The Garden of Allah Part 93

"My father had originally come to Africa for his health, which needed a warm climate. He had some money and bought large tracts of land suitable for vineyards. Indeed, he sunk nearly his whole fortune in land. I told you, Domini, that the vines were devoured by the phylloxera. Most of the money was lost. When my father died we were left very poor. We lived quietly in a little village--I told you its name, I told you that part of my life, all I dared tell, Domini--but now--why did I enter the monastery? I was very young when I became a novice, just seventeen. You are thinking, Domini, I know, that I was too young to know what I was doing, that I had no vocation, that I was unfitted for the monastic life. It seems so. The whole world would think so. And yet--how am I to tell you? Even now I feel that then I had the vocation, that I was fitted to enter the monastery, that I ought to have made a faithful and devoted monk. My mother wished the life for me, but it was not only that. I wished it for myself then. With my whole heart I wished it. I knew nothing of the world. My youth had been one of absolute purity. And I did not feel longings after the unknown. My mother's influence upon me was strong; but she did not force me into anything. Perhaps my love for her led me more than I knew, brought me to the monastery door. The pa.s.sion of her life, the human pa.s.sion, had been my father. After he was dead the pa.s.sion of her life was prayer for him. My love for her made me share that pa.s.sion, and the sharing of that pa.s.sion eventually led me to become a monk. I became as a child, a devotee of prayer. Oh!

Domini--think--I loved prayer--I loved it----"

His voice broke. When he stopped speaking Domini was again conscious of the music in the city. She remembered that earlier in the night she had thought of it as the music of a great festival.

"I resolved to enter the life of prayer, the most perfect life of prayer. I resolved to become a 'religious.' It seemed to me that by so doing I should be proving in the finest way my love for my mother. I should be, in the strongest way, helping her. Her life was prayer for my dead father and love for her children. By devoting myself to the life of prayer I should show to her that I was as she was, as she had made me, true son of her womb. Can you understand? I had a pa.s.sion for my mother, Domini--I had a pa.s.sion. My brother tried to dissuade me from the monastic life. He himself was going into business in Tunis. He wanted me to join him. But I was firm. I felt driven towards the cloister then as other men often feel driven towards the vicious life. The inclination was irresistible. I yielded to it. I had to bid good-bye to my mother.

I told you--she was the pa.s.sion of my life. And yet I hardly felt sad at parting from her. Perhaps that will show you how I was then. It seemed to me that we should be even closer together when I wore the monk's habit. I was in haste to put it on. I went to the monastery of El-Largani and entered it as a novice of the Trappistine order. I thought in the great silence of the Trappists there would be more room for prayer. When I left my home and went to El-Largani I took with me one treasure only. Domini, it was the little wooden crucifix you pinned upon the tent at Arba. My mother gave it to me, and I was allowed to keep it. Everything else in the way of earthly possessions I, of course, had to give up.

"You have never seen El-Largani, my home for nineteen years, my prison for one. It is lonely, but not in the least desolate. It stands on a high upland, and, from a distance, looks upon the sea. Far off there are mountains. The land was a desert. The monks have turned it, if not into an Eden, at least into a rich garden. There are vineyards, cornfields, orchards, almost every fruit-tree flourishes there. The springs of sweet waters are abundant. At a short way from the monastery is a large village for the Spanish workmen whom the monks supervise in the labours of the fields. For the Trappist life is not only a life of prayer, but a life of diligent labour. When I became a novice I had not realised that.

I had imagined myself continually upon my knees. I found instead that I was perpetually in the fields, in sun, and wind, and rain--that was in the winter time--working like the labourers, and that often when we went into the long, plain chapel to pray I was so tired--being only a boy--that my eyes closed as I stood in my stall, and I could scarcely hear the words of Ma.s.s or Benediction. But I had expected to be happy at El-Largani, and I was happy. Labour is good for the body and better for the soul. And the silence was not hard to bear. The Trappists have a book of gestures, and are often allowed to converse by signs. We novices were generally in little bands, and often, as we walked in the garden of the monastery, we talked together gaily with our hands. Then the silence is not perpetual. In the fields we often had to give directions to the labourers. In the school, where we studied Theology, Latin, Greek, there was heard the voice of the teacher. It is true that I have seen men in the monastery day by day for twenty years with whom I have never exchanged a word, but I have had permission to speak with monks. The head of the monastery, the Reverend Pere, has the power to loose the bonds of silence when he chooses, and to allow monks to walk and speak with each other beyond the white walls that hem in the garden of the monastery. Now and then we spoke, but I think most of us were not unhappy in our silence. It became a habit. And then we were always occupied. We had no time allowed us for sitting and being sad. Domini, I don't want to tell you about the Trappists, their life--only about myself, why I was as I was, how I came to change. For years I was not unhappy at El-Largani. When my time of novitiate was over I took the eternal vows without hesitation. Many novices go out again into the world. It never occurred to me to do so. I scarcely ever felt a stirring of worldly desire. I scarcely ever had one of those agonising struggles which many people probably attribute to monks. I was contented nearly always. Now and then the flesh spoke, but not strongly. Remember, our life was a life of hard and exhausting labour in the fields. The labour kept the flesh in subjection, as the prayer lifted up the spirit. And then, during all my earlier years at the monastery, we had an Abbe who was quick to understand the characters and dispositions of men--Dom Andre Herceline. He knew me far better than I knew myself. He knew, what I did not suspect, that I was full of sleeping violence, that in my purity and devotion--or beneath it rather--there was a strong strain of barbarism. The Russian was sleeping in the monk, but sleeping soundly.

