville. Already
they looked older than they had looked when they embarked. Domini saw
them march away up the hill. They still clung to their bags and bundles.
Some of them, lifting shaky voices, tried to sing in chorus. One of
the Zouaves angrily shouted to them to be quiet. They obeyed, and
disappeared heavily into the shadows, staring about them anxiously at
the feathery palms that clustered in this new and dark country, and at
the shrouded figures of Arabs who met them on the way.

The red brick floor was heaving gently, Domini thought. She found
herself wondering how the cane chair by the small wardrobe kept its
footing, and why the cracked china basin in the iron washstand, painted
bright yellow, did not stir and rattle. Her dressing-bag was open. She
could see the silver backs and tops of the brushes and bottles in it
gleaming. They made her think suddenly of