The Garden of God

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

For quarter of a mile the cocoanut groves held, then came a great belt of mammee-apple, pandanus trees and bread-fruit, through which they passed to find a valley where the ferns grew high—the strangest surprise—for here great blocks of hewn stone lay cast about and terraces of stone stood in ruin, disrupted by the rains of the ages and the roots of screw pines working beneath them.

Fallen from its place, half prone amidst the ferns, lay a great stone idol, an island god of the long ago. The heat of the day lingered here where no wind came and where the ferns stood in stereoscopic stillness in a silence broken only by the faint hum of insects.

Stanistreet had seen temple places like this amongst the islands, but the sight was new to Lestrange. He stood for a moment gazing at the fallen god, the blocks strewn about, the terraces lit by the amber light of evening. Then he passed on down the valley and beyond, where a trodden path showed them the way past a grove of hootoo trees to the sward they had seen from the hill-top and where stood the house.

Close to the left-hand belt of trees and with a little garden beside it where toro grew, it stood, leaf-thatched and built of cane. It had no door. The light of evening entered, exposing all the simple contents, mats carefully and neatly rolled up, a shelf where stood bowls cut from cocoanut shell, a ball of twine, an old pair of scissors—all arranged neatly and in order. Some fish spears stood, leaning against a corner, and in a small bowl at the extreme end of the shelf some flowers, once bright but now withered. Yet for all the cunning of the construction the house had an unfinished look, as though the builders had been called away before its full completion.

Lestrange stood before the open door of the house, so trustful, so naive, so like a nest, this house built by the lost children whose forms he had seen but a day ago, whose voices he had not heard for so many years. It was the sight of the neatly rolled mats, the bowl of withered flowers and the carefully arranged things on the shelf that shattered for a moment the great contentment born of his vision and the surety that he was to meet the children soon. These things said “Emmeline” as plainly as a voice—Emmeline so neat, so careful of things, so fond of flowers.

The ghost child came running to him across the sands of memory, those sunlit sands that swallow so many and such great things.

He broke down and, leaning his arm against the door-post, hid his face.

Stanistreet turned on his heel and walked rapidly down to the lagoon edge, he was hit nearly as badly as the other. That house, coming after all the other things, would have moved the most callous heart.

He stood with his arms folded, looking across the lagoon water to the reef. The lagoon here was broad and shallow, corallised here and there by ridges of coral, the reef so low and far that he could see the evening light on the Pacific, the sound of whose surf on the far outer beach came like the voice of sleep.

Ah, well, it was the fate of everything and they had lived their day and been happy; there was no use in a man letting his feelings get the better of him—no use in snivelling; just as well they had come on the house: it would cure Lestrange of that madness about meeting them, it had broken down that terrible contentment—a bitter medicine, but better than the disease that threatened him.