Let Me Alone

CHAPTER 12

THE Henzada was sailing at mid-day. Passengers must be aboard an hour or so earlier. Anna got a shock when she saw the boat lying there in the midst of the chaos of the docks. Such a wretched-looking little tub of a one-funnelled boat, it seemed scarcely larger than a channel steamer. She couldn’t believe that she was to travel for three solid weeks, day and night, in that. But when they got on board, and she saw the clean young stewards and the ship’s officers, quite efficient looking, she felt a bit reassured. There was quite a professional, sea-going orderliness and smartness about the men, though the boat itself was anything but up-to-date.

It soon became apparent that Matthew’s carefully laid plans had miscarried again. It was strange what a demon of inefficiency always stalked alongside his most elaborate scheming.

The steward looked up their berth numbers which turned out to be widely separated. Matthew had been allotted a share in a deck cabin with three other men; Anna was to share with another woman, somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Imagine the way Matthew had been looking forward to getting Anna to himself in a small cabin, and you realize the extent of the disaster for him.

He was infuriated. He stopped quite still, blocking up the narrow passage where they happened to be. He was almost bursting with rage. He clenched his fists: his eyes went hot and dangerous: and he would not listen to the steward who was explaining that the boat was very crowded and that many married people were obliged to separate.

‘It’s a mistake,’ he said, in a tone of loud indignation. ‘A preposterous mistake. My cabin was booked long ago.’

He stood with clenched fists, blocking up the way. The steward watched him with a helpless face. Anna winced in discomfort and tried to urge him along. Was he going to stand there for ever? People were waiting to pass. Suddenly there came a thump. Matthew had snatched his bag from the steward and dropped it on the floor. He turned round in solemn wrath.

‘I shall go to the chief steward,’ he said. ‘I refuse to be put upon in this disgraceful manner.’ Whereupon he marched off, in a fine fume of indignation.

Anna followed behind, not knowing what else to do.

The chief steward, or whoever it was who had the final word in these matters, was sitting behind a table. He was a big, red-faced Scotchman, rather bossy and overbearing.

‘Well, what can I do for you?’ he began largely, seeing the irate Matthew bearing down upon him. He began by being lordly and condescending towards the complaint. ‘But, my dear sir, there is nothing I can do. The boat is as full as an egg.’ He smiled in a curious spiteful way, showing his teeth like a dog that wants a fight.

‘You must do something. I insist on having the matter put right.’ Matthew was furious. But he was on his dignity in front of the Scotchman, very much the Government Official before the paid employee of a shipping company. ‘It’s a disgrace to the line.’ He stared hotly at the other man. ‘I demand to be given proper accommodation!’

As Matthew became angrier and more official, Anna became more and more uncomfortable. The Scotchman sat behind his table, secure, with the smirking, unpleasant smile on his red face.

‘Don’t you hear what I say?’ Matthew exploded, beginning to bluster.

But the other only sat there, as it were behind the security of his position, and looked back at Matthew with the insolent smile on his face and a nasty glint in his eye.

‘I won’t stand it!’ Matthew’s hands were jerking dangerously.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ came from the Scotchman.

Anna watched the two men: Matthew, whose ungovernable rages she knew and despised: the other, whose bossiness was stronger than his anger, and his caution stronger still. She realized that the Scotchman was more dangerous than Matthew. He was sure of his backing. And though he might have the devil’s own temper, he would never lose sight of caution. Whereas Matthew’s rages were incontinence, pure and simple.

She took hold of his sleeve.

‘Come along,’ she said, in her cold way, that subdued him. ‘It’s no good arguing.’ And she walked him off, stiffly, feeling as though she had a vicious dog on the end of her chain.

For the moment she had him under control, all right. But her paramountcy was very precarious.

So Anna went to the cabin which she was sharing in the depths of the ship, near the ladies’ bathrooms, where it was dark and stuffy, with a hot curious smell of oil and steamy salt water. She was truly thankful to have been let off sharing a cabin with Matthew. It seemed as though the Lord were on her side in this respect.

She was getting used to scenes like this with Matthew. He seemed always to be making them. And she was always looking on, hiding her chilly discomfort under a disdainful front, and marching him off, if possible, before very much harm had been done. She felt rather ashamed of her association with him. And her nerves were very much on edge.

To calm herself, she pottered about in the cramped little cubicle, which was dismal in spite of the burning light, unpacking a few things and tidying her hair. Then up she went, through the tunnel-like passages, past groups of excited people, up to the crowded deck, and so into the light of day again.

Here was a great to-do. People with luggage; people with children; people angry, cheerful, flustered, calm; people in a hurry; people with nothing to do. People hung over the rail, watching what went on. Or they called out jokingly to each other. Or they stood in groups talking to their friends and getting in the way. A man on shore was playing ancient tunes on a battered old fiddle — Auld Lang Syne and out-of-date English songs, Tipperary and the old war songs — to please the English people. Occasionally someone threw him a coin over the side, and he scrambled for it with the men who sold carpets and binoculars and deck-chairs. There was a queer, unreal, excited feeling in the air.