That can be. Half a man's nature, if all that would call to it is carefully kept from it, may sleep, I believe, through all his life. He might die and never have known, or been, what all the time he was.

For years it was so with me. I knew only part of myself, a real vivid part--but only a part. I thought it was the whole. And while I thought it was the whole I was happy. If Dom Andre Herceline had not died, today I should be a monk at El-Largani, ignorant of what I know, contented.

"He never allowed me to come into any sort of contact with the many strangers who visited the monastery. Different monks have different duties. Certain duties bring monks into connection with the travellers whom curiosity sends to El-Largani. The monk whose business it is to look after the cemetery on the hill, where the dead Trappists are laid to rest, shows visitors round the little chapel, and may talk with them freely so long as they remain in the cemetery. The monk in charge of the distillery also receives visitors and converses with them. So does the monk in charge of the parlour at the great door of the monastery. He sells the souvenirs of the Trappists, photographs of the church and buildings, statues of saints, bottles of perfumes made by the monks.

He takes the orders for the wines made at the monastery, and for--for the--what I made, Domini, when I was there."

She thought of De Trevignac and the fragments of gla.s.s lying upon the ground in the tent at Mogar.

"Had De Trevignac----" she said in a low, inward voice.

"He had seen me, spoken with me at the monastery. When Ouardi brought in the liqueur he remembered who I was."

She understood De Trevignac's glance towards the tent where Androvsky lay sleeping, and a slight shiver ran through her. Androvsky saw it and looked down.

"But the--the--"

He cleared his throat, turned, looked out across the white sand as if he longed to travel away into it and be lost for ever, then went on, speaking quickly:

"But the monk who has most to do with travellers is the monk who is in charge of the _hotellerie_ of the monastery. He is the host to all visitors, to those who come over for the day and have _dejeuner_, and to any who remain for the night, or for a longer time. For when I was at El-Largani it was permitted for people to stay in the _hotellerie_, on payment of a small weekly sum, for as long as they pleased. The monk of the _hotellerie_ is perpetually brought into contact with the outside world. He talks with all sorts and conditions of men--women, of course, are not admitted. The other monks, many of them, probably envy him. I never did. I had no wish to see strangers. When, by chance, I met them in the yard, the outbuildings, or the grounds of the monastery, I seldom even raised my eyes to look at them. They were not, would never be, in my life. Why should I look at them? What were they to me? Years went on--quickly they pa.s.sed--not slowly. I did not feel their monotony. I never shrank from anything in the life. My health was splendid. I never knew what it was to be ill for a day. My muscles were hard as iron.

The pallet on which I lay in my cubicle, the heavy robe I wore day and night, the scanty vegetables I ate, the bell that called me from my sleep in the darkness to go to the chapel, the fastings, the watchings, the perpetual sameness of all I saw, all I did, neither saddened nor fatigued me. I never sighed for change. Can you believe that, Domini?

It is true. So long as Dom Andre Herceline lived and ruled my life I was calm, happy, as few people in the world, or none, can ever be. But Dom Andre died, and then--"

His face was contorted by a spasm.

"My mother was dead. My brother lived on in Tunis, and was successful in business. He remained unmarried. So far as I was concerned, although the monastery was but two hours' drive from the town, he might almost have been dead too. I scarcely ever saw him, and then only by a special permission from the Reverend Pere, and for a few moments. Once I visited him at Tunis, when he was ill. When my mother died I seemed to sink down a little deeper into the monastic life. That was all. It was as if I drew my robe more closely round me and pulled my hood further forward over my face. There was more reason for my prayers, and I prayed more pa.s.sionately. I lived in prayer like a sea-plant in the depths of the ocean. Prayer was about me like a fluid. But Dom Andre Herceline died, and a new Abbe was appointed, he who, I suppose, rules now at El-Largani. He was a good man, but, I think, apt to misunderstand men.

