第16章 CHAPTER IV(3)

"Yes, he is. And he is going to the Hotel du Desert. You and he are the only English here, and almost the only travellers. It is too early for many travellers yet. They fear the heat. And besides, few English come here now. What a pity! They spend money, and like to see everything. Hadj is very anxious to buy a costume at Tunis for the great /fete/ at the end of Ramadan. It will cost fifty or sixty francs. He hopes the Englishman is rich. But all the English are rich and generous."

Here Batouch looked steadily at Domini with his large, unconcerned eyes.

"This one speaks Arabic a little."

Domini made no reply. She was surprised by this piece of information.

There was something, she thought, essentially un-English about the stranger. He was certainly not dressed by an English tailor. But it was not only that which had caused her mistake. His whole air and look, his manner of holding himself, of sitting, of walking--yes, especially of walking--were surely foreign. Yet, when she came to think about it, she could not say that they were characteristic of any other country. Idly she had said to herself that the stranger might be an Austrian or a Russian. But she had been thinking of his colouring.

It happened that two /attaches/ of those two nations, whom she had met frequently in London, had hair of that shade of rather warm brown.

"He does not look like an Englishman," she said presently.

"He can talk in French and in Arabic, but Hadj says he is English."

"How should Hadj know?"

"Because he has the eyes of the jackal, and has been with many English. We are getting near to the Catholic church, Madame. You will see it through the trees. And there is Monsieur the Cure coming towards us. He is coming from his house, which is near the hotel."

At some distance in the twilight of the tunnel Domini saw a black figure in a soutane walking very slowly towards them. The stranger, who had been covering the ground rapidly with his curious, shuffling stride, was much nearer to it than they were, and, if he kept on at his present pace, would soon pass it. But suddenly Domini saw him pause and hesitate. He bent down and seemed to be doing something to his boot. Hadj dropped the green bag, and was evidently about to kneel down, and assist him when he lifted himself up abruptly and looked before him, as if at the priest who was approaching, then turned sharply to the right into a path which led out of the garden to the arcades of the Rue Berthe. Hadj followed, gesticulating frantically, and volubly explaining that the hotel was in the opposite direction.

But the stranger did not stop. He only glanced swiftly back over his shoulder once, and then continued on his way.

"What a funny man that is!" said Batouch. "What does he want to do?"

Domini did not answer him, for the priest was just passing them, and she saw the church to the left among the trees. It was a plain, unpretending building, with a white wooden door set in an arch. Above the arch were a small cross, two windows with rounded tops, a clock, and a white tower with a pink roof. She looked at it, and at the priest, whose face was dark and meditative, with lustrous, but sad, brown eyes. Yet she thought of the stranger.

Her attention was beginning to be strongly fixed upon the unknown man.

His appearance and manner were so unusual that it was impossible not to notice him.

"There is the hotel, Madame!" said Batouch.

Domini saw it standing at right angles to the church, facing the gardens. A little way back from the church was the priest's house, a white building shaded by date palms and pepper trees. As they drew near the stranger reappeared under the arcade, above which was the terrace of the hotel. He vanished through the big doorway, followed by Hadj.

While Suzanne was unpacking Domini came out on to the broad terrace which ran along the whole length of the Hotel du Desert. Her bedroom opened on to it in front, and at the back communicated with a small salon. This salon opened on to a second and smaller terrace, from which the desert could be seen beyond the palms. There seemed to be no guests in the hotel. The verandah was deserted, and the peace of the soft evening was profound. Against the white parapet a small, round table and a cane armchair had been placed. A subdued patter of feet in slippers came up the stairway, and an Arab servant appeared with a tea-tray. He put it down on the table with the precise deftness which Domini had already observed in the Arabs at Robertville, and swiftly vanished. She sat down in the chair and poured out the tea, leaning her left arm on the parapet.

Her head was very tired and her temples felt compressed. She was thankful for the quiet round her. Any harsh voice would have been intolerable to her just then. There were many sounds in the village, but they were vague, and mingled, flowing together and composing one sound that was soothing, the restrained and level voice of Life. It hummed in Domini's ears as she sipped her tea, and gave an under-side of romance to the peace. The light that floated in under the round arches of the terrace was subdued. The sun had just gone down, and the bright colours bloomed no more upon the mountains, which looked like silent monsters that had lost the hue of youth and had suddenly become mysteriously old. The evening star shone in a sky that still held on its Western border some last pale glimmerings of day, and, at its signal, many dusky wanderers folded their loose garments round them, slung their long guns across their shoulders, and prepared to start on their journey, helped by the cool night wind that blows in the desert when the sun departs.