Anna looked round for Rex Findlay. But of course she couldn’t see him. Impossible to find anyone in this confusion. She walked aimlessly towards the stern of the boat, pushing through the chattering crowd. And then she saw him, smoking a cigarette near the door of the wireless cabin, where there was a little quietude. He seemed to have found a quiet space for himself in the midst of the lively, excitable muddle.

‘So you have really appeared,’ Findlay was saying to her. She moved towards him. He stood with the cigarette drooped carelessly from the ends of his fingers, intent on the casual and yet close observation of the scene. And his mouth had the peculiar pale smile, like an emotional sign which only she could interpret. For a moment, she felt the new thrill in her blood as she looked at him, watching his mouth. She wondered what he was thinking. He spoke so unrevealingly. They stood and looked at the crowd.

‘Are you glad to be going out East?’ she asked, smiling, and glancing at his face. He took a puff at his cigarette. She watched him inhale the smoke and blow it out slowly, so very slowly, between his wide, smooth lips. Still she waited for him, and still he made no response.

‘Are you glad?’ she urged. ‘Do you want to go?’

He shrugged his shoulders this time: and contracted the corners of his mouth in a dubious way. Then he went back to his irresponsible, rather roguish smile.

‘It gives one to think. It gives one furiously to think,’ he said, looking round at the people.

‘It does indeed,’ laughed Anna. And she too threw bright glances of mockery at their fellow-passengers. She understood that he was disparaging them.

The muddle on board sorted itself out by degrees as the voyage began. But the boat was very crowded, so there still remained a certain confusion. Naturally, the chief steward had a down on Matthew and Anna. He was able to inflict on them various minor discomforts. Owing to the number of passengers, meals were served in two relays: the Kavans were drafted into the second division amongst the young bachelors and the less important folk, where the food was always scrappy and cold. And they were obliged to sit at an inferior table, right at the edge of the saloon. These things annoyed Matthew exceedingly. He took them as so many direct insults, aimed at him, personally; which, in a way, they were. And he went about in a fever of resentment, airing his grievances on every occasion, suitable or not.

The weather was rather bad at first. Anna felt that all her life she would remember the cold, grey, heavy weather, the weird, purgatorial existence on the slowly heaving ship, evening coming on, and the cold vista of deck — like a nightmare hospital ward — with rows of prone, shrouded figures, and someone passing and passing, lurching and staggering as from a wound. There was a bull on board, travelling in a great crate near the stern. And the smell of this animal, and of its sickness, and the look of its evil, reddish eye, inflamed with insane, villainous resentment, peering out of the wooden crate under the shock of shaggy, curly hair — so like a certain type of man — were also things that she would never forget.

As they neared Port Said the storms cleared off and the sun came out again like a god stepping up the sky, stepping out of the heavily-heaving waves. The spirit of the ship changed. From being a hospital ward the deck became a playground. Children ran and shouted everywhere. There was a feverish outburst of dancing and deck games.

Matthew and Anna went ashore with the Bretts and a number of other acquaintances whom Matthew had collected. A new side of Matthew’s character had been appearing lately on the ship. He had come out as a social success. Perhaps ‘success’ is rather an over-statement. But he certainly seemed to get on very well. Especially with the ladies. There was something of the ladies’ man about him, now that he was with his own kind — really rather lady-killing. But all perfectly innocuous, unexceptionable. He never went further than a sort of chaste badinage, touched now and then with just a trace of wistfulness. He was like a polite schoolboy, so cheerful and neat and nicely mannered, hanging round the ladies and feeding on the sweets of their appreciation. He fetched books and cushions for them, played games with them and allowed them to win, told innocently naughty stories that made them giggle, and played with their children. All this without losing for a moment his strange, stiff, wooden inhumanness. And occasionally, just once in a while, he allowed the pathetic look of reverence to appear; so appealing. He did so love the maternal, Madonna quality in a woman, which Anna, of course, conspicuously lacked. He wanted to bow down and worship it. And the ladies were all in a flutter of motherliness over him.

With the men he didn’t get on quite so well. He tried to be a jolly good fellow, and drank with them in the bar. But it didn’t quite go down. There was always a false note ringing somewhere. His fellow males rather edged away from him, not hostile exactly, but faintly contemptuous, as though they despised his methods. Perhaps they thought him unmanly.

And Anna, a regular fish out of water, watched all these goings-on with straight, astonished eyes, feeling thoroughly lost.

She was a bit disappointed herself over young Findlay. She had hoped so much from him in a vague, indefinite, untranslatable way. But nothing materialized. She saw quite a lot of him. He lent her books and sat beside her and walked with her; the endless, monotonous prowl round and round the deck. He was charming and amusing. But elusive. They never seemed to get any further.

