“Oh, what a God-forsaken country!” he muttered; and therewith fetched his guitar from its case, and sitting cross-legged upon the bed in his pyjamas, began twanging the strings and singing old songs in a minor key which sounded like dirges for the dead. The music soothed him, and soon he was pouring his whole heart into the melodies, oblivious to all around him. They were songs of love now, and as he sang his thoughts went out over the seas to Cairo where Monimé at this moment was probably lying asleep in her bed, her black hair spread upon the pillow.
There was a sharp knock upon the door. “Come in,” he called out, pausing in his song, but remaining seated upon the bed, with his fingers upon the strings of his guitar.
A red-faced, grey-moustached man of military appearance stumped into the room, clad in a brown dressing-gown. “Confound you, sir!” he roared. “If you don’t put that damned banjo away and go to bed, I’ll ring for the manager.”
“What’s it to do with you?” Jim asked, twanging the strings dreamily.
“It’s disturbing the whole hotel,” he answered. “Nobody can get a wink of sleep with that blasted noise going on. Damn it, sir!—have you no sense of duty to your neighbour?”
The question hit home: once again he had been proved wanting in consideration. “I’m most awfully sorry,” he said, with genuine contrition. “I’d clean forgotten I was in a hotel. Please forgive me. Have a whisky and soda? Have a cigar?”
His visitor did not deign to reply. He stared at Jim with hot, scowling eyes, and then, making a contemptuous gesture, left the room again, slamming the door after him.
“Well, that’s that,” Jim muttered, thereafter returning to bed, annoyed with himself and distressed that he should have caused annoyance to others. “What a swine I am,” he thought.
Matthew Arnold’s lines:—