CHAT ON BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 65

CHAT ON BOOKS.

"The Garden of Allah" is a book with an "atmosphere" — that elusive quality which is said to be essential for a work of art. In this cas-e it is the atmosphere of the Sahara, radiant, keen, thin, and pure, with its glory of blue sky, its qxiivering golden heat, and its wide flats of pulsating sand. It is portrayed by one who has liv©di in, and loved, and studied these great* wastes which the Arabs have thought worthy to be called "The Garden of AllaJa," and in this garden of Allah the two principal characters of the story meet, love, marry, and part. They are a. young Englishwoman, Domini Enfildeu.', and a man of

mixed parentage-, half Russian, half Eng lish — Boris Androvsky. Domini is not the heroine of 17 or 3 8 years, and of unnumbered charms, ■whom we have had too> frequently of late in American fiction, but a matured woman of 32, whom the authoi daringly presents as being sft lOin . height, and looking her age. Her mother, a "woman of Hungarian descent^, and an ardent Catholic, had married when very young Lord -Revs, who, in name a Protestant, but in reality nothing, became a Roman Catholic to please her. But when, ! after 20 years or so of married, life, whea. Domini was just 19, she runs away with a Hungarian musician, Lord Revs becomes embittered against the Church he entered for her sake, and, refusing to believe that any good can exist in a Church of which the one disciple that he loved has proved faithless, he secedes from it, and endeavours to induce Domini to do so, too. however, more just in her „uu. o though shaken by her mother's sin, *** strength (enough to resist this attempt, paying, nevertheless, the price of her effort in a partial and secret collapse afterwards — a- slacker hold upon her faith. I She lives for trie next 10 or 12 years with her father, forced to listen to" his blasphemies and to endure his bitterness, living meanwhile the, ordinary life of a woman of the world till the death of her father, who bequeaths her Ids large fortune and leaves her free. She travels for a short time in the South of Europe, then, dTawn by a strong impulse, crosses the Mediterranean to Africa., and settles down in the little oasis of Beni-Moia, right on the border of the great desert. Waking at 1-er father's death, from the empty worldlhiess of the life of her order, Domini began to wonder what she was, capable of what, of how much good -or evil, and to feel sure she did not know, had never known, or tried to find out. . .. She had come from her last confession asking herself, What am I?' She had felt infinitely small confronted with the pettiness of modern civilised life in a narrow, crowded world. Now she did not torture herself with any questions, for she~ knew that something large, something capable, something perhaps even noble rose up -within her to groat all this nobility, all this mighty frankness ~nd fierce undressed sincerity of NatMre. This desert and this sun would be her comrades, and she was not afraid of them. And in this desert, and under this sun, sh& meets Boris Androvsky, tho man who is to change all her life — himself, like her, a seeker after truth and peace. He is cvi- , dently not of the world that she has lived in, knows nothing of its little courtesies and the society of women ; he is like some hermit who has for years been cut off from all contact with his fellows and knows no larger how to bear himself with them. But in spite of his boorish awkwardness, his rudenesses, something in Domini is attracted by the impression of great strength this man gives her, and she allows their acquaintanceship to ripen till she suddtenly realises that she loves with all the tremendous force hitherto dormant in h-or nature this mysterious stranger of whose ■past she knows nothing. Her only two friends in Beni-Mora — Count Anteoni and Father Roubier — have both conceived prejudices against this man, but in spite of their warnings she marries him, and they set forth on a prolonged journey through tho ds&ert as their wedding tour. The part of the book describing this journey is an idyll, perfect alike in its delicate delineation of supreme human joy and in its marvellous word-pictures of the desert. Here is one of them : But as the radiant afternoon drew to its end, there came into the blue sky a whiteness that suggested a heaven turning pale in the contemplation ot some act that was piteous and terrible. This whiteness was shot, at the hour of sunset, with streaks of sulphur yellow, and dappled with small, ribbed clouds tinged with yellow-green, a bitter aJid cruel shade of green, that distressed the eyes as a merciless light distresses them ; b>-' these colours quickly faded, and ag*. the whiteness prevailed for a brief space of time before the heavy falling of a darkness unpierced by stars'. With this darkness came a. faint moaning-' of hollow wind from the desert, a lamentable murmur that shuddered over the great spaces, crept among the palms and the flatroofed houses, and died away at the foot of the brown mountains beyond the flammam SaJahine. The succeeding silence, short a-nd intense, was like a sound of fear, like the cry of a voice iifted up in protest against the approach of an unknown, but dreaded, fate Then the wind cams again with a stronger moaning and a lengthened 1 life, not yet forceful, not yet with all its powers, but more tenacious, more acquainted with itself and tha deeds that it might do when the night was black among the vast sands which were its birthplace, among the crouching plains and the trembling palm groves that would be its battleground. But the idyll of this wedding journey leads to a tragedy of separation only the more awful because of the beauty of the union of these two human beings, yet dictated by a conception of duty so lofty as to be almost beyond human strength. To touch upon the reason for this great sacrifice is not fair to the author ; consequently this sketch must necessarily be somewhat unfinished. Whether Domini was right in her decision is a question which will be diversely answered ; but there can only be admit ation for the magnificent strength ' of her faith to the vision she had of right, ' a strength which, sufficient for herself and her husband, enabled them to meet their self-imposed doom. The character of Domini is a masterly creation, excelled by none in recent fiction. Indeed, the author has given us throughout this book living, moving men and women : Count Anteoni, the easy, finished, travelled man of the world, full of gentle bonhomie, with a deep and understanding love of the desert and the Arabs and his own delectable land, the garden of his planting; Father Roubier, the simple,

' kindly, wise old priest, whose unfulfilled aspiration to become a "frere arnie" makes, unconsciously to him, the pathos of his life, tingeing all his gentle dignity and sweet unworldliness. These two are the friends of Domini, and the two principal of the subordinate characters of the book. Besides them are a whole kaleidoscope of interesting characters : Suzanne, Domini's French maid, whose maiden modesty is compelled to keep its eyes downcast ancf its lips pursed at the sight of so many 7 "-' Arab legs: Batouch, Domini's poet'lashing cavalier, and Eastern mys , .aiain, the doorkeeper of Count Anteoni's Paradise, the soft, Eastern, whiterobed dreamer, waiting with a rose in his hand to greet Domini ; — all these, set against their background of golden desert light, make pictures that a few lines have -■resented in all their brilliant reality. A -•f vivid pictures passes before the j. the reader — the crowded market, with its bartering of burnouses, weapons, skins, and perfumes ; the sand diviner, shuddering over the fate he reads for Domini in the sand of the desert ; the dancing-girls, dancing their stomach dance or dagger dance ; the magicians, walking on fire, or eating glass or scorpions, or piercing themselves with swords. There is much description here — wealth' of it, magnificence of it ; there is much introspection, much analysis of character j, there is at times a laboured imaginative ness. But withal the reader who ha y read through these five hundred pagewill leave them feeling that' he has new friends in Boris Androvsky, Father Roubier, and Count Anteoni, above all in Domini, a woman already strong and true and fearless, but made by her love stronger and greater and more human.