And, most disheartening aspect of the case, he seemed quite unaware that there was any further to get. He was perfectly happy just strolling and chatting carelessly with Anna. But she felt any other fairly intelligent, fairly attractive girl would have done equally well.

However, Rex Findlay came ashore with them at Port Said. He was a little bit eccentric in his dress, going about without a coat in his soft woollen cardigans, smoky blues, and russets, so soft and close, like a bird’s plumage, now that the weather was warmer. The strait-laced matrons and the formal, stiff-collared Britishers turned up their noses.

‘So slovenly,’ they murmured. And thought it bad for British prestige. If his dress was casual his morals probably were too — so they implied.

The young man himself was rather amused. Of course, he was quite aware of the general opinion. And equally, of course, he didn’t care a straw. Like a tall, elegant bird, with his firm, smooth, smoke-coloured breast, he stepped delicately up and down, amongst the drab, conventional flock. He decked himself out, when he felt inclined, and carelessly flaunted his soft-toned splendours, rather like a high-stepping, whimsical bird.

Upon Port Said a bright sun shone. Anna went ashore pleased and smiling. Findlay walked beside her. They were all dining together. How firm, how pleasant was the solid land! In the warm African winter sunshine she went ashore, to the noisy, vivid town, she smelled the East and felt the quality of the sun, the faces thronging about were dark and fantastic, everywhere was the intense novelty of a new continent, full of unexpected sights and sounds. She sensed the proximity of the East, it seemed to await her with heavy significance behind the town. In the dusty air came the strange suggestion, the light was the winter outpouring of a fiercer sun, the crude scarlets and blues and the white dazzle of walls were the fringes and decoration of a gayer and more exotic garment.

The bells of the little two-horse carriage jingled as they drove. Anna looked gaily at everything, Findlay included. But he was rather bird-like and remote. She was conscious of his softly glowing breast.

‘Isn’t it fun?’ she said to him.

‘Yes,’ he said. But he did not come near. He seemed to have flown off blithely to the top of a tree.

The driving, and the dinner at the hotel that evening passed rapidly, like a dream. Anna felt dazzled. She saw only the faces of the natives, the new glow of colour. But sometimes she glanced at Findlay’s face, which was the one that pleased her.

As the evening went on, she was aware of some intention fixed upon her. Someone was willing her. Some secret, silent influence was centred upon her, urging her, intently, in some unknown direction. She looked up and met the blue eyes of Matthew fastened upon her.

‘The East begins here,’ he said to her, when the party broke up, and she found herself suddenly stranded, alone with him in one of the jingling carriages. She looked, and saw the black, domed sky arching over her head. And her heart dilated; she felt the great black dome in her heart. She sat under the stars, worshipping them. Her heart opened and grew vast, until the whole sky with all its stars began to pour into her, a mysterious flood of star-strung darkness. She wanted to receive the night sky into her heart. But Matthew sat beside her, an intruder, weighing upon her. His hard, round head was like a stone lying on her heart. He was insentient, and he weighed her down. She wanted to escape him. But he sat beside her like a stone, immovable, senseless, assailing her with the blind, indestructible, stony weapon of his obstinate will. If only she could get away from him to be alone with the starry night.

‘Where are we going?’ said her low voice, the voice of the small waves along the shore. She closed her eyes in the fragile brightness of the stars, so that she might not look at him.

He did not answer. In her remoteness she felt with faint surprise the hidden power of excitement in him.

‘This is not the way to the boat,’ came her cool voice.

And she knew that he was working against her in some way. A strange certitude came to her, a conviction of his treachery. She felt his malicious scheming about to entangle her.

‘I want to show you something,’ he said.

A defiance, an obstinacy took possession of her, and a kind of lethargy. She could not trouble to circumvent him. She did not really believe in his ability to harm her. She despised him too much. He was too inhuman. And her heart, the heart of her attention was open and softly preoccupied with the starlit night.

She could feel his will straining against her, like a heavy rock grinding and crushing, to compel her. He seemed mindless and oppressive as a rock. She was cold and abstracted and inert, not to be troubled or roused.

So they drove down the narrow streets, and stopped at last in a doubtful quarter of darkness and dingy flares. There was a nameless, unpleasant smell of food and dirt and dark-skinned humanity. Matthew got out, and Anna followed him. He walked holding her arm, urging her on beside him. And she went submissive. She was as indifferent as a leprechaun, as untouchable, he seemed to be holding a goblin arm that chilled him. Yet he must press her on, like a weight against her.

They went through a dark entry. Here Anna saw, with something of horror, the dense, close mass of faces glistening duskily, dusky and appalling under the white-hot flares, shifting and changing as the shadows flickered, chattering and grimacing with apparent ferocity or horrible amusement. All was hideous, a grimacing of hot, glistening, greyish faces. She was repelled by the dense animal conglomeration of humanity pressing about her. Her heart started and contracted within her. She knew that she was afraid.