The Abbe of a Trappist monastery has complete power over his community.

He can order what he will. Soon after he came to El-Largani--for some reason that I cannot divine--he--removed the Pere Michel, who had been for years in charge of the cemetery, from his duties there, and informed me that I was to undertake them. I obeyed, of course, without a word.

"The cemetery of El-Largani is on a low hill, the highest part of the monastery grounds. It is surrounded by a white wall and by a hedge of cypress trees. The road to it is an avenue of cypresses, among which are interspersed niches containing carvings of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross. At the entrance to this avenue, on the left, there is a high yellow pedestal, surmounted by a black cross, on which hangs a silver Christ. Underneath is written:

"FACTUS OBEDIENS

"USQUE

"AD MORTEM

"CRUCIS.

"I remember, on the first day when I became the guardian of the cemetery, stopping on my way to it before the Christ and praying. My prayer--my prayer was, Domini, that I might die, as I had lived, in innocence. I prayed for that, but with a sort of--yes, now I think so--insolent certainty that my prayer would of course be granted. Then I went on to the cemetery.

"My work there was easy. I had only to tend the land about the graves, and sweep out the little chapel where was buried the founder of La Trappe of El-Largani. This done I could wander about the cemetery, or sit on a bench in the sun. The Pere Michel, who was my predecessor, had some doves, and had left them behind in a little house by my bench. I took care of and fed them. They were tame, and used to flutter to my shoulders and perch on my hands. To birds and animals I was always a friend. At El-Largani there are all sorts of beasts, and, at one time or another, it had been my duty to look after most of them. I loved all living things. Sitting in the cemetery I could see a great stretch of country, the blue of the lakes of Tunis with the white villages at their edge, the boats gliding upon them towards the white city, the distant mountains. Having little to do, I sat day after day for hours meditating, and looking out upon this distant world. I remember specially one evening, at sunset, just before I had to go to the chapel, that a sort of awe came upon me as I looked across the lakes. The sky was golden, the waters were dyed with gold, out of which rose the white sails of boats. The mountains were shadowy purple. The little minarets of the mosques rose into the gold like sticks of ivory. As I watched my eyes filled with tears, and I felt a sort of aching in my heart, and as if--Domini, it was as if at that moment a hand was laid, on mine, but very gently, and pulled at my hand. It was as if at that moment someone was beside me in the cemetery wishing to lead me out to those far-off waters, those mosque towers, those purple mountains. Never before had I had such a sensation. It frightened me. I felt as if the devil had come into the cemetery, as if his hand was laid on mine, as if his voice were whispering in my ear, 'Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world, which G.o.d made for men. Why do you reject it?'

"That evening, Domini, was the beginning of this--this end. Day after day I sat in the cemetery and looked out over the world, and wondered what it was like: what were the lives of the men who sailed in the white-winged boats, who crowded on the steamers whose smoke I could see sometimes faintly trailing away into the track of the sun; who kept the sheep upon the mountains; who--who--Domini, can you imagine--no, you cannot--what, in a man of my age, of my blood, were these first, very first, stirrings of the longing for life? Sometimes I think they were like the first birth-pangs of a woman who is going to be a mother."

Domini's hands moved apart, then joined themselves again.

"There was something physical in them. I felt as if my limbs had minds, and that their minds, which had been asleep, were waking. My arms twitched with a desire to stretch themselves towards the distant blue of the lakes on which I should never sail. My--I was physically stirred.

And again and again I felt that hand laid closely upon mine, as if to draw me away into something I had never known, could never know. Do not think that I did not strive against these first stirrings of the nature that had slept so long! For days I refused to let myself look out from the cemetery. I kept my eyes upon the ground, upon the plain crosses that marked the graves. I played with the red-eyed doves. I worked.

But my eyes at last rebelled. I said to myself, 'It is not forbidden to look.' And again the sails, the seas, the towers, the mountains, were as voices whispering to me, 'Why will you never know us, draw near to us?

Why will you never understand our meaning? Why will you be ignorant for ever of all that has been created for man to know?' Then the pain within me became almost unbearable. At night I could not sleep. In the chapel it was difficult to pray. I looked at the monks around me, to most of whom I had never addressed a word, and I thought, 'Do they, too, hold such longings within them? Are they, too, shaken with a desire of knowledge?' It seemed to me that, instead of a place of peace, the monastery was, must be, a place of tumult, of the silent tumult that has its home in the souls of men. But then I remembered for how long I had been at peace. Perhaps all the silent men by whom I was surrounded were still at peace, as I had been, as I might be again.

