He lifted his hand and calmly smelt his red rose, keeping his great eyes fixed upon her. Domini"s wish to be alone had left her. This was surely the geni of the garden, and his company would add to its mystery and fragrance.
"You need not stay by the door?" she asked.
"No one will come. There is no one in Beni-Mora. And Ha.s.san will stay."
He pointed with his rose to a little tent that was pitched close to the gate beneath a pepper tree. In it Domini saw a brown boy curled up like a dog and fast asleep. She began to feel as if she had eaten hashish.
The world seemed made for dreaming.
"Thank you, then."
And now for the first time she looked round to see whether Batouch had implied the truth. Must the European gardens give way to this Eastern garden, take a lower place with all their roses?
She stood on a great expanse of newly-raked smooth sand, rising in a very gentle slope to a gigantic hedge of carefully trimmed evergreens, which projected at the top, forming a roof and casting a pleasant shade upon the sand. At intervals white benches were placed under this hedge.
To the right was the villa. She saw now that it was quite small. There were two lines of windows--on the ground floor and the upper story. The lower windows opened on to the sand, those above on to a verandah with a white railing, which was gained by a white staircase outside the house built beneath the arches of the arcade. The villa was most delicately simple, but in this riot of blue and gold its ivory cleanliness, set there upon the shining sand which was warm to the foot, made it look magical to Domini. She thought she had never known before what spotless purity was like.
"Those are the bedrooms," murmured the Arab at her side.
"There are only bedrooms?" she asked in surprise.
"The other rooms, the drawing-room of Monsieur the Count, the dining-room, the smoking-room, the Moorish bath, the room of the little dog, the kitchen and the rooms for the servants are in different parts of the garden. There is the dining-room."
He pointed with his rose to a large white building, whose dazzling walls showed here and there through the ma.s.ses of trees to the left, where a little raised sand-path with flattened, sloping sides wound away into a maze of shadows diapered with gold.
"Let us go down that path," Domini said almost in a whisper.
The spell of the place was descending upon her. This was surely a home of dreams, a haven where the sun came to lie down beneath the trees and sleep.
"What is your name?" she added.
"Smain," replied the Arab. "I was born in this garden. My father, Mohammed, was with Monsieur the Count."
He led the way over the sand, moving silently on his long, brown feet, straight as a reed in a windless place. Domini followed, holding her breath. Only sometimes she let her strong imagination play utterly at its will. She let it go now as she and Smain turned into the golden diapered shadows of the little path and came into the swaying mystery of the trees. The longing for secrecy, for remoteness, for the beauty of far away had sometimes haunted her, especially in the troubled moments of her life. Her heart, oppressed, had overleaped the horizon line in answer to a calling from hidden things beyond. Her emotions had wandered, seeking the great distances in which the dim purple twilight holds surely comfort for those who suffer. But she had never thought to find any garden of peace that realised her dreams. Nevertheless, she was already conscious that Smain with his rose was showing her the way to her ideal, that her feet were set upon its pathway, that its legendary trees were closing round her.
Behind the evergreen hedge she heard the liquid bubbling of a hidden waterfall, and when they had left the untempered sunlight behind them this murmur grew louder. It seemed as if the green gloom in which they walked acted as a sounding-board to the delicious voice. The little path wound on and on between two running rills of water, which slipped incessantly away under the broad and yellow-tipped leaves of dwarf palms, making a music so faint that it was more like a remembered sound in the mind than one which slid upon the ear. On either hand towered a jungle of trees brought to this home in the desert from all parts of the world.
There were many unknown to Domini, but she recognised several varieties of palms, acacias, gums, fig trees, chestnuts, poplars, false pepper trees, the huge olive trees called Jamelons, white laurels, indiarubber and cocoanut trees, bananas, bamboos, yuccas, many mimosas and quant.i.ties of tall eucalyptus trees. Thickets of scarlet geranium flamed in the twilight. The hibiscus lifted languidly its frail and rosy cup, and the red gold oranges gleamed amid leaves that looked as if they had been polished by an attentive fairy.
As she went with Smain farther into the recesses of the garden the voice of the waterfall died away. No birds were singing. Domini thought that perhaps they dared not sing lest they might wake the sun from its golden reveries, but afterwards, when she knew the garden better, she often heard them twittering with a subdued, yet happy, languor, as if joining in a nocturn upon the edge of sleep. Under the trees the sand was yellow, of a shade so voluptuously beautiful that she longed to touch it with her bare feet like Smain. Here and there it rose in symmetrical little pyramids, which hinted at absent gardeners, perhaps enjoying a siesta.
Never before had she fully understood the enchantment of green, quite realised how happy a choice was made on that day of Creation when it was showered prodigally over the world. But now, as she walked secretly over the yellow sand between the rills, following the floating green robe of Smain, she rested her eyes, and her soul, on countless mingling shades of the delicious colour; rough, furry green of geranium leaves, silver green of olives, black green of distant palms from which the sun held aloof, faded green of the eucalyptus, rich, emerald green of fan-shaped, sunlit palms, hot, sultry green of bamboos, dull, drowsy green of mulberry trees and brooding chestnuts. It was a choir of colours in one colour, like a choir of boys all with treble voices singing to the sun.
Gold flickered everywhere, weaving patterns of enchantment, quivering, vital patterns of burning beauty. Down the narrow, branching paths that led to inner mysteries the light ran in and out, peeping between the divided leaves of plants, gliding over the slippery edges of the palm branches, trembling airily where the papyrus bent its antique head, dancing among the big blades of st.u.r.dy gra.s.s that sprouted in tufts here and there, resting languidly upon the glistening magnolias that were besieged by somnolent bees. All the greens and all the golds of Creation were surely met together in this profound retreat to prove the perfect harmony of earth with sun.