They stood for a moment of unbearable isolation. Blurred faces looked at them, whitish eyes stared at them, gargoyle mouths leered at them. Here and there a separate visage gleamed, sweatily, like a cheese. Looking round at the shadowy, horrible, mouthing throng a sudden panic-lust seized her, to hack a way through them and tear and trample them and so escape. Her body stiffened rigid like a blade. She looked about, and her face shone cold with loathing. She was afraid.

And an intuition in her warned her against Matthew. He was plotting against her: he wished her ill. He would inflict some evil thing upon her. She stood rigid in the noisome place, waiting. The premonition of evil stung her fiercely, with a poisoned point. Still tensely she must wait.

Till suddenly, a flame went over her, a deadly flame of disgust, burning, corrosive, feeding like some destructive acid upon the very core of her being, destroying her. She must escape, or die. A negro had strolled into the vacant central space. He was altogether naked, was dusty-bluish skinned, and led by one horn a small goat — a dirty brown goat — that seemed frightened and cowed. He was evidently pleased with himself. His curious leering smile, and the curious way he jerked the reluctant goat with his naked arm, in a sort of flick, was very disgusting. Anna felt her heart dissolving in a flame of utter disgust. She must escape or perish, annihilated and consumed by her own horror. She turned and thrust her way out into the street.

So she fled from the place, she hurried along as if escaping from a nightmare. She sped through the stir of the narrow, seething streets, a pale, unthinking thing, flying from the world. She wanted solitude, the absence of alarm, the reassurance of the starlit night. Above all she wanted to get away from the repellant, insistent crowd of natives hemming her about.

She was not afraid any more. All this herd of dusky creatures seething and surging had no power to alarm her. It was not the natives who had made her afraid. But the evil breath of that noxious place, and the evil thing which germinated there. That and the round, dark head of Matthew that haunted her like a traitorous thought.

She hurried blindly along. She had no idea where she was going. She did not think at all. She was detached, alone.

Gradually she began to come back to herself. Gradually a more normal consciousness returned. Slowly the sky swung back to its high, calm, nightly beneficence. She saw the stars still benign and lovely, the pernicious horror of the night began to evaporate. But dismay still lapped her about. What had happened? What was this horror she had experienced? The horror was evil: and it was Matthew. It was Matthew who had inflicted this nightmare upon her. Was Matthew the nightmare? He was strange, he was unreal. What had he done to her? How had he contrived to violate her inmost sanctities? She was filled with superstitious fear of the Matthew who had done this thing. She could not believe that this was the man she knew, it was not possible, not to be thought of. She would not believe in it. With her will she refused to believe. Matthew was a nonentity, a cipher. But he was harmless, his intentions towards her were good and affectionate and commonplace. She would not believe anything else.

So she walked in a daze of dismay. She did not know how to get back to the boat, where to go. It did not matter. She only wanted to be by herself. She wanted to get out of the crowds. Quickly she walked the unfamiliar streets — quickly — as in a delirium. The place had become a nightmare to her: the world was a nightmare. To escape the nightmare she wanted to isolate herself, she wished to be in some lonely spot.

She met Findlay standing at a corner; waiting for her, it seemed. She was astonished.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.

‘Looking for you,’ he replied.

‘But how is it you are just here? At this particular corner?’

‘I followed your carriage. After a time my driver lost sight of you, so I got out and wandered about.’

Anna was astonished. Or rather, she felt that she ought to be astonished. Actually, his appearance seemed natural, almost inevitable: rather providential, too, really. She found that she was glad of his support.

They began to walk along. The dark faces were still ceaselessly passing, and hemming them in, and staring with a strange, sneering, slightly obscene curiosity, in the flary dark. Findlay seemed unaware. But Anna felt herself violated. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling of violation, of having her privacy exposed and desecrated. She wanted to get away from all the dark faces — never to see them again — never while she lived.

‘Can’t we go somewhere quiet?’ she said. ‘Away from all these creatures? I want to be quiet.’

They turned off down a dark alley beside an immensely high wall. Massive and black the wall loomed in the darkness, steeply solid as a mountain-side, and black as the abysmal heart of night. An iron gate stood ajar. They pushed through. Inside was a queer, dark, level place with a few trees blackly entangled in the starry sky, and a mysterious distant glitter of black water. Black, nameless piles were towering here and there, incomprehensible and vaguely menacing like unknown presences. It was very dark, quiet, and deserted.

All this time, Findlay stayed silent, uninquiring. It was not till he had lighted cigarettes for Anna and for himself that he began to speak.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked, and his sleeve touched her wrist.

Anna strolled on with her cigarette in her mouth, abstracted. He kept in step with her, watching her with side-long glances in the dark. But there was a great gulf between them.

‘Where did you get to?’

‘Matthew took me to some horrible place,’ she said.

