第54章 CHAPTER VIII(10)

The alley was an alley of women. In every house on either side of the way a similar picture of attentive patience was revealed: a narrow Moorish archway with a wooden door set back against the wall to show a steep and diminutive staircase winding up into mystery; upon the highest stair a common candlestick with a lit candle guttering in it, and, immediately below, a girl, thickly painted, covered with barbarous jewels and magnificently dressed, her hands, tinted with henna, folded in her lap, her eyes watching under eyebrows heavily darkened, and prolonged until they met just above the bridge of the nose, to which a number of black dots descended; her naked, brown ankles decorated with large circlets of gold or silver. The candle shed upon each watcher a faint light that half revealed her and left her half concealed upon her white staircase bounded by white walls.

And in her absolute silence, absolute stillness, each one was wholly mysterious as she gazed ceaselessly out towards the empty, narrow street.

The woman before whose dwelling Domini had stopped was an Ouled Nail, with a square headdress of coloured handkerchiefs and feathers, a pink and silver shawl, a blue skirt of some thin material powdered with silver flowers, and a broad silver belt set with squares of red coral.

She was sitting upright, and would have looked exactly like an idol set up for savage worship had not her long eyes gleamed and moved as she solemnly returned the gaze of Domini and of the man who stood a little behind looking over her shoulder.

When Domini stopped and exclaimed she did not realise to what this street was dedicated, why these women sat in watchful silence, each one alone on her stair waiting in the night. But as she looked and saw the gaudy finery she began to understand. And had she remained in doubt an incident now occurred which must have enlightened her.

A great gaunt Arab, one of the true desert men, almost black, with high cheek bones, hollow cheeks, fierce falcon's eyes shining as if with fever, long and lean limbs hard as iron, dressed in a rough, sacklike brown garment, and wearing a turban bound with cords of camel's hair, strode softly down the alley, slipped in front of Domini, and went up to the woman, holding out something in his scaly hand. There was a brief colloquy. The woman stretched her arm up the staircase, took the candle, held it to the man's open hand, and bent over counting the money that lay in the palm. She counted it twice deliberately. Then she nodded. She got up, turned, holding the candle above her square headdress, and went slowly up the staircase followed by the Arab, who grasped his coarse draperies and lifted them, showing his bare legs. The two disappeared without noise into the darkness, leaving the stairway deserted, its white steps, its white walls faintly lit by the moon.

The woman had not once looked at the man, but only at the money in his scaly hand.

Domini felt hot and rather sick. She wondered why she had stood there watching. Yet she had not been able to turn away. Now, as she stepped back into the middle of the alley and walked on with the man beside her she wondered what he was thinking of her. She could not talk to him any more. She was too conscious of the lighted stairways, one after one, succeeding each other to right and left of them, of the still figures, of the watching eyes in which the yellow rays of the candles gleamed. Her companion did not speak; but as they walked he glanced furtively from one side to the other, then stared down steadily on the white road. When they turned to the right and came out by the gardens, and Domini saw the great tufted heads of the palms black against the moon, she felt relieved and was able to speak again.

"I should like you to know that I am quite a stranger to all African things and people," she said. "That is why I am liable to fall into mistakes in such a place as this. Ah, there is the hotel, and my maid on the verandah. I want to thank you again for looking after me."

They were at a few steps from the hotel door in the road. The man stopped, and Domini stopped too.

"Madame," he said earnestly, with a sort of hardly controlled excitement, "I--I am glad. I was ashamed--I was ashamed."

"Why?"

"Of my conduct--of my awkwardness. But you will forgive it. I am not accustomed to the society of ladies--like you. Anything I have done I have not done out of rudeness. That is all I can say. I have not done it out of rudeness."

He seemed to be almost trembling with agitation.

"I know, I know," she said. "Besides, it was nothing."

"Oh, no, it was abominable. I understand that. I am not so coarse- fibred as not to understand that."

Domini suddenly felt that to take his view of the matter, exaggerated though it was, would be the kindest course, even the most delicate.

"You were rude to me," she said, "but I shall forget it from this moment."

She held out her hand. He grasped it, and again she felt as if a furnace were pouring its fiery heat upon her.

"Good-night."

"Good-night, Madame. Thank you."

She was going away to the hotel door, but she stopped.

"My name is Domini Enfilden," she said in English.

The man stood in the road looking at her. She waited. She expected him to tell her his name. There was a silence. At last he said hesitatingly, in English with a very slight foreign accent:

"My name is Boris--Boris Androvsky."

"Batouch told me you were English," she said.

"My mother was English, but my father was a Russian from Tiflis. That is my name."

There was a sound in his voice as if he were insisting like a man making an assertion not readily to be believed.

"Good-night," Domini said again.

And she went away slowly, leaving him standing on the moonlit road.

He did not remain there long, nor did he follow her into the hotel.

After she had disappeared he stood for a little while gazing up at the deserted verandah upon which the moon-rays fell. Then he turned and looked towards the village, hesitated, and finally walked slowly back towards the tiny, shrouded alley in which on the narrow staircases the painted girls sat watching in the night.