第42章 CHAPTER VII(5)

He was still gazing towards the south, from which the night was slowly emerging, a traveller through a mist of blue. He seemed to be held fascinated by the desert which was fading away gently, like a mystery which had drawn near to the light of revelation, but which was now slipping back into an underworld of magic. He bent forward as one who watches a departure in which he longs to share, and Domini felt sure that he had forgotten her. She felt, too, that this man was gripped by the desert influence more fiercely even than she was, and that he must have a stronger imagination, a greater force of projection even than she had. Where she bore a taper he lifted a blazing torch.

A roar of drums rose up immediately beneath them. From the negro village emerged a ragged procession of thick-lipped men, and singing, capering women tricked out in scarlet and yellow shawls, headed by a male dancer clad in the skins of jackals, and decorated with mirrors, camels' skulls and chains of animals' teeth. He shouted and leaped, rolled his bulging eyes, and protruded a fluttering tongue. The dust curled up round his stamping, naked feet.

"Yah-ah-la! Yah-ah-la!"

The howling chorus came up to the tower, with a clash of enormous castanets, and of poles beaten rhythmically together.

"Yi-yi-yi-yi!" went the shrill voices of the women.

The cloud of dust increased, enveloping the lower part of the procession, till the black heads and waving arms emerged as if from a maelstrom. The thunder of the drums was like the thunder of a cataract in which the singers, disappearing towards the village, seemed to be swept away.

The man at Domini's side raised himself up with a jerk, and all the former fierce timidity and consciousness came back to his face. He turned round, pulled open the door behind him, and took off his hat.

"Excuse me, Madame," he said. "Bon soir!"

"I am coming too," Domini answered.

He looked uncomfortable and anxious, hesitated, then, as if driven to do it in spite of himself, plunged downward through the narrow doorway of the tower into the darkness. Domini waited for a moment, listening to the heavy sound of his tread on the wooden stairs. She frowned till her thick eyebrows nearly met and the corners of her lips turned down.

Then she followed slowly. When she was on the stairs and the footsteps died away below her she fully realised that for the first time in her life a man had insulted her. Her face felt suddenly very hot, and her lips very dry, and she longed to use her physical strength in a way not wholly feminine. In the hall, among the shrouded furniture, she met the smiling doorkeeper. She stopped.

"Did the gentleman who has just gone out give you his card?" she said abruptly.

The Arab assumed a fawning, servile expression.

"No, Madame, but he is a very good gentleman, and I know well that Monsieur the Count--"

Domini cut him short.

"Of what nationality is he?"

"Monsieur the Count, Madame?"

"No, no."

"The gentleman? I do not know. But he can speak Arabic. Oh, he is a very nice--"

"Bon soir," said Domini, giving him a franc.

When she was out on the road in front of the hotel she saw the stranger striding along in the distance at the tail of the negro procession. The dust stirred up by the dancers whirled about him.

Several small negroes skipped round him, doubtless making eager demands upon his generosity. He seemed to take no notice of them, and as she watched him Domini was reminded of his retreat from the praying Arab in the desert that morning.

"Is he afraid of women as he is afraid of prayer?" she thought, and suddenly the sense of humiliation and anger left her, and was succeeded by a powerful curiosity such as she had never felt before about anyone. She realised that this curiosity had dawned in her almost at the first moment when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling so unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of all her old indifference that side which confronted people had always been the most sturdy, the most solidly built.

Without affectation she had been a profoundly incurious woman as to the lives and the concerns of others, even of those whom she knew best and was supposed to care for most. Her nature had been essentially languid in human intercourse. The excitements, troubles, even the passions of others had generally stirred her no more than a distant puppet-show stirs an absent-minded passer in the street.

In Africa it seemed that her whole nature had been either violently renewed, or even changed. She could not tell which. But this strong stirring of curiosity would, she believed, have been impossible in the woman she had been but a week ago, the woman who travelled to Marseilles dulled, ignorant of herself, longing for change. Perhaps instead of being angry she ought to welcome it as a symptom of the re-creation she longed for.

While she changed her gown for dinner that night she debated within herself how she would treat her fellow-guest when she met him in the /salle-a-manger/. She ought to cut him after what had occurred, she supposed. Then it seemed to her that to do so would be undignified, and would give him the impression that he had the power to offend her.

She resolved to bow to him if they met face to face. Just before she went downstairs she realised how vehement her internal debate had been, and was astonished. Suzanne was putting away something in a drawer, bending down and stretching out her plump arms.

"Suzanne!" Domini said.

"Yes, Mam'zelle!"

"How long have you been with me?"

"Three years, Mam'zelle."

The maid shut the drawer and turned round, fixing her shallow, blue- grey eyes on her mistress, and standing as if she were ready to be photographed.

"Would you say that I am the same sort of person to-day as I was three years ago?"

Suzanne looked like a cat that has been startled by a sudden noise.

"The same, Mam'zelle?"