He peered closely.

‘How — horrible?’ he said, watching her.

She lifted her shoulders in an odd motion, half shrug, half shudder.

‘Oh — beastly. Don’t let’s talk about it.’ And she walked on more quickly, puffing her cigarette.

Findlay watched her with invisible eyes. His eyes were darkened shadows in the pale gleam of his face. She could not see them. But his smile, the beginning of his luminous smile, was visible to her.

‘Why are you going to the East?’ he said. ‘Why are you going to live with Matthew?’

‘Why?’ she repeated, in astonishment. ‘I’m married to him — that’s why.’ There was some bitterness in her tone.

He shook his head in the darkness.

‘It won’t do, you know,’ he said. ‘You’ll never be able to live with him, with Matthew.’

She felt a tremor go through her blood at the sound of Findlay’s mischievous, soft voice. There was something about him that was like magic to her, the swift, secret, unbelievable excitement that trembled in all her veins, because he was so thrilling, and she was so aware. She seemed so subtly attuned to his thrillingness. The consciousness of it vibrated through her with almost unbearable intensity. Yet her mind stayed quite aloof. Her mind was not attracted: it was even a little antagonistic. With her mind she recognized something shifty and elvishly unreliable in him, something which made it impossible to depend on him. And this she found unsympathetic.

‘Why won’t it do? Why shouldn’t Matthew and I live together?’

Once more she saw the negatory movement of his head. His face wore the curious smile, pale, disturbing, poignant, with the satyr-quality of dangerous archness.

‘It’s ridiculous. You’ll be unhappy. You’ll hate the life in the East. Why are you going there?’

Anna stood still and tipped the ash from her cigarette.

‘I must go. I must,’ she said. ‘There’s no alternative.’

‘You’ll hate it.’

She looked at him angrily.

‘Why do you say that? Why should you deliberately try to make me depressed? Do you want me to be miserable?’

‘Yes, perhaps.’ He gave a curious Mephistophelean laugh, almost soundless. ‘Perhaps that’s what I do want.’

She was resentful, staring at him accusingly.

‘Why? Why?’ she asked resentfully, challenging him.

He smiled, his wide, subtle smile, like a satyr’s, but so strangely attractive. It made a quiver like electricity pass through her. Yet her mind was antagonized, nor would it ever be otherwise.

So there was a sort of deadlock. She was tremulous before his smiling face. She thrilled at the careless, graceful poise of his long, thin body, so like an elegant, long-legged bird. She wanted him to come near. And he wanted to approach. But her mind had ultimately decided against him, rejecting him. And this held him off. He was too sensitive a plant not to wilt and shrivel in the blast of her silent criticism. He could not stand up against that. And she couldn’t help finding fault with him, in her mind. He was so irresponsible, like a child; and like a child, charming and heart-breaking. Perhaps if he were to touch her, her resistance would break down. Would he touch her? She shuddered, and hoped not. Or did she really, underneath everything, hope that he would? Anyhow, he did not.

And suddenly, as she watched him, she saw some men in uniform, with lanterns, coming along. As they caught sight of Anna and Findlay, as they drew near across the dark, empty space, there arose a certain commotion. Some of them shouted. Some were calling incomprehensibly, some were running towards them, some were gesticulating; it was like a kind of attack. Anna watched the approaching troop with apprehension.

And as she watched, in a moment the foremost men were upon them, talking loudly and excitedly. Findlay answered laboriously. It seemed that he knew a few words of Arabic. Anna looked on, rather nervous. The men were all round, standing quite near; such an odd, theatrical crew. But they didn’t do anything violent. In spite of their excitement they seemed quite deferential. So her alarms subsided, and she listened to the palaver. Findlay was standing beside her. She would have liked to stick a pin in his smoothly swelling, handsome, birdlike chest. She felt intolerant of him. He stood there, speaking slowly, his nose arched in his faintly conceited, aristocratic manner, as he talked to the men. His face had the palely-smiling gleam, his eyes in the lantern light flickered roguish and attractive. But somehow, mentally, she rather distrusted him. He was unsatisfactory: though he had that peculiar demonish distinction that thrilled her so much. She was sure he would let her down if he had the chance. If he had not already done so.

An understanding had at last been reached with the men. Findlay suddenly laughed and threw his cigarette on the ground. He stamped it out with the heel of his shoe.

‘We mustn’t smoke here,’ he told Anna. ‘It seems we’re in the government petrol depot.’ His face was all curling up in pale, faunal amusement.

But her heart had hardened against him. She put out her cigarette and moved away.

‘We must find Matthew and get back to the boat,’ she said coolly.

There was a dreariness in her on Findlay’s account. As though in rejecting him, or being let down by him, she had suffered some dragging internal wrench.

