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.