“And I want you to share in my little distribution,” he added. “And you, Monsieur, if you don’t mind. There are moments when—Open the gate, Smain!”
His ardour was infectious and Domini felt stirred by it to a sudden sense of the joy of life. She looked at Androvsky, to include him in the rigour of gaiety which swept from the Count to her, and found him staring apprehensively at the Count, who was now loosening the string of the bag. Smain had reached the gate. He lifted the bar of wood and opened it. Instantly a crowd of dark faces and turbaned heads were thrust through the tall aperture, a multitude of dusky hands fluttered frantically, and the cry of eager voices, saluting, begging, calling down blessings, relating troubles, shrieking wants, proclaiming virtues and necessities, rose into an almost deafening uproar. But not a foot was lifted over the lintel to press the sunlit sand. The Count’s pensioners might be clamorous, but they knew what they might not do. As he saw them the wrinkles in his face deepened and his fingers quickened to achieve their purpose.
“My pensioners are very hungry to-day, and, as you see, they don’t mind saying so. Hark at Bel Cassem!”
The tomtom and the shriek that went with it made it a fierce crescendo.
“That means he is starving—the old hypocrite! Aren’t they like the wolves in your Russia, Monsieur? But we must feed them. We mustn’t let them devour our Beni-Mora. That’s it!”
He threw the string on to the sand, plunged his hand into the bag and brought it out full of copper coins. The mouths opened wider, the hands waved more frantically, and all the dark eyes gleamed with the light of greed.
“Will you help me?” he said to Domini.
“Of course. What fun!”
Her eyes were gleaming too, but with the dancing fires of a gay impulse of generosity which made her wish that the bag contained her money. He filled her hands with coins.
“Choose whom you will. And now, Monsieur!”