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Page 40
The eunuch's bankings-account--which was kept in a certain secret nook
of the harem court--had become sadly depleted on account of his
master's eccentric views as regarded women, but he still lived in hope,
and, delighting in intrigue, as every native does, had welcomed the
advent of his ebony brother primed with gossip and suggestion.
Therefore, upon the beating of the gong which had not been struck for
many weary moons, he hastened to the court and salaamed to the ground
before his master, who sat upon a pile of cushions, guarded by the two
shaggy dogs of Billi, with the amber mouthpiece of the jewel-encrusted
_nargileh_ between his lips and the falcon upon a padded perch beside
him.
"Bring me a woman--to dance," he curtly ordered, and the slave sped to
do his bidding, with visions of a big increase in the banking-account
hidden in a secret place.
And when the dancer drifted in like a flower-petal upon a breeze, Hugh
Carden Ali looked up slowly, letting escape a wisp of smoke from
between his lips.
The dancer wore one single garment of transparent black, hung from the
shoulders by diamond bands and through which her perfectly nude body
shone like an ivory pillar; her slender feet with crimsoned toes and
heels were bare; the tiny hands ablaze with jewels; a huge bunch of
orange-tinted diamond-sprinkled osprey was fastened in her jet-black
hair; across her face there hung a short, almost transparent veil, one
corner of which she held between her teeth, leaving to view the
wonderful eyes, a heaven or hell of invitation--as you will.
She danced as had danced her Biblical sister to the pleasing of a king
for the attainment of her desire; and she danced humming a little tune
behind the veil until the movement of her beautiful body and the
knowledge of a man's eyes upon her went to her head like wine, so that
in the end, by force of habit maybe, she danced to conquer where she
had only intended to interest.
As already mentioned, she had the morals of a jackal.
She drifted down the court towards Hugh Carden Ali and, standing before
him, bowed her beautiful head to the level of her dimpled knees,
laughed gently, and was gone like a bird to a far corner of the court.
She seemed to swing in the air like a lime flower caught on the end of
a spider's thread, as she came slowly down once more; to be blown
hither and thither like a leaf before the gale as she ran here, sprang
there, to the rhythm of the little tune she hummed behind the wisp of
veil; to undulate, like a field of ripe wheat beneath the summer sun as
she stood quite near the man who watched her with a fraction of the
interest he would have shown in the purchase of a dog or falcon in the
open mart.
Her henna'd toes pressed firmly on the centre of a Persian rug of such
antiquity as to render the pattern indecipherable; she moved her body
from the slender waist downward not at all; the muscles of her arms and
shoulders rippled, and her head moved, slightly but unceasingly from
side to side.
How often one hears of the European's boredom whilst watching the
Nautch Dance in which the Indian Nautch girl, fully clothed, indeed in
high tight bodice and ankle-length, voluminous skirt, will drive her
native audience clean crazy with the tapping of her feet and slight,
undulating movements of the slender body and rod-like arms. It is
indeed the dullest thing on earth to watch if you are unable to follow
and _interpret_ every little movement. But if you can--well! the
unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights will be as milk-and-water
compared to the heady brew offered for your consumption. And the old
Harrovian sitting cross-legged, upon a heap of cushions, with the smoke
of the _nargileh_, drifting from between his lips, smiled as he picked
up the thread of the same old story which had been spun for him when,
an arrogant youth of twelve summers, he had ruled his house with no
gentle hand.
Otherwise he showed little interest and felt no desire to lift the
tantalising veil; neither did he turn his head, else might he have seen
the ebony face of the Ethiopian eunuch peering from between a mass of
flowers, from which point of vantage he watched the scene with intent
to report thereon to his black twin-brother.
At last, and very slowly, and with a growing feeling of resentment in
the place where her heart by rights should have been, Zulannah sped
down the court upon her toes and fell at the edge of the piled
cushions, causing the dogs to growl softly at her daring.
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