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 eviclass="underline" 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.