Without more ado they went back to the frequented, the Europeanized, tourist-ridden part of the town. Matthew was discovered outside the hotel, walking up and down in suppressed anxiety, and of course looking in the wrong direction. What to say to him? Anna could not bring herself to believe in his latest enormity, nor disbelieve. They called out to attract his attention.

He turned round. ‘Where have you been?’ he said, in an aggrieved fashion. ‘I’ve hunted for you everywhere. Everywhere.’ So he stared out of his blue eyes at Anna, and seemed to have forgotten the rest of the evening.

When Anna looked at him, she saw only his innocence, his extraordinary, naive unawareness, as though he had really forgotten. And the look of anxious reproach in his eyes which seemed to put her in the wrong. She did not know what to believe.

‘How could you go off like that?’ said Matthew, his eyes reproachful. ‘I’ve been dreadfully worried. Port Said is no place for a woman alone.’ He really seemed to think she was in the wrong.

Findlay wandered away. When Anna was alone with Matthew he still maintained his injured, innocent behaviour.

‘Why did you do it?’ she said, staring at him coldly. ‘Why did you take me to that horrible place?’

‘Why did you run away?’ he retorted. He avoided the issue entirely. He would not answer her. And she knew that he never would answer. Impossible to get anything out of him. Perhaps he really failed to hear her question, or failed to understand. The impossibility of communication with him made her feel hopeless. She looked at his face. It was brown and blank.

‘We must go back to the boat,’ he said. ‘We must get a gharri.’

A carriage was called and they got in. Anna made one more attempt.

‘I want to know what your idea was in taking me to that beastly place,’ she said. Her eye was stony.

Matthew sat beside her listening to her question, to her voice of cold inquiry. He did not seem to hear. He seemed to hear only what he wished, to understand only what was acceptable to him. You might question him for a year and a day and he would never hear you — unless he wanted to hear.

Anna felt this, and gave it up. She was quite bewildered. She could not reconcile the Matthew who had inflicted the nightmare upon her with the innocent Matthew who came afterwards. She did not know which to believe in. Nevertheless, she knew he was more of a nonentity to her than a nightmare. He would never become important. He was not real. She looked at him with a certain horror and apprehension, at his close, round, meaningless head bobbing in her direction. She hurried away as soon as she could. But he was not really of any importance, although she found him repugnant.

The voyage went on, the Port Said incident dropped out of sight and was more or less forgotten. Matthew stuck closer to Anna. It seemed now that he had to be always with her. His popularity among the lady passengers was on the wane for some reason. Perhaps they had tired of his somewhat insipid attractions and had begun to see through him. Or perhaps it was he himself who had changed, growing less gratifyingly obliging. He was rather touchy these days; he started to quarrel with the men, to take offence at everything. He seemed to have developed a childish fear of being ‘left out.’ And so, of course, he was left out. And so he turned back to Anna, and would not leave her. Which was distinctly trying.

Not that he interfered particularly. But he was always hanging round her deck-chair, urging her to partner him in the games, and, when she refused, sitting down beside her with his dumb, stonelike obstinacy and a rather martyrized expression.

Anna would not play in the games. Not so much because she disliked the games themselves — certainly they were inane and boring enough, but then the whole shipboard life was such a madness of inanity that the lesser, incidental imbecilities were excusable — but because she could not endure the determinedly jovial attitude which everyone adopted towards the skittle contests and the quoits and the deck-tennis and deck-everything-else. ‘Let’s get up a cheery party.’ ‘Let’s collect a cheery crowd.’ There was something about the very sound of the word ‘cheery’ that set her teeth on edge with repulsion. All this fizz of jovialness left her cold. She was somewhat contemptuous, somewhat dazed in the society of all these jolly good fellows who treated her to their peculiar mixture of gallantry and effrontery and mock-deference — all overlying, in some way, a fundamental slight. Presumably the slight was unconscious and unintended; but it was there, none the less. A kind of masculine all-highest condescension to which the other women played up disgustingly. The flighty feminine dove-cote always seemed to be in a flutter of coquettish excitement over some fine gentleman. It was the sort of atmosphere which one expects to meet in mid-Victorian fiction. But it had a central nullity particularly its own. Underneath the superficial cheeriness and the little flirtatious excitements was a sort of flatness, an emptiness. As though at any moment the whole system might collapse into a black abyss of vacancy.

Anna found it all rather depressing. However, she sat calmly in her chair, and watched the slow, hot passage of the hours, and felt uneasy and dubious. A horrible empty feeling she had. And lonely, as if the universe were tumbling down in a watery swirl, and she alone stood solid on her solitary peak. The horizon was like a ruled line, clean-cut and rigid, cutting the world in two. The upper half, the sky, pale ultramarine; the lower, the watery half, cobalt, or sometimes prussian-blue with streaks of purple in it. The empty, empty world of water and blueness! In her eye came an ache like nausea, craving so keenly the relief of solidity. She wanted so much to find something to catch hold of. But what was there?

