Part 5 (1/2)
”Claire! Claire!”
She slowly withdrew her eyes.
”Yes, Desmond.”
A question stammered on his lips; but as she smiled at him, he felt the mad absurdity of it, and was silent.
”Well, Desmond, what is it?”
”Nothing,” he answered.
Absalem now claimed their attention. He was determined that they should be in the front of the crowd, and ruthlessly pushed away the Moors who had obtained the best places, pointing at Claire and Renfrew, and wildly vociferating their mighty rank and enormous wealth. The staring mob gave way; and in a moment Claire and the miracle man stood face to face. His frenzied eyes had no sooner seen her than he too fell upon the surrounding natives, thrusting them violently to one side, and cursing them for daring to draw near to the great English gentleman and lady. In the whole mighty mob these two were the only Europeans, and they attracted as universal an attention as two Aztecs would in a Bank Holiday gathering at the Crystal Palace. Renfrew could now see that the screeching music came from one side of the ring, where a couple of men, clothed in filthy rags, were sitting on the ground, one playing a long pipe of straw, the other beating an enormous drum. Immediately behind them a very old man, evidently a maniac, swayed his body violently backwards and forwards, and at regular intervals uttered a loud and chuckling cry that might have been the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of a tipsy school-boy, and came strangely from withered lips hanging loose with weakness and with age. This dancing Methuselah caught Renfrew's attention; and, for the moment, he forgot to look at the miracle man. A general outcry from the mult.i.tude made him turn his head. He saw then that the miracle man held in his huge hands a sort of kennel of straw, the mouth of which was closed with a movable flap. Lifting this aloft, he sprang wildly round the ring, vociferating some words at the top of his voice; then, suddenly casting it down, he flung himself upon the ground, which he beat with his forehead, while he shrieked out a prayer to his patron saint for protection in the great miracle which he was about to perform.
”What is he doing?” Renfrew asked of Absalem.
”Don't you know?” Claire said.
Her eyes were gleaming with excitement as they stared at the salaaming figure that grovelled at their feet.
”No. How should I?”
”He is praying to Sidi Mahomet,” she said.
And then she looked at Renfrew. He understood. At that moment, despite the excessive heat engendered by the blazing sun and the pressure of the crowd, he turned very cold, as if his body was plunged in glacier water.
He thought of the tall figure that had stood before Claire's tent door in the moonbeams, the lips that had coaxed from the pipe the tune that charmed all serpents,--that right tune that they must follow, which drew them from the desert sands to the gra.s.s of the oasis, till they wound up the body of this gaunt and tremendous savage, and hid themselves in his hairy bosom. This miracle man, then, was a snake-charmer, and Claire had divined it at once. How? Renfrew put the question quickly.
”How did I know? He is the man who played outside my tent in the night, Desmond.”
”The very man! Impossible.”
”The very man.”
”Then you were not asleep, not dreaming?”
”How can one tell? Hus.h.!.+”
She spoke in the low voice of one whose attention is becoming concentrated, and who cannot endure the interruption. The charmer had now finished his pet.i.tion to his G.o.d, and, standing up, thrust into his mouth a handful of some green herb, which he chewed and swallowed. Then his whole manner abruptly changed. The frenzy died out of his eyes. A calm suffused his tall and muscular body till it became strangely statuesque. His lips slowly smiled, and he raised his hands towards the glaring sky with a sublime gesture of grat.i.tude.
”What an actor!” Renfrew heard Claire murmur softly.
He, too, had become intensely engrossed by this man in whom he, from this moment, began to see Claire: the exquisite woman whom the civilised world wors.h.i.+pped in the mighty savage who came from the remote depths of Morocco; the white being who played with the minds of the capitals of Europe, in the black being who played with the reptiles of the desert and of the jungle. For Claire, guided by the spirit that ever goes before genius bearing the torch, had instinctively divined what she had never known. In London it seemed that she had entered into the very soul of this man who now stood before her. She had caught the wild graces of his bearing. She had reproduced his smile, so full of secrets and of power. She had moved as he did. She had been motionless as now he was motionless. In the sun she stood at this moment and beheld the reality of which she had been the magnificent reflection. And Renfrew felt his heart oppressed, as if clouds were closing round him.
Now the snake-charmer looked slowly all round the great circle of watching faces until his eyes rested on Claire. He had taken the straw kennel into his hands, and he softly lifted the flap, and turned it flat upon the top of the kennel, leaving the mouth open. Then he thrust one hand into this mouth, and withdrew it, holding a writhing snake whose striped satin skin changed colour in the suns.h.i.+ne, turning from pink to green, from green to black.
”It is the snake I saw,” Claire whispered to Renfrew.
He did not reply. He seemed fascinated by the savage and the serpent.
Holding the snake at arm's length, the charmer walked softly round the circle, collecting money from the crowd. He stopped in front of Claire.
The snake thrust out its flat head towards her. She did not shrink from it; and the charmer cried aloud some words that seemed like praise of her beauty and of her composure. She gave him a piece of gold. Renfrew gave him nothing.