"A young monk died in the monastery and was buried in the cemetery. I made his grave against the outer wall, beneath a cypress tree. Some days afterwards, when I was sitting on the bench by the house of the doves, I heard a sound, which came from beyond the wall. It was like sobbing.

I listened, and heard it more distinctly, and knew that it was someone crying and sobbing desperately, and near at hand. But now it seemed to me to come from the wall itself. I got up and listened. Someone was crying bitterly behind, or above, the wall, just where the young monk had been buried. Who could it be? I stood listening, wondering, hesitating what to do. There was something in this sound of lamentation that moved one to the depths. For years I had not looked on a woman, or heard a woman's voice--but I knew that this was a woman mourning.

Why was she there? What could she want? I glanced up. All round the cemetery, as I have said, grew cypress trees. As I glanced up I saw one shake just above where the new grave was, and a woman's voice said, 'I cannot see it, I cannot see it!'

"I do not know why, but I felt that someone was there who wished to see the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs fell down from the tree I saw a woman's face, tear-stained, staring at me. It seemed to me a lovely face.

"'Which is his grave?' she said. I pointed to the grave of the young monk, which could now be seen through the gap I had made, descended the ladder, and went away to the farthest corner of the cemetery. And I did not look again in the direction of the woman's face.

"Who she was I do not know. When she went away I did not see. She loved the monk who had died, and knowing that women cannot enter the precincts of the monastery, she had come to the outside wall to cast, if she might, a despairing glance at his grave.

"Domini, I wonder--I wonder if you can understand how that incident affected me. To an ordinary man it would seem nothing, I suppose. But to a Trappist monk it seemed tremendous. I had seen a woman. I had done something for a woman. I thought of her, of what I had done for her, perpetually. The gap in the cypress tree reminded me of her every time I looked towards it. When I was in the cemetery I could hardly turn my eyes from it. But the woman never came again. I said nothing to the Reverend Pere of what I had done. I ought to have spoken, but I did not.

I kept it back when I confessed. From that moment I had a secret, and it was a secret connected with a woman.

"Does it seem strange to you that this secret seemed to me to set me apart from all the other monks--nearer the world? It was so. I felt sometimes as if I had been out into the world for a moment, had known the meaning that women have for men. I wondered who the woman was. I wondered how she had loved the young monk who was dead. He used to sit beside me in the chapel. He had a pure and beautiful face, such a face, I supposed, as a woman might well love. Had this woman loved him, and had he rejected her love for the life of the monastery? I remember one day thinking of this and wondering how it had been possible for him to do so, and then suddenly realising the meaning of my thought and turning hot with shame. I had put the love of woman above the love of G.o.d, woman's service above G.o.d's service. That day I was terrified of myself.

I went back to the monastery from the cemetery, quickly, asked to see the Reverend Pere, and begged him to remove me from the cemetery, to give me some other work. He did not ask my reason for wishing to change, but three days afterwards he sent for me, and told me that I was to be placed in charge of the _hotellerie_ of the monastery, and that my duties there were to begin upon the morrow.

"Domini, I wonder if I can make you realise what that change meant to a man who had lived as I had for so many years. The _hotellerie_ of El-Largani is a long, low, one-storied building standing in a garden full of palms and geraniums. It contains a kitchen, a number of little rooms like cells for visitors, and two large parlours in which guests are entertained at meals. In one they sit to eat the fruit, eggs, and vegetables provided by the monastery, with wine. If after the meal they wish to take coffee they pa.s.s into the second parlour. Visitors who stay in the monastery are free to do much as they please, but they must conform to certain rules. They rise at a certain hour, feed at fixed times, and are obliged to go to their bedrooms at half-past seven in the evening in winter, and at eight in summer. The monk in charge of the _hotellerie_ has to see to their comfort. He looks after the kitchen, is always in the parlour at some moment or another during meals. He visits the bedrooms and takes care that the one servant keeps everything spotlessly clean. He shows people round the garden. His duties, you see, are light and social. He cannot go into the world, but he can mix with the world that comes to him. It is his task, if not his pleasure, to be cheerful, talkative, sympathetic, a good host, with a genial welcome for all who come to La Trappe. After my years of labour, solitude, silence, and prayer, I was abruptly put into this new life.