The days went by, and they were at Colombo — the voyage was ending. She came up on deck one morning, very early, and saw the land, a tremulous, rosy scarf floating on the blue rippling water, but pearly, pearly, a very precious and diaphanous thing, lucent and phantasmal. She remembered that Ceylon was called the pearl-drop of India. And there it was, the pearl, before her eyes.

Many passengers were leaving the boat, Findlay among them. Matthew and Anna went ashore with him. They had arranged to make an expedition together, a sort of farewell party. They would drive to Mount Lavinia, dine and stay the night. It was not necessary to return to the ship till the following day.

Anna was very excited. It was dry land, solidity at last. She was in the East, in the great continent of ancient Asia, with the hot earth underfoot. And really, in the blue and glittery atmosphere, in the reckless, transparent flood of sunshine, in the hot dazzle of buildings, and palm trees bursting up, there was something different, something romantic. And the fantastic figures of the men going about, so womanish with their coloured skirts and their long black hair turned up in a bun or swathed round a tortoiseshell comb — altogether womanlike until you saw their smallish, metallic faces which had a curious small-scale maleness of their own, a sort of masculinity in minature. Like men dressed up as women in a pantomime they were, after you had seen their male faces. Anna was exhilarated.

In the afternoon they motored into the country, in a whirl of dust and palms and scarlet and vivid green, and chickens scattering at the sides of the roads — all rather gaudy and unconvincing, like a pantomime. There was even a glimpse of elephants solemnly trundling. Then, in the evening, a hotel by the sea, gardens, people bathing, and palm trees darkly leaning over the pale sand.

Anna was very aware of Findlay. But what did she feel about him? She looked at him to find out. He smiled at her. And the blood stirred in her veins. This was her response, but what did it mean? She was on the alert for him, she wanted to make contact.

But she could not speak to him. There was no opportunity. The presence of Matthew and of the other people was like a wall of rock round her. She hated them. In a fury of intolerance her grey eyes looked out at them. But she gave no sign. She sat quietly, concealed and secret behind her smiling face. So the whole evening passed without any trace of intimacy. Findlay and Anna were like affable, shipboard acquaintances taking leave of each other. Matthew sat near Anna and refilled her glass. And as she drank she began to grow angry. A sort of shame was at the root of her anger, her heart was cold. She looked at Findlay with a smiling, cold face which he seemed not to see. Then, laughing, saying that they must go and look at the moon, he led the way out of doors.

Anna went with him into the garden. The night was brilliant, the moonlight burned and glittered. The moon seemed smaller, more distinct, much more dazzling and intense than the English moon. It was like a small round hole in the sky through which the white fire of brightness poured in a concentrated beam. The air was quite warm.

The warm night air was on Anna’s face, not stirring, but lying softly upon her, like a flower. It was an alien, soft air, heavy with the suggestion of unknown things. And she was alone with Findlay. Out in the mysterious, nocturnal garden he walked beside her.

‘Shall we go down to the sea?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ came his airy voice.

And smiling, he took her hand. A sharp tremor went over her.

‘Which is the way?’ she said.

‘Here,’ he answered.

He walked holding her hand in the moonlight, she saw his face strangely blanched and masklike, and yet beautiful. It was the beautiful curve of his mouth which so enthralled her.

They went in silence, wading through the pale brightness. The moonlight was like a fluid, a magic, silvery element, buoyant and wonderful.

They came to the shore, a ghostly silver waste, with grey wraiths of palm trees writhing and bending. The sea moved with mysterious massiveness, shadowed and brightly flashing, the mysterious, slow waves of the Indian Ocean rolled in, slowly, heavily, without spray, and flattened themselves with a dull, muted crash. It was all mysterious and unfamiliar; rather oppressive, the heavily swinging ocean, in the flare of dead white light.

She stood on the sand, on the unstable, treacherous body of the sand, and watched the slow rhythm of the unfurling waves. Her heart was cold like the sea. And yet an emotional excitement burned hotly in her veins, because of Findlay, and because of the wine she had drunk.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said, in an unfamiliar tone. ‘It’s a dead sea.’

He gave an odd, half-mocking jerk of his head, and began to laugh. She could not hear his laughter in the noise of the waves, but she saw his face laughing at her boldly, carelessly, mischievously, like the satyr he resembled. She had an impulse to abandon herself — to him? — to what? She was not certain.

‘Rex?’ she said to him.

‘Well?’ he answered.

The impudent smile showed on his face, he took hold of her hands. She felt the warm, firm swell of his chest. For the moment she was open to him. If he should take her at this moment she would yield. She waited for him: let him do as he wished. She leaned towards him in the moonlight, she felt his hands holding hers.

She saw his eyes looking down on her, dark and sparkling and alien. Gazing up, she saw the luminous pallor of his face above her, in the moonlight, something irresponsible and thrilling and rather sinister. She looked at him and her blood pulsed hot and expectant. She waited, submissive, and he hovered above her in his elusiveness, his heart yearning to her.

