"Oh, don't be rotten," he told himself. But the occasional hot and
searing pain remained, and the little black cloud was in his mind. When
they were close in the soft gloom, shoulder to shoulder, her eyes
closed, her slim cinnamon hands clenched, pain stabbed him like a knife.
And in the gay mornings, when she was arranging her flowers in vases of
Persian blue, it made him silent as the grave. And in the evening when
she was doing her subtle Syrian broideries, it aroused in him queer
gusts of controlled fury.... Could it be possible? A mountebank.... And
the "Thousand and One Nights" began with _Shah Zamon's_ queen and her
love for the blackamoor slave....
If the wrestler would only go away, become tired of parading, and
Fenzile would tire of smiling.... And later on Campbell would laugh....
But the wrestler stayed, and many times Campbell met him in the streets,
and each time was exaggerated, insulting courtesy from the Aleppo man,
as he drew aside to let the Frank pass. There was hostility and contempt
in his veiled eyes.... There nonchalance in his smelling of the rose ...
Campbell passed by frigidly, as if the man weren't there, and all the
time his blood was boiling.... But what was one to do? One could not
make a scene before the riff-raff of Syria. And besides, there was too
much of a chance of a knife in the back.... Franks were cheap these
days, and it would be blamed on the war of the Druses....
Argue with himself as much as he could, it was intolerable. It was
silly, but it was intolerable.... To think of another caressing that
perfumed hair, of another kissing the palm of that slim hand, of another
seeing those sleek, sweet shoulders....
Was he jealous ...? No, irritated, just, he told himself. Was he in love
with her himself? Of course not. She wasn't close enough to him for
that.... Then why ...?
Oh, damn it! He didn't know why, but it was just intolerable....
Section 11
The bark was in the open roadstead, cargo all ready, Levantine pilot on
board. A reaching breeze from the north and all favorable. And when he
would get home to Liverpool, he had a design to spend a few weeks in
Ulster.... The roads would be glistening with frost there, and the
pleasant Ulster moon at the full.... The turf would be nearly black, and
bare as a board, and there would be coursing of hares ... November
mists, and the trees red and brown.... Eh, hard Ulster, pleasant Ulster!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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