“Of course. Come to-morrow to lunch: you must meet my brother.”
“Oh, thank you. I’ll bring back an answer from Rosa, if she sends one. Anything that I can ever do for you will always be absolute happiness; you know that, don’t you?”
“Thank you, Hi.”
She gave him her hand, in the foreign fashion, to kiss: he was grateful for this. A clock chimed for half-past seven. “You must go,” she said, “you haven’t much time.”
* * * * * * *
His caleche jolted him back through Medinas, which was now lit for the night from its many windows. He saw it as a darting of children and a slinking of men, amid a noise of babies squalling, men singing and women screaming. A gas-lamp at a corner of a lane lit the words on a wooden direction post, To Medinas Close; he could just see a lit space surrounded by decaying old black houses, seven or nine storeys high. “So that is where ’Zeke lives,” he thought. “I’ll go to see the old man as I come back to-morrow.”
There was delay in getting through the gates, in spite of his pleading that he was English. He delivered his letter to Rosa, learned that there was to be no answer, and then drove off (his driver in a hurry) to reach the hotel before eight o’clock. On coming to the gate on his way back, he had some trouble with the guard. Unfortunately it was not the guard which had passed him through ten minutes before. The sergeant of this guard was a mulatto (with an Irish accent), who was very rude and smelt of aniseed.
“You damned English,” he said. “What’s stopping ye staying in your homes? I suppose ye’re ate up by your lice, and think ye can scrape them off on us. Well, get through and be damned to ye and obey the proclamation another time.”
The hotel people opened their doors grudgingly to him. They gave him a tasteless supper in the ill-lit, frowsy dining-room, from which all the life had gone; everybody seemed to have gone to bed. He hurried through the meal and then went up to his bedroom.
Here, in bed, he went over the events of the day with a great deal of relish.