He wanted so much to take her in the moonlight. But the desire in him was overborne by the knowledge of her difference. He knew that she was not for him. His airy nature sheered off in alarm. He wanted her, and yet he did not want her. His irresponsibility made a gulf between them. They were in different worlds.

So he could not touch her. He did nothing. He did not even kiss her. He sheered off, he had to retain his elvish freedom, though the leaving of her hurt him and lacerated him.

Anna stood still, feeling lost. Presently she realized his failure. Her heart flew to anger. She looked at Findlay, and there seemed to be a furtive look about him, an evasiveness, and she stiffened in sudden dislike, turning away. Then a sort of shame stabbed through her anger; she was ashamed, and only wanted to be gone.

‘Let us go back,’ she said.

They turned away from the heaving bulk of water, away from the darkly surging waves, back towards the hotel. Findlay glanced at her, and would have spoken. But she would not look at him. Pale and silent and angry, she walked in the gleaming, silvery night. And all the time at the back of her mind there was something shameful. She wondered angrily at her own shame.

They reached the lighted entrance. Anna’s heart trembled, but it was locked in bitterness.

‘Good night,’ she said, standing on the step above him, her face wearing its peculiar blank, almost stony look. She wondered what he was thinking, as he stood and watched her.

He looked at her, at her slender body, which he was not able to touch. And he knew that his failure would always haunt him. He did not want her, he was in a different world; but he suffered at losing her.

‘What have I done?’ he asked, diffident, and smiling rather exquisitely.

She felt her heart stir. His smile still went to her heart. Yet her heart was not touched; it was cold and bitter. No response came on her face.

‘Nothing,’ she said, hating him.

She went into the hotel and turned her back on him. There were people moving about. She caught sight of Matthew. She went up and touched his arm.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I shall go to bed now.’

He looked at her very strangely. He looked at her hands, which trembled slightly. Then he looked at her face again, which was cold and blank and a little despairing.

A slyness came into his eyes, a strange suggestion of craft.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will see you upstairs.’

He took her arm at the elbow to lead her away. She did not notice him. Findlay stood in the doorway, watching, but without any expression, the two people, the girl and the stiff-shouldered, rather insignificant man. Anna went on with Matthew. They began to walk up the stairs. Still she was locked in anger, feeling a great bitterness in her heart. Against her will her hands were trembling: but she was not softened: her anger was cold and shameful. She had a sensation of strange, cold lightness.

Matthew had opened her bedroom door, and was waiting for her to go in.

‘Can I do anything?’ he asked, watching her.

She was aware of a cold indifference, and also of something else, not exactly excitement, but a kind of frozen recklessness, anguished and bitter. It was as if her disillusionment, her feeling of shame aroused some passionate desperation in her. She seemed to be in the grip of a kind of possession.

‘Can I do anything for you?’ persisted Matthew. There was a queer confidence in his voice and also a note of insinuation.

She hesitated, watching him. The blue glassiness was bright in his eyes, he was staring at her hungrily, as a starved creature might. Some certainty flared in her soul. She knew that if she let him come into the room she would have to submit to him.

‘Would you like me to open the shutters?’ he asked, humbly it seemed.

She shuddered with cold and with the intense premonition of what must follow.

They still stood at the door.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Leave them as they are.’

‘It will be stuffy. I had better open them,’ he said, with his strange, blindly persisting obstinacy that seemed to stifle her.

There was something inevitable about him. It no longer seemed worth while to resist. Sometime, somewhere his obstinacy, his mindless, unwavering determination would get the better of her. Impossible to withstand him for ever. She realized with horror that she was going to yield. His large, brown, hairless hand was advancing in her direction. She stood still. His head was round and dark and ball-like. So unlike a human cranium. He smiled in anticipation.

‘No!’ she exclaimed involuntarily, stepping back.

But he stepped after her, very prancy and complacent now, and closed the door behind him. She saw his brown, neat, expressionless face coming towards her through the air. It was like an image approaching. Her blood ran cold with the horror of his unreality, with the horror of the thing he threatened, and with humiliation, and with the bitterness of lonely despair. She was a helpless traveller alone in the night. And what was he? She felt herself his victim.

Just for a moment, she struggled wildly to defend herself. But when she felt his strength, the tough, monkeyish strength of his long arms about her, she knew she had no chance against him. She had to submit. But he was ugly to her, horrible. Never for one instant did her spirit yield to him. Her will, her soul, was set in inflexible, adamantine resistance, defying him. He was hateful to her, despicable, so that she cringed under the humiliating infliction of his body, his hard, smooth, unattractive muscularity. But she submitted to him, to his ugliness and to his strength, his imperceptiveness. And he ravished her. He simply took her body and ravished it. She suffered atrociously. Yet all the time her spirit remained cold, reckless, and unchanging. Nor did he ever become real to her.