"Domini, to me it was like rushing out into the world. I was almost dazed by the change. At first I was nervous, timid, awkward, and, especially, tongue-tied. The habit of silence had taken such a hold upon me that I could not throw it off. I dreaded the coming of visitors. I did not know how to receive them, what to say to them. Fortunately, as I thought, the tourist season was over, the summer was approaching. Very few people came, and those only to eat a meal. I tried to be polite and pleasant to them, and gradually I began to fall into the way of talking without the difficulty I had experienced at first. In the beginning I could not open my lips without feeling as if I were almost committing a crime. But presently I was more natural, less taciturn. I even, now and then, took some pleasure in speaking to a pleasant visitor. I grew to love the garden with its flowers, its orange trees, its groves of eucalyptus, its vineyard which sloped towards the cemetery. Often I wandered in it alone, or sat under the arcade that divided it from the large entrance court of the monastery, meditating, listening to the bees humming, and watching the cats basking in the sunshine.

"Sometimes, when I was there, I thought of the woman's face above the cemetery wall. Sometimes I seemed to feel the hand tugging at mine. But I was more at peace than I had been in the cemetery. For from the garden I could not see the distant world, and of the chance visitors none had as yet set a match to the torch that, unknown to me, was ready--at the coming of the smallest spark--to burst into a flame.

"One day, it was in the morning towards half-past ten, when I was sitting reading my Greek Testament on a bench just inside the doorway of the _hotellerie_, I heard the great door of the monastery being opened, and then the rolling of carriage wheels in the courtyard. Some visitor had arrived from Tunis, perhaps some visitors--three or four. It was a radiant morning of late May. The garden was brilliant with flowers, golden with sunshine, tender with shade, and quiet--quiet and peaceful, Domini! There was a wonderful peace in the garden that day, a peace that seemed full of safety, of enduring cheerfulness. The flowers looked as if they had hearts to understand it, and love it, the roses along the yellow wall of the house that clambered to the brown red tiles, the geraniums that grew in ma.s.ses under the shining leaves of the orange trees, the--I felt as if that day I were in the Garden of Eden, and I remember that when I heard the carriage wheels I had a moment of selfish sadness. I thought: 'Why does anyone come to disturb my blessed peace, my blessed solitude?' Then I realised the egoism of my thought and that I was there with my duty. I got up, went into the kitchen and said to Francois, the servant, that someone had come and no doubt would stay to _dejeuner_. And, as I spoke, already I was thinking of the moment when I should hear the roll of wheels once more, the clang of the shutting gate, and know that the intruders upon the peace of the Trappists had gone back to the world, and that I could once more be alone in the little Eden I loved.

"Strangely, Domini, strangely, that day, of all the days of my life, I was most in love--it was like that, like being in love--with my monk's existence. The terrible feeling that had begun to ravage me had completely died away. I adored the peace in which my days were pa.s.sed.

I looked at the flowers and compared my happiness with theirs. They blossomed, bloomed, faded, died in the garden. So would I wish to blossom, bloom, fade--when my time came--die in the garden--always in peace, always in safety, always isolated from the terrors of life, always under the tender watchful eye of--of--Domini, that day I was happy, as perhaps they are--perhaps--the saints in Paradise. I was happy because I felt no inclination to evil. I felt as if my joy lay entirely in being innocent. Oh, what an ecstasy such a feeling is! 'My will accord with Thy design--I love to live as Thou intendest me to live! Any other way of life would be to me a terror, would bring to me despair.'

"And I felt that--intensely I felt it at that moment in heart and soul. It was as if I had G.o.d's arms round me, caressing me as a father caresses his child."

He moved away a step or two in the sand, came back, and went on with an effort:

"Within a few minutes the porter of the monastery came through the archway of the arcade followed by a young man. As I looked up at him I was uncertain of his nationality. But I scarcely thought about it--except in the first moment. For something else seized my attention--the intense, active misery in the stranger's face. He looked ravaged, eaten by grief. I said he was young--perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven. His face was rather dark-complexioned, with small, good features. He had thick brown hair, and his eyes shone with intelligence, with an intelligence that was almost painful--somehow. His eyes always looked to me as if they were seeing too much, had always seen too much.

There was a restlessness in the swiftness of their observation. One could not conceive of them closed in sleep. An activity that must surely be eternal blazed in them.

"The porter left the stranger in the archway. It was now my duty to attend to him. I welcomed him in French. He took off his hat. When he did that I felt sure he was an Englishman--by the look of him bareheaded--and I told him that I spoke English as well as French. He answered that he was at home in French, but that he was English. We talked English. His entrance into the garden had entirely destroyed my sense of its peace--even my own peace was disturbed at once by his appearance.

"I felt that I was in the presence of a misery that was like a devouring element. Before we had time for more than a very few halting words the bell was rung by Francois.

"'What's that for, Father?' the stranger said, with a start, which showed that his nerves were shattered.