The tonga skirted a high wall, cutting through dust so deep that its progress was hardly audible, turned in through a gateless arch, and halted before a massive, towering building. Stella, weary, yet excited, followed her husband up a steep flight of stone steps that terminated in a vast, whitewashed vestibule; there were countless doors, all open, screened with short portières. It was cold, gloomy, dim. None of the lamps that hung on the walls had been turned up; the silence was oppressive, cheerless.
Robert, muttering angrily, strode ahead and stumbled over a form that lay swathed, corpse-like, in one of the doorways. A scene ensued that to Stella was horrifying. The corpse-like figure sprang up with a wild yell of alarm, and was cuffed and abused by the Sahib. The noise brought a scampering of bare feet and a swarm of people, hastily binding on turbans, adjusting garments. It appeared that the servants had all been asleep, that preparations for the Sahib's arrival were not even begun. The air shook with the wrath of the Sahib; he would listen to no explanations; the offenders ran hither and thither; there was confusion, consternation.
Stella stood by, silent, trembling; she was appalled by her husband's exhibition of rage; he might murder one of these defenceless people; it seemed even possible that at any moment he might turn upon her, and kick and beat and abuse her also! What a ghastly arrival!... Then all at once there was peace. Sher Singh had arrived with the luggage, and in no time refreshments were on the table; the dining-room, big as a ballroom, blazed with light; the Sahib's fury subsided.
To Stella's astonishment the servants conducted themselves as if nothing extraordinary had happened, and all went well. Robert made no excuse or apology for his anger; apparently he was unconscious of having behaved, as it seemed to her, like a madman. He ate and drank with complacence, asking questions quite amiably at intervals of the rotund attendant who was evidently chief of the table staff; while Stella, unable for very fatigue to swallow food, sipped her tea and looked about her with dazed interest.... What high walls, washed a pale brick colour; how bare the great room, just a big table and clumsy wooden chairs with arms and cane seats. On the floor was a sort of thick drugget; it felt hard beneath her feet. A wood fire had been lighted in a wide open grate; it smelt fragrant, comforting.... Stella's eyes drooped; the white-clad figures of the servants grew blurred to her vision; Robert himself, still eating heartily, seemed to recede in a mist. Then suddenly there arose, from somewhere outside, a succession of blood-curdling yells, and she started, wide awake, laid hold of Robert's arm. "Oh, what is it?" she cried in alarm. "Someone is being killed!"
He laughed and patted her hand reassuringly. "It's only hyenas and jackals," he told her; "you'll hear it every night—soon get used to it."
Hyenas and jackals! Wild beasts she would have gazed at in a zoo with wondering interest were here, close by, and no more to be heeded than if they had been stray dogs! She remembered that this was India; the weird noise fired her fancy, and mingled with her dreams that night.
She awoke next morning to a very different sound, the cooing of doves; bright, hard sunlight streamed through the long door-windows. She found she had slept late; Champa, bringing tea, said the Sahib had already gone out, had left orders that the memsahib was not to be disturbed. Then she bathed—in a bathroom that resembled a prison cell; the tub was of zinc, and there was a row of red earthenware vessels for the cold water. Stella thought them very artistic; how Mrs. Daw would love to paint on them, paint storks and sprays of apple-blossom, and fill them with dried bulrushes—the very thing for a bazaar!... But there was nothing that could by any possibility be considered artistic about the bedroom: the beds were just wooden frames, not even enamelled or painted; two enormous cupboards stood against the walls; the fireplace was a cavern; the dressing-table was more suited to a kitchen; and there were a few clumsy chairs matching those of the dining-room. It was with a slight feeling of desolation that she began to explore the house; in the drawing-room was a certain amount of wicker furniture, with loose cretonne covers of an ugly pattern, a pair of handsome screens, and two or three richly carved tables; the dining-room she avoided, having caught sight of servants laying the table; she felt shy of encountering them. She peeped into other rooms, all of them equally bare and enormous, comfortless—even the one she supposed must be Robert's study, since it had a business-like table in the centre, covered with papers.
And yet there was something exhilarating in the airiness, in the sense of space, the hard brilliance of the sunshine outside, the unfamiliar scents and sounds that seemed to float everywhere. Her spirits rose as she wandered out on to a balcony almost wide enough for a dog-cart, and gazed over a limitless landscape studded with low bushes, and in the foreground a few ruins of what might have been mosques or dwellings or tombs. The flat country, stretching for miles to the dusty horizon, was impressive in its very persistence and sameness, that was without relief, save for here and there a pillar of dust that swirled upwards, waltzing madly for a moment as though demon-possessed. Then she watched a more steady dust-cloud, of a different form, that was wending its way slowly among the clumps of scrub and stunted bushes; and presently there came into view a string of camels led by a great beast hung with gaudy trappings, ridden by a figure swathed in white garments, heavily turbaned. On they came, a silent, stately procession, moving as though to the rhythm of a funeral march, men striding beside them in flowing garments or seated between the great bales slung on either side of the camels' humps. One or two baby camels shambled along by their mothers—awkward, woolly creatures, the size of colts, with legs that appeared too long for their bodies.