And now, growing accustomed to the pervading silence, Domini began to hear the tiny sounds that broke it. They came from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini"s feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very delicate was the touch of the dying upon the yellow sand.
It increased the sense of pervading mystery and made Domini more deeply conscious of the pulsing life of the garden.
"There is the room of the little dog," said Smain.
They had come out into a small open s.p.a.ce, over which an immense cocoanut tree presided. Low box hedges ran round two squares of gra.s.s which were shadowed by date palms heavy with yellow fruit, and beneath some leaning mulberry trees Domini saw a tiny white room with two gla.s.s windows down to the ground. She went up to it and peeped in, smiling.
There, in a formal salon, with gilt chairs, oval, polished tables, faded rugs and shining mirrors, sat a purple china dog with his tail curled over his back sternly staring into vacancy. His expression and his att.i.tude were autocratic and determined, betokening a tyrannical nature, and Domini peeped at him with precaution, holding herself very still lest he should become aware of her presence and resent it.
"Monsieur the Count paid much money for the dog," murmured Smain. "He is very valuable."
"How long has he been there?"
"For many years. He was there when I was born, and I have been married twice and divorced twice."
Domini turned from the window and looked at Smain with astonishment. He was smelling his rose like a dreamy child.
"You have been divorced twice?"
"Yes. Now I will show Madame the smoking-room."
They followed another of the innumerable alleys of the garden. This one was very narrow and less densely roofed with trees than those they had already traversed. Tall shrubs bent forward on either side of it, and their small leaves almost meeting, were transformed by the radiant sunbeams into tongues of pale fire, quivering, well nigh transparent.
As she approached them Domini could not resist the fancy that they would burn her. A brown b.u.t.terfly flitted forward between them and vanished into the golden dream beyond.
"Oh, Smain, how you must love this garden!" she said.
A sort of ecstasy was waking within her. The pure air, the caressing warmth, the enchanted stillness and privacy of this domain touched her soul and body like the hands of a saint with power to bless her.
"I could live here for ever," she added, "without once wishing to go out into the world."
Smain looked drowsily pleased.
"We are coming to the centre of the garden," he said, as they pa.s.sed over a palm-wood bridge beneath which a stream glided under the red petals of geraniums.
The tongues of flame were left behind. Green darkness closed in upon them and the sand beneath their feet looked blanched. The sense of mystery increased, for the trees were enormous and grew densely here.
Pine needles lay upon the ground, and there was a stirring of sudden wind far up above their heads in the tree-tops.
"This is the part of the garden that Monsieur the Count loves," said Smain. "He comes here every day."
"What is that?" said Domini, suddenly stopping on the pale sand.
A thin and remote sound stole to them down the alley, clear and frail as the note of a night bird.
"It is Larbi playing upon the flute. He is in love. That is why he plays when he ought to be watering the flowers and raking out the sand."
The distant love-song of the flute seemed to Domini the last touch of enchantment making this indeed a wonderland. She could not move, and held up her hands to stay the feet of Smain, who was quite content to wait. Never before had she heard any music that seemed to mean and suggest so much to her as this African tune played by an enamoured gardener. Queer and uncouth as it was, distorted with ornaments and tricked out with abrupt runs, exquisitely unnecessary grace notes, and sudden twitterings prolonged till a strange and frivolous Eternity tripped in to banish Time, it grasped Domini"s fancy and laid a spell upon her imagination. For it sounded as naively sincere as the song of a bird, and as if the heart from which it flowed were like the heart of a child, a place of revelation, not of concealment. The sun made men careless here. They opened their windows to it, and one could see into the warm and glowing rooms. Domini looked at the gentle Arab youth beside her, already twice married and twice divorced. She listened to Larbi"s unending song of love. And she said to herself, "These people, uncivilised or not, at least live, and I have been dead all my life, dead in life." That was horribly possible. She knew it as she felt the enormously powerful spell of Africa descending upon her, enveloping her quietly but irresistibly. The dream of this garden was quick with a vague and yet fierce stirring of realities. There was a murmuring of many small and distant voices, like the voices of innumerable tiny things following restless activities in a deep forest. As she stood there the last grain of European dust was lifted from Domini"s soul. How deeply it had been buried, and for how many years.
"The greatest act of man is the act of renunciation." She had just heard those words. The eyes of the priest had flamed as he spoke them, and she had caught the spark of his enthusiasm. But now another fire seemed lit within her, and she found herself marvelling at such austerity. Was it not a fanatical defiance flung into the face of the sun? She shrank from her own thought, like one startled, and walked on softly in the green darkness.
Larbi"s flute became more distant. Again and again it repeated the same queer little melody, changing the ornamentation at the fantasy of the player. She looked for him among the trees but saw no one. He must be in some very secret place. Smain touched her.
"Look!" he said, and his voice was very low.
He parted the branches of some palms with his delicate hands, and Domini, peering between them, saw in a place of deep shadows an isolated square room, whose white walls were almost entirely concealed by ma.s.ses of purple bougainvillea. It had a flat roof. In three of its sides were large arched window-s.p.a.ces without windows. In the fourth was a narrow doorway without a door. Immense fig trees and palms and thickets of bamboo towered around it and leaned above it. And it was circled by a narrow riband of finely-raked sand.