She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers in her left hand.
“You are coming, aren’t you?” she said, looking over her shoulder into his eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let go his hand and slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and taking his coat from a nail, slung it over his shoulders and drew it on. Then he picked up his hat, and put his foot on his half-smoked cigarette, which lay smoking still. He followed her out of the room, walking with his head rather forward, in the half loutish, sensual-subjected way of the Italians.
As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of Madame standing alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white under her spotted veil, her eyes very black. She watched Ciccio following behind Alvina in his dark, hangdog fashion, and she did not move a muscle until he came to a standstill in front of her. She was watching his face.
“Te voilà donc!” she said, without expression. “Allons boire un café, hé? Let us go and drink some coffee.” She had now put an inflection of tenderness into her voice. But her eyes were black with anger. Ciccio smiled slowly, the slow, fine, stupid smile, and turned to walk alongside.
Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle, calling out that he would go straight to Woodhouse.
When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her veil just above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her brows. Her face was pale and full like a child’s, but almost stonily expressionless, her eyes were black and inscrutable. She watched both Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable looks.
“Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?” she said, with an amiable intonation which her strange black looks belied.
“Yes,” said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while Ciccio sat sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow, stupid, yet fine smile on his lips.
“And no more trouble with Max, hein?—you Ciccio?” said Madame, still with the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes. “No more of these stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me.”
“No more from me,” he said, looking up at her with a narrow, catlike look in his derisive eyes.
“Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren’t we, Miss Houghton, that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no more rows?—hein?—aren’t we?”
“I’m awfully glad,” said Alvina.
“Awfully glad—yes—awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you remember another time. What? Don’t you? Hé?”
He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.
“Sure,” he said slowly, with subtle intonation.
“Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all friends, aren’t we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Hé? What you think? What you say?”
“Yes,” said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow, glinting eyes.
“All right! All right then! It is all right—forgotten—” Madame sounded quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her eyes, and the narrowed look in Ciccio’s, as he glanced at her, showed another state behind the obviousness of the words. “And Miss Houghton is one of us! Yes? She has united us once more, and so she has become one of us.” Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round white face.
“I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras,” said Alvina.
“Yes—well—why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say, Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps better than Kishwégin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us? Is she not one of us?”
He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.
“Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?”
“Yes,” said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.
“Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it, and speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes.”
So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tramcar, while Ciccio rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and Alvina found to say to one another.
Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty much as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the Saturday night. On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about thirty miles away, to fulfil their next engagement.
That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched Alvina. She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching meant. In the same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found one gliding in the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively, but persistently. And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in his negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped forward, and his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But there was a sort of finesse about his face. His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was waiting: silent
